Mad Science Monday, 2/7/2011

Ok, I really like writing these things. I think I'll try to do this weekly again.

Mad Reference: Josh Bongard. "Morphological change in machines accelerates the evolution of robust behavior." Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. January 25, 2011 vol. 108 no. 4 1234-1239. (abstract)

A lot of my random reads come from "cool" via Recommendations, a Google Reader list of things that other people have shared. As far as I can tell, this one mostly made that list because the title was cool, but the research is pretty neat.

Mad Background: Evolutionary algorithms are just about my very favoritest of things. Basically, computer scientists, inspired by the simplicity and elegance of biological evolution, have started using reproduction (of code fragments), mutation (of the specifics of the code), and selection (of the code fragments that are most successful at whatever task the programmers give them) to evolve programs. Such evolutionary algorithms often find solutions that the programmer might not have thought of, and do so faster than would occur if the programmer directly designed the solution. In other words, evolutionary algorithms flip the bird to intelligent design "theory" (which is only a theory in the colloquial sense of "guess;" there's no science there to actually make it a scientific theory).

Evolutionary algorithms are often used to design robots, both real and simulated (as shown in the video above).

Mad Observations: Real biological systems don't start out even crawling; they go through various body plans through their lifetime, and through the many lifetimes that take them from one species to another. For example, life has, multiple times, gone from a snakelike slithering form to legged walking form, both over many generations and within the lifetime of single organisms.

Mad Hypothesis: A robot that starts in a snakelike ("anguilliform") body plan before progressing to a four-legged walker can figure out how to walk faster and better than a robot that starts out up on four legs.

Mad Experiment: This experiment was mostly virtual. The experimenter set up digital "robots," some of which started out with legs, and some of which started out down on their belly. He then allowed them to search for a control mechanism for their four limbs that would get them from one corner of the simulation to the other. He also ran trials in which the belly-walkers gradually stood up on their legs (by slowly increasing the angle between the legs and the body), and then ran trials where robots pre-loaded with the slithering programs started out up on their legs. He even built Lego robots similar to his digital creatures, which just makes it all cooler.

They All Laughed, But: It worked. Robots that started out up on their legs took several hours to figure out how to walk, while the slitherers (and their progeny) figured it out in seconds. Even the Lego bots, which were slowly changed from slitherers to walkers, were able to figure out how to walk in the real world really fast, much faster than their always-walking cousins.

Mad Engineering Applications: When you're building your robot death army, don't start them out as bipedal killing machines. Sure, give them arms and a desire to rip things to shreds, but start out forcing them to use those arms to slither, then walk, and then finally they can stand erect and use those arms for their intended purpose.

This would probably also be useful for less destruction-focused robots, but that wouldn't be nearly as Mad.

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 12/15

I haven't done one of these recaps since Friday, but it doesn't look like I shared too much over the weekend, so this shouldn't be too huge.

Science and Medicine:

• I love this scale model of the solar system in Maine. I really want to get one of these together in the Austin area.
• Researchers in Australia have found that sarcasm is useful for detecting dementia. I dunno, I'm not sure I believe there are demented people in Australia.
• Researchers at the University of Toledo have reported the first case of sleep-emailing. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend turning on Mail Gogggles in Gmail Labs.
• Ferrofluid is awesome. Must... own... lots! I'm thinking some sort of system hooked to a speaker magnet would be very cool.

Software and the Internets:

• Apparently there's a Firefox-like open-source alternative to iTunes/Windows Media Player. The duplicate-finder add-on alone makes it enough for me to check out, at least for my home library.

Politics:

• It looks like I was also wrong about the pick for HUD. This guy sounds qualified, though, so I'm fine with being wrong again.
• The origin of the so-called War on Christmas, waged by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, has been traced to white supremacists. Not much of a surprise there, really.
• Obama's transparency has already infected the Congressional Oversight Panel, tasked with keeping track of where our $700 billion goes. Woot.
• Work on spreading this meme: Harry Reid is an ineffective Senate Majority Leader. Any failures aren't because we didn't get 60; they're because the modern filibuster is a joke. The filibuster is supposed to be there so you can block legislation you findunconscionable, not legislation that you want to vote no on.
• The first batch of answers from "Open for Questions" are up at Change.gov. Neat.
• The Illinois House has begun the impeachment process for Blago.

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 12/12

I skipped yesterday, so there will probably be quite a few shared items here. So, without further ado...

Hardware:

• Shut down your PC when you aren't using it. I still leave mine on, but this story might finally kick me into being better about power management.

Astronomy:

• A group of Dutch geophysicists have proposed that the Moon arose by a massive nuclear explosion 4.5 billion years ago. I don't think they'll supplant the impact theory (that the Moon formed when a very large object smacked into the early Earth, leaving its heavy bits behind and ejecting a bunch of the Earth's crust, which then coalesced into the Moon), but it's an interesting idea.

Politics:

• Obama is looking into changing the War Power Act, or, as I like to call it, the "Nanana I can't hear you the President can do what he wants nanana" Act. Er, well, one of such acts.
• Do not, as the New York Times did in their summary of this article, buy into the myth that the overpaid UAW is killing the auto industry bailout. UAW line workers, on average, make less than or equal to their equivalents at non-union, foreign plants in states like Kentucky or Alabama (according to Olbermann last night, at least). It just so happens that senators from those states are spreading this myth of the overpaid, obstructionist UAW worker. Funny how that works.
• Looks like I'm probably wrong about who Obama will choose for Secretary of Transportation. I haven't looked into it enough yet to know whether I'd prefer the Texas guy or the California guy.

Science:

• Japanese scientists have reconstructed images by scanning a human brain while it viewed those images. In other words, they, in part, read people's minds. That is fraking unbelievably awesome.

Zombies:

• Holy crap, it's Zombie Friday again already! The third one is hilarious. The first is pretty funny, but just wrong. The second is awesome but I didn't re-watch 'cuz I'd already seen, and the fourth is way too long.

Software and the Internets:

• Lifehacker had a feature on Open++, a program that lets you add anything to Windows right-click menus. I like.
• Lifehacker found an online Photoshop replacement that's even cooler than the Phoenix I linked to before.
• The Austin teacher who insisted there's no such thing as free software is calming down, as is the guy who started the story. It sounds like both sides were overreactive morons, but the teacher is the one who threatened legal action while being the opposite of right, so I still side with the Linux guy.
• NiceTranslator is badass. Set your target language, type a phrase, and it uses Google Translate to figure out what language you're typing in and give you a translation. Neat. Hey, wait. That's kinda sci-fi, even if it can only work with known languages. Neat.
• I recommend against the auction site called Swoopo, based on this write-up. Jeebus that can't be legal.

As always, comment on these or any other shared items (or items you'd like to share with the rest of us) below.