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Daily Archives: May 18, 2017
This Simple Puzzle Test Sealed The Fate Of Immigrants At Ellis … – NPR
Posted: May 18, 2017 at 2:29 pm
A wooden puzzle in the silhouette of a human head might look fun if the stakes weren't so high. A doctor named Howard Knox invented The Feature Profile Test the formal name for this puzzle after officials struggled to administer IQ tests to immigrants because of issues with language and literacy. Stephen Lewis/Art + Commerce/Smithsonian Magazine hide caption
A wooden puzzle in the silhouette of a human head might look fun if the stakes weren't so high. A doctor named Howard Knox invented The Feature Profile Test the formal name for this puzzle after officials struggled to administer IQ tests to immigrants because of issues with language and literacy.
A wooden puzzle in the silhouette of a human head might look fun if the stakes weren't so high.
Historians at Smithsonian Magazine say this simple puzzle containing facial features broken into pieces was administered to immigrants at Ellis Island in the early 1900s. The goal was to weed out the "feeble-minded" and ensure that a "better class" of foreign-born people was ushered into U.S. citizenship. The puzzle is currently housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
The Feature Profile Test the formal name for this puzzle sprang out of an idealistic policy that was supposed to be fair, writes historian Adam Cohen. A doctor named Howard Knox invented it after officials struggled to administer IQ tests to immigrants because of issues with language and literacy.
"This was in some ways a progressive reform," Cohen says. "The idea that this would be a puzzle that no matter where you were born in the world, where you came from, people generally had the idea of what a face looked like, so it had a kind of democratic impulse behind it."
At the same time, the eugenics movement was informing U.S. immigration policy. Cohen says the eugenicists were worried the wrong types of people were coming into the country.
"They believed that in various ways we had to test and weed out the people who would bring the wrong genes," Cohen says. "That included trying to have fewer people from countries that were deemed to have worse genes, and then also using tests like this to at the individual level weed out people who were unintelligent, feeble-minded, unfit."
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This Simple Puzzle Test Sealed The Fate Of Immigrants At Ellis ... - NPR
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Scientists find evolution in butterfly eye dependent on sex – Phys.Org
Posted: at 2:28 pm
May 18, 2017
By analyzing both the genes that control color detecting photoreceptors and the structural components of the eye itself, University of California, Irvine evolutionary biologists have discovered male and female butterflies of one particular species have the unique ability to see the world differently from each another because of sex-related evolutionary traits.
The study, which appears in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, offers new insights into these selective environmental pressures that guide butterfly eye evolution.
Led by Adriana D. Briscoe, UCI professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at the Ayala School of Biological Sciences, researchers discovered that the butterfly species Heliconius erato possesses a distinct set of visual photoreceptors based on species sex. Females of the species contain two types of the ultraviolet opsin gene (UVRh1 and UVRh2), while males lack UVRh1.
The findings were surprising to the group, as no other animal has been found to have a sex-linked difference in the make-up of its eye that depends on the suppression of an opsin gene. The researchers also noted that the violet receptors controlled by the expression of the ultraviolet opsin genes may help facilitate species recognition between Heliconius erato and other butterflies.
"We are only now beginning to appreciate that male and female Heliconius see the world through different eyes," said Briscoe. "Pollinator preference can have a huge impact on the evolution of flower coloration, just by virtue of which flower gets visited. Flowers may change their colors to match what butterflies can see; and sex differences add another layer to the story of these interactions."
Briscoe and her colleagues were astonished by the sex differences found in the Heliconius erato species; however, it remains to be determined why such differences would evolve in the first place. Their findings shed light on a fascinating way that environmental pressure can give rise to the origins of a new visual receptor.
"We think this study will inspire visual ecologists to look more closely at the behavior of each sex - how they see each other, how they see flowers and how they find places to lay their eggs," she said. We are testing this hypothesis by giving male and female Heliconius butterflies color vision tests in the lab."
