Self-sculpting sand Imagine that you have a big box of sand in which you bury a tiny model of a footstool. A few seconds later, you reach into the box and pull out a full-size footstool: The sand has assembled itself into a large-scale replica of the model. That may sound like a scene from a Harry Potter novel, but it’s the vision animating a research project at the Distributed Robotics Laboratory (DRL) at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. At the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May — the world’s premier robotics conference — DRL researchers will present a paper describing algorithms that could enable such “smart sand.” They also describe experiments in which they tested the algorithms on somewhat larger particles — cubes about 10 millimeters to an edge, with rudimentary microprocessors inside and very unusual magnets on four of their sides. Distributed intelligence Rapid prototyping
Daemon (technothriller series) Daemon and Freedom™ comprise a two-part novel by the author Daniel Suarez about a distributed, persistent computer application, known as The Daemon, that begins to change the real world after the original programmer's death. Walter F. Parkes, who produced the 1983 film WarGames, had optioned the film rights to Daemon with Paramount Pictures,[1] however these rights likely reverted to Suarez on 8 December 2012.[2] During his investigation, Peter meets and befriends Jon Ross who is a technology consultant. The program takes over thousands of companies and provides financial and computing resources for creating AutoM8s (computer controlled driverless cars, used as transport and occasionally as weapons), Razorbacks (sword-wielding robotic riderless motorcycles, specifically designed as weapons) and other devices. Matthew A.
To Predict Dating Success, The Secret's In The Pronouns : Shots - Health Blog hide captionPeople who are interested in and paying close attention to each other begin to speak more alike, a psychologist says. iStockphoto.com People who are interested in and paying close attention to each other begin to speak more alike, a psychologist says. On a recent Friday night, 30 men and 30 women gathered at a hotel restaurant in Washington, D.C. The women sat at separate numbered tables while the men moved down the line, and for two solid hours they did a rotation, making small talk with people they did not know, one after another, in three-minute increments. I had gone to record the night, which was put on by a company called Professionals in the City, and what struck me was the noise in the room. What were these people saying? And what can we learn from what they are saying? That is why I called James Pennebaker, a psychologist interested in the secret life of pronouns. The. "Function words are essentially the filler words," Pennebaker says. Some of those questions included:
David Chalmers David John Chalmers (/ˈtʃælmərz/;[1] born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. He is also Professor of Philosophy at New York University.[2] In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Life[edit] Since 2004, Chalmers has been Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Centre for Consciousness, and an ARC Federation Fellow at the Australian National University. A Rhodes Scholar raised in Australia, Chalmers received his PhD at Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter. He is the lead singer of the Zombie Blues band which performed at the Qualia Fest in 2012.[5] in New York. Thought[edit] Philosophy of mind[edit] With Andy Clark, Chalmers has written The Extended Mind, an article about the borders of the mind.[7] "Water is H2O"
Tetris effect Screenshot of a tetromino game. People who play video puzzle games like this for a long time may see moving images like this at the edges of their visual fields, when they close their eyes, or when they are drifting off to sleep. The Tetris effect (also known as Tetris Syndrome) occurs when people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams. It is named after the video game Tetris. Other examples[edit] The Tetris effect can occur with other video games.[2] It has also been known to occur with non-video games, such as the illusion of curved lines after doing a jigsaw puzzle, or the involuntary mental visualisation of Rubik's Cube algorithms common amongst speedcubers. On a perceptual level, sea legs are a kind of Tetris effect. ’Tain’t—so—bad—by—day because o’ company,But—night—brings—long—strings—o’ forty thousand million Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up an’ down again. Place in cognition[edit] L'effet Tetris[edit]
This may sound like a weird question, but if our only premiss was for a person to stay conscious, what parts of the human body could be taken away for the person to still stay alive and conscious? : askscience Can Playing the Computer Game “Tetris” Reduce the Build-Up of Flashbacks for Trauma? A Proposal from Cognitive Science The Ghosts We Leave Behind — Better Humans One of my good friends, Dannel Jurado, recently did an excellent piece in Tiny Cartridge about Pokemon X / Y’s ability to store Pokemon in a cloud service rooted somewhere on the Internet. Additionally, through some circuitous methods, you’ll be able to transfer Pokemon in from 3 generations ago into the most recent release. Jurado goes on to muse about how this indicates that we, as a society, are beginning to form attachments to data in the same way we form attachments to old photographs or worn books — we’ll be able to play a brand-new Pokemon game with hand-raised creatures that will be older than some of the children playing the games to begin with. However, the difference between forming an attachment to a first-edition print of Old Man and the Sea and your 10-year-old Roselia is that the book was printed in a moment in time and, when changing hands, continues to be the same book. So, for those raised by the Internet and described by data, there are thousands of you.
IBM's "neurosynaptic" chips are the closest thing to a synthetic brain yet A nice, clear, and mostly correct statement. However, you are forgetting one thing: Those in power wish to stay in power. Those who have power wish to have more power. And those who have property that could suddenly not be "theirs" would be highly resistant to relinquishing said property. Therefore such straightforward language would never make it into law in a modern society. Because there will be those who wish to oppress simply because they can, and it gives them a power trip to know that they've tapped into the innate fear of change/difference that the 'majority' possesses to do it. As a programmer and developer, I can see the day coming where systems can easily outgrow their original programming. Right now that's a binary tug of war between the glitch and the software - and it usually either results in an accurate result or a failure state. Eventually the system learns that it can generate responses similar to but not constricted by its original parameters. Hence, blurry line.
Moore's law Moore's law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper.[1][2][3] His prediction has proven to be accurate, in part because the law is now used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development.[4] The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law: processing speed, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras.[5] All of these are improving at roughly exponential rates as well. The period is often quoted as 18 months because of Intel executive David House, who predicted that chip performance would double every 18 months (being a combination of the effect of more transistors and their being faster).[9] History[edit] Gordon Moore in 2004 Network capacity.