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Europe's Got Talent For Geeks
fiannaFailMan writes "Teams of scientists from across the continent are vying for a funding bonanza that could see two of them receive up to $1.33 billion over 10 years to keep Europe at the cutting edge of technology. The contest began with 26 proposals that were whittled down to six last year. Just four have made it to the final round. They include a plan to develop digital guardian angels that would keep people safe from harm; a massive data-crunching machine to simulate social, economic and technological change on our planet; an effort to craft the most accurate computer model of the human brain to date; and a team working to find better ways to produce and employ graphene — an ultra-thin material that could revolutionize manufacturing of everything from airplanes to computer chips."
I disagree. The human brain model is a realistic and useful project. In fact, modelisation has always been a very active field in computer science.
In my experience, once you discover, that no matter where you go, roughly 90% of the people are complete and utter idiots, you're forgetting all the racial or nationalistic stereotypes you were brought up with.
At least in my case, misanthropy cured nationalism.
I am speaking from an American born Chinese working in London, and while I can't speak about other European nations, the UK is pretty good with diversity. I have not experienced any overt discrimination, and it's comparable to the environment for when I worked in the US.
Like most countries, cities are better with diversity than rural areas. In fact, one third of Londoners were born outside of Britain, and the last census indicated that white Brits are a minority in London, (this excludes British people of different ethnicities as well as white people from other countries).
How can you abstract the important parts, when we have no idea what they are?
There are several levels of abstraction that one can pursue when modeling things. We already know a lot about things in all of these levels, only not in a fully comprehensive way. Modeling and simulation is an excellent way to give insights about the gaps in the knowledge and to direct further research.
We're still trying to figure out the many, highly complex biochemical pathways.
And each of the 250+ neurotransmitters has different physic-chemical dynamics. Does that mean we need to know everything before we make an overall functional model? Definitely no.
Do I have to take into consideration every car in existence to make a model of congestion on roads? No. Now bring me my spherical cow please.
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