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Green Crude

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:52:44 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad

Sapphire Energy turns algae into 'green crude' for fuel

A San Diego company said Wednesday that it could turn algae into oil, producing a green-colored crude yielding ultra-clean versions of gasoline and diesel without the downsides of biofuel production.

The year-old company, called Sapphire Energy, uses algae, sunlight, carbon dioxide and non-potable water to make "green crude" that it contends is chemically equivalent to the light, sweet crude oil that has been fetching more than $130 a barrel in New York futures trading.

Chief Executive Jason Pyle said that the company's green crude could be processed in existing oil refineries and that the resulting fuels could power existing cars and trucks just as today's more polluting versions of gasoline and diesel do.

"What we're talking about is something that is radically different," Pyle said. "We really look at this as a paradigm change."

Who found Machu Picchu?

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:30:27 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: An interesting "archaeology story" - reminded me C. W. Ceram's "Gods, Tombs and Scholars".

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

When Peruvian locals led Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu in 1911, it was a discovery which would make the Yale professor famous, highly respected and richer.

Bingham went on to become a governor of Connecticut and member of the US senate, and his book on Machu Picchu became a bestseller. Such was his prominence in early 20th century archaeology, that some have speculated that Bingham was the inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones.

But Bingham's claim to be the first to discover Peru's lost city of the Incas is looking more than a little doubtful. Detailed investigations by a US historian have revealed that Machu Picchu was, in fact, discovered over 40 years earlier by a German businessman.

Tags: archaeology, peru, inca, machu picchu, south america, hiram bingham, augusto berns

Origin of Numbers

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:01:18 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08
clipper's remarks: More to it than just the Abacus!

Clip Source: www.euphoria-magazine.com

Origins of the Numerals

Today's numbers, also called Hindu-Arabic numbers, are a combination of just 10 symbols or digits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0.

Numerals, a time travel from India to Europe

Before adopting the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, people used the Roman figures instead, which actually are a legacy of the Etruscan period. The Roman numeration is based on a biquinary (5) system.

The graphical origin of the Roman numbers

Other original systems of numeration

Other original systems of numeration were being used in the past. The "Notae Elegantissimae" shown below allow to write numbers from 1 to 9999.

Chinese and Japanese contributions

The Ba-Gua (pron. pah-kwah) trigrams and the Genji-Koh patterns, antique Chinese and Japanese symbols,

strangely enough related to mathematics and electronics. If all the entire lines of the trigrams (___) are replaced with the digit 1 and the broken lines (_ _) with the digit 0

Write "a", "b", "c", "d" and "e" under the five small red sticks

Genji-Koh

Tags: numerals, numbers, hindu-arabic, roman, arabic, japanese, chines, counting

Consciousness as Integrated Information

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 10:52:52 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.spectrum.ieee.org

If the level of consciousness has to do with how much integrated information a conscious entity generates, it is essential that we determine to what extent different neural architectures can generate integrated information. The integrated-information theory of consciousness, or IIT, is an attempt to do so, and to approach consciousness from first principles.

IIT introduces a measure of integrated information, represented by the symbol Φ and given in bits, that quantifies the reduction of uncertainty (that is, the information generated when a system enters a particular state through causal interactions among its parts) This measure is above and beyond the information generated independently within the parts themselves. The parts should be chosen in such a way that they can account for as much nonintegrated (independent) information as possible.

Tags: mind, consciousness, information

Poetry Comes from Our Tree-Climbing Ancestors

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 10:37:53 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Poetry Comes from Our Tree-Climbing Ancestors, Neuroscientist Says

Some people hear colors, see flavors and are generally prone to a mixing-and-matching of typically disparate perceptual domains.

Those people are called synesthetes, and were the topic of a World Science Festival talk delivered last night by neuroscientist extraordinaire V.S. Ramachandran.

Where does synesthesia come from? Maybe synesthetes are just lying. Perhaps they're under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs -- many research subjects are college kids, after all -- or happened as children to play with colored alphabet blocks. Or maybe they're simply good with metaphors.

To Ramachandran, the latter answer gets at the truth -- but he stressed that what appears as metaphor is a literal sensory experience for synesthetes. That may explain, he said, why synesthesia is eight times more common among poets, artists and novelists than the general population.

Tags: neuroscience, poetry, evolution

Political Cartoons - latest

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:55:46 GMT

clipped by: righthand

Clip Source: noseconenews.blogspot.com

Tags: comic, politics

Christianity=Good, Everyone Else=Bad?

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:32:36 GMT

clipped by: boniface
clipper's remarks: Pain-in-the-ass Christians can't stand it when anyone else follows their traditions. No, only X-tianity should be allowed, according to them.

(I am not referring here to "non-pain-in-the-ass Christians.")

Clip Source: wnd.com

Pagan 'blessing' sought for new building

'Good fortune and fertility' sought from 'the gods on the structure'

A former employee of a Tennessee insurance company is objecting to a "ceremony" held at the construction site of a new building because it called on "the gods on the structure" for "good fortune and fertility."

BCBS then blamed the situation on Skanska, the construction company, saying it was a contractor's tradition.

Jessica Murray, a spokeswoman for the builder, said it's "common practice" for builders to have such a ceremony.

"Centuries ago … when people first started doing it in Scandinavia, there had been some religious connotations. Nowadays all that is doing is signifying the project has been completed to its highest point. Lifting the tree up is symbolizing teamwork … and wishing luck on the building," she said.

Tech Luminaries Address Singularity

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:29:17 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.spectrum.ieee.org

Douglas Hofstadter

SINGULARITY WILL OCCUR Someday in the distant future

MACHINE CONSCIOUSNESS WILL OCCUR Yes

MOORE'S LAW WILL CONTINUE FOR 20 more years

Jeff Hawkins

SINGULARITY WILL OCCUR “If you define the singularity as a point in time when intelligent machines are designing intelligent machines in such a way that machines get extremely intelligent in a short period of time—an exponential increase in intelligence—then it will never happen. Intelligence is largely defined by experience and training, not just by brain size or algorithms. It isn't a matter of writing software. Intelligent machines, like humans, will need to be trained in particular domains of expertise. This takes time and deliberate attention to the kind of knowledge you want the machine to have.”

John Casti

T.J. Rodgers

SINGULARITY WILL OCCUR Never

Eric Hahn

Gordon Bell

Steven Pinker

Gordon E. Moore

Jim Fruchterman

Esther Dyson

Tags: singularity, opinions, tech luminaries

Intelligent Computers See Your Human Traits

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 08:10:34 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: physorg.com

Today’s computers can do a lot as far as computation goes, but they tend to do it in an impersonal, stand-offish way, so to speak. However, computer engineers are busy changing that, as they try to give computers a bit of a personal touch to make human-computer interaction more natural and friendly.

For instance, two studies from a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia have investigated enabling computers to recognize users’ emotional states and ages. The researchers hope that tomorrow’s computers will be able to “look” at a human face and extract this type of information, much like humans do with each other.

Emotional Detection

By combining audio and visual data, Yongjin Wang from the University of Toronto and Ling Guan from Ryerson University in Toronto have developed a system that recognizes six human emotional states: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust.

Tags: computers, recognition, humans, traits