John Wickman has been working on aluminum/oxidizer (LOX, not ice) motors since the 80s. His are intended to run on lunar soil.
Also in the can, a jet engine that runs on Martian atmosphere. Development from Oberth's original ammonium nitrate motors as an alternative to ammonium perchlorate.
Now working on NASA's SHARP re-entry vehicle. He's also one of the few pros that teach his craft at the amateur level and consult out to rocketers who want to carry out major projects.
"Rocket scientist" used to be a compliment. That fell away as they numbered into the tens of thousands and each did a tiny piece of engineering. This guy earns that title all over again.
It's the time of year to celebrate many different things religious or religion-derived. So true to form the marketoids come up with a name that not only ignores the origin of the celebrations but also ignores itself, instead focusing entirely on the only thing the marketoids can perceive, making money.
Every time I see the words I cringe. How do you answer "How did your Black Friday turn out?" Well, let's see. I went to a leadership seminar hosted by Charles Manson then had lunch with Jeffery Dahmer. After lunch I signed up for flying lessons so I can learn to fly an airliner, but not land it.
That's a shame. There should be another, listed under WTF Does That Even Mean?
Programming continues entirely oblivious to one more or less language of more or less capability/complexity and/or simplicity/ease of use. The parameters of this one language do not affect any other language or the flow of logic necessary for developing an algorithm. The development of BASIC, Forth, Java and Logo were all simplifications. Programming has remained undumbed regardless.
Dumbing down is the negative connotation, simplifying is the positive. Powerful is the positive connotation, complicated is the negative. The denotation? Programming is its own denotation.
Nothing sparks a debate on ZDnet except ZDnet, and they do it for the simple reason of trying to interest the readers to turn pages and see ads. When they do it successfully the embedded triggers can be transferred to other venues such as/. intact, causing people to react as if there were a debate rather than a hollow question framed as a basis for confrontational discourse despite there being, at the base of it, nothing of useful meaning in the question.
However, this begs the question that if ZDnet can create validity out of thin air by developing a question that spurs discussion, and so turn the question into a meaningful one, may I not do the same and assert with assured validity that by hiring writers that produce material devoid of any objective content or concrete knowledge to be gained, and that by publishing the same, ZDnet is dumbing down ZDnet? In for a penny, in for a pound. This being the case, we can and should ignore TFA.
What happens when I'm tagging a photo but listening to music at the same time?
Or I run the photo tagging software in a small window and watch a movie (or some porn) instead?
So they can create tags from brain waves, but there's no way to tell what a user is actually focussing on.
If you were in a sensory deprivation tank with the only perceptual cue the target image, you'd still have hundreds to thousands of competing cognitions boiling away, fighting for processing space on their way to awareness, few of them making it but all taking up some resources and generating some signal. But these, as well as any ongoing stimulus like music, are not locked in time with the stimulus presentation and so are random as compared to the stimuli. When processed the signal is cut at the same point compared to the stimulus and the many samples averaged to zero out the 'random' 'noise'. What's left is a good estimate of the signal. This averaging technique is very common in EEG and other electrophysiology measurements. So much so that it's built into virtually all data collection software. For a description see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoked_potential
I used to work in an EEG lab, and I can tell you that those caps are pretty uncomfortable to wear. After they put them on, you stick these little needles into the leads and squirt conductive goop on your scalp. It takes a few cycles to rinse that stuff out too.
Smitty, we've come a long way from those caps. There are now "caps" that are essentially nets of elastic cord with plastic cups containing pieces of sponge in them, the electrodes embedded in the sponge. Dip it in mild salt water for conduction, shake it out so there's no drips running together bridging the electrode sites, and pull it on. I could get good signal on 128 channels in less than 10 minutes from the time they walked in to data collection start.
There is also a European company selling a similar get up, but the preamps are built into the cups on the net, making impedance matching irrelevant and signal balancing automatic on the fly. These are so stable that they can be used ambulatory.
And nobody ever has to get goop or glue stuck on/into them any more.
Ants carry with them a cognitive map, that is an image of their environment (created from perceived and recalled information) and a self-image (their kinesthetic perception of their self embedded in the environment). They compare their environment with their self image constantly to locate/orient themselves and detect/evaluate potentially positive or negative environmental elements. In that comparison is direction and distance related information with which they can estimate walking time/steps. If either or both cues are changed, the result differs because their estimates based on accumulated information changes slower that real time information based on environment + self. This is a non-conscious process, just as it mostly is in us. It is essentially a dynamic component of the environment capable to actively interaction with the rest of the environment. The cognitive map is a well known mental construct from cognitive psychology, the embedded-in-environment concept is taken from evolutionary psychology. The former could count as support that fact that the suggested mechanism depends on heuristic processing producing the 'fastest good enough' result, often with some error but usually not enough to be totally wrong, as opposed to counting which implies an ongoing real time abstraction compared with a more detailed or accurate perception of the environment which is constantly updated. Besides the implication that self-awareness of some amount may be necessary for this, the cognitive load required for the heuristic process is far less than that of the more accurate real time processing. In the end, ants behave as if they are counting, as do we frequently. Just because we can doesn't mean we always or even usually do, and even if they can't 'think out loud' doesn't mean they can't have and use a process that produces as result as if they can. Lesser creatures can exhibit behaviors that appears as if higher level processing is occurring but which can be explained by the far more acceptable dynamic internal/external environmental processing concept. As an example I recommend Darwin's writings on his observations of the behavior of earth worms.
As much as I dislike fMRI research due to the technical problems compounding with far too little understanding of the technology and errors on the part of far too many researchers, this is one topic on which it has some merit. There's been enough MRI (including the f- variant) work done on limbic systems and disorders that the body of results approaches validation. In the absence of deep brain trauma (there being none on this case) one can assume the structural abnormalities to have pre-existed, making the 1983-2009 time span less problematic.
However, although psychopaths tend to show certain differences, showing those differences does not mean the person is a psychopath. As TFA states there are other tests that have been used for longer that are more reliable. In fact, skin conductance is very good. Psychopaths (and habitual criminals without that specific diagnosis) show a rapid rise in skin conductance to violent imagery, but return to baselines much more quickly than 'normal' persons. Easy, cheap, and replicated year after year.
From the description in TFA I think a very useful illustration of the concepts of the 3 to 1 space enfolding and the decoupling of space and time as equivalent in relativistic terms can be seen in "A Brief History Of Time". Hawking describes his alternative to a big bang singularity, showing that near the event, time and space would fold into each other, rounding off the point of the light cone. The illustrations use a single space dimension line to represent all 3. Here the picture can simply be taken as more accurate than that schematic had intended to portray. In ABHoT time and space lose their right angle relationship, a function of relativity. Here, they lose their relativistic relationship at high energies (a singularity should probably count), become decoupled in their original sense, and take on a different relationship. Taken together, if the 3 space dimensions enfold into 1, and the 3-in-1 folds over (decouples from the right angle) and approaches the time line, you have 3 space lines approaching parallel with the one time line. From TFA: "within this regime, space stretches only a third as quickly as time." Restated, three space dimensions together would stretch at the same rate (under these conditions) as the one time dimension.
Of course that may just be my tendency towards visual cognition trying to fit things together. Therefore, the question: can anybody suggest a 'for dummies' version? Something that describes the math rather than requiring one to follow the mathematical development? Pictures would be helpful.
