My Science School

Have you ever wondered how we may perceive human-like robots? According to new research, when robots engage with people and display human-like emotions, then people may perceive them as capable of thinking and acting on their own beliefs, rather than being driven by programs.

At a time when the tendency to attribute independent thought and intentional behaviour to robots hasn't been fully understood, a group of researchers from the American Psychological Association came up with these experiments. Their results were published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior.

Intentional or mechanical?

Researchers examined how people perceived a human-like robot across three experiments that involved 119 participants. Participants completed a questionnaire before and after interacting with the iCub robot. Questions were typically images of the robot in different situations, asking the participants to identify if the robot's motivation in each of these situations was intentional or mechanical.

The researchers remotely controlled iCub's actions in the first two experiments. This meant that it greeted the participants, introduced itself. asked the participants for their names, and even maintained eye contact. Participants then watched three short video documentaries with the robot. which was programmed to respond with sounds and facial expressions.

The researchers programmed iCub to be more like a machine in the third experiment. This meant that it did not maintain eye contact, spoke only recorded sentences to the questionnaire before and after interacting with the iCub robot. Questions were typically images of the robot in different situations, asking the participants to identify if the robot's motivation in each of these situations was intentional or mechanical.

The researchers remotely controlled iCub's actions in the first two experiments. This meant that it greeted the participants, introduced itself. asked the participants for their names, and even maintained eye contact. Participants then watched three short video documentaries with the robot. which was programmed to respond with sounds and facial expressions.

The researchers programmed iCub to be more like a machine in the third experiment. This meant that it did not maintain eye contact, spoke only recorded sentences to the participants, and even its emotional reactions were replaced with beeps and repetitive movements of its parts.

Behaviour matters

The researchers were able to find that participants who watched videos with the human-like robot were more likely to rate the robot's actions as intentional and not programmed, while those who interacted with the machine-like robot were not. This shows that human-like behaviour is important for robots to be perceived as an intentional agent by humans.

Researchers believe that this could play a part in the design of social robots of the future. According to them, the next step of research in this area is to determine contexts where social bonding and attribution of intentionality to robots proves beneficial for the well-being of humans.

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It is exactly what it says it is-BIG. Enormous amount of information or data is constantly created by many people through various methods. For example, when you play a video game post on Instagram or Facebook, or just surf the Intemet, data is generated.

This data may come from the communication with people you know, your laptop, smartphone or any other such device. All the data adds up and keeps growing progressively bigger.

It is so voluminous that the usual data processing systems or software tools cannot handle it. It needs to be analysed properly to gain the right insights into it. It is thus broken down by three characteristics, also known as the three Vs of Big Data- -volume, which is the amount of data that gets generated, velocity, or the speed at which it is processed, and variety, the differenttypes of data that gets generated.

While Big Data offers multiple ways to analyse data and use it to our advantage, it is vital to exercise caution while doing so.

Data is information that can be processed and put to use. Now, it is Big Data that has gained importance and is dominating the way companies work world over.

Importance

Have you noticed how, sometimes, Google may suggest new things which you may be interested in or like? How does it do that? This is because, all the data about you has been collected and processed and then used by the search engine to know your likes and dislikes.

Big data enables organisations to store, manage, and manipulate vast amounts of information. It helps companies improve the way they work, offer better customer services, and provide more personal offers or campaigns, among other things. In short, it is for the company's benefit and to earn more profit. Its importance lies in not the amount of data a company has, but how it is able to use the gathered data.

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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is an infrared space observatory that launched on Dec 25, 2021, from ESA's launch site at Kourou in French Guiana, at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT; 9:20 a.m. local time in Kourou), aboard an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket. 

NASA released the first scientific images from Webb at a live event on July, 12. Explore the first images in more detail and what it means for JWST science in our recently published article.

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope — NASA's largest and most powerful space science telescope — will probe the cosmos to uncover the history of the universe from the Big Bang to alien planet formation and beyond. It is one of NASA's Great Observatories, huge space instruments that include the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the cosmos.

The release of the first full-colour images and spectroscopic data will mark the beginning of the next era in astronomy as Webb will help answer questions about the earliest moments of the universe and allow astronomers to study exoplanets in greater detail than ever before. James Webb was launched in December to succeed the revolutionary - but now ageing-Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope uses a 19.7-foot-tall primary mirror to collect light. That light is bounced to a smaller secondary mirror, which then redirects it onto the telescope's instruments, including a camera that records an image.

While Hubble looks mostly in the visual and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, Webb will look at longer wavelengths in the infrared, to see what the universe looked like around 100 to 250 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies were formed.

Early alignment imagery already demonstrated the unprecedented sharpness of Webb's infrared view. However, these new images will be the first in full colour and the first to showcase Webb's full science capabilities.

Credit : Space.com 

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While turning corners at high speeds, F1 drivers experience up to four times the normal force of gravity. This means that if a drivers head weighs about four kg, it will momentarily become as heavy as 16 kg while he is turning the corner. "I know of no other sport that places such high demands on the neck muscles," says Riccardo Ceccarelli, F1 doctor. The head and F1 helmet together weigh about six kg. Therefore, while turning a corner in a Grand Prix race, the neck has to support about 24 kg, he explains. Racing car drivers spend hours strengthening neck muscles with gym equipment designed specifically for the neck.

