The Cocktail Boat

The cocktail boat.

We describe the inspiration, development, and deployment of a novel cocktail device modeled after a class of water-walking insects. Semi-aquatic insects like Microvelia and Velia evade predators by releasing a surfactant that quickly propels them across the water. We exploit an analogous propulsion mechanism in the design of an edible cocktail boat. We discuss how gradients in surface tension l...

Rocking the Boat: Damage to Eelgrass by Swinging Boat Moorings

Seagrass meadows commonly reside in shallow sheltered embayments typical of the locations that provide an attractive option for mooring boats. Given the potential for boat moorings to result in disturbance to the seabed due to repeated physical impact, these moorings may present a significant threat to seagrass meadows. The seagrass Zostera marina (known as eelgrass) is extensive across the nor...

Thinking with the Coleman Boat

The Cocktail Party Problem

This review presents an overview of a challenging problem in auditory perception, the cocktail party phenomenon, the delineation of which goes back to a classic paper by Cherry in 1953. In this review, we address the following issues: (1) human auditory scene analysis, which is a general process carried out by the auditory system of a human listener; (2) insight into auditory perception, which ...

The cocktail party problem

Natural auditory environments, be they cocktail parties or rain forests, contain many things that concurrently make sounds. The cocktail party problem is the task of hearing a sound of interest, often a speech signal, in this sort of complex auditory setting (Figure 1). The problem is intrinsically quite difficult, and there has been longstanding interest in how humans manage to solve it. The p...