A computer scientist from Mexico City has developed Mexica, a software that understands emotion and tension well enough to compose stories.

In an Internet survey where the Mexica's stories were pitted against human and other computer-generate stories, the program of Rafael Perez y Perez was ranked highest in flow, coherence, structure, content, suspense, and overall ... quality.

Rafael, who has a really cool name, works for the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico. He explains that his program begins with a very simple story, a few sentences outlining a beginning, a middle, and an end. Then it treats the characters as variables and assigns numerical values to emotional links between them. After that, it conducts an engagement-reflection cycle where it searches for atoms, i.e. story actions and occurrences stored in a database. The chosen atom will be the one that best fits for the context of the character at that moment. This process is repeated until no more atom can be found. Finally, the software conducts an analysis of the coherence and interestingness. A story is considered interesting when tensions levels fluctuate throughout.

Perez y Perez explains that Mexica does not want to replace human writers, but rather to help them understand the way they write, and thus allow them to see how they can improve their writing.
Unfortunately, impossible to find this software nor a example of generated story...

Source: Discovery News, last friday.

Researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris have developed an algorithm that allows robots to find the source of a faint scent even with air turbulence. Like a moth would do.

Massimo Vergassola and his colleagues tested their algorithm in a virtual environment and they discovered that not only the robot (virtual, also!) succeeds to find the source but overall, it moves in complex back and forth sweeping motions, s-curves, and spirals that closely look like the way of a moth.

The algorithm uses information received from the scent itself but when no scent is detected, it mixes to behaviours: going directly toward the point where it guesses the scent is coming from and wandering around collecting information.

Vergassola says that the algorithm could be implemented in an real sniffer robot but also in any other application that involves searching without much information. Example: detecting the best paths for data to be sent through a network.


Source: NewScientistTech, last week.

The eRiceCooker is connected to the Internet. It continuously reads the news on the Web and each time it sees a post about genetically modified rice (GMO), a quarter cup of rice is dispensed into the cooker. When it's full, water is automatically added and it starts cooking. At the end, an e-mail is sent to a mailing-list, inviting people to come and eat some rice! :)

To subscribe to this list, go to the page eRiceCooker that belongs to the MIT Media Lab. This idea belongs to Annina Rüst. The goal is to create awareness to issues surrounding Genetically Modified Organisms.
Here is a little video of 2 minutes length: the eRiceCooker in action.

Same idea but surely less funny, the artist Caleb Larsen created a candy dispenser. Small yellow candies. It also reads the news on Internet and when people has been reported killed, an algorithm extracts the exact number and a Lego NTX machanism dispenses candies on the ground. Accumulation...


Source: Information Aesthetics, 3 days ago.
For those who do not know: A genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using techniques in genetics generally known as recombinant DNA technology. Recombinant DNA technology is the ability to combine DNA molecules from different sources into one molecule in a test tube. Thus, the expression of certain traits, the phenotype of the organism, or the proteins it produces, can be altered through the modification of its genes.

How to build a complete house in 24 hours? A house with all the walls, the insulation, plumbing and electricity?
Using the robot technology invented by Dr Behrokh Khoshnevis at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. It's called the Contour Crafting.

Berok (his little nickname) first created a small machine, a small robot able to create 3D models layer after layer. You draw your cup with sketchup for example, and the machine prints it in 3 dimensions.

That's already nice but starting from there, he has created a much bigger machine that builds a house the same way. It superimposes layers of a mix of gypsum and concrete, a liquid that dries very quickly, so quick that it's ready when the next layer arrives.

The purpose is to build his house entirely from his computer, but also to reduce the costs (half), to reduce the environmental waste and also facilitate the rehousing of the disaster victims after a catastrophe. In theory.


Source: University of Southern California', march 2005 and a video from Daily Planet.

If you want to minimize greenhouse gas emissions, following the shortest route from your navigation system isn't the best idea. Neither is the quickest road.

Swedish researchers from the Lund Institute of Technology have created and tested a GPS navigation system programmed to work out the most "efficient" route. In the streets of Lund, the three women proved that their system can calculate routes that are significantly less polluting than the standard options. An average fuel saving of 8,2% in one area, 8,2% less pollution. Eva Ericsson (the boss) estimates that 4% is more realistic for a global use.

To develop the all thing, the team assigned fuel consumption factors for 3 types of car on 22 streets in the digital map database. To get there, they merged information on thoses streets: width, speed limit, typical traffic flows in both peak and off-peak hours.

But the suppliers of digital maps are more skeptics. By Navteq for example, assign a fuel factor to every street would be too expensive. But they imagine probe vehicles that would transmit data on their fuel consumption as they travel around so one can use them in real time or store them as historical data.


Source: NewScientistTech, yesterday.

Koen Clays is a professor at the Chemistry department of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. But he went to China, Beijing, to discover an organic substance which makes it possible to reach a rate of 150 Gb/sec!

To remind you, a current high-rate connection goes around 0,005 Gb per second. You can't imagine that. 150 Gb/sec.

150 Go/sec, this is the possibility to totally fill your hard disk in one second. A report should be published in January in the scientific Optic Letters (“The journal where readers look for the latest in optics discoveries" !). Koen discovered an organic molecule whose reaction time to the light is up to 50% faster than the fastest material used today. And the more a substance reacts to the light, the more the transfer is fast. Bye-bye previous records…

On another hand, nobody can make routers that can manage such an high-speed...


Source: DataNews, today.