Author: Michele Debczak

As many of Australia’s native languages are spoken less often and by fewer people, one of the biggest threats to the countries’ oldest tongues is simply time. But in an effort to preserve the words of her ancestors, Angelina Joshua has lent her story to an animated game that uses technology to breathe life into an ancient language, Mashable reports.

In My Grandmother’s Lingo, an interactive animation produced by the Australian network SBS, Joshua introduces players to Marra one word at a time. Today, Marra is only spoken partially by one speaker and fluently by two speakers in Joshua’s Aboriginal community of Ngukurr. Joshua isn’t fluent herself, but she grew up listening to her grandmothers and great aunts speak the language.

Players progress through each stage of the game by speaking words in Marra out loud. As participants learn words like “crow,” “house,” and “fire,” graphics animated by Jake Duczynski bring the terms to life.

My Grandmother’s Lingo is just one recent example of how videogames can be used to spread endangered cultures across national borders. In April, an anthropologist launched a game based on the culture of the Kaxinawá people native to western Brazil and Peru.

[h/t Mashable]

All image: Screenshots via SBS

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Young adults are waiting longer to buy homes, get married, and have kids than the generations that came before them. It makes sense, then, that they’d use an entirely different set of milestones to mark the transition into adulthood: Opening a savings account, making your rent payments, and signing up for health insurance all qualify as “adulting” by today’s standards. According to a recent study, young women are more likely to have all these boxes checked than their male counterparts. A new report released by Bank of America and USA Today [PDF] shows that 18- to 26-year-old women are more financially independent than their male peers, Fortune reports.

For the study, researchers surveyed 2180 young adults in the first three weeks of July 2016. When breaking down the financial habits of 18- to 26-year-olds, they found some significant differences between male and female respondents. Sixty-one percent of women have savings set aside compared to 55 percent of men. Young women are also more likely to do their own taxes (34 percent compared to 28 percent of men in this age category), have health insurance (33 percent to 25 percent), and pay their own rent (38 percent to 32 percent).

These numbers may look surprising in the context of the growing conversation around the wage gap, but some research shows that women in their 20s actually out-earn men of the same age (by £1111 or $1381 a year, according to data taken from the UK’s Office for National Statistics). It’s around age 30, a.k.a. when more women are starting their families, that the pay gap really begins to widen in favor of men. In addition to a lack of paid family leave and inflexible hours potentially slowing women’s careers, men also tend to advance up the ladder sooner in their careers while female workers struggle to catch up.

While women may be better off financially earlier in life than men, the statistics aren’t altogether reassuring. The fact that college-age students were included in the survey only partly explains why less than 40 percent of all respondents pay their own rent. A Pew survey released over the summer revealed that 32.1 percent of Millennials still live with their parents.

[h/t Fortune]

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Today, Friday, October 7, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos was named 2016’s Nobel Peace Price recipient. The committee bestowed the honor on Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end.”

As reported by The New York Times, the announcement comes less than a week after Colombians voted to reject a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The treaty was meant to signal the end of a bloody, 52-year conflict between the nation and the rebel group. After President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Timoleon Jimenez came together to sign the deal following four years of negotiations, all that was needed to move the plan forward was a vote from the Colombian people. In a shocking development, the agreement was stricken down by a slim majority of 50.2 percent.

The future of the South American nation remains uncertain, but the Nobel Prize committee stresses that the news shouldn’t be seen as the defeat of peace. While that specific agreement has been discarded, President Santos—who was elected in 2010—hasn’t given up his goal of progressing towards peace.

The committee said in a press statement, “The Norwegian Nobel Committee emphasizes the importance of the fact that President Santos is now inviting all parties to participate in a broad-based national dialogue aimed at advancing the peace process.” In addition to recognizing President Santos’s commitment to peace, the award is meant to pay tribute to all parties fighting for peace in Colombia, to the citizens who’ve yet to give up hope of achieving it, and “not least, to the representatives of the countless victims of the civil war.” 

[h/t The New York Times]
 
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When shopping at the supermarket, it can be hard to know how far food has traveled before ending up on the shelf. But soon, shoppers at one Belgian grocery store will be able to rest easy knowing that part of the produce selection was cultivated just above their heads. Beginning in the summer of 2017, the Boondael location of the Delhaize supermarket chain will sell fruits and vegetables grown on the building’s rooftop, inhabitat reports.

The store is setting aside 3444 square feet for a rooftop greenhouse and open-air plot that will supplement their own inventory. Foods like greens, cherry tomatoes, and eggplants will be grown on site and sold for a lower price than the organic produce that’s also available. (Since the store-grown vegetables are being raised on a rooftop and not in natural soil, they don’t get the “organic” label.) Thanks to the greenhouse, the store will be able to continue the initiative into the winter months.

