The Ultimate Puzzle!

The Parallax View

Project from Peder Norrby is an IphoneX visual toy using TrueDepth facetracking to produce a Trompe-l'œil effect of depth from the position of your head:

Explainer video - enable sound! The app, called #TheParallaxView, is in review on @AppStore#iPhoneX #ARKit #FaceTracking #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/6P8ofGZqP4

— ΛLGΘMΨSΓIC (@algomystic)

February 28, 2018

Yes it’s ARKit face tracking and #madewithunity … basically non-symmetric camera frustum / off-axis projection.

The app is currently in review, but Peder plans to release the code to Github in the future for developers to experiment with.

You can follow progress at Peder’s Twitter account here

komorebi

Design project by Leslie Nooteboom is a lamp that can project artificial natural lighting onto walls, created with high-rise apartment spaces in mind:

komorebi is sunlight filtering through leaves, creating a dance of light and shadows where filtered sunrays hit a surface. It is the reflections on pavements underneath centuries-old trees on a sunny day, and moving, framed lightboxes through windows of homes onto walls. However, these days buildings are taller than they have ever been, creating a place to live for as many people as possible on the tiniest piece of land possible. Homes become a place of isolation from the outside – windows are absent or so tiny that even the idea of nature disappears, and lighting has become so artificial that there is no sense of day, time or place anymore.

komorebi lets you curate natural lighting experiences indoors.

In a time where indoor sunlight is becoming more scarce, the need for technological nature is increasing. With an ever growing global population and urbanisation levels reaching huge rates, fewer living spaces are able to receive direct sunlight. There are attempts at solving this issue, however these are very static. Intensity and colour seem to be the only way in which their light is dynamic.

You can find out more at Creative Applications here or the project page here

Harry Potter and the Neural Network fan fiction

Or, what happens if you train a neural network on the titles and plot summaries of over 100,000 works of Harry Potter fan fiction.

In the decades since the Harry Potter books were published, fans have written literally hundreds of thousands of Harry Potter stories of their own, and shared them online. Can a neural network join in on the fun?

In a way, everything a recurrent neural network writes is fan fiction. A recurrent neural network looks at an example dataset (such as the complete Sherlock Holmes stories) and teaches itself the patterns and conventions that it sees. So, if it’s given Sherlock Holmes stories, it will become obsessed with Holmes and Watson, and if it’s given knock-knock jokes, it will spend all day telling awful knock-knock jokes of its own.

Thanks to an idea by a couple of readers, some heroic work by @b8horpet in scraping (with permission) hundreds of thousands of Harry Potter fan fiction titles and summaries from AO3, and a flexible new recurrent neural network implementation by Chen Liang, the neural network’s latest obsession is Harry Potter.

The Perfect Party by iamisaac Draco has been left alone, and Ginny confused must learn and who has his best friend. They were breathed by a love that didn’t become his grounds and the flowers begin.

This is a typical example of the neural network’s fan fiction - romantic pairings of two or more Harry Potter characters (called “ships” in fan fiction-speak). In this case, it even has chosen a plausible author: iamisaac is a real and fairly prolific fan fiction author whose works do tend to be of the “romantic” variety. 

The Garden by perverse_idyll for lexigilite Ron and Hermione move after a man party. What did her best things go and has to deal with people she loves? How many imperfect love really belonges them and needs to be a person? Or will they learn and more than the war? Mirror Thing by Queen_Elexhan “Are you there for a relationship? I was a sad future for your love.”  Harry and Ginny find out the meaning is.

Shatters by Kis [archived by TheHexFiles_archivist ] Based on the Spot Are It Falls Into A Heir by NextrangeOnTheThree Draco and Hermione share a whole indescribbening.

