complexitystudies

Evolutionary Theory is the central paradigm of modern biology. As humans are also biological, it should come as no small wonder that all sciences concerned with humans should also take evolution into account (ie evolutionary psychology, sociobiology etc etc). Medicine is no exemption, and I am glad to read that this is receiving wider attention: [...]

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This sounds interesting: Numenta - numenta.com
Numenta was formed to develop and promote a technology called Hierarchical Temporal Memory, or HTM. We are confident that the principles underlying HTM are the same principles that govern much of the operation of the human neocortex; thus, HTM enables the creation of machines that have some of the capabilities [...]

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This result is widely reported on the net lately, and while we can’t yet be sure it actually occurs in plants at normal temperatures (so there is room for speculation - it shows one thing for sure - something I have been advocating for a long time: that the boundaries between the scientific disciplines [...]

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Here is a nice example of what systems that exhibit non-linear dynamic behaviour “do”:
Cornstarch - Phenomena
Walk on cornstarch
Non-Newtonian fluid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(This was discussed on the Rosen List recently.)

Technorati Tags: complexity, nonlinearity

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Janet has a wonderful entry on self-reinforcing hierarchies both in the blogosphere and in the world of science. The gist of the post is that success is not necessarily a function of excellence, but involves other factors such as luck and having the right support at the right time - once structures are entrenched, they [...]

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Increasing evidence points to the possibility of octopi being intelligent: Developing Intelligence : Platform-Independent Intelligence: Octopus Consciousness
Why is this important? Because their brain architecture is different from ours (humans), it may help extract necessary and sufficient conditions for intelligence and consciousness. This will hopefully further our quest toward developing a conscious AI.

Technorati Tags: artificial intelligence, [...]

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Technorati Tags: internet, pointer

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Ony of my favorite topics in mathematics is infinity and it’s diverse forms. A nice result is that the Continuum Hypothesis (the hypothesis that there is no infinity between aleph_zero of the integers and aleph_1 of the reals) is independent of the currently accepted/used Axioms of set theory (ZFC) - which form the basics of [...]

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In these days it is the duty of every scientist to go against superstition, belief in the paranormal, supernatural and unphysical. Here something about past lives (they’re just a case of bad recall of information source, it turns out):
Remember a Previous Life? Maybe You Have a Bad Memory: Scientific American

Technorati Tags: cognitive science

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