Domain: pitt.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to pitt.edu.
Comments · 376
-
Re:Easy Solution!
Uh, huh? Local to me, it's one of two major universities. SO, since I'm in Pittsburgh, that would be either the University of Pittsburgh, or Carnegie Mellon University. Which one do you think it could be?
-
Re:A Note of Solidarity
We are not randomly rounding up citizens and putting them in internment camps.
True. The roundups are much more systematic.
muslim lawyers
immigrants
film makers
You're probably white middle class, Judeo-Xtian, and have nothing to fear. -
Re:Has to do with the oxygen level
The SA article mentions this as background for the work with H2S. The Sulfur can replace Oxygen due to its similar valences, etc, so they're able to reach the anoxic state instead of the hypoxic state without damaging tissue in the process. For more info you probably want to visit:
The Safar Center for Resuscitation Research
Mark Roth's (principal researcher on this article) website
Wikipedia page on Hydrogen Sulfide
On a side note, that was a great SA issue in general, they also had a really cool article on creating antimatter.
Derek -
Re:I call "bullshit" on this article.
The instititute does actually exist. I think this is legitimate. http://www.safar.pitt.edu/
-
Re:Not On Me.
Really?
http://www.safar.pitt.edu/content/programs/safar/h s_sa4.html
They talk about the program right there. It took me 2-clicks to get there from your link. I agree they don't go into a lot of details, but they explicitly talk about reviving dogs. -
More information can be found...
at the University of Pittsburgh' Safar Center for Resuscitation Research web site.
They provide a little more information on their suspended animation page. -
More information can be found...
at the University of Pittsburgh' Safar Center for Resuscitation Research web site.
They provide a little more information on their suspended animation page. -
Re:I call "bullshit" on this article.
It's not an unknown research center. They specifically named the Safar Center in the article, which you ought to be able to find by yourself.
-
Re:well...Note that the article reports the source as "Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research". Isn't Pittsburg where George Romero shoots all his films?
Pittsburg is also the home of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, which is what the Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research is part of.
The man the center is named after developed CPR.
-
Re:Fake, but hilarious!
-
Re:well...
Here are the Google search results on Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research. It looks legitimate: http://www.neurosurgery.pitt.edu/research/safar.h
t ml -
Re:well...
Well, there is actually a Safar Center for Resuscitation Research in Pittsburgh. They have been doing Suspended Animation research for at least 10 years now, according to thier site, for the U.S. Navy. They have been using dogs as test subjects, but apparently only until recently have been unable to bring the animals back to life without some brain damage. Their goal is to make it 2 hours or more with causing brain damage. The intent is for severe trauma victims to be put into a state of suspended animation until they can be transported to a hospital for treatment, specifically battlefield injuries.
-
Re:well...
Well, there is actually a Safar Center for Resuscitation Research in Pittsburgh. They have been doing Suspended Animation research for at least 10 years now, according to thier site, for the U.S. Navy. They have been using dogs as test subjects, but apparently only until recently have been unable to bring the animals back to life without some brain damage. Their goal is to make it 2 hours or more with causing brain damage. The intent is for severe trauma victims to be put into a state of suspended animation until they can be transported to a hospital for treatment, specifically battlefield injuries.
-
Re:Not On Me.
I can't find anything on the web corroborating this story. Even the official site of Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, the institute metioned in TFA has nothing about this.
-
Philosophical Links on Time TravelPhilosophers have long thought about these issues. Here are a few web sites that are worth looking at:
1. http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/timetravel.htm
Time travel is a fairly new topic of scientific and philosophical investigation. In science, different models of the cosmos and the natural laws governing the universe imply different possibilities for time travel. Theories about time travel have changed as the dominant cosmological theories have evolved from classical, Newtonian conceptions to modern, relativistic and quantum mechanical conceptions. Philosophers were quick to note some of the implications of the new physics for venerable issues in metaphysics: the nature of time, causation and personal identity to name just a few. The subject continues to produce a fruitful cross-fertilization of ideas between scientists and philosophers as theorists in both fields struggle to resolve confounding paradoxes that emerge when time travel is pondered seriously. This article discusses both the scientific and philosophical issues relevant to time travel.
2. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-travel-phy
s /Time travel has been a staple of science fiction. With the advent of general relativity it has been entertained by serious physicists. But, especially in the philosophy literature, there have been arguments that time travel is inherently paradoxical. The most famous paradox is the grandfather paradox: you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, thereby preventing your own existence. To avoid inconsistency some circumstance will have to occur which makes you fail in this attempt to kill your grandfather. Doesn't this require some implausible constraint on otherwise unrelated circumstances? We examine such worries in the context of modern physics.
3. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001673/
0 1/TMArchive.pdfWe discuss the possibility to build and operate a time machine, a device that produces closed timelike curves (CTCs). We specify the spacetime structure needed to implement a time machine and assess attempted no-go results against time machines in classical general relativity, semi-classical quantum gravity, quantum field theory on curved spacetime, and in Euclidean quantum gravity. Such no-go theorems for time machines would show that, under physically reasonable conditions, CTCs cannot develop in spacetimes initially free of these pathologies. Our review indicates that an investigation of the prospects of achieving no-go results has not been entirely successful in establishing such generality. At the same time, the pursuit of chronology protection results has proved to be a fruitful way to probe the foundations of classical GTR and the interface between general relativity and quantum field theory.
-
Re:Clutter...
In fact, I never go to google.com. I use the "Quick Search" feature of Firefox to do all my searches (g for google l for google/linux img google images def for google define fm for freshmeat man for man pages cpan for perl modules w for wikipedia and so on..)
There's also a handy extension that allows me to select text and open a right-click menu with all those searches for that text.
-
Re:Politics and Energy
Actually it was originally called Zeugmatography. Then NMR imaging, then just MR imaging.
-
Re:laptop use? doubt it.
Information theoretic entropy is only equal to thermodynamic entropy for canonical ensembles. Norton's discussion of Landauer's exorcism of Maxwell's demon goes into this in considerable detail.
Information theoretic entropy is always defined. Thermodynamic entropy is only defined for systems in thermodynamic equilibirium (same with temperature, and other thermodynamic quantities.) They are fundamentally different animals, despite their important similarities.
--Tom -
Re:Repeat
...but they've got a switch which moves an arm, and a single neuron controlling the on off. From down, to up. No control. You could also say "Monkey uses mind to start a car!" using the same single neuron to control a remote starter.
Really. That's not what it looks like to me. -
Source Article [PDF Reprint]
For those interested, a much more informative description of Schwartz et. al.'s research can be found at his lab paper reprint section (click on on the second title from the top - "Schwartz, A.B.: Cortical neural prostheses, Ann. Rev. Neurosci. 27:487-507, 2004.")
Just to give my two cents, this is cool stuff, but it's not that big of a deal when compared with prior research:
"Investigators have demonstrated the potential of this technology in humans patients with the cone electrode (Kennedy et al. 2000). This electrode is a capillary tube filled with growth factor or peripheral nerve extract. Also in the tube are the exposed ends of two microwires, which act as differential electrodes. Neurites that sprout in re-sponse to the electrode penetration are attracted to the interior of the tube, through which they grow and form synaptic connections to other neurons. The axon is per-manently trapped next to the recording electrode. Although only a few channels of multiunit data were recorded, this activity was used by locked-in ALS patients for communicating with a spelling/letter-board program. One patient used this method for more than a year." -- (Schwartz 503)
Also, it's interesting that the paper notes that "laboratories using CNP suggests that, on average, a chronic electrode implanted in monkey cortex has only a 40% to 60% chance of recording unit activity." (Schwartz 503) -- maybe this is just me, but this percent really needs to go up to at least 95% before it's commercially viable -- it'd really suck to have an ALS patient get a cortical implant stuck in his brain at the tune of $100,000+, and have it break immediately after.
-
Re:My College Did It...
At least at Pitt, I know that students are indeed allowed to keep this software after they leave: "Students are permitted to keep, for their personal use, copies of Microsoft software received under this license upon leaving the University."
From this page: http://www.technology.pitt.edu/sls_student2/stu_mi crosoft.html -
Re:"Unhackable Code"?
Summary: parent poster is being a twit.
Long version:
First, let's clarify what it means to say that "physics" guarantees that your quantum key distribution (QKD) system is unbreakable. Given a perfect implementation of the QKD protocol, or at least an implementation where the errors are within certain bounds and you haven't done anything stupid like reusing your OTP, you are guaranteed security if quantum mechanics is correct.
What do I mean by correct? I mean that quantum mechanics correctly describes the relevant systems--systems to which it is currently considered applicable.