Again, “perverse_idyll” and “TheHexFiles_archivist” are fairly active authors. (Hi, if you’re reading! The neural network seems to like your writing, and is writing fan fiction of your fan fiction!) Those familiar with Harry Potter fan fiction will not be surprised to learn that the neural network really likes to generate ships; pretty much every combination of characters is represented (some of the more unusual combinations being “The Snow/Voldemort”, “The Ministry/Draco Malfoy”, and “Voldemort/Random Quidditch Child”).

By turning down the neural network’s creativity setting to near-zero, we arrive at its vision of what the quintessential Harry Potter fan fiction would be like - and we also learn its favorite ship:

Persuading by theladyblack Harry and Draco are still a second chance at the end of the war.  Will they be able to do with the fairy tale of the first time they were a strange stranger to the street of the war and the war is over?

It turns out the neural network is obsessed with Harry/Draco, although in a pinch, Sirius/Remus will also do.

The neural network also seems to really like stories about Professor Snape trying to do rather ordinary things:

New Moon Boys by Dungoonke for Loki_Kukaka Severus Snape comes back to a night’s politics.

In the Reason Is Blinders by LittleRoma Severus has been through his lost remote.

In The Alteri Silence by Forest_of_Holly for roscreens41 Snape receives life after plants to do by work over whether they get into. Just Hell.

A Second Chance by DarkCorgi Snape had a second thing, and that is better than anything for for the rest of his life.

Mirror by orphan_account Severus Snape tries to get a lot of dragons and that was to be more than he didn’t expect to continue. He has always been a bit of an old and a baby to stay the way he’d been the brother at Hogwarts and he keeps the chance of meeting… Deception by FlyingEyes Snape is a British Robes of interesting things and worrys like a little fun and sees the pretty battle for a while.

Another thing that happened, which is pretty much my favorite thing ever, is that the neural network apparently encountered some fan fiction stories that were not in English. As a result, it learned to do this from time to time:

The Secretary Of the World  Challenge inspired by GoF and la mating resigns de la mill colors per mereple beruit carteur la pelete el wert rardo completing and herillo intus den una a des rush sentines kelta an transoles… 

Between by Cheyangel13 A series of fivers are unexpectedly depressed and controlled by the bed, with least more from una perfemale erpensa de the maesse akai suidadium dela vida call de la los se terriuus do form en sou dies de fasurard il resisted de for dogs la sementu sein prong colors itu dee adte se sige natard…

The neural network has also learned to employ capital letters:

Les finds love by violet_quill for starstruck1986 Severus Snape wanted him to be more and she likes Draco.  The person he wants an energy to him.  WHALIDE NO GEATIRE SOURR INSPE AHARMANABLISH ALL SOME TO VERY THE RERIDE!!!!!!!

secret Quidditch by snapsleert Collapse and find the second worst and very different. See Gain and Descent motivate surprising death. Unbusing one of the months: should make more bumo.choooshots. HUGULATED

And the neural network occasionally uses content warnings, although it seems to have a rather fuzzy idea about what to warn its readers about:

Better With The Broom Complicate by Margyn_Black Tonks gets more than the best girl of creation. (Rated Maturisle, mark, a violence, contract) (slash] part of themes) ferret.

Art for the Sun a Scary by disillusionist9 A collection of warnings: characters and situations of silence.

Some of the neural network’s stories, though, are just plain weird.

Harry Potter and the Painful Eyes by dark_pook A Birthday drabble about the problems and a woman who shows up a lot less than she checks at Hogwarts in the destiny to the infamous adventure of control of the Art of The Good Boy Kings With Hermione. Harry and the Blue Special Delicious by apolavia_scg An unexpected potions messaged in the world their lives are to find friendship following the day of different pagers. James and Lily come to the summer before the war.

The Perfect Cow by alafaye Severus and Hermione start a horcruxes

Art: Let Draco roll the light of the moon, and means. by Dangelanne What happens after the war. Not drawn to Draco Malfoy jumpers. Originally written in 2008.

Birds of a Saturday by SasuNarufan13 Harry Potter is drunk and discovers he is an alternate universe.

