Science Education: Summer Science Programs in Forensics

The South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics (USA) runs its Summer Science Programs (SSP) every summer. SSP is a residential summer camp for rising 8th, 9th and 10th graders. Both in-state and out-of-state students are accepted.


I'll be teaching two, one-week runnings of my course, A Mathematical Tour of Forensic Science, again this year.  In addition, Dr. Sid Parrish will be teaching his ever popular CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) course.  For those who, for some unimaginable reason, might want to take courses in subjects unrelated to forensics, there are a large number of offerings (Lego Robotics, Great Experiments in Physics, and more).  If you are interested, you can find out more on their website. I hope to see you there!

Science Education: Popular Science Magazine puts entire archive online for free viewing

As a kid growing up in the USA in the 70's, I spent a lot of time in my local public library reading everything I could get my hands on.  When it came to science and technology magazines, I remember reading every single Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and Scientific American as soon as it came in. Of course, a lot of what was in Scientific American was written above my academic level, but with each issue I read I got a little further into each article before I was lost- over time I gave myself a pretty good science education that way. (Aside: of course, that was before Scientific American became so politicized, but I can expound upon the politicization of science and science journalism another day...).

This trip down Memory Lane has a pleasant destination - Popular Science Magazine has put its entire archive of back issues - complete with period advertisements- online for free viewing.  The archive is even searchable using Google's technology.  Very cool, in a geeky sort of way (yes, I was a geek before geeks became cool).

Enjoy!

Speech Recognition: Men harder to understand than women

Researchers at Stanford University (USA) and the University of Edinburgh (UK) have tested various automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems and found that in general they have a more difficult time recognizing speech from males than females.  One of the causes mentioned by the researchers was that the men tended to use fillers such as "emm" more often.

I should point out that the tests were conducted using recordings of telephone calls.  This is important because the type of "channel" the audio is being carried over makes a significant difference to a computer-based speech recognition system.

The work was sponsored by the US Office of Naval Research.

For a quick overview of the research, you can read the BBC (center-left news media, UK) article here.

Enjoy!

Human Auditory System: Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains can not cope

I guess there is a scientific reason "modern" classical music sounds so awful to my ear after all!  The Daily Telegraph (center-right newspaper, UK) has the story.

Human Visual System: Caucasians and Asians recognize faces and expressions differently

World Science (an online science news site) summarizes work by researchers at the University of Montreal (Canada) into how Asians and Caucasians differ in recognizing faces and facial expressions.  Eye tracking cameras were used to monitor where the subjects were gazing.  Doctoral candidate and researcher Caroline Blais said that

The study confirmed that Caucasians study the triangle of the eyes and mouth, while Asians focus on the nose..

 In a separate study, she also tested how recognition of facial expressions differed between the two ethnic groups. It turned out that Asians were not as accurate at recognizing emotions that required observing the mouth, such as fear, disgust, and anger.

The two studies were published in the journals Current Biology and PLoS One.

Acoustics: Visualizing whale calls as art

NewScientist (science magazine, UK) has a fascinating set of images from Mark Fischer, who uses artistically manipulated wavelet transforms of the calls of marine mammals to create stunning artwork.
Enjoy!

Science and Math: Another round-up of interesting links

I have been having difficulty finding enough time to write my normal analysis and commentary on the information I have come across. Therefore, in order to not fall any further behind in getting interesting things out to you, I'm going to once again resort to listing the links.

With apologies, here they are:

US Judge rules that computerized voice stress analysis can be used to monitor offenders  (note: I've blogged previously about how detecting stress is NOT the same as detecting a lie)

Mathematicians: An Outer View of an Inner World

NASA Interstellar Boundary Explorer Mission

Forensic Audio overview article

Mysterious spiral lights
(solution: failed Russian missile launch)

Victorian Infographics

Virtual tours you don't want to miss

Saturn at equinox

The secret life of chaos

Enjoy!

Acoustics: Shattering glass with sound

I really enjoy Make Magazine (USA) for their many contributions to open source hardware development, but that is not the subject of this post. Instead, I'd like to point you to an excellent video they have up on their site from the MIT Department of Physics on breaking a wine glass with sound.

Law Enforcement: LRAD used for crowd control

The LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) was used for crowd control during a G-20 meeting in Pittsburg, USA in September 2009, according to this report.  For background on LRAD, see my previous post.

Human Auditory System: Learn echolocation

I came across (yet) another article on learning echolocation, this time by Wired (USA, popular technology magazine).  It is worth a read, if only for the observations, such as getting dry mouth from clicking too much.

For the record, I posted about this topic before to refute the contention that humans are learning to do this for the first time.

Admin: Word verification requirement for comments

Due to an overly burdensome and increasing amount of spam comments, I have turned on word verification for all submitted comments. I hope that this has not inconvenienced anyone.

Kind Regards,

Keith

Audio Forensics: Signal Processing helps unravel JFK Shooting evidence

IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) has started a public video section on its web site it calls ieee.tv.  I have been a member of IEEE since at least my graduate school days, as are many speech and forensic scientists, so if you are in either one or both of these fields and are not a member, I highly recommend that you check into it. (And in the spirit of full disclosure and in the hopes of avoiding investigation under who knows what new law is actually now or ever will be on the books about such things on the Internet - no, they didn't pay me to plug them as a professional organization!).

On to the subject of this post: ieee.tv has a fascinating video clip on the gunshot analysis performed by various experts on the recordings JFK assassination.

Hat Tip: Thanks Alex!

Human Auditory System: Foreign subtitles improve speech perception

Want to improve your ability to comprehend a second spoken language? One way is to watch foreign films and read the foreign language subtitles - not the English ones. Eurekalert reports on a recent study.

Human Auditory System: Newborn babies cry with mother's accent

MedGadget reports on a study by French and German scientists on accent that a newborn uses - conclusion: its mother's. It is well known that a person's hearing system begins functioning while still forming in the womb. I find it fascinating that it is also "training" the speech part of the system at the same time and that the interplay works so soon after birth.

Audio Forensics: Pro Tools Snow Leopard Pre-Release

I don't use Pro Tools myself, but many audio forensics professionals do, so here is a breaking news item...

From Hitsquad Musician's News:

Pro Tools Prerelease now available for Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Avid/Digidesign is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a prerelease version of Pro Tools software that provides expanded Mac OS X 10.6.x Snow Leopard compatibility to Pro Tools 8 users.