We have many good reasons to believe quantum mechanics is correct. Its relativistic extension, QED, has given us some of the most accurately-verified theoretical predictions ever. Notable objections to the theory (such as the famous paper by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, or "EPR") have proven false (google the Bell inequality and the Aspect experiment).
More specifically, some of the particular variations in quantum mechanics that one would imagine could be useful for defeating a QKD system, such as nonlinearity, would give rise to highly unphysical effects (superluminal signaling), which we have not observed.
It seems that quantum mechanics is an island in theory space--that is, any perturbation from the accepted theory seems to give something obviously unphysical, or at least something that does not agree with experiment.
In other words, this is as close to proof as it gets in science. Clearly, quantum mechanics isn't the final word on, say, quantum gravity, but we're not going to be throwing out the undergrad quantum mechanics books any time soon.
Yes, it would be nice to have information-theoretic security, but that doesn't seem to be possible for a key distribution protocol. Still, security predicated on the laws of physics is a hell of a lot better than security-based-upon-the-fact-that-we-haven't-heard -of-anyone-breaking-it, which is all RSA and other popular schemes have going for them (RSA isn't even computationally secure). -
I'm in the same boat
I got my powerbook the week the new ones were released. Now, there wasn't anything official, that I am aware of, with respect to software updates. Everything I read suggested that computers purchased two weeks prior to a software upgrade would be given free upgrades (more or less). Even though this might not have been the official policy, it seemed to be, and currently seems to be, the de facto policy.
Since I'm a student, $129 is a bit for me. However, being a student, I'll be getting Tiger free from the school. -
Content might be legal according to federal judge
This article should also include a reference to the decision by a federal judge last september that "struck-down" the anti-boot leg law.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2004/09/anti -bootleg-law-struck-down.php
Yes yes, mod this post way up. The content according to september's ruling may be actually legal. -
Re:contract work
MOD PARENT UP
Grandpartent is known sex-offender and can't even drive. -
Snakebots are very fragile!My friend Jer Romeiko builds these kinds of robots for a living. You can download some cool videos of snakebot action at his employer's web site (CMU).
Snakebots are very fragile. Many times a section would break after a few hours demostration. Jer was working on making each section more modular and easier to build. Apparently the main goal of snakebots for many research labs are for providing demostrations (read: grantbots) and giving new grad students something to do.
;-) -
Re: One place to look
First off, The USofA is not torturing people there. What is happening there is similar to what the French are doing with suspected terriorist:They are detained.
yes, it is sad but you are completely wrong
Secondly, these people are not innocent. They were captured fighting for a terrorist cause on a battlefield.
Some of them were, but certainly not all. Some were rounded up by a $20,000bounty offered by the US Government, and there are children as youg as 13 imprisoned there, and they are being let go - as in free- as in "not terrorists". Not to mention a senior American military interrogator at Camp Delta told 60 Minutes II that as many as 20 percent of the Guantanamo prisoners were sent there by mistake - and that they were innocent bystanders, or very small fish. -
Re:Almost nothingI wonder what the total environmental burden of making the photovoltaic panels actually is
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.htm l
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF SOLAR ELECTRICITY
Even if there were a competition between solar and nuclear electricity, there is no technically valid reason to prefer the former. It was pointed out previously that production of the materials for deploying a solar cell array requires burning 3% as much coal as would be burned in generating the same amount of electricity in coal-burning power plants. Roughly the same is true for the power tower and wind turbine applications of solar energy. That means that they produce 3% as much air pollution as coal burning. This is not a great environmental problem, but it still makes them more harmful to health than nuclear power. In addition, there are long-term waste problems, discussed in Chapter 12, which pose many times more of a health problem than the widely publicized nuclear waste. There are lots of poisonous chemicals used in fabricating solar cells, such as hydrofluoric acid, boron trifluoride, arsenic, cadmium, tellurium, and selenium compounds, which can cause health problems. Also, there is much more construction work needed for solar installations than for nuclear; construction is one of the most dangerous industries from the standpoint of accidents to workers.
If photovoltaic panels on houses become widespread, how many people would be killed and injured in cleaning or replacing solar panels on roofs, or in clearing them of snow? What about the dangers in repairing the complex electric conversion systems? Over a thousand Americans now die each year from electrocution, and the power-conditioning equipment needed for a solar electricity installation would represent a major increase in this risk. Back-up systems, most especially diesel engines in the home, have serious health problems. Diesel exhausts include some of the most potent carcinogens known, and they contribute to most of the other air pollution problems discussed in connection with coal burning in Chapter 3.
