QUEST Discussion Topics September 10, 2010

1.) Neuro cinematics – it is very difficult to estimate the impact of any stimuli on a person, there is recent work led by among others RH and colleagues at George Mason in neuro ergonomics, this article discusses ongoing commercial work in using fMRI to analyze brain activity when subjects are exposed to movie sequences. The quest question is can our recent discussion of the ‘link game’ provide a better / less invasive and more useable approach to estimating the impact of stimuli in these applications and others we’ve discussed to include more efficient warfighter training, finding the ‘buy button’ for advertising, …. We want to tie to this discussion a recent article in the NY times – ‘good study habits’ – this leads us down the path of the need for links to associate new concepts with current concepts and the use of time/space to make those concepts anchored. This seems to be related to another interest of ours – the mixing of exercises (crossfit) allows the muscles to ‘associate’ and seems to be a better approach to fitness.

2.) Link game, cache, dreaming and the quale of time – we want to revisit our discussion from above and the general challenge of the link game, recall we have posited that time is a quale, adam recently suggested that the units of time are ‘links’, we would like to have a discussion of the impact of link game and perceived time, example – when a bball game ‘slows down’ for Michael Jordan does this imply that the amount of qualia links that he has to exercise to accurately predict / respond to events in the game are fewer than other experiences in a game thus he has the perception that it ‘slowed down’.

3.) Image quality discussion – we have two points to bring up on this topic from last week: The fundamental unit of cognition is a situation – thus if we want to estimate image quality we want to extract a measure of the ‘situation’ extraction quality. The number of concepts (qualia) and relationships between them that an average agent of a given class of agents could reasonably be expected to extract – the second point is that we believe there is No Free Lunch for Image quality – unless we define the agents being supplied the images and the thus the information need they

are trying to resolve there is NO hope for coming up with a useful estimate of image quality

4.) One quale at a time visual illusions article

News ArticlesA. Learning and YATE

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html?ref=science

Gist – Recall of learned concepts is greatly affected by the environment under which the learning took place, the more links that were present the better.

Tags – learning, concepts, isolation, study habits, brain associations, links, intensive immersion, YATE, memory, recall

Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities

and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how…cognitive

scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably

improve what matters most: how much a student learns from

studying…directly contradict much of the common wisdom about

good study habits, and they have not caught on…instead of sticking

to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person

studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related

skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a

single thing.. Take the notion that children have specific learning

styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some

are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.”… team of

psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas…“The

contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles

approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its

utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers

concluded…Some excellent instructors caper in front of the

blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the

point of shyness. “We have yet to identify the common threads

between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,”…

individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have

discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is

flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that

students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the

library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In

one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college

students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different

rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a

view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who

studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have

confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics…brain makes subtle

associations between what it is studying and the background

sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether

those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles

Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room,

say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade

of the willow tree in the backyard…when the outside context is

varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down

forgetting,”… arying the type of material studied in a single sitting —

alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in

a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain

than does concentrating on just one skill at a time…“When students

see a list of problems, all of the same kind, they know the strategy to

use before they even read the problem,” said Dr. Rohrer. “That’s like

riding a bike with training wheels.” With mixed practice, he added,

“each problem is different from the last one, which means kids must

learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like they had

to do on the test.”…finding undermines the common assumption

that intensive immersion is the best way to really master a

particular genre, or type of creative work…Cognitive scientists do

not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better

grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to

speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn…

When the neural suitcase is packed carefully and gradually, it holds

its contents for far, far longer. An hour of study tonight, an hour on

the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called

spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in

more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies

have found…The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a

book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the

information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in

the future…When students studied the same material twice, in back-

to-back sessions, they did very well on a test given immediately

afterward, then began to forget the material..But if they studied the

passage just once and did a practice test in the second session, they

did very well on one test two days later, and another given a week

later….The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to

later forget. This effect, which researchers call “desirable difficulty,”

is evident in daily life…

B. Neurocinematics

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727774.000-brain-

imaging-monitors-effect-of-movie-magic.html?full=true

Gist – Use of neuroimaging techniques to develop better

movies/marketing methods based off of desired user experience

Tags – neurocinematics, movies, fMRI, brain activity correlation, buy

button

is this movie stirring up the right emotional reactions deep down?

