Bob Jensen's Threads on the Networking of the Five Senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, and Taste)

Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Five Senses

More on Visualization of Data

Beyond the Browser

Bob Jensen's Old Book on Visualization of Data (See Chapter 6 of Phantasmagoric Accounting)
Volume No. 14. Phantasmagoric Accounting (Sarasota:  American Accounting Association) --- http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aaa/market/studar.htm 

 

 

 

 

Five Senses

From Yahoo on April 2, 2001

Nasdaq 100 Heatmap

http://screening.nasdaq.com/heatmaps/heatmap_100.asp 

Just when you thought that the thrills and chills of recent markets had finally grown tepid, here's this hot application from the folks at Nasdaq. An interesting visual representation of the Nasdaq-100 stocks, it displays price fluctuations in near real time -- green if the price is up, red if it's down. As you move your cursor over each color-coded ticker symbol, you can view a daily chart with vital trading stats. There's a similar heatmap for Exchanged Traded Funds as well.

Note from Jensen: As financial reporting moves to real time, I can imagine this technology being applied to accounting items. For example, point to key ratios and a color of the rainbow might appear along with links to accounting assumptions and current outcomes.

I subscribe to a magazine called Yahoo Internet Life.  I don't think the articles are available online.  The December 2000 edition has six interesting articles about "Five Senses of the Web" (Sight by Julian Dibbell, Sound by John Alderman, Smell by Ben Greenman, Touch by Lisa Margonellin and Taste by Steve Silberman).

Sight

Advances include live interactive television of high quality, artificial vision for the blind, Xerox PARC's advances in embedding microscopic beads in a sheet of plastic that will print and erase images repeatedly based upon electronic impulses, table cloths and clothing that ripple in waves of color, head mounted viewers that take the place of bulky monitors, head viewers that provide 360 degree vision, head viewers that use your eye focus for a "mouse" pointer, MP4 video that compress online video by over 90%, wireless liveCams, facial pattern recognition devices that will identify persons from still pictures, and advertising-skipping video (I'm not certain this is a good thing from the standpoint of creative programming and funding).

EMAGIN has announced that it is building thumbnail-size, high-definition OLED displays into lightweight, head-mounted viewers. eMagin's displays may lend themselves not to virtual reality but to something called augmented reality, the overlay of virtual imagery onto real space; picture pilots eyeing phantom cockpit readings that hover in the corner of their vision, or surgeons consulting complex diagnostic images without lifting their eyes from the operating table. These can all be implemented with semitransparent visor displays lit up by mini OLED screens.

RSD maker MICROVISION has plans to build its tiny projectors into cell phones and PDAs, allowing you to point your gadget at your eyes and conjure up a 21-inch virtual screen floating at arm's length in front of you. Microvision's Matt Nichols says, "What we'd like to do is take a hundred percent of the Internet's capabilities and deliver it wirelessly anywhere you need it."

Suggested links include the following:

Sound

Multi-dimensional data representation using sound, cataloged sounds to overcome dependence upon the English language on the web, instant language translators, musicians who jam online from all parts of the globe, and archives of captured sounds in history, and chat rooms in audio.

The Web offers us a connection to all of these novel sounds, but seeking them out proves just how difficult it can be to navigate such an immense universe. Listen.com and MP3.com are stretched to breaking as categories are being added. 

As our computer screens continue to overload our eyes with ever-denser walls of visual input, our ears offer broad new avenues through which to communicate. In a Japanese city, subway travelers hear a specific tune at each stop, alerting them in a way that becomes natural and eventually subconscious. Similar auditory cues, dubbed "earcons," may soon find their way onto the Web and into mobile computers and telephones.

The newly released gotoworld.com voice plug-in is a step that allows the user to hear written instant messages voiced in one of six different languages.

With backing from Sony and others, GIG.COM is hatching big plans to create "Jukebox in the Sky"--its version of the idea of total access to all music all the time.

Suggested links include the following:

Imagine the art patron as canvas. Artist Jody Elff's sound sculpture uses a computer to translate the ambient noise generated by movement and sound at an art gallery into musical responses. Reena Jana reports from New York on the latest in the art of sound --- http://www.wirednews.com/news/culture/0,1284,40960,00.html 

The Moving Image Gallery website is at http://www.movingimagegallery.com/ 
As with modern art, some of us are just too old fashioned and set in our ways to truly appreciate or understand the leading edges of art.