Large solar plants also create environmental and ecological problems. What happens to the land and animals that live on it when a 5-mile diameter area is covered with solar cells or mirrors? Desert areas, which are most attractive for solar installations, are especially fragile in this regard.
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter12.htm lDeaths Caused
Source First 500 years Eventually
Nuclear
High-level waste 0.0001 0.018
Radon emissions 0.00 -420
Routine emissions (Kr,Xe,T,14C) 0.05 0.3
Low-level waste 0.0001 0.0004
Coal
Air pollution 75 75
Radon emissions 0.11 30
Chemical carcinogens 0.5 70
Photovoltaics for solar energy
Coal for materials 1.5 5
Cadmium sulfide 0.8 80 -
Re:Almost nothingI wonder what the total environmental burden of making the photovoltaic panels actually is
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.htm l
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF SOLAR ELECTRICITY
Even if there were a competition between solar and nuclear electricity, there is no technically valid reason to prefer the former. It was pointed out previously that production of the materials for deploying a solar cell array requires burning 3% as much coal as would be burned in generating the same amount of electricity in coal-burning power plants. Roughly the same is true for the power tower and wind turbine applications of solar energy. That means that they produce 3% as much air pollution as coal burning. This is not a great environmental problem, but it still makes them more harmful to health than nuclear power. In addition, there are long-term waste problems, discussed in Chapter 12, which pose many times more of a health problem than the widely publicized nuclear waste. There are lots of poisonous chemicals used in fabricating solar cells, such as hydrofluoric acid, boron trifluoride, arsenic, cadmium, tellurium, and selenium compounds, which can cause health problems. Also, there is much more construction work needed for solar installations than for nuclear; construction is one of the most dangerous industries from the standpoint of accidents to workers.
If photovoltaic panels on houses become widespread, how many people would be killed and injured in cleaning or replacing solar panels on roofs, or in clearing them of snow? What about the dangers in repairing the complex electric conversion systems? Over a thousand Americans now die each year from electrocution, and the power-conditioning equipment needed for a solar electricity installation would represent a major increase in this risk. Back-up systems, most especially diesel engines in the home, have serious health problems. Diesel exhausts include some of the most potent carcinogens known, and they contribute to most of the other air pollution problems discussed in connection with coal burning in Chapter 3.
Large solar plants also create environmental and ecological problems. What happens to the land and animals that live on it when a 5-mile diameter area is covered with solar cells or mirrors? Desert areas, which are most attractive for solar installations, are especially fragile in this regard.
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter12.htm lDeaths Caused
Source First 500 years Eventually
Nuclear
High-level waste 0.0001 0.018
Radon emissions 0.00 -420
Routine emissions (Kr,Xe,T,14C) 0.05 0.3
Low-level waste 0.0001 0.0004
Coal
Air pollution 75 75
Radon emissions 0.11 30
Chemical carcinogens 0.5 70
Photovoltaics for solar energy
Coal for materials 1.5 5
Cadmium sulfide 0.8 80 -
Re:Per Square _inch_?
The only thing the book you referenced said is, "The principal health impact of solar energy is in the coal that must be burned to produce
The book covers solar risks more extensively than that. Here are Cohen's comments on the electrocution problem: "What about the dangers in repairing the complex electric conversion systems? Over a thousand Americans now die each year from electrocution, and the power-conditioning equipment needed for a solar electricity installation would represent a major increase in this risk."
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.htm l
"In construction, the LLE ... is ... 38 days for those involved with heating, plumbing, and electrical wiring."
"All electrical energy technologies bring with them the risk of electrocution, which has an LLE of 5 days for the average American. Note that this is far higher than the effects of generating nuclear electricity even if we accept the estimates of the nuclear power opponents. If solar electricity is generated and power conditioned in homes, it would probably multiply this effect manyfold."
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter8.html
.
This has sod-all to do with claims of thousands of people plummetting from roofs.
Cohen says, "If photovoltaic panels on houses become widespread, how many people would be killed and injured in cleaning or replacing solar panels on roofs, or in clearing them of snow?" And many people might also insist on installing their own solar power collection systems, so this comment of Cohen's is also relevant: "Also, there is much more construction work needed for solar installations than for nuclear; construction is one of the most dangerous industries from the standpoint of accidents to workers." Both of these comments can be found here:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.htm l
If you wonder how this translates into thousands of people dying from falling off of roofs each year, it might be helpful to remember that small accident risks scale and that the United States has a population of ~290 million. -
Re:Per Square _inch_?
