Posts
posted on slashdot.org:
"The BBC News' Laura Gray reports on a juggling notation system developed in the 80's called Siteswap (aka Quantum Juggling and Cambridge Notation) and how it has helped jugglers discover and share thousands of new tricks.
Frustrated that there was no way to write down juggling moves,
mathematician Colin Wright and others helped devised Siteswap, which
uses sequences of numbers to encode the number of beats of each throw,
which is related to their height and the hand to which the throw is
made. 'Siteswap has allowed jugglers to share tricks with each other
without having to meet in person or film themselves,' says James Grime,
juggling enthusiast and math instructor for Cambridge University. Still
unclear on the concept? Spend some time playing around with Paul
Klimek's most-excellent Quantum Juggling simulator, and you too can be a Flying Karamazov Brother!"
This is pretty cool:
Quantum Juggling simulator
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Aphrodite's Child - 666
A friend heard this on the local college radio station, commemorating the upcoming Mayan apocalypse on 12/21/12.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
from wiki:
Aphrodite's Child was a Greek progressive rock band formed in 1967, by Vangelis Papathanassiou (keyboards), Demis Roussos (bass guitar and vocals), Loukas Sideras (drums and vocals), and Anargyros "Silver" Koulouris (guitar).[1] Their band's name was derived from the title of a track from another Mercury act, Dick Campbell, from his Sings Where It's At album. Papathanassiou and Roussos had already been successful in Greece (playing in the bands Formynx and Idols respectively) while they got together with Sideras and Koulouris to form a new band. Their first recording as a band was for George Romanos' album In Concert and in Studio where they played on four songs and were credited as 'Vangelis and his Orchestra'. In the same year they recorded a two song demo and submitted it to Philips Records.
The band began to record their next outpouring late in 1970: a musical adaptation of the biblical Book of Revelation, entitled 666.[1] Koulouris, having finished his Greek army duty rejoined the band. However, relations between all the band members were not good at the time, and continued to worsen during the album's creation.
Essentially, 666 was Vangelis' concept, created with an outside lyricist, Costas Ferris. The music that Vangelis was creating for 666 was much more psychedelic and progressive rock oriented than anything the band had done before.[citation needed] This did not sit well with the other band members, who wished to continue in the pop direction that had brought them success.[citation needed] Furthermore, Roussos was being groomed for a solo career, and recorded his first solo single We Shall Dance (with Sideras on drums), and his first solo album On the Greek Side of My Mind, whereas Vangelis recorded the score for L'Apocalypse des animaux and worked on a single with his girlfriend Vilma Ladopoulou, performing with Koulouris using the pseudonym 'Alpha Beta'.
Full album part 1
Full album part 2
Pixels replaced by vectors in 5 years
http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/2012/12/11/pixel-die/
The team behind the project, consisting of the University, Root6
Technology, Smoke & Mirrors and Ovation Data Services – are now
looking for industry buy-in to the research to expand its potential
applications. The codec was launched at the CVMP 9th European Conference
on Visual Media Production held at Vue Cinema in Leicester Square,
London.
Digital pictures are built from a rectangular grid of coloured cells,
or pixels. The smaller and closer the pixels are together, the better
the quality of the image. So pixel-based movies need huge amounts of
data and have to be compressed, losing visual quality. They are also
difficult to process.
The alternative, a vector-based format, presents the image using contoured colours. Until now there has not been a way to fill in between the colours at the quality needed for professional use. The Bath team has finally solved this problem.
A codec is a computer programme capable of encoding or decoding a digital video stream. The researchers at Bath have developed a new, highly sophisticated codec, which is able to fill between the contours, overcoming the problems previously preventing their widespread use. The result is a resolution-independent form of movie and image, capable of the highest visual quality but without a pixel in sight.
Professor Phil Willis, from the University’s Department of Computer Science, said: “This is a significant breakthrough which will revolutionise the way visual media is produced.
“However, to accelerate this project we’ll need companies from around the world to get involved. At the moment we’re focusing on applications in post-production and we’re working directly with leading companies in this area, however there are clear applications in web, tablets and mobile which we haven’t explored in detail yet.
“Involvement from a greater variety of companies with different interests will extend the project in a variety of ways and increase the potential applications of this game-changing research.”
To learn more about the project and to see the video demonstration given at CVMP visit: www.cs.bath.ac.uk/vsv
Other article posted on Slashdot.org:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143130-vector-vengeance-british-researchers-claim-they-can-kill-the-pixel-within-five-years
PDF:
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/47879/1/ID47879.pdf
Researchers launching a new vector-based video
codec are claiming their work will lead to the death of the pixel within
the next five years.
The alternative, a vector-based format, presents the image using contoured colours. Until now there has not been a way to fill in between the colours at the quality needed for professional use. The Bath team has finally solved this problem.
A codec is a computer programme capable of encoding or decoding a digital video stream. The researchers at Bath have developed a new, highly sophisticated codec, which is able to fill between the contours, overcoming the problems previously preventing their widespread use. The result is a resolution-independent form of movie and image, capable of the highest visual quality but without a pixel in sight.
Professor Phil Willis, from the University’s Department of Computer Science, said: “This is a significant breakthrough which will revolutionise the way visual media is produced.
“However, to accelerate this project we’ll need companies from around the world to get involved. At the moment we’re focusing on applications in post-production and we’re working directly with leading companies in this area, however there are clear applications in web, tablets and mobile which we haven’t explored in detail yet.
“Involvement from a greater variety of companies with different interests will extend the project in a variety of ways and increase the potential applications of this game-changing research.”
To learn more about the project and to see the video demonstration given at CVMP visit: www.cs.bath.ac.uk/vsv
Other article posted on Slashdot.org:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143130-vector-vengeance-british-researchers-claim-they-can-kill-the-pixel-within-five-years
PDF:
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/47879/1/ID47879.pdf
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Naked Eyes - Promises, Promises
I recalled the song 'Promises, Promises' after mulling over the question of whether to use the phrase 'getting started' vs. 'quick start' for a help screen. I voted 'quick start' because it suggests immediate help whereas 'getting started' suggests promises you may eventually get to after expending energy going through tutorials.
I awoke at 2:30 or 3 in the morning with these thoughts and sent this email response:
"Users will reach to launchpad in their periphery - 'quick start' might be more direct and less demanding, whereas 'getting started' is passive (future passive) and feels like a request to invest time in learning / reading in order to get to results.
If my hair was on fire I might prefer 'quick start' vs. 'getting started' - evocative of 'now' vs. 'eventually'."
...then I thought of this song - how these things stay with us - I didn't even know who the band was, though I know one of their other hits (but didn't know that both songs were by the same band).
