USCKI Incognito - What do you think?

Editie 2005 van dit symposium heeft als titel “What do you think?” en als onderwerp een brede kijk op concepten. Het symposium zal gehouden worden op donderdag 19 mei 2005. Op het symposium zullen vier sprekers hun kijk op dit onderwerp geven. Zo zullen Tony Belpaeme, Filip Buekens, Ardi Roelofs en Remco Veltkamp een lezing verzorgen. Carola Houtekamer zal de dag voorzitten, en na afloop van de lezingen een discussie tussen hen en het publiek leiden.

Ik ben al naar een paar symposia van Incognito geweest en die waren telkens weer zeer interessant en leuk.

hmm, what kind of ethical questions does this raise … ?
UF SCIENTIST: “BRAIN” IN A DISH ACTS AS AUTOPILOT, LIVING COMPUTER
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The “brain” — a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish — gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene.

Microsoft has been awarded a patent for using human skin as a power conduit and data bus. This is in an effort to create an effortless Personal Area Network (PAN) through which devices such as cell phones and PDAs can communicate through the body’s existing infrastructure. Article Link.
Patent No. 6,754,472, which was published Tuesday, describes a method for transmitting power and data to devices worn on the body and for communication of data between those devices.

LANGUAGE, BIOLOGY, AND THE MIND A Talk with Gary Marcus

Gary Marcus is a young research psychologist whose interest in the literature of biology and resulted in new and interesting ideas about the biological basis of mind. He believes that “the mechanisms that build our brains are just a special case of the mechanisms that build the rest of our body. The initial structure of the mind, like the initial structure of the rest of the body, is a product of our genes.”

His goal is twofold: (a) “to track closely the progress in genetics, and try to think about the question of how a tiny number of genes can lead you from an ancestral chimpanzee view of the world to a human view of the world”; and (b) “to rethink linguistics as a question of adapting from primate systems that are already in place. Instead of assuming that everything about language is sui generis—independent of the rest of the cognitive system—or the opposite extreme, which the anti-nativists might assume—that there’s nothing special about language—I’m assuming there’s something special about language, but that it’s a variation on a theme.”

kuro5hin.org || Subconsciously, People may be Bayesian