Archives: February 2005
Mon Feb 28, 2005
Simulated meals?
By loading an inkjet printer with "fruit and vegetable concoctions" instead of ink, and printing on to edible 'paper' made of soya bean and vegetable starch, chef Homaru Cantu, of Chicago's Moto restaurant, can print out edible images, according to a report in Caterer Online. He dips the results in "a powder made of soy sauce, sugar, vegetables or dehydrated sour cream" and then cooks them.
He's starting with menus (eat the menu to see what the meal will be like) but sees his invention as ideal for food advertising as well. "You can make an inkjet printer do just about anything," he claims. (Flight simulator manufacturers! Have trainee pilots experience authentic airline meals whilst wrestling with turbulence and engine failure!)
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Valuation of SATCO: how much are simulation companies worth?
The St Paul Pioneer Press report that UBG Financial Corp. of Atlanta plans to invest $300 million for a 25 percent stake in Spiral Aviation Training Co., valuing the company at $1.2 billion. More...
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Wed Feb 23, 2005
Indian Ocean tsunami simulation
Cornell University has issued a video simulation of the 26 December tsunami. This was created using a numerical model called the Cornell Multigrid Coupled Tsunami model, developed by Philip Liu. More...
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Sun Feb 20, 2005
Simulation at the US Federal Reserve
<p>Economic Forecasting at the Fed is an article on the excellent O'Reilly site, about the serious uses to which the equally excellent open-source computer language Perl is now being put.
However, it also reminds me that US financial planners routinely use model simulations and forecasts "to gauge how major events, such as disruptions to foreign economies or changes in fiscal policy, may affect U.S. growth and inflation, and how monetary policy responses to such shocks might affect these outcomes." .</p>
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Wed Feb 16, 2005
What are the limits of financial models and simulations? A 'quant' speaks.
An interview on 11 February 2005 in Trading Markets with Dr Emmanuel Derman raises some interesting points about the validity of models and simulations. Dr Derman is a 'quant' on Wall Street, with a background as a physicist, applying higher mathematics to investment banking.
Financial modelling ought to be simple: all the inputs and results are already in numerical form, and massive amounts of data are readily available.
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What can go wrong with 'war game' simulations?
Toward a History-Based Doctrine for Wargaming by LT COL MATTHEW CAFFREY JR., USAFR, published in April 2000, is an exceptionally interesting study of how war games and simulations have developed, and more to the point, how they have been used (or misused) in actual events.
I've tried to isolate some of the problems that have arisen - not to criticise war games as such, but because these problems can presumably also arise with any other sort of simulation. The military have just put more time and effort into finding them.
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Mon Feb 14, 2005
Everyone who lives in Dallas, Portland, Chicago and Los Angeles has a digital twin.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, operated by the University of California since 1943, includes a simulation project whose goal "is to build the comprehensive formal basis for simulation of large heterogeneous socio-technical systems as electric power networks, transport networks, communication networks. The focus is on developing supporting system design and analysis for national security oriented issues and critical infrastructures mentioned above." More...
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Sun Feb 13, 2005
General Schwarzkopf should win the Loebner prize.
What is the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and simulation?
I've been pondering this question after reading 'Introducing AI' by Henry Brighton (ISBN1-84046-463-1). The most obvious problem AI faces is that no-one can satisfactorily define 'intelligence'. AI works best in subsets of reality where the rules are precise and there is no room for surprises - eg chess, where a computer first beat the world's highest ranked human chess player in 1987. I can remember the uneasy feeling; nowadays we take it for granted.
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Fri Feb 11, 2005
Attract a simulator
According to the 'Virginian Pilot' on 10 February , US lawmakers have formed a caucus to attract modeling and simulation firms to their districts. In the Orlando (Florida) area the industry has generated 63,000 jobs and $1 billion a year for the state.
Locally, the "cottage industry" has created more than 4,000 jobs with an average salary of $59,271, and $413 million a year turnover, and has built up around US Joint Forces Command, in the Hampton Roads area.
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Sun Feb 06, 2005
On the difference between simulation and reality
Simulation is some form of representation of reality, but we make dangerous assumptions if we talk glibly about "reality". (The Wachowski brothers' films "The Matrix" (etc) suggest that what we know as life is in fact a huge computer game inside which we are all trapped. An Oxford philosopher, Nick Bostrom, has written a critique of this idea, which appears to conclude that it either is true, or is not.)
French sociologist Jean Baudrillard argues that we are moving from mass media representations of reality, via misleading images such as advertising, to a world of "hyper-reality" in which the media become self-referential and starts to simulate a reality which does not really exist.
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Fri Feb 04, 2005
Not just fighter pilots: London bus drivers to train on simulators
London bus drivers will now be trained using a simulator built by Arotech Corporation, through its FAAC subsidiary, for the UK bus company First, in a $700,000 contract. Computer-generated imagery will allow the trainee to see in front and through driving mirrors, and "a realistic... virtual driving world representative of roads in London is being developed.."
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050201005603&newsLang=en
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Wed Feb 02, 2005
UK Sim conference - call for papers
The next annual UKSim conference is on 6-8 April at St John's College, Oxford. Anyone wanting to submit a paper, please see their 'call for papers' notice on http://ducati.doc.ntu.ac.uk/uksim/uksim'05/UKSim2005.htm
The deadline is 7 Feb.
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