Special relativity, of course, forbids sending information faster than light. A theory supplanting the space-time unification of General Relativity would also supplant special relativity, and hence might not have that limitation. Here's an inteersting tidbit from the article: "Gia Dvali, a quantum gravity expert at CERN, remains cautious. A few years ago he tried a similar trick, breaking apart space and time in an attempt to explain dark energy. But he abandoned his model because it allowed information to be communicated faster than the speed of light."
I'd call that a feature, not a bug!
As it is written, so shall it be done.
In TFA: "he explains that within this regime, space stretches only a third as quickly as time." Take the inverse of the space-like concept, and space is compressed 3:1 vs time not at all. The speed of light itself may still indeed be glued to space, but information might still travel faster. In particular, this may apply to the theorized disparity between the speed of gravitational waves and gravitational radiation (see http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_speed.html and http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_radiation.html ). The former has been estimated at 0.8 to 1.2 c and there's little reason to think it's other than c. The latter is not necessarily constrained, and as this article states could be determined if a very high energy event involved both EM and g propagation could be detected.
If pressed, Dr. Boahen himself would contradict the Discover article and say the chips were not "brain like" at all. He's working from the same place Karl Pribram worked from 50 years ago, and Karl still can't say he knows how the brain works. Simulating a process that's assumed to be a part of brain function because it can produce results more effectively and/or efficiently that brute force digital computing does not make it "brain like". The comparison/contrast done on power consumption doesn't make a case for similarity to brain function either. It's even more misleading because the sole source of power for the brain is metabolism of glucose, with no consideration of Ohm's law and such to be taken into account.
Some of the most primitive neural networking devices were capable of learning to a depth and at a speed far outstripping the brain when the number of neurons/switched are taken into account. To make a chip more "brain like" is to negate that benefit. There are 7 billion human brains running around loose, and way too many cat brains if you ask the SPCA. We don't need to build more. At least not the hard way. What we need are devices that can out perform the brain in specialized functions. Mimicking a process in order to mimic a result does not produce an efficient process or even an efficient mimicking. Building in "noise" when one doesn't even understand what the noise is for (here taken in the signal processing sense: anything other than a defined signal is noise) doesn't improve the situation. Even more salient, building a digital simulation of an analog process introduces error that compounds the longer it runs. No, not even neurons "firing" are digital in nature. They require a voltage curve specific to the neuron type that in general follows a specific pattern of hyperpolarization and depolarization which is itself analog. Furthermore, the voltage measured is a change over time either inside or outside the cell membrane; taken together the internal and external voltages balance as to the respective changes. Digital signals are one voltage throughout the channel.
The continual insistence at trying to satisfy the descriptor "brain like" when one doesn't have an accurate description of that the brain itself is like, only makes Edsger Dijkstra's quote more relevant: "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
2. Flamebait, perhaps, but "lead to political discussion" is a bit generous. I doubt the result was intended to be discussion.
1. One does not write and publish such a specific article out of ignorance. In particular one does not do so stating that medical professionals scored a test wrong leading to the error when they would have long before performed an EEG that would have given the correct result. The doctor who supposedly done the 'high tech brain scan' would not have made this error either. One does not do the research for such an article, or interview real professionals in the field, and remain so abysmally ignorant as to make the mistakes noted as well as others not mentioned. One can only remain that ignorant by not researching and not interviewing. Having not done so, to write and publish it is intentional fraud. That requires a measure of ignorance, thinking one could get away with it, but it took more besides.
The article uses coma and PVS (persistent vegetative state) interchangeably. They're not. And the symptoms described do not belong to either of those, but rather to "locked in state". Since the article makes these two glaring errors, as well as the following, I call BS on the author and Mail Online. The difference between these three states is well understood by the neurologists that would have diagnosed him after having performed the test far more accurate in differentiating these, the same EEG that's been around for far longer than this man's problems. There'd be no reason to use a far more expensive and far less accurate test.
The article is a troll, intended solely to push peoples' buttons regarding with regards to the life support and health care cost issues. If I'm wrong about it being a troll, fine, but I'm not wrong about it being a fake. The details show that it was written with no understanding of the subject, which would not have happened if actual neurologists were consulting on a real case and were interviewed for a story. There's too many problems for them to be able to weasel out of it by claiming there were 'some mistakes'.
Of course the global warming hysterics true tyrannical intentions have been unmasked. Stories like this have zero credibility and do not belong in the politics not science section. How about a story about a space elevator?
Oh heck no, I want to see more of this stuff. It's got to be better than science coming from an unbiased source. You can tell it's the truth because it has an actual email in it. When we're done here, I'd like to see the absolute, inarguable proof that Pope John Paul II was a bigot by reproducing the email from him to Yassir Arafat telling the joke about black (Nelson Mandela), the redneck (George W. Bush) and the jew (Menachem Begin) going into the bar and arguing about who's going to pay for the drinks (Mandela won't drink anything until they've all paid the same amount; Begin won't pay anything unless he gets to drink the most and Bush gives him the money; Bush drinks all the drinks, shoots the bartender, and tells the other two they had all agreed the bartender WMDs behind the bar even though they turned out to be those little umbrellas he likes so much in his drinks). If you like, I can help with the headers to make it even more true than the email in the blog post by making them all accurate including IP numbers, even if the headers say it was sent after both were dead.
I'm just kidding, the pope didn't tell that joke. I just made that joke up. He told the one about "Peter, I can see your house from up here."
GOOD SCIENCE is all I ask for, which mean never hear the words ''the debate is over''. Here is a link to an article from the WSJ on hacked emails showing scientists deliberately manipulating data to get results they want.
There was the link to the WSJ article with supposedly hacked emails manipulated to show what [WSJ/hackers/you] wanted them to show.
You can't tell what [evidence/data] was manipulated by whom and why, yet you're willing to assume one assertion true and another false. Until you're willing to reject irreplicable and unsupportable assertions generated by anyone suggesting any point they wish to make from these, there's no point in trying to evaluate the science.
You can, however, evaluate evaluations of the science involved using the above paragraph as an example. If someone says something is wrong, do they simply repeat that from another unverifiable source, or can they actually take issue with the data as presented and the methods by which is was obtained? In the weekly circle jerk here on this subject I rarely see a single instance of anyone going any deeper than an appeal to authority (that's an error in logic) quoting a particular assertion that happens to fit their viewpoint. That's from both sides, and it's only mostly due to inability of the respondents to evaluate the actual work. When it says what someone wants it to say, we entirely fail to see any of the otherwise ubiquitous "not peer reviewed" flags. Lest it need be said, WSJ is never peer reviewed, so both its assertions and any conclusions to be drawn from the data presented (or presented as tainted) is invalid.
"Most people think they are thinking when what they are really doing is rearranging their prejudices." -- William James
Oh, and although I quote a particular post and reply with "you" I do so taking the former as an example of many such posts and the latter as a generic plural.
SF doesn't run on steam. It runs on sales. Look at what's selling now vs. then.
Prediction is still as prevalent. It just has to be further and further out because of the acceleration of technologies. It's harder to hit the single-generation prediction window.
TFA uses technology and computing interchangeably. Computing is a subset. Computing is becoming predictable, and those that write about it are paying more attention to it rather than simply imagining. Not to do so leaves them open to criticism from, well, pretty much the entire audience of TFA and its transfer over here.
There's a lot more very visually descriptive, realistic-science SF now days being used as the basis for social commentary/prediction. Figure those predictions into the field's output and see if things don't even back out.
