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Curious Cat Science and Egineering blog full tag cloud
Webcast from 23andme on human evolution. Continued: What are genes?, What are SNPs? (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms), Where do your genes come from? and What is phenotype?. These webcasts provide an easy to understand overview. Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and husband of 23andme co-founder Anne Wojcicki. People have 23 pairs of chromosomes.
Related: Understanding the Evolution of Human Beings by Country - Evolution is Fundamental to Science - 8 Percent of the Human Genome is Old Virus Genes - science webcasts
| Adaptive Flight Control With Living Neuronal Networks on Microelectrode Arrays (open access paper) by Thomas B. DeMarse and Karl P. Dockendorf Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida
investigating the ability of living neurons to act as a set of neuronal weights which were used to control the flight of a simulated aircraft. These weights were manipulated via high frequency stimulation inputs to produce a system in which a living neuronal network would “learn” to control an aircraft for straight and level flight.
A system was created in which a network of living rat cortical neurons were slowly adapted to control an aircraft’s flight trajectory. This was accomplished by using high frequency stimulation pulses delivered to two independent channels, one for pitch, and one for roll. This relatively simple system was able to control the pitch and roll of a simulated aircraft. |
When Dr. Thomas DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. “You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out — and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,” he said. “(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it’s a live computation device.”
To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions: whether the plane is flying straight and level or is tilted to the left or to the right. The neurons then analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system.
“Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,” DeMarse said. “So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data come in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.”
Although the brain currently is able to control the pitch and roll of the simulated aircraft in weather conditions ranging from blue skies to stormy, hurricane-force winds, the underlying goal is a more fundamental understanding of how neurons interact as a network, DeMarse said.
Related: Neural & Hybrid Computing Laboratory @ University of Florida - UF Scientist: “Brain” In A Dish Acts As Autopilot, Living Computer - Roachbot: Cockroach Controlled Robot - New Neurons in Old Brains - posts on brain research - Viruses and What is Life - Great Self Portrait of Astronaut Engineer
The panel starts speaking at about minute 14. The technical presentation of the video could be better (likely will be as we develop good, easy ways to capture speaking events for web delivery) but their is some interesting content.
Related: Microbes - Secret Life of Microbes - SciVee: Science Webcasts - Plants, Unikonts, Excavates and SARs
The webcast goes into the human eye while describing the microscopic details of the human eye. See more such videos: The Eyes of a Fly - Zoom Into a Fish - Zoom Into a Butterfly
Related: Non-Newtonian Fluid Demo - posts on biology - science webcasts
Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard P. Feynman is a great explanation of how scientists think: “The science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower”
I did post on this before. Related book: Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character.
Related: Vega Science Lectures: Feynman and More - How flowering plants beat the competition - What Are Flowers For?
Very cool animation, by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Interactive Knowledge, of the working of the inner workings of our bodies as they react to a cut. If you want to get right to the science, skip the first minute. Providing these types of educational animations is a great way for educational institutions to take advantage of technology to achieve their mission in ways not possible before.
It is annoying how many of those “educational” institutions don’t provide such educational material online (and even take material offline that was online). Have they become more focused on thinking and operating the way they did in 1970 than promoting science education? It is a shame some “educational” institutions have instead become focused on looking backward. I will try to promote those organizations that are providing online science education.
Related: Inside Live Red Blood Cells - Universal Blood
Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research. This is another awesome combination of technology, distributed problem solving, science education…
Essentially the game works by allowing the person to make some decisions then the computer runs through some processes to determine the result of those decisions. It seems the human insight of what might work provides an advantage to computers trying to calculate solutions on their own. Then the results are compared to the other individuals working on the same protein folding problem and the efforts are ranked.
This level of interaction is very cool. SETI@home, Rosetta@home and the like are useful tools to tap the computing resources of millions on the internet. But the use of human expertise really makes fold.it special. And you can’t help but learn by playing. In addition, if you are successful you can gain some scientific credit for your participation in new discoveries.
Related: Expert Foldit Protein Folder, JSnyder - Researchers Launch Online Protein Folding Game - New Approach Builds Better Proteins Inside a Computer - Phun Physics - Protein Knots
The site includes some excellent educational material on proteins and related material. What is a protein:
About a year ago I posted that UC-Berkeley Course Videos were available on Google Video. Well now the
Berkeley YouTube site includes even more videos of Berkeley lectures. They include those listed on Google Video that I mentioned last year such as Physics for Future Presidents and Search Engines (by Sergey Brin) and more.
They currently have 201 videos posted. Hopefully they will add many more.
Does anyone else have the annoying delay on pages with YouTube videos? My entire browser locks up for probably 15 seconds on average now for any page that has an embedded YouTube video (not always but very often now). I find this very annoying.
Related: Science and Engineering Webcast Directory - More Great Webcasts: Nanotech and more - Google Technology Talks
SciVee is a new site by the great people at PLoS, with support from NSF and San Diego Supercomputer Center. It is very early in the launch of this effort but it looks very promising.
Of course plenty of great videos are already online but this looks like another great effort at helping improve communication of scientific ideas by the Public Library of Science. And there are advantages to a community lead by scientists that not only posts videos but encourages scientific discussion on the related matters. I am hopeful (and confident) this will become a great resource.
Related: Science and Engineering Webcast Directory - Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Public Lectures - Google Engineering and Technology Webcasts
Originally I posted this to my employers blog: Engineering and…. It turns out it was made public prematurely - SciVee update.
Cool video. If you are like me, it might take awhile to understand all that is said, it is packed with information.
Related: The Inner Life of a Cell, Animation - 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Scientists discover new class of RNA - science webcast posts
The online video is beautiful, see - Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell. Update: Unfortunately the webcast links on that page are not working but you can see a longer version than was available via: Inner Life of a Cell - Full Version.
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Huge amount of University of California Berkely webcasts of course lectures. Subscribe to RSS feeds and listen to podcasts or listen online.
Courses include: General Biology, Solid State Devices and Introductory Physics. Course websites include handouts for the lectures.
A great open access resource.
I can’t believe I have mentioned MIT open courseware before but a search didn’t find anything. MIT’s effort is an excellent resource, many on science and engineering: Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering, etc..
MIT also includes the excellent: Visualizing Cultures - a gateway to seeing history through images that once had wide circulation among peoples of different times and places by John Dower (author of National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winning: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II) and Shigeru Miyagawa.
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