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Thursday, June 19
Future Bodies: The Technological Future of Human Evolution (CNN Futures summit)
by
Rich
on June 19, 2008 06:35PM (PDT)
a technological optimistic look at future bodies in which human flesh is seamlessly inserted into machine... more » Tuesday, June 10
Welcome to Augmented Reality
by
Rich
on June 10, 2008 09:25AM (PDT)
 Augmented reality combines features of a virtual environment with the real world. Most often, the augmentation is visual, with a user sporting an eyepiece connected to a wearable computer and positioning equipment. By tracking where the user’s head is and what he is seeing, the computer is able to overlay graphics and/or text onto his vision. more » Saturday, April 19
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Adults Recognition and Management
by
rakesh
on April 19, 2008 04:04PM (PDT)
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is considered the most common psychiatric disorder experienced during childhood. Some references indicate an incidence as high as 10% of American school-age children. Most references, however, place the incidence in this age group at around 2%–5%. Approximately 80% of children with ADHD continue to have symptoms of the condition as adolescents, and more than 60% of children experience symptoms as adults. If these estimates are correct, between 2 and 5 million adults who had ADHD as a child continue to be affected by the condition. Many adults with ADHD have not been diagnosed as such. more »
Monday, March 3
First Avalanche Photographed on Mars by HiRISE exp. on NASA MRO
by
ronjon
on March 3, 2008 02:15PM (PST)
A NASA spacecraft has taken the first-ever image of an avalanche in action near Mars' north pole. -- The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. The image, released today, shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down.
The camera was tracking seasonal changes on Mars when it inadvertently caught the avalanche on film. -- HiRISE mission scientist Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona was the first person to notice the avalanche when sifting through images. "It really surprised me," she said. "It's great to see something so dynamic on Mars. A lot of what we see there hasn't changed for millions of years." ... more » Sunday, February 17
Laser Light Creates [first?] Black Holes In The Lab
by
ronjon
on February 17, 2008 09:57PM (PST)
Imagine being able to peek inside a black hole and even perform experiments there. It may not be as far-fetched as it sounds, thanks to a team which claims to have simulated a black hole’s event horizon in the lab. -- Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews, UK, and his colleagues accomplished the feat by firing lasers down an optical fiber, exploiting the fact that different wavelengths of light move at different speeds within an optical fiber.
They first shot a relatively slowmoving laser pulse through the fibre, and then sent a faster “probe wave” chasing after it. The first pulse distorts the optical properties of the fibre simply by travelling through it. This distortion forces the speedy probe wave to slow down dramatically when it catches up with the slower pulse and tries to move through it. In fact, the probe wave becomes trapped and can never overtake the pulse’s leading edge, which effectively becomes a black hole event horizon, beyond which light cannot escape. This “laser black hole” could allow physicists to examine what happens to light on both sides of a event horizon – “a feat that is utterly impossible in astrophysics”, the authors note in their paper. ... more » Tuesday, February 12
The Material Basis for the Phenomenon of Man
by
RY Deshpande
on February 12, 2008 03:14AM (PST)
We have to keep in mind that Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point is in no way an object of scientific study, it cannot be; certainly it is not amenable to the Cartesian analysis. Actually it is a kind of both within and without, both at once; it is Within-Without, the originator and the culminator of the entire becoming that we are. Going a step farther, it is also the endless becoming in its own new dimensional possibilities. The Omega Point is trans-descriptive and trans-analytical, yet holding and encompassing all that we are, and all that we shall be, in its newer and happier truth. If transcendence is one of the attributes of this emerging and immerging Urge, then it is well understood that it will escape all scaling up or down, will prevent all quantification of the mysterious Within-Without. It cannot be described in terms of scientific measurements that are relative in the Einsteinean sense. Then, even on a lesser level to make man as an object of measurement and knowledge becomes fallacious. The notion of “true physics” projecting itself in the phenomenon of man eventually turns out to be non-scientific if we have to retain the full connotation and context of the physics proper. … more »
Friday, January 11
Mathematics, Purpose, and Truth: An Interview with Astrophysicist Janna Levin
by
ronjon
on January 11, 2008 03:48PM (PST)
Thanks to RY Deshpande for recommending this article. ~ rj
As a theoretical physicist, Janna Levin probes whether the universe is finite or infinite. As a novelist, she explored the separate but parallel lives of two influential 20th-century scientists: Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. Their work laid the foundations for computer intelligence while challenging fundamental notions about how we can know what is true. ... more » Thursday, January 3
'Tipping Points' in Global Climate Change: Latest report from AGU SF Mtg. of Dec.07
by
ronjon
on January 3, 2008 02:28PM (PST)
