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Revising history with science and art

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Caption: The 2000-year-old pipe sculpture’s bulging neck is evidence of thyroid disease as a result of iodine deficient water and soil in the ancient Ohio Valley. Credit: Kenneth Tankersley

An October 4, 2018 news item on ScienceDaily describes the analytic breakthrough,

Art often imitates life, but when University of Cincinnati anthropologist and geologist Kenneth Tankersley investigated a 2000-year-old carved statue on a tobacco pipe, he exposed a truth he says will rewrite art history.

Since its discovery in 1901, at the Adena Burial Mound in Ross County, Ohio, archaeologists have theorized that the the 8-inch pipe statue—carved into the likeness of an Ohio Valley Native American—represented an achondroplastic dwarf (AD). People with achondroplasia typically have short arms and legs, an enlarged head, and an average-sized trunk, the same condition as Emmy Award-winning actor Peter Dinklage from HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

“During the early turn of the century, this theory was consistent with actual human remains of a Native American excavated in Kentucky, also interpreted by archaeologists as being an achondroplastic dwarf,” says Tankersley.

This theory flourished in the scientific literature until the turn of the 21st century when Tankersley looked closer.

“Here we have a carved statue and human remains, both of achondroplasia from the same time period,” says Tankersley. “But what caught my eye on this pipe statue was an obvious tumor on the neck that looked remarkably like a goiter [or goitre] or thyroid tumor.”

An October 2, 2018 University of Cincinnati (UC) news release (also on EurekAlert but published Oct. 3, 2018), reveals more details,

Tankersley collaborated with Frederic Bauduer, a visiting biological anthropologist and paleopathologist from the University of Bordeaux, UC’s sister university in France, to ultimately dispel previous academic literature claiming the sculpture as portraying achondroplasia.

…

“In archaeological science, flesh does not survive, so many ancient maladies go unnoticed and are almost always impossible to get at from an archaeological standpoint,” says Tankersley. “So what struck me was how remarkably Bauduer was using ancient art from various periods of antiquity to argue for the paleopathology he presented.”

Using radiocarbon dating on textile and bark samples surrounding the pipe at the site, the Adena pipe dates to approximately 2000 years ago, to the earliest evidence of tobacco.

Traditionally, tobacco is considered a sacred plant to Native Americans in this region, and smoking tobacco played an important role in their ceremonies, but he points to tobacco smoking as being long associated with an increased prevalence of goiter in low iodine intake zones worldwide.

From a medical perspective, Bauduer found the physical characteristics, such as the short forehead and long bones of the upper and lower limbs, simply not adding up as an achondroplastic dwarf.

“We found the tumor in the neck, as well as the figure’s squatted stance — not foreshortened legs as was formerly documented in the literature — were both signs and symptoms of thyroid disease,” says Tankersley.

“We already know that iodine deficiencies can lead to thyroid tumors, and the Ohio Valley area, where this artifact was found, has historically had iodine depleted soils and water relative to the advance of an Ice Age glacier about 300,000 years ago.”

Students in a university lab look through microscopes.

Tankersley (top center) teaches archaeology students to date soil, bones and textiles using radiocarbon science.

Profile of ancient tobacco pipe sculpture portraying a Native American wearing ceremonial regalia.

The figure’s bulging neck (goiter) and appearance of short stature are actually results of iodine deficient thyroid disease. The legs are bent in a tilted squat likely during a Native American ceremonial dance.

Tankersley says the Ohio Valley region, before the introduction of iodized salt in the 1920s,
was part of the so-called U.S. “goiter belt” where goiter frequency was relatively high —  five to 15 incidences per thousand.

The lower limbs on the statue, previously documented in the literature as short in stature, are actually normal size in bone length, according to Bauduer. Upon closer inspection, both Bauduer and Tankersley agree that the figure is also portrayed in a tilted squat, a common gait anomaly found in people with hypothyroidism.

The figure has what appears to be an abdominal six-pack, but both researchers say the detailed physical features indeed portray a normal physique except for the telltale signs of thyroid disease.

“The fact that the bones of the figure are all normal size leads us to believe the squat portrays more of an abnormal gait while likely in the stance of a typical Native American ritual dance,” says Tankersley, who is one-quarter Native American himself and regularly attends ceremonial events throughout Ohio and Kentucky.

“The regalia the figure is wearing is also strongly indicative of ancient Native Ohio Valley Shawnee, Delaware and Ojibwa to the north and Miami Nation tribes in Indiana.

“The traditional headdress, pierced ears with expanded spool earrings and loincloth with serpentine motif on the front and feathered bustle on back are also still worn by local Native tribes during ceremonial events today.”

Artistic clues

Portrait of Dr. Frederic Bauduer, biological pathologist from University of Bordeaux in France, on an ancient architectural balcony.

Frederic Bauduer, biological anthropologist, paleopathologist and critical collaborator on this research from the University of Bordeaux, UC’s sister university in France. photo/Frederic Bauduer

In addition to figures found in South America and Mesoamerica, Tankersley says the Adena pipe is the first known example of a goiter depicted in ancient Native North American art and one of the oldest from the Western Hemisphere.

“The other real take here is that a lot of people ask, ‘What is the value of ancient art?’” asserts Tankersley. “Well, here’s an example of ancient art that tells a deeper story. And similar indigenous art representations found in South America and Mesoamerica strengthen our hypothesis.”

