Posts Tagged ‘pod57’
November 19, 2013
There is an interesting discussion about synthesized voices and how the technology is changing as well as some of the legal implications of this. Does a person own their voice after it has been moved into a synthesizer? For instance one can easily take the addresses from George Bush and Barak Obama and create synthesized voices from them that sound fairly realistic, which in turn can be used to say virtually anything.
Do you own your own voice? It’s now possible to synthesize realistic #voices from snippets such as an Obama address
http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/v499/n7457/nature-2013-07-11.html
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Tags: naturemagazinefirsthalf2013, pod57
November 13, 2013
#Emergent Sensing of Complex Environments by Mobile Animal Groups: Fish swarm into dark patches from speed adjustment
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6119/574.abstract
An interesting discussion of how fish swarms reflect collective behavior. The basic idea is that fish like to swim in dark patches of water as opposed to light patches and one question is how a swarm finds this quickly. It turns out that it is not related to individual fish swimming away from light and dark but rather that the fish in light water swimming more quickly than those in dark water and the fish also trying to stay together as a swarm. The latter acts essentially as almost an axle between two wheels that are moving at different speeds forcing the fish to naturally turn into dark areas. A very intuitive discussion of this topic and a nice comparison to how this type of collective behavior is what one sees in the nervous system as well – One would not want to be making mental decisions on the basis of an individual neuron.
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Tags: pod57, sciencemagazinefirsthalf2013, x57d
November 1, 2013
Interesting discussion of a protein produced in mice and dog urine that acts as a pheromone. It is called Darcin and was named after the famous character, Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen’s novels, since it makes females very attracted to males.
Pheromonal Induction of Spatial Learning in Mice: Darcin
(#Austen-inspired name) acts as an attractant to females
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6113/1462
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Tags: pod57, sciencefirsthalf
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