The U.S. Navy has lots of fancy gadgets, including rail guns and laser cannons, but when they want to make sure two ships stay the same distance apart while refueling, they shoot a rope out of an M14 rifle.
OK then.
There you have it, folks.
(P.S. Give a follow, won’tcha, to howgovtworks, a new Tumblr from USA TODAY political editor Paul Singer.)
How Manual Transmissions Work:
[click to embiggen]
Automotive transmissions send power from the engine to the drive wheels and allow the vehicle’s engine to operate near its optimal performance. In this episode of TechStuff, Jonathan & Lauren veer into CarStuff’s territory (with Scott & Ben’s gracious permission) to explain how your basic 5-speed manual transmission on a rear-wheel drive vehicle works.
![neuromorphogenesis:
A “baseball-playing” robot with a 100,000-neuron “brain”
That’s a lot of quotation marks. Also the robot’s baseball bat looks a bit like an oversized fly swatter. Whatever – this thing is still impressive.
The real-time cerebellum was created by Tadashi Yamazaki and Jun Igarashi, of Japan’s RIKEN Brain Science Institute. An accelerometer located at the rear of the batting cage detects the flight path of the ball, and relays that information to a graphics processor (GPU), similar to what you might find in a gaming computer.
This GPU is the robot’s artificial brain. According to the researchers, it comprises a large-scale spiking network model of a cerebellum, including “more than 100,000 spiking neuron units within realistic parameters.” (The neurons in a spiking neural network, like the neurons in your brain, fire in accordance with the propagation of simulated neuron potentials. Basically, the GPU’s artificial neurons obey the same go/no-go rules as the neurons in your head, making spiking neural networks some of the most realistic brain simulators out there.) The GPU does some number-crunching and tells the robot how best to move in order to make contact. But the GPU also learns from its mistake. Even if the robot swings and misses, it’s only a matter of time until it’s nailing every pitch (provided the ball is tossed at the same speed and along the same flight path every time). If the pitch-speed and path are changed, the robot learns again.
As Wired’s Daniela Hernandez points out, this is not the first time researchers have used a neural network to control a robot:
A team of scientists in Europe, for instance, have used an artificial cerebellum to control a robotic limb. But according to [Yamazaki]… the baseball-playing robot is the second largest model of its kind and it runs in realtime, meaning its much faster than other systems. That means the GPU brain is better suited to controlling external hardware, he says.
The paper describing the research is published, in Neural Networks.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/1869db5a66f84ed3c74f30d5d3b387d7/tumblr_mm0sknsRae1qhejy8o1_500.jpg)
A “baseball-playing” robot with a 100,000-neuron “brain”
That’s a lot of quotation marks. Also the robot’s baseball bat looks a bit like an oversized fly swatter. Whatever – this thing is still impressive.
The real-time cerebellum was created by Tadashi Yamazaki and Jun Igarashi, of Japan’s RIKEN Brain Science Institute. An accelerometer located at the rear of the batting cage detects the flight path of the ball, and relays that information to a graphics processor (GPU), similar to what you might find in a gaming computer.
This GPU is the robot’s artificial brain. According to the researchers, it comprises a large-scale spiking network model of a cerebellum, including “more than 100,000 spiking neuron units within realistic parameters.” (The neurons in a spiking neural network, like the neurons in your brain, fire in accordance with the propagation of simulated neuron potentials. Basically, the GPU’s artificial neurons obey the same go/no-go rules as the neurons in your head, making spiking neural networks some of the most realistic brain simulators out there.) The GPU does some number-crunching and tells the robot how best to move in order to make contact. But the GPU also learns from its mistake. Even if the robot swings and misses, it’s only a matter of time until it’s nailing every pitch (provided the ball is tossed at the same speed and along the same flight path every time). If the pitch-speed and path are changed, the robot learns again.
As Wired’s Daniela Hernandez points out, this is not the first time researchers have used a neural network to control a robot:
A team of scientists in Europe, for instance, have used an artificial cerebellum to control a robotic limb. But according to [Yamazaki]… the baseball-playing robot is the second largest model of its kind and it runs in realtime, meaning its much faster than other systems. That means the GPU brain is better suited to controlling external hardware, he says.
The paper describing the research is published, in Neural Networks.
NSF-funded Superhero Supercomputer Helps Battle Autism
‘Gordon,’ a supercomputer with unique flash memory, helps identify gene-related paths to treating mental disorders
When it officially came online at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) in early January 2012, Gordon was instantly impressive. In one demonstration, it sustained more than 35 million input/output operations per second—then, a world record.
Input/output operations are an important measure for data intensive computing, indicating the ability of a storage system to quickly communicate between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world. Input/output operations specify how fast a system can retrieve randomly organized data common in large datasets and process it through data mining applications.
The supercomputer’s record-breaking feat wasn’t a surprise; after all, Gordon is named after a comic strip superhero, Flash Gordon.
Gordon’s new and unique architecture employs massive amounts of the type of flash memory common in cell phones and laptops—hence its name. The system is used by scientists whose research requires the mining, searching and/or creating of large databases for immediate or later use, including mapping genomes for applications in personalized medicine and examining computer automation of stock trading by investment firms on Wall Street.