Other technologies are not being so smoothed, pre-compressed, pre-approved and second guessed. They're not suffering from the prediction deficit. Frinstance, the second place Hugo nominee from 1971 (the first place being "no award") isn't heavy on the details, but the technology necessary is barely less than overt: "There's a star ship circling in the sky, it's gonna be ready by 1990. They'll be building it up in the air, ever since 1980. People with a clever plan can assume the role of the mighty. Hijack the star ship, carry 7000 people past the sun." [Blows Against The Empire -- Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship]
Finally, it's pretty silly to set a standard and claim other works don't measure up to it unless you can objectively show it to measure out as such. And if it did, the resulting article wouldn't be "isn't it great that subsequent SF is keeping pace with..." it's be saying "what a damn shame that everybody is copying X and riding on its coat tails." Gwan, you know you would. If you want a more interesting and applicable (as well as less predictable) answer, instead of having some techies from a techie magazine try to apply techie tunnelvision so they can sound halfway relevant, ask some SF writers to answer it. Just don't ask those who, despite being credited with helping start a new SF movement (especially a tech based one) did so almost entirely without knowledge of the current tech much less predicted future. If you do, you'll likely get an answer something like "Hell, what did I know? I wasn't predicting, I was writing fiction."
We had a 1976 "pandemic" too. They called it off when 10 people got Guillian-Barre syndrome from the vaccinations. 25 have this time, and they haven't called it off yet. In neither case was morbidity or mortality of the 'swine flu' greater than that of common variants.
I've seen good evidence that someone innoculated against H1N1 only won't get it. I've seen none that shows they can't carry it. I've seen some that suggests those who get the "seasonal" vaccine only are more likely to get H1N1. There's enough "seasonal" vaccine for most everyone who wants it. H1N1 vaccine is going to run out before 30 million doses. Dispensing both until supply or demand dictates otherwise would therefore tend to perpetuate the H1N1 'pandemic'.
The physicians I've questioned agreed that the sole difference between "seasonal" and H1N1 is that the latter has no effective treatment. The sole effective treatment for "seasonal" is Tamiflu at US$90 per regimen. I hypothesize that if there were a $90 treatment regimen for H1N1, there wouldn't be a vaccine.
My friend got sick with some flu-like symptoms, but far more unlike flu. She went to her doctor and got tested for flu. It was negative. That was to be expected since she'd had the vaccine from his office. He prescribed Tamiflu anyway. $90 later she was sicker. So was I. A week and bottle of Keflex later our bronchitis was gone, and all it cost us in medications both helpful and not, office visits and lost income was $1500 plus half her allotted sick days for a year. The doctor's response when asked how he could justify treating something that wasn't there and charging for it was an ingratiating smile wrapped around a "Well, you're not sick anymore are you? OK then." My diagnosis and bottle of Keflex were both free from the VA, making the implication he did something right all the more galling.
Just a guess, but I'm thinking that the vaccine left her immunosuppresed while she developed the flu antibody load and made her susceptible to the bronchitis. I haven't seen anything from CDC on other morbidities subsequent to flu vaccines.
I also haven't fully wrapped my head around the 2006 patent for attenuated H1N1 apparently intended for preparing a vaccine for a pandemic (specified as such in the patent) when there was no sign of one occurring. Good guessing maybe. That doesn't address why the previous Big Scare, H5N1 (bird flu) produced no patent, vaccine, or pandemic.
National Institutes of Health were doing pod/vodcasting including via subscription when I first arrived in June 2002. The office responsible is the Center for Informational Technology. The benefit here is that NIH is under instruction from the office of the director to make every effort to provide information to the people for whose benefit NIH exists, the US public. Although intended to refer to health information, there is nothing in the directives that preclude CIT from providing details regarding *casting technology history as well as evidence in the form of samples from their archives.
"...Is Nearing the Market" is a damn far cry from "the first of two Phase III studies, which got under way earlier this month".
A phase III often lasts years, and considering the potential dangers of messing with chemicals that mimic neurotransmitters, this will be one. Even if the second runs concurrent or nearly so, I expect FDA blessings no sooner than 2016. If they're run serially, 2020+. "Nearing market" like fusion reactors are nearing break even. Slam.
"NicVAX works by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to nicotine in the bloodstream, making the nicotine molecule too large to cross the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain."
Which doesn't do a damn bit of good for the nicotinic acetylcholine (nAch) receptors in the mouth and throat that react within seconds of taking a drag, or the physiological effects that occur within the first minute, or the significant high and/or reduction in withdrawal symptoms resulting from the association between these, all of which happens twice as fast a peak plasma nicotine levels in the brain following injection into the carotid artery to say nothing of the nicotine binding to enough nAch receptors there to have a central effect. The former is a significant part of the addiction. It's not a strong as the latter, but failure to take it into account makes the difference between 80% success and 80% failure in cessation experiments using transdermal nicotine replacement. Dunk.
Nicotine is far from the only psychoactive in tobacco. At least one other (trimethylnaphthoquinone) has several actions that would make it likely to be involved in tobacco addiction. It is both a dopamine release stimulator and reuptake inhibitor, cocaine being one of the few other substances having both actions. TMN is also an MAO inhibitor, allowing a greater build up of dopamine and its products epinepherine and norepinepherine (those are central; peripherally they're called adrenaline and noradrenaline). The excess of these excitatory neurotransmitters/hormones results in physiological stimulation indistinguishable from that caused by nicotinic action. And that's just one. There's several thousands we haven't studied yet. Even if this were the only one, you could entrap plasma nicotine all day long and this could maintain an addiction, ie. keep someone smoking. Possibly smoking even more and accumulating more damage trying to get as much effect out the the tobacco. The clinical trails aren't testing other sources, only safety and efficacy with respect to nicotine binding. Flush.
I thought it was about Androids. Maybe military ones.
Ah. Well then, these are not the droids you're looking for. Unless perhaps these are the ones on the TV commercial being dropped by a squadron of stealth fighters only to do some high speed post hole digging and suffer significant damage in the process. The focusing problem explains the action in the ad, which otherwise has no point. Given the new data, perhaps it should be re-edited:
Wide shot: several F-117s in close formation pull into view. Medium shot: pilot in helmet and goggles seen through front windscreen. Close up: Pilot's gloved hand pushes trigger. Medium: door opens in bottom of plane and object launches. "Fox 3. Sprint PCS signal detected. Targeting towers." Wide: Objects fly ahead from under each of the planes, veering off into wildly different trajectories. "Target acquired. Bearing two six zero. Uh. Six two zero?" "Bearing two through six, range fifty, no fifteen..." "Blue side up, green side down. Blue side up, green side down...." Cut in: Shot of Bomb 20 hanging beneath Dark Star: "And I saw that I was alone...." Close up, Sgt. Pinback sitting at Dark Star firing control: "Hey..... Bomb?" Several rapid shots of objects impacting with supersonic soil spreading and creative crater creation. Medium shot, up from inside crater, two cowboys peer down over rim. Cowboy 1: "What the heck is it?" Medium, down from rim. Object opens showing metal iris. Close up, iris opens showing lens. "Can you hear me now? Hello? Is there anybody there?" Medium, up from inside crater. Cowboys scowl, stand, turn and walk away. Scene: cowboys' receding backs, going out of focus and blurring. Both cowboys together (disgustedly): "Droids." Voice over: "Verizon Droids. At least we can still hear you.... That is you, isn't it?" Pan up. Falling from high altitude, a bowl of petunias. "Oh, no. Not again." Cut to black.
