Thank God, Danielle Steele Can Finally Retire!

Computer Program Writes Its Own Fiction
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Jan. 26, 2007 — Could a computer one day be a fiction bestseller? While a computer-written bestseller may be unlikely, a technology expert has created a computer program that writes its own fiction stories with minimal user input.

The program, called MEXICA, is the first to generate original stories based on computerized representations of emotions and tensions between characters.

Rafael Pérez y Pérez, MEXICA’s creator, explains, "The program keeps a record of the emotional links between characters while developing a story, and employs its knowledge about emotions to retrieve from memory possible logical actions to continue the story."

A paper describing the program has been accepted for publication in the journal Cognitive Systems Research.

In an Internet survey that pitted the computer-generated stories against other computerized stories, as well as stories written solely by a human, readers ranked MEXICA’s stories highest for flow and coherence, structure, content, suspense and overall quality.

Pérez y Pérez, a computer scientist at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in México City, explained to Discovery News that a story might begin with something as basic as, "The enemy wounded the knight. The princess cured the knight. The knight killed the enemy. The knight rewarded the princess. The end."

The program reads characters as variables and assigns a numerical value, between a continuum of –3 to +3, to emotional connections that are defined as either amorous or non-amorous. The numerical value is equivalent to the degree of emotion, with –3 being intense hate and +3 being intense love.

The program also understands story tension, such as linking the word "wounded" with tension. This too is assigned a numerical value.

Once these clusters of emotional links and tensions are established, the program begins what is called an "engagement-reflection cycle." Basically this involves searching a database of story actions and other happenings, which are called "atoms," and determines the best match for the characters’ contexts for that moment. The process repeats itself again and again until the system can no longer make any matches.

At this point, the computer analyzes the story for coherence and "interestingness." The program views a story as interesting when tension levels increase and fall throughout the piece. If the program finds that the story is boring or incoherent in places, it will replace or insert atoms until a version is deemed satisfactory.

Mike Sharples, director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham in England, is the author of the book, "How We Write: Writing as Creative Design." In it he describes a scientific model for creative writing.

Sharples told Discovery News, "Rafael drew on key elements of that model of human creative writing — particularly the movement between engagement and reflection — to produce a computer program that simulates essential parts of the story writing process to produce interesting and engaging story outlines."

Sharples described the program as "innovative."

Pérez y Pérez hopes that MEXICA and any future related programs will be viewed as tools and not replacements for human writers. He believes the programs may even lead to better quality stories and books.

"Programs like MEXICA are computer models that help us to conceive, and therefore to understand, how we write stories," Pérez y Pérez said. "Thus, we can improve our capacities. In my opinion, that is the goal."

Blue Computing

Prussian Blue For Information Storage
Science Daily — In the family of Prussian blue, there is a compound that can act as a switch: it is not magnetic at the outset, but it can become magnetized by the effect of light and return to its initial state by heating. Researchers of the Institute of Molecular Chemistry and Materials of Orsay (CNRS/University of Paris XI) and the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry and Molecular Materials (CNRS/University of Paris VI) showed that this change of state is due to the collective modification of the position of the atoms, induced by light. Such compounds, which can memorize binary information, could be used as storage bits for future computers. This work was presented in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition (after the online publication of January 9, 2007)
Link:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070117134322.htm

Why I'm Stupid

ScienceDaily: Neural Bottleneck Found That Thwarts Multi-Tasking
Neural Bottleneck Found That Thwarts Multi-tasking
Science Daily — Many people think they can safely drive while talking on their cell phones. Vanderbilt neuroscientists Paul E. Dux and René Marois have found that when it comes to handling two things at once, your brain, while fast, isn't that fast.

