Learning makes animals intelligent The fact that animals can use tools, have self-control and certain expectations of life can be explained with the help of a new learning model for animal behaviour. Researchers at Stockholm University and Brooklyn College have combined knowledge from the fields of artificial intelligence, ethology and the psychology of learning to solve several problems concerning the behaviour and intelligence of animals. Animals are often very effective; an oystercatcher opens mussels quickly, a baboon takes every opportunity to steal food from tourists or a rat navigates with ease between the bins in a park. Previously these behaviours have been considered to be inherited instincts, even though it is well known that animals have great learning abilities. Researchers from Stockholm University and Brooklyn College have now created an associative learning model that explains how effective behaviours can arise. "Young animals are often a bit clumsy, while adult animals are extremely skilled.
Les extraordinaires découvertes de Masaru Emoto Par le Passeur. A travers les écrits de cette époque où tout nous est restitué, nous parlons souvent de notre pouvoir créateur. Peut-être certains ont-ils besoin de comprendre mieux ce que cela signifie très concrètement. Un homme nous en a délivré la preuve incontestable et pourtant je me rends compte que bien peu de gens ont entendu parler des extraordinaires travaux du Dr. Titulaire d’un Doctorat de l’Université de Yokohama en Médecine Alternative (eh oui, au Japon ça existe), Masaru Emoto a pu mettre au point avec son équipe une méthode d’observation des cristaux d’eau gelés par la photographie. Masaru Emoto C’est au fil de ses travaux sur les fluctuations ondulatoires de l’eau que M. Tout de suite, l’équipe d’Emoto a découvert que les cristaux étaient très différents selon la provenance de l’eau. La découverte est d’une telle simplicité que mieux vaut tout simplement en regarder les images plus que de longs discours : Créé avec les mots "tu me rends malade' Fraternellement,
The Latest on Lucy: Early Hominin Spent Serious Time in Trees - Dead Things : Dead Things 3.18 million years ago, the member of Australopithecus afarensis better known as Lucy walked around what’s now Ethiopia. But researchers still debate how she walked — and how much time she spent on the ground. (Image credit: Associated Press) Hey Lucy, you got some more explainin’ to do. A controversial study published in August proposing that a fall from a tree killed Lucy, the world’s most famous fossil, was just the opening salvo in a renewed debate. Researchers announced an even bigger breakthrough today: Analysis of micro-CT scans reveal Lucy was at home on the ground and in the trees, a finding that puts the team at odds with some of the field’s biggest names. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Texas Austin looked at cross sections of micro-CT scans of Lucy’s upper and lower limb bones. It’s the first time that anyone has turned to micro-CT scanning to determine an early hominin’s locomotion. The Lucy Chronicles Rumble ’bout the Tumble Lucy the Gymnast?
Erik Verlinde's Gravity Minus Dark Matter For 80 years, scientists have puzzled over the way galaxies and other cosmic structures appear to gravitate toward something they cannot see. This hypothetical “dark matter” seems to outweigh all visible matter by a startling ratio of five to one, suggesting that we barely know our own universe. Thousands of physicists are doggedly searching for these invisible particles. But the dark matter hypothesis assumes scientists know how matter in the sky ought to move in the first place. This month, a series of developments has revived a long-disfavored argument that dark matter doesn’t exist after all. The latest attempt to explain away dark matter is a much-discussed proposal by Erik Verlinde, a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam who is known for bold and prescient, if sometimes imperfect, ideas. Instead of hordes of invisible particles, “dark matter is an interplay between ordinary matter and dark energy,” Verlinde said. The New MOND Ilvy Njiokiktjien for Quanta Magazine
Consciousness could be a side effect of 'entropy', say researchers It's impressive enough that our human brains are made up of the same 'star stuff' that forms the Universe, but new research suggests that this might not be the only thing the two have in common. Just like the Universe, our brains might be programmed to maximise disorder - similar to the principle of entropy - and our consciousness could simply be a side effect. The quest to understand human consciousness - our ability to be aware of ourselves and our surroundings - has been going on for centuries. Although consciousness is a crucial part of being human, researchers still don't truly understand where it comes from, and why we have it. But a new study, led by researchers from France and Canada, puts forward a new possibility: what if consciousness arises naturally as a result of our brains maximising their information content? In other words, what if consciousness is a side effect of our brain moving towards a state of entropy?
intelligence artificielle : la révolution de l'apprentissage profond Les ordinateurs ont suscité beaucoup d'enthousiasme et d'attentes dans les années 1950, quand ils ont commencé à battre au jeu de dames certains amateurs de bon niveau. Dans les années 1960, les chercheurs espéraient reproduire les fonctions du cerveau humain avec un ordinateur et des programmes informatiques. L'« intelligence artificielle » égalerait alors les performances humaines pour tous les types de tâches. En 1967, le spécialiste Marvin Minsky, du mit (l'Institut de technologie du Massachusetts), affirmait que les défis de l'intelligence artificielle seraient résolus en une génération. Cet optimisme était prématuré. Au milieu des années 2000, le rêve de construire des machines aussi intelligentes que des humains avait presque été abandonné par la communauté scientifique. Les choses ont commencé à basculer en 2005. Ces progrès ont ouvert la voie à de nouvelles réalisations de ces techniques, à des applications commercialisées, et l'intérêt ne cesse de croître.