Do you really want someone drilling holes in your head and shoving wires into it just so you don't have to type and use a mouse? Do you have any idea how many of these things you'll need shoved through your skull to be able to fore go just those two activities? (Hundreds) Do you realize that implants hasten neuron death and as they die you'll need to associated electrodes replaced? And just who makes enough money to pay for undergoing dozens (at least!) of invasive implantation surgeries requiring real time CT or MR imaging? You insurance damn sure won't pay for it. And don't give me that "for the disabled" crap -- they don't get the expensive stuff either.
You don't need implants for brain "waves". Implants are better suited for detecting neural firing patterns on a much smaller scale. But you can get the job done with "waves" (EEG) without having to trephan yourself.
There are now EEG systems that have the premap on the electrode, making impedance issues irrelevant and signal balancing automatic. There are EEG analysis packages that use continuous wavelet analysis to do time/frequency analysis similar to the "thousands of channels" analysis radio-astronomers enjoy. Between these two, and 'training' a system to recognize a particular person's EEG patterns well enough to control a device like a computer, the other EEG related problems like skin potentials, EMG and EKG artifact become non-issues. And as far as localization, I can reliably localize 40 to 50 signals simultaneously with this technology using a high density (256 or more) electrode EEG.
This technology exists now. The computing power necessary to operate in as a control system in real time is beyond most people's ability to purchase. So if the nice folks from Intel will kindly put down the cranial drill and get back to what they're good at, maybe by 2020 we can have the sort of computing power sitting on everyone's desk if not sitting in a handheld device in their pocket.
And get away from that fMRI. I don't care what you think you saw. I saw the fMRI "brain scan" of the dead salmon showing it lighting up as it recognized a human emotion from a photo it had been shown before (but while still dead).
" raising privacy concerns " is a ubiquitous trigger cliche tossed out by people who want to inflame and enrage. It is as hollow as 'raising awareness' because neither are things that are raised, they are things you become, or become more so.
In this case, the persons or agents raising 'concern' are Wired and Times, who just might want readers so they can get ad money, and a lawyer that specializes in genomics, who just might want to attract clients for a law suit from which he'll collect big time (despite the fact that the as yet imaginary court battle would be over IP and privacy, neither of which are related to genomics). Oh, and a spokescritter from a group dedicated to watching tech and waving their arms, calling out 'Danger, Will Robinson' any time they can pretend something technological might be involved in anything that they can yell about and hope those who notice will join up and pay dues -- oh yes, so they can collect some cash too.
TFA states specifically who has the data and what they can and cannot do with it. In purchasing the assets of DeCODE, Saga is bound by law to protect the data. Despite this clear statement, the writers see fit to have "privacy advocates", that is, people who appoint themselves to speak on others' behalf without asking them, be 'concerned' that Saga will do this anyway.
In other words, the only people for whom this is an issue have a vested (ie. financial) interest in there being an issue, many of which have no relationship or arrangement with the persons whose data in involved in this imaginary 'concern' beyond their imaginary right to speak for those individuals.
I call BS on the bunch of them. There's not a single DeCODE client among them*. The only person interviewed who is actually involved is the CEO of DeCODE, who knows what needs to be done and is doing it. Not even Iceland's first lady is concerned, and wouldn't even be involved in this imaginary issue if it weren't for the fact that the Wired writer knew her premise was weak without an actual imaginary victim, so she dug until she found someone who was a client and tossed her name out in close proximity to concocted claims about privacy and such in order to lend the color of legitimacy to an otherwise transparent FUD spew.
If you have two identical pieces of music and you require people to rank them in order of preference, then the results will necessarily be perfectly random. This provides a built-in calibration.
Conversely, if the results are not random, then the people could necessarily tell differences in them.
Imagine if you merely asked people to say whether they perceived a difference but without asking them which one they prefer. Such a design would have no built-in "calibration", in the sense that it has no objective way of signalling when two pieces are identical.
Both are fine test designs. The one you suggest is pretty much the one they used. But it does not test the hypothesis. The forced preference choice precludes a "no" answer to the (one would assume) yes or not required to be able to tell if they can or can't tell the difference.
While I agree with you generally (even if your post has its flaws, pointed out already in other asnwer), why do you think people should be trained in how original sounds before the tests? It would preciselly work against determining whether people can hear the difference.
Short answer: control.
If they know how it's supposed to sound, they can better tell when it doesn't sound right. They can then say that both sound the same, but they sound wrong, and you know that the compression caused the same artifact or noise, and that they'd have been able to tell them apart otherwise.
I think it's pretty much a given that compression can be detected or we wouldn't have expanders to compensate. It'd be more telling to test various amounts of compression to see where people stop being able to tell the difference, then looking at the compressed music to see if it's more or less compressed than the "just noticeable difference".
As far as judging what they're hearing, they should not only be using a source familiar to them but also a reproduction system. They should listen through their own speakers or headphones. Different designs sound different and can make what starts out as a poorer source sound better than a better source, if the transducer emphasizes things to make that happen. Recording studios frequently have studio monitor speakers that are well known and commonly used, not because they sound better, but because they're consistent. A JBL studio monitor in Abbey Road sounds just like a JBL studio monitor in Chillocothe. They made mediocre listening at best on a home system, but they make the same listening everywhere, and they do that for a reason that the article authors couldn't possibly fathom.
The present study suffers from that methodological malady known in scientific circles as being "fucked". Please bear with me as I explain this technical term.
The question posed in the text is 'can we tell the difference'. One assumes from this that the answer is yes or no. Testing this question would require playing two versions and asking whether they're the same (can't tell the difference) or different (can etc.).
But that's not what gets asked. The subjects get asked to tell which version sounds better. The question assumes they can tell the difference. Even if they can't tell the difference they are forced by the design to choose one over the other as if they can.
Since they are forced to say which sounds better even if they can't tell the difference (something impossible to determine from this design) then they are simply guessing or picking one arbitrarily, and there is no way to determine if or when this occurred. Thus, the results are not only unable to answer the original question, they are unable to answer anything because the data do not even necessarily represent answers.
The design is so fatally flawed that there is nothing that can be pulled out of it. It's complete garbage.
As an aside, I'm not familiar with the musical pieces used, but I'm betting they're fairly new. For years now recordings have been increasingly compressed by the engineers. Most popular works produced in this decade are already so compressed that you can't tell much difference between the original and a recording of it having been compressed yet again, no matter by what method.
To tell the difference between compressed versions one should start with an uncompressed source. And for a person to be able to hear a difference in two versions, they should already be familiar with the original in uncompressed form so they can try to say whether one sounds more like the original than the other (the alternative being both sound worse or both sound like it). If they have no clue what it's supposed to sound like, any attempt to say which sounds better is badly broken due to having no reference with which to compare them.
No attempt was made to determine whether the subjects even had normal hearing. And I don't mean just asked (though that should be done) but tested. People can have frequency drop outs that they're unaware of and that would affect the results.
There are so many problems with the study that it is completely useless. The problems were of the authors' making. Thus, they did not know what they were doing. This is what we mean by "fucked".
I want to know who determined that 'trusted' was a good name for the magazine/blog/honey wagon in which the article appears. I wouldn't trust them to test light bulbs to see if they're burnt out.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.wickmanspacecraft.com/wspcnews.html
John Wickman has been working on aluminum/oxidizer (LOX, not ice) motors since the 80s. His are intended to run on lunar soil.
