We are pleased to announce a special session on "Signal Analysis for Biodiversity" to be held at the EUSIPCO 2024 conference: August 26-30 2024, Lyon, France. Please consider submitting a paper.

• Deadline for paper submission: Extended to March 10th 2024

Special session description

This Special Session will bring together practitioners interested in use of signal processing and machine learning methods to monitor biodiversity and the behavior and interaction of living organisms in an environment. For example, a typical contribution would be about using audio or video signal processing to detect animals in a forest or a farming site.

The biodiversity crisis continues to grow and becomes more visible every year. Although much monitoring is already conducted, there is a massive information gap due to the scale of the issue: for example there is currently ongoing discussion about whether the recently-identified “insect apocalypse” applies across all species and all parts of the world. Resolving these issues is of vital importance since insects and many other animals are, among other things, crucial to society as crop pollinators. On the positive side new information streams for biodiversity are becoming available, from audio and video recorders, satellite and drone imaging, and many other environmental sensors. Signal processing and statistical optimisation have a key role to play, since they are needed to turn these raw data streams into evidence.

Scientific development of such methods requires attention to the specific properties of the signals as well as the inferences required: for example, a single audio signal may embed evidence of multiple different species, and their interactions, as well as weather and human factors.

Organising committee

• Dan Stowell
• Aki Härmä
• Ricard Marxer

Instructions for authors

Deadlines, dates, and author instructions are listed on the main call for papers for EUSIPCO 2024. Papers should be submitted in the EUSIPCO main submission system, ensuring to select the correct special session in the drop-down menu.

This simple millet and pulse dish is adapted from the recipe "chana dal pulav" by Vijaya Venkatesh. It's a delighfully fragrant fluffy indian dish, which can be a simple one-pot meal or can be an accompaniment for a nice fragrant curry (e.g. a korma, or kofte with sauce).

It's also handy if you're cooking for someone who can't eat onion/garlic.

I've written up my own version of this recipe in order to make clearer some of the steps involved. I also used dessicated coconut in place of coconut cream and liked the effect. I also used kodo millet - you can use any millet (probably!) but I like this hulled kodo millet with its white colour and very pure taste.

Serves 2. Takes 25 minutes, plus an hour of pre-soaking time.

• 100g kodo millet (or other millet, eg little millet)
• 100g chana dal/bengal gram
• 2 tbsp coconut oil, or ghee, or a flavourless Oil
• 1 tsp cumin seed (jeera)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 star anis
• 2-inch cinnamon stick
• 2 cardamoms, bashed so they split slightly
• 1 tsp chopped ginger
• 1 tsp chopped green chillies (optional)
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp chilli powder
• 2 tbsp dessicated coconut OR 3 tbsp Coconut milk
• 400ml water (cold or hot - but do measure the amount)

Soak the the millet in plenty of cold water, and the chana dal in hot water (e.g. from a boiled kettle), both for an hour or more. Drain them (separately). Try to get the chana dal very dried off, to make the next stage easier - I did this by draining them in a sieve, then on some kitchen paper.

In a medium saucepan with a lid, warm up the oil, and add all the ingredients from jeera to chilli powder one after another. Temper them - i.e. fry them for a minute or so until they become fragrant.

Add the drained dal and sauté for a minute on low heat, stirring occasionally to make sure they don't stick.

Add millet, salt, coconut and water - do measure the water, you need to get it right. Give a good mix.

Put the lid on, bring it almost to boiling, then turn the heat right down and let it cook gently - undisturbed - for approx 20 minutes. Then stir it with a spoon to fluff it up, and serve immediately.

Just in time for Dry January - we made it to 250! Two hundred and fifty alcohol-free beers, from 20 different countries, ranked and rated, in our delightfully geeky spreadsheet. To celebrate it, in this thread below are some of our absolute favourites:

• Brulo, a Scottish brewery, makes a fabulous range of beers, almost all of them memorably good - for me, the "dry-hopped stout" is an absolute winner: foamy head, full-bodied stout with a touch of coffee, and a gentle crisp hoppiness. Unbelievably good for a 0.0% dark beer. --- You should also check out their "Sabro Galaxy IPA" which is also delicious.

• Can Belgian-style beers really be made alcohol free? Surely not, they're so strong! Well not until Force Majeure, a Belgian brewery - thier Tripel really has to be tasted, it's a fabulous achievement. A serious rendition of the Belgian "tripel" style but with no alc. Great frothy head, and a complex, banana-y but not overly sweet flavour, hint of black pepper and very well rounded.