"Why is it that with our incredibly complex and sophisticated brain, with 100 billion neurons processing information at rates of up to a thousand times a second, we still have such a crippling inability to do two tasks at once?" Marois, associate professor of Psychology, asked. "For example, what is it about our brain that gives us such a hard time at being able to drive and talk on a cell phone simultaneously?"
Researchers have long thought that a central "bottleneck" exists in the brain that prevents us from doing two things at once. Dux and Marois are the first to identify the regions of the brain responsible for this bottleneck, by examining patterns of neural activity over time. Their results were published in the Dec. 21 issue of Neuron.
"In our everyday lives, we seem to complete so many cognitive tasks effortlessly. However, we experience severe limitations when we try to do even two simple tasks at once, such as pressing a button when a visual stimulus appears and saying a word when a sound is presented. This is known as dual-task interference," Dux, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Psychology, said. "We were interested in trying to understand these limitations and in finding where in the brain this bottleneck might be taking place
Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070118161628.htm

Internationally Adopted Children Shed Light On How Babies Learn Language

Science Daily — Each year, about 40,000 children are adopted across national lines, primarily by families from North America and Western Europe. These joyful occasions mark the growth of new families and also provide the framework for a natural experiment in language development. Although most are infants and toddlers, thousands of older children are also adopted. Typically, these older children loose their birth language rapidly and become fluent speakers of their new language.
Link:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070118181008.htm

Eyetap

Eyetap
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from EyeTap)
The EyeTap is a name for a device that is worn in front of the eye that
Acts as a camera to record the scene available to the eye, and
Acts as a display to superimpose a computer-generated imagery on the original scene available to the eye.
In order to capture what the eye is seeing as accurately as possible an EyeTap uses a beam splitter to send the same scene (with reduced intensity) to both the eye and a camera. The camera then digitizes the reflected image of the scene and sends it to a computer. The computer processes the image and then sends it to a projector. The projector sends the image to the other side of the beam splitter so that this computer-generated image is reflected into the eye to be superimposed on the original scene.

Fasten your seatbelt, Make that a double

Sentient Developments
Transhumanist and technoprogressive perspectives on science, philosophy, ethics, and the future of intelligent life

George P. Dvorsky's Blog



...Before I get into the list, however, I'd like to clarify the purpose of this exercise.

First, I am trying to come up with a list of the most fundamental and crucial terms that are coming to define and will soon re-define the human condition, and that subsequently should be known by anyone who thinks of themselves as an intellectual. I admit that there's an elitist and even pompous aspect to this exercise, but the fact of the matter is that the zeitgeist is quickly changing. It's not enough anymore to be able to quote Dostoevsky, Freud and Darwin. This said, while my list of terms is 'required' knowledge, I am not suggesting that it is sufficient.

.....
Accelerating Change: That the pace of technological development is accelerating is now undeniable. The steady onslaught of Moore's Law and its eerie regularity is the most profound example. As thinkers like Ray Kurzweil and others have shown, the onslaught of accelerating change throws commonly held time-frames out the window. And that this rate of change is exponential implies radical social disruption around the mid-point of the 21st Century.

Anthropic Principle: Once considered a philosophical lark, the anthropic principle has become an integral methodological tool with which to best analyze the extreme unarbitrariness of the Universe's parameters. The AP, which suggests that our Universe's qualities are unavoidable in consideration of the presence of observers, has helped cosmologists, astrobiologists and quantum physicists as they work with such related concepts as the fine-tuning hypothesis, string theory, and various multiverse theories.

Artificial General Intelligence: This ain't your daddy's AI. Rather, AGI describes the kind of intelligence that you and I have -- the commonsense knowhow we have when we're put into unfamiliar situations. Once developed, artificial agents endowed with AGI will be non-specialized intelligent entities that will come to represent the bona fide synthetic equivalent to human intelligence, and then move beyond.

Augmented Reality: AR describes the fusion of the real world with the virtual. By using eyetaps, eartaps and implants, individuals will be able to filter unwanted information from their sensory fields (such as annoying advertising and sounds). Alternately, users will have new information virtually inserted into their environment, including descriptions of landmarks, maps, or even an alert notification that a familiar person is approaching. Imagine the gaming possibilities...

Bayesian Rationality: Bayesian rationality is a probabilistic approach to reasoning. Bayesian rationalists describe probability as the degree to which a person should believe a proposition. They also apply Bayes' theorem when inferring or updating their degree of belief when given new information. Some scientists and epistemologists hope to replace the Popperian view of proof with a Bayesian view.

Cosmological Eschatology (aka physical eschatology): CE is the study of how the Universe develops, ages, and ultimately comes to an end. While hardly a new concept, what is new is the suggestion that advanced intelligence may play a role in the universe's life cycle. Given the radical potential for postbiological superintelligence, a number of thinkers have suggested that universe engineering is a likely activity for advanced civilizations. This has given rise to a number of theories, including the developmental singularity hypothesis and the selfish biocosm hypothesis.