They apparently had four hits and then disbanded by choice. One of the musicians died at age 42 following colon surgery:
Promises, Promises
What In the Name of Love
When the Lights Go Out
Always Something There
Naked Eyes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Eyes
Monday, December 10, 2012
Altered Immune Cells Beat Leukemia
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/health/a-breakthrough-against-leukemia-using-altered-t-cells.html?hp&pagewanted=all&_r=2&
PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.
PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.
It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.
Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at
the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been
tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The
experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.
The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it
cancer-free, and about seven months later is still in complete
remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in
whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a
patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.
Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she
was 5, said her parents, Kari and Tom. She is their only child.
She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania.
Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the
National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in
New York.
“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June,
who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He hopes
the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation,
an even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last
hope when other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases.
Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of
Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of
disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr.
David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and
one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then
relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The
Pennsylvania researchers were presenting their results on Sunday and
Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.
Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research
say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of
testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases. “I think this is a
major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Dr. John Wagner,
the director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the
University of Minnesota, called the Pennsylvania results “phenomenal”
and said they were “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not
seeing to this extent.”
A major drug company, Novartis, is betting on the Pennsylvania team and
has committed $20 million to building a research center on the
university’s campus to bring the treatment to market.
Hervé Hoppenot,
the president of Novartis Oncology, called the research “fantastic” and
said it had the potential — if the early results held up — to
revolutionize the treatment of leukemia and related blood cancers.
Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune
system, may also eventually be used against tumors like breast and prostate cancer.
To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s
T-cells — a type of white blood cell — and insert new genes that enable
the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The technique employs a disabled form
of H.I.V. because it is very good at carrying genetic material into
T-cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal
part of the immune system that turn malignant in leukemia.
The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then
dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they
multiply and start destroying the cancer.
The T-cells home in on a protein called CD-19 that is found on the
surface of most B-cells, whether they are healthy or malignant.
A sign that the treatment is working is that the patient becomes
terribly ill, with raging fevers and chills — a reaction that
oncologists call “shake and bake,” Dr. June said. Its medical name is
cytokine-release syndrome, or cytokine storm, referring to the natural
chemicals that pour out of cells in the immune system as they are being
activated, causing fevers and other symptoms. The storm can also flood
the lungs and cause perilous drops in blood pressure — effects that nearly killed Emma.
Steroids sometimes ease the reaction, but they did not help Emma. Her
temperature hit 105. She wound up on a ventilator, unconscious and
swollen almost beyond recognition, surrounded by friends and family who
had come to say goodbye.
But at the 11th hour, a battery of blood tests gave the researchers a
clue as to what might help save Emma: her level of one of the cytokines,
interleukin-6 or IL-6, had shot up a thousandfold. Doctors had never
seen such a spike before and thought it might be what was making her so
sick.
Dr. June knew that a drug could lower IL-6 — his daughter takes it for rheumatoid arthritis. It had never been used for a crisis like Emma’s, but there was little to lose. Her oncologist, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, ordered the drug. The response, he said, was “amazing.”
Within hours, Emma began to stabilize. She woke up a week later, on May
2, the day she turned 7; the intensive-care staff sang “Happy Birthday.”
Since then, the research team has used the same drug, tocilizumab, in several other patients.
In patients with lasting remissions after the treatment, the altered
T-cells persist in the bloodstream, though in smaller numbers than when
they were fighting the disease. Some patients have had the cells for
years.
Dr. Michel Sadelain,
who conducts similar studies at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, said:
“These T-cells are living drugs. With a pill, you take it, it’s
eliminated from your body and you have to take it again.” But T-cells,
he said, “could potentially be given only once, maybe only once or twice
or three times.”
The Pennsylvania researchers said they were surprised to find any big
drug company interested in their work, because a new batch of T-cells
must be created for each patient — a far cry from the familiar
commercial strategy of developing products like Viagra or cholesterol medicines, in which millions of people take the same drug.
But Mr. Hoppenot said Novartis was taking a different path with cancer
drugs, looking for treatments that would have a big, unmistakable impact
on a small number of patients. Such home-run drugs can be approved more
quickly and efficiently, he said, with smaller studies than are needed
for drugs with less obvious benefits.
“The economic model is totally acceptable,” Mr. Hoppenot said.
But such drugs tend to be extremely expensive. A prime example is the
Novartis drug Gleevec, which won rapid approval in 2001 for use against
certain types of leukemia and gastrointestinal tumors. It can cost more
than $5,000 a month, depending on the dosage.
Dr. June said that producing engineered T-cells costs about $20,000 per
patient — far less than the cost of a bone-marrow transplant. Scaling up
the procedure should make it even less expensive, he said, but he
added, “Our costs do not include any profit margin, facility
depreciation costs or other clinical care costs, and other research
costs.”
The research is still in its early stages, and many questions remain.
The researchers are not entirely sure why the treatment works, or why it
sometimes fails. One patient had a remission after being treated only
twice, and even then the reaction was so delayed that it took the
researchers by surprise. For the patients who had no response
whatsoever, the team suspects a flawed batch of T-cells. The child who
had a temporary remission apparently relapsed because not all of her
leukemic cells had the marker that was targeted by the altered T-cells.
It is not clear whether a patient’s body needs the altered T-cells
forever. The cells do have a drawback: they destroy healthy B-cells as
well as cancerous ones, leaving patients vulnerable to certain types of
infections, so Emma and the other patients need regular treatments with
immune globulins to prevent illness.
So far, her parents say, Emma seems to have taken it all in stride. She
went back to school this year with her second-grade classmates, and
though her grades are high and she reads about 50 books a month, she
insists impishly that her favorite subjects are lunch and recess.
“It’s time for her to be a kid again and get her childhood back,” Mr. Whitehead said.
Chavez names Nicolas Maduro successor
Maduro? Maduros?
Well, not quite just-plain-bananas. Fried plantains.
But, upon Google image-searching 'maduros',
I encountered other...disturbing...
not-safe-for-work analogous imagery.
Hugo, is this some kind of sick, machismo psyop?
And, why this insistence upon the mustache with these guys?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Staples To Offer 3D Printing Services
http://fabbaloo.com/blog/2012/11/28/breaking-staples-to-use-mcor-iris-in-copy-centers.html#.ULoDVoU8bQI
In a blockbuster announcement, Mcor, the makers of the IRIS color
3D printing system based on plain old paper, say they've struck a huge
deal with print services giant Staples to supply 3D printing equipment
for their numerous print and copy centers.
This will obviously take a while to implement, so
Staples Printing Division is starting the process by rolling it out in
Belgium and the Netherlands in Q1 2013 and then "will be rolled out quickly to other countries" according to Staples.
