SocialPipeline 06/04/2011 (a.m.)

• Reverse-engineering the infant mind | KurzweilAI

  tags: Learning Baby

  • The study is the first step in a long-term effort to “reverse-engineer” infant cognition by studying babies at ages 3-, 6- and 12-months (and other key stages through the first two years of life) to map out what they know about the physical and social world. That “3-6-12” project is part of a larger Intelligence Initiative at MIT, launched this year with the goal of understanding the nature of intelligence and replicating it in machines.

• Study locates the source of key brain function | KurzweilAI

  tags: Brain

  • To find out the “where” of this “scene-facilitation effect,” researchers flashed drawings of pairs of objects for just 1/20 of a second. Some of these objects were depicted as interacting, such as a hand grasping for a pen, and some were not, with the hand reaching away from the pen. Test subjects were asked to press a button if a label on the screen matched either one of the two objects, which it did on half of the presentations.

• Quantum knowledge may cool computers | KurzweilAI

  tags: SharismBook Entropy

  • However, the researchers showed that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.

    The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy, the researchers said. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with the second law of thermodynamics: the entropy of the universe can never decrease.

    “We’re working on the edge of the second law,” says physicist Vlatko Vedral. “If you go any further, you will break it.”

• Global Internet traffic to quadruple by 2015 | KurzweilAI

  tags: SharismBook Internet Macro

  • Cisco predicts more than 15 billion network-connected devices by 2015, reaching 966 exabytes (10^18 bytes) per year — close to 1 zettabyte (10^21 bytes).

  • 

    Monthly traffic in exabytes 2010 – 2015 by country. U.S. is highest, followed by Korea, and in 2015, China  (credit: Cisco)

• Researchers build largest biochemical circuit out of small synthetic DNA molecules | KurzweilAI

  tags: SharismBook

  • To build their circuits, the researchers used pieces of DNA to make logic gates. Instead of depending on electrons flowing in and out of transistors, DNA-based logic gates receive and produce molecules as signals. The molecular signals travel from one specific gate to another, connecting the circuit as if they were wires.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.