Engineered Negligible Senescence: Aging is increasingly coming to be regarded as a disease, and as such it is privy to treatment and therapies leading to outright eradication. Indefinite lifespans may be as little as 50 years away.

Existential Risks: The development of nuclear weapons marked a disturbing turning point for the human species: we are increasingly coming into the possession of apocalyptic technologies. Soon to join the list are such problems as a malevolent superintelligence, deliberate or accidental misuse of nanotech, runaway global warming, a killer artificial virus, an antimatter holocaust, or a particle accelerator disaster. Read more here and here. Adding insult to injury is the Doomsday Argument.

Extended Identity: Human activity is increasingly migrating to the digital realm. The rise in popularity of MMORPGs such as Second Life and World of Warcraft show that the self can, to a non-trivial degree, be transfered to an alternative medium. With the maturation of these technologies will come distributed personhood and new legal protections to guarantee safe and ubiquitous online activity.

Fermi Paradox: The FP is the disturbing realization that, given the extreme age of the galaxy and the radical potential for post-Singularity intelligences (including their ability to disseminate Von Neumann replicators), our galaxy should be saturated with advanced civilizations and megaprojects by now. Yet, we see no signs of ETI's. Consequently, any predictions about the future of human intelligence must seek to reconcile this observation. Key theories to date include the Great Filter hypothesis, the migration hypothesis (pdf), and the transcension hypothesis (the idea of inward migration into increasingly sophisticated and complex MEST space (Matter, Energy, Space, and Time)).

Friendly AI: If we are going to survive the Singularity and the onset of greater-than-human AI, it had better be friendly. And if it turns out to be friendly, it won't be by accident. Computer science theorists such as Eliezer Yudkowsky and Ben Goertzel are already working on what may ultimately prove to be an intractable problem. A poorly programmed, malevolent, or misguided SAI could destroy all of humanity with a mere thought. Asimov's Three Laws will do little against incomprehensibly powerful autopotent entities (a term coined by Nick Bostrom indicating total self-awareness and ability to self-modify).

Human Enhancement: Humans are about to decommission natural selection in favour of guided evolution. Darwinian processes gave humanity a good start, but Homo sapiens can be improved. Owing to advances in genetics, cybernetics, nanotechnology, computer science, and cognitive science, humans are set to redefine the human condition. Future humans can look forward to longer lives, enhanced intelligence, memory, communication and physical skills, and improved emotional control. Humans may eventually cease to be biological and gendered organisms altogether, giving rise to the posthuman entity. Human enhancement will irrevocably alter social arrangements, interpersonal relationships, and society itself. And there's also the added potential for nonhuman enhancement.

Human Exceptionalism (aka human racism): Not everyone is in favour of human enhancement and the prospect of greater-than-human intelligence. Nor is everyone in favour of extending personhood outside the human sphere. These 'human exceptionalists', a group that includes anti-transhumanist Wesley Smith, argue that being human is what matters, and that to give equal moral currency to non-humans is a violation of human dignity and worth. The opposing viewpoint to this is that of Non-Anthropocentric Personhood -- the notion that nonhumans, be they animals, robots, or uploaded minds, have the potential for personhood status, and by consequence, are worthy of moral consideration.

Information Theoretic Death: New technologies will soon demand that we redefine what we mean by death. It is becoming increasingly unsatisfactory to declare death when the heart stops. As long as the information within the brain can be preserved and restored, a person should not be considered irrevocably dead. Given the potential for molecular nanotechnology and other future biotechnological advances, it is reasonable to suggest that most cognitive impairment will someday be repairable. Consequently, we will need to reconsider the status of persons frozen in cyronic stasis or hooked up to life support systems.

Mass Automation: The robotic revolution has only just begun. Robots, AI and automated systems are poised to dramatically reduce the amount of manual labor performed by humans. For example, we are less than 10 years away from the advent of self-driving cars. What will that mean for taxi and bus drivers? Checkouts at grocery stores are already becoming automated as are a significant number of factory jobs. The good news is that a lot of demeaning, difficult and dangerous work is about to be eliminated, the bad news is that it will likely cause serious employment issues.

