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Ancestor algorithm revives languages of the past
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LIKE living things, languages evolve. Words mutate, sounds shift and new tongues arise from old. Charting this landscape is usually done through manual research. But now a computer has been taught to reconstruct lost languages using the sounds uttered by those who speak their modern successors. Alexandre Bouchard-Côté at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues have developed a machine-learning algorithm that uses rules about how the sounds of words can vary to infer the most likely phonetic changes behind a language’s divergence. For example, in a recent change known as the Canadian Shift, many Canadians now say “aboot” instead of “about”. “It happens in all words with a similar sound,” says Bouchard-Côté. The team applied the technique to
thousands of word pairings used across 637 Austronesian languages – the family that includes Fijian, Hawaiian and Tongan. The system was able to suggest how ancestor languages might have sounded and also identify which sounds were most likely to change. When the team compared the results with work done by human specialists, they found that over 85 per cent of suggestions were within a single
“The system reconstructs lost languages based on the sounds of phonetically similar modern tongues” character of the actual words (PNAS, 10.1073/pnas.1204678110). The technique could improve machine translation of phonetically similar languages. Endangered languages could also be preserved if they are phonetically related to more widely spoken tongues, says Bouchard-Côté. He is now working on an online version of the tool for linguists to use. Douglas Heaven n
C.WisHisSoc/Everett/Rex Features
Ancestor algorithm revives languages of the past
One Per Cent
Is your gadget dead on arrival? You buy a new gadget online, unpack it excitedly, only to find it’s not working. Was it dead out of the factory gate, or did the parcel get dropped in transit? A sticky radio tag might one day spill the beans on sloppy delivery firms. Called DropTag, the device combines a battery, a Bluetooth transmitter, an accelerometer and a memory chip. Developed by UK firm Cambridge Consultants, it logs any g forces it experiences after being switched on. When a parcel containing one arrives, you turn on your smartphone’s DropTag app and use Bluetooth to scan it before signing for delivery. If it has been drop-kicked around the van, you can refuse delivery.
Wipe that cellphone memory
Augment your tongue and taste the world anew CAN YOU imagine feeling Earth’s magnetic field on the tip of your tongue? Strangely, this is now possible, using a device that converts the tongue into a “display” for output from environmental sensors. Gershon Dublon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology devised a small pad containing electrodes in a 5 × 5 grid. Users put the pad, which Gershon calls Tongueduino, on their tongue. When hooked up to an electronic sensor, the pad converts signals from the sensor into small pulses of electric current across the grid, which the tongue “reads” as a pattern of tingles. Dublon says the brain quickly adapts to new stimuli on the tongue and integrates them into
our senses. For example, if Tongueduino is attached to a sensor that detects Earth’s magnetic field, users can learn to use their tongue as a compass. “You might not have to train much,” he says. “You could just put this on and start to perceive.” Dublon has been testing Tongueduino on himself for the past year using a range of environmental sensors. He will now try the device out on 12 volunteers. Blair MacIntyre at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta says a wireless version of Tongueduino could prove useful in augmented reality applications that deliver information to users inconspicuously, without interfering with their vision or hearing. “There’s a need for forms of awareness that aren’t socially intrusive,” he says. Even Google’s much-publicised Project Glass will involve wearing a headset, he points out. Hal Hodson n
Sending your old cellphone to a recycling company can leave you at risk of identity theft. The deletion techniques such firms use are meant for hard discs and so don’t work on the solid-state flash memory used in mobiles. That means your personal data could end up in someone else’s hands. BlackBelt Smartphone Defence of Skelmersdale, UK, claims to have developed a software algorithm that can securely delete data on cellphone memory chips. The technique will be showcased at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, at the end of the month.
Log your life and behave better Can wearing a camera help change your lifestyle? A clutch of studies in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine look at how “lifelogging” can influence behaviour. Volunteers wore a Microsoft SenseCam around their necks that automatically took hundreds of images each day. In one study, sports players kept food diaries too. The cameras revealed a higher estimated calorie intake than the wearers themselves reported. Another study showed that SenseCams can provide a more accurate picture of daily activity than other devices, while another showed that smartphones are an effective – but cheaper – alternative.