Tankersley is interested in looking deeper for pathologies and maladies portrayed on other ancient artifacts from Native Americans thousands of years ago here in the Ohio Valley and elsewhere.

“Art history is beginning to help substantiate many scientific hypotheses,” says Tankersley. “Because artists are such keen students of anatomy, artisans such as this ancient Adena pipe sculptor could portray physical maladies with great accuracy, even before they were aware of what the particular disease was.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Medical Hypotheses Evidence of an ancient (2000 years ago) goiter attributed to iodine deficiency in North America by F. Bauduer, K. Barnett Tankersley. Medical Hypotheses Volume 118, September 2018, Pages 6-8 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2018.06.011

This paper looks like it’s behind a paywall.

Ingenuity Lab (a nanotechnology initiative), the University of Alberta, and Carlo Montemagno—what is happening in Canadian universities? (1 of 2)

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I was not expecting to come back to the Carlo Montemagno ‘affair’ after my March 5, 2018 posting but it seems this story about a nanotechnology laboratory (Ingenuity Lab) in Alberta and the lab’s leader, Dr. Carlo Montemagno and his hurried departure for a position at Southern Illinois University (SIU) as Chancellor in summer 2017 has legs. It also hints at some issue within Canadian higher education.

Set up

I noted at the time of my posting, that no one in Illinois seemed to be aware that Montemagno had obtained employment for his daughter and son-in-law at the University of Alberta just as he did at SIU when he later moved there. I also noted the pay cut Montemagno took when he moved to Illinois. Both of these facts have since come to light in Illinois and are mentioned in an April 10, 2018 article by Anna Spoerre for SIU’s student paper, the Daily Egyptian.

Before moving onto the latest, I was hoping they’d be able to salvage something from the wreckage in Alberta (from my March 5, 2018 posting),

As for the Ingenuity Lab, perhaps we’ll hear more about their Carbon transformation programme later this year (2018). Unfortunately, the current webpage does not have substantive updates. There are some videos but they seem more like wistful thinking than real life projects.

…

If they are cleaning up a mess and this looks like it might be the case, I hope they’re successful and can move forward with their projects. [emphases mine] I would like to hear more about the Ingenuity Lab in the future.

Tragedy and comedy

Sadly, it seems the Ingenuity Lab is in the process of being mothballed (from Spoerre’s April 10, 2018 article),

Nine months after Carlo Montemagno left a position as director of Ingenuity Lab to assume the chancellorship at SIU’s Carbondale campus, some members of the Alberta community are still picking up the pieces of what they call a failed project brought to life and then abandoned by its director.

Ingenuity Lab was established in 2012 by the government of Alberta in partnership with the University of Alberta and Alberta Innovates to conduct nanotechnology research related to health, environment, energy and agriculture.

Though a reason was not explicitly given, funding for the lab will be cut this year [2018; emphasis mine] following a review of the lab’s operations.

…

In June 2017, a review of Ingenuity Lab was authorized. [emphasis mine] The process wrapped up in September [2017] as part of a review of all Alberta Innovates funded programs, said Robert Semeniul, the new media specialist at Alberta Innovates.

Montemagno announced his relocation to SIU shortly after the review got under way. [emphasis mine] Meanwhile, an interim director — Murray Gray — was appointed by the university to redirect the initiative, Semeniul said.

“I was looking for an institutional leadership position that presented new challenges and opportunities — where there was work to be done and I could make a difference,” Montemagno said of leaving Alberta for Illinois. “I also missed interacting and working directly with students.”

“This was supposed to generate incredible amounts of economic activity,” said a former researcher at the former National Institute for Nanotechnology who had experience in the lab. “After awhile — three or four years — people were astonished at the lack of anything coming out of this lab, out of this giant pile of money that was being spent.”

Montemagno said through ground-breaking research the lab attracted external grant funding, including $9 million the last year he ran the lab. [As far as I can tell, as per an Ingenuity Lab news release mentioned in my March 5, 2018 posting, there was a $1.7M from Natural Resources Canada. It was the only grant announced when I was looking in March 2018. Where did the $9M come from?]

…

The final review has not been made public. Gray did not respond to requests for comment.

Keeping family close

In early April [2018] in Edmonton the remnants of the Ingenuity Lab were gradually erased from the Nanotechnology Research Center on the University of Alberta’s campus.

A nametag pinned to a cubicle wall there displayed the name Kyle Minor, Montemagno’s nephew, and graduate student and project leader in his uncle’s lab.

Minor was one of three family members Montemagno employed at Ingenuity Lab. [emphasis mine] Montemagno’s daughter, Melissa Germain, and son-in-law, Jeffrey Germain, (both of whom are now employed at SIU) were also given jobs at the lab in Canada. The possibility of the Germains’ employment was mentioned in Montemagno’s hiring contract in Alberta.

…

“I can see why the people who hired [Montemagno] liked him, because he has a charismatic presence and he says the right things to the people he is speaking to,” a previous research associate at the lab said.

Montemagno was brought to the university of Alberta in 2012 with an annual salary of $500,000, almost $400,000 in U.S. currency at Tuesday’s exchange rate. He also received a $1,000,000 interest-free housing loan, according to his employment paperwork. [emphasis mine]

“Your intention to employ, through funding available under the NEBSL Accelerator initiative, your son-in-law and daughter in positions commensurate with their education and experience is acknowledged,” Montemagno’s contract read.

