This is just a pure stab in the dark here, but could a drug stimulating this region be used to help depression?
I don't know about drugs, but I do know that it's already been shown that deep brain stimulation in the subgenual cingulate region (somewhat in the vicinity of the rostral anterior cingulate region mentioned in the summary) is effective in treating severe clinical depression. Unfortunately, it's quite an invasive procedure, and not the sort of thing which should be performed lightly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_brain_stimulation#Clinical_depression
Researchers reported in 2005 that electrical stimulation of a small area of the frontal cortex brought about a "striking and sustained remission" in four out of six patients suffering from clinical depression, whose symptoms had previously been resistant to medication, psychotherapy and electroconvulsive therapy.[15]
Using brain imaging, the researchers noticed that activity in the subgenual cingulate region (SCR or Brodmann area 25) -- the lowest part of a band of tissue that runs along the midline of the brain -- seemed to correlate with symptoms of sadness and depression. They implanted electrodes into six patients while they were locally anesthetised, but alert. While the current was switched on, four of the patients reported feeling a black cloud lifting, and became more alert and interested in their environments. The changes reversed when the current was switched off.[15]
The effects of continuous SCR stimulation have produced sustained remission from depression in the four patients for six months. When reporting the results, the team did caution that the trial was so small that the findings must be considered only provisional.[15]
Will they let the chinese show up? Or maybe the Japanese?
FYI, the Chinese and Japanese craft (while cool) are orbiting lunar probes, not landers. The Chinese are eventually planning on doing a lunar lander, but that won't be until 2012 at the earliest.
Keep in mind that while international collaboration is nice, it certainly isn't a panacea. Recall that international collaboration is the basis of the ISS, which is largely an overbudget boondoggle.
The legalization of abortion also occurred in a similar time frame and also has been attributed to a large statistical decrease in violent crime. Are both studies wrong? One study? More bending of statistics to make up for science? Anyone specifically in the know?
The research paper actually takes that into account, and spends a few pages specifically talking about abortion. According to their calculations (correcting for various factors), lead accounts for a 56% decline, while abortion accounts for a 29% decline. From the paper:
The elasticity of violent crime with respect to childhood lead exposure is estimated to be approximately 0.8. This implies that, between 1992 and 2002, the phase-out of lead from gasoline was responsible for approximately a 56% decline in violent crime. Results for murder are not robust if New York and the District of Columbia are included, but suggest a substantial elasticity as well. No significant effects are found for property crime. The effect of legalized abortion reported by Donohue and Levitt [2001] is largely unaffected, so that abortion accounts for a 29% decline in violent crime (elasticity 0.23), and similar declines in murder and property crime. Overall, the phase-out of lead and the legalization of abortion appear to have been responsible for significant reductions in violent crime rates.
So the Secret Service just happened to be listening to the tech support line, hoping to recognize a criminal voice? I believe this is what they call a "buried lead" - the story should be, Secret Service Listens to Tech Support Lines.
The article is a little slim on details, but I'm guessing the chain of logic is probably something like the following:
the Secret Service has primary jurisdiction over investigating financial crime and counterfeiting (contrary to popular belief, they don't just guard the President)
since the item stolen was a driver's license printer from the Missouri Department of Revenue, this falls pretty squarely in the Secret Service's financial crime/counterfeiting jurisdiction and they were probably called in early on in the case
somebody who steals a driver's license printer may have very well also have committed finance/counterfeiting crimes in the past, which a Secret Service agent may have been familiar with and heard their voice on
I'd actually be surprised if they don't try to match voice recordings of the various cases their on with each other
there was probably something inherently suspicious about the tech support call (for example, I imagine that not too many people call about missing software for a drivers license printer from a phone line outside a government agency), which likely caused the company to bring it to the attention of the Secret Service agents investigating the crime
LOL. Great theory except for the mythical "discount of Y" and "lowering of prices once meals were eliminated". There was no lowering of prices, the meals were eliminated in an attempt to raise profits. Just like there won't be a discount of Y.
I'm not sure that's an entirely fair statement. Airline costs have also been increasing quite a bit due to the cost of oil, and I suspect that measures like the one you describe are a big part of the reason that costs haven't been higher.