• No Worries (by Lervig, Norway) - The "No Worries" beers were a revelation when we discovered them - truly Norway's finest. The original "No Worries" is a delicious IPA, and there's plenty I could say about it's great taste and body. But then! There's also a grapefruit version that's delcious and zingy, a pineapple version that's lots of fun. And the excellently-named "No Worries Driving Home For Christmas", a delightful dark (but not heavy) Christmassy ale, with a great foamy head and a lovely balanced taste of cinnamon. You should look out for the funky "No Worries" can design whichever version you find.

• We have officially drunk 70 alcohol-free IPAs, but there's exactly ONE which comes out on top every single time: Playground IPA, by the Dutch brewery Van de Streek. We've done multiple blindfold taste tests and nothing beats this: a lovely clear IPA taste and mouthfeel, and the balanced but detailed hoppy flavour you want.

• The best alcohol-free pale ale we've had recently is from the UK's Brewgooder. As soon as we poured this one we could tell it was going to be phenomenal, a pure great pale ale. Smells great, pours great. Then on drinking it’s a really tasty pale ale, with lovely frothy mouthfeel. And it's a true 0.0%! You should try this one, for sure.

• The UK is also producing some gorgeous alcohol-free IPAs. The breweries you need to know are Brulo, Big Drop and Northern Monk. I really liked Northern Monk's "Super Stredge" - A delightful IPA with a hazy look, a great ringing whack of mosaic dry-hopping, and a mineral finish. Also Big Drop's "Citra 4 hop" pale ale - they've been experimenting with various hop combinations and I think their "4 hop" is perhaps the peak.

• Want a wheat beer? The Netherlands also has you covered for that. The beer is "Vrijwit" from Brouwerij 't IJ in Amsterdam. It's a delightful Belgiian wheat beer! Frothy head, a complex full flavour, well-balanced and satifsying. If you prefer a German-style wheat, "Maisel's Weisse" is absolutely my favourite.

• Lowlander (yes, it's Dutch!) is a fabulous brewery that does a lot of sustainable work - they use surplus fruit to make new beers, for example - and they have a lot of interesting alcohol-frees. One you should know is the Lowlander "Cool Earth Lager", which is a delicious hoppy lager, with a mild hint of lemongrass sliding into the aftertaste.

• I have to tell you about the Polish beer called "For.rest". It's a crazy idea but a great result: the Polish "Nepomucen" brewery decided to use a heck of a lot of spruce pine to replace the "tang" of alcohol - what a great idea! The strong pine - there's more spruce in this than hops - "replaces" the alcohol sharpness brilliantly. Could be fizzer. But honestly it's great, and really memorable.

• How about something floral? My final Dutch recommendation is this recent discovery of "Bloesem Bluf" which has a delightful flowery flavour (some blossoms in the ingredients?) - slight mango smell, and lavender/violet tastte. Frothy/fizzy mouthfeel and good head - a soft and interesting pale-blonde beer.

When we started this nonsense back in "Dry January" 2019 we had no idea that Europe was going to produce such a burst of really innovative alcohol-free brewing. The only credible beer I was aware of back then was Nanny State. Our spreadsheet officially confirms that there are now at least 147 which are worth your time, scoring 7 or higher! Here's the spreadsheet or as PDF version

Hey you! Need lovely food? Me too! So here are our top hit new recipes we discovered in 2023. They're all vegetarian and more than half of them happen to be vegan too. Pick a recipe, try it out:

• Plantain and black bean burgers (PS I only used 100g flour not 250g!) These are a super delicious flavour pairing. also very handy to make ahead and freeze. The flavour combo is fabulous, the black beans help the plantain to taste chunky and meaty - this recipe is so easy, it has no right to taste this good. We used the same flavour combo to make black bean and plantain tacos, which is also great.
• Monastery lentils - very nice way to flavour a simple lentil dish with cheese and sherry!
• "Fresh India" by Meera Sodha -- Honestly, this whole blog article could just be one sentence: "Buy a copy of Fresh India" - because so many of the recipes in that book have been fabulous. There's a mix of traditional and innovative Indian cooking, lots of recipes, well-written and easy to follow. Some recipes from Fresh India that we loved are:
  • Baby aubergines stuffed with coconut and peanut
  • Blackened sweetcorn chaat
  • Paneer butter masala
  • Fresh matar paneer
  • Mushroom keema
• Potsticker dumplings -- These were nice, easy, and fun. Not very filling though - I put rice with them to make a full meal and I'd still suggest more next time. You could increase the filling by about 30% in my opinion.