The contract, which purported to follow the University’s “Employment Policy” and “Managing Conflict of Interest in Employment Procedure” was signed by David Lynch, Alberta’s [sic] dean of engineering at the time of the hire. Lynch did not respond to requests for comment.

According to emails obtained through public information requests, there was a personal agreement between Lynch and Montemagno that the expenses for the immigration costs for him and his family would also be covered. [emphasis mine]

“On occasion, the recruitment of specialized faculty members includes a provision for the hiring of a family member into a position commensurate with their education and experience, and subject to our recruitment policy, [emphasis mine]” said Kiann McNeill, spokesman for the University of Alberta.

…

In addition to what seems to be an extraordinarily high salary ($500,000 + per year) and hiring his family (three of them per the Daily Egyptian’s Anna Spoerre as opposed to the two mentioned in my March 2018 post) to work in his lab, Montemagno got a $1M interest-free loan (this is not entirely correct, the CBC article, which follows, downgrades that number as you’ll see in the 2nd excerpt) and had his and his family’s immigration expenses covered. Is this standard hiring practice in the academic field? Given the failure to get a response from an individual (David Lynch, the University of Alberta’s then dean of engineering) who would have been involved, the answer would seem to be ‘no’.

Please do read the rest of Spoerre’s article and, if you have a little more time,  the comments. It should be noted that there seem to be a couple of problems with details. The one noted here is the issue around the loan and, in the article, she states that the National Institute of Nanotechnology has been renamed to Nanotechnology Research Center. After changing ‘center’ to ‘centre’ in my search term, I found this site, which bears yet another name, NRC-UAlberta Nanotechnology Initiative. Should I ever find out what is going with Canada’s national nanotechnology institution, it will be the subject of another posting. [ETA June 20, 2018: I was finally able to untangle the mess (see my June 20, 2018 posting). Spoerre is unlikely to have been following the ‘National Institute of Nanotechnology story’ as I have and missed the ‘downsizing/rebranding exercise’ that had taken place. Also, that particular detail was largely irrelevant to her story.]

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) also covered the situation in an April 10, 2018 online article by Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell,

The University of Alberta recruited star American nanotechnology researcher [emphasis mine] Carlo Montemagno in 2012 by agreeing to his condition that it hire his daughter and son-in-law to work in his laboratory — in addition to his $500,000 a year salary.

Documents obtained through freedom of information by CBC News show the university offered jobs to Jeff and Melissa Germain, for which the couple were not required to formally apply.

…

In addition to leading the Ingenuity Lab at the U of A, he also served as director of the biomaterials program for the Canada Research Council’s National Institute for Nanotechnology and was its research chair in intelligent nanosystems.

The university recruited Montemagno from the University of Cincinnati, where he was the founding dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

An internal U of A document shows Montemagno sought the nepotism hires in Alberta because he wanted to continue the same arrangement he had at the University of Cincinnati.

It is the same deal he again negotiated when he left Alberta in 2017 to become chancellor of Southern Illinois University – Carbondale (SIU).

In January [2018], the university’s student newspaper, The Daily Egyptian, revealed SIU hired the Germains into jobs which were not advertised. Those hirings are now the subject of a state investigation.

Here’s where it gets interesting (from CBC’s April 10, 2018 online article),

The internal University of Alberta documents reveal:

  • The university appears to have allowed Montemagno to help write son-in-law Jeff Germain’s job description [emphasis mine] as laboratory manager. An early draft of the job description shows a master’s degree as a minimum educational requirement. It was later downgraded to a bachelor’s degree. Germain has a bachelor’s degree in biology but had significant experience as a lab manager.
  • The university agreed to pay Jeff Germain a “market supplement” of more than $25,000 [emphasis mine]. Added to his base salary of nearly $95,000, that raised his total yearly salary to $120,000 a year, not including benefits. Germain was later promoted to director of operations for the Ingenuity Lab.
  • The engineering faculty also hired Montemagno’s daughter, Melissa Germain, as a “laboratory technician” in chemical and materials engineering, the same area as her husband. For 24 hours a week, her starting salary was nearly $3,500 a month. [emphases mine]While officially employed as a lab tech, Melissa Germain’s LinkedIn profile states she worked as a copy editor. She was later promoted to a full-time position as communications director and paid nearly $6,000 a month. According to her LinkedIn account, she has a bachelor’s degree in geology. [emphases mine]
  • ​The university also initially offered Montemagno an interest-free $1.4-million loan to buy a house. That provision was later changed to an interest-free $100,000 loan [emphases mine] and the reimbursement of any mortgage or line of credit interest fees used for a downpayment, provided the cost of the house was not more than $1.4 million. The loan had to be repaid as soon as Montemagno sold his house in Ohio or by June 30, 2017, whichever came first.

(sigh of relief) At least, it wasn’t a $1M loan. One other thought, was the loan repaid? Also, I checked (see here [accessed April 18, 2018]) for the standard salary scale for communications specialists in Canada and Melissa Germain’s roughly $72,000/year is on the high end of the scale, $73,000 being at the top. Presumably, you’d need a lot of experience and, hopefully, some training for the top salary.

Ethics, anyone?

CBC soldiered on and found an ethics expert (perhaps the University of Alberta needs someone?), from (from CBC’s April 10, 2018 online article),

Hiring spouses who are themselves academics is not uncommon in higher education, said Richard Leblanc, an expert in ethics and governance at York University in Toronto. But Leblanc said hiring a child and their spouse is “very, very strange. Very anomalous.”