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It refers to the tingling sensation one experiences due to various kinds of feel-good sounds.

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a term that describes a spontaneous, enjoyable, and relaxing tingling sensation that begins in the scalp and radiates down the spine to your upper back shoulders, and legs. The sensation is triggered by various stimuli such as gentle whispering, brushing hair, soft finger tapping, crumpling or folding of paper, etc. The term was coined by Jennifer Allen in 2010 when she formed a Facebook group dedicated to ASMR. It is colloquially known as 'brain massage, head tingle, brain tingle', or 'spine tingle. ASMR is being currently studied by scientists and psychologists.

According to an ongoing online survey, ASMR is experienced by people of all ages across the globe irrespective of race or culture, suggesting it is a sa biological response. So far scientists can't explain why it works for many people or why it doesn't affect some people. ASMR has, of late, become a YouTube phenomenon with millions of ASMR videos flooding the Internet. They feature someone talking softly, making soothing sounds, gently scratching various surfaces with fingernails, etc. People watch these videos to induce sleep or relaxation. However, professionals caution against depending much on ASMR, as its drawbacks, if any are yet to be fully ascertained.

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Artificial intelligence can simplify complicated tasks but it may still be unable to do what humans do instinctively.

It is a concept in computing put forward by Austrian artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Hans Moravec in the 1980s. He theorised that while it is easy to make computers do highly intelligent tasks such as calculating complicated mathematical equations, it is very difficult to make them do simple tasks such as walking. According to Moravec, humans have evolved over millions of years. to perfect simple physical tasks such as walking and running. Such tasks, which we take for granted, are a result of the process of natural selection.

Moravec's paradox states that it is difficult to build a machine that has the skills of a one-year-old child with the instinctive ability to move around, recognise faces, and avoid danger. It takes a lot of difficult computations to instruct a computer to do what a human being can do without thinking twice. On the other hand, humans acquired sophisticated skills such as abstract reasoning and logical thinking that result in excellence in the fields of engineering, mathematics and art, about hundred thousand years ago. It is easy to devise algorithms for these skills for computers. That is why it is easy to build a computer that can defeat a professional chess player or play music.

Moravec's paradox can be interpreted in different ways. Some scholars believe that it means that Al can render people with high-level jobs such as stock analysis or engineering unemployed, while the jobs of cooks and gardeners are safe. Others take it to mean that Al will always need human supervision.

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Once a dominate platform, support for the 27-year-old browser was officially ended just a fortnight ago by its company Microsoft.

The end of Internet Explorer (IE) will come as no real surprise to most PC users, given that it has been superseded by a newer Microsoft browser called Edge, launched in 2015.

IE was once the most dominant browsing platform, with an estimated peak market share in the early 2000s of over 90%-thanks to being contentiously bundled in with the Windows PC operating system.

However, today's market is very much different to that found when IE launched in 1995. Then Netscape Navigator ruled the browsing world until IE dethroned it. Now Google's Chrome is the most successful browsing tool, with a 64.95% market share, followed by Apple's Safari on 19.01%.

 The future of Mozilla's once popular Firefox looks questionable as it flounders with a dwindling share of just 3.26%.

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LED stands for Light-emitting diode. It is a semiconductor device that emits light when an electric current flows through it. Unlike others lights, LEDS never dim with time and have an extended lifespan that can last a couple of years. They also do not contain poisonous gases like mercury that are commonly used to make the traditional lights. These energy-efficient bulbs are made up of glass and aluminum, which can be recovered by recycling and used to create other products.

The LED is a specialised form of PN junction that uses a compound junction. The semiconductor material used for the junction must be a compound semiconductor. The commonly used semiconductor materials including silicon and germanium are simple elements and junction made from these materials do not emit light. Instead compound semiconductors including gallium arsenide, gallium phosphide and indium phosphide are compound semiconductors and junctions made from these materials do emit light.

These compound semiconductors are classified by the valence bands their constituents occupy. For gallium arsenide, gallium has a valency of three and arsenic a valency of five and this is what is termed a group III-V semiconductor and there are a number of other semiconductors that fit this category. It is also possible to have semiconductors that are formed from group III-V materials.

The light emitting diode emits light when it is forward biased. When a voltage is applied across the junction to make it forward biased, current flows as in the case of any PN junction. Holes from the p-type region and electrons from the n-type region enter the junction and recombine like a normal diode to enable the current to flow. When this occurs energy is released, some of which is in the form of light photons.

It is found that the majority of the light is produced from the area of the junction nearer to the P-type region. As a result the design of the diodes is made such that this area is kept as close to the surface of the device as possible to ensure that the minimum amount of light is absorbed in the structure.

To produce light which can be seen the junction must be optimised and the correct materials must be chosen. Pure gallium arsenide releases energy in the infra read portion of the spectrum. To bring the light emission into the visible red end of the spectrum aluminium is added to the semiconductor to give aluminium gallium arsenide (AlGaAs). Phosphorus can also be added to give red light. For other colours other materials are used. For example gallium phoshide gives green light and aluminium indium gallium phosphide is used for yellow and orange light. Most LEDs are based on gallium semiconductors.

Credit : Electronics notes 

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