IN THIS ISSUE Rave From the Office I-Pod, I-Phone, I-Baby? Edible Plastic, Coming to a Supermarket near you! Colour and your....Palate A Second Brain and Another set of Eyes!!? Site of the Month Final Word

Rave From the Office Hey Guys Well we have been running around like headless chickens trying to get ourselves organised for our Western Australia tour as we are leaving in two weeks! Everyone is busy writing and designing shows, as well as looking for awesome places to stay in the towns we are visiting.  For this tour we are lucky enough to be traveling with two presenters from Sci-Tech (Western Australia's Science Center) which should be a lot of fun! Well there is no time to waste so we had better get back to it. Keep an eye out for our next issue as we will give you a sneak peak of our adventures in Western Australia! Take care and see you next month

Teams of researchers around the world are working on one of the most ambitious robotics projects ever, building a robotic baby, the i-cub!

Why build a robotic baby when you can have a full scale version? The answer comes from the way that people learn. Humans aren’t born with the knowledge it takes to survive in the real world, we gradually learn new things as we experience them. Unlike us though, robots have generally been built with all their knowledge pre-programmed. Now some engineers think that it may be more effective to build robots that learn in a similar way to people. The new robotic baby will be programmed to learn from it’s experiences, leaving all the hard work up to the robot.

In an effort to mimic the learning process of a human in acquiring new information, the i-Cub consortium have built a robot that is about the same size and shape as a two year old child. Scientists from all over the world are able to interact with the i-Cub, teaching it new things about itself and the world.

Teams working on the i-Cub are based in London, Paris, Lyon, Munich, Barcelona and Ankara in Turkey. So far it looks as though they are learning as much from it as it is from them. When this project is finished, the information gained from it will be included in the next generation of i-Cubs, of which there will around 20. Anyone up for some Robo-babysitting?

For more information visit: 

http://www.robotcub.org/index.php/robotcub


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So much of the food we eat today comes in non-biodegradable plastic wrapping that will inevitably find its way into the rubbish tip where will sit for 1000’s of years.

Scientists in Australia are working on a new plastic product that will break down when put on a compost heap. This new product is similar to plastic, it can be used for packaging food products, but it won’t damage the environment.

The best thing about this plastic is that it is made from a cheap, renewable resource that Australia grows a lot of, wheat!

The alternative plastic is made from starch that can be found in abundance in wheat. The process works by first combining wheat starch with a few other biodegradable products, then heating the mixture and generating long thin strips of plastic, a bit like strands of spaghetti. These strips are then chopped into small plastic pellets which go through another machine that turns them into plastic sheeting which can be used to wrap food in.

Scientists at CSIRO, where the product is being tested, say they hope that soon you will be able to eat your sandwich and the wrapper too!

For more on this story go to CSIRO Online:

http://www.csiro.au/multimedia/PlasticFromPlants.html

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Are you the type of person who knows if something tastes good by looking at it? It might sound a little bit silly to think that you can know how something will taste by looking at it, but the reality is that our eyes play an important role in interpreting taste.

Part of the reason for this is that we have an instinctive ability to know what foods can be good or bad for us by the colour they are. If you’ve ever had green mould on your bread, you probably knew not to eat it, and even if you did you’d soon realise that it tasted bad.   

Memory is also important when it comes to food. If we eat something that we dislike or that makes us sick, we are less likely to want to eat something that reminds us of that food. Are there any foods that you won’t eat because you once had a bad experience with them? If you get sick after eating a particular food you will be unlikely to want to eat that food again anytime soon. This is true even if it’s not the food that actually made you sick

Appearance and expectation can also affect our taste. If you see a food you’ve never had before and think “that looks nice”, you’re probably comparing it’s appearance to foods you have enjoyed before.

If you want to experiment on somebody, try this: 

Give someone three separate soft drinks. Two of the drinks should be standard flavours like cola or lemon. The third drink, however, should be flavourless carbonated water with just enough food colouring for it to change colour. Ask the person to taste each one and guess the flavours. You can do this test on multiple people to see how often people can pick which drink has no flavour. 

For more on this story, check out the link below:

 http://itotd.com/articles/629/the-influence-of-color-on-taste-perception/
 
http://hubel.sfasu.edu/courseinfo/SL03/color_taste.htm



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“Where are my keys Sam?” would have to be one of the most common things my mum has said to me throughout my entire existence. Answering this question usually requires a bit of an adventurous exploration through the house, until eventually the keys are found. That is, until now.

A team from the Tokyo University of Information Science in Japan are currently working on a design called ‘Smart Goggles’. These goggles are fairly normal glasses but with a camera attached. The camera records everything we see with our own eyes; the room we’re in, the faces of people that we’re with, the objects we look at. Using a fairly simple algorithm, the device can cycle through the recording, retracing your footsteps looking for when you last saw your keys or your Big Day Out tickets. The only catch is that you have to train the glasses to recognise those items. 

The inventor, Professor Kuniyoshi, says that finding missing items is just one thing that the Smart Goggles will potentially be able to achieve. They could also be used to remind you of the name of someone you thought you had forgotten. Say you’re at a dinner and see a familiar face, but as so often happens, you just can’t put a name to that face. As long as the Smart Goggles have seen the face before, they will be able to recognise the person and go back through the recording to let you know who they are and where you know them from. 

This ‘second brain’ might one day be able to identify things like what species of weed is growing near the back shed or who owns the handwriting on a secret valentines letter you once received. It looks like we’re catching up with science fiction.

So soon my mum might not need to ask where she put her car keys anymore. Unfortunately though, the Smart Goggles won’t help me out by feeding the dogs or unpacking the dishwasher. Soon maybe…


For more on this story, check out :

  http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/14/image_recognition_glasses/


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Want to know how to extract DNA from a Banana? Or find out about the Mobile Telescope? Then this site is for you! Jammed packed with the latest stories about science and technology this site covers everything from sports to entertainment!


http://www.cramscience.ca/

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That's it till next time. If you've got any questions, comments or suggestions for stories, please drop us a line at: qsmnews@questacon.edu.au

We’ll leave you with a quote

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought"

- Albert Szent- Gyorgyi