This recent report, from the session on 'Tipping Points' at the important Dec.07 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, illustrates the complexity of current technical discussions about the validity of the increasingly disruptive climate change scenarios being projected by various Climate Change computer models. The bottom line is that our models may be seriously underestimating the rapidly of the coming changes, as indicated in the previously posted article re the melting of arctic sea ice. ~rj
...In Hansen's talk, he did try to clarify what he meant by a tipping point. His notion of this has less to do with what mathematicians understand as "bifurcations," and more to do with a kind of inertia in the climate system. He means things like having passed a threshold of CO2 which, given warming in the pipeline and the lifetime of CO2, commits a certain discrete event — e.g. loss of perennial sea ice or the Amazon rainforest– to occurring even if we were to later reduce emissions to zero. He tried to distinguish between reversible and irreversible tipping points... ...where things get interesting is where you try to explain a magnitude of signal this big in terms of basic physics. This is important because there is a perception that GCM's vastly underestimate the amplitude of the response to total solar luminosity, leading to a perception that there is some "missing physics" (whether it be exotic amplification of a stratospheric response, or something like clouds and cosmic rays)... But — the take-home point is that at this point the study of solar cycle response very strongly supports the notion that there is no need to invoke any mysterious or exotic missing physics (like cosmic ray modulation of clouds) in order to represent the response of climate to solar variability. If some models underestimate the response, this is likely to have more to do with errors in the vertical mixing of heat than any missing fundamental physics. ... more »
Could Arctic summers be ice-free 'by 2013' !?
by
ronjon
on January 3, 2008 12:32PM (PST)
Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. -- Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.
Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million sq km, the smallest ever extent in modern times. -- Remarkably, this stunning low point was not even incorporated into the model runs of Professor Maslowski and his team, which used data sets from 1979 to 2004 to constrain their future projections. "Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. -- "So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative." ... more » Saturday, December 29
Hitching a Ride on the Infinite Subway (Dr. Stan Grof's 'holotropic' research)
by
ronjon
on December 29, 2007 02:35PM (PST)
Here's another excerpt from Michael Talbot's fascinating book The Holographic Universe. I continue to recommend this book.
...Other experiences included the accessing of racial and collective memories. Individuals of Slavic origin experienced what it was like to participate in the conquests of Genghis Khan's Mongolian hordes, to dance in trance with the Kalahari bushmen, to undergo the initiation rites of the Australian aborigines, and to die as sacrificial victims of the Aztecs. And again the descriptions frequently contained obscure historical facts and a degree of knowledge that was often completely at odds with the patient's education, race, and previous exposure to the subject. For instance, one uneducated patient gave a richly detailed account of the techniques involved in the Egyptian practice of embalming and mummification, including the form and meaning of various amulets and sepulchral boxes, a list of the materials used in the fixing of the mummy cloth, the size and shape of the mummy bandages, and other esoteric facets of Egyptian funeral services. Other individuals tuned into the cultures of the Far East and not only gave impressive descriptions of what it was like to have a Japanese, Chinese, or Tibetan psyche, but also related various Taoist or Buddhist teachings. In fact, there did not seem to be any limit to what Grof's LSD subjects could tap into. They seemed capable of knowing what it was like to be every animal, and even plant, on the tree of evolution. They could experience what it was like to be a blood cell, an atom, a thermonuclear process inside the sun, the consciousness of the entire planet, and even the consciousness of the entire cosmos. More than that, they displayed the ability to transcend space and time, and occasionally they related uncannily accurate precognitive information. In an even stranger vein they sometimes encountered nonhuman intelligences during their cerebral travels, discarnate beings, spirit guides from "higher planes of consciousness," and other suprahuman entities... Perhaps Grof's most remarkable discovery is that the same phenomena reported by individuals who have taken LSD can also be experienced without resorting to drugs of any kind...The Grofs call their technique holotropic therapy and use only rapid and controlled breathing, evocative music, and massage and body work, to induce altered states of consciousness. To date, thousands of individuals have attended their workshops and report experiences that are every bit as spectacular and emotionally profound as those described by subjects of Grof's previous work on LSD... more » Friday, December 28
'Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within', a new feature length documentary
by
ronjon
on December 28, 2007 10:41PM (PST)
Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within is a feature length documentary which invites the viewer to rediscover an enchanted cosmos in the modern world by awakening to the divine within. The film examines the re-emergence of archaic techniques of ecstasy in the modern world by weaving a synthesis of ecological and evolutionary awareness, electronic dance culture, and the current pharmacological re-evaluation of entheogenic compounds.
