Friday, December 29, 2006

Online world as important to Internet users as real world?. The 2007 Digital Future Project found that 43 percent of Internet users who are members of online communities say that they "feel as strongly" about their virtual community as they do about their real-world communities.  The 2007 Digital Future Pro... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:59:41 AM      Google It!.

Me Translate Pretty One Day. Over the past decade machine translation has improved dramatically, propelled by Moore's law, a spike in federal funding in the wake of 9/11, and a new method called statistical-based MT.  Meaningful Machines, a New York firm with an ingenious algo... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:58:00 AM      Google It!.

Minsky talks about life, love in the age of artificial intelligence. MIT computer science professor Marvin Minsky has written a new book, "The Emotion Machine," in which he argues that, contrary to popular conception, emotions aren't distinct from rational thought; rather, they are simply another way of thinking, one ... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:56:35 AM      Google It!.

Stem Cells Are Where It's At. There are now more than 1,000 stem-cell therapies in early human trials around the world. Last month saw the first patient treated with embryonic cells, which have triggered much debate in the United States. After years of being thought of as sci... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:54:48 AM      Google It!.

Roche unveils new nanotech diagnosis tool. Roche Holding AG has unveiled a new method to track patients' responses to treatments by monitoring their genes.  It detects active genes directly by using sensors attached to silicon cantilevers that are only 450 nanometers thick and therefore rea... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:53:47 AM      Google It!.

Peering Into the Future: Genetic Testing. Genetic testing is transforming medicine -- and the way families think about their health. Today gene tests are available for more than 1,300 diseases, including cystic fibrosis and hemophilia. As genetic screening gets cheaper and faster, resear... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:52:47 AM      Google It!.

Genomic atlas of the mouse brain revealed. A genomic atlas of the mouse brain, the Allen Brain Atlas, has been completed. It contains 85 million images and documents the activity of more than 21,000 genes across the entire mouse brain in such fine detail that it is possible pick out individua... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:51:34 AM      Google It!.

Ultrastrong Carbon-Nanotube Muscles. By spinning carbon nanotubes into yarn a fraction of the width of a human hair, researchers have developed artificial muscles that exert 100 times the force per area of natural muscle. ... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:50:29 AM      Google It!.

Study Detects Recent Instance of Human Evolution. A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest lactose, the principal sugar of milk, in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 year... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:49:07 AM      Google It!.

Mileage from megawatts: Study finds enough electric capacity to 'fill up' plug-in vehicles across much of the nation. If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A new study for the Department... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:47:07 AM      Google It!.

IBM to Open Islands in Virtual World. IBM has created 12 islands in the popular virtual world Second Life, where employees and customers can hold meetings, take orientation and training sessions and discuss projects. IBM also hopes to use Second Life to interact directly with customers. ... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:45:04 AM      Google It!.

Nano-cables convert light into electricity. Nanocables that convert light into electricity could one day be used to power nanorobots, because of their similarity in size and function to the antennas used by bacteria for photosynthesis.... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:42:53 AM      Google It!.

Diabetes breakthrough. The body's nervous system helps trigger diabetes, researchers at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto have found.  They blocked the pain nerves surrounding insulin-producing islets in mice with diabetes, and found that the islets began secret... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:41:50 AM      Google It!.

Tech lessons learned from the wisdom of crowds. Google, HP Labs, Yahoo, and Microsoft are among companies using "prediction markets" to improve forecasts. The technique rewards employees for success in making predictions. ... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:40:55 AM      Google It!.

Researchers Demonstrate Direct Brain Control Of Humanoid Robot. "Thought commands" generated by analysis of EEG signals can control the actions of robots, University of Washington researchers have found. ... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:39:52 AM      Google It!.

In Memory-Bank 'Dialogue,' the Brain Is Talking to Itself. New recordings of electrical activity in the brain may explain a major part of its function, including how it consolidates daily memories, why it needs to dream and how it constructs models of the world to guide behavior. The finding by MIT resear... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:38:23 AM      Google It!.

Pluggd: A Google for Podcasts. Pluggd has found a way to index podcasts, talk shows and other spoken-word content. The company's service then allows users to search the audio files for specific words, which are spoken in context by the original speaker. ... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] there is reportedly an open source version somewhere at MIT -- BL 11:36:00 AM      Google It!.

Conscious computing debated at MIT anniversary event. Will there ever be such a thing as artificial intelligence? That question was argued by inventor Ray Kurzweil and Yale University professor David Gelernter.... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:31:54 AM      Google It!.

We'll all be cyborgs someday, scientist says. The day will come when all people will be implanted with computer chips and government will be able to track them all the time, recording their smallest behavioral traits, says Kevin Haggerty, associate professor of criminology at the University of A... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:29:27 AM      Google It!.

Short Mental Workouts May Slow Decline of Aging Minds, Study Finds. Ten sessions of exercises to boost reasoning skills, memory and mental processing speed staved off mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people in the first definitive study to show that honing intellectual skills can bolster the mind in the same... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:28:39 AM      Google It!.