Rather than ask your opinion, it's now possible to cut out the

middleman and go straight to your brain for the verdict….new

approach, known as neurocinematics, is beginning to make itself felt

in movie-making and could one day help regulatory bodies

implement appropriate age restrictions on films…investigate how the

brain responds to movies using an fMRI brain scanner…When

volunteers watched a section of Alfred Hitchcock's Bang! You're

Dead, for example, they found that about 65 per cent of the frontal

cortex - the part of the brain involved in attention and perception -

was responding in the same way in all the viewers. Only 18 per cent

of the cortex showed a similar response when the participants

watched more free-form footage, of sitcom Curb Your

Enthusiasm…"Greater correlation doesn't mean the movie is better,"

Hasson notes. Some film-makers aim for the opposite - to leave the

movie open to interpretation… coherent scene structure was needed

to achieve the highest correlation of activity between viewers in parts

of the brain involved in extracting meaning…similar technique could

help a film editor work out how effective different edits are for an

audience's understanding of a film…also using fMRI to see how active

different parts of a viewer's brain are during a screening (see

diagram). Among other things, knowing which areas are activated

when you see your leading lady or man could inform future casting

decisions…reckons his company can also identify what the brain of a

captivated viewer looks like, depending on the aim of the scene. As a

general rule, an "engaged" brain will have high levels of activity in

areas involved in processing sound and images. And if a person is

watching a good horror movie, for example, you'd expect to see more

activity in the amygdala - the part of the brain that responds to

threats. On the other hand, a scene which inspires compassion will

activate the insula…Another key area is the ventromedial prefrontal

cortex - part of the brain thought to be involved in self-awareness.