Within a narrative framework that imagines consciousness itself to be evolving, Entheogen documents the emergence of techno-shamanism in the post-modern world that frames the following questions: How can a renewal of ancient initiatory rites of passage alleviate our ecological crisis? What do trance dancing and festivals celebrating unbridled artistic expression speak to in our collective psyche? How do we re-invent ourselves in a disenchanted world from which God has long ago withdrawn? Entheogen invites the viewer to consider that the answers to these questions lie within the consciousness of each and every human being, and are accessible if only we give ourselves permission to awaken to the divine within. ... more » Tuesday, December 25
"Al-Kemi: A Memoir"
by
Kim
on December 25, 2007 08:59PM (PST)
Al-Kemi recounts the story of the eighteen months that Andrew VandenBroeck, a painter and writer, spent in daily contact with the remarkable French philosopher, hermetist, and Egyptologist, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961). Structured like a mystery, and distilled in the crucible of memory for fifteen years, Al-Kemi provides a passionately felt, personal, and dramatic introduction to the startling world of this contemporary alchemist (from back cover).
... Before reaching these particulars, it must be known that de Lubicz held the traditional conception of an esoteric science and its transmission: true knowledge is inaccessible to the rational mind. This epistemological tenet caused his writings to be spiked with metaphor, innuendo, and at times, obscurity. He mistrusted the written word, disliked writing because truth was inevitably degraded when committed to paper through a profane language. This attitude most clearly ordinates the lineage along which he inscribes himself by his premises and his results. His low regard for “demotic” writing as a means of truth-communication made personal contact with him invaluable, for he had no such reservations concerning the spoken word, the word of gesture. Thus he actively believed in oral transmission of a kind of knowledge best called “gnosis,” [3] and in private, I always found him accessible to leisurely conversation on the most exalted topics. As our relationship soon proved more than casual, his information became increasingly direct, in contrast to his written expression which often presents problems of meaning and referent. more »
To such an epistemology, personal contact is the kingpin of communication, and I found out later to what extent his frame of reference was tailored to his correspondent. ... Wednesday, December 19
Laws of Nature, Source Unknown—by Dennis Overbye (from NYT)
by
RY Deshpande
on December 19, 2007 06:19AM (PST)
[Further to Paul Davies’s article Taking Science on Faith in the New York Times, published http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2007/12/3/3389652.html/ here in the sequel is Laws of Nature, Source Unknown, by Dennis Overbye appearing on 18 December 2007, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/science/18law.html/ If the laws of physics are to have any sticking power at all, to be real laws, says the author, one could argue, they have to be good anywhere and at any time, including the Big Bang, the putative Creation. Which gives them a kind of transcendent status outside of space and time. On the other hand, many thinkers—all the way back to Augustine—suspect that space and time, being attributes of this existence, came into being along with the universe—in the Big Bang, in modern vernacular. So why not the laws themselves? But the question that has to be asked is: What is it exactly that we mean by the expression laws of the physical world, by the mysterious word ‘law’? Possibly, we represent by it just our way of understanding the physical world, the comprehensibility of the incomprehensible, comprehending things in our own way, in our own terms, and never making an attempt to apprehend them. But the physical world itself might be thinking about itself in its own way and not necessarily in the way we look at it. The dichotomy between the ‘laws’ and the ‘universe’ exists in our mind and not in the mind of the physical world. The “chicken-and-egg problem with the universe and its laws, which ‘came’ first—the laws or the universe?” exists in our mind and not in the physical world’s mind. If this is so, then we may have re-examine the following: Maybe both alternatives—Plato’s eternal stone tablet and Dr. Wheeler’s higgledy-piggledy process—will somehow turn out to be true. The dichotomy between forever and emergent might turn out to be as false eventually as the dichotomy between waves and particles as a description of light. Who knows? RYD] more »Monday, December 10
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
by
ronjon
on December 10, 2007 05:31PM (PST)
I think this may be an important development. My intuition tells me that Lisi is really on to something here, that we'll be hearing lots more about this, and if his predictions are verified when Large Hadron Collider comes online next year, physics will never be the same. ~ rj
An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists. - Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt)... Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan. ... more » Monday, December 3
Blue Brain Project Moves Onto Whole Brain, Really?