The only thing the book you referenced said is, "The principal health impact of solar energy is in the coal that must be burned to produce
The book covers solar risks more extensively than that. Here are Cohen's comments on the electrocution problem: "What about the dangers in repairing the complex electric conversion systems? Over a thousand Americans now die each year from electrocution, and the power-conditioning equipment needed for a solar electricity installation would represent a major increase in this risk."
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.htm l
"In construction, the LLE ... is ... 38 days for those involved with heating, plumbing, and electrical wiring."
"All electrical energy technologies bring with them the risk of electrocution, which has an LLE of 5 days for the average American. Note that this is far higher than the effects of generating nuclear electricity even if we accept the estimates of the nuclear power opponents. If solar electricity is generated and power conditioned in homes, it would probably multiply this effect manyfold."
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter8.html
.
This has sod-all to do with claims of thousands of people plummetting from roofs.
Cohen says, "If photovoltaic panels on houses become widespread, how many people would be killed and injured in cleaning or replacing solar panels on roofs, or in clearing them of snow?" And many people might also insist on installing their own solar power collection systems, so this comment of Cohen's is also relevant: "Also, there is much more construction work needed for solar installations than for nuclear; construction is one of the most dangerous industries from the standpoint of accidents to workers." Both of these comments can be found here:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.htm l
If you wonder how this translates into thousands of people dying from falling off of roofs each year, it might be helpful to remember that small accident risks scale and that the United States has a population of ~290 million. -
Re:Per Square _inch_?
The only thing the book you referenced said is, "The principal health impact of solar energy is in the coal that must be burned to produce
The book covers solar risks more extensively than that. Here are Cohen's comments on the electrocution problem: "What about the dangers in repairing the complex electric conversion systems? Over a thousand Americans now die each year from electrocution, and the power-conditioning equipment needed for a solar electricity installation would represent a major increase in this risk."
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.htm l
"In construction, the LLE ... is ... 38 days for those involved with heating, plumbing, and electrical wiring."
"All electrical energy technologies bring with them the risk of electrocution, which has an LLE of 5 days for the average American. Note that this is far higher than the effects of generating nuclear electricity even if we accept the estimates of the nuclear power opponents. If solar electricity is generated and power conditioned in homes, it would probably multiply this effect manyfold."
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter8.html
.
This has sod-all to do with claims of thousands of people plummetting from roofs.
Cohen says, "If photovoltaic panels on houses become widespread, how many people would be killed and injured in cleaning or replacing solar panels on roofs, or in clearing them of snow?" And many people might also insist on installing their own solar power collection systems, so this comment of Cohen's is also relevant: "Also, there is much more construction work needed for solar installations than for nuclear; construction is one of the most dangerous industries from the standpoint of accidents to workers." Both of these comments can be found here:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.htm l
If you wonder how this translates into thousands of people dying from falling off of roofs each year, it might be helpful to remember that small accident risks scale and that the United States has a population of ~290 million. -
Re:Cost ?
How about solving problems of radioactive waste disposal
How about applying comprehensive cost/benefit analyses?
.
The pebble bed idea is a small step forward
That would not have been my conclusion.
.
we should devote our ressources to increased efficiency
Everyone has a hobby. Some hobbies are expensive and kill people - energy efficiency does both, and I am not the first person to point this out. See Bernard Cohen, for example. you might want to ask yourself, "What is the true cost of a negawatt?"
.
renewables
What is renewable that nuclear/coal/gas-turbine/petroleum are not? Answer: nothing, unless you apply a double standard. Applying a single standard, solar is no more renwable than nuclear, coal, gas-turbine, or petroleum. Applying a single standard, solar is no more sustainable than nuclear, coal, gas-turbine, or petroleum. -
Re:Per Square _inch_?
So you are saying that use of solar panels will lead to the destruction of our physical infrastructure
No, because it is well-understood by contractors and insurance companies that unmodified roofs cannot support solar panels without being destroyed.
.
and the death of thousands?
