"...the largest branded content company in the US, with an audience of 75 million domestic uniques."
I imagine there are providers that report the actual number of active users, but I've never been in contact with any. All that I've worked with report the number of sign-ups whether or not they remained active members. I suspect that's the case here.
To be fair with AOL, it's been my experience that their inaccuracies are as often due to incompetence as they are to prestidigitation of data. Either way, I seriously doubt the numbers, but I believe this VP of Weasel Words believes what he's saying.
This is the subject that started my research career. Got some good references below (full references are available in the mentioned PDF).
Anything that has an effect on living organisms has the potential for incurring both positive and negative effects. We just have to find the way to make things happen the way we want them to. That's been the basis of pharmacology since its origin of trying to systematically determine what it is about material from one organism that has effects on another.
There's 5,000 chemical components in a cigarette, another 10,000 in the smoke from one. We understand about 1% of those 15,000. I was fortunate enough to do my dissertation examining the effects of some of those. It was part of the project that got its results mentioned in "Thank You For Smoking" ('We just found that smoking can offset Parkinson's Disease.')
Some clinical populations use tobacco significantly more than non-clinical populations. Whereas 24% of the general population smokes, 70% of schizophrenics smoke (Adler et al., 1998), as do 42% of persons with attention deficit disorder (Lambert & Hartsough, 1998). Both of these disorders are frequently associated with deficiencies in ignoring or gating extraneous information. These persons, as well as many smokers (Edwards et al., 1985; Gilbert, 1994; Kassel, 1997), report that smoking improves their ability to concentrate and focus their attention. Nicotine may serve as an ameliorative for cognitive decline in Alzheimerâ(TM)s (for review, see Rezvani & Levin, 2001). Thus, tobacco smoking may serve a neurotherapeutic role in some groups or individuals.
Several epidemiological studies suggest that tobacco smokers contract Parkinsonâ(TM)s disease at a rate of only 25% of that of non-smokers (e.g., Morens et al., 1995). This may be due to the chronically inhibited monoamine oxidase (MAO) levels in smokers (Fowler et al., 1996; Fowler et al., 1998). Despite negative connotations due to harmful effects of smoking, tobacco remains a potentially important source of beneficial pharmaceuticals.
[And a bit later...]
The majority of studies which have investigated sensory gating deficits in schizophrenics, who often report accompanying difficulty in attentional processing and the blocking out of extraneous information or stimuli, use ratio or subtraction scores to determine degree of sensory gating and assume that differences are due to gating out mechanisms. Smoking normalizes the deficit in P50 reduction in these patients and decreases their negative symptoms (Adler et al., 1993). It is theorized that this is due to dopaminergic activity (Lyon, 1999). After reviewing this literature, DeBruin et al. (2001) point out that these sensory gating deficits observed in schizophrenics may be due to decreased S1 (gating in) rather than decreased S2 (gating out) amplitudes.
=====
The 'gating' referred to is an EEG measure similar to the startle response. Both are inhibited more or less according to an individual's make up, by a stimulus that preceeds the startling one by half a second or so. The effect is very pronounced in schizophrenics. It is also pronounced in about half the non-symptomatic first degree relatives of schizophrenics. While TFA is correct regarding nicotinic/cholonergic effects (as noted in my dissertation) it is not the only chemical at work, and the results may be better explained as an interaction of the effects of nicotine and other psychoactive substances.
The substance of our interest wasn't nicotine, it was trimethyl naphthoquinone. It was up to me to show that something other than tobacco was activ
This is precisely why in science, real science, we have the scientific method which requires that experiments/studies etc. be repeatable.
Welcome to a new incoming member of the scientific professions (some of us actually look up those links from the user names).
A tip for you from experience: Yes, proper design and methodology requires replicability. However, Wyeth and those of us out here in the lab trenches both know how hard it is just to get funded for initial research. It is almost unheard of to get funded for replications. You can get funded for an extension of previous work that requires replication as a first step, and discover contradictory results, or suspect a problem and get funded to disprove the previous work, but even those don't happen often. BigPharma banks (literally) on this. And should someone actually get funded to replicate and find problems, Wyeth et al. has deep pockets and can fund plenty of replications of their own, with obvious results. Not to say we never win this one -- just that we have to do it primarily with ingenuity. A bushel full of ornery helps, stomping your feet and yelling until people turn and listen. And when you get evidence, accuse the originators of scientific misconduct in the proper venues. Obviously it can be done because it was in this case, but it's a struggle. It's also very rewarding when you win one.
I remember selling a few of a device that was a hand held mouse/game controller (for the Atari 400/800, VIC29 and C=64). It was more like a joystick without a base, just a handle with buttons on the top. Inside were mercury switches that detected when it was tilted.
Since it had no tactile feedback nor accelerometer type detection for greater tilt, it wasn't long before the user started trying harder and harder to make it go faster (especially for games) by tilting it farther and farther, until they eventually (like 15 minutes eventually) turned it upside down and hosed the mercury switches.
I thought it was a pretty cool idea. My employees thought it was a techno-turd. But we all agreed it was hilarious to load up a fast game, plug this thing in, and let a customer play with it. Within minutes they were twisting their arm like a pretzel and dancing around trying to get body language or position to add to the speed, while cussing the device (but refusing to give up).
It really would have been a good hack except for one thing missing -- something to hold it while you typed. When you went two handed at the keyboard you had to lay it down, thereby positioning your cursor at one edge of the screen as well as ruining the merc switches.
A nice article and summary. Not entirely new nor inclusive of present theory unfortunately.
Pain is handled by two channels: nocioception, the sensation itself, and the perceptual distress component. This can easily be seen in the actions of the agents affecting each. Sensation is blocked by anesthesia. Interpretation of the pain signal is altered by analgseia -- you may still feel a sensation but you don't care, or at lest you're not so bothered by it. There are different neural pathways and processes to handle these.
It is likely that itching relates to pain in this fashion. The sensation of pressure or stretching of the skin in certain places would be common to all as their are receptors in the skin for these. A parallel pathway governing perceptual interpretation of that sensation, possibly the same one as for pain, would also exist. The resulting interpretation based on personal experience and/or genetically determined wiring would cause different interpretations of the same experience on different individuals, the same individual under different conditions, or (as is common) different locations on the same individual.
Form (circuitry) does not equal function (brain processes). A situation in which the people involved didn't grasp this fact was the pacific island cargo cults. They built crude replicas of the shiny magical giant birds on the abandoned runways in order to entice the real ones to come back and feed them some more. Extend the circuitry to trillions of switches and quadrillions of connections if you like, it'll still be a lifeless static model and nothing more.
Those billions of neurons are connected by those trillions of synapses in a very important fashion. They are connected so that no neuron is more than six synapses from any other neuron, the average being three synapses. This requires mapping the connections in a very high dimension (a mathematical term, not a throw-away physics term). Look up the Connection Machine for a lesson. In that computer the mere thousands of (RISC to the limit; 1 bit) processors were connected in a 12 D hypercube. The very efficient layout of the 12 D connection circuitry resulted in a box for the CM-1A with 1024 processors being 1.5 meters on a side, or 3.375 cubic meters. 22 billion processors? A layout one machine high would cover 49.5 square kilometers. That's a square 4.35 miles on a side. That's all due to the massive cross-over circuitry needed for the interconnectivity in the design. The circuitry to simulate brain function would require far more volume. I don't suppose you've noticed that they haven't yet done so, have you? I get the feeling that despite thinking they can simulate a brain based simply on circuitry, they don't understand just what sort of circuitry is required. The tip off is the suggestion that the circuitry might be able to be imprinted on a chip. Not even if the chip were the size of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, where they put together the space shuttle prior to launch, is my feeling.
I also get the feeling they can't define for us at what point their 'artificial intelligence' surpasses that of human intelligence because they don't have a workable, objective definition for 'intelligence'. They may think they do, but these folks aren't cognitive scientists, and we cognitive scientists know we don't.