“You want merit-based hiring and merit-based student applications, and not on the basis of favouritism or conflicts of interest,” he said.

“You want completely even-handed treatment of staff, of faculty, and of students. And something like this could reveal a culture of, in fact, inequitable treatment, which could be very damaging for a university.”

Leblanc also said the university should not be offering loans.

“Unless you are a financial institution — which the university is not, the university has public taxpayer money and the public trust — so offering an interest-free loan for anybody, any faculty member, is highly anomalous, for obvious reasons,” Leblanc said.

“I mean, that’s not what the university does and it is a conflict of interest because you don’t have the ability to let that person go. You are sort of beholden to that person and it is just not a proper use of scarce funding and taxpayer resources, to offer an interest-free loan. It is very strange.”

But the university’s new dean of engineering, Fraser Forbes, strongly defended the hirings, insisting there was no nepotism involved. [emphases mine]

Just in case some of us might not agree with Forbes, he notes this, (from CBC’s April 10, 2018 online article),

Forbes said the Germains were not paid with university operating funds. Instead, Forbes said they were paid with funds provided to the university by the province and federal government for nanotechnology research. [emphases mine]

I feel ever so much better.

The Province of Alberta did have something to say about this, eventually (from CBC’s April 10, 2018 online article),

The University of Alberta said Wednesday [April 11, 2018] it will review its conflict of interest policy in light of news that a former employee six years ago had requested family members be hired in a process that was not rigorously documented.

Last month [March 2018], Alberta Advanced Education Minister Marlin Schmidt [emphasis mine] sharply criticized University of Alberta president David Turpin’s $824,000 total compensation in the context of a four-per-cent budget cut, and increases in tuition for international students and student-residence rates.

Schmidt refused an interview request from CBC News for this story. His press secretary said Schmidt had no time in his schedule over several days to accommodate a 10-minute interview.

But at a media availability Tuesday [April 10, 2018] on new rules to limit salaries of university and college presidents, Schmidt was asked about Montemagno’s deal to hire his daughter and son-in-law.

“No, nepotism has no place in any public agency,” Schmidt said.

It’s good to know Schmidt’s stance on this and perhaps there will be some action taken over what seems to be a blatant failure to curb nepotism at the now largely defunct (no website but they still have a Facebook and Twitter presence) Ingenuity Lab.

Since the April 10, 2018 online article, the University of Alberta has pleaded guilty in the court of public opinion and admitted to the conflicts of interest in the Montemagno affair, from an April 11, 2018 article by Juris Garvey for the Edmonton Journal,

While the university was in no way “contractually obligated” to hire family members, it may have done so against its own conflict of interest policy. [emphasis mine]

Deputy provost Wendy Rogers said Wednesday there is nothing unusual about post-secondary institutes hiring people from the same family. But their policies say family members are not allowed to be involved in the hiring of other family, develop job descriptions, supervise them or make recommendations for their pay.

Emails show university staff recommended Montemagno write the position description for the job intended for Jeffrey Germain, and an organizational chart shows Jeffrey Germain reported directly to Montemagno for the first two years.

Of greatest concern, however, is that the university acknowledged there was “no record of an advertisement for the position … nor records of the hiring process” for Jeffrey Germain.

“We cannot confirm whether or not the appropriate procedure governing conflict of interest was initially followed,” the university said in a statement posted to its website Tuesday [April 10,2018].

“Had we received a complaint about this at any time while Dr. Montemagno was employed here, it would have been fully investigated.” [emphasis mine]

Yes, I can imagine the number of people stepping forward to make a complaint. They were certainly eager to be interviewed for Spoerre’s April 10, 2018 article,

The former research associate was one of 11 people interviewed in Edmonton for this story who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of harming their careers.

Part 2

Beating tactical experts in combat simulation—AI with the processing power of a Raspberry Pi

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It looks like one day combat may come down to who has the best artificial intelligence (AI) if a June 27, 2016 University of Cincinnati news release (also on EurekAlert) by M. B. Reilly is to be believed (Note: Links have been removed),

Artificial intelligence (AI) developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate was recently assessed by subject-matter expert and retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee — who holds extensive aerial combat experience as an instructor and Air Battle Manager with considerable fighter aircraft expertise — in a high-fidelity air combat simulator.

The artificial intelligence, dubbed ALPHA, was the victor in that simulated scenario, and according to Lee, is “the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I’ve seen to date.”

Details on ALPHA – a significant breakthrough in the application of what’s called genetic-fuzzy systems are published in the most-recent issue of the Journal of Defense Management, as this application is specifically designed for use with Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) in simulated air-combat missions for research purposes.

The tools used to create ALPHA as well as the ALPHA project have been developed by Psibernetix, Inc., recently founded by UC College of Engineering and Applied Science 2015 doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, now president and CEO of the firm; as well as David Carroll, programming lead, Psibernetix, Inc.; with supporting technologies and research from Gene Lee; Kelly Cohen, UC aerospace professor; Tim Arnett, UC aerospace doctoral student; and Air Force Research Laboratory sponsors.

The news release goes on to provide a overview of ALPHA’s air combat fighting and strategy skills,

ALPHA is currently viewed as a research tool for manned and unmanned teaming in a simulation environment. In its earliest iterations, ALPHA consistently outperformed a baseline computer program previously used by the Air Force Research Lab for research.  In other words, it defeated other AI opponents.