The fact that widespread rooftop solar would lead to the deaths of thousand through accidents is well-established. One source that points this out is Bernard Cohen in his book The Nuclear Energy Option. He also points out in that book (Chapter 8, Understanding Risk) that, "All electrical energy technologies bring with them the risk of electrocution, which has an LLE of 5 days for the average American. Note that this is far higher than the effects of generating nuclear electricity even if we accept the estimates of the nuclear power opponents. If solar electricity is generated and power conditioned in homes, it would probably multiply this effect manyfold." So we have not only the accident risk for solar of falling off of roofs, but we also have the accident risk of electrocution. -
Lawrence Lessig != Gotthold LessingWhenever I see Lessig in the headlines, I always think of having to read "The Three Ring Parable" in German class. Luckily, Lessig talks a lot about making a collage of different ideas in terms of technology, While Lessing talked about making a collage of different ideas in terms of philosophy (or more precisely, religion).
In any case, I would like to draw out the comparison a bit further. Nathan the Wise was Lessing's play in favor of religious toleration, expanding what was allowable thought at the time. Lessing may have been wrong about a lot, but pushing that envelope was a great thing. Lessig too risks his reputation by pushing the envelope. In the future, we will probably see intellectual property law very differently, thanks to the discussions going on now.
(from the interview) . . . imagine a group of butchers who've spent their lives dealing with cut-up meat. That's the way they understand how to make money, to cut up meat and sell it in the most efficient way. And then they come across a racehorse and, of course, their first intuition is, here's a valuable resource--we'll cut it up and sell it in bits. But all of us recognize that the racehorse is more valuable without being ground into this system of butchery if it gets to be used in this different way.
And that's the way I think we should think about our culture. Their conception of how to make money off the culture is to cut it up and sell it like pieces of dead meat. And that's of course valuable for butchers, but it's not clear it's valuable for society. If all content is locked in these little separate containers and you have to seek permission to do anything with it, then a huge potential, both economic and social, will have been lost. -
Re:Medical School
He can't type, you insensitive clod. The least you could've done is create a link to http://www.medschool.pitt.edu/.
-
Re:That's not my hand on your ass
Note: I am a Pitt student.
I wouldn't be suprised if this happened around here...does everyone else at Pitt hate ResNet (our networking infrastructure) as much as I do? This is the extent of Pitt's 'Linux Support.' We're using 802.1x to connect over wires. I'm stuck in shitty Win98 on a daily basis because I can't get my comp to connect in Linux for the life of me, and it sucks. Plus I can't play XBox Live!, because it doesn't support 802.1x either. They could have just left it as pppoe like last year, but nooo, they have to change it...
Any other Pitt /.ers frustrated out there by this? I wouldn't be suprised if they were playing monkey grabass instead of, you know, supporting thier students' technology.
I realize that the department that administers our network isn't going to be in charge of inventing this crap, I just needed to vent, sorry. -
Links and more info
First off, it's the University of Pittsburgh, not Pittsburgh University.
The actual web site for Schwartz's lab:
http://motorlab.neurobio.pitt.edu/
The above link has neat videos of the monkey moving the arm around.
Researchers like Schwartz who record from motor areas of the brain do cool stuff, but I'm personally more interested in folks like the Andersen Lab who do recording from more goal-oriented areas. Basically, it's a difference between a command to "move my elbow this much" versus "I want to grab this object."
Here's a PDF link to a paper published by Schwartz and others in 2002. Here's the abstract:
Direct Cortical Control of 3D Neuroprosthetic Devices
Dawn M. Taylor, Stephen I. Helms Tillery, Andrew B. Schwartz
Three-dimensional (3D) movement of neuroprosthetic devices can be controlled by the activity of cortical neurons when appropriate algorithms are used to decode intended movement in real time. Previous studies assumed that neurons maintain fixed tuning properties, and the studies used subjects who were unaware of the movements predicted by their recorded units. In this study, subjects had real-time visual feedback of their brain-controlled trajectories. Cell tuning properties changed when used for brain-controlled movements. By using control algorithms that track these changes, subjects made long sequences of 3D movements using far fewer cortical units than expected. Daily practice improved movement accuracy and the directional tuning of these units.
-
Links and more info
First off, it's the University of Pittsburgh, not Pittsburgh University.
The actual web site for Schwartz's lab:
http://motorlab.neurobio.pitt.edu/
The above link has neat videos of the monkey moving the arm around.
Researchers like Schwartz who record from motor areas of the brain do cool stuff, but I'm personally more interested in folks like the Andersen Lab who do recording from more goal-oriented areas. Basically, it's a difference between a command to "move my elbow this much" versus "I want to grab this object."