Smell

There will be many types of scent available, including customized scents that identify you and only you.  There will be all sorts of education and training scents on the web, including scents of chemicals, medicines, engine malfunction smells, etc.  Perhaps it will be possible to smell your Firestone tire getting abnormally hot.  Physicians will be able to detect disease in remote sites based upon smells from the patient.

Since DigiScents made its brave foray into synthetic smell in March, virtual-reality engineers, Web pundits, and other interested parties have been watching, waiting to see if the world is ready for a Net that smells. At the heart of DigiScents' plans is the iSmell Personal Scent Synthesizer, expected to be on the market early next year. It can best be described with the somewhat oxymoronic phrase "smell speaker."

Professors David Larel and Doron Lancet announced—in a joint statement with Tel-Aviv start-up Senselt—that though they still consider their work a budding technology, they hope to be spraying odors out of your computer via the Internet by early next year.

TriSenx, in Savannah, Georgia is at the vanguard of digital taste delivery, having devised a mechanism for remotely designing synthetic flavors and squirting them onto small wafers. In addition to being one of the leaders in smell technology, TriSenx is also at the vanguard in digital smell delivery.

Suggested links include the following:

"E-mail tries out a sense of smell," BBC News, February 19, 2004 --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3502821.stm

An e-mail would contain a code for a particular scent You could soon be able to spice up your e-mails with your favourite perfume. UK net provider Telewest Broadband is testing a system to let people to send aromatic e-mails over the internet.

It has developed a kind of hi-tech air freshener that plugs into a PC and sprays a smell linked to the message.

Telewest say it could be used by supermarkets to tempt people with the smell of fresh bread or by holiday companies seeking to stir up images of sun-kissed beaches.

"This could bring an extra whiff of realism to the internet," said Chad Raube, director of internet services at Telewest Broadband.

"We are always looking at ways to enhance the broadband internet experience of the future and this time we are sure consumers will come up smelling of roses."

Emotional response

The technology behind the idea was originally developed by US company Trisenx. Scientists at Telewest's labs in Woking , Surrey , have built on that research to come up with the idea of a "scent dome".

Continued in the article.

 

Touch

Questions
Will we soon be able to lecture without opening our mouths?
Can you send a "relational" database file to a friend by simply shaking hands?
Is this the beginning of a whole new definition of human "relationships?"
Can the message of a hug be digital and unambiguous?
New magic in a kiss or two?
Does your database have halitosis or dirty fingernails or a flu virus?
I'd better stop asking questions about this before I get into big trouble!
 

Japanese firm harnesses the power of human touch
They say you can tell a lot from a handshake. But while it's usually guesswork, the power of human touch will soon be used in Japan to transmit data. Telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) is planning a commercial launch of a system to enter rooms that frees users from the trouble of rummaging in their pockets or handbags for ID cards or keys. It uses technology to turn the surface of the human body itself into a means of data transmission. As data travels through the user's clothing, handbag or shoes, anyone carrying a special card can unlock the door simply by touching the knob or standing on a particular spot without taking the card out. "In everyday life, you're always touching things. Even if you are standing, you are stepping on something," research engineer Mitsuru Shinagawa told AFP. "These simple touches can result in communication," said Shinagawa, senior research engineer at the company's NTT Microsystem Integration Laboratories. He said future applications could include a walk-through ticket gate, a cabinet that opens only to authorised people and a television control that automatically chooses favourite programmes.
PhysOrg, February 21, 2008 --- http://physorg.com/news122793751.html

Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

The Five Senses of the Future:  Threads on the Networking of the Five Senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, and Taste) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/senses.htm  

Barbra Streisand - He Touched Me (1967) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO-wPOgVtqg

Logitech introduced the iFeel MouseMan that vibrates over hotlinks on web pages.  Books will give you right brain experiences as you feel the setting and well as read the text describing the setting.  Medical students will practice on a Laparoscopic Interface rather than real cadavers.  Surgeons may in fact be able to perform surgeries from long distances.  Perhaps your barber can even give you a haircut while you are in your hotel room in some distant city.  Touch will be able to improve the web experience of hearing and sight impaired persons.  And you will be able to wear a safe-sex rubber suit.  (That old idea of a safe-sex condom large enough to contain your entire body is not so far fetched.)