Commissioned by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2009 for $20 million, Gordon is part of NSF’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, or XSEDE program, a nationwide partnership comprising 16 high-performance computers and high-end visualization and data analysis resources.
“Gordon is a unique machine in NSF’s Advanced Cyberinfrastructure/XSEDE portfolio,” said Barry Schneider, NSF program director for advanced cyberinfrastructure. “It was designed to handle scientific problems involving the manipulation of very large data. It is differentiated from most other resources we support in having a large solid-state memory, 4 GB per core, and the capability of simulating a very large shared memory system with software.”
Last month, a team of researchers from SDSC, the United States and the Institute Pasteur in France reported in the journal Genes, Brain and Behavior that they used Gordon to devise a novel way to describe a time-dependent gene-expression process in the brain that can be used to guide the development of treatments for mental disorders such as autism-spectrum disorders and schizophrenia.
The researchers identified the hierarchical tree of coherent gene groups and transcription-factor networks that determine the patterns of genes expressed during brain development. They found that some “master transcription factors” at the top level of the hierarchy regulated the expression of a significant number of gene groups.
The scientists’ findings can be used for selection of transcription factors that could be targeted in the treatment of specific mental disorders.
“We live in the unique time when huge amounts of data related to genes, DNA, RNA, proteins, and other biological objects have been extracted and stored,” said lead author Igor Tsigelny, a research scientist with SDSC as well as with UC San Diego’s Moores Cancer Center and its Department of Neurosciences.
“I can compare this time to a situation when the iron ore would be extracted from the soil and stored as piles on the ground. All we need is to transform the data to knowledge, as ore to steel. Only the supercomputers and people who know what to do with them will make such a transformation possible,” he said.
(via thescienceofreality)
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. We’re surrounded by water — we’re made of it, life springs from it — but how do we turn an ocean full of saltwater into something we can use? It seems simple. After all, you can simply boil water and collect the steam to purify it. But, like many simple processes, desalination becomes problematic on bigger scales.
Join Fw:Thinking host Jonathan, series writer Joe, and nerd-at-large Lauren as they discuss the present and possible future(s) of desalination.
Though Earth’s surface is some 70% water, less than 3% of all that is fresh — and even less is drinkable on any given day. With the world’s population on the rise and local water supplies shifting, we’re going to need to change the ways we create and consume fresh water.
In honor of World Water Day, Fw:Thinking explores how we might purify and desalinate what we have — and how asteroids might be the aquifers of the future.
![space-tart:
Illustrated Misconception: NASA is already over-funded, and will not be affected by the recent budget cuts.
In a 1997 poll, people were found to estimate NASA’s share of the federal budget was around 20%. “Had this been true,” Launius writes, “NASA’s budget in 1997 would have been $328 billion.” In actuality NASA receives less than one percent of the Federal budget each year- a budget that has been diminishing since the early 1990s. [Launius 174, “Public Opinion Polls and Perceptions of US Human Spaceflight”]
For those of you who want to continue NASA’s progress- you’re not alone! Popular television host and “Big Think” speaker, Bill Nye, has this to say on the matter: “If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it’s game over. It’s control-alt-delete for civilization.” The benefits of improving the budget for NASA don’t just end at defense, but to improve current technology, including noninvasive medical technology.
Anonymous nay-sayers to the idea of stopping the 2013 budget cuts to NASA funding say ”Perhaps NASA needs to sharpen its priorities, and drop the whiz bang stuff. “Because its there” is not a sufficient justification for a bunch of new toys.” (sfbaywalk, Washington Post) However, if you enjoy satellite television, artificial limbs, MRI and CAT scans, breast cancer screenings, heating protection materials used by firefighters, freeze-dried food, solar energy, water filters, smoke detectors, or even memory foam mattresses then you have NASA to thank for these devices, and the lists goes on and on and on…
[Visit here to learn more about “Penny 4 NASA”]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/1cb921f9805457c6d645dffba557445c/tumblr_mjq7y73szN1raj94zo1_500.jpg)
Illustrated Misconception: NASA is already over-funded, and will not be affected by the recent budget cuts.
In a 1997 poll, people were found to estimate NASA’s share of the federal budget was around 20%. “Had this been true,” Launius writes, “NASA’s budget in 1997 would have been $328 billion.” In actuality NASA receives less than one percent of the Federal budget each year- a budget that has been diminishing since the early 1990s. [Launius 174, “Public Opinion Polls and Perceptions of US Human Spaceflight”]
For those of you who want to continue NASA’s progress- you’re not alone! Popular television host and “Big Think” speaker, Bill Nye, has this to say on the matter: “If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it’s game over. It’s control-alt-delete for civilization.” The benefits of improving the budget for NASA don’t just end at defense, but to improve current technology, including noninvasive medical technology.
