This week’s Learning-Quiz question: What, if anything, could the authors of this study possibly have hoped to learn from doing this study? The study is: “What is beautiful is good, even online: Correlations between photo attractiveness and text attractiveness in men’s online dating profiles“, Rebecca J. Brand, Abigail Bonatsos, Rebecca D’Orazio, Hilary DeShong, Computers in […]
Month: April 2013
Kenneth Appel, 4-color-map half-solver, has died
David Brooks reports, in his Granite Geek blog: Kenneth Appel, famous for being part of the team that created the first great computer-aided proof, of the “four-color” theorem which says that any map can be colored with four colors without bumping colors against each other, and who later headed up the UNH math department, has […]
A subject-specific model of human buttocks
Specific buttocks get a thorough analysis in this study: “A subject-specific model of human buttocks and thighs in a seated posture,” Rami M.A. Al-Dirini, Matthew Reed, Gunther Paul, Gunther and Dominic Thewlis, in 7th Australasian Congress on Applied Mechanics, ACAM 7, 9-12 December 2012, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA. “MR image processing was conducted to both […]
Abusing robots – current positions [part 3 of 4]
Continuing our observation of inquiries into the torture of robots, we now turn to the ethical questions raised (by some). Kate Darling – who presented the recent ‘Robotic Dinosaur Abuse Workshop’ in Geneva, examines such questions in a paper entitled – Extending Legal Rights to Social Robots – (presented at the We Robot Conference, University of […]