Cool Science

[libby]

   No, no, no! That is truly scary. Think Borg. Think crazy or evil or power mad people who write those programs. 

[Bo D]

Mars rover selfie ....

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2014/08/mars-rover-selfie?et_cid=4124406&et_rid=54725525&location=top

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used the camera at the end of its arm in April and May 2014 to take dozens of component images combined into this self-portrait where the rover drilled into a sandstone target called "Windjana."

[Bo D]

Robo Brain Teaches Robots Everything from the Internet

Robo Brain — a large-scale computational system that learns from publicly available Internet resources — is currently downloading and processing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals. The information is being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format that robots will be able to draw on when they need it.

To serve as helpers in our homes, offices and factories, robots will need to understand how the world works and how the humans around them behave. Robotics researchers have been teaching them these things one at a time: How to find your keys, pour a drink, put away dishes, and when not to interrupt two people having a conversation. This will all come in one package with Robo Brain.

"Our laptops and cell phones have access to all the information we want. If a robot encounters a situation it hasn't seen before it can query Robo Brain in the cloud," said Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University. Saxena and colleagues at Cornell, Stanford and Brown universities and the University of California, Berkeley, say Robo Brain will process images to pick out the objects in them, and by connecting images and video with text, it will learn to recognize objects and how they are used, along with human language and behavior.

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2014/08/robo-brain-teaches-robots-everything-internet?et_cid=4124406&et_rid=54725525&location=top

[libby]

Robo Brain Teaches Robots Everything from the Internet

Robo Brain — a large-scale computational system that learns from publicly available Internet resources — is currently downloading and processing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals. The information is being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format that robots will be able to draw on when they need it.

To serve as helpers in our homes, offices and factories, robots will need to understand how the world works and how the humans around them behave. Robotics researchers have been teaching them these things one at a time: How to find your keys, pour a drink, put away dishes, and when not to interrupt two people having a conversation. This will all come in one package with Robo Brain.

"Our laptops and cell phones have access to all the information we want. If a robot encounters a situation it hasn't seen before it can query Robo Brain in the cloud," said Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University. Saxena and colleagues at Cornell, Stanford and Brown universities and the University of California, Berkeley, say Robo Brain will process images to pick out the objects in them, and by connecting images and video with text, it will learn to recognize objects and how they are used, along with human language and behavior.

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2014/08/robo-brain-teaches-robots-everything-internet?et_cid=4124406&et_rid=54725525&location=top

  Maybe not everyone thinks like me -- heck, maybe nobody does -- but I can distinctly remember a time when I was just out of high school and had the idea that too much education by rote would dull the mind, and I had to resist that and be an independent thinker.

If we turn it all over to computers/robots, what happens to the human brain? (Use it or lose it.)

I have enough trouble with this computer. When I want to write something, I often write and rewrite, thinking as I go, and that seems to confuse the computer, which keeps bouncing the cursor around, which then confuses me.

[Palehorse]

Mars rover selfie ....

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2014/08/mars-rover-selfie?et_cid=4124406&et_rid=54725525&location=top

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used the camera at the end of its arm in April and May 2014 to take dozens of component images combined into this self-portrait where the rover drilled into a sandstone target called "Windjana."

That surface looks just like a dried river bed to me. And the place looks like it could be somewhere out west. . .

[libby]

That surface looks just like a dried river bed to me. And the place looks like it could be somewhere out west. . .

  Seeing that made me think about The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. Spooky and fascinating reading.

[libby]

The following was in yesterday's Washington Post. Thanks to genetic studies, a big surprise!

Easter Island's ancient inhabitants weren't so lonely after all

By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON Thu Oct 23, 2014 2:31pm EDT

(Reuters) - They lived on a remote dot of land in the middle of the Pacific, 2,300 miles (3,700 km) west of South America and 1,100 miles (1,770 km) from the closest island, erecting huge stone figures that still stare enigmatically from the hillsides.

But the ancient Polynesian people who populated Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, were not as isolated as long believed. Scientists who conducted a genetic study, published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology, found these ancient people had significant contact with Native American populations hundreds of years before the first Westerners reached the island in 1722.

The Rapa Nui people created a unique culture best known for the 900 monumental head-and-torso stone statues known as moai erected around Easter Island. The culture flourished starting around 1200 until falling into decline by the 16th century.

Genetic data on 27 Easter Island natives indicated that interbreeding between the Rapa Nui and native people in South America occurred roughly between 1300 and 1500.

"We found evidence of gene flow between this population and Native American populations, suggesting an ancient ocean migration route between Polynesia and the Americas," said geneticist Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas of the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, who led the study.

The genetic evidence indicates either that Rapa Nui people traveled to South America or that Native Americans journeyed to Easter Island. The researchers said it probably was the Rapa Nui people making the arduous ocean round trips.