They're trying to pack a single kind of circuitry tighter and tighter hoping to simulate a rain. But a brain has many different kinds of circuitry. And that circuitry can interact with other circuitry to either stimulate or inhibit its operation depending on input to the first. That mode selection is done by an entirely different kind of circuity in the switching system of the thalamus, and is given weighting in the form of context according to another different sort of circuitry in the limbic system. They're trying to build up to the equivalent of the neocortex so they can have something like the 'new' part of the brain, but are neglecting the infrastructure of the 'old' brain, which makes the 'new' operate like a brain, period.
They're trying to use processors as computational devices. Those have hard coded calculation capabilities. The brain uses collections of neurons for different calculations, and the same neurons can calculate in different ways according to what collection it happens to belong to at the moment, essentially being a part of a computational collective whose capabilities are reprogrammed on the fly. Also, their processors are switches, which have definite state calculations, like binary. Many brain processes are calculated by continuous 'slow potentials' instead of the binary output 'firing'. Their device can't do this.
They're using that binary output as the basis of coding for transfer of information between processing structures. Brain process output can be coded as changes in firing rate compared to resting 'spontaneous' firing (do they have spontaneous firing as a baseline?), changes in the variance of firing rate integrated over a time scale suitable for a particular process (ie. pain response vs. rational thought), pairs of pulses whose inter-pair and/or intra-pair spacing varies and so inte
" It's not clear why the bankruptcy judge opted for this solution..."
A great many of the gyrations of the case since the crack legal team that defended them came on board, as well as many to come, will make much more sense if you remember one salient point: the deal with the lawyers was that if SCO won, they'd get a cut of the winnings, but if SCO lost, they'd get a cut of the corpse.
What judge is going to order that his fellow court officers' income for a job well done get cut out of their deal? As long as it has the appearance of restructuring they can drain the coffers dry and force SCO to keep filling them as long as it has blood to let.
From PubMed, search terms 'spleen, function, monocyte, review' meaning it's only turn up review articles that cover collections of previous articles on the subject. Those research articles would be older, the reviews not so much. Still, 35 years is a fair bit of wallop to the "new discovery" claim, no?
Clin Haematol. 1975 Oct;4(3):685-703. Mononuclear phagocyte proliferation, maturation and function. Territo MC, Cline MJ.
The mononuclear phagocytic system is a continuum of cells beginning with the bone marrow monoblast and promonocyte, through the monocyte to the larger tissue macrophages and multinucleate giant cells. This system of cells is widely distributed throughout the body in the blood and bone marrow; the pleural, peritoneal, and alveolar spaces; the lymph nodes, spleen, liver, and other parenchymal organs. The activity and composition of the cell varies with the level of maturation, changes in cellular environment, and with various cellular activities. The monocyte-macrophage group of cells plays an active role in defense reactions against certain microorganisms, and in the removal of dying cells and cell debris. They are an integral part of both the inductive phase of the immune response, and of cell-mediated immune reactions. In addition, they probably play a role in the defence against spontaneously arising tumours, in the control of granulopoiesis, and possibly in erythropoiesis.
When it starts with a catchy title, especially one that has to take a swipe at something else to make room for itself, you can be sure it's got an agenda that isn't high on the list of realistic possibilities. Or else it's a parody of that.
A "panel reporting to President Obama" is one or more persons that have an idea and know the address of the White House. I have every bit the ear of the administration (ie. essentially none, sadly) and I'm a scientist. I want my headline too.
NASA's present plans are a rerun of its history of "Go, Get Back, Give Up". The stuff in TFA are apparently the opposite in every respect except for actually accomplishing a permanent exploratory and colonial presence. A combination of both, but with the intention of making each step another rung in a ladder would get us there, keep us there, and get us farther later easier and cheaper. Any program that's a subset of the Stepping Stones approach floated years before Sputnik is a waste of time and money because it requires replication of what it accomplished in order to do more later.
Here's the details as to why Branson was at Oshkosh:
"One year after its roll out WhiteKnight Two flew from Mojave to the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture show. While there, its owner Virgin Galactic announced an anticipated important next step by signing a major investor. However, the home of origin of this investor as well as many details of the merger came as a surprise. Aabar Investments http://www.aabar.com/ of the United Arab Emirates is paying $280 million for a 32% stake in Virgin Galactic, valuing the overall company at about $900 million. Aabar is also providing $100 million for the development of a smallsat launcher that would use WK2 as the launch platform, and will build spaceport facilities in Abu Dhabi and have "exclusive regional rights" for Virgin Galactic tourism and research flights. The numbers dwarf those of Virgin Galactic, which has invested $100 million developing its space flight program since it was founded in 2004. Meanwhile, WhiteKnight Two, the world's largest all carbon composite aircraft, is performing flawlessly in flight testing, and its sister craft Spaceship Two is preparing for flight testing later this year."
Branson has said he's naming it EVE. Until he takes possession of it, the name remains WhiteKnight Two.
WhiteKnight Two was "unveiled" (called a roll-out) on July 28, 2008. It has been seen flying at Mojave several times since. It's first outside public appearance was at the groundbreaking ceremony for Spaceport America June 18, 2009.
The EAA function is called AirVenture. The name was changed in 1998.
WhiteKight Two has been undergoing flight testing since its first flight on December 21, 2008 (this ironically taken from the EAA News). Flight testing of Spaceship Two is scheduled for later this year.
That's the problem with grabbing something off the Firehose and not looking into any of the details before submitting it.
Nothing here states why WhiteKnight Two was taken to Oshkosh. It wasn't so the attendees could gawk at it or because Virgin Galactic needed the ticket sales. A pending submission covers this so I'll hold back and see how that turns out.
"FSA Finds No Health Benefits" means "fails to find", not "finds that there is no". The latter would require testing the foods. They did not. They read "the literature". There nothing in TFA that indicates whether the literature was as "independent" as their own report.
Since by "independent" they mean "commissioned, conducted, (peer) reviewed and published entirely by FSA", they mean precisely the opposite of "independent". Given this, one can safely assume they would at least feel free to report "no health benefits" when they mean the opposite.
In fact, since by "no important differences" they not only mean but come out and state "A small number of differences" it's apparent they are making the sort of value judgements usually derived from data. In the absence of data (which may well be subject to the same sort of selective re-evaluation and definition contrary to common connotation, or simply manufactured if they even bother to produce any) they apparently feel free to apply the word "important" arbitrarily to suit their intention, already shown to differ significantly from pesky facts and such.
Politicians are protected by the law so that they may support a particular point in discussion or legislation without having fear of reprisal influence their pursuit of the best alternative among many. When this is done with science, it is no longer science, and as far as I know scientists are not so protected. That is, of course, unless they are not scientists despite their presentation as such, but rather politicians. Finding out the facts in this matter would simply require filing charges of scientific misconduct against the individuals that maintain the results and summary presented here are accurate, and wait to see whether their asses are yanked out of a well deserved fire by politicians.
A last little bit of blackish white is the "fact" that "The FSA commissioned this research as part of its commitment to giving consumers accurate information about their food, based on the most up-to-date[1] science[2]." [1] They used literature spanning half a century, making most of their information not "the most up to date". [2] They did no science, they only claimed to have done a literature review, examining other results of unspecified selectivity and unproven objectivity. To present their results as science is as fraudulent as the claims made that are contrary to conventional acceptance or even other claims of their own.
Entirely neglected is the main reason people buy organic foods -- control over additives, in terms of determining which are suitable and acceptable (ie. simple nitrates as preservatives) as well as those which they maintain should not be permitted at any point within the system (ie. livestock 'nourishment' additives in the form of material processed from dead animals; the origin of mad cow disease). Perhaps FSA felt more confident in lying about the irrelevant rather than risk getting caught lying about what people know enough and care a great deal about.
A rebuttal against the FSA piece is available from first professional organization is the UK approved for licensing and regulation of organic foods and producers:
Even a moderate load of smarts is enough to figure that it's cheaper to let someone else do the R&D the build a copy. Just look at pretty much all aircraft they've built and compare with ours.
