Clipmarks | wildcat's 'environment' clips

Evolutionary Game Theory And The Mathematics Of Altruism

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:02:00 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: A fascinating example of cooperation we have right here at CM

Why do humans cooperate in things as diverse as environment conservation or the creation of fairer societies, even when they don’t receive anything in exchange or, worst, they might even be penalized?

This is a question that has puzzled academics Why do humans cooperate in things as diverse as environment conservation or the creation of fairer societies, even when they don’t receive anything in exchange or, worst, they might even be penalized? This is a question that has puzzled academics for centuries, especially since in evolution the basis for the “survival of the fittest” is, after all, selfishness.

But in an article just published in the journal Nature, three Portuguese theoretical physicists developed a mathematical model capable of providing a way out from this conundrum through the introduction of social diversity

the act of cooperation may depend on one’s social context/ranking

when social diversity was taken into account

the numbers of those cooperating increased

Tags: evolutionary, game theory, mathematics, altruism

How Visionary Political Leadership Can Save the Environment for Future Generations

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:21:47 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Halting the destruction of the environment for the sake of future generations takes peering into the future so that we are able to truly perceive the impact of our actions. In that respect, leadership can be a powerful force to direct the behavior of nations toward the accomplishment of some common environmental objectives.

Clip Source: ecoworldly.com

Political leaders have a key role to play in developing and taking action to combat the world environmental degradation, according to a recent survey of 1,350 professionals in position to make or influence large climate-related decisions in their governments, companies, or other organizations across 120 countries.

The performance of key actors - particularly national governments - has been inadequate to date with rhetoric at much feted climatic conferences over-dominating action states the survey.

Respondents in the survey conducted by the GlobeScan for the World Bank, The World Conservation Union (IUCN), and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), noted that there is currently little consensus on solutions to climate change.

In many parts of the world, the destruction of the environment is a daily reality in spite of the numerous statements that have been made about the terrible state of the environment.

Tags: visionary, political leadership, environment, future generations

"Snowball earth" in our past? yes

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:12:24 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Was there a "Snowball Earth" in Our Past? -New Evidence Says "Yes"

LSU scientist Huiming Bao, along with colleagues from UCLA and China, recently discovered some of the first atmospheric evidence in support of the “Snowball Earth” hypothesis, which suggests that Earth was entirely covered by ice during the Cryogenian period, which took place from about 790 to 630 million years ago.

Bao and his group used a new parameter called “sulfate oxygen-17 anomaly” to measure atmospheric records found in mineral sulphate deposits. “My group specializes in measuring these anomalies – very few other groups do,” said Bao. “This puts us in an extremely good position for uncovering previously unknown information.”

These oxygen-17 anomalies are usually not measured by scientists who study Earth rocks because they were originally believed to be exclusively extra-terrestrial in nature, coming only from specific types of asteroids

Tags: snowball earth, environment, evidence

Can’t Find a Parking Spot? Check Smartphone

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:34:06 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO — The secret to finding the perfect parking spot in congested cities is usually just a matter of luck. But drivers here will get some help from an innocuous tab of plastic that will soon be glued to the streets.

This fall, San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces in the nation’s most ambitious trial of a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment.

Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.

“If the San Francisco experiment works, no one will have to murder anyone over a parking space,”

“It will have a cascade of positive effects on transportation and the economy and environment,”

Tags: parking, smartphones

Farms in the sky

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:49:57 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.iht.com

What if "eating local" in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food?

Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to make these zucchini-in-the-sky visions a reality. Despommier's pet project is the "vertical farm," a concept he created in 1999 with graduate students in his class on medical ecology, the study of how the environment and human health interact.

The idea, which has captured the imagination of several architects in the United States and Europe in the past several years, just caught the eye of another big city dreamer: Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president in New York.

Despommier estimates that it would cost $20 million to $30 million to make a prototype of a vertical farm, but hundreds of millions to build one of the 30-story towers that he suggests could feed 50,000

Tags: farms, eating local, self-sustaining, skyscrapers

cigarette alternatives and smoking substitutes

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:42:17 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: has anyone tried this?