Delhaize will become the first supermarket in Belgium to sell its own roof-grown produce when the plan goes into effect next summer. A few grocery stores stateside have already experimented with the idea: After Whole Foods opened a location in Lynnfield, Massachusetts with a rooftop farm in 2013, it took two seasons for the setup to produce three tons of food.

[h/t inhabitat]

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Human tower-building is the ultimate team sport. A single structure, or castell, can comprise hundreds of individuals working together to ascend several stories in the air. The unusual tradition traces back to the 18th century and, as CBS News reports, the 26th competition recently took place in Catalonia, Spain.

To win the event, teams called colles must assemble to build the tallest most complex castells possible. The towers can involve as many as 400 people and reach dizzying heights. The world record for tallest tower belongs to the team Minyons de Terrassa, which stacked competitors 10 levels high during 2015’s event. The construction process is only half the battle. After the colles achieve their maximum height, they then have to disassemble themselves without toppling over.

According to Times of Malta, roughly 20,000 people gathered to witness the competition. This year the Castellers de Villafranca team was crowned victorious, marking their eighth win in a row.

[h/t CBS News]

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If the list below is any indication, the future of robotics looks bright. These women have moved the field forward in some major ways, including developing robots that can traverse treacherous terrain, hold conversations, and act like part of the family. Look to these nine brilliant ladies for an idea of what to expect from the robots of tomorrow.

1. CYNTHIA BREAZEAL

Cynthia Breazeal believes that the robot of the future will have excellent social skills. In 2014 she launched a crowdfunding campaign for Jibo, a home robot designed to interact naturally with humans. The project was fully funded and in April Jibo received a Popular Science 2016 Invention Award. When Breazeal isn’t designing robots that give Pixar characters a run for their money, she’s teaching media arts and sciences at MIT. In 2010 she gave a TED talk about her robot-related ambitions, citing Star Wars as a major inspiration.

2. LYDIA E. KAVRAKI

Before a robot can accomplish such important tasks as analyzing Martian dirt and taking pizza orders, it needs to be able to move properly. That’s where Dr. Lydia E. Kavraki comes in—the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science and Bioengineering at Rice University is known for her work planning paths for robots. She’s the developer of the Probabilistic Roadmap Method (PRM), a system that uses randomizing and sampling-based motion planners to keep robots from crashing. Praised for its simplicity, the PRM was a game changer in the field of robotics. Her book Principles of Robot Motion explains the subject in depth. She’s also the recipient of numerous accolades, including an ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and a Sloan Fellowship.

3. FEI-FEI LI

It’s hard to talk about the future of robotics without mentioning artificial intelligence. One of the women currently shaping the field is Fei-Fei Li, an associate professor at Stanford’s computer science department and director of the university’s Artificial Intelligence and Vision laboratories. According to Li, the key to designing a useful, effective AI system is to enable it with smart vision. That means building a robot capable of recognizing and reacting to images instead of just recording them like a camera. Vision is one of our most complicated cognitive processes, and Li has already made strides towards applying it to machines. In 2014, she and her students created a computer vision model capable of describing the images it was shown with human-like sentences. Li believes this technology could one day be applied to everything from healthcare to self-driving cars.

4. ANDREA THOMAZ

Fifty years ago, The Jetsons promised viewers a future where tedious household chores would be taken care of by robot maids. That reality has yet to fully arrive, but Andrea Thomaz is working on it. The Georgia Institute of Technology professor is developing robots that complete tasks in response to verbal instructions rather than programming. This would allow users of all technical skill levels to program personal robots to do almost anything. Her work with charming social robots “Simon” and “Curi” has been featured in Popular Science, The New York Times, and NOVA Science Now.

5. RUTH SCHULZ

What does a conversation between two robots sound like? If your answer involves a lot of “beep-boop-bops,” you’re on the right track. A few years ago, cognitive scientist Ruth Schulz led her colleagues at the University of Queensland to develop a pair of “lingodroids.” Rather than communicating with people, the robots are designed to “talk” with one another. The discussions never get too complex—the bots invent words on the fly to share spatial concepts like where they currently are and where they want to go. “The important part is that they are forming these concepts, they are starting to really understand what words mean and this is actually all up to the robots themselves,” Schulz told ABC Science in 2011. She’s currently doing research into human cues for robot navigation at the University of Queensland.