Either this guy is ignorant to the point of incompetence, or he's just playing wag-the-weenie national ego games. They built stuff very much like ours when we were enemies. They're allies now.
"In our recent discussion of the phenomenon of noctilucent clouds..."... we had plenty of input on the history and nature of them, including an uncharacteristically (for recent examples) detailed and accurate recounting from Wired.
So how is it one can reference an article with such good, clear information, and then utterly ignore all of that in order to posit such a ridiculous assertion? Worse than submission of such junk articles is the complete lack of editorial effort in determining whether the submission is worth posting.
As to whether these predate the observed appearance following the Krakatoa eruption, it might be useful to inquire of those who'd be likely to have historical sightings -- arctic or near arctic natives such as Yup'ik, Saami or Tungusk.
Recycling is wonderful. This is a rejected submission from 2 years ago:
According to Flight Global: "The US Air Force intends to certificate its entire aircraft fleet to run on synthetic jet-fuel blend by 2011, and began on 8 August when the Boeing B-52H became the first to be approved. The eight-engined bomber finished testing earlier this year with fuel produced from natural gas using the Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process. "Each time the price of fuel goes up $10 a barrel, it costs the USAF $600 million", says air force secretary Michael Wynne. "It causes angst to know that we're faced with a commodity that some might use against us," he says, pointing to the potential of F-T to convert domestic coal and natural gas to jet fuel." The snag in a complete switch-over could be building a plant with the capacity needed for the USAF's needs. It would cost US$1 billion. However, Syntroleum and Tyson Foods have teamed up and claim they could build the plant for only US$100 million, using a simpler, cheaper and cleaner process than the F-T, starting with a major product of Tyson's: chicken fat. If this comes about, there may even be a chicken-burning car in your future."
"I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim."
Pretty sad when an academic doesn't learn the relevant details of copyright as pertains to their work.
You can't copyright a result, only the work that contains it. The results can always be expressed and referred to elsewhere. The ideas can be expressed elsewhere as long as they are not presented in the same words (apply 'fair use' here; this is academics after all). The situation as stated pertains to academic research. When done commercially, or in an academic setting for a commercial entity, the copyright goes to the owner, not the researcher. Cross that line and you're in far deeper waters than mere copyright infringement.
The article summary is sentence after sentence of assertions that contradict decades of social and psychological studies, including longitudinal studies across continents.
More attractive people tend to make more money. People with more money tend to have fewer children.
The possibility of being more attractive is heritable. Without an environment that allows it to flourish (more money or less need for it = more and better food + less strenuous physical labor) appearance gets worn and old instead.
Attractiveness changes over time within the same culture. That fact alone yanks TFA's plug. In addition, they studied people from a fairly rich group. Those people can afford cosmetics, specialized diets, surgery, and all manner of artificial enhancements to appearance available to those that can afford it.
People that conform to a predetermined concept of attractiveness are not attractive, they are merely successful at altering their appearance to conform to an arbitrary standard. That is not heritable. However, people born into families in which such conformance is possible due to being able to afford it, can themselves take advantage of that. That has the effect of heritability but is not heritability. Furthermore, these people tend to end up with the type of appearance common to their higher socio-economic class and so attract others from that class, and so perpetuate families that purchase the appearance considered desireable in their circles.
An analogy can be taken from increasing height. As a culture overall becomes richer the people can afford better nourishment. Given that, they grow taller. The genetics for their height pre-existed the availability of the environmental factors that made it possible. All along the same genetics got passed along but remained stable -- people merely become able to achieve that which was already built into them.
Lastly, the research is confounded by use of questionnaires. People answer those according to what they think they should say, or don't answer in ways that they perceive will reflect badly on them. In the subject at hand, guys will, for instance, claim to prefer thinner females. The increasingly widespread availability of BBW porn indicates that far more guys like fat chicks than will admit to it. That ending only seemed to lose its scientific attitude. Actually it just switched from the theoretical and sanitized results of research to the real world.
OK, really for real lastly. As a bit of synchronicity, the tag line appearing now summarizes much of what I said: "There is no such thing as an ugly woman -- there are only the ones who do not know how to make themselves attractive. -- Christian Dior" Add "or can afford to" and that pretty much sums it up.
SOME scientists have said things that is being REPORTED HERE as 'worry' for the sake of impact, the connotation of which the author wishes people to accept as accurate, that some NONEXISTANT, NONDESIGNED and entirely HYPOTHETICAL "machine(s)" may perform one or more functions that could be CONSTRUED as 'more intelligent' than some undefined and in examination undefinable conglomerate measure of humanity.
The assertion will never be provable until we have an acceptable definition of 'intelligence'. The harder cognitive scientists look at the concept the slipperier it becomes and the less they agree.
If a machine should perform a function that some construe as smarter than a person, it will be only that function that succeeds. If they think to credit the machine, I suggest they equip it with mobility and manual manipulation, set it free, and see how long it survives on the wits provided by that one function.
As the complexity of computation necessary for a machine of the sort hypothesized (more precisely, that fits the definition implied by TFA) grows far faster than the machine itself, it is highly likely anyone attempting this will hit an arbitrary point of diminishing returns and give up. This is the practical basis of Dijkstra's quote "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." A submarine that moved like a fish would be a sad piece of work compared to the other 'machines' of similar intention. Likewise, a computer than functioned as a human in any respect besides modeling and results that could be construed as appearing similar, would be a sad piece of work also.
Why force good iron to behave in such an error prone manner so different from its better capabilities? What a waste. Instead, build them according to the best we can design into them, and if they outperform humans, well, they already do in many respects, and we're not slaves of our silicon-brained overlords yet. If that happens, only the second rate science journalists, writing for publishers more interested in revenue than scientific accuracy, will confuse "outperform" with "outsmart".
To be fair, there are some cognitive scientists that cogitate on questions such as reported here. They discuss the subject often. At great length. With such diversification of actual knowledge that as they proceed it becomes harder and harder to conceive of a way to apply the collection of concepts to anything that might become reality. I know, I've sat in with some and listened. These are the cognitive scientists that come from or rely heavily on philosophy. They philosophize on it so much that eventually the resulting opinions outnumber the individuals involved. They can create a mass of hypotheticals, but very few can put a soldering pencil to a PCB, and the few that can program are utterly unable to produce code that they can honestly say does more than produces a result that has an appearance that some could claim looks like a result that a person might produce. Ask them to produce a result that "outsmarts" a human, and they'll launch into a rant very much like the one above. But theirs will be as a defense, whereas mine is a criticism. Very sad when the two of those don't just have an appearance that can be construed as similar, but are actually congruent.
Jupiter is the only planet in our system close enough to the sun and with a deep enough gravity well for them to have a barycenter (common orbital center) outside the sun's surface. That sort of wobbly orbital mechanics has far more effect on trajectories of small bodies than a nice, neat set of concentric circular orbits. The sun-Jupiter system will be more likely to cause fluctuations that result in small interlopers to get thrown out of the system or sucked into one of their gravity wells. Seeing the result on Jupiter is rare. Seeing it at the sun is more common. Between the two they're going to suck up far more than hit elsewhere.
But their influence is only the majority of a chaotic multi-body system. Just because they account for the most hits doesn't mean they take them all and nothing gets through elsewhere. Of course some will miss the big guys and hit (or nearly so) some of the others. That's the nature of a chaotic system of orbital mechanics. They are not exerting influence in an intentional manner, rather a deterministic but fairly unpredictable manner.
To assume a certain thing always happens because it has happened, and also to say it not accurate because there is an exception, is the sort of low caliber absolutist thinking that's common in "modern" science reporting. I have no doubt the parties credited with these viewpoints understand quite well the situation, and the apparent controversy is a function of the author of TFA.
1. The rods of the human retina can react to a single photon. However, to be consciously perceived between 5 and 10 photons must be detected within 100 milliseconds. To pick up light that's 'visible', but "1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive" ('Which is, of course, impossible. -- Hitchhiker's Guide) the researchers in TFA are claiming to detect small fractions of a photon (repeat HHG assertion here).