"We have finally solved the chicken-and-the-egg problem," says Dr. Louis Rosenbert, the CEO of Immersion Corporation in San Jose, California. Immersion's touch-Sense software turns the Web into the digital equivalent of the bottom of a boat: Textures attach themselves like a barnacle to the standard elements of existing pages.

You can purchase from Sensable Technologies the company's FreeForm software and a Phantom 3-D modeling "mouse". With  your hand on the Phantom, you can explore something as mundane as a chocolate bar as though it is a moonscape. You're able to feel things you'd never imagine from merely looking, and you can examine them in ways we've barely dreamed of.

 Suggested links include the following:

Update in July 2001
"Touchy-Feely Computing A NEW MOUSE PICKS UP GOOD VIBRATIONS," by Steve Ditlea, Scientific American --- http://www.scientificamerican.com/2001/0801issue/0801technicality.html 

The first tactile devices to hit the market were designed for medical training. Doctors-to-be use the instruments to virtually feel the right way to perform a catheterization or a spinal injection. Engineers and architects employ similar devices for computer-assisted design, allowing them to "touch" the contours of their three-dimensional models. And for a few years now, computer gamers have been playing with force-feedback joysticks that can simulate a machine gun's recoil or the stresses on an airplane's controls. But no touch-feedback device for general-purpose computing was available until the introduction of the iFeel mouse last year.

The iFeel looks like an ordinary mouse (albeit one attractively finished in iridescent teal blue). And its retail price is modest--only $10 more than a comparable mouse without touch feedback. There are two models available: a simple symmetrical design that sells for $39 and a $59 premium version that has a contoured shape intended to fit the hand more comfortably. Both are optical devices that detect movement with reflected light rather than with a less precise trackball.

At the pulsating heart of the new mouse is technology licensed from Immersion Corporation, which pioneered the development of touch-feedback systems in the 1990s. Louis Rosenberg, the company's chairman, says the key hardware component is a 25-gram motor that can move up and down, imparting about 150 grams of force against the user's hand. The mouse can also vibrate up to 300 times a second, enabling the device to reproduce a wide range of sensations. For example, Immersion's special-effects software library allows Web site developers to enhance pages with simulated textures such as corduroy or sandpaper. When the iFeel user drags the cursor across such a page, the mouse rapidly jiggles up and down, as if it were traveling over a rough surface.

Trying out the iFeel mouse for the first time can be disconcerting. The installation is straightforward: just plug this USB device into an appropriate computer port and load the driver software from a CD-ROM. (Mac users are out of luck; so far the mouse works only with Windows.) Once connected, the iFeel fundamentally alters one's perception of Windows' familiar screens. If you slide the cursor across one of the desktop program icons, the mouse shakes like dice in a cup. If you glide the mouse over the selections in a menu bar, it feels like a set of chattering false teeth. Push the iFeel back and forth over the options in a pull-down menu, and it hums like an electric shaver. The mouse also shakes up Web pages (iFeel works with either Explorer or Netscape, but Explorer must be installed on the computer even if you use only Netscape). The most noticeable sensation is the bump that occurs when the cursor crosses a hot link or menu choice. For anyone accustomed to an inert mouse, such physical cues may be distracting. Because people have different thresholds for sensing force, Immersion's software developers have provided access to an onscreen control for adjusting the strength of the feedback. Another control allows you to choose a different set of sensations. In addition to the default setting (which simulates the feeling of tapping a wooden surface), the iFeel offers six other options: crisp, metallic, spongy, rubbery, steel drum and sonic vibe.

