Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Jeff Hawkins Develops a Brainy Big Data Company - NYTimes.com

Jeff Hawkins Develops a Brainy Big Data Company - NYTimes.com:

Mr. Hawkins, who helped develop the technology in Palm, an early and successful mobile device, is a co-founder of Numenta, a predictive software company. Numenta’s technology is based on Mr. Hawkins’s theories of how the brain works, a subject he has studied and published on intensively. Perhaps most important for the technology industry, the product works off streams of real-time information from sensors, not the trillions of bytes of data that companies are amassing.
Numenta’s product, called Grok, is a cloud-based service that works much the same way. Grok takes steady feeds of data from things like thermostats, Web clicks, or machinery. From initially observing the data flow, it begins making guesses about what will happen next. The more data, the more accurate the predictions become.
It has been much more difficult to engineer than that sounds. Modeling itself on 40 sensory receptors feeding over 128 information-seeing dendrites on each cell of the brain, Mr. Hawkins put into Grok a mathematical algorithm that he says approximates the way brain cells work together, even sometimes canceling out each other’s signals to refine a sense of what’s going on.
“This is the future of machine intelligence,” he said. “Twenty years from now the computer industry will be driven by this, I’m certain of it.”

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Clocking The Speed Of Thought



Around 300 milliseconds. That's how long it took a volunteer to begin to understand a pictured object. Add to that another 250 to 450 milliseconds to fully comprehend what it was. Total speed of thought: between 550 and 750 milliseconds."



Such are the results coming out of work conducted by John Hopkins scientists seeking to measure rates of comprehension. "This information has been difficult to acquire," says neurologist and team leader John Hart, "even with different combinations of behavioural tests, electrical recordings and imaging studies such as PET scans."

Yet by taking advantage of a unique opportunity afforded by a patient scheduled for tests using electrodes surgically placed on his brain, the researchers have moved one step closer to "building theories of higher mental activity." Until now, the speed of cognitive operations (including language processing) has been the missing ingredient.

Reporting their findings in the May 25 Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, the researchers describe how the patient was asked to name and categorize a variety of pictures and words. By way of a grid of 174 electrodes, his brain activity was then monitored. The speed of comprehension was far quicker for objects that were already familiar to him.

"The data, obtained within a single stage at a single site in the brain, are further evidence that information accumulates gradually in the brain, rather than in a strictly all-or-none fashion," says Hart.
He adds that understanding this process of accumulation could help scientists understand comprehension and word loss from disorders such as stroke or Alzheimer's disease.




'via Blog this'

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Guest post: a teser on Mars « Why Evolution Is True

Guest post: a teser on Mars « Why Evolution Is True:


According to NASA:
“This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission,” said Opportunity’s principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars.”
Read more 

'via Blog this'

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Landing of Curiosity: Relive the video if you have missed!

Go ahead and watch the video of rover curiosity landing on Mars posted by NASA Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech. It is an amazing moment and should not miss such an event marking stepping of mankind on Mars!



Monday, August 6, 2012

From Star Wars to science fact: Tatooine-like planet discovered


Although cold and gaseous rather than a desert world, the newfound planet Kepler-16b is still the closest astronomers have come to discovering Luke Skywalker's home world of Tatooine. Like Tatooine, Kepler-16b enjoys a double sunset as it circles a pair of stars approximately 200 light-years from Earth. It's not thought to harbor life, but its discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy.

Mars Curiosity Opens Eyes and Sees This: Big Pics : Discovery News


In my last post in smile I had the news of the launch of curiosity. Now the time has come at last when curiosity is on its homeland!

Here is from Discovery News:

 "Aug 6, 2012 -- Curiosity found its new home on Mars early Monday, settling down beside a giant mound of layered rock inside an ancient crater at 1:32 a.m. EDT. The rover opened its eyes and took these photos of its surroundings, the first-ever images of this part of the planet.

Curiosity will prowl the crater for two years, as well as an unusual, three-mile-high mound of what appears to be sediments rising from the crater’s floor. The purpose of the $2.5 billion, two-year mission is to look for habitats where life could have taken root."

Monday, April 16, 2012

Dream ATM: Scan hand for money, no hand required!


Here is the news from DiscoveryNews:

In a move that seems like it should have happened in the year 2000, a Japanese bank announced it will be installing about a dozen automated teller machines that can read customers' palms to identify them. Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank will be the country's first to introduce the system.

Following the massive earthquake and tsunami more than a year ago in Japan, scanning started to be seen in a new light. Instead of being extra security, it could mean standard security for customers who need cash in an emergency but don't have their bank cards on them.

The AFP reports   that Ziraat Bank in Turkey was the first to use the palm-scanning bank machines that don't need a card. In Japan, Ogaki Kyoritsu plans to install the new ATMs at 10 branches, two mobile banks, and a drive-through location this September.

Analysis by Alyssa Danigelis for Discovery News analyses this dream ATM this way:
Then again, there's something potentially freeing about not needing a plastic card. Look, guys, I just place my hand here and cash comes out! Still, I do feel kind of bad for parents who will have to explain how this works to little kids: "No, sweetie. I can't always just make money appear."