As stated, the above applies to conscious perception. A normally non-conscious perception via an alternate visual channel has been proven to exist. This 'blindsight' has been discussed here previously http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/24/2330245 . It has been shown to not only exist in the sighted, but can be trained in them so to become functional. There was a school for this in New Mexico that was written up in Co-Evolution Quarterly almost 20 years ago. In the discussion thread here, more than one person admitted to having developed or noticed having this ability.
2. The spirit of we two legged can become attuned to the spirit of the four legged, and so the hunter can find prey in darkness, and one can also avoid becoming hunted. Likewise, we can feel the spirit of the standing people (trees) and so find our way between them with surprising speed. Although it works as though it were sight, because it is a working of the spirit, the impressions received are not detected as visual images to the mind, but only to the spirit.
I've got a lot of academic training in #1. I've got some training, and have ancestors with a lot more in #2. They may be incompatible, but since no viewpoint perfectly and completely describes reality, none can be said to be the only truth. In any case, learning to use dark sight doesn't require believing either.
He's not modeling brains, he's modeling neocortical minicolumns. Theoretically that's not too difficult. I did a schematic for a subset of a minicolumn, a Hebbian cellular assembly. A collection of those in a minicolumn can process some significant chunks of information, given in/out infrastructure.
But, as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_column a minicolumn contains about 80 neurons, and there are 50 to 100 minicolumns in a (hyper)column. That's 4000 to 8000, cut it down the middle and say 6000. There are 2 million hypercolumns in a human cortex. According to Markram he's modeling things with a processor representing a neuron. To build a human cortex he'll need 12 billion processors. That's 1.2 million Big Blues. Good luck on getting IBM to fork those over.
But to model it right, the neurons have to be interconnected so that none are more than 6 hops away from any other, with an average of 3 hops. The Connection Machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_machine would be a better choice to match the connectivity. A fully tricked out CM-1 had 65,536 processors, so the artificial human brain would need 183106 CM-1's with the machines interconnected in hypercubic fashion just as they're wired internally. That's a lot of iron. Worse, the CM-1 used single bit processors. The CM-5 used SPARC RISC processors, and we'll assume for brevity that they can do the job Markram wants done. A fully packed CM-5 could carry 16384 processors http://home.wlu.edu/~whaleyt/classes/parallel/topics/cm.html a quarter the number in a CM-1, so 4 times as many machines -- 732,421 hypercubic networked machines. That's about 21000 times more machines than were built, and those carried no more than 1024 processors. To get this artificial brain going Danny Hillis needs to get his soldering gun warmed up.
The CM-5 has a 900 m^2 footprint www-csag.ucsd.edu/individual/achien/cs433/papers/jpdc95.ps , so the requisite collection would cover 255 square miles plus access space and a massive amount of cable space for the interconnection.
In the absence of machine specs, I'll use the estimate of power consumption per compuational nose used in a Los Alamos paper comparing their options when they were shopping for some heavy iron. That estimate produces a probable power requirement for the CM-5 array modeling an entire human cortex at 12 to 24 gigawatts.
I don't disagree too strenuously that a design could be done in 10 years. But the collection of machines, even given advances in technology? Make it 100 to 200.
Then comes the final shot fired: why the hell would anyone cripple some perfectly good hardware by forcing it to act in such a capricious, error prone fashion as a human brain? Why not also buy an airplane and just taxi it down the streets rather than using a car? We already know that stem cells can be used to repair brain damage. Better to apply the appropriate technology to the problem.
First off, it's bullshit. They may develop the thing, but it's not going to fly itself. The Google X-Prize money is for the development, not the flying, and it's not enough to get it there anyway.
They WANT to have it explore the moon (actually they want to be seen wanting to do so, in order to increase their chances of getting the prize money; you think the timing of the announcement was random?). There's nothing here about anyone else wanting them to.
And given their announced target, I think they've just pointed the space demodulator at their foot. Far too many people would be offended.
All in all, this is a PR job. The guy may be capable of developing, but the chances are that having teamed up with this company, their plans are to get the prize money, maybe develop, maybe not, and know for certain ahead of time it'll never leave the ground. They just want the money. The tip off? Such a device could do valuable research, such as roving around the south pole looking for ice. Are they planning any useful or noble venture like that? No. They're planning on some virtual tourism, and true to big ticket money tourist ideals think that they're permitted to walk on anyone's lawn they wish just so they can take their holiday photos.
Fuck 'em. If you think they're hosebags for wanting to trundle all over what may be the most historic of historic sites, complain to the Google Lunar X-Prize people http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/contact-us and tell them not to support this project.
"During traditional surgery for Parkinson's, for example, the neurosurgeon stimulates the target area with the electrode to make sure he or she has identified the piece of the brain responsible for the patient's motor problems, and then kills that piece of tissue."
I got my PhD in psychology, but the work was done in the Center for Parkinson's Research in the chemistry department. At NIH I worked for a guy that did lots of studies on Parky's, and he loaned me out to other labs doing Parky's work to help develop new data collection and analysis techniques. I did work for a review paper on Parky's research and treatment techniques when I was with the psychiatry department at Yale Medical School. I've worked in surgery doing intra-operative neural monitoring -- I don't hold a knife, but I do hold that probe, test the target areas, and tell the surgeon where he can and can't cut. I know my way around a brain and a good bit about Parky's. That's not to ring my own bell, but is a set up for my response to TFA.
I've never heard of surgery for Parky's. If someone said they were going to have it I'd convince them not to. If a surgeon said they were going to do it, I'd offer to smack his hands. There are so many other things that can be done that it's foolish to kill off perfectly functioning brain tissue (motor area or thalamic circuitry feeding it) just because the circuitry that suppresses all but the desired actions (dopamine carrying inhibitory innervation) is running low on power because its source (substantia nigra) is itself dying off. Quite often the problem resolves itself because the various uninhibited signals wear themselves out fighting against each other, and some motor control can be retained. But if you kill the circuitry, it can't possibly be recovered.
When motor activity must be brought down due to disinhibition allowing random activity to become harmful, you can always do cryo-ablation of the nerve trunk coming off the spinal cord, killing off a small portion of it temporarily. It lasts around 18 months. You can redo it then if the problem returns, or let it recover if not. This is done as outpatient treatment in clinics by anesthesiologists all over, for chronic pain and such. Doing it to motor nerves differs not one iota in principle.
There's plenty of other alternatives, some approved by cross over for treatment of other symptoms, such as hydergine + nootropil conjunct (approved to delay or prevent dementia; helps sensitize the cortex to a lower level of dopamine), and high dose gabapentin to make those neurons that receive the dopamine signal and control cortical pyramidal cell circuitry to make them more effective.
If I ever run across a surgeon that wants to ablate some cortex or otherwise kill off brain tissue to treat a chemically based control signal failure, I'm going to attempt to alter his consciousness on the subject with an experimental technique of my own: corrective phrenology.
For the unlearned, phrenology is the discredited technique of reading the bumps in the various regions on one's head to determine the greater or lesser contributions from those areas to one's collective make up. Corrective phrenology is applying kinetic energy in the form of a good whack in order to change the size of the bumps and so the relative contributions of the areas this is applied to. The technique is discredited because nobody ever proved what areas do what, although we know that applies to the brain. So my technique would be experimental in that I'd have to give a good many whacks in various places to see what accomplishes the job. I'm thinking a Craftsman five pound ball peen cranial impact probe would be an appropriate tool.
It's got a few problems still. I set my home location. I set a location on the moon -- Tranquility Base. I set it to give me directions. Rather than telling me to go to Cape Canaveral and turn up or some such, it placed Tranquility Base somewhere in Africa.
Slashdot Mirror
"...the largest branded content company in the US, with an audience of 75 million domestic uniques."
I imagine there are providers that report the actual number of active users, but I've never been in contact with any. All that I've worked with report the number of sign-ups whether or not they remained active members. I suspect that's the case here.
