Computer Science / Engineering posts
- July 16, 2012
- 12:59 PM
- 277 views
More Big Data to Consider: Bioimage Informatics
I’m not sure any more when I signed up for complementary copies of Nature Methods, but just like clockwork my copy arrives each month. If you’d like to get it too, you can apply for a subscription here (Firefox seems to work better than IE, btw). This month’s issue particularly interested me because it contains a focus on Bioimage Informatics. [...]... Read more »
Greg Miller. (2012) Blast Injuries Linked to Neurodegeneration in Veterans. Science, 336(6083), 790-791. DOI: 10.1126/science.336.6083.790
Gene Myers. (2012) Why bioimage informatics matters. Nature Methods, 659-660. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.2024
Anne E Carpenter, Lee Kamentsky, & Kevin W Eliceiri. (2012) A call for bioimaging software usability. Nature Methods 9, 666-670. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.2073
Kevin W Eliceiri, Michael R Berthold, Ilya G Goldberg, Luis Ibáñez, B S Manjunath, Maryann E Martone, Robert F Murphy, Hanchuan Peng, Anne L Plant, Badrinath Roysam.... (2012) Biological imaging software tools. Nature Methods, 697-710. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.2084
- July 15, 2012
- 11:52 PM
- 476 views
What Makes the Uncanny Valley so Unsettling?
by Eric Horowitz in peer-reviewed by my neurons
Every day we inch closer to the time when intelligent robots will be a part of everyday life. Among the many challenges we must overcome before then is gaining a better understanding of the "uncanny valley" -- the feeling of discomfort we have around humanlike robots. Thus far, most research has tended to focus on robot appearances. For example, there is evidence that humanlike robots are unnerving because their faces remind us of death, have abnormal features, and fail to align with o........ Read more »
Gray K., & Wegner D.M. (2012) Feeling robots and human zombies: Mind perception and the uncanny valley. Cognition. PMID: 22784682
- July 11, 2012
- 09:35 AM
- 367 views
Dark Galaxies of the Early Universe
by Jason Carr in Wired Cosmos
Dark galaxies are small, gas-rich galaxies in the early Universe that are very inefficient at forming stars. They are predicted by theories of galaxy formation and are thought to be the building blocks of today’s bright, star-filled galaxies. Astronomers think that they may have fed large galaxies with much of the gas that later formed [...]... Read more »
Sebastiano Cantalupo, Simon J. Lilly, & Martin G. Haehnelt. (2012) Detection of dark galaxies and circum-galactic filaments fluorescently illuminated by a quasar at z. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. info:/arxiv.org/abs/1204.5753
- July 8, 2012
- 11:00 PM
- 356 views
Critique of Chaitin’s algorithmic mutation
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
Last week, I reviewed Gregory Chaitin’s Proving Darwin. I concentrated on a broad overview of the book and metabiology, and did not touch on the mathematical details; This post will start touching. The goal is to summarize Chaitin’s ideas more rigorously and to address Chaitin’s comment: I disagree with your characterization of algorithmic mutations as [...]... Read more »
Chaitin, G. (2009) Evolution of Mutating Software. EATCS Bulletin, 157-164. info:/
- July 8, 2012
- 09:24 PM
- 20 views
Visualizing fields of research based on readership
by Peter Kraker in Science and the Web (Peter Kraker's weblog)
Social reference management systems provide a wealth of information that can be used for the analysis of science. In this paper, we examine whether user library statistics can produce meaningful results with regards to science evaluation and knowledge domain visualization. We are conducting two empirical studies, using a sample of library data from Mendeley, the worlds largest social reference management system. Based on the occurrence of references in users libraries, we perform a large-scale i........ Read more »
Peter Kraker, Christian Körner, Kris Jack, & Michael Granitzer. (2012) Harnessing User Library Statistics for Research Evaluation and Knowledge Domain Visualization. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference Companion on World Wide Web , 1017-1024. DOI: 10.1145/2187980.2188236
- July 6, 2012
- 10:14 AM
- 447 views
Advances in Neuronal Destruction
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
Destroying neurons is not difficult. Destroying specific neurons, but leaving others intact is another story. Ablating specific neurons usually involves fancy genetic trickery, but it can also be accomplished with fancy mechanical lasers! Laser near cell (source)A new study published in PNAS (Hayes et al., 2012) uses the cells own rhythm generating properties to target the neurons for destruction.Specifically, Hayes et al. is investigating the breathing neurons. These neurons are in t........ Read more »
Hayes JA, Wang X, & Del Negro CA. (2012) Cumulative lesioning of respiratory interneurons disrupts and precludes motor rhythms in vitro. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(21), 8286-91. PMID: 22566628
- July 3, 2012
- 09:13 AM
- 432 views
Artificial Cerebellum in Robotics Developed
by Jason Carr in Wired Cosmos