In fact, it was only after early iterations of ALPHA bested other computer program opponents that Lee then took to manual controls against a more mature version of ALPHA last October. Not only was Lee not able to score a kill against ALPHA after repeated attempts, he was shot out of the air every time during protracted engagements in the simulator.

Since that first human vs. ALPHA encounter in the simulator, this AI has repeatedly bested other experts as well, and is even able to win out against these human experts when its (the ALPHA-controlled) aircraft are deliberately handicapped in terms of speed, turning, missile capability and sensors.

Lee, who has been flying in simulators against AI opponents since the early 1980s, said of that first encounter against ALPHA, “I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed.”

He added that with most AIs, “an experienced pilot can beat up on it (the AI) if you know what you’re doing. Sure, you might have gotten shot down once in a while by an AI program when you, as a pilot, were trying something new, but, until now, an AI opponent simply could not keep up with anything like the real pressure and pace of combat-like scenarios.”

But, now, it’s been Lee, who has trained with thousands of U.S. Air Force pilots, flown in several fighter aircraft and graduated from the U.S. Fighter Weapons School (the equivalent of earning an advanced degree in air combat tactics and strategy), as well as other pilots who have been feeling pressured by ALPHA.

And, anymore [sic], when Lee flies against ALPHA in hours-long sessions that mimic real missions, “I go home feeling washed out. I’m tired, drained and mentally exhausted. This may be artificial intelligence, but it represents a real challenge.”

New goals have been set for ALPHA according to the news release,

Explained Ernest, “ALPHA is already a deadly opponent to face in these simulated environments. The goal is to continue developing ALPHA, to push and extend its capabilities, and perform additional testing against other trained pilots. Fidelity also needs to be increased, which will come in the form of even more realistic aerodynamic and sensor models. ALPHA is fully able to accommodate these additions, and we at Psibernetix look forward to continuing development.”

In the long term, teaming artificial intelligence with U.S. air capabilities will represent a revolutionary leap. Air combat as it is performed today by human pilots is a highly dynamic application of aerospace physics, skill, art, and intuition to maneuver a fighter aircraft and missiles against adversaries, all moving at very high speeds. After all, today’s fighters close in on each other at speeds in excess of 1,500 miles per hour while flying at altitudes above 40,000 feet. Microseconds matter, and the cost for a mistake is very high.

Eventually, ALPHA aims to lessen the likelihood of mistakes since its operations already occur significantly faster than do those of other language-based consumer product programming. In fact, ALPHA can take in the entirety of sensor data, organize it, create a complete mapping of a combat scenario and make or change combat decisions for a flight of four fighter aircraft in less than a millisecond. Basically, the AI is so fast that it could consider and coordinate the best tactical plan and precise responses, within a dynamic environment, over 250 times faster than ALPHA’s human opponents could blink.

So it’s likely that future air combat, requiring reaction times that surpass human capabilities, will integrate AI wingmen – Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) – capable of performing air combat and teamed with manned aircraft wherein an onboard battle management system would be able to process situational awareness, determine reactions, select tactics, manage weapons use and more. So, AI like ALPHA could simultaneously evade dozens of hostile missiles, take accurate shots at multiple targets, coordinate actions of squad mates, and record and learn from observations of enemy tactics and capabilities.

UC’s Cohen added, “ALPHA would be an extremely easy AI to cooperate with and have as a teammate. ALPHA could continuously determine the optimal ways to perform tasks commanded by its manned wingman, as well as provide tactical and situational advice to the rest of its flight.”

Happily, insight is provided into the technical aspects (from the news release),

It would normally be expected that an artificial intelligence with the learning and performance capabilities of ALPHA, applicable to incredibly complex problems, would require a super computer in order to operate.

However, ALPHA and its algorithms require no more than the computing power available in a low-budget PC in order to run in real time and quickly react and respond to uncertainty and random events or scenarios.

According to a lead engineer for autonomy at AFRL, “ALPHA shows incredible potential, with a combination of high performance and low computational cost that is a critical enabling capability for complex coordinated operations by teams of unmanned aircraft.”

Ernest began working with UC engineering faculty member Cohen to resolve that computing-power challenge about three years ago while a doctoral student. (Ernest also earned his UC undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics in 2011 and his UC master’s, also in aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, in 2012.)

They tackled the problem using language-based control (vs. numeric based) and using what’s called a “Genetic Fuzzy Tree” (GFT) system, a subtype of what’s known as fuzzy logic algorithms.

States UC’s Cohen, “Genetic fuzzy systems have been shown to have high performance, and a problem with four or five inputs can be solved handily. However, boost that to a hundred inputs, and no computing system on planet Earth could currently solve the processing challenge involved – unless that challenge and all those inputs are broken down into a cascade of sub decisions.”

That’s where the Genetic Fuzzy Tree system and Cohen and Ernest’s years’ worth of work come in.

According to Ernest, “The easiest way I can describe the Genetic Fuzzy Tree system is that it’s more like how humans approach problems.  Take for example a football receiver evaluating how to adjust what he does based upon the cornerback covering him. The receiver doesn’t think to himself: ‘During this season, this cornerback covering me has had three interceptions, 12 average return yards after interceptions, two forced fumbles, a 4.35 second 40-yard dash, 73 tackles, 14 assisted tackles, only one pass interference, and five passes defended, is 28 years old, and it’s currently 12 minutes into the third quarter, and he has seen exactly 8 minutes and 25.3 seconds of playtime.’”