6. AYANNA HOWARD

Ayanna Howard boasts quite the resume: She’s served as a scientific consultant on Robocop (2014), was named one of MIT Technology Review’s top young innovators of 2003, and she’s co-authored enough papers to earn an Erdős number (that number being four). Some of her most prolific work was done at NASA, where she worked with Penn State scientists to engineer a fleet of toy-sized snowmobiles. The “SnoMotes” were built to cover Arctic and Antarctic terrain too dangerous for scientists studying climate change to venture onto on foot. She told NASA in 2008, “Essentially, the robots could act as ‘mobile weather stations,’ able to travel to capture real-time data at the spot where change is occurring.” Today Howard is an award-winning professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

7. AYORKOR KORSAH

Ayorkor Korsah wants to share her passion for robotics with an entire continent. In 2012 she co-founded the African Robotics Network, an international community of institutions, individuals, and organizations that share robotics resources and support each other’s work. The group regularly hosts projects, meetings, and events in Africa and abroad. Another way Korsah is making an impact on Africa’s next generation of roboticists is through her work as a teacher. She’s a professor at Ashesi University in Ghana and head of the computer science and robotics department there.

8. STÉPHANIE LACOUR

Many robots come with arms, legs, and a face, but something they usually lack is skin. Smart skin for robots is Professor Stéphanie Lacour’s area of expertise. She’s dedicated much of her career to developing an electronic skin that can not only sense subtle pressures but can stretch without losing its effectiveness. One of the most exciting applications of such technology is prosthetics: The hope is that amputees will one day be able to use artificial skin to regain the sensation of touch in lost limbs. Lacour is currently continuing her research into soft bioelectronics at the School of Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

9. MARITA CHENG

Marita Cheng kicked off her robotics career as an undergrad at Melbourne University in Australia, where she was one of five women in a class of more than 50 men. There, she co-founded Robogals. The aim of the organization is to get young girls involved in engineering and robotics by hosting student-run workshops around the world. After helping launch the successful nonprofit, Cheng didn’t slow down. Five years later she founded 2MAR robotics, a company focused on helping people with disabilities. One of their early inventions was a voice-activated bionic arm called “Jeva” designed to aid quadriplegics. Their latest tool, Teleport, is a rolling video screen meant to help people with mobility limitations communicate.

It’s been nearly 2000 years since the destruction of Pompeii, and thanks to new technology, scientists are finally starting to better understand the scope of the catastrophe. In 2015, researchers used 3D imaging to create highly-detailed scans of the victims’ remains. Now, as Gizmodo reports, a new group of scientists has turned to computer modeling once more, this time to restore one of the city’s most opulent homes to its former glory.

The reconstruction, produced by researchers at Lund University in Sweden, depicts Pompeii immediately leading up to the deadly eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The digital tour was modeled using the scanned remains of a well-preserved city district excavated by Italian archaeologists.

The video above provides a stark contract to most illustrations we see of the doomed city. Instead of ash, embers, and chaos, the scene is full of vibrant colors, bright skylights, and flourishing plant life. The house researchers chose to recreate belonged to a rich resident named Caecilius Lucundus. Pompeii was plagued with devastating economic inequality in its day, so such luxurious digs wouldn’t have been the norm across the city.

You can learn more about the researchers’ process in the video below.

[h/t Gizmodo]

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Pocky sticks appeal to kids and grown-ups alike, but a classy version of the Japanese treat is being marketed exclusively at an older clientele. As RocketNews24 reports, snack manufacturer Glico plans to release a whiskey-flavored line of their beloved Pocky sticks later this month.

The boozy variety, dubbed Adult Amber (Otona no Kohaku in Japanese), looks like the traditional chocolate-covered pretzel stick. The dough has been flavored with malt extract reminiscent of fermented mash and dusted with fine salt that adds a layer of complexity. The final touch is a coating of bitter chocolate infused with a whisky aroma.

The product is designed to pair well with alcohol, and it even comes in a package that resembles a high-end liquor bottle. Adult Amber received its first launch last November before Glico’s inventory quickly ran dry. The snack sticks will once again be available in limited supply this time around (about 300,000 boxes in total) and will be sold exclusively through Amazon Japan starting October 25. The boxes can be preordered for $9.70, which should give snack-lovers ample time to plan the perfect booze and candy tasting menu for Halloween.

[h/t RocketNews24]

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New Yorkers are used to jungles of the concrete variety. The trees that do line the city’s streets and populate its parks pale in comparison to the immense redwoods that brush the skies above the opposite side of the country. Looking to recreate the wilderness of a redwood forest in an urban setting, artist Spencer Finch planted 4000 trees in a downtown Brooklyn park. The installation mirrors a real forest in California, albeit on a much smaller scale, FastCo.Design reports.

“Lost Man Creek,” named after the original plot of trees it’s modeled after, is a grove of dawn redwood saplings planted in the middle of MetroTech Plaza. Finch came up with the idea over a year ago after he was contacted by the Public Art Fund to design their annual installation for the site. He was inspired by the plaza’s 4500-square-foot wedge of grass and got to work transforming it into a miniature forest.

