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Has Facebook made you psychotic?

Looking for something besides politics to discuss over Thanksgiving dinner?
November 22, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

Are you lonely or vulnerable due to the loss of or separation from a loved one? Are you inexperienced with technology?

If so, you might want to read this before logging onto Facebook or Twitter after (or during) your Thanksgiving dinner.

Dr. Uri Nitzan of Tel Aviv University‘s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Shalvata Mental Health Care Center presented three in-depth case studies from his own practice linking psychotic… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Internet/Telecom | Social Networking/Web/Education

Comments (58)

Ask Ray | Asimov’s ‘The Last Question’

November 27, 2012

Asimov The Last Question

Dear Ray,

About Asimov’s “The Last Question” — I was captivated by Asimov’s story as a child, and again some 50 years later in reading Ray’s version of the answer in The Singularity Is Near.

Looking forward to getting his new book!

Thank you,
Ron Eckhardt

Dear Ronald,

Thanks. Yes, the evolution of intelligence runs counter to the second law.… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics

Comments (51)

How bio-inspired deep learning keeps winning competitions

An interview with Dr. Juergen Schmidhuber on the future of neural networks
November 28, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica, Jürgen Schmidhuber

nn

Dr. Jürgen Schmidhuber is Director of the Swiss Artificial Intelligence Lab, IDSIA. His research team’s artificial neural networks (NNs) have won many international awards, and recently were the first to achieve human-competitive performance on various benchmark data sets. I asked him about their secrets of success.… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics

Comments (14)

Uploaded e-crews for interstellar missions

December 12, 2012 by Giulio Prisco

The bright star Alpha Centauri and its surroundings

The awesome 100 Year Starship (100YSS) initiative by DARPA and NASA proposes to send people to the stars by the year 2100 — a huge challenge that will require bold, visionary, out-of-the-box thinking.

There are major challenges. “Using current propulsion technology, travel to a nearby star (such as our closest star system, Alpha Centauri, at 4.37 light years from the Sun, which also has a a planet with… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Singularity/Futures | Space

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How to control music and video on the Web with a wave of your hand

December 28, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

webcam sees

“We are so excited and pleased to release a new version [of Flutter] that allows you to control music & videos in Google Chrome using gestures — just in time for the holiday season. Flutter now supports YouTube, Pandora, Grooveshark & Netflix. We will be updating AppStore version in early 2013. For now direct download the new version.”… read more

Topics: Entertainment/New Media | Innovation/Entrepreneurship

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The best tribute to Aaron Swartz

January 15, 2013 by Giulio Prisco

AaronSwartzPIPA

If you are a scientist, you can pay the best and most effective tribute to the memory of Aaron Swartz by sharing PDFs of your published work on pdftribute.net via the hashtag #pdftribute on Twitter.

Researchers are now offering open-access versions of their work using this hashtag.

I also suggest to boycott the pay-walled journals of the science mafia and publish on… read more

Topics: Internet/Telecom | Social/Ethical/Legal

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DIY BioPrinter

January 28, 2013

DIY BioPrinter (credit: BioCurious/Instructables)

Bioprinting is printing with biological materials.

There’s a lot of work being done at research labs and big companies like Organovo on print human tissues and human organs, with an eye towards drug testing, and transplantation into humans.

Check out these amazing TED talks by Anthony Atala, for example:

Anthony Atala: Growing new organs
Anthony Atala: Printing a human… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science | Social Networking/Web/Education

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Stalking the wild microbiome

Startup biotech project offers sequencing of your 100 trillion microbes --- indiegogo crowdfunding campaign expires Thurs. Jan. 31 just before midnight
January 31, 2013 by Amara D. Angelica

The full microbiome analysis will be available with the $1,337 Delta Five kit (credit: uBiome)

Did you know that foreign microoganisms outnumber our own cells by 10:1, and that we know almost nothing about how they affect our personal health?

Neither did I. But biotech startup µBiome, a UCSF Quantitative Biosciences Institute spinoff, hopes to fix all that by launching the world’s first citizen science effort to fully map the human “microbiome” (all the microbes in your body),… read more

Topics: Biotech | Social Networking/Web/Education

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The Singularity by Miracles of Modern Science

Miracles of Modern Science singer/bassist Evan Younger on the story behind "The Singularity," featured on the orchestral rock group's upcoming EP, MEEMS
February 5, 2013 by Amara D. Angelica

meems

We recently got a note from Evan Younger, vocalist/bassist for Brooklyn-based orchestral rockers Miracles of Modern Science mentioning a single he wrote, “The Singularity.” How could I resist? I punched up the podcast link.

