Learn about how scientists came up with a thousand questions that stump computers; what happened to the ghost ship Mary Celeste; and why a warm bath can help you sleep better. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Scientists Came Up with 1,000 Questions That Stump Computers — https://curiosity.im/2ZvMVkL What Happened to the Ghost Ship Mary Celeste? — https://curiosity.im/2KMkTxd Want Better Sleep? Scientists Confirmed an Obvious but Effective Trick — https://curiosity.im/31RNoPQ Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about how scientists came up with a thousand questions that stump computers; what happened to the ghost ship Mary Celeste; and why a warm bath can help you sleep better.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/sleep-better-with-a-bath-questions-that-stump-computers-and-the-ghost-ship-mary-celeste
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how scientists came up with a thousand questions that stump computers; what happened to the ghost ship Mary Celeste; and why a warm bath can help you sleep better.
CODY: Let’s bathe in some curiosity.
Scientists Came Up with 1,000 Questions That Stump Computers — https://curiosity.im/2ZvMVkL (Cody)
Scientists came up with a thousand questions that stump computers. And they did it to help researchers improve machine learning in the future. You know when you ask a question to your smart speaker or Siri, and it gives you an answer that’s pretty much useless? Well that’s the kind of thing scientists would like to work on, but in order to help computers think better, first we need to learn more about how they think in the first place. So a team of researchers from the University of Maryland set out to do that, by coming up with a list of questions that computers could not solve. It all comes down to the fact that language can be tricky for machines. If you tweet that something was totally sick, you might mean that it was cool, even though the dictionary might suggest you’re saying something has a disease. We humans are pretty good at picking up patterns like this when we see certain language used the same way multiple times, and it turns out that AI systems are pretty good at doing that, too. But if you want to expose a system to unfamiliar words and phrases, then you need to figure out what those unfamiliar words and phrases are. Usually, questions are written by either humans or computers to figure this out, but this research tried something new: scientists developed a computer system that let humans work WITH computers to come up with the questions. The system basically showed the human authors what the computer was "thinking" while they typed their question. It did that by highlighting which words or parts of the sentence the computer was using to make its guesses at an answer. So let’s say the author wrote this question: “What composer’s ‘Variations on a Theme by Haydn’ was inspired by Karl Ferdinand Pohl?” The system then gives the correct answer, which in this case is “Johannes Brahms.” And the system would also highlight the words “Ferdinand Pohl” and display other questions the computer had encountered that involved both Karl Ferdinand Pohl and Johannes Brahms, to show that this phrase led the computer to the answer. Understanding how the computer "thinks" let the author edit the questions to be harder for the computer, but without changing the meaning of the question. Like they might replace the name of Karl Ferdinand Pohl with a description of Pohl’s job, “the archivist of the Vienna Musikverein.” THIS phrasing stumped the computer. At the end of the day, the team came up with 1,213 stumpers. Those questions were then put to the test in two live human vs. computer tournaments. In both tournaments, the humans beat the AI, with even the weakest human teams defeating the strongest computer system. They found several phenomena that tripped up the computer’s natural language processing ability. Some had to do with the language itself, like paraphrasing or using words in unexpected contexts, while others related to the computer’s reasoning skills, like when it took multiple steps to go from clues to answers. The researchers found that humans can generalize more and see deeper connections; basically, we may not have limitless memory, but we can see the forest for the trees. And if you want to see the “trees” in question from this research, then you’re in luck. Because the researchers made their questions and data freely available so other researchers can use them to help improve machine learning. And you can find links to that our full write-up of this story on curiosity-dot-com.
Q10 In October 2018, a provincial capital announced plans to launch an aritificial moon to replace streetlights. NASA employees are banned from working with businessmen from this country, echoing tensions that began when this country shot down one of its weather satellites in low orbit in 2007. This country's Landspace company plans to offer private space launches. In 2003, this country became the third nation to achieve manned spaceflight with the voyage of the Shenzhou 5. For 10 points, name this country that maintains control centers at Xi'an [SHEE-en] and Beijing.
What Happened to the Ghost Ship Mary Celeste? — https://curiosity.im/2KMkTxd (Ashley)
Historians may have solved the mystery of the ghost ship Mary Celeste. And if you haven’t heard the story, then get ready for a wild ride.
It all started in 1872, which wasn't a good year for sailors on the Atlantic Ocean. Hundreds of ships were lost or abandoned at sea, after being battered by some of the worst weather in recorded history. But not the Mary Celeste. She eventually found her way back to port, with rations fully stocked and cargo secure in the hold. But the ship was missing one thing: a crew. About a month after leaving New York, she was discovered in nearly perfect condition, save for a missing lifeboat and the fact that there were no humans on board. It seemed like the crew jumped ship on the lifeboat in a hurry — too fast to gather any of their supplies, at least. But there was no sign of any disaster that would have caused that kind of panic.
Obviously this was great fodder for a ghost story, but a convincing explanation finally showed up when a documentarian named Anne MacGregor went through the ship’s logs. According to the last entry, the ship was in sight of Santa Maria in the Azores on November 25. 10 days later, it was found 400 miles east of that point. In MacGregor's estimation, the likeliest scenario is that the crew jumped ship on the last recorded day and the ship sailed itself the rest of the way. But why? After carefully examining the available records, MacGregor and oceanographer Phil Richardson came to the conclusion that the captain had a faulty chronometer — which told the captain that the ship was about 120 miles west of where it actually was. So, lost on a turbulent ocean, the captain likely ordered the crew to abandon ship and head for the nearby island. If only he'd trusted his vessel.
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Want Better Sleep? Scientists Confirmed an Obvious but Effective Trick — https://curiosity.im/31RNoPQ (Republish) (Cody)
Want better sleep? Scientists have confirmed a potentially obvious but definitely effective trick.
As reported by The Conversation, it turns out that you could fall asleep faster and get better sleep by treating yourself to a warm bath or shower one to two hours before bedtime.
In a recent collaboration between the University of Texas and the University of Southern California, researchers reviewed more than 5,000 studies related to bathing and sleep. 17 of those studies met the team’s criteria to look into the effects of a warm bath or shower on sleep. And they found that you can significantly improve overall sleep efficiency with a warm bath — around 104 to 109 degrees Fahrenheit, for as little as 10 minutes. When you take that bath one to two hours before bedtime, it can help you fall asleep about 36 percent faster.
And there’s a physiological reason for this. Your body temperature is not constant over 24 hours. It’s higher in the morning and evening, and it’s the lowest during nighttime sleep. Your body temperature needs to drop to initiate good sleep. When you take a warm bath or shower, your body brings a large amount of blood flow to the surface, especially hands and feet. This blood flow moves the heat from your core to the surface, then rejects the heat to the environment and causes a drop in body temperature. So if you take a warm bath or shower at the right biological time — as in, one to two hours before bedtime — it’ll aid your natural circadian process and improve your sleep.
As a next step, the researchers are working to design a commercially viable bed system with technology that mimics the effect of warm bath. The bed of the future!
ASHLEY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today. Today we learned that computers may have more memory than humans, but they can miss the forest for the trees.
CODY: And that an entire crew probably abandoned ship because of a faulty chronometer. I like that our first story was about how humans and machines can work together to achieve great things, and our second story was about how a machine pretty much screwed up an entire voyage.
ASHLEY: And that you can fall asleep faster and get better sleep by taking a warm bath or shower within a couple hours of going to bed.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!