To be fair with AOL, it's been my experience that their inaccuracies are as often due to incompetence as they are to prestidigitation of data. Either way, I seriously doubt the numbers, but I believe this VP of Weasel Words believes what he's saying.
This is the subject that started my research career. Got some good references below (full references are available in the mentioned PDF).
Anything that has an effect on living organisms has the potential for incurring both positive and negative effects. We just have to find the way to make things happen the way we want them to. That's been the basis of pharmacology since its origin of trying to systematically determine what it is about material from one organism that has effects on another.
There's 5,000 chemical components in a cigarette, another 10,000 in the smoke from one. We understand about 1% of those 15,000. I was fortunate enough to do my dissertation examining the effects of some of those. It was part of the project that got its results mentioned in "Thank You For Smoking" ('We just found that smoking can offset Parkinson's Disease.')
Here's some words and numbers relevant to (and predating) TFA. The whole thing can be downloaded as a PDF from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05062002-134953/unrestricted/McClainFurmanskiAmend.pdf
=====
Some clinical populations use tobacco significantly more than non-clinical
populations. Whereas 24% of the general population smokes, 70% of schizophrenics
smoke (Adler et al., 1998), as do 42% of persons with attention deficit disorder (Lambert
& Hartsough, 1998). Both of these disorders are frequently associated with deficiencies
in ignoring or gating extraneous information. These persons, as well as many smokers
(Edwards et al., 1985; Gilbert, 1994; Kassel, 1997), report that smoking improves their
ability to concentrate and focus their attention. Nicotine may serve as an ameliorative for
cognitive decline in Alzheimerâ(TM)s (for review, see Rezvani & Levin, 2001). Thus, tobacco
smoking may serve a neurotherapeutic role in some groups or individuals.
Several epidemiological studies suggest that tobacco smokers contract
Parkinsonâ(TM)s disease at a rate of only 25% of that of non-smokers (e.g., Morens et al.,
1995). This may be due to the chronically inhibited monoamine oxidase (MAO) levels in
smokers (Fowler et al., 1996; Fowler et al., 1998). Despite negative connotations due to
harmful effects of smoking, tobacco remains a potentially important source of beneficial
pharmaceuticals.
[And a bit later...]
The majority of studies which have investigated sensory gating deficits in
schizophrenics, who often report accompanying difficulty in attentional processing and
the blocking out of extraneous information or stimuli, use ratio or subtraction scores to
determine degree of sensory gating and assume that differences are due to gating out
mechanisms. Smoking normalizes the deficit in P50 reduction in these patients and
decreases their negative symptoms (Adler et al., 1993). It is theorized that this is due to
dopaminergic activity (Lyon, 1999). After reviewing this literature, DeBruin et al. (2001)
point out that these sensory gating deficits observed in schizophrenics may be due to
decreased S1 (gating in) rather than decreased S2 (gating out) amplitudes.
=====
The 'gating' referred to is an EEG measure similar to the startle response. Both are inhibited more or less according to an individual's make up, by a stimulus that preceeds the startling one by half a second or so. The effect is very pronounced in schizophrenics. It is also pronounced in about half the non-symptomatic first degree relatives of schizophrenics. While TFA is correct regarding nicotinic/cholonergic effects (as noted in my dissertation) it is not the only chemical at work, and the results may be better explained as an interaction of the effects of nicotine and other psychoactive substances.
The substance of our interest wasn't nicotine, it was trimethyl naphthoquinone. It was up to me to show that something other than tobacco was activ
This is precisely why in science, real science, we have the scientific method which requires that experiments/studies etc. be repeatable.
Welcome to a new incoming member of the scientific professions (some of us actually look up those links from the user names).
A tip for you from experience: Yes, proper design and methodology requires replicability. However, Wyeth and those of us out here in the lab trenches both know how hard it is just to get funded for initial research. It is almost unheard of to get funded for replications. You can get funded for an extension of previous work that requires replication as a first step, and discover contradictory results, or suspect a problem and get funded to disprove the previous work, but even those don't happen often. BigPharma banks (literally) on this. And should someone actually get funded to replicate and find problems, Wyeth et al. has deep pockets and can fund plenty of replications of their own, with obvious results. Not to say we never win this one -- just that we have to do it primarily with ingenuity. A bushel full of ornery helps, stomping your feet and yelling until people turn and listen. And when you get evidence, accuse the originators of scientific misconduct in the proper venues. Obviously it can be done because it was in this case, but it's a struggle. It's also very rewarding when you win one.
Best of luck.
I remember selling a few of a device that was a hand held mouse/game controller (for the Atari 400/800, VIC29 and C=64). It was more like a joystick without a base, just a handle with buttons on the top. Inside were mercury switches that detected when it was tilted.
Since it had no tactile feedback nor accelerometer type detection for greater tilt, it wasn't long before the user started trying harder and harder to make it go faster (especially for games) by tilting it farther and farther, until they eventually (like 15 minutes eventually) turned it upside down and hosed the mercury switches.
I thought it was a pretty cool idea. My employees thought it was a techno-turd. But we all agreed it was hilarious to load up a fast game, plug this thing in, and let a customer play with it. Within minutes they were twisting their arm like a pretzel and dancing around trying to get body language or position to add to the speed, while cussing the device (but refusing to give up).
It really would have been a good hack except for one thing missing -- something to hold it while you typed. When you went two handed at the keyboard you had to lay it down, thereby positioning your cursor at one edge of the screen as well as ruining the merc switches.
A nice article and summary. Not entirely new nor inclusive of present theory unfortunately.
Pain is handled by two channels: nocioception, the sensation itself, and the perceptual distress component. This can easily be seen in the actions of the agents affecting each. Sensation is blocked by anesthesia. Interpretation of the pain signal is altered by analgseia -- you may still feel a sensation but you don't care, or at lest you're not so bothered by it. There are different neural pathways and processes to handle these.
It is likely that itching relates to pain in this fashion. The sensation of pressure or stretching of the skin in certain places would be common to all as their are receptors in the skin for these. A parallel pathway governing perceptual interpretation of that sensation, possibly the same one as for pain, would also exist. The resulting interpretation based on personal experience and/or genetically determined wiring would cause different interpretations of the same experience on different individuals, the same individual under different conditions, or (as is common) different locations on the same individual.
Form (circuitry) does not equal function (brain processes). A situation in which the people involved didn't grasp this fact was the pacific island cargo cults. They built crude replicas of the shiny magical giant birds on the abandoned runways in order to entice the real ones to come back and feed them some more. Extend the circuitry to trillions of switches and quadrillions of connections if you like, it'll still be a lifeless static model and nothing more.
Those billions of neurons are connected by those trillions of synapses in a very important fashion. They are connected so that no neuron is more than six synapses from any other neuron, the average being three synapses. This requires mapping the connections in a very high dimension (a mathematical term, not a throw-away physics term). Look up the Connection Machine for a lesson. In that computer the mere thousands of (RISC to the limit; 1 bit) processors were connected in a 12 D hypercube. The very efficient layout of the 12 D connection circuitry resulted in a box for the CM-1A with 1024 processors being 1.5 meters on a side, or 3.375 cubic meters. 22 billion processors? A layout one machine high would cover 49.5 square kilometers. That's a square 4.35 miles on a side. That's all due to the massive cross-over circuitry needed for the interconnectivity in the design. The circuitry to simulate brain function would require far more volume. I don't suppose you've noticed that they haven't yet done so, have you? I get the feeling that despite thinking they can simulate a brain based simply on circuitry, they don't understand just what sort of circuitry is required. The tip off is the suggestion that the circuitry might be able to be imprinted on a chip. Not even if the chip were the size of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, where they put together the space shuttle prior to launch, is my feeling.
I also get the feeling they can't define for us at what point their 'artificial intelligence' surpasses that of human intelligence because they don't have a workable, objective definition for 'intelligence'. They may think they do, but these folks aren't cognitive scientists, and we cognitive scientists know we don't.
