A team of computer scientists at Tel Aviv University have developed an algorithm that makes people in pictures more attractive:

This sketch presents a novel method for digital face beautification: given a frontal photograph of a face (a portrait), our method automatically increases the predicted attractiveness rating of the face. The main challenge is to achieve this goal while introducing only minute, subtle modifications to the original image, such that the resulting “beautified” face maintains a strong, unmistakable similarity to the original, as demonstrated by the pair of faces shown in Figure 1.

The algorithm makes minor adjustments so that the picture is more attractive, but still recognizable as the original subject.

Pseudo-scientifically, it works by taking the original picture and comparing it to optimal hotness (also called the Dave Dworin Point), and then makes minor adjustments to reconcile the two. Or something else involving math.

Categories: Israel, Photos, Science, Technology
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The spermatophore is a package of male sperm that is deposited on the female. The researchers were able to monitor the sizes of the spermatophores and found that its diameter per copulation decreased in males that mated with many partners. The scientists wrongly hypothesized that this decrease in average diameter might result from the males rationing their sperm; it turned out, however, that they were running out of resources to distribute. As a result, the females sought more mates to accumulate enough sperm to fertilize all their eggs.

Scientists have discovered that with fewer males, females get more frisky.  And get your mind out of the gutter, they’re talking about butterflies.

Categories: Dating, Distribution, Funny, Matching Mechanisms, Science
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Prizes stimulate innovation better than grants:

BACK in the 1700s, prizes were a fairly common way to reward innovation. Most famously, the British Parliament offered the £20,000 longitude prize to anyone who figured out how to pinpoint location on the open sea. Dava Sobel’s best-selling 1995 book “Longitude” told the story of the competition that ensued, and Mr. Hastings mentioned the longitude prize as a model at that meeting back in March.

Eventually, though, prizes began to be replaced by grants that awarded money upfront. Some of this was for good reason. As science became more advanced, scientists often needed to buy expensive equipment and hire a staff before having any chance of making a discovery.

The internet is changing the economics of innovation and discovery.  Science is no longer expensive like it once was, it is within the realm of dedicated and educated hobbyists.  Robin Hanson, who the article discusses, is everywhere you find interesting information economics problems.

Categories: Business and Economics, Incentive Centered Design, Information Asymmetries, Information Economics, Information Markets, Matching Mechanisms, Science, Social Software, Strategy, Technology, Users as Partners
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I picked up a Wired magazine for the plane and it was one of their best issues in months.  A few of the Must Read pieces, in order:

• What We Don’t Know: Want to know all the cool things that scientists are still trying to figure out?  Wired collected dozens of questions, along with descriptions, that show where science is looking but not finding the answers they want.  Alongside are John Hodgmans hysterical expert opinions.  If you think learning stuff about the universe is cool, start reading this article now.
• How Yahoo Blew It: Yahoo had all the advantages when Google started to emerge: a full product suite, enormous user base, and existing relationships with advertisers.  So how did they screw it up?  This article points the finger indirectly at CEO Terry Semel, who came in to make it a content creator when it needed to serve ads better.  As an aside, I’ve noticed lately that a lot of the Yahoo! products that I left for Google are now better than their rivals.  I also owe Yahoo for helping me find my Wii.
• The Invisible Enemy: Soldiers from Iraq started getting sick with drug-resistant bacteria that started to spread through the evacuation chain.  Was it coming from desert soil? Unsanitary field hospitals? Coating the IEDs?  This article explores the making of an epidemic in the hospital system, and how the military is starting to combat it.

Two other articles, on MTV creating virtual worlds and the growing acceptance of manufactured diamonds, deserve nods, but not the lengthy descriptions.  I normally don’t highlight a whole magazine, but Wired this month deserves a trip to the newsstand.

Categories: Distribution, Science, Social Software
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FuturTech Panels are today.  Everybody come!

Categories: Business and Economics, Futurtech, Graduate School, Information Economics, Science, Social Software, Technology, Winter of Dave
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The GapMinder foundation has a cool tool hosted by Google that lets you compare graphs of development variables against each other over time.  It defaults to Life Expectancy vs. Income per capita, but you can chart other variables as well.  You can see some very interesting movements when you play with the time slider.  Genocides show up as major dips in life expectancy - look at Cambodia in the 70s, Rwanda in the 90s.  To see the impact of AIDS, look at Zimbabwe or South Africa more recently.  A fun tool to play with, though it doesn’t have nearly as much data as some other visualization sties out there.

Categories: Business and Economics, Metrics, Philanthropy, Politics, Science, Technology
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The most important cause of the increase in autism diagnoses was the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, a federal law that required states to provide suitable education to autistics and to create registries for them. Autism has become a trendy diagnosis, and at times a useful one to stretch. “I am incredibly disciplined in the diagnostic classifications in my research,” Judy Rapoport, a senior child psychiatrist at the National Institutes of Health, tells Grinker, “but in my private practice, I’ll call a kid a zebra if it will get him the educational services I think he needs.”

Why there’s no autism epidemic in Slate.

Categories: Books, Education, Incentive Centered Design, Metrics, Science
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In contrast to The Simpsons, Futurama permitted the writers to let their mathematical fancies run wild and to cram in math references for their personal delectation, Keeler says. “That’s why it’s not on the air any more,” he jokes.

The Simpsons writers are math nerds!

Futurama, which had even more math nerds as writers, along with Al Gore’s daughter Kristen Gore, remains one of my favorite TV shows, even in reruns.  That’s why I’m psyched it’s coming back.

Categories: Entertainment Media, Metrics, Science, Television
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One problem with the Vulcan emphasis on logic above all is that it is not clear what motivates Vulcans. Logic helps us to see what is true, but it cannot tell us what we ought to do. Indeed, although Vulcans in the stories are successful within the quasi-military structure of Star Fleet, where orders come from above and give them straightforward guidance as to what their goals should be, they seem to be at something of a loss if thrown into an ambiguous situation, separated from authority and forced to set their own goals.

From Overcoming Bias.

Oh how I have nerded myself by posting that, but at least I didn’t write it.

Categories: Ephemera, Science
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The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers was able to decipher many inscriptions and reconstruct the gear functions, revealing, they said, “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.”

This thing is super cool - a 2000 year old computer 1000 years ahead of its time. A Special David Dworin Online Internet Honor goes to the first person to build one out of Lego, and a Double Bonus Honor if it uses Lego Mindstorms to improve on the original.

After reading the NYTimes article and a recent visit to the field museum, Stephen Dubner at the Freakonomics Blog is wondering about technology that’s ahead of its time, noting how often major scientific discoveries were found centuries apart. I think there are two explanations for why science has such gaps. First, it wasn’t really until the enlightenment that there was a general consensus around the scientific method, which means for millenia, scientists weren’t even all speaking the same language, and didn’t have the same set of standards. Once the rules of the game became standardized, things started moving quicker.

Beyond that, though, it wasn’t even until recently that communication technology was amenable to the wide scale dissemination of ideas. The writings of the Greek Philosophers survived in hand copied volumes, mostly in the Arab World (because they were destroyed in the west), meaning few had access to them. Since communication over time and distance was expensive, the notion that large groups of scientists would collaborate, as they do now, was out of the question. Science has progressed so rapidly in the modern era because it is so easy for scientists to communicate, collaborate, and document their findings, increasing the number of brilliant minds that can tackle the same problem.

Categories: Science
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