"It seems most likely that they voyaged from Rapa Nui to South America and brought South Americans back to Rapa Nui and admixed with them," said Mark Stoneking, a geneticist with Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who collaborated on a related study of Brazil's indigenous Botocudo people. "So it will be interesting to see if in further studies any signal of Polynesian, Rapa Nui ancestry can be found in South Americans."

In making their way to South America and back, the Rapa Nui people may have spent perilous weeks in wooden outrigger canoes.

The researchers concluded that the intermixing occurred 19 to 23 generations ago. They said Rapa Nui people are not believed to have started mixing with Europeans until much later, the 19th century. Malaspinas said the genetic ancestry of today's Rapa Nui people is roughly 75 percent Polynesian, 15 percent European and 10 percent Native American.

A second study, also published in Thursday's issue of Current Biology, illustrates another case of Polynesians venturing into South America. Two ancient human skulls from Brazil's indigenous Botocudo people, known for the large wooden disks they wore in their lips and ears, belonged to people who were genetically Polynesian, with no detectable Native American ancestry.

"How the two Polynesian individuals belonging to the Botocudos came into Brazil is the million-dollar question," said University of Copenhagen geneticist Eske Willerslev of the Center for GeoGenetics, who led the study on the Botocudos.

The findings suggest these Polynesians reached South America and made their way to Brazil, either landing on the western coast of the continent and crossing the interior or voyaging around Tierra del Fuego and up the east coast, Stoneking said.

"In either event it is an amazing story," he said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Leslie Adler)
FILED UNDER:
Science

[Bo D]

This may be cool ... it may be scary ....  You decide!

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2014/11/direct-brain-brain-interface-operates-between-humans-real-time?et_cid=4252393&et_rid=54725525&location=top

Direct Brain-to-brain Interface Operates between Humans in Real Time

Researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team's initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person's brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.

If you have time, please read the entire article. Fascinating, at the very least!

[The Troll]

A clock that runs on just water .....

Bedol has an alarm clock that runs on tap water.  You don't have to put anything in the water – no salts or anything – just tap water.

http://the-gadgeteer.com/2010/09/03/bedol-water-clock-with-alarm-review/

  How big would the metal plates have to be and how much water would it take to make enough power to light a city????   

[libby]

This may be cool ... it may be scary ....  You decide!

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2014/11/direct-brain-brain-interface-operates-between-humans-real-time?et_cid=4252393&et_rid=54725525&location=top

Direct Brain-to-brain Interface Operates between Humans in Real Time

Researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team's initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person's brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.

If you have time, please read the entire article. Fascinating, at the very least!

I read it, and yes, it is fascinating. Right off the top of my head, I'd say that could be leaning towards scientific proof of what used to be called, especially in science fiction, telepathy. It has always fascinated me, to the point that I once took part in a short study, but it was called Mind Control. That was about the time that the U.S.and Russia were experimenting with mind to mind communication.

[libby]

This may be cool ... it may be scary ....  You decide!

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2014/11/direct-brain-brain-interface-operates-between-humans-real-time?et_cid=4252393&et_rid=54725525&location=top

Direct Brain-to-brain Interface Operates between Humans in Real Time

Researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team's initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person's brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.

If you have time, please read the entire article. Fascinating, at the very least!

I read it, and yes, it is fascinating. Right off the top of my head, I'd say that could be leaning towards scientific proof of what used to be called, especially in science fiction, telepathy. It has always fascinated me, to the point that I once took part in a short study, but it was called Mind Control. That was about the time that the U.S.and Russia were experimenting with mind to mind communication.

Am still thinking about the above, and guess I would say I'd call its scary science -- because of the feelings I went away with after I took the Mind Control class. During intermissions I walked around and listened to people talking: there was a really diverse group of people -- a couple of men who said they were bankers, a pilot, a college professor, a man from a federal agency, and others I don't remember specifically. And although it was all fascinating, I left with the very distinct feeling that I had learned enough to know that I did not want to go down that road.

[me]

https://www.youtube.com/v/Jzj5fO5my5M&feature=youtu.be

[libby]

https://www.youtube.com/v/Jzj5fO5my5M&feature=youtu.be

(sometimes there are no words ....)

[Bo D]

Take a Live Trip to the Edge of Space

Anyone with a computer or a smartphone can register for free live video streaming of Brunel University London's scientific expedition to the edge of space — more than 100,000 feet — three times higher than the cruise altitude of transatlantic passenger jets.

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2015/02/take-live-trip-edge-space?et_cid=4409100&et_rid=54725525&location=top

[Bo D]

https://www.youtube.com/v/Jzj5fO5my5M&feature=youtu.be

Please keep the junk in your garbage-can-of-an-inbox out of here.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/cicret.asp

http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/the-cicret-is-out-this-futuristic-bracelet-doesnt-exist/52677