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POPSCopernican principle re-examined: We might be living in a giant cosmic bubble Clifton, along with Oxford researchers Pedro G. Ferreira and Kate Land, say that in coming years we may be able to distinguish between dark energy and the void. They point to the upcoming Joint Dark Energy Mission, planned by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy to launch in 2014 or 2015. The satellite aims to measure the expansion of the universe precisely by observing about 2,300 supernovae. The scientists suggest that by looking at a large number of supernovae in a certain region of the universe, they should be able to tell whether the objects are really accelerating away, or if their light is merely being distorted in a void.
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POPSResearchers decode thought “In one of our early studies, we showed people words representing tools and words representing buildings,” Mitchell said. “We found that we could train our model so that it could successfully distinguish new tool words from new building words.” Having developed a model able to categorize objects correctly approximately 90 percent of the time, the team sought to determine the effect that viewing an object as a picture, as opposed to viewing an object as a word, has on a person’s brain activation patterns. The team therefore trained their model on fMRI data collected from subjects looking at pictures, and then tested the model on fMRI data collected as subjects read corresponding words. “The accuracy was almost the same,” Mitchell said. “The fact that it doesn’t matter whether we use a word or a picture means that we are really capturing the neural activity associated with the meaning of an item, and not just the .”
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POPSHaving Their Cake and Eating It Too From the article: "Let's imagine that the Alliance Defense Fund and its clerical clients were to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn the Johnson amendment's ban on political endorsements from the pulpit. At that point, what would prevent wealthy ideologues from making tax-exempt contributions to sympathetic pastors' churches for the express purpose of engaging in partisan electioneering? For that matter, what would prevent ambitious pastors from soliciting just such contributions and then using them to bind like-minded ministers into powerful political machines?"
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POPSUmberto Eco's defining characteristics of fascism CONTINUED... 11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero . 12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. 13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism , a qualitative populism, one might say. 14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
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POPSRadiation Detection at Ports? $3.1 Billion According to the clip, via National Journal's Earlybird news digest, the Department of Homeland Security says GAO's estimate is misleadingly high "because it includes operation and maintenance costs." Unless I'm missing something, that strikes me as an unusually lame response. Why wouldn't you consider maintenance costs for something like a system to detect nukes?
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POPSVIRTUAL INSTRUMENTATION APPROACH Now A Days Automotiove Testing Plays Very Important Role In The Manufacturing Industry With Innovative Use Of Virtual Instrumentation Engineers And Scientists Will Be Able To Distinguish Themselves Better Than Before And Latest Cots Technologies Like Fpgas, Dsps, Pci Express Etc Expedite Deployment Of The Approved And Verified Designs.
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POPSMirror Neuron - Almost everything you wanted to know Very interesting and educative read: Based on context, mirror neurons can distinguish intention. The activity of the observer’s mirror neurons is greatest for the neat scenario—almost double the amount in the messy one—because drinking is a more fundamental intention than cleaning up.
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POPSUsing AI to find biomarkers of calorie restriction Novel artificial intelligence methodologies were applied to analyze gene expression microarray data gathered from mice under a calorie restriction (CR) regimen. The data were gathered from three previously published mouse studies; these datasets were merged together into a single composite dataset for the purpose of conducting a broader-based analysis. The result was a list of genes that are important for the impact of CR on lifespan, not necessarily in terms of their individual actions but in terms of their interactions with other genes. Furthermore, a map of gene interrelationships was provided, suggesting which intergene interactions are most important for the effect of CR on life extension.
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POPSMinority Report is being materialized "The inventors of the technology claim the system can distinguish between people’s memories of events they witnessed and between deeds they committed" “As we enter more fully into the era of mapping and understanding the brain, society will face an increasing number of important ethical, legal and social issues raised by these new technologies,” Mr. Greely, the Stanford bioethicist, and his colleague Judy Illes wrote last year in the American Journal of Law & Medicine." Interesting article. Raises many questions; a) the easiest one is is it valid? why easiest because it can be one day answered, at least i assume so. b) if it is valid, should we use it? where is the line of privacy? should there be a line as such? i find it fundamentally challenging the human conceptual descriptions of what is self, identity, society and its relation. Fascinating. what do you think?
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POPSRedefining Depression "What is the “real” trigger for this patient’s depression? Perhaps it is a combination of psychological and neurological factors. In short, the notion of “reacting” to adverse life events is complex and problematic."
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POPSThe Landscape of Possible Intelligences If we imagine the levels of intelligence as a ladder with unevenly spaced rungs, there may be jumps that some intelligences are not able to complete, or their derivatives are not able to jump. So a type 3 mind may be able to jump up four levels of bootstrapping intelligence, but not five. Since I don't believe intelligence is linear (that is I believe intelligence grows in many dimensions), a better illustration may be to view the problem of bootstrapping super intelligence as navigating across a rugged evolutionary landscape.
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POPSHow genes pick our mates for us Instead of smelly T-shirts, Chaix and colleague Peter Donnelly of the University of Oxford studied previously gathered genetic data on 30 Caucasian couples from Utah and 30 Yoruba couples from Nigeria. The researchers analysed about 9000 genetic differences within the MHC genes, as well as more than 3 million differences dotted across the rest of their genomes. This suggests that the American couples are selecting mates, in large part, based on MHC genes. Not so for Yoruba couples, who seemed to pick mates with MHC genes no more different than would be expected for any two people picked at random from the population. One explanation for the different findings could be diversity. Overall, Yoruba people had more differences in their MHC genes than Americans, so there could be less evolutionary pressure to find a mate with new genes.
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POPSThe Communist Manifesto Bourgeoisie --> revolutionize instruments of production --> relations of production change --> relations of SOCIETY changes
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POPSAnother Google First This camera can easily distinguish objects 16 inches long, with 11-bits per pixel color. It's orbit is one day so that the images are not blurred.
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POPSWhen Hairballs Become Hazardous One of my cats is having a terrible time expelling hairballs and may be in trouble. I'm going to follow this advice with respect to adding some oil and fiber and see if this helps the old girl.
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POPSRosenberg on Glenn Beck ROSENBERG: I’m not saying that we are definitely going to see the total fulfillment of the Ezekiel 38 and 39 prophecy in our lifetime. GLENN: But you are not not saying it, either. ROSENBERG: You couldn’t rule it out based on the trajectory which seems to be accelerating. Look at it. That Bible prophecy that we’re talking about, Glenn, talks about Russia coming from the north with its allies to attack Israel. Now, take out a map. Go to Moscow. Go straight south and before you get to Israel, where do you drive right through? Georgia. Transcript.
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POPSCultural Neuroscience I do believe this attention to culture as every bit as important as brain activity, indeed inseparable from it, is crucial for the way we think about thinkinfg and how we think we think we are.
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POPSTHE ORIGIN OF BIOLOGICAL INFORMATION Yet Muller and Newman insist that population genetics, and thus evolutionary biology, has not identified a specifically causal explanation for the origin of true morphological novelty during the history of life. Central to their concern is what they see as the inadequacy of the variation of genetic traits as a source of new form and structure. They note, following Darwin himself, that the sources of new form and structure must precede the action of natural selection (2003:3)–that selection must act on what already exists. Yet, in their view, the “genocentricity” and “incrementalism” of the neo-Darwinian mechanism has meant that an adequate source of new form and structure has yet to be identified by theoretical biologists. Instead, Muller and Newman see the need to identify epigenetic sources of morphological innovation during the evolution of life. In the meantime, however, they insist neo-Darwinism lacks any “theory of the generative”
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