How does it work? Those with printable 3D models can
merely upload them to Staples' web site, where they will be transformed
into full color 3D objects with Mcor's new IRIS paper-based 3D
printers. Printed models will be sent to your local Staples or directly
to your address. It's not entirely clear from the announcement, but we
suspect the 3D printers will not be located initially in all Staples
print shops, but instead centralized in some efficient fashion.
Nevertheless, we also suspect the long-term intention is indeed to equip
every Staples print center with this 3D printing equipment.
The implications of this move are truly enormous, as
it will go a very long way to opening up 3D printing for all. Staples
is a massive brand with an astonishing capacity for advertising compared
to any 3D printing company. Soon people will receive newspaper flyers
explaining the new 3D print service. Perhaps we'll even see discount
starter promotions. In any case, many more people will know about 3D
printing as a result of this deal.
One issue facing Staples will be the influx of
customers attempting to 3D print models that are in fact, unprintable.
Staples and MCOR should develop some process or filter that ensures the
success rate of printing is high, otherwise the service could be in
jeopardy.
Why Staples? It's obvious when you think about it:
the MCOR IRIS is a PAPER device. Staples Printing Division is a PAPER
company. It's a totally natural fit. Staples staff are already very
familiar with paper handling, which is really how you operate an IRIS.
In fact, we strongly suspect Staples receives a decent volume discount
on their paper purchases, making the production of 3D objects from paper
even more economical.
We've all had previous thoughts or written about the
"Kinko's" model of 3D printing. This is exactly that. Except it's not
Kinko's.
It's Staples. And it's now.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Mind-controlled robot avatars inch towards reality
http://www.gizmag.com/mind-controlled-robot-avatars/24994/
By Jason Falconer
A researcher minds the robot's balance as it is commanded to pick up a canned drink by an operator (off camera)
Researchers at the CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory (a
collaboration between France's Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique and Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial
Science and Technology) are developing software that allows a person to
drive a robot with their thoughts alone. The technology could one day
give a paralyzed patient greater autonomy through a robotic agent or
avatar.
The system requires that a patient concentrate their attention on a symbol displayed on a computer screen (such as a flashing arrow). An electroencephalography (EEG) cap outfitted with electrodes reads the electrical activity in their brain, which is interpreted by a signal processor. Finally, the desired command is sent to the robot to carry out.
The system does not provide direct fine-grain motor control: the robot is simply performing a preset action such as walking forward, turning right or left, and so on. The robot's artificial intelligence, developed over several years at the lab, allows it to perform more delicate tasks such as picking up an object from a table without needing human input. In this scenario, the robot's camera images are parsed by object recognition software, allowing the patient to choose one of the objects on a table by focusing their attention on it.
This is similar to but more sophisticated than previous projects, one involving Honda's ASIMO robot from 2006, and another at the University of Washington from 2007.
A different but more direct approach would be to track a patient's eye movements. Recent research conducted at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris enabled cursive writing on a computer screen through eye movement alone. The same technology could allow a patient to move a cursor and select from a multitude of action icons without having to go through the EEG middle-man. The hitch is that – in some circumstances – eye movement isn't possible or can't be tracked reliably due to eye conditions. In that case, brain implants may be the way to go.
No matter how you slice it, researchers aren't giving up, and with further progress robot avatars may cease being the stuff of science fiction. No doubt patients would feel empowered and liberated by this technology, but it will be awhile before it can be implemented, and the robots being deployed will likely look more like Toyota's recently unveiled Human Support Robot than advanced bipedal robots.
Source: AIST-CNRS JRL (Japanese) via DigInfo News
The system requires that a patient concentrate their attention on a symbol displayed on a computer screen (such as a flashing arrow). An electroencephalography (EEG) cap outfitted with electrodes reads the electrical activity in their brain, which is interpreted by a signal processor. Finally, the desired command is sent to the robot to carry out.
The system does not provide direct fine-grain motor control: the robot is simply performing a preset action such as walking forward, turning right or left, and so on. The robot's artificial intelligence, developed over several years at the lab, allows it to perform more delicate tasks such as picking up an object from a table without needing human input. In this scenario, the robot's camera images are parsed by object recognition software, allowing the patient to choose one of the objects on a table by focusing their attention on it.
Object
recognition software automatically detects and highlights the bottled
water and canned drink in the robot's camera images, and by focusing on
one of them the patient can command the robot to retrieve it
With training, the user can direct the robot's movements and pick up
beverages or other objects in their surroundings. The system can be seen
in use in the DigInfo video at the bottom of the page.This is similar to but more sophisticated than previous projects, one involving Honda's ASIMO robot from 2006, and another at the University of Washington from 2007.
A different but more direct approach would be to track a patient's eye movements. Recent research conducted at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris enabled cursive writing on a computer screen through eye movement alone. The same technology could allow a patient to move a cursor and select from a multitude of action icons without having to go through the EEG middle-man. The hitch is that – in some circumstances – eye movement isn't possible or can't be tracked reliably due to eye conditions. In that case, brain implants may be the way to go.
No matter how you slice it, researchers aren't giving up, and with further progress robot avatars may cease being the stuff of science fiction. No doubt patients would feel empowered and liberated by this technology, but it will be awhile before it can be implemented, and the robots being deployed will likely look more like Toyota's recently unveiled Human Support Robot than advanced bipedal robots.
Source: AIST-CNRS JRL (Japanese) via DigInfo News
UMUC Computer Security - www.umuc.edu/ComputerSecurity
Advance your education with a degree in Cybersecurity.
Advance your education with a degree in Cybersecurity.
Jason is a freelance writer based in central Canada with a background
in computer graphics. He has written about hundreds of humanoid robots
on his website Plastic Pals and is an avid gamer with an unsightly
collection of retro consoles, cartridges, and controllers. All articles by Jason Falconer
Robots replacing human workers
There is an ideal that everyone should pursue their ultimate
potential - self actualize - to make a better world.
If everyone fulfilled their potential, our factories and service jobs would be empty and we would have to replace workers with robots or do without. These jobs are temporary vehicles for some, and careers for others.
One major concern for corporations is retention - HR works hard to keep people from leaving jobs by offering self help courses that make employees feel like they are growing and learning. They use industrial psychologists to identify talent and fast track those who can actually grow and contribute, and the others just keep rowing the boat.
Most people don't have rock star jobs, but can take pride in their work by being engaged because it's what they have to do, to make the best of their existence and strive to get a better condition along the way. There are others who may avoid getting a 'real job' at any cost and will find ways to 'work the system' even if it means a lesser quality of life; perhaps they even consider working for someone a form of 'selling out'.