Clip Source: www.ruyanamerica.com

Welcome to the Ruyan America information website. The Ruyan family of products, including the V-8 E-cigarette, the Ruyan Vegas E-cigar, the E-pipe, the varieties of replacement cartridges and other accessories, are designed to be used as cigarette alternatives and smoking substitutes, allowing smokers to satisfy their cravings for nicotine in places and situations where they otherwise would not be allowed to smoke by law, regulation or common courtesy.

Ruyan smoking substitutes use cartridges that contain nicotine, flavoring and other ingredients determined to be safe by international organizations and regulatory bodies. The products contain no tobacco and do not produce smoke of any kind. Rather, they produce a vapor that is primarily made up of water and pose no harm to the user’s associates or environment.

Tags: cigarette, alternatives, smoking, substitutes

Keep Your Mind’s Eye on Cybernetics

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:01:48 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

Clip Source: www.jumpthecurve.net

Imagine sitting in your home and being able to control a device in a different room, a different city or even a different country by thought alone. Sounds impossible doesn’t it? Well, accordingly to this fascinating article from Popular Mechanics, advances in the field of cybernetics are occurring so rapidly that such things may be possible in the not-too-distant future.

Consider this: a monkey in North Carolina can already send a signal to Japan (where it controls a robot) faster than it can send a message from its brain to its own muscles. One immediate practical application of this technology may occur in the field of surgery whereby a surgeon could control a small robotic device faster and more precisely than she could move her hand. In a field like brain surgery such a distinction could make a big difference.

consider how such mind-machine devices may change how we perceive and interact with our environment in the future

just “think” your bot to do it

Tags: cybernetics, mind-machine interface

Biologically Inspired Ocean Power Systems

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:49:15 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.biopowersystems.com

BioPower Systems is commercialising ocean power conversion technologies. Through application of biomimicry, we have adopted nature's mechanisms for survival and energy conversion in the marine environment and have applied these in the development of our proprietary wave and tidal power systems.

Our technologies inherit benefits developed during 3.8 Billion years of evolutionary optimization in nature’s ocean laboratory.The resulting systems move and sway in tune with the forces of the ocean, and naturally streamline when extreme conditions prevail. This leads to lightweight designs and associated low costs.

The inherently simple bioWAVE™ and bioSTREAM™ devices are designed to supply utility-scale grid-connected renewable energy using efficient modular systems. These systems will reside beneath the ocean surface, out of view, and in harmony with the living creatures that inspired their design.

Tags: biology, ocean, energy, biomimicry, wave, tidal, power

Where the Linear Crosses the Exponential

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:46:52 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: as always, a fascinating read from K.Kelly at the Technium

Clip Source: www.kk.org

All extropic systems -- economy, nature and technology -- are governed by self-accelerating feedback cycles. Like compounding interest, or virtuous circles, they are powered by increasing returns. Success breeds success. There is a long tail of incremental build up and then as they keep doubling every cycle, they explode out of invisibility into significance. Extropic systems can also collapse in the same self-accelerating way, one subtraction triggering many other subtractions, so in a vicious cycle the whole system implodes. Our view of the future is warped and blinded by these exponential curves.

But while progress runs on exponential curves, our individual lives proceed in a linear fashion. We live day by day by day. While we might think time flies as we age, it really trickles out steadily. Today will always be more valuable than some day in the future, in large part because we have no guarantee we'll get that extra day

Ditto for civilizations

Tags: ecology, investment, extropic systems, future, environment

Novelty drives choice behavior in humans

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:14:48 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

New research suggests that novelty drives choice behavior , even when the degree of familiarity with an option is completely unrelated to choice outcome. The research, published by Cell Press in the June 26th issue of the journal Neuron, reveals fascinating insights into the brain mechanisms that underlie the tendency to explore, and even value, unfamiliar options.

Novelty seeking can be strongly adaptive because unfamiliarity tends to be associated with uncertainty and the potential for valuable outcomes. "It can be advantageous for an animal to explore new parts of its environment because it might find valuable sources of food there," says study author Dr. Bianca C. Wittmann from University College London. In humans, this tendency is often exploited by manufacturers of everyday goods when they remarket identical products with novel packaging or advertising,

Tags: novelty, behavior, adaptaton, evolution

Life on Mars: What's The Truth?

