Gizmorama - April 15, 2015

Good Morning,

Scientists claim that smartphones and fitness trackers will be able to predict future earthquakes. Be sure to check your phone for texts, Facebook posts, and noticeable seismic disturbances.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Smartphone data could predict future earthquakes --*
SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) - The next big earthquake, scientists say, could be predicted by data from smartphones and fitness trackers, and they've got the data to prove it.

Last year, in the wake of the 6.0-magnitude earthquake that rocked Napa Valley, sensors in the fitness trackers made by Jawbone were able to document seismic disturbances in Berkeley, Oakland and San Jose. Bloggers (doubling as data scientists) at the company shared the results, showing the sudden shift in sleep patterns in the wee hours of the morning.

But the question remained: could such data ever be more than fodder for viral infographics? Could data collected by sensors in smartphones and life trackers have predictive value?

Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey suggest that it can. The GPS sensor in a smartphone, they say, could pick up a sudden jerk in one direction. If hundred or thousands of smartphone users were to register the same movement at once, it could be an early sign of a seismic shift.

"Imagine all of Portland was out at a cafe on a sunny day, and everyone's smartphones were sitting on the table when one of these great earthquakes happened," USGS scientists Benjamin Brooks told NewScientist. "The whole city would appear to move."

Scientists at the agency tested the idea using a computer model designed to predict what smartphone data might look like in the moments before, during and after a major earthquake. The model simulated a hypothetical 7.0-magnitude earthquake along San Francisco's Hayward Fault Zone, and also re-enacted Japan's devastating 2011 earthquake using real seismic data.

Their analysis suggested readings from as few as 5,000 smartphone users would be enough to identify the beginnings of a major earthquake, allowing officials to issue a five-second warning before the disaster struck other densely populated locations. While five seconds may not sound like much, researchers say it could be enough to sound alarms, shut off gas lines and even trigger the garage doors of fire stations.

Researchers have increasingly looked at crowdsourcing as a tool for disaster prediction. Previous studies suggested "reporting, collection, and analysis of individual experiences" during and after an earthquake could help scientists build more accurate predictive models.

But the latest study is one of the first to gauge the potential for smartphone users to identify the very beginnings of an earthquake. The study was published this week in the journal Science.


*-- Communication is the most important learning tool --*
TRIESTE, Italy (UPI) - Humans are intellectual creatures. But perhaps more so, they are emotional creatures. A new study illuminates the importance of emotion and human-to-human connection -- via communication -- in early learning.

Humans often think of the learning process as a process of repetition -- of seeing and doing. But as new research reveals, the focus on statistical or repetitive learning fails to recognize the importance of communication.

In a recent study, researchers proved that the addition of human communication enabled less reliable information to beat out more statistically valuable info. The study featured an infant as the learner and an adult manipulating a machine with two buttons as the teacher. One button turned on a light two-thirds of the time (the high-frequency button), the other turned on the light only one-third of the time (the low-frequency button).

In the baseline scenario, the adult rotated between pressing the buttons successively over a brief period of time. The mimicking infant preferred the button that demonstrated a greater efficiency.

But in a second scenario, a communicative element was added. The adult made eye contact with the child and made baby-talk sounds when pressing the low-frequency button. Despite the statistical information available, the infants showed a preference for the low-frequency button.

"Human beings learn from statistical associations between events and objects," said study author Hanna Marno, a researcher at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy. "If, for example, one event very frequently follows another, we'll learn to associate the first with the second and to use this association in our daily lives. However, this is not the only way we learn."

The new study demonstrates that a preference for communicative learning may both interfere with and enhance early learning.

"The results demonstrate that in these experiments the 'communicative' signals are more important than the efficiency of the action" explains Marno. "Compared to children's tendency to choose the more efficient button in the neutral condition, in the experimental situation they tended to prefer the button with low efficiency if this had been highlighted by the adult's communicative signals."

"Our studies clearly demonstrate the huge importance of communication in human learning," she concluded.

The research was published this week in the journal PLOS ONE.

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