Science & TechnologyS


Laptop

New IBM-developed processor functions like the human brain


RedOrbit
Sat, 09 Aug 2014 14:17 UTC
Supercomputer
© ThinkstockThe project, which was funded by DARPA, could allow a chip to perform supercomputer-level calculations without needing to connect to the Internet to do so.
IBM researchers have announced the development of a new computer chip that is inspired by the brain, mimicking the way that the mind can recognize patterns utilizing a web of interconnected transistors to simulate neural networks.

The processor is named TrueNorth, and according to John Markoff of the New York Times, it contains more than 5.4 billion transistors, yet requires no more power to function than a hearing aid (just 70 milliwatts of power versus the minimum of 35 watts required by current Intel processors, with have 1.4 billion transistors).

TrueNorth contains electronic "neurons" capable of signaling others when a specific type of data reaches a predetermined threshold, allowing them to work in unison to organize data into patterns, Markoff said. Using this infrastructure, the chip could ultimately be capable of calculations beyond the modern supercomputer, recognize when a person is performing a specific action, or controlling the activities of a robot.

Despite being no larger than a postage stamp, this neurosynaptic processor could also be used in self-driving vehicles and artificial intelligence systems installed on mobile devices, the AFP news agency explained. It is part of the company's new approach to computer architecture design known as "cognitive computing."
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Robot

Computer passes 'Turing Test' for the first time after convincing users it is human

Hannah Furness
The Telegraph, UK
Sun, 08 Jun 2014 14:46 UTC
Alan Turing
© Agence France-PresseAlan Turing.

A ''super computer'' has duped humans into thinking it is a 13-year-old boy to become the first machine to pass the ''iconic'' Turing Test, experts have said.

Five machines were tested at the Royal Society in central London to see if they could fool people into thinking they were humans during text-based conversations.

The test was devised in 1950 by computer science pioneer and Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing, who said that if a machine was indistinguishable from a human, then it was ''thinking''.

No computer had ever previously passed the Turing Test, which requires 30 per cent of human interrogators to be duped during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations, organisers from the University of Reading said.

But ''Eugene Goostman'', a computer programme developed to simulate a 13-year-old boy, managed to convince 33 per cent of the judges that it was human, the university said.

Professor Kevin Warwick, from the University of Reading, said: ''In the field of artificial intelligence there is no more iconic and controversial milestone than the Turing Test.

''It is fitting that such an important landmark has been reached at the Royal Society in London, the home of British science and the scene of many great advances in human understanding over the centuries. This milestone will go down in history as one of the most exciting.''
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Info

Violent solar system history uncovered by Western Australia meteorite

Megan Meates
Phys Org
Fri, 08 Aug 2014 08:46 UTC
Meteorite
© NASA
Curtin University planetary scientists have shed some light on the bombardment history of our solar system by studying a unique volcanic meteorite recovered in Western Australia.

Captured on camera seven years ago falling on the WA side of the Nullarbor Plain, the Bunburra Rockhole Meterorite has unique characteristics that suggest it came from a large asteroid that has never before been identified.

Associate Professor Fred Jourdan, along with colleagues Professor Phil Bland and Dr Gretchen Benedix from Curtin's Department of Applied Geology, believe the meteorite is evidence that a series of collisions of asteroids occurred more than 3.4 billion years ago.

"This meteorite is definitely one-of-a-kind," Dr Jourdan said.

"Nearly all meteorites we locate come from Vesta, the second largest asteroid in the solar system. But after studying the meteorite's composition and orbit, it appears it derived from a large, unidentified asteroid that was split apart during the collisions."

The research team dated the meteorite with the argon-argon technique, a well-known method for dating impact crater events, to offer a glimpse of the asteroid's impact history.
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Calculator

Google search results will favor encrypted web sites


RT
Thu, 07 Aug 2014 15:22 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Mal Langsdon
Websites that are not encrypted will receive a lower ranking on Google's search engine, in a move designed to push site owners towards adopting technology that protects users' data against hackers.

The step is the latest in a series that Google has made to improve the security of the web - something it has focused on since Edward Snowden's National Security Agency (NSA) spying allegations broke last year, which detailed information about mass government surveillance by the US and some of its allies, including the UK.

All major websites use encryption when a person submits their login details, but some sites then downgrade to an unencrypted connection.

