IBM to build brain-like computers

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IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.

_45225594_bca17f49-d4bc-41cf-8516-4e021b80e8bf Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.

As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa.

The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition.

"The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object, and interrelationship from the sensory data," says Dharmendra Modha, the IBM scientist who is heading the collaboration.

"There are no computers that can even remotely approach the remarkable feats the mind performs," he said.

BBC

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12,000-year-old ‘shaman’ unearthed in Israel

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A new figure in humanity’s history emerged last week when archaeologists announced the discovery of what could be one of the world’s oldest known spiritual figures. After years of meticulous excavation just miles from Israel’s Mediterranean coast, scientists from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem unearthed a 12,000-year-old grave that held the remains of a diminutive "shaman" woman. Buried alongside the woman’s small, huddled corpse were selected pieces of animal bone, a cowtail, an eagle wing, the foot of another human, and, most curiously, some fifty tortoise shells deliberately arranged around the woman’s body — all tell-tale signs, experts say, of her lofty social status at the time. "This is something very special; it stands apart," says Leore Grosman, the project’s lead archaeologist.

TIME

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Study Shows How We Evolved Different Personalities

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Although members of the same species share more than 99 percent of their genetic makeup, individuals often have small differences, such as in their appearance, susceptibility to disease, and life expectancy. Another difference, one that has gone overlooked from the evolutionary perspective, is personality variation. Even identical twins can have personality types at opposite ends of the spectrum.

This observation has led researchers to ask how evolution may have selected for personality variation within a species. A team from the UK has recently suggested a novel yet simple answer: that variation begets variation. They explain how there is no single ideal personality (as there is an ideal hand or eye, which we all share), but nature instead promotes different personalities.

In their recent study, John McNamara, Philip Stephens, and Alasdair Houston from the University of Bristol, and Sasha Dall of the University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus, explain how natural selection can prevent individuals in a species from evolving toward a single optimum personality, using a game theory scenario.

PhysOrg

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Company offers moon as final resting place

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The moon could become a final resting place for some of mankind thanks to a commercial service that hopes to send human ashes to the lunar surface on robotic landers, the company said on Thursday.

Celestis, Inc., a company that pioneered the sending of cremated remains into suborbital space on rockets, said it would start a service to the surface of the moon that could begin as early as next year.

Reuters

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LSD inventor Albert Hofmann dies

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Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, has died of a heart attack at his home in Basel at the age of 102.

Mr Hofmann first produced LSD in 1938 while researching the medicinal uses of a crop fungus.

He accidentally ingested some of the drug and said later: “Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror.”

He argued for decades that LSD could help treat mental illness, but in the 1960s it became a popular street drug.

‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’
BBC news

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Arthur C. Clarke, Author of `2001: A Space Odyssey,’ Dies at 90

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Arthur C. Clarke, the U.K. science- fiction writer and futurist visionary best known for the novel adapted for the film ``2001: A Space Odyssey,’’ has died. He was 90.

Clarke died in his adopted home country of Sri Lanka early today from respiratory complications, according to a statement from his office there. He had suffered from post-polio syndrome for the last two decades of his life and was confined to a wheelchair. Clarke had lived in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, since 1956 and held citizenship there.

The author, scientist, space expert and underwater diver was one of the most prolific and renowned science-fiction writers, publishing more than 30 novels, at least 13 short-story collections and 28 works of non-fiction. He was honored with a British knighthood in 2000, and his work inspired the names of some spacecraft, an asteroid and even a species of dinosaur. ``2001: A Space Odyssey’’ was adapted in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film of the same name.

Clarke’s visions of the future took form in geostationary satellites, which some credit as a blueprint for modern-day communication methods. In 1945, he set out his ideas in an article, ``Extra-Terrestrial Relays,’’ published in the Wireless World magazine.

http://www.bloomberg.com/

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‘Mind Gaming’ Could Enter Market This Year

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In an adapted version of the Harry Potter video game, players lift boulders and throw lightning bolts using only their minds. Just as physical movement changed the interface of gaming with Nintendo’s Wii, the power of the mind may be the next big thing in video games.

And it may come soon. Emotiv, a company based in San Francisco, says its mind-control headsets will be on shelves later this year, along with a host of novel “biofeedback” games developed by its partners.

Several other companies – including EmSense in Monterey, California; NeuroSky in San Jose, California; and Hitachi in Tokyo – are also developing technology to detect players´ brainwaves and use them in next-gen video games.