• Moroccan Millet & Roasted Carrot Pilaf -- The carrot and the spices go really well with the slightly nutty, and slightly "cakey" texture of the millet grain
• Vegan spaetzle (spätzle, south German noodles) Verdict: #nom. It's a very easy recipe, though a bit of a mess in the kitchen! Handy to be able to whip up these noodles quickly.
• Dutch loaded fries! ("Kapsalon")
• Mushroom/cabbage/tofu ramen, from Tim Anderson's "Vegan JapanEasy". I've never made ramen before this year - it's a bit intimidating, but it was fun and wow it was gorgeous.

• Almond jelly with mango & brown sugar syrup ("annin dōfu"), a delicious n stylish vegan dessert, from Tim Anderson's "Vegan JapanEasy". The almond essence we bought was crazy powerful -- even half a teaspoon for 2 people was still slightly too much!

Most of the recipes I listed here are also vegan. It's getting easier and easier to cook ace vegan food - I used to think it was verging on impossible.

... And here are the top hits from previous years:

• Favourite vegetarian recipes of 2021
• Vegan recipe tips for 2020
• The best vegetarian recipes of 2016

Cover versions of songs can reveal the "quality" versus "flimsiness" of the songs themselves, especially covers that take the song into new territory. You know that already from some well-known classic songs - even in rock and pop where lots of well-known stuff might be a great song or might just be a great delivery. My surprise with Radiohead was that, even for the tracks that are most solidly "rock", when other people cover Radiohead -- as reggae or 8-bit or whatever -- the strength of the songwriting shows itself: Radiohead's tendency to inject an interesting "something" into the chord structure of many of their songs, for example, provides the kernel that allows the song to remain distinctive even when people try to transform it. I'm interested to find out from that which Bjork tracks have "good bones".

My prior expectation is that a lot of Bjork's music rests on her vocal adventures as well as her adventures in techno production, neither of which carry over into cover versions. But then, on the other hand, I did previously think Radiohead's "Kid A" was all about wallowing in production effects, and I wasn't right about that! - They have some actual tunes buried in there, which the cover versions brought out.

The way to tell a good Bjork cover version, or a Bjork song that is good enough to be covered well, is when you're listening to the other artist and not hearing the echo of Bjork's voice throughout. There are plenty of covers that fail this test, which can be either because the covering artist didn't try/succeed to make the track their own, or perhaps because the track doesn't support it.

Hence, after some detailed inspection, here's a pretty small list of cover versions that pass the test! They're all great:

1. Stornoway - It's not up to you -- This track renders a Bjork song in a much more mainstream happy folk-pop version -- to me this is good, and interesting, because I hadn't noticed that this track had enough substance to work like that, separate from all of Bjork's quirks.
2. Peter Musk - One Day -- A fabulous cover, in which the vocal and also the guitar actually retain a lot of material from the original, but also completely re-clothe it in their own style. The vocalist follows the original melody lines, and keeps the "pining/loving" emotion, but for his version he evokes the same emotions with his own jazz/folk scat singing.
3. Georgi Kay - Joga -- This is a great example. The music is basically unchanged (the strings are rendered directly as elegant electric guitar), but the singer takes the vocals in completely her own direction: a sort of yearning pop ballad, with a very different implied emotion than in the original.
4. Ben Gibbard (Deathcab for Cutie) and Ben Barnett - Joga -- A simple lo-fi indie guitar recording. The layering of the guitar parts creates a nice harmony, almost like bells ringing-the-changes. Slightly less impressive than Georgi Kay's version, but I like the lo-fi atmosphere, and it's quite fun given that Bjork's sound is often very hi-fi.
5. Daryl Banner - Hunter (8-bit cover) -- He did a lot of Bjork versions, and most 8-bit covers are simply re-instrumentations, even if good. This one manages to take the melodies and rhythms in Hunter and do something different with them.
6. Death Cab for Cutie - All is full of love -- This makes an expansive and spacious indie rock track out of this one. The singer owns the vocals, and is surrounded by a new context of expansive guitar lines.
7. Radiohead - Unravel -- Here you can hear the similarities between Thom Yorke and Bjork in the way they use vocal "flights". There's not much more to this track than a nice Thom Yorke rendition, perhaps?