I can't find a more recent plot, but this one which goes until 2000 shows a steady decrease in U.S. domestic airfare prices:
Gee... I thought we could already make crystal clear calls from 25,000ft up on cell phones based on the calls from supposed passengers on 9/11! Oh wait... someone actually tested that with cell phones and none worked at all...
Um... 9/11 truthering aside, do you have a citation for that? My understanding is that phone calls are possible, but they're quite rough (especially due to the rapid switching between cell regions) and produce a huge load on the cell network, since a single cellphone can easily transmit to many stations.
Because an antiaircraft gun's high rate of fire and high-explosive projectiles are devastatingly effective against infantry and unarmored vehicles.
Indeed, it turns out this specific model of cannon, the Oerlikon 35mm twin cannon, was used by Argentine troops to deliver direct fire against British ground troups during the Falklands War in 1982:
Considering Google's #1 motive seems to be to collect as much information as possible on the public
Well, uh, yes. They're a search company. Collecting information on everything and anything is what they do.
it really makes you question their ultimate goals and wonder about how such a young company got so much funding so quickly to become the monolith they are
Well yes, they must obviously be a branch of the CIA/Haliburton! If not them, then the Illuminati/Freemason coalition must be responsible for Google's large market cap. Brilliant.
For anybody who wants a little more info than is present in the popular-press summary, here's a couple of conference papers from Rozenblit's group on using coevolution and genetic algorithms to analyze/visualize military scenarios. I think they might require institutional subscriptions to see the full PDF, but I've pasted the abstracts below.
The current state of military operations includes many stability and support (SASO), multi-sided conflicts. The research presented in this paper attempts to address this complex environment by creating a SASO simulation, coevolutionary generation of courses-of-actions (COAs) for each side, and visualization tools for analysis of the resulting COAs. The SASO simulation is significantly different from previous systems because it incorporates non-conventional warfare units such as terrorists and media. The coevolution algorithm is different because it allows all sides of the conflict to evolve their COAs. The visualization tools are important because SASO doctrine is not as well developed as conventional warfare doctrine. Therefore, visual analysis and understanding of a system that is not well defined provides insight for future modeling and verification.
Stability and support operations (SASO) are becoming increasingly important in modern military operations. Conflicts are no longer comprised solely of two opposing sides engaged in combat on an open battlefield. Instead, they are more likely to involve groups sharing various alliances and relationships each pursuing a range of different goals. The Sheherazade SASO wargaming engine presented here: a) incorporates subjective criteria for scoring course of action (COA) success such as the animosity between factions and attitudes of locales, b) uses nontraditional units such as refugees, media and information operators, and c) employs a coevolutionary genetic algorithm in modeling the dynamics of the complex multisided simulation for generating COAs. This paper outlines our approach towards the development of a wargaming model that handles the more complex and computationally demanding arena of SASO.
Why do we need Terabytes of information about landing sites about Mars but all it took was a telescope to pick a landing site on the moon?
If a robotic lander sent to the Moon craps out, it doesn't take too long to send up a new one. If the same happens with Mars, it'll take quite a bit longer to send up a new one.
Also, gathering information about potential landing sites is just one of the many things the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is doing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter#Mission_objectives
MRO is conducting science operations for two Earth years, from November 2006 to November 2008. One of the mission's main goals is to map the Martian landscape with its high-resolution cameras in order to choose other landing sites for future missions. The MRO played an important role in choosing the landing site of the Phoenix Lander, which will explore the Martian Arctic,[1]. The initial site chosen by scientists was imaged with the HiRISE camera and found to be littered with boulders. After analysis with HiRISE and the Mars Odyssey's THEMIS a new site was chosen. Mars Science Laboratory, a highly maneuverable rover will also have its landing site inspected. The MRO will also provide critical navigation data during their landings and a act as a transmission relay.
MRO is using its on-board scientific equipment to study the Martian climate, weather, atmosphere, and geology, and to search for signs of water in the polar caps and underground. In addition, MRO is looking for the remains of the previously lost Mars Polar Lander and Beagle 2 spacecraft,[7] and serves as the first step in setting up an internet protocol network for the planets in our solar system. After its main science operations are completed, the probe's extended mission is to be the communication and navigation system for landers and rover probes.