University of Granada researchers have developed an artificial cerebellum (a biologically-inspired adaptive microcircuit) that controls a robotic arm with human-like precision. The cerebellum is the part of the human brain that controls the locomotor system and coordinates body movements.... Read more »
Luque NR, Garrido JA, Carrillo RR, Tolu S, & Ros E. (2011) Adaptive cerebellar spiking model embedded in the control loop: context switching and robustness against noise. International journal of neural systems, 21(5), 385-401. PMID: 21956931
- July 2, 2012
- 04:35 AM
- 317 views
How 16,000 Processors Learned to Actually ‘See’
by United Academics in United Academics
In their search for knowledge on complex data processing, the group has created a huge surrogate neural-like network of 16,000 connected computer processors, which share about one billion connections.... Read more »
Quoc, V. Le, Marc’Aurelio Ranzato, Rajat Monga, Matthieu Devin, Kai Chen, Greg S. Corrado, Jeff Dean, Andrew Y. Ng. (2012) Building High-level Features Using Large Scale Unsupervised Learning. arxiv.org. info:/
- June 29, 2012
- 04:42 PM
- 425 views
How fireworks light up the sky
by Cath in Basal Science (BS) Clarified
Many countries/regions will be celebrating their national/independence day over the weekend and into next week, so you’ll likely have a chance to see some fireworks whether in person, on television, [...]... Read more »
Roncone, K. (2004) Things that go boom in the night: The art and science of fireworks. JOM JOURNAL OF THE MINERALS, METALS AND MATERIALS SOCIETY. DOI: 10.1007/s11837-004-0084-8
- June 29, 2012
- 01:00 PM
- 408 views
Is Chaitin proving Darwin with metabiology?
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
Algorithmic information theory (AIT) allows us to study the inherent structure of objects, and qualify some as ‘random’ without reference to a generating distribution. The theory originated when Ray Solomonoff (1960), Andrey Kolmogorov (1965), and Gregory Chaitin (1966) looked at probability, statistics, and information through the algorithmic lens. Now the theory has become a central [...]... Read more »
Chaitin, G. (2009) Evolution of Mutating Software. EATCS Bulletin, 157-164. info:/
- June 27, 2012
- 07:20 AM
- 125 views
Herkent u deze melodie? [Dutch]
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Je zit in je auto en draait wat aan de knop van de radio. Je hoort al snel of bepaalde muziek je bevalt of niet. Je herkent een stem, een liedje of zelfs de uitvoering ervan. Iedereen doet het, iedereen kan het. En vaak ook nog eens razendsnel: sneller dan een noot gemiddeld klinkt.Als u gevraagd zou worden om naar een reeks muziekfragmenten van 0,2 seconde te luisteren, zal blijken dat u met gemak aan kan geven welk fragment klassiek, jazz, R&B of pop is (zie luistertest). Een snippertje ge........ Read more »
Gjerdingen, Robert O., & Perrott, D. (2008) Scanning the Dial: The Rapid Recognition of Music Genres. Journal of New Music Research, 37(2), 93-100. DOI: 10.1080/09298210802479268
- June 25, 2012
- 09:11 AM
- 126 views
Why does a well-tuned modern piano not sound out-of tune?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Karlheinz Stockhausen is listening."Neue Musik ist anstrengend", wrote Die Zeit some time ago: "Der seit Pythagoras’ Zeiten unternommene Versuch, angenehme musikalische Klänge auf ganzzahlige Frequenzverhältnisse der Töne zurückzuführen, ist schon mathematisch zum Scheitern verurteilt. Außereuropäische Kulturen beweisen schließlich, dass unsere westliche Tonskala genauso wenig naturgegeben ist wie eine auf Dur und Moll beruhende Harmonik: Die indonesische Gamelan-Musik und Indiens Raga........ Read more »
Julia Kursell. (2011) Kräftespiel. Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, 2(1), 24-40. DOI: 10.4472_zfmw.2010.0003
Whalley, Ian. (2006) William A. Sethares: Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale (Second Edition). Computer Music Journal, 30(2). DOI: 10.1162/comj.2006.30.2.92
- June 21, 2012
- 03:21 PM
- 479 views
Neuron-controlled robots: reverse-cyborgs
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
Last post we discussed robotically controlled biology. In this post we will talk about biologically controlled robots.The Hybrot: a rat neuron controlled robotIn 2001, S. Potter published a paper on the "Animat". A set of cultured neurons on a multi-electrode array (MEA, purple circle in above image) interfaced with a simulated robot. That is, not a physical moving around robot as pictured above, but a computer program simulating what a robot/animal could do. They made a v........ Read more »
Demarse TB, Wagenaar DA, Blau AW, & Potter SM. (2001) The Neurally Controlled Animat: Biological Brains Acting with Simulated Bodies. Autonomous robots, 11(3), 305-310. PMID: 18584059
- June 20, 2012
- 11:10 PM
- 445 views
A bright future with self-assembling nanocubes
by Cath in Basal Science (BS) Clarified
What does the home pregnancy test and stained glass have in common? Both contain nanometer sized particles of metal (nanoparticles) that play a key role in how they work. The [...]... Read more »
Barnes, W.L., Dereux, A., & Ebbesen, T.W. (2003) Surface plasmon subwavelength optics. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature01937
