Cameron's Brain

The Singularity Is Near

There aren't too many things as exciting as getting the next Kurzweil book delivered. His latest, THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR, arrived today (along with BOBBY FISCHER TEACHES CHESS).

I'm one of those people who is convinced that the chances of The Singularity occurring in the next 50 years is highly probable. I've been reading singularity-related material for about ten years and in all that time I'm yet to hear an intelligent argument against it. Sure - Moore's Law could, feasibly, collapse. But there are no signs of that happening anytime soon. Sure - we could turn back the clock and stop technological advancements - but I can't see any signs of that happening either. Sure - it's possible that really REALLY fast processing capability will not allow machines to achieve practical sentience or any kind of useful AI. But what we know about the neuro-architecture of the human brain today seems to suggest that it isn't really all that efficient. Carbon-based electro-chemical communication architectures aren't as efficient as silicon-based copies.  Human neurons operate by sending electrochemical signals that propagate at a top speed of 150 meters per second along the fastest neurons. By comparison, the speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second, two million times greater. And quantum architectures take us into a whole other ballgame.

The only way I can see us not achieving a singularity within the next 50 years is some kind of a MAJOR global conflict that sets the entire human race back 500 years. And that's highly possible.

If you're not aware of what The Singularity is, go read this.

I know Belinda, I'm not supposed to buy books before my birthday, but... y'know. I ordered them from Amazon WEEKS ago. Really.

OK, I'm off to the blood bank for my regular draining....

Josh hunts down the giant squid... expert

I loved that news last week about the sighting of the giant squid. Showed my boys the photos and everything. Jules Verne stories from my childhood never far from my mind.

Josh Gliddon has written up his interview with  Dr Steve O'Shea, a leading authority on giant squid, on his blog. It's a great read.

Evolution - A Fact AND a Theory

Here's something for all of my fundamentalist Christian friends, who keep trying to tell me "there is no evidence to support the theory of evolution", to read....

EVOLUTION - A FACT AND A THEORY

Biologists consider the existence of biological evolution to be a fact. It can be demonstrated today and the historical evidence for its occurrence in the past is overwhelming.

How To Live To 1000

Today I had the opportunity to interview Dr Aubrey de Grey, biogerontologist from the Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, UK, and one of the leaders in field of anti-aging research.

Now I’m not talking about the Ponds Institute kind of anti-aging… I’m talking about CURING aging. I’m talking about genetic science which will enable you to live hundreds of healthy, productive years. And I’m talking about research which, if properly funded, could deliver these results within MY lifetime.

Check out the interview here.

Japanese develop 'female' android

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Japanese develop 'female' android

Repliee Q1 is not like any robot you will have seen before, at least outside of science-fiction movies. 

She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.

She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.  

See photos and video here.

And she doesn’t need to go shopping. She doesn’t mind if you go out drinking with the boys. And best of all – you don’t have to sign a pre-nup.

Although I’m sure as the AI improves, these things may change…

Drew Berry's DNA animations

ABC TV had two great shows tonight featuring the work of Melbourne’s Drew Berry – an episode of Catalyst that featured his DNA animations and then the documentary DNA which also featured his amazing work.

Berry has post-graduate honours (BSc Hons) and Masters of Science (MSc) degrees in cell biology from the University of Melbourne and his animations are based on the latest scientific data. Over a number of years, he has developed novel techniques from the sophisticated digital tools used for special effects in Hollywood feature films.

You can see some of his amazing DNA animations at DNAi.

Watching Deep Impact - live

MAJOR geek moment today. David Scott Lewis IM'd me from his home in Qingdao, China, to tell me to tune into NASA TV to watch the crash of Deep Impact into the Tempel 1 comet... LIVE. So I'm sitting in Melbourne Australia, David's in China, NASA JPL are in Pasadena and Tempel 1 is 83 million miles away. What an amazing experience. I'm watching live as man smashes a satellite into a  4.5 billion year-old piece of rock half the size of Manhattan.

The world's oldest clone turns 10

Megan the sheep turns 10 today.

"Her story also underlines how clones of the same DNA are far from identical, being influenced by environment and upbringing, too."

I always laugh when I read suggestions that clones will somehow be identical in personality to the person/animal they were cloned from. Parents of identical twins (like myself) know how ridiculous that is. Hunter and Taylor (my 4 year old sons) have identical DNA. And yet they have totally different personalities. They don't even look identical. That makes the nature versus nurture debate interesting. H & T have the same nature and have had the same nurturing. Yet they are different. Why? Random quantum events?

Mice put in 'suspended animation'

This report from the BBC is very exciting. Anyone who knows me very well, knows I'm a big believer in cryonics. The current methods of cryonics have challenges and the more, less-invasive alternatives we have for entering into suspended animation, the better.

In this experiment,

researchers from the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle put mice in a chamber filled with air laced with 80 parts per million (ppm) of hydrogen sulphide (H2S).

The animals' breathing rates dropped from the normal 120 breaths per minute to less than 10 breaths per minute.

During exposure their metabolic rates dropped by an astonishing 90%, and their core body temperatures fell from 37C to as low as 11C.

After six hours' exposure to the mixture, the mice were given fresh air. Their metabolic rate and core body temperature returned to normal, and tests showed they had suffered no ill effects.

Word Of The Day: Sonoluminescence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sonoluminescence is the emission of short bursts of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by sound. In single bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL), a single bubble, trapped in the acoustic standing wave, emits a pulse of light with each compression of the standing wave. This technique allowed a more systematic study of the phenomenon, because it isolated the complex effects into one stable, predictable bubble. They realized that the temperature inside the bubble was hot enough to melt steel. Interest in sonoluminescence was renewed when an inner temperature of such a bubble well above one megakelvin was postulated, making it a possible source for nuclear fusion energy.

And now this from New Scientist on March 5:

THE idea that nuclear fusion can occur inside bubbles created by bombarding fluids with sound waves has received a boost. Temperatures inside such bubbles are far higher than previously thought, bringing them closer to the conditions required for fusion.