The project is a 1:100 scale replica of its 790-acre twin on the west coast. Instead of towering trees, the saplings in the park reach a maximum height of 4 feet. Even the topography of the original patch of forest has been recreated using foam blocks to stand in for hills and valleys. The highest hill reaches 8 feet to represent the 800-foot peak in California.

Hyperion, the tallest redwood tree on Earth, stands at nearly 380 feet tall, a height that rivals some of the tallest skyscrapers in Brooklyn. The trees at MetroTech have a long way to go before catching up with their relatives out west: Experts estimate Hyperion to be about 600 years old. Unfortunately the installation won’t be open long enough for the forest to reach its full potential in Brooklyn. After it closes in March, 2018, the trees will be relocated to a new habitat.

[h/t FastCo.Design]

All photos by Timothy Schenck, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY

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Today’s kids aren’t easily spooked. If you plan to make your home the envy of the neighborhood in time for Halloween, you’ll need to think beyond fake cobwebs, styrofoam skulls, and bowls of peeled grapes. Designing a haunted house that’s fit for the 21st century requires a bit of tech savvy, and here are a few ideas to get you started. 

1. TEXT-ACTIVATED JACK O’LANTERNS

Even in the most elaborate cases, jack o’lanterns are traditionally low-tech. One way to give your pumpkin a modern upgrade is by connecting it to your smartphone. For this project, an amateur mad scientist programmed an Arduino circuit board to respond to text messages. LEDs in the jack o’lantern light up red on the word “red,” blue on “blue,” etc. The trick isn’t limited to simple color commands—as the above video shows, a word like “chaos” can be used to trigger a frenzy of fog, strobe lights, and spooky sound effects. You can find the step-by-step instructions on the Twilio blog.

2. HAUNTED MANSION-STYLE SINGING BUSTS

The Haunted Mansion set a high bar for haunted houses when it opened in Disneyland in 1969. Many of the special effects that brought the ride to life nearly 50 years ago are just as frightening today, and you can even recreate some of them at home. To build your own version of the Haunted Mansion’s “grim grinning ghost” troupe, you’ll need a computer, a projector, and four white mannequin heads. The actual footage from the ride can be projected onto the blank busts to animate them while their lips move to the iconic tune.

3. MAGIC MIRROR

As countless horror movies have demonstrated, mirrors provide the perfect opportunity for a jump-scare. To transform your mounted flat screen TV into a “magic mirror,” find an old mirror and replace the glass inside with two-way mirror film (a tinted sheet of Plexiglas also works). Hang the frame in front of your television screen and wait for innocent victims to walk by. The set-up can be motion-activated to display the horrifying content of your choice (but as you can see above, the classic “mirror, mirror” mask is tough to beat).

4. HELL HOUSE

Special effects don’t need to be complicated to instill fear in the hearts of your neighbors. This larger-than-life trick requires just one major piece of gear: a flickering flame projector. Set up the equipment in your driveway and watch as your house is engulfed by hell fire. An appropriate playlist can help amp up the atmosphere—some of the tracks suggested on the Instructables page include “The Roof Is on Fire” and “Burning Down the House.”

5. REAPER DRONE

Haunted homeowners don’t have to wait for trick-or-treaters to come to them to deliver the best scares—all they need is a bit of engineering know-how. By strapping a plastic skeleton prop onto a quadcopter with some Velcro, Mesa, Arizona resident D.J. Vegh constructed this floating ghoul himself in 2012. Aided by an excellent soundtrack selection, Vegh’s video has since gained widespread attention on the web.

6. SPOOKY ANIMATRONICS

If you already have a plastic skull and pumpkin mixed in with your Halloween decorations at home, the first step of this project is taken care of. Now all you have to do is engineer the props to speak and move the way you want them to. The detailed directions are available on Instructables: You’ll need some RC servos to act as the “muscles” of the robots, and specific software to program them how you please. At the very least, the activity is a fun opportunity to show off your spooky voice acting skills.

7. A OUIJA BOARD WITH A MIND OF ITS OWN

Ouija boards are scary when they work. But during an unsuccessful seance, the occult icon can feel like a glorified board game. Ensure your planchette springs to life every time by building your own high-tech Ouija board at home. Constructing this piece is a major time commitment: You have to carve, stain, and wire the hardware yourself. The final product is a Ouija board you can command to spell out customized messages from your computer. Be thankful this wasn’t around during your slumber party years.

8. FLOATING SKULL HOLOGRAM

Creating a hologram at home isn’t as difficult as sci-fi movies let on. All you need is a computer, a sheet of glass, and a video you wish to use for the effect. The creator of this Instructables project chose footage of a ghastly green floating skull to do the trick. When the glass is placed at an angle above a computer monitor that’s hidden from view, it will reflect whatever image is on the screen. If done right, the floating head will appear to materialize from thin air.