Smell-o-vision is here

Based at the School of Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Professor Nakamoto is building a range of gadgets and sensors which sniff, mix and pump out a range of hundreds of scents.

One of the most ambitious devices his team has built is a sophisticated "odour recorder" which can sniff an object and then reproduce its smell using a host of chemicals.

If you present the recorder with a shiny red apple, the electronic nose will take a cursory sniff, analyse the odour and then draw up a recipe of chemicals needed to recreate it.

The odour recorder uses a neural network to learn fragrance recipes
When you want to replay the scent, the device mixes the ingredients and pumps the smell of apples back at you.

"Our intention is to make all smells reproducible," Professor Nakamoto said. "So, in this case we have combined two techniques: smell detection and smell generation". . .

But synthesising billions of different smells is still problematic, the professor admits. There is not a small number of "primary" odours from which all others can be created.

And another project which sounds amusing:

Although not virtual reality, his team has recently exhibited a computer game that generates scents to match the onscreen action.

It is a relatively simple cooking game, where users wearing a mask add virtual ingredients to an onscreen frying pan to rustle up a Japanese curry.

As you add the butter and onions, realistic scents are pumped through the mask. In turn, garlic, meat and spice aromas complete the overall dish.

From the BBC.

Bruce Ferrini bankruptcy: selling off the house

How the world turns:

The possessions of a well-known Bath Township art collector and dealer will be perused and picked over Saturday and Sunday as the items are sold to satisfy debts to his creditors.

But those looking for the rare antiquities still in Bruce Ferrini's collection will have to wait until lawyers put to rest a number of legal issues.

Ferrini filed for bankruptcy in September 2005. As part of the settlement he agreed to sell his household possessions, said Akron attorney J. Bruce Hunsicker. His 22-room home is expected to hit the market shortly.

Hunsicker said that although the rarities that Ferrini owns aren't part of this tag sale, there are still plenty of interesting items, including furniture, paintings by prominent Canton artist John Sokol and impressive sculptures on the house's grounds.

Full article here; the sale starts tomorrow outside of Akron, Ohio.

Breaking arms over carry-ons

As international authorities strive to harmonize a myriad of rules for carry-on flight luggage, a Russian-American jazz musician is nursing a broken arm he said he suffered in a struggle with French airport police over his right to board with a prized trumpet.

The musician, Valery Ponomarev, 63, a former member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, was preparing to board an Air India flight on Sept. 9 from Paris to New York City, where he lives, when a routine airport ritual erupted into a fierce dispute over his 1961 Constellation trumpet. . .

The airport authorities and the police confirm that the episode took place as Mr. Ponomarev was boarding the flight at Charles de Gaulle airport. But in the view of the police, the musician bears responsibility for his injury.

Sounds like a nasty break, too. Full article in the NY Times.

Airline policy on carry-on luggage also has had a major impact on collectors. I was recently talking to a California dealer about an accelerating decline in sales at better shows there over the past few years. Buyers who used to fly in from all over the country have increasingly been staying away. Air travel is a much bigger hassle for everyone, but especially for those carrying large amounts of cash (which, though entirely legal, has led to confiscations by the TSA) or bringing home valuable and delicate items that cannot safely be packed in checked luggage. In most cases, to be sure, there are no problems, but when there are problems word gets around -- and many clearly don't like dealing with the uncertainty of it all. Delicate items (musical instruments included) are a special case, yet the airlines could do much to ease the burden of dealing with excess carry-ons by doing more to provide an alternative. Were checked luggage less roughly handled, better protected against theft, and more promptly delivered upon arrival, much more would get checked instead of carried.

Mus Cypriacus: a new European mammal

A new species of mammal – a mouse with unusually large ears and eyes – has been discovered on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. It is the first new mammal species to be found in Europe in over a century, the researchers claim.

Genetic tests prove that the grey mouse is indeed a new species, which has been named Mus Cypriacus (Cypriot mouse). It overturns the widely held belief that every living species of mammal had been identified in Europe. . .

In fact, the genetic evidence shows it to be an "ancient relic", closer to its prehistoric ancestor than any modern cousin. Other mammals endemic to the island died out with the arrival of man, except two species of shrew. "The new mouse is the only endemic rodent still alive and as such can be considered a living fossil," Cucchi told the Associated Press.

From New Scientist.

No bridge to Sicily

Italy has abandoned controversial plans to build a bridge between the country's mainland and the island of Sicily.

The structure would have crossed the Messina Straits, forming the world's longest single-span suspension bridge.

But Italian MPs voted to scrap the proposed construction, saying they had other priorities for Italy's impoverished southern island.