And an honourable mention for the classical string group "Wooden Elephant" for their instrumental cover of the whole album "Homogenic". -- In one sense it's not what I'm looking for, especially as Bjork already focusses a lot on strings in her production. But when listening to this performance, I noticed that they've done one thing very successfully: they've integrated to vocal melodies in with the other melodies, and they haven't tried to make it sound like a human voice, but just another string voice in the very nice diverse string orchestrations they come up with. So... well, something of an aside, really, especially since this is a slightly avant-garde classical performance, not exactly the pop cover version.

...

OK, so what? Where has that brought us? I rejected a lot of others: one thing I notice is that for many singers it's quite hard to get away from the Bjork vocal quirks that they remember from the original - they're often tempted to reproduce them, at least a little bit. That's something of a trap because it draws them away from putting their own stamp on it. The versions I've listed here are the few singers that really get away from that and fully make it their own.

What do we learn about the music? Well, that's not up to me. This selection spans lots of years/albums, but only from the range 1993-2001 (then again, that's also the most well-known material). Some of the covers do reveal some new strengths in the composition that I hadn't seen before. Will people be covering some of these songs twenty years from now?

In the spirit of the 2023 International Year of Millet, I went to the shop and bought some millet. But what sort of millet?

The bag doesn't say at all what it is. Just "millet" (in Dutch, "gierst"). OK, we don't eat much millet in this country, but it's a bit confusing since some recipes ask for a certain type of millet. I wrote to the Dutch shop and asked, and apparently the answer is "Pluimgierst". I'm confused by many different names, so... well here's my list of what I think I've worked out so far, about the main culinary millets that you might possibly find in a shop:

Is this table correct? I don't know! Please do correct me if you see a mistake. I might try to update Wikipedia with these cross-language comparisons later - it's got some of them, but it doesn't have a standalong article for each of these so it's not necessarily the place to find the info.

UPDATE: This article by an American academic is informative, and has a detailed table

This year at Tilburg University I launched my new undergraduate course: "AI for Nature and Environment". After a few different conversations I was encouraged to put some information online about it, so here's an overview of the whole thing.

First let me address one thing: "AI for Nature and Environment"? Really? Does nature really need more AI? ... Well in a way, no. AI is not the solution. Land management, good politics, quitting oil, and quitting beef -- they're all much more important. However, AI and modern data technologies are crucial to effective management of almost all the good solutions, even "nature-based solutions".

My course is intended for everyone out there who has developed some skills with data science and machine learning, and wants to use them for good. For example, if you're thinking about how you can move into a new career in which those skills are actually helping with some of the world's biggest problems: climate and biodiversity.

Here are all the details, corresponding to the 2023 edition at least:

Target level: BSc 3rd year (BSc Cognitive Science and AI)

Instruction language: English

Aims:

This course will provide the skills and knowledge to apply AI and data science in multiple ways to help nature and the environment. The biodiversity crisis and climate crisis are complex and interconnected: luckily there are many ways that technology can help to monitor the natural world, and to help society have a more positive impact. After successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Explain multiple current/novel ways in which AI can be used for biodiversity/ecology/environment.
2. Critically evaluate potential data-driven interventions in natural environments, for their benefits and impacts.
3. Describe good practice and common pitfalls in machine learning and data processing, within the realm of biodiversity/ecology/environmental data.
4. Implement algorithmic data analysis for biodiversity/ecology/environment in Python.
5. Analyse the performance of AI algorithms on datasets relating to the natural world.

Content:

This course focusses on a diverse set of applications of tech for nature, in each case studying how data science and AI methodologies can be used. We also encourage a critical and comparative approach, by looking at the impacts as well as the benefits of tech for nature, and considering machine learning good practices. The course assumes some familiarity with programming (Python) and with AI concepts, and explores the topics through computer-based data/AI practical work.

Topics covered include:

• Computer vision for wildlife monitoring
• Acoustic monitoring (bioacoustics): AI sound detection and classification
• Deep learning methods and their relation to wildlife data
• Remote sensing (e.g. satellite, drone)
• Citizen science
• Devices for AI monitoring in the wild
• Estimating animal populations
• Critiques of some technologies; benefits/impacts on nature
• Advanced topics in bioacoustics and deep learning

Prerequisites:

• Experience in python programming
• Knowledge of machine learning, e.g. through CSAI courses on ML/DL

Assessment:

(a) 60% final exam

(b) 30% individual coding project

(c) 10% group "paper review" presentation

Lecture topics:

