Virtual people help bridge digital divide
August 1, 2002
Web-based avatars are being developed in the U.K. as a simplified interface to computer systems that inform citizens about services.
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How neurons synthesize proteins from limited number of genes
August 1, 2002
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and UK-based Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have identified a mechanism by which neurons can synthesize a diverse range of proteins from a relatively limited number of genes.
For the Pcdh family of proteins, the diversity is achieved by “alternative promoters and cis-alternative splicing with a low level of trans-splicing,” enabling individual neurons to express distinct combinations of Pcdh genes, and, in turn, proteins.
In an Ancient Game, Computing’s Future
August 1, 2002
Programmers working on Go — which is more complex than chess — see it as more accurate than chess in reflecting how the human mind uses pattern recognition. “Writing a strong Go program will teach us more about making computers think like people than writing a strong chess program,” says David Fotland, creator of “The Many Faces of Go” software.
REBOOTING CIVILIZATION II
August 6, 2002
On July 21, Edge held a meeting, REBOOTING CIVILIZATION II, concerned with information processing and computation as central metaphors.
It included leading scientists commenting on various “universes”: physicist Seth Lloyd (the computational universe), physicist Paul Steinhardt (the cyclic universe), physicist Alan Guth (the inflationary universe), computer scientist Marvin Minsky (the emotional universe), and technologist Ray Kurzweil (the intelligent universe).
The text and… read more
More Memory on the Way
August 6, 2002
Researchers from the University of Southern California School of Engineering have developed a 256-bits “Data IntensiVe Architecture (DIVA)” memory that puts a processor on the DRAM chip, allowing for significantly faster memory performance and eliminating the gap between CPU and memory performance.
Machine brains poised to surpass us
August 7, 2002
Ray Kurzweil believes we are fewer than 30 years away from a time when machine intelligence will surpass our own, he said, speaking at the annual conference of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence.Kurzweil predicted:
Another Dimension
August 8, 2002
Two chipmakers are developing 3-D chips to increase semiconductor power and speed by a factor of 10–at no additional cost.
Tohoku University professor Fujio Masuoka, who invented flash memory, and a small team of researchers plan to have a 3-D chip ready in five years.
Matrix Semiconductor, with has raised $80 million, says it has already created a 3-D chip that it will start selling by year-end, mainly to… read more
Playstation 3 chip nears completion
August 8, 2002
IBM, Sony and Toshiba have designed a new multimedia chip called “Cell,” touted as a “supercomputer on a chip.” It is expected to be used in Playstation 3 and as future IBM server chips.
Featuring a multiple-core-processor, the new multipurpose chip will be capable of running graphics, high-bandwidth communication, and multiple devices, and operating at one teraflop.
Charmed by Six Feet of Circuitry
August 8, 2002
Grace, a six-foot autonomous robot, was the star of the recent annual meeting of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in Canada.Grace performed successfully in the “Robot Challenge” event: start at the entrance to the conference center, take the elevator to the registration desk, register for the conference and then deliver a speech in the auditorium.
Grace was co-developed by Carnegie Mellon University (overall hardware and software architecture), the… read more
Black hole theory suggests light is slowing
August 9, 2002
Observations of the light from distant, superbright galaxies suggest that the “fine structure constant” was slightly smaller 10 billion years ago, which implies that the speed of light has decreased over time, according to Paul Davies of Macquarie University in Sydney.
If proved right, this would challenge the theory of relativity and the theory of inflation, which says space expanded extremely rapidly in the first split second after the… read more
Scientists unravel secrets of long life
August 9, 2002
Longevity is related to body temperature, and to levels of insulin and DHEAS (dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate) circulating in the blood, according to researchers at the National Institute of Ageing in Baltimore.
Men with lower temperature and insulin and those maintaining higher DHEAS levels have greater survival than respective counterparts.
Research teams have made critical breakthroughs in developing quantum computers. The Quantronics group at the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Saclay, France, and Siyuan Han’s laboratory at the University of Kansas reported qubit chip designs with coherence times at least 100 times as great as those achieved before. Investigators at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colo., have come up with a design that they think… read more
Only the Strong Survive
August 12, 2002
Santa Fe Institute research computer scientist Melanie Mitchell is studying how natural systems perform computation and says we can solve some complex problems by letting systems evolve solutions through a process of natural selection.
Bridging the Language Gap
August 12, 2002
The Tongues research project at Carnegie Mellon Language Technologies Institute allows a computer to listen to speech in one language, translate it, and speak in another.
The system includes a speech recognizer, which turns spoken words into text; a machine translator, which converts the text from one language to another; and a speech synthesizer, which turns the text back into audible words.
Net Visionaries Seek New Vistas
August 13, 2002
Vinton Cerf (co-designer of the TCP/IP protocol upon which the Internet is built) is currently mapping out plans for an Interplanetary Internet.
“Some of the ideas we’re pursuing will have utility on Earth in the mobile environment, where connectivity is often episodic and the data rates are often low and sometimes asymmetric,” Cerf said at this year’s Telluride Tech Festival in Colorado.
Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Worldwide Web),… read more