Nova Spivack – Minding the Planet

All living things are made up of proteins. Each protein is a string of
amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids, and each protein can
consist of dozens to thousands of them.

Scientists write down these amino acid sequences as series of
text letters. Clark and her colleagues assign musical notes to the
different values of the amino acids [...]

Researchers in South Korea may have discovered a new cure for cancer — a genetically engineered  form of a virus that causes colds. By injecting this in animals with cancer it kills 90% of all cancer cells within 60 days, with no other side-effects.
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This is a surprisingly good article on the nature of consciousness — providing a survey of the current state-of-the-art in cognitive science research. It covers the question from a number of perspectives and interviews many of the leading current researchers.
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Below is the text of my bet on Long Bets. Go there to vote.
“By 2050 no synthetic computer nor machine intelligence will have become truly self-aware (ie. will become conscious).”
Spivack’s Argument:
(This summary includes my argument, a method for judging the outcomeof this bet and some other thoughts on how to measure awareness…)
A. MY PERSPECTIVE…
Even if [...]

This study is strange. But plausible.
Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting
what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between
autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3.
The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television
became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980,
childhood autism [...]

For an interesting read — download this wonderful presentation on zooming out in time as a way to predict the future. It’s from a talk given at the Long Now Foundation. Nice visual slides illustrate how the world changes over vast timescales.
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One of my readers commented that they were looking for this really cool flash presentation that I blogged about a while back — it helps you visualize higher-dimensions all the way to 10-dimensions. Check it out! After this your brain will need a rest, and possibly a hard reboot — but worth it.
By the way, [...]

This article discusses an interesting fact — some women have extra color receptors enabling them to distinguish a vastly larger range of colors than everyone else. Instead of seeing in 3 colors, they see in 4 — enabling them to tell the difference between 100 million different colors.
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Wow…
A severely brain-damaged woman in an unresponsive, vegetative state
showed clear signs of conscious awareness on brain imaging tests,
researchers are reporting today, in a finding that could have
far-reaching consequences for how unconscious patients are cared for
and diagnosed.

In response to commands, the
patient’s brain flared with activity, lighting the same language and
planning regions that are active when [...]

This article discusses the potential of using electrical stimulation to revive people from comas. It has been shown to work many times, but American doctors are still not paying attention. A small group of doctors is trying to get some buzz around this idea.
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This article discusses RNA interference (RNAi), a technique which can selectively turn genes off, which is currently in the early stages of testing. It shows promise for treating a broad spectrum of diseases.
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This is an interesting article about recent evidence of deep thinking by dolphins:
At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the
dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the
institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their
pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the [...]

An article in my new favorite magazine, Seed Magazine, by cosmologist Sean Carrol, proposes an interesting new theory about the nature of time and the evolution of baby universes. In this approach, baby universes can suddenly come into being from empty space when random quantum vacuum fluctuations fall into place in just the right way. [...]

This is a wonderful article about how a chance encounter led to the discovery of a connection between physics and number theory that may help explain everything from quantum mechanics to the prime numbers….and the most incredible thing is that the answer may actually really be "42" after all. You’ve heard of "Life Imitates Art," [...]

Here’s an interesting video about a village in India where men have been stricken for over a decade with a disease that causes them to age much faster. Nobody knows what is causing this. Men in their 30’s appear to be 80. It’s strange. Watch the video. Perhaps if someone were to collect some DNA [...]

Ack. Thanks to prodding by Josh, I finally made the mistake of installing StumbleUpon in Firefox … and now I’m really seriously addicted to it!  Help… all I can do is sit around clicking the "Stumble!" button all day long. I’ve already found so many cool things that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Like [...]

Sorry I didn’t post much today. I pulled an all-nighter last night working on Web-mining algorithms and today we had back to back meetings all day.
I just came back from a really good product team meeting facilitaed by Chris Jones on our product messaging. It’s really getting simple, direct, clear and tangible. Very positive. [...]

My company, Radar Networks, is building a very large dataset by crawling and mining the Web. We then apply a range of new algorithms to the data (part of our secret sauce) to generate some very interesting and useful new information about the Web. We are looking for a few experienced search engineers to join [...]

Drug discovery meets quantum mechanics in this article about recent evidence for quantum tunneling in enzymes:
SYDNEY, 25 August 2006: British scientists have found that enzymes
cheat time and space by quantum tunnelling – a much faster way of
travelling than the classical way – but whether or not perplexing
quantum theories can be applied to the biological world [...]

Russian scientists are now predicting a period of "Global Cooling" will begin in 2012. Well at least the good news is that Al Gore can make a sequel. And I guess this means San Francisco will have even colder summers…er winters…now? But all jokes aside, this is something to track. The term "global warming" is  [...]

Just read an interesting article on the possibility of "intraterrestrial" silicon-based life on Earth:
SETI spends enormous amounts of money
and resources looking for life outside of Earth’s realm, but life forms
so alien that scientists may simply not have recognized evidence of
their existence could inhabit the Earth, according to a leading
scientist.

Dr Tom Gold, emeritus professor of astronomy [...]

The New Scientist published a nice overview of the emerging theory of Loop Quantum Gravity. I’ve been following this for a number of years, ever since my friend Bram turned me onto it. It’s related in some ways to other models of discrete space-time, such as cellular automata and digital physics.
LEE SMOLIN is no [...]

It has just come out that supplies of rice in the USA have been contaminated with a gene that was not approved for human consumption. 
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This is a cool pair of images showing a striking similarity between the structure of neurons and that of our universe. I’ve often wondered whether the entire universe isn’t some kind of a mind or a brain in which we are like subatomic particles.
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As the distance a spaceship travels through space increases, so do the odds that it will collide with debris in its path – such as interstellar dust, micrometeorites, asteroids, dark matter, dark stars, etc.
If you are traveling at super high-speed, through uncharted territory, there is no way to know what is out there.
Even if it [...]

This is a really cool art and technology project that creates an interactive timekeeping system out of a fountain of falling drops of water and a strobe light. You can interact with the drops. It has to be seen to be explained. Watch the video.
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Shel Israel and I just finished up working together for 10 days. I needed Shel’s perspective on what we are working on at Radar Networks. Shel lived up to his reviews as a brilliant thinker on strategic messaging, branding and positioning. So what are the 15 people at Radar Networks working on? It’s still a [...]

Ok, this will be pretty interesting… as long as nothing unexpected happens, like for example, our universe starting to drain out through the wormhole they are making…that would suck…
PHYSICISTS IN JAPAN PLAN TO CREATE NEW UNIVERSE IN LAB  USING THE HIGGS FIELD, SCIENTISTS THEORIZE IT IS POSSIBLE TO CAUSE A ‘BABY UNIVERSE’ TO BREAK OFF [...]

Amazon Rainforest Faces Desertification
Amazon rainforest ‘could become a desert’
And that could speed up global warming with ‘incalculable consequences’, says alarming new research
The Independent (U.K.), July 23, 2006
The vast Amazon rainforest is on the
brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for
the world’s climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which
would be irreversible, [...]

A University of Arizona professor has invented a ripeness sticker that shows how ripe a piece of fruit is. Why didn’t I think of this!!! This is a simple, brilliant idea. It’s right up there with the blue-tip match. The University of Arizona is going to make a lot of money on this.
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