Vitals - Baby brains...the secret to a smarter computer?

Vitals - Baby brains...the secret to a smarter computer?

The irony to this piece is that whilst they recognise the magnificent thing which is a child's mind and their capacity to learn, they want to make computers more like babies and children more like computers (i.e. to only function within parameters that they define as important and useful). It's sort of like telling Salvador Dali that he could paint anything that he wants.... as long as its a stick figure.

Excerpts below -the full article can be read from the link above  

...Cognitive scientists hope to bottle up a baby's brain — and the imagination and air of possibility that comes with it — and use the result to make computers smarter.

"Children are the greatest learning machines in the universe," .... "Imagine if computers could learn as much and as quickly as they do," 

Scientists such as Gopnik have known a healthy newborn brain contains a lifetime's supply of some 100 billion neurons; as a baby matures, these brain cells grow a vast network of synapses or connections (about 15,000 by the age of 2 or 3), which allow tots to learn languages and social skills, all the while figuring out how to survive and thrive in their environment.

Adults, meanwhile, tend to focus more on the goal at hand rather than letting their powers of imagination run wild. It's this combination — goal-minded adults and open-minded children — that may be ideal for teaching computers new tricks, the researchers suspect... This childlike exploratory and "probabilistic" reasoning could make computers not just smarter, but more adaptable and more human, the team says.

"Young children are capable of solving problems that still pose a challenge for computers, such as learning languages and figuring out causal relationships,.... We are hoping to make computers smarter by making them a little more like children."

Nature Deficit Disorder The Santa Barbara Independent

Nature Deficit Disorder The Santa Barbara Independent

So much in this piece...so eloquent, so accurate....so sad.  

Excerpts below -the full article can be read from the link above  

During the past several months, one primary theme of this column has been the importance of a sense of place. This article builds on the theme by describing an important problem — ecological illiteracy.

Wild salmon can navigate through oceans .... In reproduction, this sense is passed on from one generation to another. 

.....Our human capacity to make connections between mountains, rivers, and the sea is also an important factor that contributes to our capacity to sustain our community. The problem today is that we rarely understand these connections, nor are we willing to nurture and protect these ecological and cultural relationships that sustain our economies. We enter our machines (car or bus) and quickly become passengers through a world we no longer care to understand.

We view the world through the lens of a mechanical and electronic eye (e.g., the computer, television, and camera lens).... The mass media first convinced us that the imaginary was real, and now they are convincing us that the real is imaginary. ...The more reality the TV screen shows us, the more cinematic our everyday world becomes. The reliance on technology can change our relationship to nature and society. Real “nature” is becoming imaginary — even as natural entities depicted on the TV screen go extinct......We continue to turn to the mass media to represent nature rather than interacting and participating in a natural world.

As we go further into an electronic and digital era, the separation of humanity from place seems inevitable. Children are more familiar with a cell phone or iPhone that depicts images of an imaginary nature than they are with a species of oak and chaparral that are part of their landscapes. 

Each generation is brought up to a different environmental context. With each generation, the diminishment of the natural world around us diminishes our shared ability to learn from other animals and our natural surroundings, and to adapt. We become more digitally connected but lose our capacity to relate to community.

Ultimately, the denaturing of nature coincides with a dehumanized society, people disconnected from the natural world and from one another. The loss of what it means to be a human being unfolds along with the death of nature.

The cultural and social aspects of this denaturing effect are dramatic. Society faces a crisis in education, poverty, and homelessness. Our political and economic elite fail to recognize the connection between ecological decay and cultural impoverishment. This scenario is being played out worldwide as material poverty accompanies what we often celebrate as technological progress.

Hospital hero? This frog has the makings of a lifesaver

Hospital hero? This frog has the makings of a lifesaver

Nature to the rescue of humanity yet again. It seem however that unless we can put a price tag on it or unless it can directly save us (usually from predicaments we've created) it's regarded as worthless.

Excerpts below -the full article can be read from the link above  

NUCLEAR scientists are using native frogs to thwart hospital superbugs in work that sounds more like the plot of a sci-fi thriller than legitimate research.