Yes! Very nice! Powerful lyrics that definitely get it, and the music combines the richness and intelligence of acoustic strings with the energy of a rock beat. Accelerates my thinking. I have to say… read more

Topics: Entertainment/New Media | Singularity/Futures

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Ask Ray | How to Create a Mind thought experiment

February 10, 2013

Albert Einstein

Ray,

I just finished reading How to Create a Mind. I found it both interesting and informative. At the end, I believe that there is an inherent difference between a human brain and an AI system, a difference that can’t be overcome by any amount of added speed and capacity. To illustrate this difference I have included a thought experiment:

Take the most powerful artificial brain in existence. Include all programs necessary to make… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics

Comments (114)

We Are the World: inviting everyone onboard the 100YSS is practical and will help to ensure its success

February 13, 2013 by Martine Rothblatt

wearetheworld_slide13a

Dr. Martine Rothblatt suggests inviting the entire world’s population on-board the 100YSS by uploading, at no cost, their mindfiles — a 1 TB (or less) digital file of an individual’s mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values — into a central database that will be carried onboard the starship. Presented at the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) 2012 Public Symposium Sept. 13–16, 2012 in Houston.

In… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Human Enhancement | Singularity/Futures | Space

Comments (40)

How to read a mouse’s mind

Could be a useful tool for studying new therapies for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's
February 21, 2013 by Amara D. Angelica

A tiny microscope<br /> equipped with a microendoscope images cells expressing GCaMP3 (credit: Yaniv Ziv et al./Nature Neuroscience)

Want to read a mouse’s mind — observing hundreds of neurons firing in the brain of a live mouse in real time — to see how it creates memories as it explores an environment?

You’ll just need some fluorescent protein and a tiny digital microscope implanted in the rodent’s head, Stanford University scientists say.

Here’s how:

1. First, you catch your mouse.

2. Light… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Biotech | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Innovation/Entrepreneurship

Comments (50)

It’s time for a real policy on asteroids

February 24, 2013 by Peter A. Garretson

Edge-on view of our solar system with Sun (white) in the center, showing the population of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) that scientists think are likely to exist based on the NEOWISE survey. Positions of a simulated population of PHAs on a typical day are shown in bright orange, and the simulated NEAs are blue. Earth's orbit is green. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

If you think the events of the post-Valentine’s day surprise of the Russian Meteor and 2012 DA14 near miss are one of a kind, think again. “We know there are 500,000 to 1 million asteroids the size of DA14 or larger. So far we have found fewer than 1% of that ‘cosmic hailstorm’ through which we sail in our yearly orbit around the Sun,” said the Association of Space Explorers… read more

Topics: Space | Survival/Defense

Comments (39)

In the beginning was the code

A transcript of Jürgen Schmidhuber’s TEDx talk in Belgium
March 15, 2013 by Jürgen Schmidhuber

universe_cube

There is a fastest, optimal, most efficient way of computing all logically possible universes, including ours — if ours is computable (no evidence against this). Any God-like “Great Programmer” with any self-respect should use this optimal method to create and master all logically possible universes.

At any given time, most of the universes computed so far that contain yourself will be due to one of the shortest and fastest programs computing you. This insight allows for making non-trivial predictions about the future. We also obtain formal, mathematical answers to age-old questions of philosophy and theology.… read more

Topics: Computers/Infotech/UI | Physics/Cosmology

Comments (61)

Keep your laws off my body!

March 29, 2013 by Giulio Prisco

balduzzi-dicci-si

Let’s say you have a incurable illness, and someone has developed a controversial stem-cell treatment that has led to a cure in about 80 patients. Do you have a right to ignore government regulations prohibiting its use?

If you live in Italy, the answer is si, thanks to Italy’s health minister, Renato Balduzzi, who has decreed that a stem-cell treatment can continue in 32 terminally ill patients, mostly children — even though… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Biotech | Social/Ethical/Legal

Comments (117)

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