Anonymous nay-sayers to the idea of stopping the 2013 budget cuts to NASA funding say ”Perhaps NASA needs to sharpen its priorities, and drop the whiz bang stuff. “Because its there” is not a sufficient justification for a bunch of new toys.” (sfbaywalk, Washington Post) However, if you enjoy satellite television, artificial limbs, MRI and CAT scans, breast cancer screenings, heating protection materials used by firefighters, freeze-dried food, solar energy, water filters, smoke detectors, or even memory foam mattresses then you have NASA to thank for these devices, and the lists goes on and on and on…
(via the-science-llama)
There’s a new light bulb on the horizon, one that lasts longer than a fluorescent light and is quiet; uses less energy than an incandescent bulb and or even a compact fluorescent light (CFL); and doesn’t emit the bluish light of the CFL or the light emitting diode (LED) bulb. Researchers at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and Trinity College in Ireland have developed a new sort of light fixture based on field-induced polymer electroluminescent technology, also known as FIPEL. They’re already working with a company called CeeLite to manufacture FIPEL lights and hope to have them on the consumer market by the end of 2013 [source: Neal, Spector]
Instead of mercury or the filaments in old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, FIPEL lights contain multiple layers of polymers — good ol’ plastic — imbued with an iridium compound and a small number of carbon nanotubes. The latter are cylindrical structures, built in laboratories that are as minuscule as 1/10,000th the diameter of a human hair! Compared to conventional materials, these nanomaterials have a lot of novel characteristics, such as increased strength, chemical reactivity and/or conductivity [source: European Commission]. When electrical current flows into the FIPEL tube, it stimulates it to produce light just as electrical current passing through mercury in a fluorescent tube does. That energy is filtered through the polymers to create light [sources: Dillow, Electronics Weekly].
Energywise, the FIPEL light is twice as energy-efficient as a CFL, about the same as a LED. But it doesn’t have any caustic chemicals like the CFL which contains a small amount of mercury. And because it is plastic, the FIPEL is easy to recycle. The bulb has a lifetime of 25,000 to 50,000 hours, about the same as LED. Wake Forest physics professor David Carroll, who’s the inventor, said he’s had a bulb burning in his lab for a decade [source: Neal, Spector].
World’s First Bionic Eye Receives FDA Approval
The new retinal prosthesis, called Argus II, can restore partial sight to people blinded by a degenerative eye disease. The Argus II works by substituting a small array of electrodes for the light-sensing cells that normally react to light by sending an electric signal toward the back of the retina. Those signals are relayed to the optic nerve behind the eye, and travel back along the nerve to the brain. In people with the genetic disease Retinitis pigmentosa, which affects about 100,000 people in the U.S. today, those light-sensing cells gradually stop working, resulting in total blindness. In addition to the electrode array, which is implanted in the retina at the back of the eye, the Argus II system consists of a small video camera attached to a pair of eyeglasses and a visual processor the user carries around their waist. Data from the video camera is sent to the visual processor and then back to the glasses, where it is transmitted wirelessly to the embedded electrodes.
(Source: holdinghope)
— On “uncreative writing” (via explore-blog)
(Source: , via explore-blog)
Are we living in a computer simulation?
What is real? It’s a question that’s puzzled and amused countless people, from Descartes to Neo. As human beings, we’re capable of directly perceiving only a fraction of what surrounds us. From a personal point of view, reality seems pretty limited. Is the Internet real? Am I real? Are you?
Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at the University of Oxford, put forth an interesting question: What if our reality is actually a computer-generated world that exists in some other reality? He went on to argue that if some advanced society — future-human or otherwise — is intelligent, capable, and curious enough to create such a complex simulation, that they certainly would, and already have, and that in fact it’s almost impossible that we’re not living in a computer simulation.
Tune in to this episode of TechStuff to learn lots more, or, if text is more your flavor, read up on it here.
[This is the remnant of Tycho’s supernova, SN 1572, used here ‘cause a) it’s pretty and b) it reminds me of the marble galaxies from MiB. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: MPIA, Calar Alto, O. Krause et al.]
![nprfreshair:
Cullen Murphy tells Terry Gross about how the invention of the printing press impacted the third Inquisition:
For a long time, the church had had an effective monopoly on the intellectual life in Europe. Publishing was something that involved copying manuscripts. … Suddenly, there’s a new technology on the block. And the church sees this as a threat. So the church sees a combined attack — from the printing press and the Protestant Reformation — [and that] is really the thing that instigates the third Inquisition. … This is the Inquisition that puts Galileo on trial. … It’s the Inquisition that starts the index of forbidden books.
Image of the Gutenberg Bible via History.com](http://24.media.tumblr.com/97bbd7188c79093eb382e0e9f04e5611/tumblr_mgshx8lpEf1qd9dz2o1_500.jpg)
For a long time, the church had had an effective monopoly on the intellectual life in Europe. Publishing was something that involved copying manuscripts. … Suddenly, there’s a new technology on the block. And the church sees this as a threat. So the church sees a combined attack — from the printing press and the Protestant Reformation — [and that] is really the thing that instigates the third Inquisition. … This is the Inquisition that puts Galileo on trial. … It’s the Inquisition that starts the index of forbidden books.
Image of the Gutenberg Bible via History.com
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