TEDLikia

Today I got TEDLikia :) I have watched 4 videos up to now.

The first one was about robots and their emotions, David Hanson the lecturer brought Einstein face robot to the scene. It was fun, Einstein smile and frown to David. At first I thought David is working on brain-like algorithms but he didn't mention anything so I thought he might not use them.


second video was about Prakash institute in India. I like it very much. Parkash is trying to cure blindness of some children and then during their recovery study children's brains to realize how brain learn to see. At first, cured children were able to determine a square and a circle separately but if they saw a circle covered with part of a square they couldn't recognize neither square nor circle. amazingly after recovery children's brains could see things correctly.
their study about how brain learn to see is published in Nature magazine.



The third video was interesting, it was about hallucination. It happens to 10% of people who have visual or hearing loss. The type of hallucination is called Charles Bonnet syndrom. People with this syndrome hallucinate shapes, objects, faces etc... around them. FMRI studies show their Fusiform Gyrus in the temporal lobe becomes active so they see such things. A person of note who has this syndrome is lecturer Oliver Sacks.


Forth one was about brain computer interface. The lecturer showed the ability of her program and headset. A boy came to the stage and his brainwaves(thoughts) move an object in computer.

IBM on Mapping the Human Brain and the Future of Cognitive Computing

Our simulation is a cartoon of reality Modha said.
Full article.

joking computer

************
what do you call a spicy society ?
a hot club .
************
Is it a good joke? I think your judgment about this joke will be changed if you know about a computer which has made this joke.
Yes, A computer.
this computer program is available online here.
I couldn't understand some jokes of this program, I don't know it's because of my poor English knowledge or the jokes were not jokes :)
I checked joke making algorithms I only have found 3 or 4 simple rules.
This program that is called joking computer is designed to help children who suffer some brain diseases and they are not able to communicate with other people easily.
I hope it becomes helpful for them.

My adventures with a rubik cube.

Today, while finally cleaning my desk, I found my Rubik Cube under tons of everything you can imagine. After seeing this cute object, I realized that there doesn't exist a more important thing than reaching my old dream (such as I had when I bought it.) So, happily and energetically, I started to solve it. After an hour, except for one side, there was no success. Following my dream, I decided to search the web for some help. I found a really helpful website and started to climb the ladder of success very quickly. I passed step #5 and was extremely happy; the cube was almost complete. When I scrolled down for the next step, I found that the next two steps were for making money. $2.95 for both of them. As you know, in Iran paying money is impossible. Heeeeee heeeeee heeeeeee! ( it's a loud crying sound.)
So, it became a lesson for me; first, study things accurately from beginning to end, then start doing it. ^_^
after this,Reza ;my old brother, tried to cheat he followed a Youtube video instruction: he removed small cubes to add them together one by one. you can see the result:

He just could removing them :)

I want my cube mmmmm. :(

Project Success Stories--Brain Wave Hits Computer Science Research

European researchers working on the Daisy project studied the human brain's neocortex with the hopes of ushering in a new era of computer science research. The researchers wanted to acquire a deep understanding of the functioning of neocortical daisy architectures to inspire new approaches to computer design. The ability to build a general-purpose, adaptive computer architecture based on a better understanding of the cortex can change the nature and scope of computer applications, says Daisy project lead researcher Rodney Douglas, director of Zurich's Institute of Neuroinformatics. The project sought to characterize daisy architectures, determine what type of processing they support, and develop hardware and software to emulate cortical processing. "It definitely goes in the direction of saying that we should see the cortex as one big continuous sheet probably with a very fundamental underlying structure, which is modified locally to carry out specific operations," Douglas says. The project made important advances in neuroscience and neuroanatomy, developed a working hypothesis for cortical processing, and created demonstrators to show that hypothesis could be replicated in hardware.
you can see full article here.

neurons and neurotransmitters

A good video about Neurons & Neurotransmitters :

Caro Lucas

Yesterday I was preparing a text about Randy Pausch for the blog ;A great computer scientist who passed away two years ago because of cancer, unfortunately today I heard something that I should add to this post, death of professor Caro Lucas; Iranian robotic father ,A person I love, here you can see enormous number of his articles. I think he died of cancer too.
I always wish to be his student :(
Although we(world) have lost one of the most valuable people, I am sure way of his thinking will stay alive for ever.
Scientists! please, please find a way to cure cancer, It is killing somebody we love.