Also in the can, a jet engine that runs on Martian atmosphere. Development from Oberth's original ammonium nitrate motors as an alternative to ammonium perchlorate.
Now working on NASA's SHARP re-entry vehicle. He's also one of the few pros that teach his craft at the amateur level and consult out to rocketers who want to carry out major projects.
"Rocket scientist" used to be a compliment. That fell away as they numbered into the tens of thousands and each did a tiny piece of engineering. This guy earns that title all over again.
It's the time of year to celebrate many different things religious or religion-derived. So true to form the marketoids come up with a name that not only ignores the origin of the celebrations but also ignores itself, instead focusing entirely on the only thing the marketoids can perceive, making money.
Every time I see the words I cringe. How do you answer "How did your Black Friday turn out?" Well, let's see. I went to a leadership seminar hosted by Charles Manson then had lunch with Jeffery Dahmer. After lunch I signed up for flying lessons so I can learn to fly an airliner, but not land it.
There's two major sides to this issue.
That's a shame. There should be another, listed under WTF Does That Even Mean?
Programming continues entirely oblivious to one more or less language of more or less capability/complexity and/or simplicity/ease of use. The parameters of this one language do not affect any other language or the flow of logic necessary for developing an algorithm. The development of BASIC, Forth, Java and Logo were all simplifications. Programming has remained undumbed regardless.
Dumbing down is the negative connotation, simplifying is the positive.
Powerful is the positive connotation, complicated is the negative.
The denotation? Programming is its own denotation.
Nothing sparks a debate on ZDnet except ZDnet, and they do it for the simple reason of trying to interest the readers to turn pages and see ads. When they do it successfully the embedded triggers can be transferred to other venues such as /. intact, causing people to react as if there were a debate rather than a hollow question framed as a basis for confrontational discourse despite there being, at the base of it, nothing of useful meaning in the question.
However, this begs the question that if ZDnet can create validity out of thin air by developing a question that spurs discussion, and so turn the question into a meaningful one, may I not do the same and assert with assured validity that by hiring writers that produce material devoid of any objective content or concrete knowledge to be gained, and that by publishing the same, ZDnet is dumbing down ZDnet? In for a penny, in for a pound. This being the case, we can and should ignore TFA.
What happens when I'm tagging a photo but listening to music at the same time?
Or I run the photo tagging software in a small window and watch a movie (or some porn) instead?
So they can create tags from brain waves, but there's no way to tell what a user is actually focussing on.
If you were in a sensory deprivation tank with the only perceptual cue the target image, you'd still have hundreds to thousands of competing cognitions boiling away, fighting for processing space on their way to awareness, few of them making it but all taking up some resources and generating some signal. But these, as well as any ongoing stimulus like music, are not locked in time with the stimulus presentation and so are random as compared to the stimuli. When processed the signal is cut at the same point compared to the stimulus and the many samples averaged to zero out the 'random' 'noise'. What's left is a good estimate of the signal. This averaging technique is very common in EEG and other electrophysiology measurements. So much so that it's built into virtually all data collection software. For a description see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoked_potential
I used to work in an EEG lab, and I can tell you that those caps are pretty uncomfortable to wear. After they put them on, you stick these little needles into the leads and squirt conductive goop on your scalp. It takes a few cycles to rinse that stuff out too.
Smitty, we've come a long way from those caps. There are now "caps" that are essentially nets of elastic cord with plastic cups containing pieces of sponge in them, the electrodes embedded in the sponge. Dip it in mild salt water for conduction, shake it out so there's no drips running together bridging the electrode sites, and pull it on. I could get good signal on 128 channels in less than 10 minutes from the time they walked in to data collection start.
There is also a European company selling a similar get up, but the preamps are built into the cups on the net, making impedance matching irrelevant and signal balancing automatic on the fly. These are so stable that they can be used ambulatory.
And nobody ever has to get goop or glue stuck on/into them any more.
Ants carry with them a cognitive map, that is an image of their environment (created from perceived and recalled information) and a self-image (their kinesthetic perception of their self embedded in the environment). They compare their environment with their self image constantly to locate/orient themselves and detect/evaluate potentially positive or negative environmental elements. In that comparison is direction and distance related information with which they can estimate walking time/steps. If either or both cues are changed, the result differs because their estimates based on accumulated information changes slower that real time information based on environment + self. This is a non-conscious process, just as it mostly is in us. It is essentially a dynamic component of the environment capable to actively interaction with the rest of the environment. The cognitive map is a well known mental construct from cognitive psychology, the embedded-in-environment concept is taken from evolutionary psychology. The former could count as support that fact that the suggested mechanism depends on heuristic processing producing the 'fastest good enough' result, often with some error but usually not enough to be totally wrong, as opposed to counting which implies an ongoing real time abstraction compared with a more detailed or accurate perception of the environment which is constantly updated. Besides the implication that self-awareness of some amount may be necessary for this, the cognitive load required for the heuristic process is far less than that of the more accurate real time processing. In the end, ants behave as if they are counting, as do we frequently. Just because we can doesn't mean we always or even usually do, and even if they can't 'think out loud' doesn't mean they can't have and use a process that produces as result as if they can. Lesser creatures can exhibit behaviors that appears as if higher level processing is occurring but which can be explained by the far more acceptable dynamic internal/external environmental processing concept. As an example I recommend Darwin's writings on his observations of the behavior of earth worms.
As much as I dislike fMRI research due to the technical problems compounding with far too little understanding of the technology and errors on the part of far too many researchers, this is one topic on which it has some merit. There's been enough MRI (including the f- variant) work done on limbic systems and disorders that the body of results approaches validation. In the absence of deep brain trauma (there being none on this case) one can assume the structural abnormalities to have pre-existed, making the 1983-2009 time span less problematic.
However, although psychopaths tend to show certain differences, showing those differences does not mean the person is a psychopath. As TFA states there are other tests that have been used for longer that are more reliable. In fact, skin conductance is very good. Psychopaths (and habitual criminals without that specific diagnosis) show a rapid rise in skin conductance to violent imagery, but return to baselines much more quickly than 'normal' persons. Easy, cheap, and replicated year after year.
From the description in TFA I think a very useful illustration of the concepts of the 3 to 1 space enfolding and the decoupling of space and time as equivalent in relativistic terms can be seen in "A Brief History Of Time". Hawking describes his alternative to a big bang singularity, showing that near the event, time and space would fold into each other, rounding off the point of the light cone. The illustrations use a single space dimension line to represent all 3. Here the picture can simply be taken as more accurate than that schematic had intended to portray. In ABHoT time and space lose their right angle relationship, a function of relativity. Here, they lose their relativistic relationship at high energies (a singularity should probably count), become decoupled in their original sense, and take on a different relationship. Taken together, if the 3 space dimensions enfold into 1, and the 3-in-1 folds over (decouples from the right angle) and approaches the time line, you have 3 space lines approaching parallel with the one time line. From TFA: "within this regime, space stretches only a third as quickly as time." Restated, three space dimensions together would stretch at the same rate (under these conditions) as the one time dimension.
Of course that may just be my tendency towards visual cognition trying to fit things together. Therefore, the question: can anybody suggest a 'for dummies' version? Something that describes the math rather than requiring one to follow the mathematical development? Pictures would be helpful.