For breaking tech news go to: newscientist.com/onepercent
16 February 2013 | NewScientist | 23
LIKE living things, languages evolve. Words mutate, sounds shift and new tongues arise from old. Charting this landscape is usually done through manual research. But now a computer has been taught to reconstruct lost languages using the sounds uttered by those who speak their modern successors. Alexandre Bouchard-Côté at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues have developed a machine-learning algorithm that uses rules about how the sounds of words can vary to infer the most likely phonetic changes behind a language’s divergence. For example, in a recent change known as the Canadian Shift, many Canadians now say “aboot” instead of “about”. “It happens in all words with a similar sound,” says Bouchard-Côté. The team applied the technique to
thousands of word pairings used across 637 Austronesian languages – the family that includes Fijian, Hawaiian and Tongan. The system was able to suggest how ancestor languages might have sounded and also identify which sounds were most likely to change. When the team compared the results with work done by human specialists, they found that over 85 per cent of suggestions were within a single
“The system reconstructs lost languages based on the sounds of phonetically similar modern tongues” character of the actual words (PNAS, 10.1073/pnas.1204678110). The technique could improve machine translation of phonetically similar languages. Endangered languages could also be preserved if they are phonetically related to more widely spoken tongues, says Bouchard-Côté. He is now working on an online version of the tool for linguists to use. Douglas Heaven n
C.WisHisSoc/Everett/Rex Features
Ancestor algorithm revives languages of the past
One Per Cent
Is your gadget dead on arrival? You buy a new gadget online, unpack it excitedly, only to find it’s not working. Was it dead out of the factory gate, or did the parcel get dropped in transit? A sticky radio tag might one day spill the beans on sloppy delivery firms. Called DropTag, the device combines a battery, a Bluetooth transmitter, an accelerometer and a memory chip. Developed by UK firm Cambridge Consultants, it logs any g forces it experiences after being switched on. When a parcel containing one arrives, you turn on your smartphone’s DropTag app and use Bluetooth to scan it before signing for delivery. If it has been drop-kicked around the van, you can refuse delivery.
Wipe that cellphone memory
Augment your tongue and taste the world anew CAN YOU imagine feeling Earth’s magnetic field on the tip of your tongue? Strangely, this is now possible, using a device that converts the tongue into a “display” for output from environmental sensors. Gershon Dublon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology devised a small pad containing electrodes in a 5 × 5 grid. Users put the pad, which Gershon calls Tongueduino, on their tongue. When hooked up to an electronic sensor, the pad converts signals from the sensor into small pulses of electric current across the grid, which the tongue “reads” as a pattern of tingles. Dublon says the brain quickly adapts to new stimuli on the tongue and integrates them into
our senses. For example, if Tongueduino is attached to a sensor that detects Earth’s magnetic field, users can learn to use their tongue as a compass. “You might not have to train much,” he says. “You could just put this on and start to perceive.” Dublon has been testing Tongueduino on himself for the past year using a range of environmental sensors. He will now try the device out on 12 volunteers. Blair MacIntyre at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta says a wireless version of Tongueduino could prove useful in augmented reality applications that deliver information to users inconspicuously, without interfering with their vision or hearing. “There’s a need for forms of awareness that aren’t socially intrusive,” he says. Even Google’s much-publicised Project Glass will involve wearing a headset, he points out. Hal Hodson n
Sending your old cellphone to a recycling company can leave you at risk of identity theft. The deletion techniques such firms use are meant for hard discs and so don’t work on the solid-state flash memory used in mobiles. That means your personal data could end up in someone else’s hands. BlackBelt Smartphone Defence of Skelmersdale, UK, claims to have developed a software algorithm that can securely delete data on cellphone memory chips. The technique will be showcased at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, at the end of the month.
Log your life and behave better Can wearing a camera help change your lifestyle? A clutch of studies in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine look at how “lifelogging” can influence behaviour. Volunteers wore a Microsoft SenseCam around their necks that automatically took hundreds of images each day. In one study, sports players kept food diaries too. The cameras revealed a higher estimated calorie intake than the wearers themselves reported. Another study showed that SenseCams can provide a more accurate picture of daily activity than other devices, while another showed that smartphones are an effective – but cheaper – alternative.
For breaking tech news go to: newscientist.com/onepercent
16 February 2013 | NewScientist | 23