While loaded with buzzwords, this really involves nothing that's really new.
Yeah, I haven't looked at it too intensively myself yet, but the impression I get is that most/all what Hawkins proposed has been proposed in the past. He basically took what was done in the past and made it much more accessible, which is great and all, but he really should've cited more of the prior work by others (or been more aware of it). Besides Grossberg, I think there's also quite a bit of similarity with the work of Rao & Ballard (1999) and Lee & Mumford (2003).
Still, I credit Hawkins quite a bit for making the general public much more aware of this sort of modeling.
The ability to create and hold a mental schema of an object is one of the milestones in cognitive development. Developmental scientists have named the behavioral manifestation of this competence object permanence. Convergent evidence indicates that frontal lobe maturation plays a critical role in the display of object permanence, but methodological and ethical constrains have made it difficult to collect neurophysiological evidence from awake, behaving infants. Near-infrared spectroscopy provides a noninvasive assessment of changes in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin and total hemoglobin concentration within a prescribed region. The evidence described in this report reveals that the emergence of object permanence is related to an increase in hemoglobin concentration in frontal cortex.
1) In the case of skydiving, the FAA regulates the activity. That's more than 'guidelines'. And the helmet requirement is not a 'suggestion'.
Like I said, mostly, although in my opinion if somebody seriously wants to jump out of an airplane without a helmet, they should be allowed to.
In the case of racing, the various 'guidelines' while not enforced as 'laws' they are still strictly enforced. You drive unsafe on a track and you'll be removed from that track immediately.
Lakshminarayan Srinivasan1*, Uri Tzvi Eden2, Sanjoy K. Mitter3, and Emery N Brown
Brain-driven interfaces depend on estimation procedures to convert neural signals to inputs for prosthetic devices that can assist individuals with severe motor deficits. Previous estimation procedures were developed on an application-specific basis. Here we report a coherent estimation framework that unifies these procedures and motivates new applications of prosthetic devices driven by action potentials, local field potentials (LFP), electrocorticography (ECoG), electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), or optical methods. The brain-driven interface is described as a probabilistic relationship between neural activity and components of a prosthetic device that may take on discrete or continuous values. A new estimation procedure is developed for action potentials, and a corresponding procedure is described for field potentials and optical measurements. We test our framework against dominant approaches in an arm reaching task using simulated traces of ensemble spiking activity from primary motor cortex (MI), and a wheelchair navigation task using simulated traces of EEG-band power. Adaptive filtering is incorporated to demonstrate performance under neuron death and discovery. Finally, we characterize performance under model misspecification using physiologically realistic history dependence in MI spiking. These simulated results predict that the unified framework outperforms previous approaches under various conditions, in the control of position and velocity, based on trajectory and endpoint mean squared errors.
The fact that the researcher is talking to a journalist prior to the research publication is strong evidence he is over-hyping his research.
Below is the researcher's statement in the article about what he's done. Does it seem like he's over-hyping to you? All he's doing is discussing an algorithm he's developed. Also, I'm not sure if it's only available to institutional subscribers, but the article is available in advance of publication here.
MIT said that it has developed a unified algorithm that can work within the parameters of these different approaches. Lakshminarayan "Ram" Srinivasan, lead author of a paper on the subject, said MIT's new graphical models are applicable no matter what measurement technique is used.
"We don't need to reinvent a new paradigm for each modality or brain region," he said in a statement.
Still, he said, the algorithm isn't perfect, nor the final solution to solving what is a difficult problem. "Translating an algorithm into a fully functioning clinical device will require a great deal of work, but also represents an intriguing road of scientific and engineering development for the years to come," according to MIT.
Agreed. Academic researchers do hype their stuff prematurely, but it is the nature of the game.
Um, do you have any evidence of the researcher in question over-hyping his research? As far as I can tell, all the hyping was done by the person writing the ZDnet article.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be a sucker. The govt has revised the way it tracks sectarian violence, and re-revised it again, until the numbers went down.
Since when is iraqbodycount.org the government?