Special relativity, of course, forbids sending information faster than light. A theory supplanting the space-time unification of General Relativity would also supplant special relativity, and hence might not have that limitation. Here's an inteersting tidbit from the article: "Gia Dvali, a quantum gravity expert at CERN, remains cautious. A few years ago he tried a similar trick, breaking apart space and time in an attempt to explain dark energy. But he abandoned his model because it allowed information to be communicated faster than the speed of light."
I'd call that a feature, not a bug!
As it is written, so shall it be done.
In TFA: "he explains that within this regime, space stretches only a third as quickly as time." Take the inverse of the space-like concept, and space is compressed 3:1 vs time not at all. The speed of light itself may still indeed be glued to space, but information might still travel faster. In particular, this may apply to the theorized disparity between the speed of gravitational waves and gravitational radiation (see http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_speed.html and http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_radiation.html ). The former has been estimated at 0.8 to 1.2 c and there's little reason to think it's other than c. The latter is not necessarily constrained, and as this article states could be determined if a very high energy event involved both EM and g propagation could be detected.
If pressed, Dr. Boahen himself would contradict the Discover article and say the chips were not "brain like" at all. He's working from the same place Karl Pribram worked from 50 years ago, and Karl still can't say he knows how the brain works. Simulating a process that's assumed to be a part of brain function because it can produce results more effectively and/or efficiently that brute force digital computing does not make it "brain like". The comparison/contrast done on power consumption doesn't make a case for similarity to brain function either. It's even more misleading because the sole source of power for the brain is metabolism of glucose, with no consideration of Ohm's law and such to be taken into account.
Some of the most primitive neural networking devices were capable of learning to a depth and at a speed far outstripping the brain when the number of neurons/switched are taken into account. To make a chip more "brain like" is to negate that benefit. There are 7 billion human brains running around loose, and way too many cat brains if you ask the SPCA. We don't need to build more. At least not the hard way. What we need are devices that can out perform the brain in specialized functions. Mimicking a process in order to mimic a result does not produce an efficient process or even an efficient mimicking. Building in "noise" when one doesn't even understand what the noise is for (here taken in the signal processing sense: anything other than a defined signal is noise) doesn't improve the situation. Even more salient, building a digital simulation of an analog process introduces error that compounds the longer it runs. No, not even neurons "firing" are digital in nature. They require a voltage curve specific to the neuron type that in general follows a specific pattern of hyperpolarization and depolarization which is itself analog. Furthermore, the voltage measured is a change over time either inside or outside the cell membrane; taken together the internal and external voltages balance as to the respective changes. Digital signals are one voltage throughout the channel.
The continual insistence at trying to satisfy the descriptor "brain like" when one doesn't have an accurate description of that the brain itself is like, only makes Edsger Dijkstra's quote more relevant: "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
2. Flamebait, perhaps, but "lead to political discussion" is a bit generous. I doubt the result was intended to be discussion.
1. One does not write and publish such a specific article out of ignorance. In particular one does not do so stating that medical professionals scored a test wrong leading to the error when they would have long before performed an EEG that would have given the correct result. The doctor who supposedly done the 'high tech brain scan' would not have made this error either. One does not do the research for such an article, or interview real professionals in the field, and remain so abysmally ignorant as to make the mistakes noted as well as others not mentioned. One can only remain that ignorant by not researching and not interviewing. Having not done so, to write and publish it is intentional fraud. That requires a measure of ignorance, thinking one could get away with it, but it took more besides.
Actually, I call troll.
The article uses coma and PVS (persistent vegetative state) interchangeably. They're not. And the symptoms described do not belong to either of those, but rather to "locked in state". Since the article makes these two glaring errors, as well as the following, I call BS on the author and Mail Online. The difference between these three states is well understood by the neurologists that would have diagnosed him after having performed the test far more accurate in differentiating these, the same EEG that's been around for far longer than this man's problems. There'd be no reason to use a far more expensive and far less accurate test.
The article is a troll, intended solely to push peoples' buttons regarding with regards to the life support and health care cost issues. If I'm wrong about it being a troll, fine, but I'm not wrong about it being a fake. The details show that it was written with no understanding of the subject, which would not have happened if actual neurologists were consulting on a real case and were interviewed for a story. There's too many problems for them to be able to weasel out of it by claiming there were 'some mistakes'.
Of course the global warming hysterics true tyrannical intentions have been unmasked. Stories like this have zero credibility and do not belong in the politics not science section. How about a story about a space elevator?
Oh heck no, I want to see more of this stuff. It's got to be better than science coming from an unbiased source. You can tell it's the truth because it has an actual email in it. When we're done here, I'd like to see the absolute, inarguable proof that Pope John Paul II was a bigot by reproducing the email from him to Yassir Arafat telling the joke about black (Nelson Mandela), the redneck (George W. Bush) and the jew (Menachem Begin) going into the bar and arguing about who's going to pay for the drinks (Mandela won't drink anything until they've all paid the same amount; Begin won't pay anything unless he gets to drink the most and Bush gives him the money; Bush drinks all the drinks, shoots the bartender, and tells the other two they had all agreed the bartender WMDs behind the bar even though they turned out to be those little umbrellas he likes so much in his drinks). If you like, I can help with the headers to make it even more true than the email in the blog post by making them all accurate including IP numbers, even if the headers say it was sent after both were dead.
I'm just kidding, the pope didn't tell that joke. I just made that joke up. He told the one about "Peter, I can see your house from up here."
GOOD SCIENCE is all I ask for, which mean never hear the words ''the debate is over''. Here is a link to an article from the WSJ on hacked emails showing scientists deliberately manipulating data to get results they want.
There was the link to the WSJ article with supposedly hacked emails manipulated to show what [WSJ/hackers/you] wanted them to show.
You can't tell what [evidence/data] was manipulated by whom and why, yet you're willing to assume one assertion true and another false. Until you're willing to reject irreplicable and unsupportable assertions generated by anyone suggesting any point they wish to make from these, there's no point in trying to evaluate the science.
You can, however, evaluate evaluations of the science involved using the above paragraph as an example. If someone says something is wrong, do they simply repeat that from another unverifiable source, or can they actually take issue with the data as presented and the methods by which is was obtained? In the weekly circle jerk here on this subject I rarely see a single instance of anyone going any deeper than an appeal to authority (that's an error in logic) quoting a particular assertion that happens to fit their viewpoint. That's from both sides, and it's only mostly due to inability of the respondents to evaluate the actual work. When it says what someone wants it to say, we entirely fail to see any of the otherwise ubiquitous "not peer reviewed" flags. Lest it need be said, WSJ is never peer reviewed, so both its assertions and any conclusions to be drawn from the data presented (or presented as tainted) is invalid.
"Most people think they are thinking when what they are really doing is rearranging their prejudices." -- William James
Oh, and although I quote a particular post and reply with "you" I do so taking the former as an example of many such posts and the latter as a generic plural.
SF doesn't run on steam. It runs on sales. Look at what's selling now vs. then.
Prediction is still as prevalent. It just has to be further and further out because of the acceleration of technologies. It's harder to hit the single-generation prediction window.
TFA uses technology and computing interchangeably. Computing is a subset. Computing is becoming predictable, and those that write about it are paying more attention to it rather than simply imagining. Not to do so leaves them open to criticism from, well, pretty much the entire audience of TFA and its transfer over here.
There's a lot more very visually descriptive, realistic-science SF now days being used as the basis for social commentary/prediction. Figure those predictions into the field's output and see if things don't even back out.
