Hey, you, meet you

Nearly seven years after Osama Bin Laden disappeared, US intelligence agencies are still chasing his shadow. And shadows are precisely what they should be looking for, says NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

By analysing the movements of human shadows in aerial and satellite footage, JPL engineer Adrian Stoica says it should be possible to identify people from the way they walk - a technique called gait analysis, whose power lies in the fact that a person's walking style is very hard to disguise.

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The results showed that the appropriately trained sexologists were able to correctly infer vaginal orgasm through watching the way the women walked over 80 percent of the time. Further analysis revealed that the sum of stride length and vertebral rotation was greater for the vaginally orgasmic women. "This could reflect the free, unblocked energetic flow from the legs through the pelvis to the spine," the authors note.

There are several plausible explanations for the results shown by this study. One possibility is that a woman's anatomical features may predispose her to greater or lesser tendency to experience vaginal orgasm. According to Brody, "Blocked pelvic muscles, which might be associated with psychosexual impairments, could both impair vaginal orgasmic response and gait." In addition, vaginally orgasmic women may feel more confident about their sexuality, which might be reflected in their gait. "Such confidence might also be related to the relationship(s) that a woman has had, given the finding that specifically penile-vaginal orgasm is associated with indices of better relationship quality," the authors state. Research has linked vaginal orgasm to better mental health.

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Extending the idea to satellites could prove trickier, though. Space imaging expert Bhupendra Jasani at King's College London says geostationary satellites simply don't have the resolution to provide useful detail. "I find it hard to believe they could apply this technique from space," he says.

:wq

See here.

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

Gordon C S Smith, professor1, Jill P Pell, consultant2
1 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Cambridge University, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, 2 Department of Public Health, Greater Glasgow NHS Board, Glasgow G3 8YU

Abstract

Objectives To determine whether parachutes are effective in preventing major trauma related to gravitational challenge.

Design Systematic review of randomised controlled trials.

Data sources: Medline, Web of Science, Embase, and the Cochrane Library databases; appropriate internet sites and citation lists.

Study selection: Studies showing the effects of using a parachute during free fall.

Main outcome measure Death or major trauma, defined as an injury severity score > 15.

Results We were unable to identify any randomised controlled trials of parachute intervention.

Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

Hat tip to Overcoming Bias

Just got them back from the 1-hour photo place this afternoon. Took the rest of the afternoon off work, scanned them, and then uploaded them to the Internet website Flickr.

One of the good things about not being able to blog about my work is that I can upload random charts and not have to exert the keyboard bashing required to explain my thoughts.[1]

X axis would be current account balance.[2]
Y axis is loan to deposit ratios for random banks

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[1] Which are largely derived from another happily married Aussie bloke.
[2] Dada thanks to another Aussie bloke.

Just so folks know, I'm heading on honeymoon for almost two weeks starting Friday. My posting frequency will be undisturbed by this event.

Should be fun.

despite getting married outside in pouring rain, a good time was had by all.

I spent Saturday afternoon at a birthday picnic for one of S.'s good friends who works in the film biz. The great thing about that crowd is that I get to both live vicariously through their stories and also I am reminded of the brief period when I worked in film post production. No offense to my current coworkers, but there is something special about working with creative creative people, rather than technically or financially creative people.

In a conversation with a guy who does indy film distribution, after fawning over his current project with Werner Herzog, we got into a discussion about the future of the industry with all the youtube and whatnot. I made some throw-away line about how branding isn't yet well established online and there may be some possibilities there. But what really got me thinking was the lack brand identities in the re-democratization of arts and entertainment.

Directors, record labels, musicians and producers succeed when they become brands. As much as I wish it weren't so, I would have never sat through all of Gerry if I didn't know it was a Gus Van Sant film. Countless songs would have missed out on the critical 5th replay required for them to catch on if I didn't know that they were written by X or released by Y. Sure, it is not a hard and fast rule and I discover new and unknown stuff all the time. But we all go the extra mile in accepting familiar brands. I am loyal.

If it weren't for the coin slot, people would have no qualms in stealing their morning newspaper, or so would be the case if we were all Homo Economicus. Plenty-o-folk download music without worrying about paying their dues to the artists. But would we do so if the band was watching us at the time? Radiohead's great experiment in behavioral economics showed us that when given the option of free, many people still elected to pay. I posit that it was merely the act of making the consumer aware of the option at the time of download that resulted in this. Not a really stunning observation, but I think it is key.

And it wouldn't work for bands who weren't brands. If you don't know what you are getting, you probably won't pay. However, if you were aware of the artists situation, you might come back and pay. Online, this might be as simple as putting up a download link with a big message along side: "The band remains poor and starving. Please help." But being a technologist, I think we can do better.

Imagine a system whereby independent artists collected payments, voluntary or not, through a central clearinghouse. That way each artist could accurately display how much income they are making from their music, and various stats about downloads. Starving artists can use their prandially challenged status to help convince listeners to share a few dollars. And popular artists will get all the benefits of popularity.

This could easily be another feature of last.fm or similar. But they are busy building a walled garden of listener behavior data. However there is no reason why this needs to be a centralized service. Distribute this sucker. That way record labels can do whatever it is that online record labels do, and can collect the cash. They can then distribute the cash to the artists, which I hear they do, on rare occasion, do.

Production costs are decreasing. Anyone with talent & a computer can make a great film or album. Companies yearn for strong brands as consumers can then align their personal images with these brand identities. Art and entertainment is a visceral identifier of personal characteristics. I like the music that I like because it says something about me. I strongly believe that given repeated exposure anyone can at least enjoy, if not love, any form of art. At some stage I chose the music, film and art that I wanted to be identified with, and later did the deep connection and enjoyment grow. As individuals the clothes we buy, the food we eat and the entertainment that we enjoy often provides a shortcut to our own deeper identity.

So, why do entertainer incomes follow a power distribution? Why does Coldplay have the benefit of being able to turn down multi-million dollar advertising deals when countless other musicians have to rely on government subsidies to feed themselves? These poorer artists are not always lesser in their art. I can understand that in a world where search costs are high, attention is focussed on a smaller set of well marketed artists. However with the diminished cost of search, consumers should be more selective in their choice of art brands. And if the audience is free to sample unrestricted digital works, but are aware of the status, needs and micro-brand of the artists, I would like to think that we can arrive at a more even distribution of wealth across the arts.

And then I'd find a way of sticking a fiver in this guy's cap.