Memetic Engineering: This is the radical and controversial idea that the propagation and quality of information should be monitored and managed. Memetic engineering is a term coined by Richard Dawkins, and has been elaborated upon by such thinkers as James Gardner, Robert Wright, Daniel Dennett (who calls for increased cultural health) and William Sims Bainbridge (to enhance group and societal outcomes). For example, advocates of ME would argue that some religious memes are viral and and need to curbed. I have also argued along these lines. On a related note, a burgeoning movement is afoot to help people overcome their biases.

Mind Transfer (aka 'uploading'): Uploading is the theoretical prospect of transferring cognition and consciousness to a digital medium, namely supercomputers. Recent advances in neuroscience are increasingly coming to re-enforce functionalist interpretations of mind. Given the Church-Turing theory of universal computational compatibility, there is strong reason to suspect that the mind's processes can be duplicated in computers. This has led to speculation about massive societal uploads, entire civilizations living within massive supercomputers, extreme life extension, and entire lifespans lived in open-ended virtual reality environments and simulations. A number of thinkers, including roboticist Hans Moravec, have outlined various uploading techniques. Personally, I believe the jury is still out on whether or not we will be able to code an algorithm for consciousness.

Molecular Assembler: If you're familiar with a Star Trek replicator you know about molecular assemblers. These devices could take a clump of matter and reconstitute it into anything we desire, so long we have the molecular schematics. The device would work in a similar manner to the way in which genes and ribosomes function to produce protein. Needless to say, the impacts of an assembler would be monumental. The humanitarian impact would be great, creating unprecedented material wealth and access to resources. At the same time however, it would be the most dangerous invention ever devised, capable of creating any kind of apocalyptic device and even self-replicating entities that could cause global ecophagy.

Neurodiversity: Pending biotechnologies will create a multiplicity of psychological modes of being. Today, recreational drug users and the autistic rights community contend that the obsession with maintaining 'neurotypicality' is a form of oppression. In the future, technologies such as neuropharmaceuticals, cybernetics and other cognotech will offer individuals an unprecedented opportunity to experience alternative subjective mental states. Like anything, however, neuroenablement and cognitive liberty are rights that will have to be fought for.

Neural Interface Device: An NID is any device that enables the brain to interface with a computer. Today, paraplegics use NID's to move computer cursors with their thoughts alone. Eventually this will lead to advanced prostheses, novel remote control concepts, and even the almighty brain-jack as portrayed in such sci-fi films as The Matrix.

Noosphere (aka metaconsciousness): Human communication and interaction may eventually advance to the stage where even conscious thought may be globalized and massively shared. This will lead to the rise of the so-called noosphere.

Open Source: This is a term that most people are familiar with, but it's worth re-stating. The open source revolution, where information is freely distributed and editable, is already reshaping a number of industries and upsetting traditional economic and intellectual property models. Wikipedia has very quickly become the world's largest repository of encyclopedic information. Linux and other open source software continue to rival the big players. And looking further down the line, there's the potential for open source science, culture, and the disturbing potential for open source warfare.

Participatory Panopticon: An offshoot of David Brin's transparent society, Steve Mann's sousveillance, and Charlie Stross's panopticon Singularity, the Participatory Panopticon is a proposed strategy for dealing with the onset of ubiquitous surveillance. Coined by environmentalist and forward thinker Jamais Cascio, the PP is the suggestion that all citizens will soon have the tools with which they can watch each other and keep themselves accountable for their actions.
...>
Post-Scarcity Economy: A post-scarcity economy is a hypothetical form of economy or society in which things such as goods, services and information are free, or practically free. Such a future could come about due to abundance of fundamental resources (think nano, AI, alternative energy, etc.), in conjunction with sophisticated automated systems capable of converting raw materials into finished goods (namely by molecular assemblers). In such a world, manufacturing would be as easy as duplicating software.

Small molecule offers big hope against cancer

DCA is an odourless, colourless, inexpensive, relatively non-toxic, small molecule. And researchers at the University of Alberta believe it may soon be used as an effective treatment for many forms of cancer.

Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors. 

Michelakis and his colleagues, including post-doctoral fellow Dr. Sebastian Bonnet, have published the results of their research in the journal Cancer Cell. 