Other technologies are not being so smoothed, pre-compressed, pre-approved and second guessed. They're not suffering from the prediction deficit. Frinstance, the second place Hugo nominee from 1971 (the first place being "no award") isn't heavy on the details, but the technology necessary is barely less than overt:
"There's a star ship circling in the sky,
it's gonna be ready by 1990.
They'll be building it up in the air,
ever since 1980.
People with a clever plan
can assume the role of the mighty.
Hijack the star ship,
carry 7000 people past the sun."
[Blows Against The Empire -- Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship]
Finally, it's pretty silly to set a standard and claim other works don't measure up to it unless you can objectively show it to measure out as such. And if it did, the resulting article wouldn't be "isn't it great that subsequent SF is keeping pace with..." it's be saying "what a damn shame that everybody is copying X and riding on its coat tails." Gwan, you know you would. If you want a more interesting and applicable (as well as less predictable) answer, instead of having some techies from a techie magazine try to apply techie tunnelvision so they can sound halfway relevant, ask some SF writers to answer it. Just don't ask those who, despite being credited with helping start a new SF movement (especially a tech based one) did so almost entirely without knowledge of the current tech much less predicted future. If you do, you'll likely get an answer something like "Hell, what did I know? I wasn't predicting, I was writing fiction."
We had a 1976 "pandemic" too. They called it off when 10 people got Guillian-Barre syndrome from the vaccinations. 25 have this time, and they haven't called it off yet. In neither case was morbidity or mortality of the 'swine flu' greater than that of common variants.
I've seen good evidence that someone innoculated against H1N1 only won't get it. I've seen none that shows they can't carry it. I've seen some that suggests those who get the "seasonal" vaccine only are more likely to get H1N1. There's enough "seasonal" vaccine for most everyone who wants it. H1N1 vaccine is going to run out before 30 million doses. Dispensing both until supply or demand dictates otherwise would therefore tend to perpetuate the H1N1 'pandemic'.
The physicians I've questioned agreed that the sole difference between "seasonal" and H1N1 is that the latter has no effective treatment. The sole effective treatment for "seasonal" is Tamiflu at US$90 per regimen. I hypothesize that if there were a $90 treatment regimen for H1N1, there wouldn't be a vaccine.
My friend got sick with some flu-like symptoms, but far more unlike flu. She went to her doctor and got tested for flu. It was negative. That was to be expected since she'd had the vaccine from his office. He prescribed Tamiflu anyway. $90 later she was sicker. So was I. A week and bottle of Keflex later our bronchitis was gone, and all it cost us in medications both helpful and not, office visits and lost income was $1500 plus half her allotted sick days for a year. The doctor's response when asked how he could justify treating something that wasn't there and charging for it was an ingratiating smile wrapped around a "Well, you're not sick anymore are you? OK then." My diagnosis and bottle of Keflex were both free from the VA, making the implication he did something right all the more galling.
Just a guess, but I'm thinking that the vaccine left her immunosuppresed while she developed the flu antibody load and made her susceptible to the bronchitis. I haven't seen anything from CDC on other morbidities subsequent to flu vaccines.
I also haven't fully wrapped my head around the 2006 patent for attenuated H1N1 apparently intended for preparing a vaccine for a pandemic (specified as such in the patent) when there was no sign of one occurring. Good guessing maybe. That doesn't address why the previous Big Scare, H5N1 (bird flu) produced no patent, vaccine, or pandemic.
Forwarded to EFF:
National Institutes of Health were doing pod/vodcasting including via subscription when I first arrived in June 2002. The office responsible is the Center for Informational Technology. The benefit here is that NIH is under instruction from the office of the director to make every effort to provide information to the people for whose benefit NIH exists, the US public. Although intended to refer to health information, there is nothing in the directives that preclude CIT from providing details regarding *casting technology history as well as evidence in the form of samples from their archives.
"...Is Nearing the Market" is a damn far cry from "the first of two Phase III studies, which got under way earlier this month".
A phase III often lasts years, and considering the potential dangers of messing with chemicals that mimic neurotransmitters, this will be one. Even if the second runs concurrent or nearly so, I expect FDA blessings no sooner than 2016. If they're run serially, 2020+. "Nearing market" like fusion reactors are nearing break even. Slam.
"NicVAX works by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to nicotine in the bloodstream, making the nicotine molecule too large to cross the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain."
Which doesn't do a damn bit of good for the nicotinic acetylcholine (nAch) receptors in the mouth and throat that react within seconds of taking a drag, or the physiological effects that occur within the first minute, or the significant high and/or reduction in withdrawal symptoms resulting from the association between these, all of which happens twice as fast a peak plasma nicotine levels in the brain following injection into the carotid artery to say nothing of the nicotine binding to enough nAch receptors there to have a central effect. The former is a significant part of the addiction. It's not a strong as the latter, but failure to take it into account makes the difference between 80% success and 80% failure in cessation experiments using transdermal nicotine replacement. Dunk.
Nicotine is far from the only psychoactive in tobacco. At least one other (trimethylnaphthoquinone) has several actions that would make it likely to be involved in tobacco addiction. It is both a dopamine release stimulator and reuptake inhibitor, cocaine being one of the few other substances having both actions. TMN is also an MAO inhibitor, allowing a greater build up of dopamine and its products epinepherine and norepinepherine (those are central; peripherally they're called adrenaline and noradrenaline). The excess of these excitatory neurotransmitters/hormones results in physiological stimulation indistinguishable from that caused by nicotinic action. And that's just one. There's several thousands we haven't studied yet. Even if this were the only one, you could entrap plasma nicotine all day long and this could maintain an addiction, ie. keep someone smoking. Possibly smoking even more and accumulating more damage trying to get as much effect out the the tobacco. The clinical trails aren't testing other sources, only safety and efficacy with respect to nicotine binding. Flush.
I thought it was about Androids. Maybe military ones.
Ah. Well then, these are not the droids you're looking for. Unless perhaps these are the ones on the TV commercial being dropped by a squadron of stealth fighters only to do some high speed post hole digging and suffer significant damage in the process. The focusing problem explains the action in the ad, which otherwise has no point. Given the new data, perhaps it should be re-edited:
Wide shot: several F-117s in close formation pull into view.
Medium shot: pilot in helmet and goggles seen through front windscreen.
Close up: Pilot's gloved hand pushes trigger.
Medium: door opens in bottom of plane and object launches.
"Fox 3. Sprint PCS signal detected. Targeting towers."
Wide: Objects fly ahead from under each of the planes, veering off into wildly different trajectories.
"Target acquired. Bearing two six zero. Uh. Six two zero?"
"Bearing two through six, range fifty, no fifteen..."
"Blue side up, green side down. Blue side up, green side down...."
Cut in: Shot of Bomb 20 hanging beneath Dark Star:
"And I saw that I was alone...."
Close up, Sgt. Pinback sitting at Dark Star firing control: "Hey..... Bomb?"
Several rapid shots of objects impacting with supersonic soil spreading and creative crater creation.
Medium shot, up from inside crater, two cowboys peer down over rim.
Cowboy 1: "What the heck is it?"
Medium, down from rim. Object opens showing metal iris.
Close up, iris opens showing lens.
"Can you hear me now? Hello? Is there anybody there?"
Medium, up from inside crater. Cowboys scowl, stand, turn and walk away. Scene: cowboys' receding backs, going out of focus and blurring.
Both cowboys together (disgustedly): "Droids."