Briscoe and study co-leader, UCI post-doctoral scholar Kyle McCulloch, added "Finding this level of color receptor diversity in closely related butterflies supports other studies showing that eye evolution is not always a slow and conservative process. As a field, we are still not sure why some lineages diversify and use many more color receptors than others, but with this study, we can frame new hypotheses to answer these questions. In particular it will be exciting to learn what mechanisms during development lead to these sex and species differences in the eye, and what selection pressures - mate choice, foraging, oviposition - lead to these differences in Heliconius."
Explore further: 'Taste sensor' genes in female butterflies vital to species' survival
More information: Kyle J. McCulloch et al, Sexual Dimorphism and Retinal Mosaic Diversification Following the Evolution of a Violet Receptor in Butterflies, Molecular Biology and Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msx163
Giving the phrase "Mother knows best" a whole new meaning, UC Irvine researchers have identified unique genes in female butterflies that enable them to select the best host plant for their larvae and avoid deadly ones.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Butterfly experts have suspected for more than 150 years that vision plays a key role in explaining wing color diversity. Now, for the first time, research led by UC Irvine biologists proves this theory true ...
The preference of Heliconius butterflies for certain leaf shapes is innate, but can be reversed through learning. These results support a decades-old theory for explaining the evolution of the exceptional diversity of leaf ...
The genes that make a fruit fly's eyes red also produce red wing patterns in the Heliconius butterfly found in South and Central America, finds a new study by a UC Irvine entomologist.
Professor Richard ffrench-Constant of the University of Exeter in Cornwall has worked with an international team of experts to decode the patterns on butterflies wings.
Red may mean STOP or I LOVE YOU! A red splash on a toxic butterfly's wing screams DON'T EAT ME! In nature, one toxic butterfly species may mimic the wing pattern of another toxic species in the area. By using the same signal, ...
A new Oxford University collaboration revealing the world's prime insect predation hotspots, achieved its landmark findings using an unusual aid: plasticine 'dummy caterpillars.'
After decades of research aiming to understand how DNA is organized in human cells, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have shed new light on this mysterious field by discovering how a key protein helps control gene organization.
Breeding in plants and animals typically involves straightforward addition. As beneficial new traits are discoveredlike resistance to drought or larger fruitsthey are added to existing prized varieties, delivered via ...
(Phys.org)A pair of researchers from Stanford University has studied the energy used by a type of small parrot as it hops from branch to branch during foraging. As they note in their paper uploaded to the open access site ...
Researchers have successfully developed a novel method that allows for increased disease resistance in rice without decreasing yield. A team at Duke University, working in collaboration with scientists at Huazhong Agricultural ...
University of Chicago psychology professor Leslie Kay and her research group set out to resolve a 15-year-old scientific dispute about how rats process odors. What they found not only settles that argument, it suggests an ...
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Orangutans Suckle for Up to Eight Years – Science Daily
Posted: at 2:28 pm
Science Daily | Orangutans Suckle for Up to Eight Years Science Daily Biomarkers in the teeth of wild orangutans indicate nursing patterns related to food fluctuations in their habitats, which can help guide understanding of breast-feeding evolution in humans, according to a study published today in Science Advances ... Cyclical nursing patterns in wild orangutans | Science Advances |
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The Evolution of the Gig Economy: Cupcakes to Claims Inspections – Entrepreneur
Posted: at 2:28 pm
We sure have come a long way in the gig economy. We are maturing, pivoting and enabling workers and businesses all over the world to seamlessly tap into the new digital economy. Life is good.
I remember reading back in 2011 about one of the initial gig platforms, TaskRabbit, and how one of their taskers was earning supplemental income by delivering cupcakes. It was a cute story. The gig economy started originally as a true B2C phenomenon. The "C"is obviously for cupcakes!
But that was the old gig economy. Although there is still a strong vertical for consumers, the gig economy has become more professional, streamlinedand innovative.