Scientists and doctors have used DCA for decades to treat children with inborn errors of metabolism due to mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondria, the energy producing units in cells, have been connected with cancer since the 1930s, when researchers first noticed that these organelles dysfunction when cancer is present. 

Until recently, researchers believed that cancer-affected mitochondria are permanently damaged and that this damage is the result, not the cause, of the cancer. But Michelakis questioned this belief and began testing DCA, which activates a critical mitochondrial enzyme, as a way to "revive" cancer-affected mitochondria. 

The results astounded him. 

Michelakis and his colleagues found that DCA normalized the mitochondrial function in many cancers, showing that their function was actively suppressed by the cancer but was not permanently damaged by it. 

More importantly, they found that the normalization of mitochondrial function resulted in a significant decrease in tumor growth both in test tubes and in animal models. Also, they noted that DCA, unlike most currently used chemotherapies, did not have any effects on normal, non-cancerous tissues. 

Exploring the Mind-Body Orgasm

Exploring the Mind-Body Orgasm

By Randy Dotinga| Wired
02:00 AM Jan, 10, 2007

Armed with MRI scanners and willing volunteers, a hardy band of sex researchers is exploring the long-misunderstood organ that's at the center of human sexuality -- the brain.

Three of the leading lights in sex research have compiled several decades' worth of knowledge into a new book called The Science of Orgasm.

The authors are Rutgers University professor emeritus Beverly Whipple (who helped popularize the "G-spot" in the '70s), Rutgers psychology professor Barry Komisaruk, and Carlos Beyer-Flores, head of the Laboratorio Tlaxcala in Mexico.

In a Q&A with Wired News, Whipple and Komisaruk discussed what we're learning about the eternal mystery of the Big O.
read on

Elegant Design

Monday, January 08, 2007
A Fast, Sensitive Virus Detector
A sensor that measures the concentration of viruses in minutes could make possible a handheld device that cheaply and quickly spots pathogens.
By Prachi Patel-Predd
Researchers at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, have developed an ultrasensitive sensor that could potentially be used in a handheld device to, within minutes, detect various viruses and measure their concentration. The sensor could be used to quickly screen people at hospitals and emergency clinics to control outbreaks of diseases such as SARS and the bird flu. All it would take is a tiny sample of saliva, blood, or other body fluid.

Currently available methods to detect viruses are also sensitive. But they require laborious preparation of the fluid sample and only give results after several days. Since viral diseases can spread rapidly, researchers are looking for easier, faster ways to directly detect viruses. "You want a tool on which you apply the [fluid] sample on-site and in a few minutes say whether or not the person has the SARS virus," says Aurel Ymeti, a postdoctoral researcher in biophysical engineering and the sensor's lead developer.

The researchers are now working with the Tiel, Netherlands-based company Paradocs Group BV to develop a commercial prototype of the sensor, which they describe online in a Nano Letters paper. The device uses a silicon substrate containing channels that guide laser light. Light enters into the substrate at one end and is split into four parallel beams. When these beams emerge at the other end, they spread out and overlap with one another, creating a pattern of bright and dark bands, known as an interference pattern, which the researchers record.

So far, the researchers have only tested the sensor for the herpes-simplex virus. On one of the four light-guiding channels, the researchers attach antibodies that bind to the virus. Then they slowly flow a saline solution of the virus along that channel. As the microbes attach to the antibodies, the interference pattern changes. The higher the concentration, the more the interference pattern shifts.

By measuring the change in the pattern for different virus concentrations, the researchers establish a fixed relationship between the two factors. Once this relationship is known, Ymeti says they can estimate the concentration of a new virus solution by analyzing the sensor's response for a few minutes. read on

Beauty in the Eye

Some Precise (if arguable) caculations defining beauty
here
And for the rest of us
here

Thanks Seed

How to go to M.I.T. for free

from the January 04, 2007 edition - CSMonitor


Online 'intellectual philanthropy' attracts students from every nation on earth.
By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

By the end of this year, the contents of all 1,800 courses taught at one of the world's most prestigious universities will be available online to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world. Learners won't have to register for the classes, and everyone is accepted.
The cost? It's all free of charge.