Touchy-Feely Art History 

Art Nouveay and the Erotic --- free from the Fathom knowledge portal --- http://www.fathom.com/index.jhtml?pageName=/story/story.jhtml?story_id=122091&trail_id=3479&storyRestrictedArea=no 
(Courtesy of The Victoria and Alfred Museum)

Art Nouveau (1890-1914) appeared during a period of radical change in Europe, as growing urbanization and political unrest forced a transformation of individual consciousness and collective society. Drawing on history, nature, symbolism and craft movements from around the world, Art Nouveau design found its expression in domestic objects, and thus brought its ideologies into the most intimate corners of human life. As Ghislaine Wood of The Victoria and Albert Museum explains below, much of this ideology was overtly erotic.

Fernand Khnopff, Istar. Austrian, 1888.  T he erotic nature of many Art Nouveau works is one of the most prevalent features of the style. Nowhere is it more abundantly seen than in small-scale sculptural or decorative arts objects such as ink-wells, carafes, centrepieces, candelabra, lamps and figurines -- the kind of objects that were disseminated widely and could be brought into any middle-class household. The eroticism of these objects is made all the more complex by their utility and domesticity. They often demand physical engagement: furniture or carafes where the handles are naked women that must be grasped; vessels that metamorphosize into women inviting touch; lamps that provocatively pose women in suggestive positions. These erotically charged objects, unlike most sculpture, demand contact.

The theme of objects fulfilling a sexual need was not a new one, although it found particular resonance in the fin de siècle. In Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus in Furs, Severin describes his lust for an inanimate sculpture of Venus: 'I love her madly, passionately with a feverish intensity, as one can only love a woman who responds to one with a petrified smile... Often at night I pay a visit to my cold, cruel beloved; clasping her knees, I press my face against her cold pedestal and worship her'. The de Goncourt brothers wrote of the erotic fascination of their Rococo objects, developing an overtly sexual and torturous relationship with them: Jules recorded his dreams of 'raping a delicate young woman who resembled one of his rococo porcelain figurines. Edmond wrote of caressing his Clodion statuette as if her stomach and neck had the touch of real skin'. The fetishistic concentration on the erotic potential of the object is implicit in much Art Nouveau.

For the rest of the document, go to ---
http://www.fathom.com/index.jhtml?pageName=/story/story.jhtml?story_id=122091&trail_id=3479&storyRestrictedArea=no 

"Promise of Touch Technologies," BBC News, November 14, 2001 --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1646000/1646909.stm 

Takuya Nojima of Tokyo University has developed a working model to show the potential of this research.

His Smart-Tool system allows people to feel the resistance between two surfaces whose boundaries are normally impossible to sense, such as the boundary between oil and water.

The main implication is for surgical operations

Takuya Nojima "The sensor detects the conductivity of the liquids," says Mr Nojima. "So, if you penetrate the oil layer, the conductivity is zero but in the water, the conductivity increases."

In early experiments, the researchers have used boiled eggs, with the Smart-Tool cutting through the egg white, but stopping when it reached the yolk.

Such projects have strong potential in biochemistry and medicine.

"The main implication is for surgical operations," says Mr Nojima.

If a surgeon used a scalpel enhanced with Smart-Tool technology, the real-time sensor on the blade could sense what kind of tissue it is touching and rely the information back to the doctor.

Taste

A startup company called Trisenx aims to taste-enable websites.  You will be able to take nibbles out of pictures of your favorite foods.  The company breaks down the tastes of foods into essential components.  These components, in theory, can be served up from a host computer to a client machines.  I pointed to a strawberry, but alas all I can smell is that familiar whatever-it-is that died somewhere beneath the rubble in my office.  The Trisenx home page is at http://www.trisenx.com/menu.html 

SENXSational News RELEASES

"Trisenx Receives Patent on Technology that Renders Fragrances and Flavors via the Internet"

"Trisenx and Arcade Form Strategic Alliance to Bring the Internet to its Senses"

"Trisenx has Patent allowed on First Machine to Render Smell and Taste Simulations Over the Internet"

"Scent and Taste are Finally part of the Internet, Revolutionizing online shopping" Video news release.

There may be trouble in the future if your dog gets at a smell/taste enabled computer.

