Job Discussion Forums

[johnslat]

"This week for Microvolunteering Wednesday you can help Scientific American and Zooniverse with their newly launched crowdsourcing project. They are looking for people to decode new phrases, dialects and meaning of killer and pilot whale songs. A staggering 15,000 whale songs have been recorded and uploaded onto Whale.fm

http://whale.fm/

where citizen scientists are being asked to determine if the data contains new meanings or phrases by comparing sound wave patterns taken from different whale pods around the world.
�The first thing we want them to do is compare the images because of what the human brain is very, very good at doing is comparing images, and is much better than a computer. For someone like me who�s tone deaf, who isn�t very good at telling sounds apart, we�re very, very good at making distinctions between small changes in shapes and objects.�
Prof. Ian Boyd, University of St Andrews� Sea Mammal Research Unit.
Despite the fact that both Killer and Pilot whales have very complex repertoires Boyd says some sounds are repeated over and over again indicating they are not produced at random. Also different pods produce different types of sounds suggesting that there may be different whale dialects that are inherited from generation to generation. While their meanings are not yet understood researchers hope to be able to map differing sound wave samples to see if any further patterns emerge."

http://dailycrowdsource.com/2011/12/07/earth/geography/help-wanted-killer-whales-need-translators/

Whales travel in pods - I KNOW there's a pun there somewhere having to do with whale pods and iPods.

Regards,
John