That receiver – rather than standing still on the line of scrimmage before the play trying to remember all of the different specific statistics and what they mean individually and combined to how he should change his performance – would just consider the cornerback as ‘really good.’

The cornerback’s historic capability wouldn’t be the only variable. Specifically, his relative height and relative speed should likely be considered as well. So, the receiver’s control decision might be as fast and simple as: ‘This cornerback is really good, a lot taller than me, but I am faster.’

At the very basic level, that’s the concept involved in terms of the distributed computing power that’s the foundation of a Genetic Fuzzy Tree system wherein, otherwise, scenarios/decision making would require too high a number of rules if done by a single controller.

Added Ernest, “Only considering the relevant variables for each sub-decision is key for us to complete complex tasks as humans. So, it makes sense to have the AI do the same thing.”

In this case, the programming involved breaking up the complex challenges and problems represented in aerial fighter deployment into many sub-decisions, thereby significantly reducing the required “space” or burden for good solutions. The branches or sub divisions of this decision-making tree consists of high-level tactics, firing, evasion and defensiveness.

That’s the “tree” part of the term “Genetic Fuzzy Tree” system.

Programming that’s language based, genetic and generational

Most AI programming uses numeric-based control and provides very precise parameters for operations. In other words, there’s not a lot of leeway for any improvement or contextual decision making on the part of the programming.

The AI algorithms that Ernest and his team ultimately developed are language based, with if/then scenarios and rules able to encompass hundreds to thousands of variables. This language-based control or fuzzy logic, while much less about complex mathematics, can be verified and validated.

Another benefit of this linguistic control is the ease in which expert knowledge can be imparted to the system. For instance, Lee worked with Psibernetix to provide tactical and maneuverability advice which was directly plugged in to ALPHA. (That “plugging in” occurs via inputs into a fuzzy logic controller. Those inputs consist of defined terms, e.g., close vs. far in distance to a target; if/then rules related to the terms; and inputs of other rules or specifications.)

Finally, the ALPHA programming is generational. It can be improved from one generation to the next, from one version to the next. In fact, the current version of ALPHA is only that – the current version. Subsequent versions are expected to perform significantly better.

Again, from UC’s Cohen, “In a lot of ways, it’s no different than when air combat began in W.W. I. At first, there were a whole bunch of pilots. Those who survived to the end of the war were the aces. Only in this case, we’re talking about code.”

To reach its current performance level, ALPHA’s training has occurred on a $500 consumer-grade PC. This training process started with numerous and random versions of ALPHA. These automatically generated versions of ALPHA proved themselves against a manually tuned version of ALPHA. The successful strings of code are then “bred” with each other, favoring the stronger, or highest performance versions. In other words, only the best-performing code is used in subsequent generations. Eventually, one version of ALPHA rises to the top in terms of performance, and that’s the one that is utilized.

This is the “genetic” part of the “Genetic Fuzzy Tree” system.

Said Cohen, “All of these aspects are combined, the tree cascade, the language-based programming and the generations. In terms of emulating human reasoning, I feel this is to unmanned aerial vehicles what the IBM/Deep Blue vs. Kasparov was to chess.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Genetic Fuzzy based Artificial Intelligence for Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle Control in Simulated Air Combat Missions by Nicholas Ernest, David Carroll, Corey Schumacher, Matthew Clark, Kelly Cohen, and Gene Lee. J Def Manag [Journal of Defense Management]  6:144. doi:10.4172/2167-0374.1000144 Published: March 22, 2016

This is an open access paper.

Segue

The University of Cincinnati’s president, Santa Ono, recently accepted a job as president of the University of British Columbia (UBC), which is located in the region where I live. Nassif Ghoussoub, professor of mathematics at UBC, writes about Ono and his new appointment in a June 13, 2016 posting on his blog (Note: A link has been removed),

By the time you read this, UBC communications will already have issued the mandatory press release [the official announcement was made June 13, 2016] describing Santa Ono’s numerous qualifications for the job, including that he is a Canuck in the US, born in Vancouver, McGill PhD, a highly accomplished medical researcher, who is the President of the University of Cincinnati.

So, I shall focus here on what UBC communications may not be enclined [sic] to tell you, yet may be quite consequential for UBC’s future direction. After all, life experiences, gender, race, class, and character are what shape leadership.

…

President Ono seems to have had battles with mental illness, and have been courageous enough to deal with it and to publicly disclose it –as recently as May 24 [2016]– so as to destigmatize struggles that many people go through. It is interesting to note the two events that led the president to have suicidal thoughts: …

The post is well worth reading if you have any interest in Ono, UBC, and/or insight into some of the struggles even some of the most accomplished academics can encounter.

New method of Rayleigh scattering for better semiconductors

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Rayliegh scattering provides a scientific explanation first devised in the 19th century for why the sky is blue during the day and why it turns red in the evening. A March 4, 2014 news item on Nanowerk describes some research into measuring semiconductor nanowires with a new Rayleigh scattering technique,

A new twist on a very old physics technique could have a profound impact on one of the most buzzed-about aspects of nanotechnology.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati [UC] have found that their unique method of light-matter interaction analysis appears to be a good way of helping make better semiconductor nanowires.

