![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.conversiondiary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/7_quick_takes_sm1.jpg\" "\\"7_quick_takes_sm\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u2014 1 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m\u00a0totally\u00a0<\/em>delighted by these mischievous bridges<\/a>. \u00a0Euro notes apparently each feature a picture of a bridge, drawn in different architectural styles, but none modelled on a\u00a0real<\/em> bridge, so that the nations of the EU wouldn\u2019t be divided into \u201cincluded in\/excluded from currency\u201d factions. \u00a0But the Netherlands has scuppered that compromise \u2014 they\u2019ve built all seven!<\/p>\n The local council responsible for constructing a new housing development in Spijkenisse, a suburb of Rotterdam, heard about the idea and approached Stam about using his designs.<\/p>\n \u2026The bridges are exact copies of those shown on the banknotes, down to the shape, crop and colour.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to give the bridges an exaggerated theatrical appearance \u2013 like a stage set,\u201d adds Stam, who poured dyed concrete into custom-made wooden moulds to make them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 2 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Stam converted these fictional bridges into real live spans, and, in this next link, scientists converted real-life pulses into drawings, and ,now, have reconverted them into sound<\/a>.<\/p>\n Until the mid-19th century, charting a pulse required the doctor to cut into an artery and place a metal device or a glass tube inside. There were no human volunteers, and studies were limited to animals. The first known recording occurred Dec. 12, 1846, when a German physician,\u00a0Carl Ludwig<\/a>, took the pulse of a horse.<\/p>\n It was Karl von Vierordt, a German physiologist, who invented the elaborate device that charted human pulses noninvasively. He called it thesphygmograph<\/a>, or \u201cpulse writer,\u201d and in 1854 he used it to trace 45 feeble pulses of Johann Hahn, a 71-year-old patient who suffered from pulmonary emphysema.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now that these paper records have been digitized, we can listen to the heartbeat of a man who was born in 1769.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 3 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n And speaking of visualizing sounds and rhythms, Flowing Data provides this link to a \u201cpianogram\u201d<\/a> \u2014 a histogram of the relative frequency of notes in a song.<\/p>\n This one is Rachmaninov\u2019s Prelude in C-Sharp.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 4 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Ach, you may say, it\u2019s all very well using computers to graph songs, but where will we be when they get out of hand? \u00a0Well, you probably won\u2019t be reassured by this next link, \u201cWatch As A Hacker Frees This Telepresence Robot From Its Confinement.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 A telepresence robot company let people test drive their robot, which was safely shut up in a conference room.<\/p>\n The operative word in that last sentence is \u201cwas.\u201d<\/p>\n The persistence and cleverness of the person who piloted the robot out of its chamber is fun to watch, but also a good reminder that limited machines can be used for more than just their intended purposes, whether animated by mischievous humans or insufficiently precise code.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 5 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m pretty sure I know at least one person who\u2019d be hesitant about using a telepresence robot\u00a0anyway<\/em>, for fear of getting motion-sick. \u00a0Which brings me to this interesting\u00a0Nautilus\u00a0<\/em>story on treatment for\u00a0mal de debarquement<\/em> syndrome<\/a> (the swaying feeling that you\u2019re at sea, long after your cruise is over<\/a>).<\/p>\n On Monday, during Perry\u2019s first treatment session, Dai set out to measure her perceived motions. Perry stood on a\u00a0<\/span>Wii Balance Board<\/a>\u00a0that contains pressure sensors; on a connected computer, Dai and a colleague watched Perry\u2019s center of balance shift in a slow, clockwise circle. Next the doctors told Perry to sit down, strapped an accelerometer to her wrist, and asked her to move her arm in time with her perceived circular swaying motions. Both of these tests revealed the same frequency of motion: Perry\u2019s internal deck was\u00a0completing its rocking motion once every seven seconds.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Once the scientists knew the period of Perry\u2019s phantom swells, they could work on retraining her brain and her balance. \u00a0The trick they use is pretty cool, and you can find it in the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 6 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Can I tell a story abounding in pilish using its trick? Alleluia!<\/p>\n Ok, back to Standard English. \u00a0Pilish is an English variant<\/a>, which constrains how long all your words can be. \u00a0You must start with a three letter word, then a one letter one, then four, then one again, then five, and by now you\u2019ve probably twigged that the pattern of pilish is the digits of pi. Turns out people have written poems and even novellas in this form, but I would have had trouble with just the twelve words above, were it not for scrabble dictionaries that let you search by length of word.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 7 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Pilish is a joke that relies on math, but isn\u2019t a particularly mathy matter, itself. \u00a0But this final link, an explanation of zero-knowledge proofs<\/a>, is\u00a0fascinating<\/em>, and it\u2019s written for laypeople, so please give it a try\u2013I was awestruck by this topic. \u00a0I\u2019ll give you the lead-in here, and I\u00a0really<\/em> recommend going over for the explanation:<\/p>\n Prior to Goldwasser\u00a0<\/span>et al.<\/i>, most work in this area focused the\u00a0<\/span>soundness<\/a>\u00a0of the proof system. That is, it considered the case where a malicious Prover attempts to \u2018trick\u2019 a Verifier into believing a false statement. What Goldwasser, Micali and Rackoff did was to turn this problem on its head. Instead of worrying only about the Prover, they asked: what happens if you don\u2019t trust the\u00a0<\/span>Verifier?\u00a0<\/i> \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n
The specific concern they raised was\u00a0<\/span>information leakage.\u00a0<\/i>Concretely, they asked, how much extra information\u00a0is the Verifier going to learn during the course of this proof, beyond the mere fact that the statement is true?<\/span>
It\u2019s important to note that this is not simply of theoretical interest. There are real, practical applications where this kind of thing matters.<\/span>
Here\u2019s one: imagine that a real-world client wishes to log into a web server using a password. The standard \u2018real world\u2019 approach to this problem involves storing a\u00a0<\/span>hashed version of the password<\/a>\u00a0on the server. The login can thus be viewed as a sort of \u2018proof\u2019 that a given password hash is the output of a hash function on some password \u2014 and more to the point, that the client actually\u00a0<\/span>knows<\/i>\u00a0the password.<\/span>
Most real systems implement this \u2018proof\u2019 in the absolute worst possible way. The client simply transmits the original password to the server, which re-computes the password hash and compares it to the stored value. The problem here is obvious: at the conclusion of the protocol,\u00a0<\/span>the server has learned my cleartext password.<\/i>\u00a0Modern password hygiene therefore involves a good deal of praying that servers aren\u2019t compromised.<\/span>
What Goldwasser, Micali and Rackoff proposed\u00a0was a new hope for conducting such proofs. If fully realized, zero knowledge proofs would allow us to prove statements like the one above, while provably revealing\u00a0<\/span>no information<\/i>\u00a0beyond the single bit of information corresponding to \u2018this statement is true\u2019.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n