Valentine’s Day is over, but it’s never a bad idea to stock up on gift ideas for that geeky girl or guy in your life. I just discovered these while browsing Etsy and HAD to share them with the [GaS] community!
These were crafted by Houston-based CleanerScience. As a microbiology researcher, I can tell you they might fool me if you laid them out on my lab bench – they even have the streak marks on them. Of course if they were left open, I’m sure the Apple or Grapefruit scents might give them away!
Even better, here are a couple of “cultures” that will glow in the dark (for fun, or a surprise during a power outage):
So let your geeky sweety know you care with a stack of E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and others! Their selection gets extra points for including many less-well known organisms that people might work on in their labs!
P.S. – They also have some neat mini-soaps that look like red blood cells (erythrocytes)!
If Valentine’s Day taught us anything this year, it was that sexy geeks love Nathan Fillion. Now we know, if ever there was doubt, that the Science Channel loves sexy geeks: according to a very quiet notice on their Programs page, Joss Whedon’s (heartbreakingly short-lived) sci-fi western series Firefly will be airing there, beginning March 6th.
The press release gives a good synopsis of the show, if you’re woefully in the dark or need a refresher.
The IBM computer “Watson” has established a clear lead after two days of its gameshow challenge against Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. But thankfully for those fearing 2011 may be the year the machines take over, it has made a couple of flubs.
The three-episode challenge is an attempt to test IBM’s abilities to create a machine capable of sophisticated reasoning rather than pure data storage and processing. The format of Jeopardy (contestants guess the question from a supplied answer) is a particular test of this. Not only does the contestant have to figure out which elements of the clue are most significant, but there is inherently no single “correct” question. This means the contestant first has to simultaneously consider a range of possibilities, but must then make a judgment about which is most likely to be the one the quiz setter was thinking of.
As we noted last week, though, it’s not just a game: the results of the show will help IBM refine the process for other situations such as those that involve diagnosing a problem working only from known symptoms, whether that be medical advice or tech support.
After the first day of competition, things were tight: Watson and Rutter were tied on $5,000 apiece, with Jennings lagging on $2,000. But despite its impressive performance, one limitation of Watson emerged when it repeated an incorrect answer that had already been offered by another contestant.
Come day two, though, and Watson hit its stride: answering 14 questions correctly out of 15, it ended the episode on $35,734 compared to $10,400 for Rutter and $4,800 for Jennings.
It’s the question that Watson got wrong that’s attracting the most attention though. Offered the clue “Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle”, it guessed Toronto rather than the correct reply of Chicago. That wouldn’t have been so embarrassing had the category not been US Cities.
Though that might seem like a total duh-brain move, some have offered possible explanations. Stephen Baker of the Huffington Post speculated that Watson may have been influenced by data sources that lumped in Toronto with US cities, such as the Blue Jays baseball team playing in the American League, or authors embarking on US city book tours that include the short hop across the border.
It’s also worth noting the mistake was only uncovered because the particular rules of the round meant an answer had to be provided. Watson estimated the probability of Toronto being correct at just 14% which, under normal circumstances, would have meant it wouldn’t have buzzed in with an answer.