The March 4, 2014 University of Cincinnati news release, which originated the news item, has the researcher describing his work in further detail (Note: Links have been removed),

“Semiconductor nanowires are one of the hottest topics in the nanoscience research field in the recent decade,” says Yuda Wang, a UC doctoral student. “Due to the unique geometry compared to conventional bulk semiconductors, nanowires have already shown many advantageous properties, particularly in novel applications in such fields as nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, nanobiochemistry and nanoenergy.”

Wang will present the team’s research “Transient Rayleigh Scattering Spectroscopy Measurement of Carrier Dynamics in Zincblende and Wurtzite Indium Phosphide Nanowires” at the American Physical Society (APS) meeting to be held March 3-7 [2014] in Denver. …

Key to this research is UC’s new method of Rayleigh scattering, a phenomenon first described in 1871 and the scientific explanation for why the sky is blue in the daytime and turns red at sunset. The researchers’ Rayleigh scattering technique probes the band structures and electron-hole dynamics inside a single indium phosphide nanowire, allowing them to observe the response with a time resolution in the femtosecond range – or one quadrillionth of a second.

“Basically, we can generate a live picture of how the electrons and holes are excited and slowly return to their original states, and the mechanism behind that can be analyzed and understood,” says Wang, of UC’s Department of Physics. “It’s all critical in characterizing the optical or electronic properties of a semiconducting nanowire.”

Semiconductors are at the center of modern electronics. Computers, TVs and cellphones have them. They’re made from the crystalline form of elements that have scientifically beneficial electrical conductivity properties.

Wang says the burgeoning range of semiconductor nanowire applications – such as smaller, more energy-efficient electronics – has brought rapid improvement to nanowire fabrication techniques. He says his team’s research could offer makers of nanotechnology a new and highly effective option for measuring the physics inside nanowires.

“The key to a good optimization process is an excellent feedback, or a characterization method,” Wang says. “Rayleigh scattering appears to be an exceptional way to measure several nanowire properties simultaneously in a non-invasive and high-quality manner.”

Additional contributors to this research are UC alumnus Mohammad Montazeri; UC physics professors Howard Jackson and Leigh Smith and adjunct associate professor Jan Yarrison-Rice, all of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences; and Tim Burgess, Suriati Paiman, Hoe Tan, Qiang Gao and Chennupati Jagadish of Australian National University.

You can get more information about the American Physical Society March 3 – 7, 2014 meeting in Denver, Colorado here.

Science policy, innovation and more on the Canadian 2010 federal budget; free access in the true north; no nano for Van Gogh’s The Bedroom; frogs, foam and biofuels

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There are more comments about Canada’s 2010 federal budget on the Canadian Science Policy Centre website along with listings of relevant news articles which they update regularly. There’s also a federal budget topic in the forums section but it doesn’t seem have attracted much commentary yet.

The folks at The Black Hole blog offer some pointed commentary with regard to the budget’s treatment of post doctorate graduates. If I understand the comments correctly, the budget has clarified the matter of taxation, i. e., post doctoral grants are taxable income, which means that people who were getting a break on taxes are now losing part of their income. The government has also created a new class of $70,000 post doctoral grants but this will account for only 140 fellowships. With some 6000 post doctoral fellows this means only 2% of the current pool of applicants will receive these awards. Do read The Black Hole post as they clarify what this means in very practical terms.

There’s been another discussion outcome from the 2010 budget, a renewed interest in innovation. I’m kicking off my ‘innovation curation efforts’ with this from an editorial piece by Carol Goar in the Toronto Star,

Five Canadian finance ministers have tried to crack the productivity puzzle. All failed. Now Jim Flaherty is taking a stab at it.

Here is the conundrum: We don’t use our brainpower to create new wealth. We have a highly educated population, generous tax incentives for research and development and lower corporate tax rates than any leading economic power. Yet our businesses remain reluctant to invest in new products and technologies (with a few honourable exceptions such as Research in Motion, Bombardier and Magna). They don’t even capitalize on the exciting discoveries made in our universities and government laboratories.

…

Economists are starting to ask what’s wrong. Canada ranked 14th in business spending on research and development – behind all the world’s leading industrial powers and even smaller nations such as Belgium and Ireland – in the latest statistical roundup by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

I believe she’s referring to the 2009 OECD scorecard in that last bit (you can find the Canada highlights here).

There are many parts to this puzzle about why Canadians and their companies are not innovative.  Getting back to Goar’s piece,

Kevin Lynch, who served as Stephen Harper’s top adviser from 2006 to 2009 [and is now the vice-chair of the Bank of Montreal Financial Group], has just written an article in Policy Options, an influential magazine, laying the blame squarely on corporate Canada. He argues that, unless business leaders do their part, it makes little sense to go on spending billions of dollars on research and development. “In an era of fiscal constraint, there has to be a compelling narrative to justify new public investments when other areas are being constrained,” he says.

Here’s a possible puzzle piece, in yesterday’s (March 15, 2010) posting I noted a study by academic, Mary J. Benner, where she pointed out that securities analysts do not reward/encourage established US companies such as Polaroid (now defunct) and Kodak to adopt new technologies. I would imagine that the same situation exists here in Canada.

For another puzzle piece: I’ve made mention of the mentality that a lot of entrepreneurs (especially in Canadian high tech) have and see confirmation  in a Globe and Mail article by Simon Avery about the continuing impact of the 2000 dot com meltdown where he investigates some of the issues with venture capital and investment as well as this,

“It’s a little bit about getting into the culture of winning, like the Olympics we just had,” says Ungad Chadda, senior vice-president of the Toronto Stock Exchange. “I don’t think the technology entrepreneurs around here are encouraged and supported to think beyond the $250-million cheque that a U.S. company can give them.”

