SMP Pictures
01-02-2013
, 06:53 PM
01-03-2013
, 12:40 AM
Quote:
The principal discovery is an 80 feet (24 m) line of hominid fossil footprints, discovered by Mary Leakey and her team in 1976 (and fully excavated by 1978), preserved in powdery volcanic ash originally thought to have been from an eruption of the 20 km distant Sadiman volcano. However, recent study of the Sadiman volcano has shown that it is not a source for the Laetoli Footprints Tuff (Zaitsev et al. 2011). Soft rain cemented the ash-layer (15 cm thick) to tuff without destroying the prints. In time, they were covered by other ash deposits.
The hominid prints were produced by three individuals, one walking in the footprints of the other, making the original tracks difficult to discover. As the tracks lead in the same direction, they might have been produced by a group visiting a waterhole together—but there is nothing to support the common assumption of a nuclear family.
The footprints demonstrate that the hominids habitually walked upright as there are no knuckle-impressions. The feet do not have the mobile big toe of apes; instead, they have an arch (the bending of the sole of the foot) typical of modern humans. The hominins seem to have moved in a leisurely stroll.
Computer simulations based on information from A. afarensis fossil skeletons and the spacing of the footprints indicate that the hominids were walking at 1.0 m/s or above, which matches human walking speeds.[1] The results of other studies have also supported the theory of a human-like gait
The hominid prints were produced by three individuals, one walking in the footprints of the other, making the original tracks difficult to discover. As the tracks lead in the same direction, they might have been produced by a group visiting a waterhole together—but there is nothing to support the common assumption of a nuclear family.
The footprints demonstrate that the hominids habitually walked upright as there are no knuckle-impressions. The feet do not have the mobile big toe of apes; instead, they have an arch (the bending of the sole of the foot) typical of modern humans. The hominins seem to have moved in a leisurely stroll.
Computer simulations based on information from A. afarensis fossil skeletons and the spacing of the footprints indicate that the hominids were walking at 1.0 m/s or above, which matches human walking speeds.[1] The results of other studies have also supported the theory of a human-like gait
Volcanic eruptions on Io, one of the four moons of Jupiter.
Photo from the surface of Mars. Not sure which rover took this photo.
01-05-2013
, 08:17 AM
Transistor counts for integrated circuits plotted against their dates of introduction. The curve shows Moore's law - the doubling of transistor counts every two years. The y-axis is logarithmic, so the line corresponds to exponential growth.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html#
Hard disk capacity between 1980 and present (2011), based on for-retail products. For data, data source, and discussion, see Talk page on Commons. Hankwang 17:00, 2 March 2008 (UTC), update 20:38, 18 September 2011 (UTC).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
Exponential growth of supercomputers performance, based on data from top500.org site. Y Axis shows performance in GFLOPS. Red line denotes fastest supercomputer in the world at the time. Yellow line denotes supercomputer no. 500 on TOP500 list. Dark blue line denotes total combined performance of supercomputers on TOP500 list
2 week weather modeling anyone?
http://www.top500.org/
next?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_revolt
Last edited by masque de Z; 01-05-2013 at 08:46 AM.
01-05-2013
, 11:20 AM
Notes made by Galois before departing for his fatal duel.
01-05-2013
, 02:17 PM
. This graph is probably about when you'll get the computing capacity of a human brain in your laptop for $1000. About year 2030 is an estimation. Didn't check it's credibility so deeply. Looks plausible to me.Naturally this development puts **** sapiens in a dead end position. We'll live in our own zoo for some generations. Would like to be a computer
Last edited by plaaynde; 01-05-2013 at 02:40 PM.
