Science!: Masks, Pills and Prescient Frogs

[Lauren Admire]

Science!: Masks, Pills and Prescient Frogs

Inside: A pill that tells your doctor when you haven't been taking it.

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[Jared]

That group research actually makes some sense...a little. I mean, if you want to see more of whats going on always better to be looking in, rather than been the core...plus, all hell breaks out, never expect you!

 

[The Random One]

I'd head things about how easy digital facial recognition is to be foiled, so the most striking thing about this part was that Admire mentioned Robin, and the researcher's name is Adam Harvey, as in Adam West + Harvey Dent. (And I'm not even that much of a geek - I actually had to look up Harvey Dent's name. I searched Wikipedia for 'list of batman villains'.)

I agree the test for the leader may have been faulty. If you're physically following a leader, he should try to be at the forefront of the group, hence the edge. If you're not physically moving, things might be different. Experiment suggestion: a group of people must reach an unanimous conclusion about something or other. Two 'plants' are giving opposite suggestions, one standing at the center of the group, one hanging at the edge. Who wins?

That pill thing sounded scary, but if it only tells you it was taken and nothing else it's fine. Then again, the guy could feed it to his dog and it'd go off. Or child. Or hostage. (SAW XIII: SCREW THE DOCTORS)

Frogs are weird.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

Until science invents a pill which can overcome ugliness..... pharmaceuticals will only ever be about managing pain....

 

[the1ultimate]

The link to the face detection page seems to be broken. I think I found it though: Popular Science.

 

[lomylithruldor]

For my job, i had to do a facial detection function (the first part of recognizing a face is to know where it is) so i know a bit how it works. Simply put, the thing checks for features (like a light area between two dark areas for the eyes and the nose) and if it has enough recognized features, it detects a face. It's all on greyscaled images so it's faster and that the light in the room don't count as much.

The trick to fool the algorithm is to change the shape and how light reflects on the face. If one eye is pretty light and the other is larger and isn't in the shape of an eye, there's a good chance the algorythm won't find the face.

Also, i don't know why he reverse engineered it since there's an open source function in openCV [http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/FaceDetection] and a lot of articles on the internet that describe how to do it.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Until science invents a pill which can overcome ugliness

They already have, its called Rohipnol. Only thing is to get the other person to take it.

Its funny that animals can detect trouble long before humans do, if they could read and write we would find messages saying "Ha ha ha! Your all going to die!"

 

[Tristan Sjet]

You're.

that would be cool though.

 

[copycatalyst]

Wow, did someone really give them a grant to study people walking in groups, which supposedly determines that being on the fringe of a crowd provides more influence? Pretty weak study, if you ask me. It's not like the centre of a crowd is its centre of attention anyhow.

 

[VitusPrime]

The pill idea is really useful, for obvious reasons.
Leadership seems interesting
And Frogs joining the ranks of earthquake detectors is always a reassurance.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

Oh humans can detect earthquakes before they hit.....well I'll let xkcd explain

Spoiler

 

[Undead_David]

With the group leader thing, go back to evolution and you can see probably why. The Leaders were those who could take action and respond quickly to danger and you cant easily do that when you have a bunch of people around you, too many distraction to respond effectively. Also look at how we structure military squads out in the field, most squad leaders dont set themselves up in the middle.

As for the frogs, could have used this information before that big 7.2 hit my hometown