Your brain on the edge of chaos

No news to me. I’ve always suspected that. Now, seriously:

Though much of the time it [the brain] runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise.

Neuroscientists have long suspected as much. Only recently, however, have they come up with proof that brains work this way. Now they are trying to work out why. Some believe that near-chaotic states may be crucial to memory, and could explain why some people are smarter than others.

Read whole article by the New Scientist magazine:

Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain

Unconventional computing

Just received.

…………………..

THE SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF UNCONVENTIONAL COMPUTING (SPUC09)

Cambridge (UK), March 23-25, 2009

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

We welcome submissions on topics normally classified under ‘natural computing’ or ‘unconventional computing’ or ‘hypercomputing’ including (but not restricted to) quantum computing, relativistic computing, biology-based computing, analogue computing, and also submissions on the philosophical implications of these new fields for topics including (but again not restricted to) philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, the Church-Turing thesis.

Each presentation should last no more than 30 minutes; a further 10 minutes will be allowed for discussion.

Those wishing to make a presentation should submit by email a 250-word abstract of their paper to Mark Hogarth (mhogarth@cantab.net); enquiries to the same.

Registration fee (yet to be fixed) will be around £100.

Student bursaries are available.

Conference website: http://web.mac.com/mhogarth/Site/SPUC_Conference.html

ORGANISER

Mark Hogarth (Cambridge, UK)

CONFIRMED INVITED SPEAKERS

Selmer Brinsjord (New York, USA))

Jeff Barrett (Irvine, USA)

Philip Welch (Bristol, UK)

Tim Button (Harvard, USA)

Cristian Calude (Auckland, New Zealand))

István Németi (Budapest, Hungry)

Benjamin Wells (San Francisco, USA)

Hajnal Andréka (Budapest, Hungry)

Apostolos Syropoulos (Xanthi, Greece)

Susan Stepney (York, UK)

Bruce MacLennan (Tennessee, USA)

Peter Kugel (Boston, USA)

Mark Sprevak (Cambridge, UK)

Selim Akl (Kingston, Canada)

José Félix Costa (Swansea, UK)

ADVISORY PANEL

Mike Stannett (Sheffield, UK)

John Tucker (Swansea, UK)

Barry Cooper (Leeds, UK)

Sponsored by EPSRC through HyperNet (the Hypercomputation Research Network, EP/E064183/1)

On top of each other

A picture just taken of my two Brazilian Tigre D’água turtles, competing for the sunlight that was just entering the aquaterrarium [click to enlarge].

These girls (I suppose they are girls) will soon need a lake of their own… How long will I be able to keep them in an aquaterrarium (the third one, up to now)? They are growing larger and larger.

They receive a good amount of sunlight here in Brazil, and good food, so they are quite healthy… I also have a nice place where I could build a lake for them here at home. The problem would be how to treat the water of the lake in order to avoid mosquitos, specially this unfortunate guy.

In any case, aren’t them pretty? Sometimes I feel that I am just on the top of myself, reaching nowhere.

[More on these turtles here and here].

Maragogi

In the past week my family and I were on vacation at Maragogi, located at the northern coast of the state of Alagoas, Brazil, also known as the Coral Coast. We had a very nice stay at the Salinas do Maragogi Resort. The most interesting part of the trip was the diving in the natural pools formed at about 6 km from the coast, in which one can swim with the fishes at the very green waters of the Coral Cost, also known as the “Galés”.

I include some pictures here (click to enlarge):

The beach, the sky. The climate changed very quickly from sunny to rainy and back to sunny this time of the year.

The “coqueiros”.

The very green Galés.

My kid specially liked these guys.

For more pictures, try here with Google.

Turtle: Lost and Found

Yesterday, a summer storm flooded the turtles’ aquaterrarium and one of the turtles was missing. I looked everywhere in the backyard… but nothing. Even my german shorthaired pointer couldn’t find her (I think the turtle is a “she”). I thought that my dog could have eaten her… Finally, this morning she was found. She was very well hidden in here (click on all pictures to enlarge):

She was undamaged. Survived a one meter fall, the dog and the night (with all the predators out there). These are quite resistant creatures!

Here is a picture of her back to the aquaterrarium with her friend (I believe both are female, but I cannot tell for sure):

And here are more pictures of her in closeup, so that you may have a notion of her size:

Previous post about my Tigre D’Agua turtles here.

Methanimine in galaxy Arp 220

Methanimine was found in the distant merging galaxy Arp 220. This molecule “can form the simplest amino acid, glycine, when it reacts with either hydrogen cyanide and then water, or formic acid.”

More details in this article from National Geographic.

Digitizing biology

Via Edge:

LIFE: A GENE-CENTRIC VIEW
Craig Venter & Richard Dawkins: A Conversation in Munich

Video and transcript available.

VENTER: Well, to speak to this, for the past 15 years, we have been digitizing biology. When we decoded the genome, including sequencing the human genome, that’s going from what we consider the analog world of biology into the digital world of the computer. Now, for the first time, we can go in the other direction. With synthetic genomics and synthetic biology, we are starting with that purely digital world. We take the sequence out of the computer and we chemically from four raw chemicals that come in bottles, we can reconstruct a chromosome in the laboratory, based on either design, copying what was in the digital world, or coming up with new digital versions. In fact, somewhat jokingly, we can argue that this is the only nanotechnology that actually works. Biology is the ultimate nanotechnology, and it can now be digitally designed and reconstructed.

DAWKINS: The question is about: Where does the soul sit? Either the soul doesn’t exist at all, and I don’t believe it does exist in the sense of anything outside the brain, or it is a manifestation of brain activity. I certainly would think it highly, highly unlikely that there’s anything like a soul that survives the death of the brain. So I think that one of the aspects of the revolution in biology is a complete destruction of dualism and of obscurantist mystification.

Introducing… my Brazilian ‘Tigre d’Água’ Turtles

Here they are. They are one year old now and were legally purchased from this breeder. In English they are called “D’Orbigny’s slider turtles”. This species is from southern Brazil. I’ll take better pictures when I have the opportunity.

I don’t know whether they are male/female. One can tell only when they grow older.

Here is their present aquaterrarium, in the process of being cleaned up. It is a simple process, but must be repeated often. I don’t have filters for the moment.

They enjoy to lay under the sun. They can see and hear extremely well. And I can tell you that they have different personalities.

Beware! A chimpanzee can beat you.

Yes, that is true. Look at this Nature article.

Chimpanzees seem to be “better at memorizing a snapshot view of their surroundings” than us. Apparently, “humans may have lost this capacity in exchange for gaining the brainpower to understand language and complex symbols”.

Well. In any case, I’d not be surprised if chimpanzees would beat some humans in some respects. Even dogs can beat humans in some respects. My own dog can beat many people I know when it comes to having a pure and kind temperament.

Circos

I have recently found out about this fantastic software — CIRCOS — originally conceived to be used in genomics, but actually can be used whenever “your data represents relationships between positions on one or more scales.”

Beautiful and exceptionally wonderful in many ways.

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Fig: homology between the human and the dog genomes.

PS: Thanks to John Baez for calling the attention for a very good magazine — The American Scientist –, in which I found about Circos.

First Genome Transplant

Via Edge.

How does she know it?

Look at this picture:

It is a common spider in my garden. But her web is quite unusual: look how she enforced it exactly where her legs usually stay (she likes to stay immobile in that position).

Now, how does she know it?