CatCave9 S02E05: The Piezoelectric Murder Mystery

In the Science Guest Spot: Robin Nigon from the EPFL

Neither brilliant weather nor parallel events can tempt our lovely audience! The Lausannois came plenty to see our May show, which went full-blown murder mystery. Before that, we observed some serious questions being asked, and the invention of Hatebook (press “Flame” to dislike a lot). We witnessed Tajik going to town on a donkey and heard some serious arguments for Tajiki cuisine, which apparently is heavy in cilantro.

Our speaker in the science guest-spot was Robin Nigon from EPFL. Robin gave us a quick and thorough introduction to his work on piezoelectricity, which involves materials that react to external stress by generating electrical currents, all through crystal symmetry. We found out that our Catalyzers are kind of piezoelectric: they react to external stress by producing electrifying scenes. Here, this resulted in the great efforts of Dr. Piezer, whose research helped people turn their negative sides into something purely positive. This can help you with dance lessons, but also when finding your interdimensional partner for life. Also, we invented the Travelator.

In our CatCave9 Journal-Couch we discuss (and act on) some research we recently read! Here’s what went down:

  • Adria recounted a recent talk she attended on Noisy Advice/Random Listening 1) “From Ants to Query Complexity” by Amos Korman: https://jnim2017.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/korman.pdf . Implications in child education have been shown to be numerous and to resemble a typical DnD game.
  • Dane told us about Generative Adversarial Networks used in machine learning 2) A great introductory tutorial: Goodfellow, I. (2016). NIPS 2016 Tutorial: Generative Adversarial Networks. arXiv:1701.00160 [Cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/1701.00160 . We found out that, when trying for cakes, it’s really hard not to bake a cat.

Finally, it was time for Murder Mystery (TM). Set on LunaLuna Base 1, we witnessed the aftermath of the murder of Glenn Du, the lunar janitor. Detective Daisy (of the Lunar Detective agency) and the audience were misled several times. This was not only due to the amount of Glenns on the station (oh, how we laughed) but also the deceptive spiel of Glenn (the captain, with the high voice) and Bob (the probably also captain, with the deep voice) until we finally identified the killer. Who would have thought that ambition and space rabies could drive a man to such extremes?

If you didn’t make it, don’t feel bad! We have one more show coming up before the summer break on Thursday 18th May at Cinema Oblo. If you can prove your name is “Glenn” you’re up for a 20% discount at the bar!

Bibliography

Bibliography
1 “From Ants to Query Complexity” by Amos Korman: https://jnim2017.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/korman.pdf 
2 A great introductory tutorial: Goodfellow, I. (2016). NIPS 2016 Tutorial: Generative Adversarial Networks. arXiv:1701.00160 [Cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/1701.00160

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