Suggested links include the following:

http://www.trisenx.com/menu.html 

http://www.sensorynet.com/

For other websites on the five senses, go to http://www.zdnet.com/yil/url/0012/senses.html 

Sight
Artificial Vision for the Blind
eMagin
Microvision
Flash Forward
PacketVideo
Iscan Incorporated
Sound
Listen.com
MP3.com
GoToWorld.com Voice Plug-In
Gig.com
Zoom PS-O2 Palmtop Studio
Live Jam
Rocket Network
Brain Opera
The Dakota Language Homepage
Flash Forward
Beatnik
Oddcast
GiveMeTalk.com
Wynd Communications
Smell: Flash Forward
DigiScents
RealNetworks.com
AromaWeb
Taste
TriSenx
SensoryNet.com
Flash Forward
About
eVineyard
Sensory Computing Incorporated
The Ark of Taste and Slow Food Praesidia
Touch
Logitech
Immersion Corp.
Sensable Technologies
Flash Forward
Immersion
The NanoManipulator
SafeSexPlus
CyberSuit

What is certain is that networked simulations are going to become closer and closer to reality.  There will be enormous benefits to handicapped persons, especially persons handicapped in one of the senses (such as sight or hearing) who are keen in terms of the other senses.  

There will be enormous advances in the realms that skeptics always said would never be possible (e.g., networked surgeries).  Increasingly, researchers will make use of multiple senses (especially graphics mixed with audio)  to depict multivariate data in more than three dimensions.  See the "An XML father maps the Web in 3D" linked below.

In the past, ideal learning entailed some type of optimal mix between experience and education.  Increasingly, virtual experience will reduce the need for real-world experience, although I doubt that anyone thinks it will totally overtake the real world.  A good example is the use of networked odors to train doctors, nurses, firefighters, mechanics, etc. in diagnosis tasks will have tremendous benefits, especially in situations such as chemical fires where real-world opportunities are rare events.  

In the 21st Century, persons who enjoy virtual sex in a rubber suit more than the real thing will most likely still be viewed as kinky.  Of course I make such a prediction without ever having experienced virtual sex in a rubber suit.  There may be something in this to relieve boredom in nursing homes.  My instructions to my family, when it comes time to put me away, is choose a nursing home equipped with high tech rubber suits.  My hunch is that the high-tech rubber suits will serve at least two nursing home purposes --- now that's efficient.

 

 

 

 

More on Visualization of Data

Non-hierarchical Website Navigation

OLAP, as defined in my Technology Glossary, stands for Online Analytical Processing database designs in which data can be analyzed from a multidimensional point of view. A great example is given online at the FedScope Website of the U.S. Government. Whereas a relational database can be thought of as two-dimensional, a multidimensional database considers each data attribute (such as product, geographic sales region, and time period) as a separate "dimension." OLAP software can locate the intersection of dimensions (all products sold in the Eastern region above a certain price during a certain time period) and display them. Attributes such as time periods can be broken down into sub-attributes.

I recall that somebody requested information regarding non-hierarchical organization of data and information in Websites. For example, reference was given to The Brain at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/portals.htm#TheBrain 

I stumbled upon a rather unique website that organizes data in a way that may interest some of you. It has possibilities for online training and education site designs. The site is called FedScope from the Office of Personnel Management of the U.S. Government --- http://www.fedscope.opm.gov/index.htm 

FedScope is an On Line Analytic Processing tool which provides a free and easy way to access and analyze a large array of Federal employment data on your own.  

FedScope uses multidimensional data sources called "Cubes".  A FedScope cube brings together 13 key dimensions (data elements) on the Federal workforce and lets you explore any combination of the data: up, down, and across the dimensions.

You can easily

Online Glossary of Online Terms from the Office of Personnel Management of the U.S. Government --- http://www.fedscope.opm.gov/glossary/index.htm
(This glossary has a somewhat unique design for online users.)

The U.S. Government has some other outstanding examples of Website design, including the revamped SEC site at http://www.sec.gov/  and the ever-popular IRS site at http://www.irs.gov/ 

Information Visualization

Ron Tidd suggested that I look at the following document:
Information Visualization Document from Xerox PARC's User Interface Research Group --- http://www.parc.xerox.com/istl/projects/uir/projects/InformationVisualization.html 

Projects

Beyond the Browser

Thanks to Dan Gode for finding this one.
"Beyond the Browser,"  By Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini and Jakob Nielsen, Interactive Week March 26, 2001 
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2701166,00.html 

Browsers fail to support the actual task of browsing the Web. Netscape Navigator does not have many navigation features, and Internet Explorer does not help users explore new information spaces. Page viewing is truly all they excel at. Movement between pages and the ability to understand where you have been and where you can go? Forget about it.