One last comment from  Kevin Lynch (mentioned in the second of the Goar excerpts) about innovation and Canada from his recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail,

A broader public dialogue is essential. We need to make the question “What would it take for Canada to be an innovative economy for the 21st century?” part of our public narrative – partly because our innovation deficit is a threat to our competitiveness and living standards, and partly because we can be a world leader in innovation. We should aspire to be a nation of innovators. We should rebrand Canada as technologically savvy, entrepreneurial and creative.

Yes, Mr. Lynch a broader dialogue would be delightful but there does seem to be an extraordinary indifference to the notion from many quarters. Do I seem jaundiced? Well, maybe that’s because I’ve been trying to get some interest in having a Canadian science policy debate and not getting very far with it. In principle, people call for more dialogue but that requires some effort to organize and a willingness to actually participate.

(As for “rebranding”, is anyone else tired of hearing that word or its cousin branding?)

On a completely other note, the University of Ottawa has announced that it is supporting open access to its faculty’s papers with institutional funding. From the news release,

According to Leslie Weir, U of Ottawa’s chief librarian, the program encompasses several elements, including a new Open Access (or OA) repository for peer-reviewed papers and other “learning objects”; an “author fund” for U of Ottawa researchers to help them cover open-access fees charged by journal publishers; a $50,000-a-year budget to digitize course materials and make them available to anyone through the repository; and support for the University of Ottawa Press’s OA journals.

…

But the university stopped short of requiring faculty members to deposit their papers with the new repository. “We all agreed that incentives and encouragement was the best way to go,” said Ms. Weir, who worked on the program with an internal group of backers, including Michael Geist, professor of intellectual property law, and Claire Kendall, a professor in the faculty of medicine who has been active in OA medical journals.

There is some criticism of the decision to make the programme voluntary. Having noticed the lack of success that voluntary reporting of nanomaterials has had, I’m inclined to agree with the critics. (Thanks to Pasco Phronesis for pointing me to the item.)

If you’ve ever been interested in art restoration (how do they clean and return the colours of an old painting to its original hues?, then the Van Gogh blog is for you. A member of the restoration team is blogging each step of The Bedroom’s (a famous Van Gogh painting) restoration. I was a little surprised that they don’t seem to be using any of the new nano-enabled techniques for examining the painting or doing the restoration work.

Given the name for this website, I have to mention the work done with frogs in pursuit of developing new biofuels by scientists at the University of Cincinnati. From the news item on Nanotechnology Now,

In natural photosynthesis, plants take in solar energy and carbon dioxide and then convert it to oxygen and sugars. The oxygen is released to the air and the sugars are dispersed throughout the plant — like that sweet corn we look for in the summer. Unfortunately, the allocation of light energy into products we use is not as efficient as we would like. Now engineering researchers at the University of Cincinnati are doing something about that.

The researchers are finding ways to take energy from the sun and carbon from the air to create new forms of biofuels, thanks to a semi-tropical frog species [Tungara frog].

…

Their work focused on making a new artificial photosynthetic material which uses plant, bacterial, frog and fungal enzymes, trapped within a foam housing, to produce sugars from sunlight and carbon dioxide.

Here’s an illustration of the frog by Megan Gundrum, 5th year DAAP student (I tried find out what DAAP stands for but was unsuccessful, ETA: Mar.31.10, it is the Design, art, and architecture program at the University of Cincinnati),

illustration by Megan Gundrum, 5th year DAAP student

Thank you to the University of Cincinnati for making the image available.

E-paper technology takes another step forward, spooky magnetic attractions, and the business of nano

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If you’ve read Neal Stephenson’s ‘Diamond Age’ then you’ll probably remember a passage near the beginning where a main character unrolls his flexible screen before glancing at the daily news. We’re not there yet with e-paper because there’s a problem with brightness (reflectance of ambient light). Most e-paper screens give 40% reflectance and that’s not been enough until this week when Gamma Dyanmics took a step closer to achieving the e-newspaper dream with their electrofluidic display. They are working on a international joint project with the University of Cincinnati, Sun Chemical, and Polymer Visual. They’ve unveiled a prototype and published a paper in the May issue of Nature Photonics (this is behind a paywall). For a consumer-friendly article describing the work, go to Fast Company here. For more technically-minded descriptions go here for a longer version and here for a shorter version.

Thanks to Fast Company, I found this video called, Magnetic Attractions. Artists at NASA created a short video illustrating various magnetic forces. What makes it spooky? They even show the forces extending through walls. You can see it here.

You might want to take a boo at Howard Lovy’s March 2009 posting about nano business and nano possibilities on Small Tech Talk. It was written in response to this (from Lovy’s post),

It has gotten to the point now where Scott E. Rickert, chief executive of Nanofilm Ltd., has gone as far as to declare that “the era of endless exploration is over — at least as long as the economy stumbles.” Writing in IndustryWeek, Rickert expresses his impatience now with nanotech information that is not directly related to business.

“Nanobusiness is business. Period. First, last, always,” Rickert declares.

I like Lovy’s response to this. As for me, some of the business people have extremist positions not that far removed from those of some scientists who think that they should be allowed to research whatever they want and that business is a dirty word.