How Did the "Smile" Become a Friendly Gesture in Humans? Anthony Stocks, chairman and professor of anthropology at Idaho State University, responds: "The evolution of smiles is opaque and, as with many evolutionary accounts of social behavior, fraught with just-soism. Among human babies, however, the 'tooth-baring' smile is associated less with friendship than with fright--which, one might argue, is related to the tooth-baring threats of baboons. On the other hand, a non-toothy, not-so-broad-but-open-lipped smile is associated with pleasure in human infants. Somehow we seem to have taken the fright-threat sort of smile and extended it to strangers as a presumably friendly smile. Maybe it is not as innocent as it seems. "All cultures recognize a variety of mouth gestures as indexes of inner emotional states. Frank McAndrew, professor of psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., has done extensive research on facial expressions. "Baring one's teeth is not always a threat. 'Non-Verbal Communication.' 'Emotion in the Human Face.'
La lamproie, ce poisson primitif qui aide à comprendre le cerveau humain Avez-vous déjà pensé que le cerveau d’une lamproie pouvait avoir des similitudes avec le cerveau humain ? A l’aide d’archives radiophoniques, de 1951 à 2009, éclairage sur la manière dont la connaissance du cerveau de cet animal a apporté des clés de compréhension pour le cerveau de l'homme. La lamproie, cet animal aquatique vieux d'environ 530 millions d'années, sans nageoires et sans mâchoires qui se nourrit des sang des autres poissons en s'accrochant à eux, est l'un des vertébrés les plus primitifs appartenant aux agnathes (ou cyclostomes). Le cerveau de ce poisson a pourtant des similitudes avec celui de l'être humain. Comment la connaissance du cerveau animal permet-elle de d'éclairer le fonctionnement du cerveau humain ? Ecoutez : Voyage au centre du cerveau, une série documentaire de Lydia Ben Ytzhak et Anna Szmuc L’homme et la lamproie : le cerveau des vertébrés Nous sommes en 1951 dans l’émission l’Heure de Culture Française. Écouter Durée : 10'41 • Archive INA - Radio France
Beyond the Mountains of Westworld: Part 3a – The Emergence of Consciousness in Natural and Artificial Forms of Life | Lovecraftian Science A technician re-programming one of the hosts on HBO’s Westworld. Before we compare and contrast the origins of consciousness in both H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” and HBO’s show Westworld, we should spend a little time on discussing what exactly is consciousness. A very simple definition of consciousness is “a State of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings as well as other people / organisms.” It can also be thought of as “self-awareness.” In much of science fiction, self-awareness of artificial life, from Frankenstein to Westworld, results in big problems for the creator. In the case of artificial life, would consciousness immediately “turn on” as is the case in the Terminator? Shoggoth by Manzanedo (www.deviantart.com) In many instances the term “sentience” is thought to be interchangeable with consciousness but as I found out in these investigations this is not the case. Surface scum of blue-green algae on Lake Hopatcong in fall of 2016 – Level 0 Consciousness?
Physicists make something from nothing with 'virtual' One of the more absurd facts of the universe is that empty space is never empty. At tiny scales particles are constantly popping in and out of existence – and these so-called “virtual” particles have a very real influence on the world around us. Now, using a trick of quantum optics as astonishing as it is weird, physicists from the University of Konstanz in Germany have found a way to manipulate nothingness by controlling how virtual particles interact with a pulse of light. The work, published in Nature, will be important for improving the most sensitive instruments that use light, such as used in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) which detected gravitational waves last year. An old riddle of philosophy asks, “What’s in an empty kettle?” These so-called “virtual” particles have a real effect on the universe. Like dogs snapping at the wheels of a passing car, virtual particles also worry the edges of passing photons. Now to check if my own kettle is empty.
Exotic black holes caught turning into a superfluid Pasieka/Getty By Leah Crane The black holes in our universe may seem like bizarre, voracious beasts – but stranger ones are possible. Simulations of black holes have revealed the first superfluid specimen. Superfluids are a form of matter that take mere melting one step further. But superfluids are extremely difficult to create. Advertisement Now, Robert Mann at the University of Waterloo in Canada and his colleagues have modelled a theoretical black hole that changes in a way that’s mathematically identical to what liquid helium does when it turns superfluid. These model black holes are exotic, existing in a higher-dimensional space-time with properties very different from our own. “It’s thinkable that these conditions could be satisfied in our universe, but they’re probably not,” says Mann. Even so, simulating them is potentially illuminating. The other part is exactly the reverse: studying superfluids could teach us about how black holes behave at different temperatures and pressures.
Breath of life: Did animals evolve without oxygen? Maya De Almeida Araujo/Plainpicture By Colin Barras AT THE bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Greece, there is a lake. Complete with a delicate shoreline and an inviting deep blue surface, the L’Atalante basin looks almost like a lake on land. But this is an inhospitable place. It was a shock, then, when biologist Roberto Danovaro scooped up samples from the bottom of this briny pool and found a thriving community of microscopic animals living there. Some biologists still think Danovaro must have made a mistake. It’s a finding primed to upset our tidy story of why complex life evolved on Earth. For the first 80 per cent of our planet’s history there was barely any oxygen, and no complex life either.