Within months, the browser was running out of steam, and programmers struggled to get beyond the confines of HTML, designed purely to display fixed text and graphics pages. The answer was JavaScript, a huge kludge that accelerated the move to two-way communication within Web pages. Java Script should be considered a kludge because its syntax is often antithetical to HTML, and because JavaScript was designed to be hidden within HTML comments, so the HTML wouldn't know it was there. Kludge, kludge, kludge.

From the programmer's point of view, it was expedient. Unfortunately, it had the side effect of stopping everyone who wasn't a programmer dead in his or her tracks. No one but the priesthood could develop advanced Web pages.

Eventually, a new standard for dynamic HTML promised to give back some of the power wrested away by the programmers, but infighting among the browser publishers has continued to hold back its implementation.

Because the browser's capabilities were, for all practical purposes, frozen four years ago, the browser has failed utterly in its attempts to keep up with the increasing demands of Web users.

How bad are these failings? Many basic capabilities that we took for granted on microcomputers in the late 1970s remain absent from today's browser technology. "Weblications," applications designed to be used under browsers, may run hundreds of times more slowly than the same types of applications on a 1978 Apple II.

Can anything be done about it? Yes — as long as you control the browser environment in which your users will run your weblications. Given such total control, developers can make use of third-party plug-ins that work around the problems. Lacking that control, developers must continue to turn out software no one would have dared release in the 1970s. Why do we keep using the browser if it is so bad? It is the only game in town — the only way ordinary people can access the wonders of the Web. For all its failings, it is still far better than nothing, and nothing is the only alternative.

What went wrong? Microsoft. By forcing Netscape Communications and Sun Microsystems out of the market, it eliminated the competition. As a result, all competitive pressure to fix the problem has been eliminated. (Just think: If Microsoft had as effectively stymied Apple Computer early on, we'd all still be using MS DOS.)

. . .

Weblications

Web applications will become indistinguishable from traditional applications. The productivity losses are stunning as long as we force complex transactions to take place in an interface for filling out forms that resembles nothing more than the IBM 3270 terminals from the 1960s. Either the browser manufacturers will begin to support Web applications properly, or someone else will supply the tools.

Currently, the main argument in favor of supplying application functionality through a Web browser is that users won't have to install software on their own computers. It is true that software installation can lead to a nightmare of support problems as unexpected parts of the system stop working. Windows is so brittle that users rightly resent having to add new software to any computer that still retains most of its faculties. In the future, traditional applications will be updated seamlessly over the Web. It will be possible to get the best of both worlds: Network computing frees the user from having to act as system administrator, and personal computing dedicates a powerful system to being immediately responsive to the user's smallest whim. Why not cache application functionality on the user's local hard disk and download upgrades transparently as they are needed?

Future Services

Most people think browsers are the web and the web is the internet. yet these same people use a different Internet service every day: e-mail. Many of them use a completely different Internet tool as well: peer-to-peer sharing à la Napster. In the future, many more separate and distinct software and hardware tools will appear. We are already seeing Internet "radio sets" that pick up commercial-laden Internet "broadcasts." The aforementioned TV tuners will follow.

Tomorrow's audio-visual receivers will likely have music-on-demand capabilities, so that you can draw from a vast library of DVD-audio-quality music, in effect sporting a multithousand-song "jukebox" in your very own living room. If Hollywood and the recording industry support such a phenomenon, they will make a fortune charging consumers a few cents per song per play. If they don't support it, the music will cost consumers even less.

Movies-on-demand, the great promise of a decade ago, will finally be a reality, as long as greed doesn't get in the way. With high-speed connections, a two-hour film in high-definition TV quality will be downloaded to a local player in a few minutes. Charge 50 cents or a dollar per viewing, and people will gladly pay. Charge more, and they will watch for free, even if it isn't HDTV-quality.

Bob Jensen's other threads are linked at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 

Bob Jensen's homepage is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/