Curating quirky science since 1943 Pumping up posters
Machine-learning wistfulness f course, Bialas is not the only scientist with a sense of humor. In fact, at least one writer on the Newscripts gang was nearly duped by an April Fools’ prank published by University of California, San Diego, physicist Eve Armstrong. But we probably should have guessed from the title. “A Neural Networks Approach to Predicting How Things Might Have Turned Out Had I Mustered the Nerve to Ask Barry Cottonfield to the Junior Prom Back in 1997” is pretty outlandish (2017, arXiv: 1703.10449). “It’s ridiculously long,” Armstrong says, laughing, “and ridiculously ridiculous.” The title—and the paper itself—are inspired by true events, however. Armstrong considered asking the pseudonymous Barry to junior prom 20 years ago, and the paper has its roots in real science. The publication is a by-product of Armstrong’s efforts to learn about artificial neural networks, computer algorithms with a penchant for pattern recognition. Neural network approaches, for instance, are big in facial recognition software, she explains. Researchers show the programs photos of so many faces that the algorithms learn to recognize the patterns in visual data
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o put it bluntly, the posters students usually use to announce their thesis defenses are lame, says doctoral student Chris Bialas of the University of Pennsylvania. So when he was preparing to defend, he opted for a flyer with a little more muscle. His flyer still has all the standard information: the date, time, and location of his defense, along with its title, “The Design and Engineering of an Artificial Protein Magnetoreceptor.” What sets it apart, though, is the masked, muscular wrestler wearing a graduation cap and gripping a diploma. “It’s so silly,” Bialas says of the flyer, which mixes pulp art with overthe-top machismo. “But I thought it would be cool to Taking on the committee: Get ready have something for an action-packed defense. with more monster-truck style, something that said, ‘Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!’ ” Bialas recruited Mary Leonard, a graphic designer in the university’s Biomedical Art & Design center, and the Was romance in the punch cards? Let’s just say if Barry were a tag team created the flyer using Photoshop and a poster programming language, he’d be BASIC. Bialas had found taped to a streetlamp in Philadelphia. The poster advertised a local lucha libre wrestling event, that are consistent with something being a face. The a popular style of professional wrestling developed in programs can then look at images they’ve never seen Mexico perhaps best known for its masked combatants. before and pick out the faces. Bialas and Leonard changed the text and added academArmstrong, however, has a different goal. As a postic accoutrements to the wrestler, or luchador. doc in Henry Abarbanel’s research group, she studies “I think his name is Fire Ant,” Bialas says. artificial neural networks to try to understand how Although Bialas was not on his own postnature has connected the neural circuits that control er, he did don a mask toward the end of his Matt Davenport some of life’s most basic functions. defense, which he passed. Had his defense wrote this week’s Although Armstrong’s working on serious science, it missed the mark, promoting it with such an column. Please seemed only natural for her to write a parody paper inostentatious flyer would have been a poor send comments spired by it. After all, she has a history of academic April choice, but his committee seemed to enjoy and suggestions to foolery, including another publication titled “Nondeit, he says. Beyond that, the flyer helped draw
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | MAY 1, 2017
CREDIT: CHRIS BIALAS & MARY LEONARD/UCSD (POSTER); WILL LUDWIG/C&EN/SHUTTERSTOCK (COMPUTERS)
Newscripts
a standing-room-only crowd, garnered some attention on social media, and jibed with Bialas’s ethos. “I think you’ve got to approach science with passion, but also with a sense of humor,” says Bialas, who will graduate in May.
