DustBot
Talking of robots I came across the following whilst touring the exhibition hall at last month’s conference. The DustBot project aims to improve urban hygiene by developing a network of autonomous, but co-operating, cleaning robots. There are two types: the cleaning robot is equipped with things like a vacuum cleaner whilst the dustcart robot (see photo) is an ‘on-demand’ service that lets you drop a full bin liner into its holder and then carries it away.
Apart from investigating general aspects of robotics it turns out that there is also a pressing need for a system that can handle rubbish collection from the really old, touristy parts of European cities. In places like these there’s often no space for bins and the dustcarts just can’t fit down the narrow streets.
There are going to be five demonstrators set up in cities in Italy, Spain and Sweden, but I’m toying with the idea of requesting a sixth, in Nottingham, to be tested in an ‘industrial’ environment. I reckon it’s just what we need in the office. I can sit here, finishing off a packet or two of sandwiches, and then call up DustBot for a spot of post-prandial waste disposal. Who knows, I might even get a bit of light dusting into the bargain.
the time I cracked a cheesy joke about having a mug that was Web- and dishwasher-safe and, guess what, my dream has come true. Nottingham-based 
Tech Lunch 
Laugh? I nearly (didn’t) get cited
October 29, 2008Two Israeli academics have found that the use of humour in the title of a scientific paper can be seriously detrimental to the number of citations received. Since academics increasingly live or die by the number of citations their work receives this news could seriously affect the levels of humour in the science and technology worlds.
Itay Sagi and Eldad Yechiam looked at a range of papers published over a number of years in two leading psychology journals. They had small teams of judges who reviewed paper titles and rated them for amusement levels. The citations of papers were then compared and the team found that the use of an exceptionally amusing title was “associated with a substantiate ‘penalty’ of around 33% of the total number of citations”. This was after other possible variable factors had been eliminated. Their full paper appears in the Journal of Information Science’s October edition.
Reviewing the results, the two academics postulate various reasons for this, including the obvious one that people might think humorous pieces are somehow less professional or worthy than other titles. But they also mention that a humorous title is less likely to include the professional keywords that make searching for an article online or in a database just that bit easier. I thought this was interesting given a piece that was published in yesterday’s Guardian Education about the increasing role of online journals. In this article it was noted that academic papers now have a tendency to have more tedious titles which attempt to cram in as many all-important professional keywords as possible.
Given that this blog hopes to inject the occasional burst of humour into the world of technology, this probably means that my days are numbered.
Tags:citations, humour, science
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