But back to the robots - this from slashdot.org/singularityhub:
"Foxconn, the Chinese electronics manufacturer that builds numerous mobile devices and gaming consoles, previously said the company would be aiming to replace 1 million Foxconn workers with robots within 3 years. It appears as if Foxconn has started the ball in motion. Since the announcement, a first batch of 10,000 robots — aptly named Foxbots — appear to have made their way into at least one factory, and by the end of 2012, another 20,000 more will be installed"
If everyone fulfilled their potential, our factories and service jobs would be empty and we would have to replace workers with robots or do without. These jobs are temporary vehicles for some, and careers for others.
One major concern for corporations is retention - HR works hard to keep people from leaving jobs by offering self help courses that make employees feel like they are growing and learning. They use industrial psychologists to identify talent and fast track those who can actually grow and contribute, and the others just keep rowing the boat.
Most people don't have rock star jobs, but can take pride in their work by being engaged because it's what they have to do, to make the best of their existence and strive to get a better condition along the way. There are others who may avoid getting a 'real job' at any cost and will find ways to 'work the system' even if it means a lesser quality of life; perhaps they even consider working for someone a form of 'selling out'.
But back to the robots - this from slashdot.org/singularityhub:
"Foxconn, the Chinese electronics manufacturer that builds numerous mobile devices and gaming consoles, previously said the company would be aiming to replace 1 million Foxconn workers with robots within 3 years. It appears as if Foxconn has started the ball in motion. Since the announcement, a first batch of 10,000 robots — aptly named Foxbots — appear to have made their way into at least one factory, and by the end of 2012, another 20,000 more will be installed"
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Evidence for Unconscious Math, Language Processing Abilities
Summary from Slashdot
"It's hard to determine what the unconscious brain is doing since, after all, we're not aware of it. But in a neat set of experiments, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's consciousness lab found evidence that the unconscious brain can parse language and perform simple arithmetic. The researchers flashed colorful patterns at test subjects that took up all their attention and allowed for the subliminal presentation of sentences or equations. In the language processing experiment, researchers found that subjects became consciously aware of a sentence sooner if it was jarring and nonsensical (like, for example, the sentence 'I ironed coffee')."
Research by Hebrew University Consciousness Lab
http://labconscious.huji.ac.il/
--
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/biomedical/diagnostics/your-unconscious-brain-can-do-math-process-language
Your Unconscious Brain Can Do Math, Process Language
POSTED BY: Eliza StricklandThe unconscious brain may not be able to ace an SAT test, but new research suggests that it can handle more complex language processing and arithmetic tasks than anyone has previously believed. According to these findings, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we may be blithely unaware of all the hard work the unconscious brain is doing.
In their experiments, researchers from Hebrew University in Israel used a cutting-edge "masking" technique to keep their test subjects from consciously perceiving certain stimuli. With this technique, known as continuous flash suppression, the researchers show a rapidly changing series of colorful patterns to just one of the subject's eyes. The bright patterns dominate the subject's awareness to such an extent that when researchers show less flashy material to the other eye (like words or equations), it takes several seconds before the brain consciously registers it.
This masking technique is "a game changer in the study of the unconscious," the scientists write, "because unlike all previous methods, it gives unconscious processes ample time to engage with and operate on subliminal stimuli."
To study the unconscious brain's ability to process language, the researchers subliminally showed the subject short phrases that made variable amounts of sense: For example, subjects might see the phrase "I ironed coffee" or "I ironed clothes." The researchers gradually turned up the contrast between the phrase and its background, and measured how long it took for the phrase to "pop" into the subject's conscious awareness. As the nonsensical phrases popped sooner, the researchers hypothesize that the unconscious brain processed the sentence, found it surprising and odd, and quickly passed it along to the conscious brain for further examination.
To determine the unconscious brain's mathematical abilities, the researchers presented a simple subtraction or addition equation (for example, "9 − 3 − 4 = ") to a subject, but took it away before it could pop into consciousness. Then they stopped the masking pattern and displayed a single number, asking the viewer to pronounce the number as soon as it registered. When the number was the answer to the subtraction equation (for example, "2"), the subject was quicker to pronounce it. The researchers argue that the viewer was "primed" to respond to that number because the unconscious brain had solved the equation. Oddly, they didn't find the same clear effect with easier addition equations.
Why is IEEE Spectrum covering this? We could argue that until we understand the workings of consciousness in the human brain, we'll never be able to build an artificial intelligence that can be described as conscious and aware. Or we could admit that we just thought the study was nifty.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/11/07/1211645109
Reading and doing arithmetic nonconsciously
- Asael Y. Sklara,
- Nir Levya,1,
- Ariel Goldsteinb,1,
- Roi Mandela,
- Anat Marila,b, and
- Ran R. Hassina,c,2
+ Author Affiliations
-
Edited* by Michael I. Posner, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, and approved October 5, 2012 (received for review July 12, 2012)
Abstract
The modal view in the cognitive and neural
sciences holds that consciousness is necessary for abstract, symbolic,
and rule-following
computations. Hence, semantic processing of
multiple-word expressions, and performing of abstract mathematical
computations,
are widely believed to require consciousness. We
report a series of experiments in which we show that multiple-word
verbal
expressions can be processed outside conscious
awareness and that multistep, effortful arithmetic equations can be
solved
unconsciously. All experiments used Continuous
Flash Suppression to render stimuli invisible for relatively long
durations
(up to 2,000 ms). Where appropriate, unawareness
was verified using both objective and subjective measures. The results
show
that novel word combinations, in the form of
expressions that contain semantic violations, become conscious before
expressions
that do not contain semantic violations, that the
more negative a verbal expression is, the more quickly it becomes
conscious,
and that subliminal arithmetic equations prime
their results. These findings call for a significant update of our view
of
conscious and unconscious processes.
Footnotes
-
↵1N.L. and A.G. contributed equally to this work.
- ↵2To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ran.hassin@huji.ac.il.
-
Author contributions: A.Y.S., N.L., A.G., R.M., A.M., and R.R.H. designed research; A.Y.S., N.L., A.G., R.M., and A.M. performed research; A.Y.S., N.L., A.G., and R.M. analyzed data; and A.Y.S. and R.R.H. wrote the paper.
-
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
-
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
-
†To control for the effects of the single words on popping times, we conducted a regression with expressions' affective value, the mean affective value of the individual words, and the length (number of letters) of the expression. The model was marginally significant [F(3,42) = 2.804, P = 0.051]. Word affectivity and length did not predict popping times (P > 0.3). The expression's affective value, however, remained a significant predictor [β = 0.377, t(42) = 2.627, P = 0.012]. The same analysis for Experiment 4b yielded similar results: a significant model [F(3,42) = 8.666, P < 0.001] and a significant effect of the expressions' affective value [β = 0.353, t(42) = 2.856, P = 0.007]. The valence of the single words and their length also predicted popping times [β = −0.294, t(42) = −2.380, P = 0.022 and β = −0.441, t(42) = −3.634, P = 0.001]. Importantly, these analyses show that the affective value of multiple-word expressions predicts popping time, even when the effects of the single words are statistically controlled.