Related: The Affiliate Marketing Model: A Blueprint for Success in the Gig Economy
The gig economy resulted from the combination of two important factors: the boom in digital platforms and the leveraging ofunderutilizedassets. The gig economy began as a peer-to-peer phenomenon, with consumers being able to access the assets of other consumers directly through digital platforms. Think Uber, Airbnb, and yes, cupcake deliveries on TaskRabbit.
Consumers wanted more choices, better access to goods and servicesand flexible work options. And oh boy, did they get it! Graphic designers can now easily pick up side jobs on Upwork. People with a vehicle can drive for Uber. Those with a spare room can rent it on Airbnb, and free time can be used to conduct tasks through WeGoLook.
The peer-to-peer gig economy is mainstream and is predicted to grow to a $300 billion industry by 2025. That's not bad growth. But this is only the beginning of the gig economy story. Get ready for Act 2, where businesses are taking notice and tapping into this new industry.
I love the quote by entrepreneur Paul Hawken,who in 2013 noted that the B2B gig economy would be "bigger than the internet." Now,Hawken may have been little ahead of the times, but we are starting to witness his prediction come true in 2017.
The gig economy's shift from B2C to B2B is in its early stages with Airbnb targeting the business travel marketand Uber entering the commercial transportation scene. Newcomers like DashHaul, uShipandCargomatic, businesses thatconnect enterprises with each other to leverage unused space in both shipment and warehousing, are on the rise.
The B2B gig economy began with business travel, naturally found a place in the logistics industryand is now moving toward one of its most promising sectors -- staffing.
Related: Gig Economy Platforms Are Creating A New Class of Entrepreneurs
They key difference here between the cupcake and business gig economy is that enterprise solutions provided by gig platforms are integrating seamlessly into business cycles and supply chains. How are they doing this? Through a network of on-demand workers connected through a powerful mobile application. More and more businesses are tapping into the on-demand workforcetofulfillstaffing needs. Some studies estimate 40 percentof the U.S. workforce will be classified as independent, or gig, workers by 2020.
Let's consider WeGoLook as a case study. The company has more than30,000 gig workers globally who are ready to perform professional tasks such as asset verifications, document delivery, notary services, data capturing and much more.
Enterprise clients areincreasinglyleveraging our Looker -- what we call a gig worker -- network, instead of their own workforce. Traditional staffing methods are wising up to the fact that on-demand workers can be dispatched at a moment's notice to perform a variety of professional tasks. Why use an expensive full-time employee who can use their time for other important duties? This is a rhetorical question all of our clients are asking themselves.
Freelancing and contracting is by no means new, but the integration of this type of workforce with innovative digital technology and mobile applications is fairly new.
For instance, WeGoLook works with gig workers who are licensed drone operators who can perform a variety of tasks such as damage assessments, professional photos for realty companiesand property inspections.
WeGoLook has also partnered with many enterprise insurance clients to give them access to our network of gig workers. Instead of sending an expensive fieldadjuster, our app will notify Lookers that are within the job radius. They will go capture that data immediately, submit it, and the insurance carrier has that report within an hour.
You can see why enterprises are increasingly electing to plug into the gig economy. The B2B gig economy allows businesses to easily extend their service offerings outside of their normal footprint.
Related: 6 Millennials Who Quit Their Day Jobs Share How They Did It
As you can see, the gig economy has matured considerably. The B2B gig economy has come a long way from the early days of peer-to-peer sharing of goods and services.
Seasoned gig companies like WeGoLook have embraced the shift to B2B, withoutcompromisingthe B2C services that got us into business in the first place. B2B solutions have allowed WeGoLook to give more employment options to our Lookers, all the while helpingenterprises join the digital economy.
Thegrowing enterprise demand for integrated on-demand workforces and gig economy models is shaping the future gig economy. This is the gig economy 2.0.
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The Drunkard’s Walk: How Evolution Explains Why Trump Will Soon Be Impeached – Paste Magazine
Posted: at 2:28 pm
Trump will be impeached. Given certain observable facts about the known cosmos, the inevitability of Donald Trumpbeing forced out of office grows every day.