Voice over: "Verizon Droids. At least we can still hear you.... That is you, isn't it?"
Pan up. Falling from high altitude, a bowl of petunias. "Oh, no. Not again."
Cut to black.
Do you really want someone drilling holes in your head and shoving wires into it just so you don't have to type and use a mouse? Do you have any idea how many of these things you'll need shoved through your skull to be able to fore go just those two activities? (Hundreds) Do you realize that implants hasten neuron death and as they die you'll need to associated electrodes replaced? And just who makes enough money to pay for undergoing dozens (at least!) of invasive implantation surgeries requiring real time CT or MR imaging? You insurance damn sure won't pay for it. And don't give me that "for the disabled" crap -- they don't get the expensive stuff either.
You don't need implants for brain "waves". Implants are better suited for detecting neural firing patterns on a much smaller scale. But you can get the job done with "waves" (EEG) without having to trephan yourself.
There are now EEG systems that have the premap on the electrode, making impedance issues irrelevant and signal balancing automatic. There are EEG analysis packages that use continuous wavelet analysis to do time/frequency analysis similar to the "thousands of channels" analysis radio-astronomers enjoy. Between these two, and 'training' a system to recognize a particular person's EEG patterns well enough to control a device like a computer, the other EEG related problems like skin potentials, EMG and EKG artifact become non-issues. And as far as localization, I can reliably localize 40 to 50 signals simultaneously with this technology using a high density (256 or more) electrode EEG.
This technology exists now. The computing power necessary to operate in as a control system in real time is beyond most people's ability to purchase. So if the nice folks from Intel will kindly put down the cranial drill and get back to what they're good at, maybe by 2020 we can have the sort of computing power sitting on everyone's desk if not sitting in a handheld device in their pocket.
And get away from that fMRI. I don't care what you think you saw. I saw the fMRI "brain scan" of the dead salmon showing it lighting up as it recognized a human emotion from a photo it had been shown before (but while still dead).
" raising privacy concerns " is a ubiquitous trigger cliche tossed out by people who want to inflame and enrage. It is as hollow as 'raising awareness' because neither are things that are raised, they are things you become, or become more so.
In this case, the persons or agents raising 'concern' are Wired and Times, who just might want readers so they can get ad money, and a lawyer that specializes in genomics, who just might want to attract clients for a law suit from which he'll collect big time (despite the fact that the as yet imaginary court battle would be over IP and privacy, neither of which are related to genomics). Oh, and a spokescritter from a group dedicated to watching tech and waving their arms, calling out 'Danger, Will Robinson' any time they can pretend something technological might be involved in anything that they can yell about and hope those who notice will join up and pay dues -- oh yes, so they can collect some cash too.
TFA states specifically who has the data and what they can and cannot do with it. In purchasing the assets of DeCODE, Saga is bound by law to protect the data. Despite this clear statement, the writers see fit to have "privacy advocates", that is, people who appoint themselves to speak on others' behalf without asking them, be 'concerned' that Saga will do this anyway.
In other words, the only people for whom this is an issue have a vested (ie. financial) interest in there being an issue, many of which have no relationship or arrangement with the persons whose data in involved in this imaginary 'concern' beyond their imaginary right to speak for those individuals.
I call BS on the bunch of them. There's not a single DeCODE client among them*. The only person interviewed who is actually involved is the CEO of DeCODE, who knows what needs to be done and is doing it. Not even Iceland's first lady is concerned, and wouldn't even be involved in this imaginary issue if it weren't for the fact that the Wired writer knew her premise was weak without an actual imaginary victim, so she dug until she found someone who was a client and tossed her name out in close proximity to concocted claims about privacy and such in order to lend the color of legitimacy to an otherwise transparent FUD spew.
It's a fine test design...
If you have two identical pieces of music and you require people to rank them in order of preference, then the results will necessarily be perfectly random. This provides a built-in calibration.
Conversely, if the results are not random, then the people could necessarily tell differences in them.
Imagine if you merely asked people to say whether they perceived a difference but without asking them which one they prefer. Such a design would have no built-in "calibration", in the sense that it has no objective way of signalling when two pieces are identical.
Both are fine test designs. The one you suggest is pretty much the one they used. But it does not test the hypothesis. The forced preference choice precludes a "no" answer to the (one would assume) yes or not required to be able to tell if they can or can't tell the difference.
While I agree with you generally (even if your post has its flaws, pointed out already in other asnwer), why do you think people should be trained in how original sounds before the tests? It would preciselly work against determining whether people can hear the difference.
Short answer: control.
If they know how it's supposed to sound, they can better tell when it doesn't sound right. They can then say that both sound the same, but they sound wrong, and you know that the compression caused the same artifact or noise, and that they'd have been able to tell them apart otherwise.
Good test design.
I think it's pretty much a given that compression can be detected or we wouldn't have expanders to compensate. It'd be more telling to test various amounts of compression to see where people stop being able to tell the difference, then looking at the compressed music to see if it's more or less compressed than the "just noticeable difference".
As far as judging what they're hearing, they should not only be using a source familiar to them but also a reproduction system. They should listen through their own speakers or headphones. Different designs sound different and can make what starts out as a poorer source sound better than a better source, if the transducer emphasizes things to make that happen. Recording studios frequently have studio monitor speakers that are well known and commonly used, not because they sound better, but because they're consistent. A JBL studio monitor in Abbey Road sounds just like a JBL studio monitor in Chillocothe. They made mediocre listening at best on a home system, but they make the same listening everywhere, and they do that for a reason that the article authors couldn't possibly fathom.
The present study suffers from that methodological malady known in scientific circles as being "fucked". Please bear with me as I explain this technical term.
The question posed in the text is 'can we tell the difference'. One assumes from this that the answer is yes or no. Testing this question would require playing two versions and asking whether they're the same (can't tell the difference) or different (can etc.).
But that's not what gets asked. The subjects get asked to tell which version sounds better. The question assumes they can tell the difference. Even if they can't tell the difference they are forced by the design to choose one over the other as if they can.
Since they are forced to say which sounds better even if they can't tell the difference (something impossible to determine from this design) then they are simply guessing or picking one arbitrarily, and there is no way to determine if or when this occurred. Thus, the results are not only unable to answer the original question, they are unable to answer anything because the data do not even necessarily represent answers.
The design is so fatally flawed that there is nothing that can be pulled out of it. It's complete garbage.
As an aside, I'm not familiar with the musical pieces used, but I'm betting they're fairly new. For years now recordings have been increasingly compressed by the engineers. Most popular works produced in this decade are already so compressed that you can't tell much difference between the original and a recording of it having been compressed yet again, no matter by what method.
To tell the difference between compressed versions one should start with an uncompressed source. And for a person to be able to hear a difference in two versions, they should already be familiar with the original in uncompressed form so they can try to say whether one sounds more like the original than the other (the alternative being both sound worse or both sound like it). If they have no clue what it's supposed to sound like, any attempt to say which sounds better is badly broken due to having no reference with which to compare them.
No attempt was made to determine whether the subjects even had normal hearing. And I don't mean just asked (though that should be done) but tested. People can have frequency drop outs that they're unaware of and that would affect the results.
There are so many problems with the study that it is completely useless. The problems were of the authors' making. Thus, they did not know what they were doing. This is what we mean by "fucked".
I want to know who determined that 'trusted' was a good name for the magazine/blog/honey wagon in which the article appears. I wouldn't trust them to test light bulbs to see if they're burnt out.