They're trying to pack a single kind of circuitry tighter and tighter hoping to simulate a rain. But a brain has many different kinds of circuitry. And that circuitry can interact with other circuitry to either stimulate or inhibit its operation depending on input to the first. That mode selection is done by an entirely different kind of circuity in the switching system of the thalamus, and is given weighting in the form of context according to another different sort of circuitry in the limbic system. They're trying to build up to the equivalent of the neocortex so they can have something like the 'new' part of the brain, but are neglecting the infrastructure of the 'old' brain, which makes the 'new' operate like a brain, period.
They're trying to use processors as computational devices. Those have hard coded calculation capabilities. The brain uses collections of neurons for different calculations, and the same neurons can calculate in different ways according to what collection it happens to belong to at the moment, essentially being a part of a computational collective whose capabilities are reprogrammed on the fly. Also, their processors are switches, which have definite state calculations, like binary. Many brain processes are calculated by continuous 'slow potentials' instead of the binary output 'firing'. Their device can't do this.
They're using that binary output as the basis of coding for transfer of information between processing structures. Brain process output can be coded as changes in firing rate compared to resting 'spontaneous' firing (do they have spontaneous firing as a baseline?), changes in the variance of firing rate integrated over a time scale suitable for a particular process (ie. pain response vs. rational thought), pairs of pulses whose inter-pair and/or intra-pair spacing varies and so inte
" It's not clear why the bankruptcy judge opted for this solution..."
A great many of the gyrations of the case since the crack legal team that defended them came on board, as well as many to come, will make much more sense if you remember one salient point: the deal with the lawyers was that if SCO won, they'd get a cut of the winnings, but if SCO lost, they'd get a cut of the corpse.
What judge is going to order that his fellow court officers' income for a job well done get cut out of their deal? As long as it has the appearance of restructuring they can drain the coffers dry and force SCO to keep filling them as long as it has blood to let.
From PubMed, search terms 'spleen, function, monocyte, review' meaning it's only turn up review articles that cover collections of previous articles on the subject. Those research articles would be older, the reviews not so much. Still, 35 years is a fair bit of wallop to the "new discovery" claim, no?
Clin Haematol. 1975 Oct;4(3):685-703. Mononuclear phagocyte proliferation, maturation and function.
Territo MC, Cline MJ.
The mononuclear phagocytic system is a continuum of cells beginning with the bone marrow monoblast and promonocyte, through the monocyte to the larger tissue macrophages and multinucleate giant cells. This system of cells is widely distributed throughout the body in the blood and bone marrow; the pleural, peritoneal, and alveolar spaces; the lymph nodes, spleen, liver, and other parenchymal organs. The activity and composition of the cell varies with the level of maturation, changes in cellular environment, and with various cellular activities. The monocyte-macrophage group of cells plays an active role in defense reactions against certain microorganisms, and in the removal of dying cells and cell debris. They are an integral part of both the inductive phase of the immune response, and of cell-mediated immune reactions. In addition, they probably play a role in the defence against spontaneously arising tumours, in the control of granulopoiesis, and possibly in erythropoiesis.
When it starts with a catchy title, especially one that has to take a swipe at something else to make room for itself, you can be sure it's got an agenda that isn't high on the list of realistic possibilities. Or else it's a parody of that.
A "panel reporting to President Obama" is one or more persons that have an idea and know the address of the White House. I have every bit the ear of the administration (ie. essentially none, sadly) and I'm a scientist. I want my headline too.
NASA's present plans are a rerun of its history of "Go, Get Back, Give Up". The stuff in TFA are apparently the opposite in every respect except for actually accomplishing a permanent exploratory and colonial presence. A combination of both, but with the intention of making each step another rung in a ladder would get us there, keep us there, and get us farther later easier and cheaper. Any program that's a subset of the Stepping Stones approach floated years before Sputnik is a waste of time and money because it requires replication of what it accomplished in order to do more later.
Here's the details as to why Branson was at Oshkosh:
"One year after its roll out WhiteKnight Two flew from Mojave to the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture show. While there, its owner Virgin Galactic announced an anticipated important next step by signing a major investor. However, the home of origin of this investor as well as many details of the merger came as a surprise. Aabar Investments http://www.aabar.com/ of the United Arab Emirates is paying $280 million for a 32% stake in Virgin Galactic, valuing the overall company at about $900 million. Aabar is also providing $100 million for the development of a smallsat launcher that would use WK2 as the launch platform, and will build spaceport facilities in Abu Dhabi and have "exclusive regional rights" for Virgin Galactic tourism and research flights. The numbers dwarf those of Virgin Galactic, which has invested $100 million developing its space flight program since it was founded in 2004. Meanwhile, WhiteKnight Two, the world's largest all carbon composite aircraft, is performing flawlessly in flight testing, and its sister craft Spaceship Two is preparing for flight testing later this year."
Branson has said he's naming it EVE. Until he takes possession of it, the name remains WhiteKnight Two.
WhiteKnight Two was "unveiled" (called a roll-out) on July 28, 2008. It has been seen flying at Mojave several times since. It's first outside public appearance was at the groundbreaking ceremony for Spaceport America June 18, 2009.
The EAA function is called AirVenture. The name was changed in 1998.
WhiteKight Two has been undergoing flight testing since its first flight on December 21, 2008 (this ironically taken from the EAA News). Flight testing of Spaceship Two is scheduled for later this year.
That's the problem with grabbing something off the Firehose and not looking into any of the details before submitting it.
Nothing here states why WhiteKnight Two was taken to Oshkosh. It wasn't so the attendees could gawk at it or because Virgin Galactic needed the ticket sales. A pending submission covers this so I'll hold back and see how that turns out.
"FSA Finds No Health Benefits" means "fails to find", not "finds that there is no". The latter would require testing the foods. They did not. They read "the literature". There nothing in TFA that indicates whether the literature was as "independent" as their own report.
Since by "independent" they mean "commissioned, conducted, (peer) reviewed and published entirely by FSA", they mean precisely the opposite of "independent". Given this, one can safely assume they would at least feel free to report "no health benefits" when they mean the opposite.
In fact, since by "no important differences" they not only mean but come out and state "A small number of differences" it's apparent they are making the sort of value judgements usually derived from data. In the absence of data (which may well be subject to the same sort of selective re-evaluation and definition contrary to common connotation, or simply manufactured if they even bother to produce any) they apparently feel free to apply the word "important" arbitrarily to suit their intention, already shown to differ significantly from pesky facts and such.
Politicians are protected by the law so that they may support a particular point in discussion or legislation without having fear of reprisal influence their pursuit of the best alternative among many. When this is done with science, it is no longer science, and as far as I know scientists are not so protected. That is, of course, unless they are not scientists despite their presentation as such, but rather politicians. Finding out the facts in this matter would simply require filing charges of scientific misconduct against the individuals that maintain the results and summary presented here are accurate, and wait to see whether their asses are yanked out of a well deserved fire by politicians.
A last little bit of blackish white is the "fact" that "The FSA commissioned this research as part of its commitment to giving consumers accurate information about their food, based on the most up-to-date[1] science[2]."
[1] They used literature spanning half a century, making most of their information not "the most up to date".
[2] They did no science, they only claimed to have done a literature review, examining other results of unspecified selectivity and unproven objectivity. To present their results as science is as fraudulent as the claims made that are contrary to conventional acceptance or even other claims of their own.
Entirely neglected is the main reason people buy organic foods -- control over additives, in terms of determining which are suitable and acceptable (ie. simple nitrates as preservatives) as well as those which they maintain should not be permitted at any point within the system (ie. livestock 'nourishment' additives in the form of material processed from dead animals; the origin of mad cow disease). Perhaps FSA felt more confident in lying about the irrelevant rather than risk getting caught lying about what people know enough and care a great deal about.
A rebuttal against the FSA piece is available from first professional organization is the UK approved for licensing and regulation of organic foods and producers:
http://www.organicfarmers.org.uk/blog/
... yeah, right.
Even a moderate load of smarts is enough to figure that it's cheaper to let someone else do the R&D the build a copy. Just look at pretty much all aircraft they've built and compare with ours.