"We hope to see more websites using HTTPS in the future," Google said in a blog post.
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Chalkboard

Mystery of brain cell growth unraveled by scientists


ScienceDaily
Fri, 08 Aug 2014 15:10 UTC
In the developing brain, special proteins that act like molecular tugboats push or pull on growing nerve cells, or neurons, helping them navigate to their assigned places amidst the brain's wiring.

How a single protein can exert both a push and a pull force to nudge a neuron in the desired direction is a longstanding mystery that has now been solved by scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborators in Europe and China.

Jia-huai Wang, PhD, who led the work at Dana-Farber and Peking University in Beijing, is a corresponding author of a report published in the August 7 online edition of Neuron that explains how one guidance protein, netrin-1, can either attract or repel a brain cell to steer it along its course. Wang and co-authors at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Hamburg, Germany, used X-ray crystallography to reveal the three-dimensional atomic structure of netrin-1 as it bound to a docking molecule, called DCC, on the axon of a neuron. The axon is the long, thin extension of a neuron that connects to other neurons or to muscle cells.

As connections between neurons are established -- in the developing brain and throughout life -- axons grow out from a neuron and extend through the brain until they reach the neuron they are connecting to. To choose its path, a growing axon senses and reacts to different molecules it encounters along the way. One of these molecules, netrin-1, posed an interesting puzzle: an axon can be both attracted to and repelled from this cue. The axon's behavior is determined by two types of receptors on its tip: DCC drives attraction, while UNC5 in combination with DCC drives repulsion.
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Info

Solar System-wide 'climate change': Supersized storms erupt on Uranus

Jason Major
Discovery News
Thu, 07 Aug 2014 15:20 UTC
Uranus Storms_1
© Imke De Pater (UC Berkeley)/Keck ObservatoryTORYInfrared image of a storm on Uranus acquired on Aug. 6, 2014 from Keck Observatory, Hawaii.
First off, you know it's pronounced "YOOR-ah-nus," right? Okay, good. Let's move on.

As hurricanes take aim at Hawaii, astronomers in Hawaii aimed their telescopes at storms raging on another planet: distant Uranus, the tilted ice giant orbiting the sun nearly 20 times farther away than Earth.

Wrapped in an atmosphere tinted pale blue by high-altitude methane, Uranus has occasionally been observed to develop large storms in its frigid windy skies. NASA's Voyager 2 saw a few small storm clouds spotting Uranus during its flyby in Jan. 1986, and more recently some large but short-lived storms were observed by Hubble and the W.M. Keck Observatory as the planet moved toward its equinox in 2007. Now, seven years after its equinox, swirling storms are once again blooming on Uranus - and Keck astronomers have caught them on camera.

It's not just one storm, either; several have appeared in infrared images of Uranus, including one enormous storm that's even bigger than a previously-observed giant that was nicknamed "Berg" because of its resemblance to an iceberg drifting through polar seas.
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Sun

Recent study finds 1950-2009 Solar Grand Maximum was a unique event in 3,000 years

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That?
Wed, 06 Aug 2014 15:16 UTC
Sun said to be "bi-modal"

While many, including the IPCC, suggest the modern Grand Maximum of solar activity from 1950-2009 has nothing to do with the 0.4C global warming measured over that time frame, it does seem to be unique in the last three millennia.

from CO2 Science: A 3,000-Year Record of Solar Activity

What was done

According to Usoskin et al. (2014), the Sun "shows strong variability in its magnetic activity, from Grand minima to Grand maxima, but the nature of the variability is not fully understood, mostly because of the insufficient length of the directly observed solar activity records and of uncertainties related to long-term reconstructions." Now, however, in an attempt to overcome such uncertainties, in a Letter to the Editor published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Usoskin et al. "present the first fully adjustment-free physical reconstruction of solar activity" covering the past 3,000 years, which record allowed them "to study different modes of solar activity at an unprecedented level of detail."
sunspot avarage
Reconstructed decadal average of sunspot numbers for the period 1150 BC-1950 AD (black line). The 95% confidence interval is shown by the gray shading and directly measured sunspot numbers are shown in red. The horizontal dashed lines demark the bounds of the three suggested modes (Grand Minimum, Regular, and Grand Maximum) as defined by Usoskin et al.