How can I be so sure of thisso sure that I have given this feature a Malcolm Gladwell-style title? The New Yorker just had a long piece by Evan Osnos about the possibility of impeachment. That article is titled How Trump Could Get Fired. (Italics mine) If the New Yorker cannot guarantee Trumps political demise, what tells me it will happen?
It doesnt take an act of God. Nor does it require the Democrats to become good at their jobs, or for the GOP to become moral, or any other impossibility. It doesnt demand the karma police or the age of heroes reborn or your cousin writing a dozen protest songs with his new girlfriend. All that is required for impeachment is for laws of the universe to continue, and for Trump to stay Trump.
The Drunkards Walk tells me everything I need to know about the eventuality of Trump leaving office.
THE DRUNKARDS WALK
By Drunkards Walk, I do not mean the actual walk we have all done at some point. The Drunkards Walk is a concept taken from biology. The scientist Stephen Jay Gould thought there was no directionality in evolution, no progress. He believed evolution was a series of unplanned genetic changes. But there does seem to be progress: complex animals come from simpler ones. How it possible for two-legged apes with therapists to emerge from a lot of random mutations? As an explanation, Gould proposed the Drunkards Walk model of evolution.
In the example of the Drunkards Walk, you have to imagine an intoxicated person, walking down a sidewalk. To his back is the bar, which he has just been kicked out of. He cant go back in. He has to walk forward. The intoxicated person is blotto and has no idea where he is going, or whats happening. He has no agenda, just as a cell has no agenda.
There is a wall to his left, and a street to his right. The Drunkards Walk suggests he will eventually land in the street, even without meaning to, because he cannot go left beyond the wall, but he can eventually go into the street. After enough random stumbles, the numbers suggest he will topple into the gutter.
The message of the Drunkards Walk is that we can arrive at a destination, without really meaning to.
In biology, Gould used the Drunkards Walk to help explain evolution. Like the intoxicated person, cells dont know what theyre doing. They dont plan on getting more elaborate. But there is a wall in evolution, the complexity of a cell. Thats the limit: cells are not going to simply disassemble, since cells are basically machines for making copies of themselves. Theres nowhere to go, except for becoming more complicated. Eventually, given enough time and enough randomness, a cell will fall in the streetgrow complex. The cell didnt mean to end up in the street; it didnt mean to do anything. It doesnt have a brain, after all. Set enough boundaries, and a direction can emerge without intention.
Although Goulds example was designed to describe the unconscious actions of cells, Goulds example can also be applied to careless public figures.
In politics, despite his famous aversion to alcohol, Trump is the very intoxicated man.
He has no plan. No idea where he is going. But he will still end up in the street, face down in the gutter.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT TRUMP?
All of the following are true:
A) Trump is President. B) Trump will never quit. C) With poor impulse control, a complaisant Congress, and a team of yes-men, Trump has no checks to stop him from doing goofy stuff.
If it isnt Comey or the Russians, it will be the next thing. Or the next thing after that. Trump will keep having penny-ante dumb reactions until its too much. Not because he is a Machiavellian monster but because hes a barely-aware toddler who lives in a narcissistic envelope. He will threaten the Republican agenda to the point where even the leaders of Congress cannot abide it.
We normally think of impeachment as the countermeasure against scheming, power-hungry Presidencies. But for the purposes of my prediction, it doesnt matter if Trump is deliberately undermining the Constitution or colluding with Putin. We get the same results whether he has an agenda or not. Personally, I dont think Trump plans anything. I think he is an old playboy with appetites and poor impulse control. In a metaphoric sense, he is permanently drunk.
Gould wrote that the simplest possible organism can only become more complex or stay the same. Let us consider his example as it applies to Trump.
The intoxicated person leaving the bar cant go back in the bar. A legally-sworn in politician cant un-President himself. Trump cant go back in the barthat is, be a private citizen and a President at the same time. The President cannot leave the spotlight. He cannot fail to discharge the duties of the office; he must keep appearing in public and saying many words and exercising many powers.