Either this guy is ignorant to the point of incompetence, or he's just playing wag-the-weenie national ego games. They built stuff very much like ours when we were enemies. They're allies now.
"In our recent discussion of the phenomenon of noctilucent clouds..." ... we had plenty of input on the history and nature of them, including an uncharacteristically (for recent examples) detailed and accurate recounting from Wired.
So how is it one can reference an article with such good, clear information, and then utterly ignore all of that in order to posit such a ridiculous assertion? Worse than submission of such junk articles is the complete lack of editorial effort in determining whether the submission is worth posting.
As to whether these predate the observed appearance following the Krakatoa eruption, it might be useful to inquire of those who'd be likely to have historical sightings -- arctic or near arctic natives such as Yup'ik, Saami or Tungusk.
Recycling is wonderful. This is a rejected submission from 2 years ago:
According to Flight Global: "The US Air Force intends to certificate its entire aircraft fleet to run on synthetic jet-fuel blend by 2011, and began on 8 August when the Boeing B-52H became the first to be approved. The eight-engined bomber finished testing earlier this year with fuel produced from natural gas using the Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process. "Each time the price of fuel goes up $10 a barrel, it costs the USAF $600 million", says air force secretary Michael Wynne. "It causes angst to know that we're faced with a commodity that some might use against us," he says, pointing to the potential of F-T to convert domestic coal and natural gas to jet fuel." The snag in a complete switch-over could be building a plant with the capacity needed for the USAF's needs. It would cost US$1 billion. However, Syntroleum and Tyson Foods have teamed up and claim they could build the plant for only US$100 million, using a simpler, cheaper and cleaner process than the F-T, starting with a major product of Tyson's: chicken fat. If this comes about, there may even be a chicken-burning car in your future."
"I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim."
Pretty sad when an academic doesn't learn the relevant details of copyright as pertains to their work.
You can't copyright a result, only the work that contains it. The results can always be expressed and referred to elsewhere. The ideas can be expressed elsewhere as long as they are not presented in the same words (apply 'fair use' here; this is academics after all). The situation as stated pertains to academic research. When done commercially, or in an academic setting for a commercial entity, the copyright goes to the owner, not the researcher. Cross that line and you're in far deeper waters than mere copyright infringement.
The article summary is sentence after sentence of assertions that contradict decades of social and psychological studies, including longitudinal studies across continents.
More attractive people tend to make more money. People with more money tend to have fewer children.
The possibility of being more attractive is heritable. Without an environment that allows it to flourish (more money or less need for it = more and better food + less strenuous physical labor) appearance gets worn and old instead.
Attractiveness changes over time within the same culture. That fact alone yanks TFA's plug. In addition, they studied people from a fairly rich group. Those people can afford cosmetics, specialized diets, surgery, and all manner of artificial enhancements to appearance available to those that can afford it.
People that conform to a predetermined concept of attractiveness are not attractive, they are merely successful at altering their appearance to conform to an arbitrary standard. That is not heritable. However, people born into families in which such conformance is possible due to being able to afford it, can themselves take advantage of that. That has the effect of heritability but is not heritability. Furthermore, these people tend to end up with the type of appearance common to their higher socio-economic class and so attract others from that class, and so perpetuate families that purchase the appearance considered desireable in their circles.
An analogy can be taken from increasing height. As a culture overall becomes richer the people can afford better nourishment. Given that, they grow taller. The genetics for their height pre-existed the availability of the environmental factors that made it possible. All along the same genetics got passed along but remained stable -- people merely become able to achieve that which was already built into them.
Lastly, the research is confounded by use of questionnaires. People answer those according to what they think they should say, or don't answer in ways that they perceive will reflect badly on them. In the subject at hand, guys will, for instance, claim to prefer thinner females. The increasingly widespread availability of BBW porn indicates that far more guys like fat chicks than will admit to it. That ending only seemed to lose its scientific attitude. Actually it just switched from the theoretical and sanitized results of research to the real world.
OK, really for real lastly. As a bit of synchronicity, the tag line appearing now summarizes much of what I said: "There is no such thing as an ugly woman -- there are only the ones who do not know how to make themselves attractive. -- Christian Dior" Add "or can afford to" and that pretty much sums it up.
SOME scientists have said things that is being REPORTED HERE as 'worry' for the sake of impact, the connotation of which the author wishes people to accept as accurate, that some NONEXISTANT, NONDESIGNED and entirely HYPOTHETICAL "machine(s)" may perform one or more functions that could be CONSTRUED as 'more intelligent' than some undefined and in examination undefinable conglomerate measure of humanity.
The assertion will never be provable until we have an acceptable definition of 'intelligence'. The harder cognitive scientists look at the concept the slipperier it becomes and the less they agree.
If a machine should perform a function that some construe as smarter than a person, it will be only that function that succeeds. If they think to credit the machine, I suggest they equip it with mobility and manual manipulation, set it free, and see how long it survives on the wits provided by that one function.
As the complexity of computation necessary for a machine of the sort hypothesized (more precisely, that fits the definition implied by TFA) grows far faster than the machine itself, it is highly likely anyone attempting this will hit an arbitrary point of diminishing returns and give up. This is the practical basis of Dijkstra's quote "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." A submarine that moved like a fish would be a sad piece of work compared to the other 'machines' of similar intention. Likewise, a computer than functioned as a human in any respect besides modeling and results that could be construed as appearing similar, would be a sad piece of work also.
Why force good iron to behave in such an error prone manner so different from its better capabilities? What a waste. Instead, build them according to the best we can design into them, and if they outperform humans, well, they already do in many respects, and we're not slaves of our silicon-brained overlords yet. If that happens, only the second rate science journalists, writing for publishers more interested in revenue than scientific accuracy, will confuse "outperform" with "outsmart".
To be fair, there are some cognitive scientists that cogitate on questions such as reported here. They discuss the subject often. At great length. With such diversification of actual knowledge that as they proceed it becomes harder and harder to conceive of a way to apply the collection of concepts to anything that might become reality. I know, I've sat in with some and listened. These are the cognitive scientists that come from or rely heavily on philosophy. They philosophize on it so much that eventually the resulting opinions outnumber the individuals involved. They can create a mass of hypotheticals, but very few can put a soldering pencil to a PCB, and the few that can program are utterly unable to produce code that they can honestly say does more than produces a result that has an appearance that some could claim looks like a result that a person might produce. Ask them to produce a result that "outsmarts" a human, and they'll launch into a rant very much like the one above. But theirs will be as a defense, whereas mine is a criticism. Very sad when the two of those don't just have an appearance that can be construed as similar, but are actually congruent.
Jupiter is the only planet in our system close enough to the sun and with a deep enough gravity well for them to have a barycenter (common orbital center) outside the sun's surface. That sort of wobbly orbital mechanics has far more effect on trajectories of small bodies than a nice, neat set of concentric circular orbits. The sun-Jupiter system will be more likely to cause fluctuations that result in small interlopers to get thrown out of the system or sucked into one of their gravity wells. Seeing the result on Jupiter is rare. Seeing it at the sun is more common. Between the two they're going to suck up far more than hit elsewhere.
But their influence is only the majority of a chaotic multi-body system. Just because they account for the most hits doesn't mean they take them all and nothing gets through elsewhere. Of course some will miss the big guys and hit (or nearly so) some of the others. That's the nature of a chaotic system of orbital mechanics. They are not exerting influence in an intentional manner, rather a deterministic but fairly unpredictable manner.
To assume a certain thing always happens because it has happened, and also to say it not accurate because there is an exception, is the sort of low caliber absolutist thinking that's common in "modern" science reporting. I have no doubt the parties credited with these viewpoints understand quite well the situation, and the apparent controversy is a function of the author of TFA.
"Wireless power system shown off" [article title]
Well, that's one state necessary for a fully functional system, but I'd be far more impressed if it was shown on.
Who's going to lug around the transmitter and receiving unit (if not internal to the device) when they can stuff a thin wire in their pocket?