Comment: The influence of sun's maximums and minimums on Earth's climate is well defined and illustrated in the pioneering book, Earth Changes and The Human-Cosmic Connection.

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Chalkboard

Do quantum particles take the road most traveled?

Kelly Dickerson
Live Science
Wed, 06 Aug 2014 10:59 UTC
Image
© Credit: Murch Lab/WUSTLThe path that quantum particles are most likely to take is beginning to emerge in this image mapping thousands of quantum paths.
For the first time ever, physicists have mapped the path that particles are most likely to take when moving from one quantum state to another.

In physics, a concept called the "path of least action" describes the trajectory that an object is most likely to follow, similar to the familiar concept of the "path of least resistance." For example, a tossed football follows a parabolic arc through the air instead of spinning off in crazy loops or zigzags. That's because a parabola path requires fewer "actions" than a looped or zigzag path.

However, physicists didn't know whether quantum particles, like electrons, neutrinos or photons, follow the same rule. Many of the classic rules of physics don't seem to apply to these tiny particles. Instead, they are governed by the weird rules of quantum mechanics that even Einstein called "spooky." [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

Comment: The role of the 'observer', quantum physics, superconductivity, information theory, Electric Universe theory and much more are discussed in Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk's new book, Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

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Airplane

Newly identified vulnerability could potentially compromise commercial airliners


RedOrbit
Thu, 07 Aug 2014 00:28 UTC
Pilot
© Thinkstock
The satellite communications equipment of passenger jets can be hacked through their wireless internet and inflight entertainment systems, claims one prominent cybersecurity researcher who has promised to reveal the details of his work Thursday at the annual Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

According to Reuters reporter Jim Finkle, IOActive consultant Ruben Santamarta plans to discuss vulnerabilities he has discovered in aerospace satellite communication systems - a presentation that "is expected to be one of the most widely watched at the conference" and "could prompt a review of aircraft security."

The 32-year-old Santamarta told Reuters he discovered the flaws in the communication systems by reverse engineering their firmware - in other words, decoding the software used to operate the equipment. Theoretically, hackers could use the onboard WiFi or inflight entertainment system to hack into its avionics equipment, allowing them to potentially disrupt the aircraft's navigation and safety systems.

The systems specifically mentioned in the study were created by Cobham, Harris, Hughes Network Systems, Iridium Communications and Japan Radio. While Santamarta told Fingle that the hacks have only been tested in controlled environments (such as IOActive's Madrid laboratory) and could be difficult to replicate under real world condition, he said that he decided to publicize his findings to encourage manufacturers to patch these security issues.

"Since the specific details of the exploit won't be announced until Santamarta's presentation later this week, we're left guessing until then just how big of an issue this actually is. The cause for concern is clear, though," said Adam Clark Estes of Gizmodo.
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Horse

Horses talk with their ears and communicate with subtle body language

Fiona Macrae
dailymail
Mon, 04 Aug 2014 13:15 UTC
ears laid back
© ferrandtriplekfarms.blogspot.comRed horse: snarl, ears laid back "Give me space"
Black horse: fear eye, backing up, head high, "Oops, sorry"
Forget neighing! Horses talk with their ears!

Horse whisperers take note: If you want to better understand your equine friends, then study their ears.

A study has revealed that just like humans, horses read each other's faces. But, unlike us, they gain important information by specifically examining the ears. It seems that when a horse is interested in something, it pricks up its ears and swivels them towards whatever has caught its attention. This movement is so important that, if its ears are covered up, another horse struggles to know what it is thinking.

angry horse
© www.horse-riding-tips-n-chat.comThis horse is demonstrating angry behavior, feeling threatened with no place to run. "Back off!"
The finding comes from University of Sussex researchers who studied what makes one horse pay attention to another horse. They began by taking photos of a horse looking to one side at bucket of food. They then placed a picture on a post between two buckets of food, led another horse into the barn and watched which bucket it went to.

They almost always took their cue from the pictured animal and chose the bucket it seemed to be looking at. However, when the photo was manipulated, so that the horse's eyes were covered up, the results were no better than chance.

This suggests the horse's gaze conveys important information.

More surprisingly, covering up the ears had the same effect - meaning they are also key to communication. Researcher Jennifer Wathan (CORR), a PhD student, said: 'Our study is the first to examine a potential cue to attention that humans do not have: the ears.

Comment: If only it was that simple for humans!

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