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POPSLearning How Not To Be Afraid When Kandel's team used radiation to blunt the birth of new cells in the dentate gyrus, they discovered that their interventions both slowed safety learning and stunted the antidepressant effects of learned safety. Another study that points to the origin of fear as a biological entity. the glitch is it turning into anxiety.
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POPSAlife, i.e. artificial life ahead "Just as 19th-century engineers studied the flight of birds and dreamed of being airborne, he says, so today's computer engineers marvel at the intelligence in all forms of life and contemplate the potential of more efficient computation." It may be sooner that expected, are we ready for it? does it matter? I think it does. I think we as a human society much put more effort in thinking the future ahead of us.
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POPSVirtual worlds carve out new path "The first step is to have virtual worlds as a common medium for ordinary people. It has to become far more ubiquitous, more like a toaster than a DVR," What virtual worlds do well is contextualise social encounters in a way that social networking cannot do, he thinks. "Without places it is hard to have activities. The bowling alley or the alcohol does not matter as much as the people but if you do not have the bowling alley or the alcohol it's just an empty room and no-one comes,"
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POPSToy Robot Intended to Save Humans This narrative, crafted by Hugo award winner Tony Daniel and University of Texas performance professor Thomas Riccio, is intended to make Zeno into a character that people identify with and want to to see develop — something with the depth of a movie character or a figure from a Homerian epic. That makes Zeno into as much of a sociological experiment as it is a technical marvel or fun toy. "The idea is to create a cultural phenomenon and accelerate the use and humanization of the technology," Where story, game, reality, toys are not differentiable anymore.
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POPSForecasts for the 25 Years... From the page: "A Crisis or an Opportunity? What Makes the Difference? The critical difference is whether you are prepared. If you’re aware of possible developments… if you see changes coming… you can take action and prepare yourself. In a rapidly changing world, new opportunities are emerging everywhere. If you get an advance notice of these possible changes, you can be ready. You can ride these waves of change to benefit your career, your business, your family and your investments." Why not changing ourselves as well? it seems as if all that will come should not affect us on deep levels, but why? part of preparation is accepting the changing of human that may come.
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POPSBiologically inspired unique design Wow, that would be the day... the idea of taking 2 concepts (e.g. biology, technology) and paralleling them is nice. The kissing borders may yield anew synthesis
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POPSA real jewel: The 50 greatest arts videos on YouTube Many more inside like: Vladimir Nabokov discusses Lolita, 1950s; David Lynch interviewed on Scene by Scene, 1999; Jackson Pollock drip paints outside his East Hampton home, 1951; Andy Warhol's Blow Job, 1963 Maria Callas in Zeffirelli's Tosca, 1964 and more...
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POPSTuring test, put to test next week. "I think the reason Alan Turing set this game up was that maybe to him consciousness was not that important; it's more the appearance of it, and this test is an important aspect of appearance.' "The test will be carried out by human 'interrogators', each sitting at a computer with a split screen: one half will be operated by an unseen human, the other by a program. The interrogators will then begin separate, simultaneous text-based conversations with both of them on any subjects they choose. After five minutes they will be asked to judge which is which." "a program needs only to make 30 per cent or more of the interrogators unsure of its identity to be deemed as having passed the test, based on Turing's own criteria"
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POPSLet's junk the myths and celebrate what we've got Moreover, we need to become responsible versus petty humans; in the words of the article "When you see nothing but junk, create quality. Where quality is hard to find, curate it, adding your own seal of approval with a link. When you read inaccuracies and misunderstandings, add facts, corrections, context and journalism. If people on the internet get things wrong, educate them. When you hear the noise of people talking online, listen." Thumbs up.
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POPS"People have found other ways to be cooperative – without God." The study also points out that in today's world religion has no monopoly on kind and generous behaviour. In many findings, non-believers acted as prosocially as believers. The last several hundred years has seen the rise of non-religious institutional mechanisms that include effective policing, courts and social surveillance. Very interesting read, on the social function of god. maybe we can say that JC, Moses and the like are history social workers :)
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POPSHumanoid Robot The fascination is double i think, by glimpsing into the future and the technology, the human may have a glimpse on herself.
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POPSDecoding the sense of smell In future work, the team plans to work with researchers worldwide, including MIT's Media Lab and Department of Biology, to develop a portable microfluidic device that can identify an array of different odors. Such a device could be used in medicine for the early diagnosis of certain diseases that produce distinctive odors, such as diabetes and lung, bladder and skin cancers, Zhang said. There are also a wide range of industrial applications for such a smell-based biosensing device, he said. One application i can think of is developing an antidote for smelly things, people etc.. :)
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POPSThe paints of Colour-blind artist. Colour-blind artist learns to paint by hearing A COLOUR-BLIND artist who could only recognise black and white shades has learnt how to paint with a full palette by “hearing” the hues he cannot see. Neil Harbisson, 25, has been fitted with a device called an Eyeborg, which converts 360 colours into different sounds. As an art student at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, he painted only in black and white because that is all he saw. But three years ago he met Adam Montandon, a cybernetics expert who came to give a lecture at the college. After the talk, Montandon was told of Harbisson’s condition and he took up the challenge of solving the problem, enabling Harbisson to paint in colour. The artist suffers from achromatopsia – or complete congenital colour blindness.
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POPSGames and reality, Which affects which? on the other hand, "some biologists think the game could have educational value just by making users think about science, like an entertaining hook into evolutionary biology." "Ultimately, games are made to engage the people who play them. Provoking wonderment or debate is a good thing. Wright abstracts grandiose topics, and he does it well. Not enough game designers have the stones or the vision to try the same, which is why we get battered with endless versions of Madden NFL (also put out by Electronic Arts). In the end, that's also why Spore leaves such an impression. It's more than just fun. It's worth arguing about."
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POPSWorkers More Prone To Lie In E-mail I think that the immediacy and accessibility of use that has been allowed by the e-mails, has contributed to this. it is as if this effortless availability with it being still new that allows somehow the users not to identify with this medium. it makes them feel more anonymous.
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POPSA Forbidden City of words Recently, a new technique has been developed that involves some software that changes the alignment of Chinese words from horizontal to vertical, and it's very popular. Chinese sentences can be read from left to right, right to left, and top to bottom. For a Chinese person reading from top to bottom is not a problem – it has been like that for thousands of years, until the early 20th century. However, the forbidden vocabulary-seeking mechanism is fooled. When all these methods fail, people can still use mobile phones and text messages, which are not covered by the censoring system yet.
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