The OpenCourseWare movement, begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 and now spread to some 120 other universities worldwide, aims to disperse knowledge far beyond the ivy-clad walls of elite campuses to anyone who has an Internet connection and a desire to learn.

Intended as an act of "intellectual philanthropy," OpenCourseWare (OCW) provides free access to course materials such as syllabi, video or audio lectures, notes, homework assignments, illustrations, and so on. So far, by giving away their content, the universities aren't discouraging students from enrolling as students. Instead, the online materials appear to be only whetting appetites for more.

"We believe strongly that education can be best advanced when knowledge is shared openly and freely," says Anne Margulies, executive director of the OCW program at MIT. "MIT is using the power of the Internet to give away all of the educational materials created here."

The MIT site (ocw.mit.edu), along with companion sites that translate the material into other languages, now average about 1.4 million visits per month from learners "in every single country on the planet," Ms. Margulies says. Those include Iraq, Darfur, "even Antarctica," she says. "We hear from [the online students] all the time with inspirational stories about how they are using these materials to change their lives. They're really, really motivated." read on

My Kinda Ringtone

"You never know." -Jonathan Keats, artist

CONCEPTUAL RINGTONE SILENCES CELLPHONES

Subscribers Hear Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds of Silence Whenever Someone Calls Them... Artist Jonathon Keats Offers Silent Ringtone Free-of-Charge Through Leading Mobile Content Provider Start Mobile... Silence May Go Platinum in 2007...

JANUARY 5, 2007 - Since the beginning of time, pure silence has been available only in the vacuum of space. Now conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has digitally generated a span of silence, four minutes and thirty-three seconds in length, portable enough to be carried on a cellphone. His silent ringtone, freely distributed through special arrangement with Start Mobile, is expected to bring quiet to the lives of millions of cellphone users, as well as those close to them.

"When major artists such as 50 Cent and Chamillionaire started making ringtones, I realized that anything was possible in this new medium," says Mr. Keats, whose previous art projects include attempting to genetically engineer God. "I also knew that another artist, John Cage, had formerly tried, and failed, to create a silent interlude."

Mr. Cage once famously composed four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence, which was performed on a piano, in front of a live audience, back in 1952. By all accounts, though, his silence was imperfect, owing to the limitations of the technology available at the time. "John Cage can't be blamed," says Mr. Keats. "He lived in an analog age."

"My Cage (Silence for Cellphone)" dispenses with performer and piano and auditorium, instead utilizing a continuous stream of silence produced on a computer, and compressed to standard ringtone format. This silence can be heard whenever a call comes through, whether out on the street, at a noisy concert, or in the quiet of home. A remastering of Mr. Cage's classic, "My Cage" is also a remix, according to Mr. Keats. "It introduces serendipity into the equation, delivering performances unpredictably, whenever calls come unexpectedly. You never know."

The silence may take place without the listener being aware of it. Or the listener may hear a call - phantom silence - when there's no one on the line. "'My Cage' is all-encompassing," Mr. Keats explains. "Even those who don't use it as a ringtone have the potential to experience it, in the silence of an unanswered call."

While noting that Mr. Keats doesn't have a cellphone of his own, and may be less-than-qualified to make global pronouncements about them, Start Mobile CEO John Doffing believes that "My Cage" may be a platinum hit. "People want a respite," he says, "and not everybody has the time or money to go to a spa. The virtues of silence are unsung."

Nevertheless, Mr. Keats is careful not to take credit for silence in general, and hopes that people will bootleg his creation, just as he was inspired by John Cage. Mr. Cage, who died in 1992, could not be reached for comment.

"My Cage (Silence for Cellphone)" can be downloaded now at www.startmobile.net/433

* * *
Jonathon Keats is a conceptual artist, novelist, and critic. For his most recent project, at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, he exhibited extraterrestrial abstract artwork. He has also attempted to genetically engineer God in a petri dish, in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, and petitioned Berkeley to pass a fundamental law of logic - A=A - a work commissioned by the city's annual Arts Festival. He has been awarded Yaddo and MacDowell fellowships, and his projects have been documented by KQED-TV and the BBC World Service, as well as periodicals ranging from The San Francisco Chronicle to New Scientist. He is represented by Modernism Gallery in San Francisco. For more information, please contact Mr. Keats at

jonathon_keats@yahoo.com, or see www.modernisminc.com/artists/Jonathon_KEATS/
Posted by Bruce Sterling 3:13 AM | Permalink
Wired