The intoxicated person cannot go left, because he will run into the wall. Trump is a prideful man who has become President. He will not quit.
The intoxicated person keeps taking random steps, because at this precise moment, he cannot sober up. Trump is unlikely to change, or submit to someone else trying to change him. God help me, but I am about to quote Ross Douthat from the Times. Douthat says about Trumps child-like incomprehension:
But ultimately I do not believe that our president sufficiently understands the nature of the office that he holds, the nature of the legal constraints that are supposed to bind him, perhaps even the nature of normal human interactions, to be guilty of obstruction of justice in the Nixonian or even Clintonian sense of the phrase. I do not believe he is really capable of the behind-the-scenes conspiring that the darker Russia theories envision. And it is hard to betray an oath of office whose obligations you evince no sign of really understanding or respecting. ... leaving a man this witless and unmastered in an office with these powers and responsibilities is an act of gross negligence.
Trump will not change. He will stay politically intoxicated and oblivious, stumbling randomly, governing on impulse, screaming at cable news.
If the intoxicated person cannot go back to the safety of the bar, go through the wall, or sober up, he will eventually fall in the street. If Trump cannot become a private citizen again, stop being President, or change his behavior, he will eventually be impeached.
Given these constraints, it is inevitable that the intoxicated person falls into the gutter. And it is pre-ordained that Trump be impeached.
These are odd times. As the New Yorker points out, most impeachments are driven by struggles for power. Andrew Johnson couldnt abide freed slaves or Radical Republicans, so he flouted the law and eventually dodged removal by one vote. At the height of his popularity and strength, Nixon struck out in paranoia against his perceived enemies. His eventual cover-up involved violating the balance of powers, so he was dispatched. Clinton surrendered to his appetites, so the Congress saw their chance to kneecap him. Trump is unpopular. A substantial portion of the populace hates and fears him, but this is different. He is not a shrewd man, but a helpless one. He will go out the door the same way he came in: by the power of his bungling and despite the incompetence of his enemies.
He will be removed from office, and then Pence will be President, and the GOP agenda will sail through Congress in about ninety days. But Trump will be gone, and there will be a diminished risk of the world ending or the Constitution dying today. Those of us on the left will deal with the devil we know, and not with the baffling demon we have never seen.
Impeaching a President is no small act. When a government falls in the gutter, we all fall with it. But as a wise man once said, when the fall is all there is, it matters.
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The Drunkard's Walk: How Evolution Explains Why Trump Will Soon Be Impeached - Paste Magazine
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Latest Homo naledi Bones Are Younger than Expected – Discovery Institute
Posted: at 2:28 pm
According to a recent article in The Guardian, New haul of Homo naledi bones sheds surprising light on human evolution, but the most important word in the headline is surprising. It turns out that the fossils are much younger than evolutionary biologists expected.1
In 1982, paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall noted that it is a myth that the evolutionary histories of living beings are essentially a matter of discovery. If this were really true, they wrote, one could confidently expect that as more hominid fossils were found the story of human evolution would become clearer. Whereas if anything, the opposite has occurred. The Homo naledi bones show that Eldredge and Tattersall were right.2
Emory University archaeologist Jessica Thompson (quoted in The Guardian) explains that the discovery makes it clear that human evolution is not as straightforward as it is made out to be. It doesnt start out with something that looks like a monkey, and then something that looks like an ape, and then something that looks like a human, and then all of a sudden youve got people, she said. Its much more complicated than that.1
Indeed, human origins are as mysterious now as they have ever been. As Yale paleoanthropologist Misia Landau once wrote, stories of human evolution far exceed what can be inferred from the study of fossils alone, so fossils are placed into preexisting narrative structures.3 And the overarching narrative structure is materialistic philosophy the view that matter and physical forces are the only realities and God is an illusion.
Science educators tell materialistic stories about how we are accidental by-products of unguided evolution, and the stories are illustrated with iconic drawings of apes morphing into humans. But the stories come first; fossils such as Homo naledi are plugged in later.