I don't know about drugs, but I do know that it's already been shown that deep brain stimulation in the subgenual cingulate region (somewhat in the vicinity of the rostral anterior cingulate region mentioned in the summary) is effective in treating severe clinical depression. Unfortunately, it's quite an invasive procedure, and not the sort of thing which should be performed lightly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_brain_stimulation#Clinical_depression Researchers reported in 2005 that electrical stimulation of a small area of the frontal cortex brought about a "striking and sustained remission" in four out of six patients suffering from clinical depression, whose symptoms had previously been resistant to medication, psychotherapy and electroconvulsive therapy.[15]
Using brain imaging, the researchers noticed that activity in the subgenual cingulate region (SCR or Brodmann area 25) -- the lowest part of a band of tissue that runs along the midline of the brain -- seemed to correlate with symptoms of sadness and depression. They implanted electrodes into six patients while they were locally anesthetised, but alert. While the current was switched on, four of the patients reported feeling a black cloud lifting, and became more alert and interested in their environments. The changes reversed when the current was switched off.[15]
The effects of continuous SCR stimulation have produced sustained remission from depression in the four patients for six months. When reporting the results, the team did caution that the trial was so small that the findings must be considered only provisional.[15]
Will they let the chinese show up? Or maybe the Japanese?
FYI, the Chinese and Japanese craft (while cool) are orbiting lunar probes, not landers. The Chinese are eventually planning on doing a lunar lander, but that won't be until 2012 at the earliest.
Keep in mind that while international collaboration is nice, it certainly isn't a panacea. Recall that international collaboration is the basis of the ISS, which is largely an overbudget boondoggle.
The legalization of abortion also occurred in a similar time frame and also has been attributed to a large statistical decrease in violent crime. Are both studies wrong? One study? More bending of statistics to make up for science? Anyone specifically in the know?
The research paper actually takes that into account, and spends a few pages specifically talking about abortion. According to their calculations (correcting for various factors), lead accounts for a 56% decline, while abortion accounts for a 29% decline. From the paper:
The elasticity of violent crime with respect to childhood lead exposure is estimated to be approximately 0.8. This implies that, between 1992 and 2002, the phase-out of lead from gasoline was responsible for approximately a 56% decline in violent crime. Results for murder are not robust if New York and the District of Columbia are included, but suggest a substantial elasticity as well. No significant effects are found for property crime. The effect of legalized abortion reported by Donohue and Levitt [2001] is largely unaffected, so that abortion accounts for a 29% decline in violent crime (elasticity 0.23), and similar declines in murder and property crime. Overall, the phase-out of lead and the legalization of abortion appear to have been responsible for significant reductions in violent crime rates.
The article is a little slim on details, but I'm guessing the chain of logic is probably something like the following:
Thanks!
Hm... anyone want to try posting a diff of the text here?
LOL. Great theory except for the mythical "discount of Y" and "lowering of prices once meals were eliminated". There was no lowering of prices, the meals were eliminated in an attempt to raise profits. Just like there won't be a discount of Y.
I'm not sure that's an entirely fair statement. Airline costs have also been increasing quite a bit due to the cost of oil, and I suspect that measures like the one you describe are a big part of the reason that costs haven't been higher.
I can't find a more recent plot, but this one which goes until 2000 shows a steady decrease in U.S. domestic airfare prices:
http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2002/el2002-01b.gif
Gee... I thought we could already make crystal clear calls from 25,000ft up on cell phones based on the calls from supposed passengers on 9/11! Oh wait... someone actually tested that with cell phones and none worked at all...
Um... 9/11 truthering aside, do you have a citation for that? My understanding is that phone calls are possible, but they're quite rough (especially due to the rapid switching between cell regions) and produce a huge load on the cell network, since a single cellphone can easily transmit to many stations.
By the way, for anybody curious about the sort of equipment involved, here's a video of an Oerlikon 35mm cannon auto-tracking a flying aircraft:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMLKuNJq2tM
Here's another video from the Swiss Army demonstrating its high rate of fire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R5JEk0c2ZE
Because an antiaircraft gun's high rate of fire and high-explosive projectiles are devastatingly effective against infantry and unarmored vehicles.