1. The rods of the human retina can react to a single photon. However, to be consciously perceived between 5 and 10 photons must be detected within 100 milliseconds. To pick up light that's 'visible', but "1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive" ('Which is, of course, impossible. -- Hitchhiker's Guide) the researchers in TFA are claiming to detect small fractions of a photon (repeat HHG assertion here).
As stated, the above applies to conscious perception. A normally non-conscious perception via an alternate visual channel has been proven to exist. This 'blindsight' has been discussed here previously http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/24/2330245 . It has been shown to not only exist in the sighted, but can be trained in them so to become functional. There was a school for this in New Mexico that was written up in Co-Evolution Quarterly almost 20 years ago. In the discussion thread here, more than one person admitted to having developed or noticed having this ability.
2. The spirit of we two legged can become attuned to the spirit of the four legged, and so the hunter can find prey in darkness, and one can also avoid becoming hunted. Likewise, we can feel the spirit of the standing people (trees) and so find our way between them with surprising speed. Although it works as though it were sight, because it is a working of the spirit, the impressions received are not detected as visual images to the mind, but only to the spirit.
I've got a lot of academic training in #1. I've got some training, and have ancestors with a lot more in #2. They may be incompatible, but since no viewpoint perfectly and completely describes reality, none can be said to be the only truth. In any case, learning to use dark sight doesn't require believing either.
Still, there ain't no such as pieces of photons.
He's not modeling brains, he's modeling neocortical minicolumns. Theoretically that's not too difficult. I did a schematic for a subset of a minicolumn, a Hebbian cellular assembly. A collection of those in a minicolumn can process some significant chunks of information, given in/out infrastructure.
But, as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_column a minicolumn contains about 80 neurons, and there are 50 to 100 minicolumns in a (hyper)column. That's 4000 to 8000, cut it down the middle and say 6000. There are 2 million hypercolumns in a human cortex. According to Markram he's modeling things with a processor representing a neuron. To build a human cortex he'll need 12 billion processors. That's 1.2 million Big Blues. Good luck on getting IBM to fork those over.
But to model it right, the neurons have to be interconnected so that none are more than 6 hops away from any other, with an average of 3 hops. The Connection Machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_machine would be a better choice to match the connectivity. A fully tricked out CM-1 had 65,536 processors, so the artificial human brain would need 183106 CM-1's with the machines interconnected in hypercubic fashion just as they're wired internally. That's a lot of iron. Worse, the CM-1 used single bit processors. The CM-5 used SPARC RISC processors, and we'll assume for brevity that they can do the job Markram wants done. A fully packed CM-5 could carry 16384 processors http://home.wlu.edu/~whaleyt/classes/parallel/topics/cm.html a quarter the number in a CM-1, so 4 times as many machines -- 732,421 hypercubic networked machines. That's about 21000 times more machines than were built, and those carried no more than 1024 processors. To get this artificial brain going Danny Hillis needs to get his soldering gun warmed up.
The CM-5 has a 900 m^2 footprint www-csag.ucsd.edu/individual/achien/cs433/papers/jpdc95.ps , so the requisite collection would cover 255 square miles plus access space and a massive amount of cable space for the interconnection.
In the absence of machine specs, I'll use the estimate of power consumption per compuational nose used in a Los Alamos paper comparing their options when they were shopping for some heavy iron. That estimate produces a probable power requirement for the CM-5 array modeling an entire human cortex at 12 to 24 gigawatts.
I don't disagree too strenuously that a design could be done in 10 years. But the collection of machines, even given advances in technology? Make it 100 to 200.
Then comes the final shot fired: why the hell would anyone cripple some perfectly good hardware by forcing it to act in such a capricious, error prone fashion as a human brain? Why not also buy an airplane and just taxi it down the streets rather than using a car? We already know that stem cells can be used to repair brain damage. Better to apply the appropriate technology to the problem.
First off, it's bullshit. They may develop the thing, but it's not going to fly itself. The Google X-Prize money is for the development, not the flying, and it's not enough to get it there anyway.
They WANT to have it explore the moon (actually they want to be seen wanting to do so, in order to increase their chances of getting the prize money; you think the timing of the announcement was random?). There's nothing here about anyone else wanting them to.
And given their announced target, I think they've just pointed the space demodulator at their foot. Far too many people would be offended.
All in all, this is a PR job. The guy may be capable of developing, but the chances are that having teamed up with this company, their plans are to get the prize money, maybe develop, maybe not, and know for certain ahead of time it'll never leave the ground. They just want the money. The tip off? Such a device could do valuable research, such as roving around the south pole looking for ice. Are they planning any useful or noble venture like that? No. They're planning on some virtual tourism, and true to big ticket money tourist ideals think that they're permitted to walk on anyone's lawn they wish just so they can take their holiday photos.
Fuck 'em. If you think they're hosebags for wanting to trundle all over what may be the most historic of historic sites, complain to the Google Lunar X-Prize people http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/contact-us and tell them not to support this project.
"During traditional surgery for Parkinson's, for example, the neurosurgeon stimulates the target area with the electrode to make sure he or she has identified the piece of the brain responsible for the patient's motor problems, and then kills that piece of tissue."
I got my PhD in psychology, but the work was done in the Center for Parkinson's Research in the chemistry department. At NIH I worked for a guy that did lots of studies on Parky's, and he loaned me out to other labs doing Parky's work to help develop new data collection and analysis techniques. I did work for a review paper on Parky's research and treatment techniques when I was with the psychiatry department at Yale Medical School. I've worked in surgery doing intra-operative neural monitoring -- I don't hold a knife, but I do hold that probe, test the target areas, and tell the surgeon where he can and can't cut. I know my way around a brain and a good bit about Parky's. That's not to ring my own bell, but is a set up for my response to TFA.
I've never heard of surgery for Parky's. If someone said they were going to have it I'd convince them not to. If a surgeon said they were going to do it, I'd offer to smack his hands. There are so many other things that can be done that it's foolish to kill off perfectly functioning brain tissue (motor area or thalamic circuitry feeding it) just because the circuitry that suppresses all but the desired actions (dopamine carrying inhibitory innervation) is running low on power because its source (substantia nigra) is itself dying off. Quite often the problem resolves itself because the various uninhibited signals wear themselves out fighting against each other, and some motor control can be retained. But if you kill the circuitry, it can't possibly be recovered.
When motor activity must be brought down due to disinhibition allowing random activity to become harmful, you can always do cryo-ablation of the nerve trunk coming off the spinal cord, killing off a small portion of it temporarily. It lasts around 18 months. You can redo it then if the problem returns, or let it recover if not. This is done as outpatient treatment in clinics by anesthesiologists all over, for chronic pain and such. Doing it to motor nerves differs not one iota in principle.
There's plenty of other alternatives, some approved by cross over for treatment of other symptoms, such as hydergine + nootropil conjunct (approved to delay or prevent dementia; helps sensitize the cortex to a lower level of dopamine), and high dose gabapentin to make those neurons that receive the dopamine signal and control cortical pyramidal cell circuitry to make them more effective.
If I ever run across a surgeon that wants to ablate some cortex or otherwise kill off brain tissue to treat a chemically based control signal failure, I'm going to attempt to alter his consciousness on the subject with an experimental technique of my own: corrective phrenology.
For the unlearned, phrenology is the discredited technique of reading the bumps in the various regions on one's head to determine the greater or lesser contributions from those areas to one's collective make up. Corrective phrenology is applying kinetic energy in the form of a good whack in order to change the size of the bumps and so the relative contributions of the areas this is applied to. The technique is discredited because nobody ever proved what areas do what, although we know that applies to the brain. So my technique would be experimental in that I'd have to give a good many whacks in various places to see what accomplishes the job. I'm thinking a Craftsman five pound ball peen cranial impact probe would be an appropriate tool.
It's got a few problems still.
I set my home location.
I set a location on the moon -- Tranquility Base.
I set it to give me directions.
Rather than telling me to go to Cape Canaveral and turn up or some such, it placed Tranquility Base somewhere in Africa.