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:48:31 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.efluxmedia.com

A Tufts University chemist who heads the team interpreting data gathered by the Phoenix lander's wet-chemistry lab alleges that the Martian soil in the area where NASA's contraption landed "seems very friendly" to simple forms of life.

Scientists are almost sure there is ice underneath the Red Planet's surface, and they say they found a lot of minerals which are the building blocks of organic life. However, the high concentration of minerals is not good news.

Back in February, NASA announced that it is very less likely that life on the fourth planet of the Sun was ever possible. Scientists said at the time that the high concentration of minerals constitutes a harsh environment even for the toughest microbes. The conclusion regarding the possibility of life on Mars in an extremely salty environment came after scientists conducted a series of experiments by simulating the Martian conditions.

Tags: mars, life, colony

Virtual Unreality

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:37:31 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: virtual worlds are created by us – so why limit ourselves to reality?

Clip Source: superconcepts.blogspot.com

In the future, we may decide that a virtual existence, a life inside a fully immersive computer game where our every desire is fulfilled, is a more appealing option than the real world we currently inhabit. Many people have presented the idea that we are already in such a virtual reality, but I don’t believe this is possible. This is because virtual worlds provide us with many possibilities that the real world does not, so why have they not been “programmed” into the real world we know?

Despite the virtual platform giving occupants the ability to fly and teleport, they still prefer to meticulously create staircases to walk their avatar up and down. At discos, people require the coolest dance animations and best looking clothes. In meetings, virtual characters sit down to rest their virtual legs. It seems the confines of reality provide a comfortable and familiar environment.

But virtual worlds are created by us – so why limit ourselves to reality?

Tags: virtual, worlds, reality

The Face of Fear Explained

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:02:26 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Everyone knows the face of fear.

Upon beholding the chainsaw-wielding ax-murderer in a slasher movie, the damsel in distress usually widens her eyes and flares her nostrils in horror.

It turns out this expression isn't merely for cinematic effect, but actually serves a biological function, scientists have found, by altering the way our senses perceive the world.

"Our hypothesis was that different changes on the face would lead to different amounts of sensory intake," said Joshua Susskind, a psychology graduate student at the University of Toronto who worked on a study testing the function of facial expressions. "The idea is that fear is for vigilance. You'd expect that changes on the face, such as opening the eyes, would be characteristic of fear, because you're trying to assess more information in your environment."

Squinty eyes and pinched nose

Tags: face, fear, biology, evolution

Lab wants to capture minds... Literally!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:15:51 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: memebox.com

The mega-billion dollar Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) recently developed a new state-of-the-art facility – Janelia Farm Research Campus – to learn how brain cells store and process information.

Today, biologists can only observe a cell’s activity by indirectly analyzing chemicals it produces in response to stimulus. But what if you could take a picture of a brain cell at the very moment it recorded a thought? HHMI researchers believe this worthy goal can be achieved and they are rounding up some of the top researchers in the world to make it happen.

Janelia Farm will provide its world-class science team with near unlimited funds in a mostly unsupervised environment. “The Institute’s core belief is that scientists who demonstrate creativity and imagination make lasting contributions to benefit humanity when they are given flexible, long-term support and the freedom to explore,” said former HHMI President Thomas Cech.

Tags: mind, biology, brain

Coming soon? or not?

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 08:19:24 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.softmachines.org

Are we imminently facing The Singularity? This is the hypothesised moment of technological transcendence, in the concept introduced by mathematician and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, when accelerating technological change leads to a recursively self-improving artificial intelligence of superhuman capabilities, with literally unknowable and ineffable consequences. The most vocal proponent of this eschatology is Ray Kurzweil, whose promotion of the idea takes to the big screen this year with the forthcoming release of the film The Singularity is Near.

Kurzweil describes the run-up to The Singularity: “Within a quarter century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it … Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment, overcoming pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity … and vastly enhanced human intelligence.

Tags: singularity, ray kurzweil, technological transcendence