Gao, B., Arya, G., & Tao, A.R. (2012) Self-orienting nanocubes for the assembly of plasmonic nanojunctions. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2012.83
- June 19, 2012
- 11:29 AM
- 386 views
The Evolution of Music
by Iddo Friedberg in Byte Size Biology
A collaboration between a group in Imperial College and Media Interaction group in Japan yielded a really cool website: darwintunes.org. The idea is to apply Darwinian-like selection to music. Starting form a garble, after several generations producing something that is actually melodic and listen-able. Or a Katy Perry tune. Whatever. The selective force being the appeal of the tune to the listener. ... Read more »
Robert M. MacCallum, Matthias Mauchb, Austin Burta, & Armand M. Leroia. (2012) (2012-06-18) Evolution of music by public choice. . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1203182109
- June 19, 2012
- 10:25 AM
- 498 views
Can artificial music evolve in a Darwinian way?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
This week an interesting study appeared in PNAS (early edition) showing that a simple Darwinian process can produce music. Inspired by cultural transmission theory, the study suggests that the evolution of music can be viewed and analyzed in terms of selection-variation processes, and, as such, may shed light on the evolution of real musical cultures. ... Read more »
Robert M. MacCalluma, Matthias Mauch, Austin Burta, & Armand M. Leroia. (2012) Evolution of music by public choice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1203182109
- June 19, 2012
- 01:23 AM
- 436 views
Do I Look Like an Alien to You?
by Jason Carr in Wired Cosmos
I finally got a chance to see Prometheus this weekend and it reminded me why I love both technology and space so much. Without giving too much away for those of you that haven’t yet watched it, one of the more prominent ideas put forth in the movie is that we were created by alien [...]... Read more »
Ehrenfreund P, Spaans M, & Holm NG. (2011) The evolution of organic matter in space. Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences, 369(1936), 538-54. PMID: 21220279
Ziurys LM. (2006) The chemistry in circumstellar envelopes of evolved stars: following the origin of the elements to the origin of life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103(33), 12274-9. PMID: 16894164
Kerr RA. (2012) Planetary science. Homegrown organic matter found on Mars, but no life. Science (New York, N.Y.), 336(6084), 970. PMID: 22628628
Davies PC. (2003) Does life's rapid appearance imply a Martian origin?. Astrobiology, 3(4), 673-9. PMID: 14987473
Frederick Su. (1996) Extraterrestrial life forms examined. SPIE. DOI: 10.1117/2.6199612.0001
- June 17, 2012
- 12:45 PM
- 565 views
Remote-controlled cyborg insects
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
Cyborgs capture the imagination. Whether human-machine prosthetics or machine-insect spybots, the possibilities for medical advances and for exciting sci-fi novels are virtually endless. Remote controlled beetle from 1909 from Insect Lab A paper in 2009 by Sato et al. made some significant advances in the frontier of remote-controlled cyborg beetles. Specifically they were able to stimulate relatively specific neurons in these beetles to get them to initiate flight........ Read more »
Sato H, & Maharbiz MM. (2010) Recent developments in the remote radio control of insect flight. Frontiers in neuroscience, 199. PMID: 21629761
Sato H, Berry CW, Peeri Y, Baghoomian E, Casey BE, Lavella G, Vandenbrooks JM, Harrison JF, & Maharbiz MM. (2009) Remote radio control of insect flight. Frontiers in integrative neuroscience, 24. PMID: 20161808
- June 15, 2012
- 10:49 AM
- 391 views
Alan Turing Centenary Conference, 22nd-25th June 2012
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Next weekend, a bunch of very distinguished computer scientists will rock up at the magnificent Manchester Town Hall for the Turing Centenary Conference in order to analyse the development of Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Alan Turing’s legacy [1].... Read more »
Chouard, T. (2012) Turing at 100: Legacy of a universal mind. Nature, 482(7386), 455-455. DOI: 10.1038/482455a
- June 14, 2012
- 03:27 PM
- 269 views
Brains are Different on Macs
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Last month, neuroscientists were warned about potential biases in SPM8, a popular software tool for analysis of fMRI data.Now a paper highlights another software pitfall: The Effects of FreeSurfer Version, Workstation Type, and Macintosh Operating System Version on Anatomical Volume and Cortical Thickness MeasurementsFreeSurfer is one of the major image analysis packages and amongst other things, you can use it to measure the size of different parts of the brain. German researchers Ed Gronenschi........ Read more »
Gronenschild EH, Habets P, Jacobs HI, Mengelers R, Rozendaal N, van Os J, & Marcelis M. (2012) The Effects of FreeSurfer Version, Workstation Type, and Macintosh Operating System Version on Anatomical Volume and Cortical Thickness Measurements. PloS one, 7(6). PMID: 22675527
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