"That's a very specific area that we feel should 'light up' if the goal of

your movie is to connect with people,"… . When the viewers used

old-fashioned red and blue 3D glasses, their brain scans suggested

they were less engaged in the film than when modern polarised

glasses were used. 3D movie-makers seem to be on to a good thing

though - 3D scenes increased general brain activation compared

with 2D…MindSign is already in the business of improving movie

scenes and trailers using neurocinematics. Remember the latest

Harry Potter movie trailer?... Brain scans aren't only aiding movie-

makers, they can help advertisers too. The elusive mental "buy

button" - the brain activity seen in a person poised to purchase - is the

ultimate goal of neuromarketing…used an fMRI scanner to track

brain activity in people while they shop at online stores Amazon and

iTunes. The group watched the participants' brain activity in real time

as they bought items ranging from songs to sofas…

C. Words and Thought

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727761.500-whats-in-a-

name-the-words-behind-thought.html?full=true

Gist – Words existing in our heads tells us that language plays a role

in internal thoughts, not just external communication

Tags – language, words, thoughts, perception, mental experiences,

benefits of words, labeling objects,

You think more words than you speak – perhaps because language

really does shape the way we navigate the world…Measuring the

contents of people's minds is difficult, but it seems that up to 80 per

cent of our mental experiences are verbal. Indeed, the extent of our

interior monologue may vastly exceed the number of words we

speak out loud. "On average, 70 per cent of our total verbal

experience is in our head,"… language helps us to think and perceive

the world….words bring a smorgasbord of benefits to human

cognition, from abstract thinking to sensory perception. These effects

may even explain why language evolved in the first place…Studies in

the late 1990s indicated that infants are better able to group objects

into categories - animals versus vehicles, say - if they have already

learned the category names…spatial reasoning of young children is

improved by reminding them of words such as "top", "middle" and

"bottom"…participants who were given names for the aliens learned

to identify the predators far more quickly, reaching 80 per cent

accuracy in less than half the time taken by those not told the

names…found that when asked to label items, volunteers were later

less likely to recall the specific details of products, such as whether a

chair had arms or not (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,

vol 137, p 348). That's because labelling objects helps our minds build

a prototype of the typical object in the group at the expense of

individual features, Lupyan says. This may not be as unhelpful as it

sounds. "Memory is quite categorical, so we often don't need to

remember the specific details," he adds…. ords you say, think and

hear have a very real impact on the way you see… hearing verbs

associated with vertical movement - such as "climb", "rise" or "drip" -

affects the eye's sensitivity to such motion… Hearing a letter said out

loud helps people pinpoint it among a string of other letters… words

prime the visual systems of our brain, conjuring up a mental image

that makes us more sensitive to the stimulus when it is seen. This

phenomenon, in which our thoughts, expectations and sensations

from the other senses can feed back into the visual system and alter

what we see, is known as "top-down processing"… Russian speakers,

who have two words for different shades of blue, really are faster at

discriminating between the different shades than English speakers…

thinks our personal monologue has a significant, though perhaps less

pronounced, effect on cognition. "It's difficult, or in many cases

impossible, to manipulate inner speech experimentally," he says.

"But I don't think words need to be heard out loud or seen in written

form to have an impact." Given that 80 per cent of our mental life

appears to be verbal, that's a profoundly important claim… If words

can help us identify friendly and hostile aliens in the lab, they might

also have helped our ancestors to learn which animals were

dangerous and which not, or which berries were poisonous and

which nourishing…. "Language is like augmented reality - an overlay

that changes how we think, reason and see,"… Language, she

believes, is how the human brain focuses on the essential details.

"It's like a guidebook that has been developed by thousands of

people before you, who have figured out what is important for us to

survive and adapt to our environment."…

D. Tech Horizons

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123220416

Gist – Overly optimistic view of computer capabilities down the road.

Tags – human computer gap, 30 year predictions, autonomous

systems,

"Humans today are still more capable than machines, but by 2030

that is absolutely not going to be the case anymore,"… report gives

an informed analysis of how the world of science and technology will

develop during the next 20 years and indentifies candidate

technologies that offer the greatest potential return for limited

investment dollars… briefly covered three of the report's major

findings… first, he cited, is a greater use of highly adaptable,

autonomous systems to achieve both improved capability and the

benefit of reducing manpower costs… influx of autonomy will bring

along the challenge of proving that autonomous systems are not

only effective in the lab but will perform the way they should under

every imaginable scenario… second finding Dr. Dahm presented

spoke to the rapid evolution of technology to a state beyond natural

human capacities… by 2030, man and machine will be coupled in

such a way where it is difficult to tell where one starts and the

other ends… must focus a greater fraction of science and technology

investments on research to support increased freedom of operations

in contested environments… types of environments he cited

warranting particular emphasis in terms of research are resilient

cyber domains, operations in GPS-denied environments and

electromagnetic spectrum warfare…

E. Color Perception and language

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/books/review/Bickerton-

t.html?_r=1&ref=science…

Gist – Effect of Native language on color perception

Tags – language, color, color perception, words, linguistic relativity

Is language first and foremost an artifact of culture? Or is it largely

determined by human biology? examines some idiosyncratic aspects

of particular languages that, in his opinion, cast further doubt on

biologically based theories of language… puzzling fact that many

languages lack words for what (to English speakers) seem to be

basic colors…. strange sequence in which color terms appear in the

world’s languages over time — first black and white, then red, then

either green or yellow, with blue appearing only after the first five are

in place — still has no full explanation, Deutscher’s suggestion that

the development of dyes and other forms of artificial coloring may be

involved is as convincing as any other, making color terms the

likeliest candidate for a culture-induced linguistic phenomenon…

demonstrating that the “fact” (attested in countless linguistic texts)

that all languages are equally complex has no empirical basis

whatsoever… there are no objective, nonarbitrary criteria for

measuring linguistic complexity across entire languages… goes on to

addresses the relationship between language and thought. Do

speakers of all languages think in similar ways, or do different

languages give their speakers quite different pictures of the world (a

view sometimes referred to as “linguistic relativity”)?... Deutscher

does find three areas where a weaker version of linguistic relativity

might hold — color terms, spatial relations and grammatical gender.