1. Intro: biodiversity, climate, data science, AI
2. Deep learning for images of wildlife
3. Seeing from above: Remote sensing
4. Deep learning for audio
5. Citizen science
6. Electricity generation/grids. And: Cost-benefit & critiques
7. Devices in the wild
   --mid-term--
8. Tracking movement: Biologging
9. Data mining, large-scale, data-viz
10. Bad tech
11. Estimating animal populations
12. Advanced topics 1
13. Advanced topics 2
14. Synaptic, exam, Q&A

Recommended reading:

• "Perspectives in machine learning for wildlife conservation", Tuia et al. 2022.
• "Emerging technologies revolutionise insect ecology and monitoring", van Klink et al. 2022.
• "Computational bioacoustics with deep learning: a review and roadmap", Stowell 2022.
• "Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning", Rolnick et al 2019.

Online communities:

I highly recommend both Climate Change AI and WildLabs which organise online events, courses, links to interesting stuff, and more.

I was really excited by the vegetarian food scene in Ljubljana, Slovenia - it's way more interesting than most other cities I've been so far. That's because there's lots to try, with modern vegan/vegetarian stuff going on, BUT ALSO there's lots of local flavour and regional cuisine mixed in there. I had a lot of things I've not tried before. And lots was great!

Let's start with a bit of fine dining. We didn't have time go to "Gaudi & Naan", a well-established posh veggie restaurant, but we went to Bistro Maha which is a small place that's recently started s 3-couse evening meal service. This is what we ate:

• Starters:
  • Witloof (chicory) with king oyster mushroom, a cream sauce, and a fantastic "caviar" (made from what?! not sure)
  • Pea and asparagus sponge, with strawberry
• Main course: Lionsmane "steaks", with dauphinoise potatoes, a fruity red wine sauce, and crispy leeks
• Dessert: Fermented soy cheesecake with strawberry coulis

Everything was fabulously flavoured, and we chatted to the host about the food. Coming from the Netherlands it was interesting to try a fancy version of witloof.

Next, let's move on to the street-food: on the weekly street-food market there were a couple of local veggies. There's a Slovenian fake-meat company called "Amaze", whose Amaze-burgers were... yeah pretty amazing. A different stall on the same market sells "štruklji", the spiral-rolled wheat dumpling that's everywhere in this region. THe most common is savoury, a cheese štruklji. I had the buckwheat and walnut štrukjli as my afters, since it looked the most different, and it was lovely. Buckwheat is common round here too, so I'm told.

Abi Falafel is a falafel-and-more place that's very popular, cheap, and flipping delicious. Our falafel and our dolma were great.

Another place that can definitely give you lots of regional specialities (in veggie form) is Gujžina. They specialise in a big menu of dishes from the North-East of Slovenia. It was super interesting - not perfect, I must say, a bit bland. But they have a variety of different regional sausages. I had lionsmane "liver-style" served with turnip and millet. Plenty to try.

The tourist adverts will tell you to try "kremšnita". A fancy dessert/pastry, with a protected name. Hilariously, though, it's exactly the same as the "vanilla slice"/"custard slice" that I grew up with in Britain, or also the "tompouce" popular in the Netherlands. The idea of taking an intercontinental train to seek out the custard slice is kinda funny. ... It tastes good, though, all the same.

Strudel is another widespread pastry. Here in Ljubljana we had a couple of great ones: cherry (lots of cherries grown there!), and a really tasty savoury one, asparagus and cheese strudel. Speaking of cheese, up in the hills (Velika Planina) we also sampled a more traditional cheese: a hand-churned raw cheese which we bought direct from a cowherd.

Oh and I almost forgot coffee. A fabulous density of really tasty modern coffee houses. You should drink at ALL these coffee shops: Črno Zrno, Mala Pražarna, Čockl, Kavarna Moderna, Stow. I've had great coffee in London, Glasgow, Berlin, and more, but here in Ljubljana I was bowled over by how many of the coffees were really delicious. Great filter coffee, cold brew, espresso.

One thing new to us was the "espresso tonic", though since we came back home, it seems this drink is cropping up everywhere in summer. We first encountered it as espresso mixed with tonic water, ice, and grapefruit juice. What? Well I drank it. I thought it was merely weird, a "dirty fruit juice" of some weird sort. Much tastier in my opinion was "cascara" - again new to me but apparently that's a Spanish word for a tea (tisane) made from coffee berries. The overall effect is a dark iced-tea-like drink reminscent of berry fruit and coffee, very refreshing.