There were also concerns that organised crime networks could hijack the lucrative project.

From the BBC.

Karlsruhe manuscripts selloff update

Followup on a proposed crime against culture of staggering proportions:

Germany's Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said on Monday he would make sure that the planned sales of a manuscript collection from the state library of Baden-Württemberg did not take place. . .

The southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg originally planned to sell around 3,600 manuscripts from its state library collection in Karlsruhe with the goal of raising around 70 million euros ($88.6 million) for financing the maintenance of Salem Castle and Abbey, a Gothic architectural gem which dates back to the 12th century.

But which is privately owned.

The planned sale of the Karlsruhe manuscript collection has been heavily criticized by historians, librarians and manuscript experts in Germany. The heads of prominent manuscript collections in Germany issued a statement on Monday in which they said they were "stunned" by the proposed sale of the collection.

From Deutsche Welle. From the article, however, it is not clear if Neumann is seeking to block the sale or merely to mitigate its impact slightly by imposing export restrictions or other conditions of sale (such as an obligation to make the manuscripts available for study or display). Certainly the latest news from Baden-Württemberg suggests that the outrage over the proposed selloff is having some impact, with the stated amount needed to be raised having been lowered from 70 million to 30 million Euros, with more conventional means of raising the funds now being explored. The manuscripts are by no means out of danger, however, and at least some of the fundraising schemes being proposed (e.g., asking each library and museum to consign an item for sale) demonstrate that the leaders of Baden-Württemberg are philistines without peer and without a clue. The notion that the preservation and renovation of a privately-owned cultural asset must be paid for with public funds is problematic enough; the insistence that those funds be taken from the cultural sphere, no matter what the damage done, is truly bizarre.

NOTE: I don't want to play down the complexity of the underlying issues regarding ownership of property nationalized in 1918 (and before), as part of the German states' transition from monarchy to democracy. Nonetheless, how far does one wish to go in returning national assets to former rulers, who now are private citizens? And especially cultural assets, that were collected when the ruling family was the government -- like most of the medieval manuscripts at the heart of this dispute, which were taken from suppressed monasteries. If a democratic revolution should be undone, why not the Reformation, or the suppression of monasteries under Napoleon? Perhaps the Vatican should make its own claim on the Karlsruhe manuscripts, and on the castle at Salem too -- a Cistercian monastery up until 1803.

ADDENDUM: Still next to nothing about this story outside of the German press, despite all the petitions and letters to the editor from scholars across the world. Let's see what happens now: I've just sent a synopsis of what's happening in Karlsruhe to various news outlets, including the BBC, the Guardian, the Times of London, and the New York Times.

The Pope's line in the sand: epilogue

When first put online, the Vatican's text of Benedict's Regensburg address came with a note promising endnotes. Those endnotes have now been added (English here, original German here), but the text has been changed slightly as well. Where Benedict originally prefixed his citation of Manuel II Palaeologos by noting its "startling brusqueness" ("erstaunlich schroffer"), the parenthetical clause, "a brusqueness we find unacceptable" ("für uns unannehmbar schroffer"), has now been inserted immediately following. This insertion is not explicitly noted in the text, though the Vatican has certainly made no secret of the change -- or of the addition of endnote 3, which reads (citations omitted):

In the Muslim world, this quotation has unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal position, thus arousing understandable indignation. I hope that the reader of my text can see immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Qur’an, for which I have the respect due to the holy book of a great religion. In quoting the text of the Emperor Manuel II, I intended solely to draw out the essential relationship between faith and reason. On this point I am in agreement with Manuel II, but without endorsing his polemic.

Again, diplomatic words, but no apology or retreat. Benedict affirms his respect for the Koran and calls Islam a "great religion" -- which as a strictly historical observation is incontrovertibly true. Yet in reaffirming his agreement with Manuel's view of faith and reason, religion and compulsion, he also reaffirms his criticism of certain aspects of how Islam is practiced. And if there is any further doubt about what the Pope is up to, this Reuters article should make things clear indeed:

Pope Benedict said on Wednesday Christians could not allow their beliefs and identity to be diluted for the sake of dialogue with other religions.

"We have to remember that this identity of ours calls for strength, clarity, and courage in the world in which we live," he told pilgrims and tourists at his weekly general audience. . .

Some Catholics feel they have compromised too much of their Christian identity in the four decades since the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council called for increased dialogue with Muslims, Jews and members of other religions.

The dilemma for Catholics isn't really dialogue, of course -- Catholic Christianity has no prohibitions against talking to those of other faiths -- but rather religious relativism.