Ever since Mark Twain mocked the pronoun confusions of “the awful

German language” — a young girl is an “it” while a turnip is a “she”

— most people, including linguists, have treated gender assignment

as largely arbitrary and idiosyncratic, devoid of any cognitive content.

But recent experiments have shown that speakers do indeed, on a

subconscious level, form associations between nonliving (“neuter”)

objects and masculine or feminine properties. As for spatial

relationships, we English speakers relate the positions of objects or

other people to ourselves (“in front of,” “behind,” “beside”) or to

each other, but some languages use compass references (“east of,”

“southwest of”) for identical relationships….t he facets of language

he deals with do not involve “fundamental aspects of our thought,”

as he claims, but relatively minor ones… possible exception of color

terms, cultural factors seldom correlate with linguistic phenomena,

and even when they seem to, the correlation is not causal. For

instance, languages of small tribes tend to have words with multiple

inflections, while those of complex industrial or post industrial

societies do not…

F. Marjah rethink

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/world/asia/05nato.html?

ref=world

Gist – Declaration of victory in Marjah was overly optimistic

Tags – Marjah, Taliban, premature victory, counterinsurgency, war

commanders were overly optimistic when they predicted quick

success last winter in taking the town of Marja from the Taliban…

now fledgling signs of a turnaround, but burned by Marja’s

unpredictability, the military will be more restrained in forecasting

success.. The idea was to develop Marja as a model for

counterinsurgency techniques in the hope that other communities

would turn against the Taliban… the Taliban have fought back. That

has fueled doubts on Capitol Hill and among the American public

that the Afghan war can be won… only now starting to take hold in a

“persistent” way that allows the government to begin functioning in

Marja…

G. Mobile robots

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/science/05robots.html?

ref=technology

Gist – Telepresence robots being used more for medical and

workplace needs

Tags – mobile robots, off-site diagnosis, telepresence,

He took a seat in front of the latest tools of his trade: computer

monitors, a keyboard and a joystick that control his assistant on the

scene — a robot on wheel… The robot’s stereophonic hearing

conveyed the answers. Using the hypersensitive camera on the

monitor, Dr. Shatzel zoomed in and out and swung the display left

and right, much as if he were turning his head to look around the

room… Mobile robots are now being used in hundreds of hospitals

nationwide as the eyes, ears and voices of doctors who cannot be

there in person… machines do not represent a great improvement

over video teleconferencing. But advocates say the experience is

substantially better, shifting control of space and time to the

remote user…. when he began using the robot during his residency,

he would carry his laptop in a backpack so he could perform

consultations anytime… Mr. Beltzner has now used the Willow

Garage robot for more than a month, usually four to six times a week

to attend meetings and chat with his co-workers in Mountain View…

finds it to be a distinctly different experience from a video

teleconference or a computer chat system… “With the robot, I find

that I’m getting the same kind of interpersonal connection during the

meetings and the same kind of nonverbal contact”… “Using Skype

would require me to initiate a phone call,” he said. “This gives me

more of a passive ability. I’m just sitting here like I would be at my

desk if I was in the office… being used by family members to pay

visits and offer help to elderly parents…

H. Missle strike

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/09/06/suspected-missile-

strike-kills-alleged-militants-pakistani-officials-say/

Gist – missle strike in Pakistan kills militants

Tags – missle strike, Pakistan, Datta Khel, war

suspected U.S. missile strike has killed three alleged militants in the

Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan…. missile hit a vehicle in the

