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Why the Best Male Doesn’t Always Win
NORMAN, Okla.– Survival of the fittest really boils down to reproduction of the fittest. If an animal can survive long enough to pass on its genes to a new generation, it has won out in the evolutionary competition. [More]
NORMAN, Okla.– Survival of the fittest really boils down to reproduction of the fittest. If an animal can survive long enough to pass on its genes to a new generation, it has won out in the evolutionary competition. [More]
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Natural Selection and Evolution, with a Key to Many Complicating Factors
June is Pride Month in the United States, and in communities across the country, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans are celebrating with carnivals, parades, and marches. Pride is a rebuke to the shame and marginalization many LGBT people face growing up, and a celebration of the freedoms we’ve won since the days when our sexual orientations were considered psychological diseases and grounds for harrassment and arrest . It’s also a chance to acknowledge how far we still have to go, and to organize our efforts for a better future.
And, of course, it’s a great big party.
June is Pride Month in the United States, and in communities across the country, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans are celebrating with carnivals, parades, and marches. Pride is a rebuke to the shame and marginalization many LGBT people face growing up, and a celebration of the freedoms we’ve won since the days when our sexual orientations were considered psychological diseases and grounds for harrassment and arrest . It’s also a chance to acknowledge how far we still have to go, and to organize our efforts for a better future.
And, of course, it’s a great big party.
Hacking the Lights Out: The Computer Virus Threat to the Electrical Grid (preview)
Last year word broke of a computer virus that had managed to slip into Iran’s highly secure nuclear enrichment facilities. Most viruses multiply without prejudice, but the Stuxnet virus had a specific target in its sights–one that is not connected to the Internet. Stuxnet was planted on a USB stick that was handed to an unsuspecting technician, who plugged it into a computer at a secure facility. Once inside, the virus spread silently for months, searching for a computer that was connected to a prosaic piece of machinery: a programmable logic controller, a special-purpose collection of microelectronics that commonly controls the cogs of industry–valves, gears, motors and switches. When Stuxnet identified its prey, it slipped in, unnoticed, and seized control.
Last year word broke of a computer virus that had managed to slip into Iran’s highly secure nuclear enrichment facilities. Most viruses multiply without prejudice, but the Stuxnet virus had a specific target in its sights–one that is not connected to the Internet. Stuxnet was planted on a USB stick that was handed to an unsuspecting technician, who plugged it into a computer at a secure facility. Once inside, the virus spread silently for months, searching for a computer that was connected to a prosaic piece of machinery: a programmable logic controller, a special-purpose collection of microelectronics that commonly controls the cogs of industry–valves, gears, motors and switches. When Stuxnet identified its prey, it slipped in, unnoticed, and seized control.
How Simple Photos Could Be Used as a Test for a Conscious Machine [Contest]
The mystery of human consciousness appears routinely as one of the greatest science problems of all time. One way to get a grip on this seemingly ineffable property would be to build a conscious machine. It may be many years before that happens. But the overriding question, when someone does try, will be: how will we know whether that machine is really conscious–and not merely faking it? [More]
The mystery of human consciousness appears routinely as one of the greatest science problems of all time. One way to get a grip on this seemingly ineffable property would be to build a conscious machine. It may be many years before that happens. But the overriding question, when someone does try, will be: how will we know whether that machine is really conscious–and not merely faking it? [More]
A Test for Consciousness (preview)
Computers inch ever closer to behaving like intelligent human beings–witness the ability of IBM’s Watson to beat the all-time champs of the television quiz show Jeopardy . So far, though, most people would doubt that computers truly “see” a visual scene full of shapes and colors in front of their cameras, that they truly “hear” a question through their microphones, that they feel anything–experience consciousness–the way humans do, despite computers’ remarkable ability to crunch data at superhuman speed.
Computers inch ever closer to behaving like intelligent human beings–witness the ability of IBM’s Watson to beat the all-time champs of the television quiz show Jeopardy . So far, though, most people would doubt that computers truly “see” a visual scene full of shapes and colors in front of their cameras, that they truly “hear” a question through their microphones, that they feel anything–experience consciousness–the way humans do, despite computers’ remarkable ability to crunch data at superhuman speed.
A Nobel Celebration (preview)
The Fundamental Physical Limits of Computation
Editor’s note (6/1/2011): We are making the text of this July 1985 article freely available for 30 days to coincide with the publication of a paper on entropy and quantum systems by Vlatko Vedral. He authored our June 2011 cover story and blogs about his latest work , which discusses the research featured in this 1985 article.
A computation, whether it is performed by electronic machinery, on an abacus or in a biological system such as the brain, is a physical process. It is subject to the same questions that apply to other physical processes: How much energy must be expended to perform a particular computation? How long must it take? How large must the computing device be? In other words, what are the physical limits of the process of computation?
Editor’s note (6/1/2011): We are making the text of this July 1985 article freely available for 30 days to coincide with the publication of a paper on entropy and quantum systems by Vlatko Vedral. He authored our June 2011 cover story and blogs about his latest work , which discusses the research featured in this 1985 article.
A computation, whether it is performed by electronic machinery, on an abacus or in a biological system such as the brain, is a physical process. It is subject to the same questions that apply to other physical processes: How much energy must be expended to perform a particular computation? How long must it take? How large must the computing device be? In other words, what are the physical limits of the process of computation?
The Evolution of Common Sense
Arthur Stanley Eddington was an interesting fellow. The English astrophysicist who photographed the solar eclipse that validated Einstein’s theory of general relativity was also a Quaker, a pacifist, and a clever popular writer. In his 1928 book The Nature of the Physical World [1] he began by noting that he had before him two tables: one of common sense, which was substantial and could change its essential nature if burned, and the table of science, which was insubstantial, mostly empty space, and which if burned changed only its state, not its essence.
Arthur Stanley Eddington was an interesting fellow. The English astrophysicist who photographed the solar eclipse that validated Einstein’s theory of general relativity was also a Quaker, a pacifist, and a clever popular writer. In his 1928 book The Nature of the Physical World [1] he began by noting that he had before him two tables: one of common sense, which was substantial and could change its essential nature if burned, and the table of science, which was insubstantial, mostly empty space, and which if burned changed only its state, not its essence.
Jumping Heartbeat: Exercise Your Pulse
Physics and the Immortality of the Soul
The topic of "life after death" raises disreputable connotations of past-life regression and haunted houses, but there are a large number of people in the world who believe in some form of persistence of the individual soul after life ends. Clearly this is an important question, one of the most important ones we can possibly think of in terms of relevance to human life. If science has something to say about, we should all be interested in hearing.
The topic of "life after death" raises disreputable connotations of past-life regression and haunted houses, but there are a large number of people in the world who believe in some form of persistence of the individual soul after life ends. Clearly this is an important question, one of the most important ones we can possibly think of in terms of relevance to human life. If science has something to say about, we should all be interested in hearing.
