An African musical instrument morphs into detecting counterfeit drugs
Q. The last massive expiration in the U.S. took place in 1998, predating Google and the Internet Age. A new expiration has just happened, eliciting both jubilation and a bit of dread. What is it? A. It’s copyright. In 1998, the year 1922 “slipped its copyright bond,” says Glenn Fleishman in “Smithsonian” magazine. Twenty-one years later, on January 1, 2019, all works first published in the U.S. in 1923 entered the public domain, an unprecedented release which could have a huge impact on culture and creativity. Included in the release are Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” first published in the “New Republic” in that year, as well as hundreds of thousands of books, musical compositions, paintings, poems, photographs and films. Think of it: “Any record label can issue a dubstep version of the 1923 hit ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas…’ any filmmaker can remake Cecil B. DeMille’s original ‘The Ten Commandments’ and post it on YouTube.”
Those celebrating the release include “academics fearful of quoting from copyrighted texts, teachers who may be violating the law with every photocopy, and modern-day artists in search of inspiration.” Some others “dread seeing Frost’s immortal ode to winter used in an ad for snow tires.” Yet even ardent copyright advocates generally agree that after 95 years, it’s time to release the works.
“Much the same will happen every January 1 until 2073,” Fleishman adds, “revealing long-overlooked works from the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, World War II and beyond.” Q. How can face-matching technology help women seeking eggs for in-vitro fertilization? A. “An EGG bank in Spain is using face-recognition technology to match prospective parents with donors who look like them,” says Frank Swain in “New Scientist” magazine. Already, a donor’s ethnicity and hair and eye colors are recorded, but Ovobank provides more with its specially developed algorithm: From a photograph of the donor at the time of donation, the algorithm analyzes her face, recording key features; the prospective parent snaps her own smartphone picture and then can look for possible matchups. The idea is that getting a strong physical resemblance could make her feel closer to a child.
As Peter Claes of Belgium’s Catholic University explains, “the forehead, eyes, nose and chin are all under strong genetic control,” so an algorithm match between donor and recipient is more likely to produce a baby with similar facial features to the recipient. Of course, he adds, the bigger the size of the database, the more likely it is to find someone similar. Q. How did the mbira, an African instrument also known as a thumb piano, inspire a way to detect faulty drugs or diagnose kidney problems? A. By distinguishing between liquids of different densities, the inexpensive, handheld tool “could help identify counterfeit and contaminated drugs, which make up an estimated 10.5 percent of all medications in low- and middle-income countries,” says Maria Temming in “Science News” magazine. Bioengineer William Grover kept the instrument’s wooden sounding board and replaced the metal prongs with a hollow, U-shaped metal tube to hold the targeted liquid.
When the tube is plucked, viscous liquids produce lower-frequency notes than thinner liquids, so a user can have a website analyze the sound frequencies to detect differences too subtle to hear. “Comparing the frequency from a suspect liquid with that of a known sample can reveal whether the two have the same density, and thus the same ingredients.”
For example, the device was able to distinguish between glycerol — a common sweet syrup used in cough medicine — and diethylene glycol, a similar but poisonous syrup. Also, field clinics could use the sensor “to test the concentration of urine samples… for signs of dehydration or kidney problems.”