Datta Khel area on the Afghan border Monday evening…

I. Cortisol and heart attack prediction from hair samples

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,600703,00.html

Gist – Taking readings of cortisol from hair samples can lead to a

clearer understanding of an individuals stress history

Tags – cortisol, hair samples, heart attacks, hair, stress levels

High levels of cortisol in hair were associated with heart attacks…

new way to research chronic stress… hair on your head is dead, but

its follicle, or root, is alive. Substances like cortisol, which get

released into the bloodstream when you're stressed, can seep into

the follicle from the tiny blood vessels in the skin of the scalp…

most people have many months' worth of records of cortisol levels

sitting on top of their heads… cortisol persists in the hair for at least

six months, and in the case of several Peruvian mummies, up to

1,500 years… took hair samples from 120 men who checked into the

cardiac unit of the Meir Medical Center in Israel. Half of the men

were diagnosed with heart attacks, while the other half had other

diagnoses like chest pain and infection… analyzed the cortisol levels

in the 1.2 inches (3 cm) of hair closest to the scalp, representing

about the last three months of the patients' lives… found that cortisol

levels were significantly higher in men who had heart attacks

compared with men who had other illnesses. When the researchers

split the men into quartiles based on their cortisol levels, they found

that of the men with the lowest levels, 32 percent had heart attacks.

In the men in the uppermost quartile of cortisol, that number jumped

to 68 percent…r esults held even after controlling for other heart-

attack risk factors like cholesterol levels and body mass index (a

measure of body fatness)… it could be a noninvasive way to measure

stress over time…

J. Bogus chips

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15990184?

nclick_check=1

Gist – Growing danger of counterfeit chips for military and

commercial applications

Tags – counterfeit chips, China, military sabotage, microprocessors,

growing deluge of millions of counterfeit chips is posing peril to the

military and the general public… admitted importing from China more

than 13,000 bogus chips altered to resemble those from legitimate

companies, including local firms Intel, Atmel, Altera and National

Semiconductor. Among those buying the chips was the U.S. Navy….

recent reports have described several close calls the military has

had with bogus chips. Because the microprocessors it needed for its

F-15 warplanes’ flight-control computer were no longer made by

the chips’ original manufacturer, the military obtained them from a

broker, only to discover they were counterfeit… not just the military

that’s at risk. Chips perform key roles in countless commercial

products, as well as phone links, banking networks, electronic grids

and nuclear power plants…. To withstand the rigors of battle, the

Defense Department requires the chips it uses to have special

features, such as the ability to operate at below freezing

temperatures in highflying planes. And because it pays extra for

such chips, experts say, it has become a prime target for

counterfeiters… urged the government to continue cracking down on

such offenses, “given the potential for catastrophic injury and

damage from failure of a counterfeit microchip.”…

K. Memristors

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/weekinreview/

05markoff.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Gist – New chip design will make future computers even smaller

Tags – memristors, moore’s law, microchips, ubiquitous computing,

Central Nervous System of the Earth

Soon, the computer may become invisible to us, hiding away in

everyday objects…. had begun commercializing a Lilliputian switch

that is a simpler — and potentially smaller — alternative to the

transistor that has been the Valley’s basic building block for the last

half-century… means the number of 1’s and 0’s that can be stored on

each microchip could continue to increase at an accelerating rate….

fulfillment of Moore’s Law, first described in the 1960s by Douglas

Engelbart and Gordon Moore, which posits that computer power

increases exponentially while cost falls just as quickly… They called

its successor “ubiquitous computing.” The computer would simply

melt away like the Cheshire Cat, and become imbedded in all the

objects that make up daily life…. Our pens, pads of paper, cars,

indeed virtually everything we use are becoming computer smart…

scientist who has led the quest for the new generation of ultrasmall

switches, known as memristors, said that their arrival foretells a

computing age of discovery that will parallel the productivity

increases first brought about by the microprocessor… amount of

data is increasing at an absolutely ferocious pace, and unless we

can catch up it will remain useless.”… example of what’s possible is a

project called Central Nervous System for the Earth, or CENSE, he

said. Based on as many as a million sensors, CENSE will make it

possible to create a far clearer picture of oil and gas reservoirs than

previously possible…

L. Cloud Music

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727765.700-tech-

heavyweights-set-to-move-music-to-the-cloud.html?full=true

Gist – music moving to a cloud-based system

Tags – Apple, Google, Cloud-computing, Cloud music, music services,

streaming, streaming issues

actually owning music could soon become a thing of the past -

because of the cloud… Cloud music services, which enable you to

stream music from the internet to your computer or phone, have

been around for a few years. But so far, services such as Pandora,

Last FM and Spotify, have had little discernible effect on music lovers'