How it All Happened

The sad tale of Tibet

55 minutes, great old footage, same old story

Better it is truly to conquer oneself than to conquer others. -The Buddha

Big Makapu'u

High surf advisory for eastern shores

Advertiser Staff

A high surf advisory is in effect for eastern shores until 6 p.m. tomorrow, National Weather Service forecasters said.
Surf along eastern shores is expcted to be 7 to 10 feet today and while nNorthern shores are still seeing remnants of the latest swell, the surf is expected to drop from 6 to 10 feet overnight to 3 to 6 feet today.

Surf along west-facing shores will be 2 to 4 feet, and surf along south-facing shores will remain 2 f feet or less.

A new moderately small northwest swell is expected over the weekend.

photo credit soest

Uh-huh. You go first.

Cloned animals deemed safe to eat

US regulators prepare to OK food made from cloned animals.
Heidi Ledford
Cloned burgers: would you eat one?

Getty
The US government has released a draft proposal declaring that food from cloned cattle, pigs and goats is "likely to be as safe as" food from their non-cloned counterparts. The draft, released yesterday, arrives more than five years after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested a voluntary moratorium on the use of cloned animals or their offspring for food until their safety could be assessed.

The proposal is now open to a 90-day public comment period, after which the FDA is widely expected to officially approve food from some cloned animals for human consumption (for sheep, they say, there is still not enough data); the draft states that the FDA has few concerns about the health of cloned animals or the food that they produce.


visit www.nature.com/news

Entanglement Without the Math

Introduction

These pages explain quantum entanglement by way of colourful pictures, helpful analogies, and absolutely no math.

To understand quantum entanglement, several ideas and words must be explained, especially the idea of a photon. The photon is a key concept in physics, and so critical to entanglement that its behaviours must be fully understood. But before delving into the details of photons, let's take a look at the world of the very tiny, beginning with waves and atoms.

Click here to continue

Entanglement

Justin Mullins Art

Remotely Activated Nanoparticles Destroy Cancer

Targeted nanotech-based treatments will enter clinical trials in 2007.
By Kevin Bullis
The first in a new generation of nanotechnology-based cancer treatments will likely begin clinical trials in 2007, and if the promise of animal trials carries through to human trials, these treatments will transform cancer therapy. By replacing surgery and conventional chemotherapy with noninvasive treatments targeted at cancerous tumors, this nanotech approach could reduce or eliminate side effects by avoiding damage to healthy tissue. It could also make it possible to destroy tumors that are inoperable or won't respond to current treatment.

One of these new approaches places gold-coated nanoparticles, called nanoshells, inside tumors and then heats them with infrared light until the cancer cells die. Because the nanoparticles also scatter light, they could be used to image tumors as well. Mauro Ferrari, a leader in the field of nanomedicine and professor of bioengineering at the University of Texas Health Science Center, says this is "very exciting" technology.
"With chemotherapy," Ferrari says, "we carpet bomb the patient, hoping to hit the lesions, the little foci of disease. To be able to shine the light only where you want this thing to heat up is a great advantage."
Although several groups are now working on similar localized treatments, Naomi Halas and Jennifer West have led the way in this area, and their work is the farthest along. (See "Nano Weapons Join the Fight Against Cancer.") Nearly ten years ago, Halas, professor of chemistry and electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, developed a precise and reliable method for making nanoshells, which can be hollow spheres of gold or, in the case of the cancer treatment, gold-coated glass spheres. These spheres are small enough (about 100 nanometers in diameter) to slip through gaps in blood vessels that feed tumors. So as they circulate in the bloodstream, they gradually accumulate at tumor sites.
Halas tuned the nanoparticles to absorb specific wavelengths of light by changing the thickness of the glass and gold. For the cancer treatment, she selected infrared wavelengths that pass easily through biological tissues without causing damage. To destroy a nanoshell-infiltrated tumor, the tumor is illuminated with a laser, either through the skin or via an optical fiber for areas such as the lungs.
"We shine light through the skin, and in just a few minutes, the tumor is heated up," Halas says. "In the studies that were initially reported--and this has been repeated now more than 20 times in at least three different animal models--we have seen essentially 100 percent tumor remission." The tests also suggest the nanoshells are nontoxic. Halas says they are eliminated from the body through the liver over several weeks. The technology was developed at Rice in collaboration with Jennifer West, a professor of bioengineering. It has been licensed by Nanospectra Biosciences, a startup based in Houston, TX, that is beginning the process of getting FDA approval for clinical trials for treating head and neck cancer. In the future, the technology could be used for a wide variety of cancers.
"There is a potential for this to bring a profound change in cancer treatment," Halas says. "For the case of someone discovering a lump in their breast, this would mean that a very simple procedure could be performed that would induce remission." She says that "for many, many cases of cancer, rather than the lengthy chemotherapy or radiation therapy," an individual would have "one simple treatment and very little side effects."
Halas anticipates that approval for the method will come quickly, in part because the nanotechnology is not a drug but a device, for which the approval process is simpler. Also, she expects it will perform the same in humans as in animal models, "because heat and light work in exactly the same way whether you're in a pig, a dog, [or] a human being."
Since their initial experiments, the researchers have been further developing the technology. They've demonstrated the ability to coat the nanoshells with antibodies that latch on to breast-cancer cells, further improving the selectivity of the treatment. They've also attached molecules that make the nanoshells into pH sensors that would be useful for both imaging tumors and as an "optical biopsy" for identifying cancers, Halas says.