-
‡To further examine awareness, we regressed subtraction facilitation scores (RTs for incongruent minus congruent trials) on objective block scores (centered so that a score of zero indicated chance level) (39). The results showed significant facilitation when accuracy in the objective block is at chance [βintercept = 14.78, t(15) = 3.91, P = 0.001] and insignificant slope [β = 86.85, t(15) = 1.47, P = 0.161].
-
§This explanation was verified in the pilot described. The results showed that addition equations were, indeed, solved faster than subtraction equations [mean = 1,795.01 ms, SD = 274.36 and mean = 2,167.78 ms, SD = 494.33, respectively; t(20) = 3.69, P = 0.001].
-
¶As a group, participants fared better than chance on the objective block (P < 0.01). However, there was a significant negative correlation between facilitation scores and objective block scores (r = −0.39, P = 0.032). Awareness of the equations, then, reduced facilitation, thereby working against the hypothesized effect. Another way of verifying that subtle awareness is not producing the effects is to use the regression method described above. This analysis showed significant facilitation, even when accuracy in the objective block was at chance [βintercept = 20.32, t(29) = 3.33, P = 0.002].
-
‖One other possible difference between addition and subtraction is that magnitude matters. The solutions to addition equations were larger than the solutions for subtraction equations and hence, more difficult to compute. The data, however, show no differences between addition equations that yielded high vs. low solutions (all P values > 0.17). These results suggest that magnitude does not play a crucial role here.
-
**There was a marginal effect on RTs (P = 0.08), raising the possibility that participants were also slower on incompatible trials. This result may suggest that the presentation of nonconscious equations results in strategic changes in processing. Because this effect was not hypothesized, we do not wish to make much of it.
-
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1211645109/-/DCSupplemental.
Monday, November 12, 2012
3D photo printing
http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-first-3d-printing-photo-booth/24965/pictures#1
Although it has been described as a "world first", as pointed out by a Abel in the comments, this type of service has been around for a couple of years already in Spain by a company called ThreeDeeYou.
Source: Omote 3D (Japanese) via Spoon & Tamago
3D printing photo booth set for scan
Ever wanted a life-like miniature of yourself or loved ones? Now's your chance, thanks to Omote 3D, which will soon be opening a 3D printing photo booth in Harajuku, Japan. There, visitors will have their bodies scanned into a computer, a process which takes about 15 minutes. Then the company prints your statuette on their 3D color printer in one of three sizes. Of course, this "photo" booth isn't cheap – 3D printing is still a fairly expensive novelty, especially for prints of this quality. And you can forget about trying to scan fidgety children or pets, as the data would get all skewed from their movements. Check out the prices based on the sizes:
- Small (Max. 10cm, 20g), US$264
- Medium (Max. 15cm, 50g), US$403
- Large (Max. 20cm, 200g), US$528
A close-up showing the level of detail possible by Otome 3D's scanning and color printing process
Omote 3D will continue to offer the service everyday from November 24th to January 13th, 2013 at the EYE OF GYRE
exhibition space. Given the time it takes to do the scanning, you may
want to make reservations at the company's website in advance.Although it has been described as a "world first", as pointed out by a Abel in the comments, this type of service has been around for a couple of years already in Spain by a company called ThreeDeeYou.
Source: Omote 3D (Japanese) via Spoon & Tamago
Invisibility cloak 'inevitable'
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/140106-duke-university-creates-perfect-centimeter-scale-invisibility-cloak
Scientists
at Duke University have created the first invisibility cloak that
perfectly hides centimeter-scale objects. While invisibility cloaks have
been created before, they have all reflected some of the incident
light, ruining the illusion. In this case, the incident light is
perfectly channeled around the object, creating perfect invisibility.
There are some caveats, of course. You didn’t really think you’d soon be sneaking away with Ron or Hermione (delete as applicable) into the woods, did you? For now, the Duke invisibility cloak only works with microwave radiation — and perhaps more importantly, the cloak is unidirectional (it only provides invisibility from one very specific direction). The big news here, though, is that it is even possible to create an invisibility cloak of any description. It is now just a matter of time before visible-light, omnidirectional invisibility cloaks are created.
So far, all invisibility cloaks — including Duke’s (pictured right) — are constructed out of metamaterials. In general, a metamaterial is an artificial, man-made material that has unnatural properties. In practice, metamaterials nearly always refer to materials that have a negative refractive index — a property that never occurs in nature, where every material has a positive refractive index. A negative refractive index allows for the creation of some crazy things, such as superlenses that go beyond the diffraction limit, or invisibility cloaks.
In theory, invisibility cloaks operate by bending electromagnetic waves around objects — so that instead of seeing the object, you see what’s behind the object. Negative index metamaterials get you most of the way, but they still need to be arranged in such a way that the illusion is perfect. To get around a 3D object, you have to turn a corner at some point — and previous cloaks have struggled to fashion metamaterials that bend waves around corners without causing reflections, which ruin the illusion. In this case, Nathan Landy, a graduate student at Duke University, tweaked the metamaterial itself, and then fashioned it into a diamond, which is apparently the best shape for minimizing reflections.
The end result is an invisibility cloak that can perfectly hide a 3×0.4-inch (7.5x1cm) cylinder from microwave radiation. This obviously isn’t quite as awesome as an invisibility cloak that operates in the visible light spectra, but microwaves are still very important in the realms of telecommunications and defense (think radar, and the ultimate stealth vehicles). A very basic application might be in fiber optic networks, where invisibility cloaks could be used to bend light around corners without attenuating the signal.
The next step for the Duke University team is to create an omnidirectional, 3D microwave invisibility cloak. Then, eventually, when we work out how to create metamaterials that can bend visible light in interesting ways, we might get an actual invisibility cloak. That’s a few years away yet, though.
Duke University creates perfect, centimeter-scale invisibility cloak
- By Sebastian Anthony on November 12, 2012 at 7:17 am
There are some caveats, of course. You didn’t really think you’d soon be sneaking away with Ron or Hermione (delete as applicable) into the woods, did you? For now, the Duke invisibility cloak only works with microwave radiation — and perhaps more importantly, the cloak is unidirectional (it only provides invisibility from one very specific direction). The big news here, though, is that it is even possible to create an invisibility cloak of any description. It is now just a matter of time before visible-light, omnidirectional invisibility cloaks are created.
