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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:20.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Dolphin
whistle instantly translated by computer<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>by<span
class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Hal+Hodson"><span
style='color:windowtext;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Hal Hodson</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>26
March 2014<i><span style='border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'><a
href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129624.300?cmpid=NLC%7CNSNS%7C2014-1004-GLOBAL&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&">http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129624.300?cmpid=NLC%7CNSNS%7C2014-1004-GLOBAL&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&</a><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><i><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black;
border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><i><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black;
border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Software has performed the first
real-time translation of a dolphin whistle – and better data tools are
giving fresh insights into primate communication too</span></i><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>IT was late August 2013 and
Denise Herzing was swimming in the Caribbean. The dolphin pod she had been
tracking for the past 25 years was playing around her boat. Suddenly, she heard
one of them say, "Sargassum".<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>"I
was like whoa! We have a match. I was stunned," says Herzing, who is the
director of the Wild Dolphin Project. She was wearing a prototype dolphin
translator called<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028115.400-talk-with-a-dolphin-via-underwater-translation-machine.html"><span
style='color:#34A3D1;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Cetacean Hearing
and Telemetry (CHAT) and it had just</span></a> translated a live dolphin
whistle for the first time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>It detected a whistle for
sargassum, or seaweed, which she and her team had invented to use when playing
with the dolphin pod. They hoped the dolphins would adopt the whistles, which
are easy to distinguish from their own natural whistles – and they were not
disappointed. When the computer picked up the sargassum whistle, Herzing heard
her own recorded voice saying the word into her ear.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>As well
as boosting our understanding of animal behaviour, the moment hints at the
potential for using algorithms to analyse any activity where information is
transmitted – including our daily activities (see "<a
href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129624.300-dolphin-whistle-instantly-translated-by-computer.html?full=true#bx296243B1"><span
style='color:#34A3D1;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Scripts for life</span></a>").<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>"It sounds like a fabulous
observation, one you almost have to resist speculating on. It's
provocative," says Michael Coen, a biostatistician at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Herzing is quick to acknowledge
potential problems with the sargassum whistle. It is just one instance and so
far hasn't been repeated. Its audio profile looks different from the whistle
they taught the dolphins – it has the same shape but came in at a higher
frequency. Brenda McCowan of the University of California, Davis, says her
experience with dolphin vocalisations matches that observation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><a
href="http://www.cc.gatech.edu/home/thad/"><span style='color:#34A3D1;
border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Thad Starner</span></a><span
class=apple-converted-space> </span>at the Georgia Institute of Technology
and technical lead on the wearable computer<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929364.500-google-glass-has-its-electronic-eye-on-health.html"><span
style='color:#34A3D1;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Google Glass</span></a>,
built CHAT for Herzing with a team of graduate students. Starner and Herzing
are using pattern-discovery algorithms, designed to analyse dolphin whistles
and extract meaningful features that a person might miss or not think to look
for. As well as listening out for invented whistles, the team hopes to start
trying to figure out what the dolphins' natural communication means, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>McCowan says it's an exciting
time for the whole field of animal communication. With better
information-processing tools, researchers can analyse huge data sets of animal
behaviour for patterns.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Coen is already doing something
like this with white-cheeked gibbons. Using similar machine-learning techniques
to those used by Starner and McCowan, he has found 27 different fundamental
units in gibbon calls.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>McCowan,
meanwhile, has recently modelled the behaviour of rhesus macaques at the<span
class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://www.primate.ucdavis.edu/"><span style='color:#34A3D1;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in'>National Primate Research Center</span></a><span
class=apple-converted-space> </span>in California. The idea is to predict
when the macaques would descend into the violent social unrest known as
"cage war" that often leads to the death of the alpha family.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Her team started collecting data,
making 37,000 observations of key signs of dominance, subordination and
affiliation over three years. Among other things, their analysis showed that
cage stability improved if new young adult males were introduced now and again
as they seemed to grow into "policing" roles. "You had to look
at the data," McCowan says. "It wasn't something a human could
see."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Terrence Deacon, an
anthropologist and neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley,
explains that some pattern of repetition is a basic requirement when information
is transmitted. In other words, if Herzing's dolphins or McCowan's macaques are
exchanging information, if their behaviour is not just random, meaningless
noise, then there must be some discoverable patterns. Information theory can
find out what those pattern are, which parts of a whistle are important,
helping behaviourists figure out what animals are communicating.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>The first results from Starner
and Herzing's work on dolphin communication-processing are due to be presented
at the speech and signal processing conference in Florence, Italy, in May. Last
summer's work was cut short because the team lost the dolphin pod, but they did
make some progress. Starner's algorithms discovered eight different components
in a sample of 73 whistles. It's still preliminary, but they were able to match
certain strings of those components with mother-calf interactions, for
instance. The work has let them plan for the coming summer when they want to
confirm two-way communication between humans and dolphins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
15.0pt;margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Deacon is excited to see if such
work can lead to a better understanding of animal cultures. He suspects much
animal communication will turn out to be basic pointing or signposting rather
than more complex language. But humans often communicate on a basic level too.
"I don't see a fundamental white line that distinguishes us from other
animals," he says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><i><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black;
border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>This article appeared in print under
the headline "Decoding dolphin"<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=infuse style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:13.45pt'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<h3 style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:7.5pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:#F2F2F2' id=bx296243B1><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Scripts
for life<o:p></o:p></span></h3>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:15.0pt;
margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt;background:#F2F2F2'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Thad
Starner wants you to be the next guinea pigs for the algorithms he uses to
study animal communications (see main story). He thinks pattern-recognition
software can discover the signature of any activity, from brushing your teeth
to commuting to work. He wants to create wearable computers that learn what the
wearer is doing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:15.0pt;margin-bottom:15.0pt;
margin-left:7.5pt;line-height:13.45pt;background:#F2F2F2'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>"Imagine
having sensors on your wrist, and as you go through daily life, it could figure
out what paging through a book is, opening the car door. All these things are
unique gestures." Put together they are scripts, Starner says. "Just
by wearing the device it learns how to interact with the world."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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