References:
(1) Ian Sample, New haul of Homo naledi bones sheds surprising light on human evolution, The Guardian (May 9, 2017).
(2) Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 126127.
(3) Misia Landau, Narratives of Human Evolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. ix-x, 148.
Photo credit: Lee Roger Berger research team (http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560) [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Latest Homo naledi Bones Are Younger than Expected - Discovery Institute
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A-Tech’s robotics team wins first in regional competition – The Star Beacon
Posted: at 2:27 pm
Ashtabula County Technical and Career Campus robotics squad, The Machinists,battled their way to a first place finish at the Alliance for Working Together Foundations seventh annual Robobot Competition at Lakeland Community College on April 29.
Amid flying sparks and metal crunching clashes, Arditi, a radio controlled robot designed by A-Techs Robotics squad defeatedthe Beaumonsters of Beaumont School in the championship round.
Teams from public, private and career technical schools from across Northeastern Ohio competed at the event.
It was exciting, team member Ayden Arendas said. Curtis (Beukeman) was the driver and Damian (Schoville) ran the weapon. I think the key to winning was building a well built and protected bot.
The Machinists are now preparing to enter the fray at a National Competition held at California University of Pennsylvania on May 20 which will feature robotics teams from across the United States.
We noticed that a lot of matches are lost because the robobots electronics would fail after being hit a couple of times. So, having reliable electronics, well-constructed parts and a titanium shell were more than enough to make sure our robobot was able to take a beating and still fight, Arendas said. Arditi is still in one piece and is completely functional. We did have to replace a bolt or two but no significant damage was done
The Machinists technical advisor, Short Run Machine products owner Scott Ray agreed.
Very minor damage to our bot after each round made for an easy day, Ray said. The key strategy was our driving: taking our time, driving with great skill and then making our move to attack. We cannot wait until the National Competition. We are ready to battle the big boys.
All of Arditis working components were machined in A-Techs learning laboratory.The robotics team includes Precision Engineering and Machining seniors Ayden Arendas, Curtis Beukeman, Damian Schoville and Justin Osborne.
It was a very exciting day, for sure, saidA-Tech Precision Engineering and Machining instructor RonMaurer. Im so proud of these students for their diligence over months of refining the bot and working so well as a team at the competition.
The A-Tech Machinists are under the guidance of Ray; Wecall, Inc., engineer Ben Chaffee; and instructor Ron Maurer.
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QUT to use SoftBank’s Pepper for social robotics research – ZDNet
Posted: at 2:27 pm
Pepper with QUT's roboticist Belinda Ward
The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has unveiled its plans to study social robotics, inviting SoftBank Robotics' Pepper onto its campus.
The university will be using Pepper as a social robotics research platform, which it said complements the Queensland government's strategy to explore the potential for humanoid robots.
The Japanese technology giant's Pepper is capable of recognising emotions and mimicking human behaviours such as following the conversation around it by looking at whoever is talking.
"Pepper is probably the most 'personable' robot on the market in terms of its perceived emotional intelligence, which makes it a fantastic platform to investigate the suitability of social robots, which is still a very new field," QUT roboticist Belinda Ward said.
"What we learn from human-computer interactions with Pepper will inform the next generation of service robots, building an effective social component into their task-oriented programming."
Ward is from QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty and is also a part of the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, which recently received a two-year, AU$1.5 million research and development grant from the Queensland government to explore social robotics with SoftBank.
The AU$1.5 million comes courtesy of the state government's Advance Queensland initiative, which was launched by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in the 2015-16 Budget.
Ward said the funding would allow her team to explore the different applications of these robots across a range of settings and conditions, and their effectiveness in each.
"While a social robot in every home is probably a long way off for society, I see a place for social robots supporting human staff in every hospital, aged care facility and classroom, as companions and helpers -- and there are no doubt many more settings we haven't even considered yet," she added.