So far, all invisibility cloaks — including Duke’s (pictured right) — are constructed out of metamaterials. In general, a metamaterial is an artificial, man-made material that has unnatural properties. In practice, metamaterials nearly always refer to materials that have a negative refractive index — a property that never occurs in nature, where every material has a positive refractive index. A negative refractive index allows for the creation of some crazy things, such as superlenses that go beyond the diffraction limit, or invisibility cloaks.
In theory, invisibility cloaks operate by bending electromagnetic waves around objects — so that instead of seeing the object, you see what’s behind the object. Negative index metamaterials get you most of the way, but they still need to be arranged in such a way that the illusion is perfect. To get around a 3D object, you have to turn a corner at some point — and previous cloaks have struggled to fashion metamaterials that bend waves around corners without causing reflections, which ruin the illusion. In this case, Nathan Landy, a graduate student at Duke University, tweaked the metamaterial itself, and then fashioned it into a diamond, which is apparently the best shape for minimizing reflections.
The end result is an invisibility cloak that can perfectly hide a 3×0.4-inch (7.5x1cm) cylinder from microwave radiation. This obviously isn’t quite as awesome as an invisibility cloak that operates in the visible light spectra, but microwaves are still very important in the realms of telecommunications and defense (think radar, and the ultimate stealth vehicles). A very basic application might be in fiber optic networks, where invisibility cloaks could be used to bend light around corners without attenuating the signal.
The next step for the Duke University team is to create an omnidirectional, 3D microwave invisibility cloak. Then, eventually, when we work out how to create metamaterials that can bend visible light in interesting ways, we might get an actual invisibility cloak. That’s a few years away yet, though.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Massachusetts Euthenasia
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2012/10/massachusetts_death_with_dignity_2012_kevorkian_and_humphry_started_the.single.html
Massachusetts Vote May Change How the Nation Dies
This Election Day, Massachusetts is poised to approve the Death With Dignity Act. “Death with dignity” is a modernized, sanitized, politically palatable term that replaces the now-antiquated expression “physician-assisted suicide.” Four polls conducted in the past couple of months have shown strong support for the ballot question, although a well-funded media blitz by the opposition is kicking in during the final several weeks and may influence voter opinions.
Massachusetts Vote May Change How the Nation Dies
Why it matters that Death With Dignity is poised to become the new norm.
Cody Curtis, right, in How To Die in Oregon
Still from Clear Cut Films/IMDB.
Still from Clear Cut Films/IMDB.
This Election Day, Massachusetts is poised to approve the Death With Dignity Act. “Death with dignity” is a modernized, sanitized, politically palatable term that replaces the now-antiquated expression “physician-assisted suicide.” Four polls conducted in the past couple of months have shown strong support for the ballot question, although a well-funded media blitz by the opposition is kicking in during the final several weeks and may influence voter opinions.
Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act has been in effect for the past 14
years, and the state of Washington followed suit with a similar law in
2008. Despite concerns of skeptics, the sky has not fallen; civilization
in the Northwest remains intact; the poor, disenfranchised, elderly,
and vulnerable have not been victimized; and Oregon has become a leader
in the provision of excellent palliative medicine services.
But the Massachusetts ballot question has the potential to turn death
with dignity from a legislative experiment into the new national norm.
The state is the home of America’s leading medical publication (the New England Journal of Medicine),
hospital (Massachusetts General), and four medical schools (Harvard,
Boston University, University of Massachusetts, and Tufts). Passage of
the law would represent a crucial milestone for the death with dignity
movement, especially since 42 percent of the state is Catholic and the
church hierarchy vehemently opposes assisted dying. Vermont and New
Jersey are already entertaining similar legislature, and if the act
passes in Massachusetts, other states that have previously had
unsuccessful campaigns will certainly be emboldened to revisit this
subject.
The American right-to-die movement began in the 1980s and 1990s with Derek Humphry’s book, Final Exit,
and his organization, the Hemlock Society. It was a reaction to a wave
of technological advances, including antibiotics, antifungal
medications, ventilators, dialysis machines, cardiopulmonary
resuscitation, organ transplantation, and intensive care units. Death
appeared to be on the run, cure was truly possible, and patients were
politely requested to be quiet and allow physicians to heroically
perform miracles. And that is when Dr. Jack Kevorkian—the bad boy of
medicine—appeared on the scene.
Kevorkian was a revolutionary. He was beloved by patients and their
families because of his gutsy intention to overthrow the medical
establishment’s prevailing ethos and hubris about dying. Clad in his
nerdy, light-blue cardigan sweater, Kevorkian paraded in front of the
cameras to show off homemade suicide gadgets and the Volkswagen van he
occasionally drove on house calls to help suffering people end their
lives. Before receiving an 11-to-20-year sentence for the second-degree
murder of Thomas Youck, a 52-year-old Michigan accountant who suffered
from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), Judge Jessica
Cooper said, “You had the audacity to go on national television, show
the world what you did and dare the legal system to stop you. Well sir,
consider yourself stopped.”
So let’s fast forward to December 2007, when Cody Curtis was
diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma. This is an unusual and deadly cancer
of the bile duct, the tube that runs through the liver. Depending on the
size of the tumor and whether it has spread throughout the body,
patients with this cancer are offered surgery, chemoradiation, and
sometimes a liver transplant. Even with aggressive treatment, however,
cholangiocarcinoma is usually a fatal diagnosis.
It’s interesting how I was diagnosed—for my 52nd
birthday I had gotten four, count them, four boxes of chocolate. And I
ate them all. Afterwards I felt (deservedly) awful. I looked up my
symptoms on the Internet and decided I was having a gall bladder attack
like my father had earlier that year. It was a Saturday night so I
didn’t want to go to the emergency room.
But I thought it was really weird, so a
few weeks later I went in to see the doctor. She ordered an ultrasound.
When I went back to her office to get the results, she looked at me and
burst into tears. She said, “Your gall bladder’s fine, but you have a
big mass in your liver.” The tumor was roughly the size of a grapefruit.
After Cody’s primary care physician calmed down, she discussed the
implications of the finding and referred her to a local oncology
surgeon, Dr. Katherine Morris—whom Cody and her family came to know as
Dr. Kate.
Cody’s postings about her illness remained upbeat but realistic:
The good news was the location of the
tumor made a resection of my liver possible. Your liver regenerates and
within six weeks you have a new liver. I had the first surgery, which
cut out about 60 percent of my liver. But there were complications and I
ended up in the hospital for 50 days. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t feed
myself. My daughter lives in Washington D.C. She visited for a week and I
didn’t know she was there. And a year after the original surgery, the
cancer came back, metastasized to the liver, lungs, and lymph nodes.
When Cody and Dr. Kate met for the first time, the surgeon was 39
years old. During the preceding three years, she had established a
vibrant solo private practice based in Portland, Ore., while also
helping run a research and tumor banking program at a tertiary care
center. She was happily married and highly satisfied with her
professional life.
