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POPSA Robot Controlled by Self Organizing Biological Neural Net "Within a week we get some spontaneous firings and brain-like activity" similar to what happens in a normal rat -- or human -- brain, he added. But without external stimulation, the brain will wither and die within a couple of months. "Now we are looking at how best to teach it to behave in certain ways," explained Warwick. To some extent, Gordon learns by itself. When it hits a wall, for example, it gets an electrical stimulation from the robot's sensors. As it confronts similar situations, it learns by habit.
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POPSSCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE in the 1950s, showed signs of therapeutic potential or value in research into the nature of consciousness and sensory perception. “Human consciousness…is a function of the ebb and flow of neural impulses in various regions of the brain-the very substrate that drugs such as psilocybin act upon,” Schuster says. “Understanding what mediates these effects is clearly within the realm of neuroscience and deserves investigation.” “A vast gap exists between what we know of these drugs-mostly from descriptive anthropology-and what we believe we can understand using modern clinical pharmacology techniques,” says study leader Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor with Hopkins’ departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and Behavioral Biology. “That gap is large because, as a reaction to the excesses of the 1960s, human research with hallucinogens has been basically frozen in time these last forty years.”
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POPS"Texas Tea Party" Held Over Through Friday From Amanda Carpenter at Townhall: I can tell you, this is going to be a full-week assault. A GOP aide showed me a week-long schedule of GOP floor speaking dates on energy while the rest of Congress is on their 5-week taxpayer paid vacation. I'll try to share that schedule with you later. If your congressman isn't on it, you should give their office call! Update: The #dontGo feed on Twitter has become de facto Update Central, but your options for following along (despite the lack of audio or video recording equipment) continues to grow, including: * Live blog at minority leader John Boehner's site * The Facebook * The YouTube Channel Update: Oil just dipped below $120 per barrel for the first time in 3 months Update: During the occasional press conferences, Minority whip Roy Blunt has just made it pretty clear that the fun will continue at least throughout the week.
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POPSSpontaneous brain activity shapes our perceptions The researchers used functional MRI to track activity in an area of the brain called the Fusiform face area, which is involved in face recognition. Activity in the FFA was tracked for several seconds, until the test subject announced what they saw.
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POPSNational Anthem Not welcome in California State House Sometimes I wish that California would be hit with the "BIG ONE" and send it into Pacific Ocean. Thank God the children did not break out into a spontaneous chorus of Amazing Grace, they might have been tarred and feathered. For this unpatriotic display on the part of the California State capital this story belongs in the Cuckoos nest for sure. No wonder they call Cali the 'Left Coast' apparently the people who live out there have taken leave of their common sense.
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POPSOuter-space sex For all these reasons, Logan said spontaneous sex in space could be "a little underwhelming." "It's a pretty messy environment, when you think about it," he said. "And for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. However ... I can well imagine how compelling, inspiring, and quite frankly stimulating choreographed sex in zero-G might be in the hands of a skilled and talented cinematographer with appropriate lighting and music." When the crowd tittered, Logan added, "I'm not kidding: Sex in zero-G is going to have to be more or less choreographed. Otherwise it's just going to be a wild flail."
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POPSThe Legacy of Charles Fort Many people over the space of 5000 yrs of human civilization have claimed to be prophets, messiahs, holy men or the Illuminated as compared to the rest of us "mere" normals. Some have claimed to be masters of the Black Arts (Aleister Crowley, et al) and some have claimed to be immortal or possessing long lives (Comte de Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, John Dee) or incredible psychic awareness (Edgar Cayce, Uri Gellar, Madame Blavatsky) but as far as I know only one man made his life out of collecting facts that were witnessed by many and researched diligently by him that still astound us. You have seen the kinds of things I am talking about on the X-Files or read of it in the Tabloids, but this man never took it as more than a wonderful reach that man's scientific knowledge was far from complete. Charles Fort only collected curiosities as I do. He was my inspiration. This is his legacy.
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POPSScientists mimic Earth's spinning core They say that the strength of the Earth's magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 150 years. Perhaps with the scale of electricity we produce, we are draining it like a battery. Maybe gradually slowing the movement of the metal. according to the law of conservation of energy. The production of energy is not spontaneous. It is a conversion, from one form to another. The fossil fuels drive a generator, but the electricity is produced due to the magnets in a dynamo interacting with the Earth's magnetic field. The magnetic energy converted to electrical energy. 26 ton Sphere full of boiling Sodium? They've disconnected the sprinklers, and the fire hoses. Humans and a 26 ton sphere full of wet sodium are better off in two different states. Sodium cracks water into caustic soda, and hydrogen with an attitude. Makes an oil fire look like a cigarette lighter. At least it's over in a flash.
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POPS"Blue Planet in Green Shackles" Czech President Vaclav Klaus Klaus said poor nations would also be hurt by efforts to impose limits and standards on emissions of gases believed to cause global warming. "They will not be able to absorb new technological standards required by the anti-greenhouse religion, their products will have difficulty accessing the developed markets, and as a result the gap between them and the developed world will widen," "This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection -- similarly to the old Marxists -- wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central, now global, planning of the whole world," he added. "No government action can stop the world and nature from changing. Therefore, I disagree with plans such as the Kyoto Protocol or similar initiatives, which set arbitrary targets requiring enormous costs without realistic prospects for the success of these measures," he said.
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POPSeurovision tweets I am not a Eurovision fan. But it is good to see a reporter spotting the potential power of tools like Twitter. And noticing that people have different roles in the ad hoc community which formed. I almost wish I had been following the twittering live, now.
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POPSAcharya Vimal Kirthi - Awakened Gaze
Mudra (Mudhra) is a word in Sanskrit language that is used to signify a gesture, or a mystically significant position using the hands or body posture. The word Mudra is derived from the Sanskrit words Mu (as in Mudhaavaham or welcome) meaning bliss, and dhra meaning dissolving, Mudra is that which dissolves duality and brings together the divine and the devotee. Mudras are meaningful gestures with a specific attitude or frame of mind, performed with the hands, eyes and head position, body postures, with bhandans (locks as in hands or legs locked in a particular positon) and adhara (how they support their body in a particular position) and are used in a process of expansion of awareness. Mudras influence the mind through direct stimulation of the brain via the nervous system, and indirect stimulation through the brain via a manipulation of the prana (life force). Mudras in a spiritual context, are not a mere creation of an inventive mind of some Yoga teacher, but originally came spont
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POPSMechanical 'skin' reduces aeroplane drag I'm sure there are a few other places this could be used. Maybe high speed trains or Formula 1 racing. Anywhere people want to go faster. The idea was started when they roughed up a few swimming costumes. Sort of counterintuitive, to have to rough something up to get a smoother ride. Perhaps the truth also is that everything is rough, it's just that most of the detail is too fine for us to notice. Air currents can put a surface under more intense scrutiny.
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POPSQuestions Requiring Anwers of Evolutionists Thoughtful scientists ponder questions such as these and arrive at their hypotheses and then experiment to prove or disprove those hypotheses. Therefore I am calling on all evolutionists to ponder these points of fact and offer us some answers. Care to tackle this experiment?
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