Single Gene Could Lead to Long Life, Better Mental Function. Researchers at the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have discovered a gene that apparently protects the brain and prolongs life.  Centenarians who passed a common test of mental function were two to three times mo... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:27:45 AM      Google It!.

2006: The year in biology and medicine. Lab-grown bladders, face transplants, wider genetic screening of embryos, and ethical stem cells, are some of this year's highlights.... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:25:56 AM      Google It!.

The Year in Biotech. Brain chips, gene Chips, life-extending pills, and stem-cell cures and among the biotech developments on 2006.... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:24:21 AM      Google It!.

The 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year. An operating system that runs entirely on the Web, the fastest desktop chip, and an e-reader are among the most innovative products of 2006.  Also listed: 5 innovations to look for in 2007.... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:23:28 AM      Google It!.

Jefferson researchers uncover new way nature turns genes on and off. Biologists may have discovered a new way that genes are turned on and off during development. They detailed a possible mechanism by which non-coding ncRNAs briefly control the functioning of homeotic, or HOX, genes, which guide the master developm... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 11:22:00 AM      Google It!.

Videogames Fill Psychological Needs for Players. codegen writes "The CBC (among others) is reporting that researchers at the University of Rochester and Immersyve Inc. have released a study indicating that people enjoy video games because they satisfy a psychological need. The study showed that the interrelations between players in MMOGs were particularly important. From the article: 'Gamers said they felt the best about their experience when the games they played produced positive outcomes in scenarios related to the real world ... The researchers evaluated players' motivations in virtual worlds by asking four groups of people to play different games, including a genre known as massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, which some industry watchers regard as the future of video games.'"[Slashdot] 11:07:47 AM      Google It!.

100 Things We Didn't Know Last Year. gollum123 writes "The BBC news magazine is running a compilation of the interesting and sometimes downright unexpected facts that we did not know last year, but now know. some examples [~] There are 200 million blogs which are no longer being updated, say technology analysts. Urban birds have developed a short, fast 'rap style' of singing, different from their rural counterparts. The lion costume in the film 'Wizard of Oz' was made from real lions. Online shoppers will only wait an average of four seconds for an internet page to load before giving up. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles. For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality. Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs is the term for people who fear the number 666. The egg came first."[Slashdot] 11:05:59 AM      Google It!.

The NSFW HTML Attribute. phaln writes "Over at The Frosty Mug Revolution, PJ Doland makes a compelling case for a new HTML attribute in the spirit of the highly-regarded 'nofollow' attribute promoted by Google [~] the NSFW attribute (rel='nsfw'). His original idea has been refined and expanded by positive comments from readers, resulting in a semantic solution to the issue he raises in the original post. From the article: 'Content creators can apply the attribute to paragraph tags, div tags, or any other block-level element. Doing so will indicate that the enclosed content is not safe for work. Visitors will be able to configure their browsers to block display of just the content enclosed by the flagged block-level element. This isn't about censorship. It is about making us all less likely to accidentally click on a goatse.cx link when our boss is standing behind us. It is also about making us feel more comfortable posting possibly objectionable content by giving visitors a means of easily filtering that content.'"[Slashdot] 10:55:45 AM      Google It!.

Online Education Gives Moms an Edge in The Workplace - ARA Derby Reporter. According to the latest estimates from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Statistics, women are projected to enter the workforce at a higher percentage rate than men over the next ten years. And the fastest growth industries will be in the computer Online Learning Update, December 29, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 9:05:43 AM      Google It!.

Grammar Game. Leading Step's Grammar Games: Constructor is a new Palm application and you can download a free 15-day trial. In game mode, students answer questions to earn puzzle pieces. The questions are completely customizable. Constructor is programmed with hundreds of sentences and students tap specified parts of speech in those sentences. Constructor allows you to specify a "Game Plan" that includes the types of questions and what kinds of sentences that will be used. Game Plans can be as simple as finding nouns in simple sentences to as complicated as identifying the kind of infinitive in sentences with predicate nominatives. The teacher can set a Game Plan on her handheld and beam it to student handhelds. Because it's so flexible, Constructor can be used in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. In addition, Constructor is set up to support up to eight users on one handheld. The users' answers are tracked and can be reviewed. Games can take some time to finish, as students Learning in Hand, December 29, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 9:04:08 AM      Google It!.

Social answers: Yahoo! in the lead. How do question-and-answer sites compare as 2006 gives way to 2007? These are social enterprises, connecting questioners with people who answer, or arrange for replies. Wade Roush examines, rates, and ranks a bunch. The winner: Yahoo! Answers. Notice that Google is missing, since they cut their own social answer effort. Microsoft and Amazon remain in the field as big corporate players. But they, and other, lesser known entities, lag significantly behind socially-minded Yahoo!, in Roush's estimate. Are there any other studies in this field? Kudos to Roush for the work. (via Slashdot) Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education, December 29, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 9:00:41 AM      Google It!.