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Past and Future: All in Your Head

Time Past, Time Future Intricately Connected In Brain

by Agence France-Presse • Posted January 2, 2007 11:24 AM

CHICAGO (AFP)—Our ability to daydream about our future is closely related to our ability to recall our past, and may even depend on it, according to a study which may explain a little-known quirk of the amnesiac's condition.

The findings come from a small study in which researchers compared the brain activity of volunteers as they alternately reminisced about past personal events such as a birthday, or getting lost, and then conjured up images of similar scenarios in the future.

The brain scans of the 21 students who took part in the experiment revealed "a surprisingly complete overlap" in the brain regions used for both processes, the researchers said.

"Our findings provide compelling support for the idea that memory and future thought are highly interrelated and help explain why future thought may be impossible without memories," said Karl Szpunar, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

They just don't get it

Jump on your bike, start the engine, throw a rev, and hear... silence? No, you haven’t gone deaf – you’ve traded your mighty Harley for the zero-cylinder ENV (yep, envy). Green vehicles are nothing new – the Prius and its kin have been quietly zipping along special commuter lanes for years – but engineers have largely dismissed an environmentally friendly two-wheeler as impractical. That was until Britain’s Intelligent Energy created the ENV, the first road-worthy hydrogen-powered motorcycle. The vehicle runs on a removable fuel cell, emits almost nothing, and will be street legal. The only drag? Top speed, for now, is 50 mph. Production versions go on sale later this year. Head out on the highway on this eco-machine.

THE FIRST ROAD-READY FUEL CELL MOTORCYCLE

Clean Burn
Most cycles crank out a nasty cocktail of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide from their tailpipes. The ENV’s only emission is pure H20, which, scientifically speaking, should be safe enough to (gulp!) drink.

High Torque
The bike’s frame is built around a specially engineered fuel cell that uses a proton-exchange membrane to kick out 6 kW of peak-load power. What does that mean? Other vehicles eat your dust at stoplights (not a bad trade-off for the snaillike top speed).

Easy Rider
Because this motor-cycle has no internal combustion engine, power is distributed evenly through a single gear – no tricky clutching or shifting required. It makes for a smooth ride.

Feather-Light
Rather than the usual solid steel frame, the ENV is constructed of hollow-cast, aircraft-grade aluminum and weighs a mere 176 pounds, including its fuel cell – about half the heft of a typical scooter.

– Daniel Dumas

Takin' it to the Streets

French marchers say 'non' to 2007

The demonstrators took French restiveness to extremes
Hundreds of protesters in France have rung in the New Year by holding a light-hearted march against it.
Parodying the French readiness to say "non", the demonstrators in the western city of Nantes waved banners reading: "No to 2007" and "Now is better!"
The marchers called on governments and the UN to stop time's "mad race" and declare a moratorium on the future.