appetite for owning songs… with Apple and Google gearing up to

offer their own services, could the era of the digital download be

coming to an end?... such services offer unlimited access to a music

store of millions of songs, either interspersed with advertisements or

for a subscription. The latest versions also promise to give people

access to their own music collection from anywhere with an internet

connection… Who would choose to own music when every song is

available to stream wirelessly, on demand?... Apple is building a huge

data centre in North Carolina that is set to be one of the largest in

the world - handy if you were planning to host a lot of music files….

greater challenges are persuading the music companies that own the

rights to the songs to get on board, and devising a workable royalty

system…. Seamless transmission of the music also needs perfecting.

One of the primary means of accessing music over the internet is via

streaming, which allows users to start playing the music before the

entire file has been transmitted. Typically, streaming files do not get

written permanently to the hard drive, so each time a user wants to

listen to a song they have to start a new stream. It can also be a slow

process when a lot of users are online at the same time, and such

bandwidth issues are only magnified when it comes to mobile

phones…. mSpot keeps bandwidth down in a different way. Its

application scans a user's own music library and enables them to

access it via the cloud. By letting users dictate which songs are

hosted in the cloud and which are stored on their mobile device, it

even promises to allow users to access their music when they have

no mobile reception… charges also vary with how much bandwidth a

user consumes - giving the company more control over how much is

taken up…

M. Drone attacks

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/

2010/2010/2010/09/2010988274408834.html

Gist – Drone attacks take out Taliban fighters in Pakistan

Tags – Drones, Drone attacks, Pakistan, war, Afghanistan, Miran

Shah, Taliban, al-Qaeda, Haqqani members

At least 14 people have been killed in two suspected

US drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal region, near the border with

Afghanistan… attacks took place hours apart on Wednesday near

Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan region… At least

10 people were killed in the first attack, when missiles struck a

compound, which officials say was used to house fighters allied

with the Taliban an al-Qaeda… second drone attack later targeted a

vehicle carrying other suspected Haqqani members…

N. Demo Syndrome

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/

surveillance-software-catches-demo-syndrome/?

utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=09091

0

Gist – Discussion of demo syndrome and how it plagues engineers

trying to sell their product

Tags – Demo syndrome, software issues, tracking, analyst needs,

performance engineering

saying that her company had recently gotten its person-identifying

software to work quite well. The software could estimate a

videotaped person’s age, gender, and ethnicity with pretty good

reliability… “Everyone was wearing hats with big rims and sunglasses,

and the lighting contrast was intense—everyone’s faces were

showing up half light, half dark,” Guler said. Needless to say,

intuVision’s engineers cut short the people-identifier portion of their

software demonstration… “Sounds like demo syndrome,” one of the

engineers commented…. clicked the “look-for-all-cars-like-this-one”

button and waited. The search timed out. He tried again using a black

SUV. The first result he called up showed a light blue minivan. The

second showed a gray station wagon…. “demo syndrome”

encompasses much more than the unexpected glitches that happen

exactly when you’re trying to show off your technology to a

journalist or a couple hundred colleagues… engineers have just a

brief window of time to convince clients that automatic surveillance

technologies are actually making their jobs easier. It doesn’t take

much for an video analyst to throw up his hands and go back to the

way he’s always analyzed video footage: with his own eyes…. a

drone-mounted video sensor and processor—will be able to survey

a 40-square kilometer area at 1.8 gigapixel resolution. “We’re

talking about being able to capture one and a half to two million

vehicles in that area during one mission,” Rush said. “You’d need

16,000 analysts based on the projected data coming out of these

systems.”… Still, at this conference alone, I’ve seen lots of impressive

algorithms—algorithms that can re-identify a person in infrared or

detect a pedestrian crossing a freeway from two kilometers above

the ground. The question is: can they do these things when it

counts?...