When I write medical stories, I routinely ask people to describe
themselves and find that most physicians become flustered when asked
this question. Although trained observers, doctors spend little time
looking in a mirror or wryly considering their own appearance. They are
no more or less narcissistic than the general public but rarely manage
to put together a coherent description of themselves—let alone one that
contains humor and modern cultural references. So I was delighted when
Dr. Kate immediately responded: “I am hopeless at this, but will
suggest, instead, a series of words to consider and words to avoid.”
Among the words and phrases to eschew were “stout, stumpy, Rubenesque,
jolly, looks like Austin Powers minus the chest hair.” Among those
worthy of consideration are “a less anorexic Angelina Jolie, statuesque,
willowy, serene, poised.” She continued: “I’m 5'4"; have dark,
shoulder-length hair; kinda hazel eyes; and teeth I should have had
straightened as a kid, but refused to have braces.” This was followed by
the admission that, “I’ve a tendency to be willful!”
Dr. Kate grew up in a bucolic setting on the outskirts of Olympia,
Wash., in a home that abounded with horses, cats, and dogs. One of her
earliest lessons was that you don’t allow animals to suffer. She was
raised as a Catholic and attended parochial school through eighth grade.
She learned other lessons: People are responsible for themselves and
their bodies, and autonomy is a cherished ethical principle to always be
respected. Dr. Kate moved to Oregon to attend medical school and
complete a surgical residency. She then traveled to New York City and
Memorial Sloan-Kettering, where she did a surgical oncology fellowship
focusing on cancers of the liver and pancreas. Portland, however, is not
an easy city to leave, and she returned to establish a private practice
and conduct clinical research. When Cody came to see Dr. Kate, she was
one of a select group of surgeons specializing in the treatment of this
particular kind of cancer.
Thanks to Cody’s case, Dr. Kate is now among the pantheon of a
growing number of medical professionals who have been transformed by
death with dignity. Perhaps it takes the dramatic actions of a flawed
advocate like Dr. Jack Kevorkian to catalyze change that leads to the
appearance of more reasonable and likable physician reformers.
Physicians of this new generation do not seek out or necessarily welcome
the role, but, having accepted it, they are irreversibly changed. Most
are modest, highly intellectual, and intensely private professionals who
are drawn to medicine because it offers a challenge and an opportunity
to help relieve distress. Most are workaholics who accept the drudgery
and frequent frustrations of the profession because it is occasionally
interrupted by the incomparable pleasure that comes with vanquishing an
illness, ameliorating suffering, and saving a life. Few of these
physicians would ever have dreamed that their greatest accomplishment
might entail helping patients to die. Not one of them would have
imagined him- or herself becoming a death-with-dignity advocate.
These doctors defy the deeply ingrained taboo against death and they
are soft-spoken combatants in this professional and cultural war. The
media has briefly illuminated a few of them. Dr. Timothy Quill is a
bioethicist and primary care physician who wrote a provocative New England Journal of Medicine article that is death with dignity’s literary equivalent of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The first-person essay resulted in a grand jury investigation (he faced
the possibility of indictment for murder or manslaughter), and it led
to his eventual role as a plaintiff in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court
case. Tim is this year’s president of the American Academy of Hospice
and Palliative Medicine.
Dr. Marcia Angell is another member of this group. She was the first female editor of the New England Journal of Medicine
and has recently been attracting attention in her capacity as an
eloquent spokesperson for the Massachusetts ballot question campaign.
She fervently believes that it is vastly preferable for dying people to
be offered a legal option of death with dignity than to secretly,
fearfully, and often brutally kill themselves.
And then there is Dr. Kate Morris. At the time Cody became her
patient, filmmaker Peter Richardson, a young native Oregonian, was
absorbed by his state’s decision to legalize death with dignity. Cody
eagerly agreed to participate in his film, and Dr. Kate grudgingly
acquiesced. Both women poignantly described to Peter the aftermath of
the surgery, the complicated recuperation, the resumption of a vibrant
life, and finally the recurrence of cancer. In the end, the camera
respectfully hovered outside of Cody’s bedroom, where her family
gathered and where she ingested the lethal dose of barbiturates that
allowed her the death with dignity she desired.
When I interviewed Richardson, he was still in shock that How To Die in Oregon
had just received the Grand Jury Prize Documentary Award at the 2011
Sundance Film Festival. Since then, it has been broadcast on HBO and is
contending for an Emmy. At the festival, Dr. Kate shared a few intense
minutes in the klieg lights with Cody Curtis’ widower and her adult
children, as they nervously answered audience questions.
Before moving to New Mexico for an academic position, the surgeon
helped one more patient to use Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act. She has
since volunteered to be the lead physician plaintiff in a case
challenging New Mexico’s law against assisted dying.
For people like Cody Curtis and Dr. Kate, death with dignity is not
incompatible with palliative care, and data show that 90 percent of
Oregon patients who choose assisted dying are simultaneously enrolled in
hospice, and 95 percent die at home. Death with dignity epitomizes
self-determination at a moment when palliative medicine bumps up against
its limits, when patients are undergoing irremediable existential
suffering and are in the process of losing everything that is meaningful
to them.
After her patient’s death, Dr. Kate concluded, “I think Cody taught
me that ‘first, do no harm,’ is different for every patient. Harm for
her would have meant taking away the control and saying, ‘No, no, no!
You have got to do this the way your body decides, as opposed to the way
you as the person decides.’ ”
Dr. Kate’s epiphany goes to the heart of the dilemma faced by
physicians who are requested to assist in hastening dying. Most have
been taught to adopt a passive stance and resist doing something rather
than risk causing more harm than good. The ethical principle of
non-maleficence has been a rationale for feigning deafness, and for
ignoring or refusing to participate in a death with dignity. However,
Dr. Kate has realized that another, more important principle—respect for
patient autonomy—should supersede in these cases. Whether or not you
would consider assisted dying as a personal option, we should allow
others to exercise their preferences. It is time we became pro-choice at
the end of life.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Buddhist monk is the world's happiest man
http://india.nydailynews.com/newsarticle/7b470adb0a9b6c32e19e16a08df13f3d/buddhist-monk-is-the-worlds-happiest-man
Tibetan monk and molecular geneticist
Matthieu Ricard is the happiest man in the world according to
researchers at the University of Wisconsin. The 66-year-old’s brain
produces a level of gamma waves - those linked to consciousness,
attention, learning and memory - never before reported in neuroscience.
As he grins serenely and his burgundy
robes billow in the fresh Himalayan wind, it is not difficult to see why
scientists declared Matthieu Ricard the happiest man they had ever
tested.
The monk, molecular geneticist and confidant of the Dalai Lama, is passionately setting out why meditation can alter the brain and improve people's happiness in the same way that lifting weights puts on muscle.
