IdeaFestival

Jeffrey Manber on "branding randomness" - IF Conversation

2008-08-20T06:15:00-04:00

Can randomness be branded? As Yuzoz CEO Jeffrey Manber explains, the company taps events in space - the Northern Lights and solar flairs, for example - and turns that information into certified random numbers that can be used for a wide variety of purposes, from architectural design and music composition to the choice of lucky numbers.

Wayne

Storing memories: Building the two-wheeled brain

2008-08-19T09:31:41-04:00

This is a first as far as I know. Researchers at the University of Reading have created a primitive biological brain from artificially cultured biological neurons and connected it to a diminutive two-wheeled robot. The goal? To understand how the brain stores specific information and how recall functions. Roland Piquepaille:

'The robot’s biological brain is made up of cultured neurons which are placed onto a multi electrode array (MEA). The MEA is a dish with approximately 60 electrodes which pick up the electrical signals generated by the cells. This is then used to drive the movement of the robot. Every time the robot nears an object, signals are directed to stimulate the brain by means of the electrodes. In response, the brain’s output is used to drive the wheels of the robot, left and right, so that it moves around in an attempt to avoid hitting objects. The robot has no additional control from a human or a computer, its sole means of control is from its own brain.'

By studying how memories are processed, researchers hope, among many other things, to understand how people afflicted by Alzheimer’s disease might be helped.

The University of Reading's School of System's Engineering has the original news, a picture of the robot and a video interview with the researchers. As might be expected, the post on Piquepaille's blog has drawn over 70 comments.

Wayne

All Doped up and Thinking ahead

2008-08-18T10:08:00-04:00

SEED editor Jonah Lehrer, who will be at the IdeaFestival in September, has written often and thoughtfully about the wonders of the human brain in his blog, Frontal Cortex, and in particular - my favorite topic - about how we as sense-making beings can - or cannot - know.

In his latest full length article, "New State of Mind," Lehrer again connects knowing to biology, describing research linking dopamine to pleasure and to a host of social behaviors that result, from simple disappointment to stock market bubbles.

Connecting pleasure to understanding is one reason play in general, and game design in particular, has emerged as a valuable economic and intellectual pursuit. He should really sit down at IF and have a long discussion with alternative reality game designer Jane McGonigal, who will also attend.

Read Montague is director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine, and collaborates with Peter Dayan of the Salk Institute. More than discovering the link between pleasure and understanding, current neurology goes further and demonstrates how we use the resulting that data to extend that understanding.

Lehrer:

The crucial feature of these dopamine neurons, say Montague and Dayan, is that they are more concerned with predicting rewards than with the rewards themselves. Once the cells memorize the simple pattern — a loud tone predicts the arrival of juice — they become exquisitely sensitive to variations on the pattern. If the cellular predictions proved correct and the primates experienced a surge of dopamine, the prediction was reinforced. However, if the pattern was violated — if the tone sounded but the juice never arrived — then the monkey’s dopamine neurons abruptly decreased their firing rate. This is known as the “prediction error signal.” The monkey got upset because its predictions of juice were wrong.

What’s interesting about this system is that it’s all about expectation. Dopamine neurons constantly generate patterns based upon experience: If this, then that. The cacophony of reality is distilled into models of correlation.

"Models of correlation" are only a couple of sentences away from something else. On this reading, story takes those correlative values and arranges them in a meaningful way.

Story is the human-readable data set we pull around our shoulders on a cold winter night when things haven't gone as expected. When the doctor has bad news. Or when we watch a loved one is slipping toward the unknown.

But alternatively and spectacularly, it can also describe how we might overcome impossible odds to reach goals that make life worth the living. Story can get the past wrong. But it can also get the future right.

Wayne

Get IFblog by Email

2008-08-15T08:55:00-04:00

If you'd rather not or are simply unsure about how to use a feed to get IdeaFestival blog posts, you may now have them sent directly to your email inbox. After signing up in an ultra simple two-step process, blog posts, if there are any, will be emailed to you once a day.

Wayne

Good morning!

2008-08-15T08:50:00-04:00

The backlit sunflower as well as its symmetrical positioning in the image lends an air of expectation to this composition from "Code Poet," a Kentucky photographer active on Flickr.

It seemed appropriate for a Friday.

Wayne

Metamaterials: not quite X-ray glasses

2008-08-14T08:34:00-04:00

Noting that forthcoming issues of Nature and Science will report recent laboratory successes, the London Times writes that invisible products based on metamaterial science are a little closer to reality.

According to Wikipedia, metamaterials gain their properties from their molecular structures rather than directly from their composition, as in textiles. London Times:

[University of California Berkeley's] Xiang Zhang, the leader of the researchers, said: 'In the case of invisibility cloaks or shields, the material would need to curve light waves completely around the object like a river flowing around a rock.' An observer looking at the cloaked object would then see light from behind it – making it seem to disappear.

Expressing doubt that the research will result in practical applications anytime soon, Popular Mechanics reaches for the reference any young boy who ever frequented the back pages of the Marvel universe will get.

Wayne

Galaxy Zoo collects ghostly specimen

2008-08-13T09:01:08-04:00

Combing the archives of the Galaxy Zoo as a volunteer and unable to find a match for the object, an amateur Dutch astronomer has discovered a one of kind light, a ghostly echo that may be entirely new to science.

In the past year 150,000 amateurs have helped classify more than 1 million galaxies as part of the Galaxy Zoo project. As Pamela Gay has suggested, astronomy is one of the rare science disciplines where amateurs can make significant contributions.

Wayne

At the bottom of the Earth, extreme life

2008-08-12T07:10:00-04:00

Using autonomous submarines, researchers are planning very dives deep into the Cayman Trench in the Caribbean to study one of the least explored areas of Earth's inner space, the volcanic vents that lie at the bottom. According to Roland Piquepaille, they believe they will find brand new life forms with unusual chemistries - sometimes called "extromophiles" - and that one of every two species encountered will be entirely new to science.

Wayne

Magicians: Neurologists!

2008-08-11T07:30:00-04:00

Proving once again that innovation can come from anywhere, the conjunction between magic and neuroscience has of late been quite productive. Boston Globe:

In the past year... a few researchers have begun to realize that magic represents... a deep and untapped store of knowledge about the human mind.

At a major conference last year in Las Vegas, in a scientific paper published last week and another due out this week, psychologists have argued that magicians, in their age-old quest for better ways to fool people, have been engaging in cutting-edge, if informal, research into how we see and comprehend the world around us. Just as studying the mechanisms of disease reveals the workings of our body's defenses, these psychologists believe that studying the ways a talented magician can short-circuit our perceptual system will allow us to better grasp how the system is put together.

'I think magicians and cognitive neuroscientists are getting at similar questions, but while neuroscientists have been looking at this for a few decades, magicians have been looking at this for centuries, millennia probably,' says Susana Martinez-Conde, a neuroscientist at the Barrow Neurological Institute and coauthor of one of the studies, published online last week in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 'What magicians do is light-years ahead in terms of sophistication and the power of these techniques.' (hyperlink added)

If you're interested in experiencing that short-circuited perception for yourself, catch Teller, who will be at the IdeaFestival in September. Individual and all-access passes are available now.

Wayne

Lakeside on Titan

2008-08-08T07:18:00-04:00

This is an artist's conception of the only known body besides Earth with liquid water on the surface, Titan. Cassini scientists have concluded that at least one of the large lakes observed on Saturn's moon contains liquid hydrocarbons, and have positively identified ethane.

Wayne

Image credit: NASA/JPL