Here's a PDF link to a paper published by Schwartz and others in 2002. Here's the abstract:
Direct Cortical Control of 3D Neuroprosthetic Devices
Dawn M. Taylor, Stephen I. Helms Tillery, Andrew B. Schwartz
Three-dimensional (3D) movement of neuroprosthetic devices can be controlled by the activity of cortical neurons when appropriate algorithms are used to decode intended movement in real time. Previous studies assumed that neurons maintain fixed tuning properties, and the studies used subjects who were unaware of the movements predicted by their recorded units. In this study, subjects had real-time visual feedback of their brain-controlled trajectories. Cell tuning properties changed when used for brain-controlled movements. By using control algorithms that track these changes, subjects made long sequences of 3D movements using far fewer cortical units than expected. Daily practice improved movement accuracy and the directional tuning of these units.
-
More Information Can Be Found...
...at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Also, the University of Pittsburgh has a movie of the monkey moving it's arm.
For more information, visit the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurobiology Motorlab -
More Information Can Be Found...
...at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Also, the University of Pittsburgh has a movie of the monkey moving it's arm.
For more information, visit the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurobiology Motorlab -
Re:Pittsburgh University?University of Pittsburgh. Though based on this picture I wouldn't be surprised if there was some collaboration with CMU.
Also interesting to note how the top of the monkey's head is occluded.
-
Re:Appropriate use
Actually, the appointment of electors is a grant of authority from the federal governmennt (contrary to what you were probably taught in high school civics, that it all flows from state to fed) to the state *legislatures*, not to the states.
The sad part is my civics class never got that detailed. However, your point is interesting. I'm shocked that the state legislatures can do something unconstitutional according the state. I'm fairly surprised the state constitution isn't considered a matter of state law. I would have accepted the argument better if they said, that the state legislature wasn't acting on behalf of the state, but is merely the group of people the Federal Gov't appointed to make a decision on the matter. However, I'm not up on the finer points of my constitutional law. I've read it enough times to know when people are expousing nonsense on slashdot about what your constitutional rights are, but not enough to argue with you successfully (unless I miss my guess).
That was really more of a large/small state issue than a free/slave state issue.
That's a widely held misconception according to what I've read. It wasn't the small states that wanted protection from the large states. Here they discuss it in the context of racism.
As a matter of fact, it was the large states that pushed for the electoral college, not the small states as I was taught in High School.
That link points out that the electoral college was desired by the large states, not the small states.
-
I did something similar.
I wanted a fileserver that was portable. I also wanted a backup. So I got two mini itx motherboards, a couple aluminium cd carring cases a few hard drives and I'm pretty happy with the result. I just add a new disk when the current one gets full and I rsync them nightly. I think I'll be able to get 8 disks in each eventually. That's 7 data and 1 for the operating system, my personal data, debian mirror, etc.
-
Re:SPAM is annoying
You should try some good SPAM recipes.
-
Re:As a Physics/Comp Sci Major...
There're two people that do that for me: Einstein and Nikola Tesla (that is, in the physics world alone). Tesla was a bit over the top, buy an incredibly bright individual indeed, and one of the most underappreciated figures in Physics. He has a measurment unit named after him and yet, a lot of people have never heard of him.
-
Ivan Sutherland invented GUI
Actually folks, Ivan Sutherland invented the GUI.
-
Re:I don't get it.
You know of a free native Windows XServer?
Hell, there are dozens...
Older (free) versions of MI/X are still mirrored all over the web. Search for:
"getme1st.exe file0001.bin"
to find thousands of sites that keep a local copy, like this one. It's nice and small enough to fit (compressed) on a floppy.
If you want rootless, just look for X-Deep/32, which is a full-featured X Server product that has gone freeware.
There are many, many more out there, if you just take the time to look for them. -
Re:I don't get it.
Putty == 380k
Bah! Older versions are much smaller...
XServer (with OpenGL support) would be 1MB or less?
With OpenGL? I think not... Not in an XServer small enough to fit on a floppy. You'll have to go with a CD-based solution if you need OpenGL.
Older versions of M/IX, before they discontinued their Free version, were quite small... About a 2.5MB download. Extract it, delete a couple MBs of unneeded fonts, unnecessary programs (xmag, tntstart), then you need to compress it into a self-extracting zipfile to get it down to floppy disk size. Compress (an older version of) Putty.exe in there too to save even more space.
Just search for the files "getme1st.exe" & "file0001.bin" and you'll find plenty of sites that still have it mirrored, like this one. -
How about Edgar Codd?