Indeed, it turns out this specific model of cannon, the Oerlikon 35mm twin cannon, was used by Argentine troops to deliver direct fire against British ground troups during the Falklands War in 1982:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oerlikon_35_mm_twin_cannon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Goose_Green
What do proofs have to do with it? They're engineering papers.
It's not a "conspiracy theory" to question Google's links to the CIA, it's a fact.
Huh? So now Google's somehow in a conspiracy with the CIA because they bought out Keyhole and turned it into Google Earth?
Considering Google's #1 motive seems to be to collect as much information as possible on the public
Well, uh, yes. They're a search company. Collecting information on everything and anything is what they do.
it really makes you question their ultimate goals and wonder about how such a young company got so much funding so quickly to become the monolith they are
Well yes, they must obviously be a branch of the CIA/Haliburton! If not them, then the Illuminati/Freemason coalition must be responsible for Google's large market cap. Brilliant.
For anybody who wants a little more info than is present in the popular-press summary, here's a couple of conference papers from Rozenblit's group on using coevolution and genetic algorithms to analyze/visualize military scenarios. I think they might require institutional subscriptions to see the full PDF, but I've pasted the abstracts below.
A coevolutionary approach to course of action generation and visualization in multi-sided conflicts
The current state of military operations includes many stability and support (SASO), multi-sided conflicts. The research presented in this paper attempts to address this complex environment by creating a SASO simulation, coevolutionary generation of courses-of-actions (COAs) for each side, and visualization tools for analysis of the resulting COAs. The SASO simulation is significantly different from previous systems because it incorporates non-conventional warfare units such as terrorists and media. The coevolution algorithm is different because it allows all sides of the conflict to evolve their COAs. The visualization tools are important because SASO doctrine is not as well developed as conventional warfare doctrine. Therefore, visual analysis and understanding of a system that is not well defined provides insight for future modeling and verification.
Modeling and simulation of stability and support operations (SASO)
Stability and support operations (SASO) are becoming increasingly important in modern military operations. Conflicts are no longer comprised solely of two opposing sides engaged in combat on an open battlefield. Instead, they are more likely to involve groups sharing various alliances and relationships each pursuing a range of different goals. The Sheherazade SASO wargaming engine presented here: a) incorporates subjective criteria for scoring course of action (COA) success such as the animosity between factions and attitudes of locales, b) uses nontraditional units such as refugees, media and information operators, and c) employs a coevolutionary genetic algorithm in modeling the dynamics of the complex multisided simulation for generating COAs. This paper outlines our approach towards the development of a wargaming model that handles the more complex and computationally demanding arena of SASO.
If a robotic lander sent to the Moon craps out, it doesn't take too long to send up a new one. If the same happens with Mars, it'll take quite a bit longer to send up a new one.
Also, gathering information about potential landing sites is just one of the many things the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is doing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter#Mission_objectives MRO is conducting science operations for two Earth years, from November 2006 to November 2008. One of the mission's main goals is to map the Martian landscape with its high-resolution cameras in order to choose other landing sites for future missions. The MRO played an important role in choosing the landing site of the Phoenix Lander, which will explore the Martian Arctic,[1]. The initial site chosen by scientists was imaged with the HiRISE camera and found to be littered with boulders. After analysis with HiRISE and the Mars Odyssey's THEMIS a new site was chosen. Mars Science Laboratory, a highly maneuverable rover will also have its landing site inspected. The MRO will also provide critical navigation data during their landings and a act as a transmission relay.
MRO is using its on-board scientific equipment to study the Martian climate, weather, atmosphere, and geology, and to search for signs of water in the polar caps and underground. In addition, MRO is looking for the remains of the previously lost Mars Polar Lander and Beagle 2 spacecraft,[7] and serves as the first step in setting up an internet protocol network for the planets in our solar system. After its main science operations are completed, the probe's extended mission is to be the communication and navigation system for landers and rover probes.
While loaded with buzzwords, this really involves nothing that's really new.
Yeah, I haven't looked at it too intensively myself yet, but the impression I get is that most/all what Hawkins proposed has been proposed in the past. He basically took what was done in the past and made it much more accessible, which is great and all, but he really should've cited more of the prior work by others (or been more aware of it). Besides Grossberg, I think there's also quite a bit of similarity with the work of Rao & Ballard (1999) and Lee & Mumford (2003).