01-05-2013
, 02:53 PM
They tend to range in estimates, it appears from 10^14 to 10^16 "calculations" (instructions?) per second for human brain.
http://illuminati.wordpress.com/2007...e-human-brain/
http://signal-integrity.tm.agilent.c...e-human-brain/
http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
I may try to think about it to see if there is a plausible argument to support a number. For example one can say that vision alone processes something much better than 100 mil pixels per second (how many instructions per pixel to register it?) . Of course the brain controls so many things at the same time and you have about 10^14 synapses out of the 10^11 neurons. If each operates with trigger speed of 1/10000 of a sec you get something of order 10^14*10^4=10^18 operations per second at the maximum so obviously it ought to be a lot less than that but this seems like a maximum rate based on chemistry speeds. So maybe some Kurzweil number like 10^16 is not that bad of an idea.
eg ; (calcium ions entry reaction time)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_synapse
"The release of a neurotransmitter is triggered by the arrival of a nerve impulse (or action potential) and occurs through an unusually rapid process of cellular secretion (exocytosis). Within the presynaptic nerve terminal, vesicles containing neurotransmitter are localized near the synaptic membrane. The arriving action potential produces an influx of calcium ions through voltage-dependent, calcium-selective ion channels at the down stroke of the action potential (tail current).[11] Calcium ions then bind with the proteins found within the membranes of the synaptic vesicles, allowing the vesicles to fuse with the presynaptic membrane, resulting in the creation of a fusion pore. The vesicles then release their contents to the synaptic cleft through this fusion pore[12] within 180 µsec of calcium entry.[11] Vesicle fusion is driven by the action of a set of proteins in the presynaptic terminal known as SNAREs. As a whole, the protein complex or structure that mediates the docking and fusion of presynaptic vesicles is called the active zone.[13] The membrane added by this fusion is later retrieved by endocytosis and recycled for the formation of fresh neurotransmitter-filled vesicles."
We probably should not confuse our conscious part (limited focus of brain in some task perceived seen as subset of the entirety of its operation) with the entire thing. I mean on vision we basically focus on parts of the view we have and ignore the majority in details although obviously we receive those too and they are processed somehow even if not intensely recognized by our conscious self at the moment as effort?
(a home computer reaching our pace by say 2015-2018 on recent pc or supercomputer trend or 2030 in some more general trend? but of course this is not the same as arguing they will be sentient=conscious, just as active in some sense)
Last edited by masque de Z; 01-05-2013 at 03:22 PM.
01-05-2013
, 04:32 PM
01-08-2013
, 12:47 PM
physicsworld.com/blog/2009/03/the_atlas_of_science.html
Quote:
Do you know that when you access a research paper via a “web portal” such as Elsevier’s Science Direct your every “click” is being recorded?
Although this monitoring might at first seem a little scary and possibly unnecessary,
Johan Bollen and colleagues from Los Alamos National Laboratory have put the data to good use.
They have created a “map of science” using over a billion so-called “click-throughs” - produced when going from the web portal to the actual full text paper or the abstract on the journal’s website. The data was taken from 2007 to 2008.
After crunching the data through a so-called “clickstream model” they produced a map (see image above) with each circle representing a journal and the lines reflecting the navigation of users from one journal to another.
Although this monitoring might at first seem a little scary and possibly unnecessary,
Johan Bollen and colleagues from Los Alamos National Laboratory have put the data to good use.
They have created a “map of science” using over a billion so-called “click-throughs” - produced when going from the web portal to the actual full text paper or the abstract on the journal’s website. The data was taken from 2007 to 2008.
After crunching the data through a so-called “clickstream model” they produced a map (see image above) with each circle representing a journal and the lines reflecting the navigation of users from one journal to another.
01-09-2013
, 05:36 AM
01-17-2013
, 02:17 PM
01-23-2013
, 12:12 AM
Quote:
An ant as imaged using a scanning electron microscope (SEM)
02-06-2013
, 02:50 AM
The southern winter sky shows off its best in this 240 degree view of the Milky Way behind the Quiver Tree Forest near Keetmanshoop, Namibia. Both Magellanic clouds are visible on the left, while the central bulge of our own galaxy contrasts with the warm glow of light pollution from the nearby town.
Note: Photo from-
(Florian Breuer, South Africa, Shortlist, Panoramic, Open Competition 2013 Sony World Photography Awards)