Holly theody by yesIpxdishoftlyGrinli What would be dangerous! Side Voldemort Jones does all lord off the sunshine show.

Lily Evans and the Ravenclaw of a Christmas Surprise by ci Severus angst the truth of a frighten situation for the wink.

Persuasion by Samanthian The Sorting Hat is fighting in one of the houses.

lily’s family by sharkle Harry woke up in searching after a werewolf Sherlock’s picnic. He is furious.

As a bonus, I leave you with some fairly-plausible screennames the neural network invented, which appear not to be taken (yet):

desire_at_the_malfoy SeverelyAshed fishlingthelovely thedarklyblue phantombeers captainingthetrain siriusly_harry DarkVoldember ChildOfAtSperble all_frogs BelladonnaLeek Sneaking_UnicornWitch bluemelooppiesweatled

Did you know the guy from Elysium really played Chappie?

SP. Household robot calculates optimal move to win using artificial intelligence and augmented vision capabilities but does not tell anyone.

Bicentennial Man (1999)

math & music

When I was a freshman, studying music, I built my first computer program… and I didn’t even know I was coding:

At the time, I was learning to analyze chords by identifying the individual notes, reordering them into “thirds”, and comparing this stack to the actual arrangement to determine the inversion. I didn’t know anything about programming at the time, but my roommate was an engineer who showed me Wolfram Alpha’s Mathematica, a coding environment useful to a number of fields.

Well, I was just as “screw the rules” then, so I learned just enough to build a sort of decision tree to do my chord analysis homework for me. Above, nested If[] statements determine the interval by calculating the distance between pitches (in half-steps). Below, a similar set-up figures out the inversion of a chord.

There are a bunch of similarities to the JavaScript world I generally live in these days. It looks like Mathematica uses [] brackets instead of () parentheses and {} squiggly brackets, and presents its arguments more like an Excel function, but all the math-y bits certainly work the same… except… I wish Javascript let you string inequalities together like that!

One interesting peculiarity here - I have multiple functions with the same name. Whereas JavaScript functions don’t much care how many inputs you actually feed them, it seems I have different versions of the same keychordtype[] function for different numbers of inputs (defined here with a trailing _ underscore).

And instead of the console.log() message or the alert() pop-ups, outputs are made visible with the MessageDialogue[] function. So even though I don’t have any comments, and my nesting, naming, and order are a bit sloppy (look at those closing brackets! ridiculous!), I can still understand what’s going on - 10 years and several languages later.

tl;dr: music theory is math; different languages have different syntax, but logic is logic; Mathematica has a 2-week trial I’m eating though to take these screenshots

project: chord analysis homework helper

The Genius of Marie Curie

Growing up in Warsaw in Russian-occupied Poland, the young Marie Curie, originally named Maria Sklodowska, was a brilliant student, but she faced some challenging barriers. As a woman, she was barred from pursuing higher education, so in an act of defiance, Marie enrolled in the Floating University, a secret institution that provided clandestine education to Polish youth. By saving money and working as a governess and tutor, she eventually was able to move to Paris to study at the reputed Sorbonne. here, Marie earned both a physics and mathematics degree surviving largely on bread and tea, and sometimes fainting from near starvation. 

In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium spontaneously emitted a mysterious X-ray-like radiation that could interact with photographic film. Curie soon found that the element thorium emitted similar radiation. Most importantly, the strength of the radiation depended solely on the element’s quantity, and was not affected by physical or chemical changes. This led her to conclude that radiation was coming from something fundamental within the atoms of each element. The idea was radical and helped to disprove the long-standing model of atoms as indivisible objects. Next, by focusing on a super radioactive ore called pitchblende, the Curies realized that uranium alone couldn’t be creating all the radiation. So, were there other radioactive elements that might be responsible?