The technology is based on medical technology that has been around for decades. Using a combination of EEGs (which reveal alpha waves that signify calmness), EMGs (which measure muscle movement), and ECGs and GSR (which measure heart rate and sweating), developers hope to create a picture of a player´s mental and physical state. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), which monitors changes in blood oxygenation, could also be incorporated since it overcomes some of the interference problems with EEGs.

PhysOrg via KurzweilAI

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Web Has Unexpected Effect on Journalism

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The Internet has profoundly changed journalism, but not necessarily in ways that were predicted even a few years ago, a study on the industry released Sunday found.

It was believed at one point that the Net would democratize the media, offering many new voices, stories and perspectives. Yet the news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual State of the News Media report.

Two stories – the war in Iraq and the 2008 presidential election campaign – represented more than a quarter of the stories in newspapers, on television and online last year, the project found.

Take away Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, and news from all of the other countries in the world combined filled up less than 6 percent of the American news hole, the project said.

Wired

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Zebrafish Regenerative Ability May Help Humans

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Biologists have discovered a molecular circuit breaker that controls a zebrafish’s remarkable ability to regrow missing fins, according to a new study from Duke University Medical Center.

Tiny wonders of the aquarium world, zebrafish can regenerate organs and tissues, including hearts, eye parts and fins. When a fin is lost, the fish regenerates a perfect copy in two weeks by orchestrating the growth of many tissue types, including bone, nerves, blood vessels, connective tissue and skin.

Scientists hope that understanding how zebrafish repair themselves will lead to new treatments for human conditions caused by damaged tissue, such as heart failure, diabetes and spinal cord injuries.

Science Blog

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Chemical brain controls nanobots

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A tiny chemical “brain” which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented.The molecular device – just two billionths of a metre across – was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say it could also be used to boost the processing power of future computers.

Many experts have high hopes for nano-machines in treating disease.

“If [in the future] you want to remotely operate on a tumour you might want to send some molecular machines there,” explained Dr Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the International Center for Young Scientists, Tsukuba, Japan.

“But you cannot just put them into the blood and [expect them] to go to the right place.”

Dr Bandyopadhyay believes his device may offer a solution. One day they may be able to guide the nanobots through the body and control their functions, he said.

“That kind of device simply did not exist; this is the first time we have created a nano-brain,” he told BBC News.

BBC news – Science and Technology

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Texas’ Peyote Hunters Struggle to Find a Vanishing, Holy Crop

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Mauro Morales picks his way through mesquite trees and prickly pear cacti. The 65-year-old cautiously steps around a thicket of tasajillo, or rattail cactus, just down the road from his small ranch near Rio Grande City. Tasajillo thorns stick you like a fish hook, he says. Then there’s the cola seca—the rattlesnake—another job hazard.

“We’re far enough from a hospital that you probably wouldn’t make it if you got bit,” he says in a quiet voice, as though a snake might take his words as an invitation to strike.

Morales has been wandering through the chaparral for half an hour, staring at the ground. He combs over small rocks with a stick. Finally, he spots a greenish knob, sprouting out of the ground under the tasajillo thicket.

“There’s some medicine, right there,” he says. It’s a lone peyote button, about an inch in diameter, way too small to harvest. It’ll be another five years before this peyote is mature. As he navigates the hostile flora, he points to three more small peyote plants, all of them too young to cut.

“I used to collect as much in a week as I now do in a month,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to the medicine.”

Dallas Observer via Dose Nation

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Next plague likeliest to emerge from poor tropical countries

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Scores of infectious diseases have emerged to threaten humans in the past decades as viruses leap the species barrier from wild animals and bacteria mutate into antibiotic-resistant strains, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Presenting the first-ever map of “hotspots” of new infectious diseases, they predict that the next pandemic is likeliest to come out of poor tropical countries, where burgeoning human populations come into contact with wildlife.

A three-year investigation led by four major institutions tracked 335 incidents since 1940 when a new infectious disease emerged.

The category includes HIV/AIDS, which has slain or infected more than 65 million people around the world, and outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and H5N1 bird flu, which have cost tens of billions of dollars to contain.

Yahoo via Posthuman Blues

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Behavior: An Absence of Free Will, a Tendency to Cheat

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If there is no such thing as free will, do you really have to put that money into the office coffee kitty when no one is looking?

A study suggests that when people are encouraged to believe their behavior is predetermined — by genes or by environment — they may be more likely to cheat. The report, in the January issue of Psychological Science, describes two studies by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan W. Schooler of the University of British Columbia.

NY Times via Technoccult

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