"Would a shy child in a classroom be more willing to ask a question of the robot rather than the class? Would a nursing home resident enjoy reminiscing about their past to a robot? Would a hospital patient feel comfortable chatting with a robot as it tidied their room?"
Ward's team will also work with ST Solutions Australia (STSA), a subsidiary of SoftBank Corp, to improve Pepper's vision and navigation systems.
QUT's use of Pepper will also have a strong student focus, expected to spend most of its time interacting with students and the public at The Cube, the university's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) engagement space.
QUT students and visiting high school students will also be able to experiment with Pepper, coding programs for it to run.
Last month, STSA signed a two-year proof of concept agreement with the Queensland government that will see it work on the development of humanoid robots, artificial intelligence, and other autonomous systems out of the state's innovation and startup centre located in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley.
The partnership will allow the government to explore the potential for humanoid robotics in education, health, and customer care.
STSA, the state government, and QUT's technology commercialisation company, qutbluebox, will also work in partnership to deliver a Robotics Accelerator program that will bring together entrepreneurial teams and innovative hardware technologies, as well as business mentorship.
"This program will fast-track the development of the next generation of startup founders to drive forward robotics and other hardware solutions across a range of industries," qutbluebox CEO Tim McLennan said on Thursday.
According to McLennan, the Robotics Accelerator is Australia's first accelerator dedicated to robotics.
When SoftBank offered 1,000 of its emotionally intelligent Pepper robots to the consumer market in 2015, the entire run sold out in under a minute.
Pepper was developed for SoftBank by Aldebaran, a French robotics company specialising in emotionally intelligent humanoids that can function in unstructured environments like homes, shops, and specialised care facilities.
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QUT to use SoftBank's Pepper for social robotics research - ZDNet
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Anderson robotics competition team: ‘It’s not BattleBots’ – Cincinnati.com
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Members of 7 Sigma FTC 10030 demonstrate the functionality of the robot used for last season's competition.(Photo: The Enquirer/Sheila Vilvens)Buy Photo
Austin Motz fondly remembers summer camps at iSpace in Sharonville.
There, as an elementary school and middle school student, he learned the art of LEGO engineering incorporating motors and computer coding. He also learned aboutvideo game design,robotics and more. These experiences fed his passion for the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
It was there he was introduced to FIRST Tech Challenge(FTC) teams of students learning about real world applications of STEM through robotics competitions and expos. Motzs STEM interest and talents landed him a spot on a robotics competition team out of West Chester.
Before long his dad, Martin Motz, became a team coach and 7 Sigma Robotics FTC10030 was formed. Team members areAustin and Andrew Motz, John Mays, Jackson Todd, Zach Rana, Rohan Rindni, Tassos Manganaris, Lauren Perozek and Nick Norton all of Anderson Township.
Now a Turpin High School student and a robotics competition champion, Motz and his 7 Sigma teammates are focused on educating others about the activitythey love. Last season 7 Sigma earned the PresidentsSilver Volunteer Service Award in recognition of the 550 plus hours of community service.
Were the only team at state to win this recognition, team member Jackson Todd said.
It wasnt their only award that year. In fact, they brought home several prestigious titles and qualified for state competition at multiple contests. But the volunteer award was one they hold special.
The robot used by 7 Sigma FTC 10030 of Anderson Township for competition last season.(Photo: Provided)
Providing motivation and generating an interest in robotics, thats the driving force behind the teams mission, Todd said.
A lot of people have no idea about the FTC or that theres even such a thing as competitive robotics, Tassos Manganaris said.
Were trying to make it more widely known, he said. So when people hear robotics competition the first thing that comes to mind isnt BattleBots, he said.
Key to this is getting into the schools, especially the elementary schools, and talking to students, Todd said.
Most of their outreach and community service efforts last year were at iSpace, a popular field trip and summer camp destination with a focus on inspiring and expanding students STEM knowledge.