In 1898, they reported two new elements, polonium, named for Marie’s native Poland, and radium, the Latin word for ray. They also coined the term radioactivity along the way. By 1902, the Curies had extracted a tenth of a gram of pure radium chloride salt from several tons of pitchblende, an incredible feat at the time. Later that year, Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel were nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics, but Marie was overlooked. Pierre took a stand in support of his wife’s well-earned recognition. And so both of the Curies and Becquerel shared the 1903 Nobel Prize, making Marie Curie the first female Nobel Laureate.

In 1911, she won yet another Nobel, this time in chemistry for her earlier discovery of radium and polonium, and her extraction and analysis of pure radium and its compounds. This made her the first, and to this date, only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. Professor Curie put her discoveries to work, changing the landscape of medical research and treatments. She opened mobile radiology units during World War I, and investigated radiation’s effects on tumors.

However, these benefits to humanity may have come at a high personal cost. Curie died in 1934 of a bone marrow disease, which many today think was caused by her radiation exposure. Marie Curie’s revolutionary research laid the groundwork for our understanding of physics and chemistry, blazing trails in oncology, technology, medicine, and nuclear physics, to name a few. For good or ill, her discoveries in radiation launched a new era, unearthing some of science’s greatest secrets.

From the TED-Ed Lesson The genius of Marie Curie - Shohini Ghose

Animation by Anna Nowakowska

This dartboard from former NASA engineer Mark Rober guarantees a bull’s-eye through the power of software, motors, and motion tracking.

Webb 101: 10 Facts about the James Webb Space Telescope

Did you know…?

1. Our upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will act like a powerful time machine – because it will capture light that’s been traveling across space for as long as 13.5 billion years, when the first stars and galaxies were formed out of the darkness of the early universe.

2. Webb will be able to see infrared light. This is light that is just outside the visible spectrum, and just outside of what we can see with our human eyes.

3. Webb’s unprecedented sensitivity to infrared light will help astronomers to compare the faintest, earliest galaxies to today’s grand spirals and ellipticals, helping us to understand how galaxies assemble over billions of years.

Hubble’s infrared look at the Horsehead Nebula. Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team

4. Webb will be able to see right through and into massive clouds of dust that are opaque to visible-light observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope. Inside those clouds are where stars and planetary systems are born.

5. In addition to seeing things inside our own solar system, Webb will tell us more about the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars, and perhaps even find the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe.

Credit: Northrop Grumman

6. Webb will orbit the Sun a million miles away from Earth, at the place called the second Lagrange point. (L2 is four times further away than the moon!)

7. To preserve Webb’s heat sensitive vision, it has a ‘sunshield’ that’s the size of a tennis court; it gives the telescope the equivalent of SPF protection of 1 million! The sunshield also reduces the temperature between the hot and cold side of the spacecraft by almost 600 degrees Fahrenheit.

8.  Webb’s 18-segment primary mirror is over 6 times bigger in area than Hubble’s and will be ~100x more powerful. (How big is it? 6.5 meters in diameter.)

9.  Webb’s 18 primary mirror segments can each be individually adjusted to work as one massive mirror. They’re covered with a golf ball’s worth of gold, which optimizes them for reflecting infrared light (the coating is so thin that a human hair is 1,000 times thicker!).

10. Webb will be so sensitive, it could detect the heat signature of a bumblebee at the distance of the moon, and can see details the size of a US penny at the distance of about 40 km.

BONUS!  Over 1,200 scientists, engineers and technicians from 14 countries (and more than 27 U.S. states) have taken part in designing and building Webb. The entire project is a joint mission between NASA and the European and Canadian Space Agencies. The telescope part of the observatory was assembled in the world’s largest cleanroom at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Webb is currently being tested at our Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston, TX.

Afterwards, the telescope will travel to Northrop Grumman to be mated with the spacecraft and undergo final testing. Once complete, Webb will be packed up and be transported via boat to its launch site in French Guiana, where a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket will take it into space.

Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.