by
ronjon
on December 3, 2007 02:40PM (PST)
"An ambitious project to create an accurate computer model of the brain has reached an impressive milestone," writes today's Technology Review. "Scientists in Switzerland working with IBM researchers have shown that their computer simulation of the neocortical column, arguably the most complex part of a mammal's brain, appears (emphasis added) to behave like its biological counterpart. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade..."
The article goes onto to share the response of Christof Koch from Caltech who calls the 10 year target of modeling the human brain "ridiculous." Despite the fantastic progress to date I agree with Christof on this. ... more »
Taking Science on Faith, by Paul Davies (NYT)
by
ronjon
on December 3, 2007 12:14PM (PST)
Thanks to RY Deshpande for referring this article.
SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term "doubting Thomas" well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue. The problem with this neat separation into "non-overlapping magisteria," as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified. The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do? ... more » Monday, November 19
What I'm optimistic about (and not), by Ray Kurzweil
by
ronjon
on November 19, 2007 07:34PM (PST)
Optimism exists on a continuum in between confidence and hope. Let me take these in order.
I am confident that the acceleration and expanding purview of information technology will solve within twenty years the problems that now preoccupy us. -- Consider energy. We are awash in energy (10,000 times more than required to meet all our needs falls on Earth) but we are not very good at capturing it. That will change with the full nanotechnology-based assembly of macro objects at the nano scale, controlled by massively parallel information processes, which will be feasible within twenty years. Even though our energy needs are projected to triple within that time, we'll capture that .0003 of the sunlight needed to meet our energy needs with no use of fossil fuels, using extremely inexpensive, highly efficient, lightweight, nano-engineered solar panels, and we'll store the energy in highly distributed (and therefore safe) nanotechnology-based fuel cells. Solar power is now providing 1 part in 1,000 of our needs, but that percentage is doubling every two years, which means multiplying by 1,000 in twenty years. Almost all the discussions I've seen about energy and its consequences (such as global warming) fail to consider the ability of future nanotechnology-based solutions to solve this problem. This development will be motivated not just by concern for the environment but also by the $2 trillion we spend annually on energy. This is already a major area of venture funding. Consider health. As of just recently, we have the tools to reprogram biology. This is also at an early stage but is progressing through the same exponential growth of information technology, which we see in every aspect of biological progress. The amount of genetic data we have sequenced has doubled every year, and the price per base pair has come down commensurately. The first genome cost a billion dollars. The National Institutes of Health is now starting a project to collect a million genomes at $1,000 apiece. We can turn genes off with RNA interference, add new genes (to adults) with new reliable forms of gene therapy, and turn on and off proteins and enzymes at critical stages of disease progression. We are gaining the means to model, simulate, and reprogram disease and aging processes as information processes. In ten years, these technologies will be 1,000 times more powerful than they are today, and it will be a very different world, in terms of our ability to turn off disease and aging. ... more » |
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