Sydney and Melbourne scientists are studying several species of Australian frogs.... whose skin secretions are toxic to a range of bacteria, including multi-drug-resistant golden staph know as MRSA.

The research leader, Frances Separovic, a biophysical biologist, said most antimicrobial peptides killed bacteria by puncturing or lysing (causing them to disintegrate) their membranes. This made it hard for bacteria to develop resistance to them..'On the other hand, most antibiotics inhibit protein synthesis in a bacteria and, over time, mutations in the bacteria lead to resistance to the antibiotics,'' 

Kids' playground goes back to nature

Kids' playground goes back to nature

"People of all ages can enjoy it. It's not just a structure for two-to five-year-olds."

Excerpts below -the full article can be read from the link above 

Kory Baker-Henderson pushes her three-year-old daughter, Kaleena, at Donnan Park recently. The playground soon will be converted to become Edmonton's first "natural playground."

Children won't find new monkey bars and bright plastic play structures at the upgraded Donnan Park.

Instead, the aging playground at 9105 80th Ave. will become Edmonton's first "natural playground," part of a growing trend in playground design.

Children in the redesigned Donnan Park will entertain themselves with such timehonoured playthings as rocks, sticks, sand and dirt. The overhauled space will feature a slide built into a hill, a sideways-growing tree, a boulder spiral, a hand pump to pour water into a small stream and plenty of plants, trees and greenery.

"Studies have shown imaginative play is much more stimulated (in natural settings) and children actually will play longer and become much more involved than on a typical red, plastic slide structure. Their games will just get much more imaginative. There's that connection with nature. We have plans for a community garden, so it's a learning and teaching tool, too."

Community volunteers have already secured two grants and are collecting donations to fund the natural playground that should cost between $50,000 and $100,000.That's far cheaper than a traditional, prefabricated play structure which can cost $200,000 or more, says Baker-Henderson.

The natural playgrounds meet all the regular safety standards, says company founder and principal designer Adam Bienenstock."We're seeing injury rates drop at schools where we've made this change from asphalt, plastic and steel to mulch, grass, rolling hills and boulders and logs as climbers," Bienenstock says.

Studies have shown children are also less aggressive and less likely to bully each other when they are spread out in natural settings instead of being clumped together and vying for space at the top of prefabricated play structures, Bienenstock says. "The truth is, you put kids into the woods and they get better. It's not that complicated."

Efforts to better connect kids with nature have attracted attention as people recognize the benefits that spring from the outdoors, ...."It's just so simple. It just allows kids to collect bugs, to find earth-worms, to see things grow, to plant seeds and see vegetables grow, to have shade from a tree,.....People are sometimes looking for alternatives to the highly technical world kids are in more and more, realizing of course that connections to nature are important and perhaps slipping away."

Outside is back in

Outside is back in

Excerpts below -the full article can be read from the link above 

It's important to take the time to appreciate our open spaces, as a little fresh air could be better for you than you think.

From improving physical health to lifting mood, promoting relaxation, improving concentration, hastening healing and facilitating social connectedness, nature seems to have it all.

''The evidence is starting to accumulate from around the world that people need green space....

People like architects, urban planners and engineers and health experts have all been doing research in the last decade or so and found that, with more green spaces, people take more exercise, which is great in fighting things like obesity and heart disease and diabetes.

''There's also evidence that hospital patients who see or have access to green spaces need less painkillers than those who don't, and that green spaces help relaxation, which increases attention restoration.''

A 2003 Swedish study of almost 1000 people in nine cities found that the more time people spent in outdoor public green space, the less stressed they felt and the fewer stress-related illnesses they reported regardless of age, gender and socio-economic status.

The British mental health organisation Mind, in its Ecotherapy report, recommended that ''green exercise'' be considered as a clinically valid treatment for people experiencing mental distress. And scientists at the University of Essex found that just five minutes of green exercise a day resulted in improvements in mood and self-esteem.

