Read-Think-b4-u-Write

Finally, someone has actually proved that zombies aren't real. I am always amazed how some people believe in zombies, ghost, the paranormal, but then claim there can be no god or spirituality. So, dare we talk about god? I'm sure it will offend someone...okay, let's do it. Here are some scientists who believed in a higher power and how they reconciled those beliefs (thanks Huffington Post ). 1. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Among his accomplishments (and getting him excommunicated from the Catholic Church) supporting the theory that the earth moved around the sun and not the other way around. I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require use to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations....

One of the things that have kept some experts from freaking out about Skynet and the takeover of human existence by artificial intelligence is that AI takes ten times longer to learn than humans. Well that is until now. Google 's Deep Mind just created an AI that learns at about the same pace as humans. "If you’re unfamiliar with how deep learning works, it uses layers of neural networks to locate trends or patterns in data. If one layer identifies a pattern, that information will be sent to the next layer. This process continues until all the information is collected." The new way of AI thinking imitates the way human and animals learn, "replicating what happens in the prefrontal cortex and then, as a backup, in the hippocampus." But not to worry, no AI has reached a true human level of thinking, at least not yet. Robotics may soon take over all of our jobs, but "as AI gets better at learning, it can be taught more and more ways to improve our l...

Harvard says it's two years away from cloning a woolly mammoth. But maybe the question, should be, "Should we resurrect extinct species?" "Advocates, like Vanessa Adams from the University of Queensland, hope that this resurrection will be beneficial not only for extinct species, but also for modern species and our environment. Adams studies how applying economic concepts, like bringing back an extinct animal that people would pay to see, can increase the effectiveness of on-ground conservation action, like raise money that can be used to conserve other endangered animals." But there are detractors. If we decide to bring back dinosaurs, mammoths, and dodos what will that do for animals currently on the endangered species list. Will we just forget about them because of the novelty of these "new" animals? Conservation budgets are already stretched pretty thin. "In modeling the reintroduction of some recently extinct species, the scientists d...

If you carefully look at the above rendering of the Saturn V Rocket, you will notice that the creator has used some pretty simple terminology. In fact, Randall Monroe employed only the 1,000 most frequently used words in English. Under this restriction, the rocket was called "up-goer five," the command module was "people box," and the liquid hydrogen feed line was "thing that lets in cold wet air to burn." The comic inspired Theo Anderson, a geneticist who supports accessible science education, to build a text editor that would force the user to write with only the 1000 most frequent words. He then invited scientists to describe what they do using the editor. Mental floss reported on the project which has been turned into "18 Complicated Scientific Ideas Explained Simply", scientific ideas ranging from olfactory biology, web development and political economy to paleomagnetism, particle physics and circadian rhythm biology where "Littl...

Can you guess what this picture illustrates? If you look at the context clues by reading the picture, what does the apple represent? Click on the apple for the bigger picture. Could it be the story of Adam and Eve? No? What about that universe inside the apple? Do you remember the story about Sir Isaac Newton and how an apple dropped on his head while napping and voila he realized there must be some force acting on the falling apple, and everything else for that matter. Over at BrainPickings they reviewed 75 Scientific Mysteries, Illustrated by Today's Hottest Artists , a book that explores scientific complexities through pictures, including gravity and the big bang. About gravity, Terry Matilsky notes: [T]he story is not finished. We know that general relativity is not the final answer, because we have not been able to synthesize gravity with the other known laws of physics in a comprehensive “theory of everything." Another artist illustrates his vision of ...