"It's a wonderful area of research because it shows that meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are," the Frenchman told AFP.
Ricard, a globe-trotting polymath who left everything behind to become a Tibetan Buddhist in a Himalayan hermitage, says anyone can be happy if they only train their brain.
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson wired up Ricard's skull with 256 sensors at the University of Wisconsin four years ago as part of research on hundreds of advanced practitioners of meditation.
The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard's brain produces a level of gamma waves -- those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory -- "never reported before in the neuroscience literature", Davidson said.
The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain's left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity, researchers believe.
Research into the phenomenon, known as "neuroplasticity," is in its infancy and Ricard has been at the forefront of ground-breaking experiments along with other leading scientists across the world.
"We have been looking for 12 years at the effect of short and long-term mind-training through meditation on attention, on compassion, on emotional balance," he said.
"We've found remarkable results with long-term practitioners who did 50,000 rounds of meditation, but also with three weeks of 20 minutes a day, which of course is more applicable to our modern times."
The 66-year-old, accompanying other senior Tibetan monks at a festival in the remote Nepalese Himalayan region of Upper Dolpa, has become a globally respected Buddhist and is one of the religion's leading western scholars.
But he has not always been on the path to enlightenment.
Ricard grew up among the Paris intellectual elite as the son of celebrated French libertarian philosopher Jean-Francois Revel and abstract watercolor painter Yahne Le Toumelin.
"All these people used to come around, most of Paris intellectual life. We had all the French painters and I was myself interested in classical music so I met a lot of musicians," he said.
"At lunch we'd have three Nobel Prize winners eating with us. It was fantastic... Some of them were wonderful but some could be difficult."
By the time he got his PhD in cell genetics from the Institut Pasteur in Paris in 1972 he had become disillusioned with the dinner party debates and had already begun to journey to Darjeeling in India during his holidays.
Eschewing intimate relationships and a career, he moved to India to study Buddhism and emerged 26 years later as something of celebrity thanks to "The Monk And The Philosopher," a dialogue on the meaning of life he wrote with his father.
"That was the end of my quiet time because it was a bestseller. Suddenly I was projected into the western world. Then I did more dialogues with scientists and the whole thing started to spin off out of control.
"I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation."
A prominent monk in Kathmandu's Shechen Monastery, Ricard divides his year between isolated meditation, scientific research and accompanying the Dalai Lama as his adviser on trips to French-speaking countries and science conferences.
He addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos at the height of the financial crisis in 2009 to tell gathered heads of state and business leaders it was time to give up greed in favor of "enlightened altruism."
His other works include "Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill" and several collections of photographs of the landscape, people and spiritual masters of the Himalayas.
Ricard donates all proceeds of his books to 110 humanitarian projects which have built schools for 21,000 children and provide healthcare for 100,000 patients a year.
He was awarded the French National Order of Merit for his work in preserving Himalayan culture but it is his work on the science of happiness which perhaps defines him best.
Ricard sees living a good life, and showing compassion, not as a religious edict revealed from on high, but as a practical route to happiness.
"Try sincerely to check, to investigate," he said. "That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel -- the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind."
Copyright (2012) AFP. All rights reserved.
The monk, molecular geneticist and confidant of the Dalai Lama, is passionately setting out why meditation can alter the brain and improve people's happiness in the same way that lifting weights puts on muscle.
"It's a wonderful area of research because it shows that meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are," the Frenchman told AFP.
Ricard, a globe-trotting polymath who left everything behind to become a Tibetan Buddhist in a Himalayan hermitage, says anyone can be happy if they only train their brain.
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson wired up Ricard's skull with 256 sensors at the University of Wisconsin four years ago as part of research on hundreds of advanced practitioners of meditation.
The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard's brain produces a level of gamma waves -- those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory -- "never reported before in the neuroscience literature", Davidson said.
The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain's left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity, researchers believe.
Research into the phenomenon, known as "neuroplasticity," is in its infancy and Ricard has been at the forefront of ground-breaking experiments along with other leading scientists across the world.
"We have been looking for 12 years at the effect of short and long-term mind-training through meditation on attention, on compassion, on emotional balance," he said.
"We've found remarkable results with long-term practitioners who did 50,000 rounds of meditation, but also with three weeks of 20 minutes a day, which of course is more applicable to our modern times."
The 66-year-old, accompanying other senior Tibetan monks at a festival in the remote Nepalese Himalayan region of Upper Dolpa, has become a globally respected Buddhist and is one of the religion's leading western scholars.
But he has not always been on the path to enlightenment.
Ricard grew up among the Paris intellectual elite as the son of celebrated French libertarian philosopher Jean-Francois Revel and abstract watercolor painter Yahne Le Toumelin.
"All these people used to come around, most of Paris intellectual life. We had all the French painters and I was myself interested in classical music so I met a lot of musicians," he said.
"At lunch we'd have three Nobel Prize winners eating with us. It was fantastic... Some of them were wonderful but some could be difficult."
By the time he got his PhD in cell genetics from the Institut Pasteur in Paris in 1972 he had become disillusioned with the dinner party debates and had already begun to journey to Darjeeling in India during his holidays.
Eschewing intimate relationships and a career, he moved to India to study Buddhism and emerged 26 years later as something of celebrity thanks to "The Monk And The Philosopher," a dialogue on the meaning of life he wrote with his father.
"That was the end of my quiet time because it was a bestseller. Suddenly I was projected into the western world. Then I did more dialogues with scientists and the whole thing started to spin off out of control.
"I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation."
A prominent monk in Kathmandu's Shechen Monastery, Ricard divides his year between isolated meditation, scientific research and accompanying the Dalai Lama as his adviser on trips to French-speaking countries and science conferences.
He addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos at the height of the financial crisis in 2009 to tell gathered heads of state and business leaders it was time to give up greed in favor of "enlightened altruism."
His other works include "Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill" and several collections of photographs of the landscape, people and spiritual masters of the Himalayas.
Ricard donates all proceeds of his books to 110 humanitarian projects which have built schools for 21,000 children and provide healthcare for 100,000 patients a year.
He was awarded the French National Order of Merit for his work in preserving Himalayan culture but it is his work on the science of happiness which perhaps defines him best.
Ricard sees living a good life, and showing compassion, not as a religious edict revealed from on high, but as a practical route to happiness.
"Try sincerely to check, to investigate," he said. "That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel -- the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind."
Copyright (2012) AFP. All rights reserved.
Read more: http://india.nydailynews.com/newsarticle/7b470adb0a9b6c32e19e16a08df13f3d/buddhist-monk-is-the-worlds-happiest-man#ixzz2AxjV0djy
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