Individually and as a team, 7 Sigma members have many interests. The top interest, however, is the FTC competition. The competition season begins in the fall with teams receiving a problem to solve and a box of parts, motors, sensors and gears. From that, they are to design, build and program a robot to take on various tasks on a court or game table.
This is a perfect match to the iSpace mission of getting children interested in STEM and STEM careers at an early age, iSpace Executive Director Sue Williams said. The volunteer efforts of 7 Sigma are encouraged.As a nonprofit, volunteers are critical to controlling costs.
Plus, she said, I think the kids love learning from older kids. And they can articulate what they did with (their STEM learning)."
The 7 Sigma team members make it "cool" to be involved in STEM, Williams said.
This spring and summer, the members of 7 Sigma remain committed to iSpace but are also expanding efforts to introduce robotics competition to younger students. Look for them to return to Anderson Days this summer with their robot and a willingness to talk about their experiences. They are also partnering with several Forest Hills schools to introduce STEM and robotics competition to other students.
What theyre doing is right in line with the FTC expectations, FTC Ohio Affiliate Partner Lori McAlister.
They did admirably in competition this past year making it to the state tournament, she said. They made it to the finals. Its a very competitive sport. Last year there were 100 teams in Ohio and 32 go to state. Only five advance to nationals. In its first year of competition 7 Sigma was in the top 1 percent of teams going all the way to nationals - a feat they hope to repeat.
This season they are focusing on innovation and design skills that might help them to achieve this goal.Until then, the teams focus remains on outreach.
To learn more about 7 Sigma and robotics competition, email themat 7sigmarobotics@gmail.com
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See bots run – The Hub at Johns Hopkins
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By Catherine Graham
The player approaches the ball and prepares to score the goal. The crowd waits anxiously.
The player isn't David Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldoit's a small, blue EduMIP mobile robot. And it's not the final moments of the World Cup. Instead, it's a robotics demonstration in a lab on the campus of Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering.
While the stakes aren't quite as high, these demonstrations are still nerve-wracking for students in the graduate-level Robot Systems Programming course.
"Not all the demos work out perfectly, and that's OK. But you have to try," said Louis Whitcomb, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering who created and has taught the course for the past four years. Despite many hours of planning, building, and testing the robots, students know that at any given moment, things may not go as planned.
Students in his course spent the last five weeks of the spring semester building and programming their own independent robotic projects. Whitcomb provides equipment and instruction but encourages students to experiment and set their own project goals. On Monday and Tuesday, 12 student teams demonstrated their robots in labs across the Homewood campus.
Students Andrew Dykman, Saurabh Singh, and Allen Jiang built a system that allows five separate EduMIP robots to communicate, move into a swarm formation, and work together to achieve complex tasks. During the demonstration, the team explained how, with some fine tuning, this technology could have many real-world applications.
"Take, for example, self-driving cars," Dykman said. "If every car on the road is running automated systems and communicating with cars around it, we could move cars at a higher speed without crashing, or reduce traffic jams by eliminating human errors."
For their project, students Kevin Yee and Nicole Ortega decided to take a favorite pastime to the next level.
"We know people already like to play chess against a computer, so we wanted to see what it'd be like to play chess against a robot," Yee said.
The pair created a platform that allows users to play chess against a chess engine on a physical board. They built a mobile robot, equipped with an end effector, that can make strategic moves and place chess pieces on target locations. According to Ortega, the robot usually wins.
Other demos included robots that can locate a soccer ball and score goals, a ball-catching robotic arm, a "self-standing" robot that can leap across obstacles, a team of robots that can map a location, and autonomous quadcoptors.
The Robot Systems Programming course gives students the tools to create their own unique vision of what a robot can do. Some will graduate next week and enter the field, and some will continue graduate work in robotics. Either way, Whitcomb said he hopes his students will use these skills to continue to explore what's possible in robotics.
"This course is intended to be a capstone experience for our advanced undergraduate and graduate robotics students," he said, "in which they use and apply the knowledge they have learned in the mathematics, engineering, and physics of robotics to develop real-world robots that can sense and interact with people and the world."
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