Still, I credit Hawkins quite a bit for making the general public much more aware of this sort of modeling.
The NSA wanted to begin its wiretapping program PRIOR to the "unforeseeable" events of September 11th, 2001???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
Here's a neat bit of trivia: When she was an undergraduate at Harvard, Natalie Portman (birth name Natalie Hershlag) in 2002 was the co-author on a paper in the journal NeuroImage, titled Frontal Lobe Activation during Object Permanence: Data from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIR) is the same technique Jacob et al. (the researchers in the summary article) will be using to take measurements for adjusting user interfaces. Here's the abstract from Natalie Portman's paper:
The ability to create and hold a mental schema of an object is one of the milestones in cognitive development. Developmental scientists have named the behavioral manifestation of this competence object permanence. Convergent evidence indicates that frontal lobe maturation plays a critical role in the display of object permanence, but methodological and ethical constrains have made it difficult to collect neurophysiological evidence from awake, behaving infants. Near-infrared spectroscopy provides a noninvasive assessment of changes in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin and total hemoglobin concentration within a prescribed region. The evidence described in this report reveals that the emergence of object permanence is related to an increase in hemoglobin concentration in frontal cortex.
1) In the case of skydiving, the FAA regulates the activity. That's more than 'guidelines'. And the helmet requirement is not a 'suggestion'.
Like I said, mostly, although in my opinion if somebody seriously wants to jump out of an airplane without a helmet, they should be allowed to.
In the case of racing, the various 'guidelines' while not enforced as 'laws' they are still strictly enforced. You drive unsafe on a track and you'll be removed from that track immediately.
My point exactly.
Most of those activities have safety guidelines to minimize the incidence and the extent of injuries.
Guidelines, yes, but for the most part not laws.
Lakshminarayan Srinivasan1*, Uri Tzvi Eden2, Sanjoy K. Mitter3, and Emery N Brown
Brain-driven interfaces depend on estimation procedures to convert neural signals to inputs for prosthetic devices that can assist individuals with severe motor deficits. Previous estimation procedures were developed on an application-specific basis. Here we report a coherent estimation framework that unifies these procedures and motivates new applications of prosthetic devices driven by action potentials, local field potentials (LFP), electrocorticography (ECoG), electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), or optical methods. The brain-driven interface is described as a probabilistic relationship between neural activity and components of a prosthetic device that may take on discrete or continuous values. A new estimation procedure is developed for action potentials, and a corresponding procedure is described for field potentials and optical measurements. We test our framework against dominant approaches in an arm reaching task using simulated traces of ensemble spiking activity from primary motor cortex (MI), and a wheelchair navigation task using simulated traces of EEG-band power. Adaptive filtering is incorporated to demonstrate performance under neuron death and discovery. Finally, we characterize performance under model misspecification using physiologically realistic history dependence in MI spiking. These simulated results predict that the unified framework outperforms previous approaches under various conditions, in the control of position and velocity, based on trajectory and endpoint mean squared errors.
Below is the researcher's statement in the article about what he's done. Does it seem like he's over-hyping to you? All he's doing is discussing an algorithm he's developed. Also, I'm not sure if it's only available to institutional subscribers, but the article is available in advance of publication here. MIT said that it has developed a unified algorithm that can work within the parameters of these different approaches. Lakshminarayan "Ram" Srinivasan, lead author of a paper on the subject, said MIT's new graphical models are applicable no matter what measurement technique is used.
"We don't need to reinvent a new paradigm for each modality or brain region," he said in a statement.
Still, he said, the algorithm isn't perfect, nor the final solution to solving what is a difficult problem. "Translating an algorithm into a fully functioning clinical device will require a great deal of work, but also represents an intriguing road of scientific and engineering development for the years to come," according to MIT.
Agreed. Academic researchers do hype their stuff prematurely, but it is the nature of the game.
Um, do you have any evidence of the researcher in question over-hyping his research? As far as I can tell, all the hyping was done by the person writing the ZDnet article.