In 2009, a team of Dutch researchers headed by health expert Jolanda Maas found that the general prevalence for 15 out of 24 diseases - including anxiety, depression, heart disease, diabetes, chronic neck and back pain, asthma and migraine - was lower in people living in environments with more green space in a one-kilometre radius. In 2001, University of Illinois professor Frances Kuo looked at the relationship between levels of vegetation and crime rates in a Chicago public housing development. She found that housing blocks with high levels of greenery had 48 per cent fewer property crimes and 56 per cent fewer violent crimes than housing blocks with little or no vegetation.

......''We have evolved from open spaces,'' he says. ''It's not surprising that we have developed to get something out of nature and green spaces, just like we get something out of food and sex and drink.''

......''For me, personally, being away from the noise of the city and computers makes a world of difference,'' she says. When I'm close to nature, I'm most at peace. ''I imagine it's a bit of a fundamental thing - if you think about how we were designed to live, sustaining ourselves from the land, it's probably innate to want to go back to those roots.''

A plan to save Europe's threatened butterflies - Technology & science - Science - OurAmazingPlanet - msnbc.com

A plan to save Europe's threatened butterflies

First bees and then butterflies, aren't we a grand species. This must be the reason for all the extreme worldwide weather events. You know,  "A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil we get a hurricane of the coast of Florida"

Excerpts below -the full article can be read from the link above 

....In the last 15 years alone, the numbers of 17 key European butterfly species have declined by 70 percent, according to a statement from researchers with the group Butterfly Conservation Europe. Up to 10 percent of the butterfly species are now threatened with extinction. Across the Atlantic, in North America, monarch butterfly numbers have also suffered.

In Europe, habitat destruction is fueling the steep losses.....Oddly, it appears that the decline of agriculture in Europe is bad for the butterflies.

......the report say that maintaining working farms is an important activity that keeps woody shrubs from taking over the grassy meadows where butterflies typically live. In addition, ...... grazing animals also help preserve key butterfly habitat. However, they say that too much agriculture — cutting too much grass for hay, letting animals overgraze a pasture — can kill off the insects.

The group also recommends keeping a diverse mosaic of plants alive in key grassland areas, since different species rely on different plants, and employ a wide variety of strategies to survive. In fact, one threatened butterfly relies on ants to stay alive, and as the ants are disappearing, so are their larger insect dependants.

"Managing habitats in the correct way is the single most important issue affecting the survival of European butterflies," lead author Chris van Swaay, of Dutch Butterfly Conservation, said in a statement. ......"We hope the advice will be taken up urgently across Europe to help save these beautiful species from extinction."

Growing Change

I highly recommend everyone view the documentary Growing Change. The film 'follows a filmmaker's journey to understand why current food systems leave hundreds of millions of people in hunger.  It's a journey to understand how the world will feed itself in the future in the face of major environmental challenges....... After hearing about efforts in Venezuela to develop a more equitable and sustainable food and agriculture system, the filmmaker heads there to see if it's working and find out what we might be able to learn from this giant experiment.

We meet people in the cities and in the countryside and learn that while Venezuela once had a strong agriculture sector it was left behind as the country became a major oil exporting economy in the 20th century. After decades of urbanisation, government neglect for agriculture, and dependent on food imports, Venezuela faced a food crisis of its own. In may ways the country was a microcosm of the challenges facing much of the world today.

.....The documentary takes us through a new food system as it's being constructed almost from scratch.
We meet farmers who are gaining access to land for the first time and working in cooperatives to break the country's reliance on imports. In lush costal villages we meet cocoa producers who are now protected against being paid below the minumum price and are now involved in the local processing of chocolate rather than just exporting raw beans. We head out to sea with fisherfolk who are benefiting from new regulations that ban industrial trawling.In the chaotic metropolis of Caracas we find urban gardens thriving and supplementing diets with fresh organic produce. We go inside shops where the urban poor have access to affordable food.

It's all part of a country-wide process towards "food sovereignty", driven by communities and the government. At the core of the process are principles of social justice and sustainability.'