The Pope said the dialogue started after the Council "must continue".

"But this path of dialogue that is so necessary must not lead us to forget the duty to firmly underscore the tenets and identity of our Christian faith that cannot be renounced."

Return of the jaguars

Using the same clandestine routes as drug smugglers, male jaguars are crossing into the United States from Mexico.

Four of the elusive cats have been photographed in the last decade — one as recently as last February — in the formidable, rugged mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.

And while no one knows exactly how many jaguars are here, or how long they hang around before sneaking back to their breeding grounds in Mexico, their presence has set off repercussions on both sides of the border.

From the NY Times. In fact, the extirpation of jaguars in the USA was relatively recent:

Jaguars are the largest native American cat. They once roamed much of the Southwest, but when ranchers took cattle to the region in the last century, the jaguars were trapped and hunted to extinction in the United States. The last known resident female was killed in 1963 near the Grand Canyon.

Cracking pyramid at Saqqara

Egyptian authorities have put a ban on idling vehicle engines in Saqqara, southwest of Cairo, after cracks started to show on the country's oldest pyramid.

The head of Egypt's supreme council for antiquities, Zahi Hawass, had "decided to ban the running of engines of all cars and buses waiting for tourists in the archaeological area of Saqqara," a council statement said.

"The running of engines has caused the area to experience some shaking, which has in turn caused cracks in the pyramid of Djoser," the statement said.

Not to mention the clouds of exhaust smothering the vicinity. From the Middle East Times.

Hudson River colonial sutlery excavation

Archeological news from Fort Edward, New York:

This history-rich Hudson River community has yielded a museum's worth of 18th-century military artifacts over the decades, from musket balls to human skeletons. But a colonial soldier's daily lot wasn't all fighting and bloodshed. They had their share of down time, and that's where the sutler came in, offering for sale two of the few diversions from frontier duty: alcohol and tobacco.

A five-year-long archaeological project has unearthed the 250-year-old site of a merchant's establishment that sold wine, rum, tobacco and other goods to the thousands of soldiers who passed through this region during the French and Indian War, when Fort Edward was the largest British military post in North America. . .

[Archeologist David] Starbuck said the Fort Edward sutler site could wind up being second in terms of significance only to Michigan's Fort Michilimackinac, another 18th-century outpost where archaeologists have found hundreds of thousands of artifacts over the past 45 years.

Thanks to reader Glenn Bowen for the reference.

No public smoking -- in France

So much for plus c’est la même chose:

France is to ban smoking in all public places from next February, the prime minister has announced.

Cafes, nightclubs and restaurants are to be given until January 2008 to adapt, said Dominique de Villepin.

From the BBC.

Big bucks for Star Trek at auction

he first auction of official "Star Trek" memorabilia hit warp speed on Saturday when a determined bidder paid $576,000 for a model of the legendary science fiction franchise's starship Enterprise, helping drive the total for the three-day sale above $7 million.

All of the 1,000 lots of props, costumes, models and miniatures and other ephemera from the five "Star Trek" television series and 10 feature films on offer at Christie's auction house found buyers.

Virtually all sold for more than their pre-sale estimates. The total taking of $7,107,040, including commission, was far more than double what had been expected.

The Enterprise model wasn't even from the original series, but rather from the Next Generations revival. From Reuters.

Fruitful multiplication

When do American kids memorize their multiplication tables? When I was a boy, you were expected to have it down cold up to 10 x 10 by the end of third grade. One of our neighbors, however, who is in seventh grade at a top local private school, tells me that a number of her classmates still don't have theirs down completely.

This I don't understand. Some things just have to be memorized: they are so essential, everyone who can should make them their own. My admittedly precocious seven-year-old is up to 10 x 10 with only a few weak spots, which will be filled in solid within a month. And why not? No one thinks twice about teaching kids the alphabet -- 26 letters, including some with confusing differences between minuscule and majuscule forms, and many with an even more confusing variety of sounds they can represent -- yet in a 10 x 10 multiplication table there are really only 28 simple combinations to remember (omitting ones, twos, and tens, and then eliminating duplicates such as 3 x 7 and 7 x 3).

Flash cards have served me well over the years, and they seem to work just fine for my daughter, too. So when I ran across a 224-page book devoted solely to memorizing multiplication tables, my first reaction was bemusement -- which would take longer: memorizing, or reading the book? In fact, the book is intended for teachers, and since not everyone memorizes in the same way, a compilation of mnemonics could be a very useful classroom resource. For most parents, though, the basic online drills available through free sites such as www.mathisfun.com and www.multiplication.com suffice quite nicely.