Jessa Gamble: Our natural sleep cycle

Name of Speaker, name of talk and URL:

Jessa Gamble: Our natural sleep cycle


Brief description or summary of talk:

This was a short discussion on how people react to sleep in different many surroundings. She gives several examples of species and plants along with humans on how their sleep patterns evolve with day light and darkness. She discuss mostly about our inner clock.

Your impressions of the talk including a discussion of what was most significant to you and why:

The talk felt as if she wasn't done it felt incomplete. How we all plants, humans, animals alike all evolve in some way, whether it be our sleeping pattern to how he do or act a certain way.

Three links associated with the individual or talk with the following information of each
Name of Link: Dr. Shock
URL of link: http://www.shockmd.com/2010/09/17/our-natural-sleep-cycle/

Name of Link: Magma
URL of link: http://mag.ma/roid/786326

Name of Link:
URL of link:
Brief Description of Links You-tube, shockmd, mag.ma, and several other websites show this video. They all show the exact video of Jessa Gamble talking about sleep.

Joshua Klein on the intelligence of crows

Name of Speaker, name of talk and URL


Joshua Klein on the intelligence of crows

Joshua Klein on the intelligence of crows | Video on TED.com

Brief description or summary of talk

This talk confirms my worst nightmare. That crows know what they are doing.
Joshua talks about how crows and other species that are not extinct should be used for other things and not just to be killed like pesky creatures. Crows try to figure things out they don't give up easily. Joshua has studied crows for 10 yrs. and had an idea to make a vending machine for crows. It goes in stages to train them to use coins to get their peanuts.



Your impressions of the talk including a discussion of what was most significant to you and why

It just confirms what I have always thought. I am scared of crows because they intimidating me. I always felt that they knew what they were doing and had plans. The most significant thing to me is actually taking this intelligent creature and turning it into a useful tool. I never really thought about how smart they could be or what they could be used for. Because I always felt the urge to run away or stay clear of them.

Three links associated with the individual or talk with the following information of each

Name of Link:
Joshua Klein Shows What Crows Can Do
URL of link
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15322
Brief Description of Link
Looks like a blog with the same video on it and a brief bio.


information of each
Name of Link:
TED 2008: Crow vending machine maker Joshua Klein
URL of link
http://boingboing.net/2008/02/29/ted-2008-crow-vendin.html
Brief Description of Link
Another blog with pictures of himself and another of the crow vending machine.


Name of Link:
Welcome to Josh.is
Hacking the future, one day at a time

URL of link
http://www.josh.is/

Brief Description of Link this is Joshua's own website that has links to his stuff like projects and information.

Name of Speaker, name of talk and URL

Mark Roth, Mark Roth: Suspended animation is within our grasp,

http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_roth_suspended_animation.html

Brief description or summary of talk

Mark Roth discusses the idea of suspended animation. The process of reanimating a living creature and then reanimating it at a future date with no harmful side effects. The way he does this is by having the subject breath in a chemical known as Hydrogen Sulfide, which binds to our cells instead of oxygen, which reduces our need for air and allowing subjects to live in areas of extremely low oxygen content. All the subject needs to do to reanimate is simply be put out in the open air at room temperature, no complex recovery techniques required.

Your impressions of the talk including a discussion of what was most significant to you and why

The ability to effectively make a person immortal is awesome. This talks about a different way of suspended animation of which the only other way I knew of was with cryogenics. The implications in the medical field are miraculous, but only so if in Mark's words, "they become more common".

Name of Speaker, name of talk and URL

Peter Molyneux, Peter Molyneux demos Milo, the virtual boy,

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_molyneux_demos_milo_the_virtual_boy.html

Brief description or summary of talk

Peter Molyneux demos Milo, an advanced AI character that exists within a video game. In the demo Milo shows the ability to talk to and understand the player, learn and adapt to the choices and decisions him and the player make in his world. In a previous demo, Milo also shows the ability to take an item from the real world and copy its image to use in the game world.

Your impressions of the talk including a discussion of what was most significant to you and why

The advanced nature of AI in games is becoming very good and Milo proves it. Milo really shows the power of the Kinect camera and the ability to take outside objects into the ingame world is remarkable.

Three links associated with the individual or talk wih the following information of each

Name of Link:

Rumour: Project Milo cancelled

URL of link

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-09-23-rumour-project-milo-cancelled

Brief Description of Link

Project Milo rumored to be canceled.

Sebastian Seung

Sebastian Seung: I am my connectomes.

Sebastian Seung gives a funny, deeeeep look at neuro-connections in the brain. He shows how single neurons and synapses and brain chemicals work to facilitate thinking and how the act of thinking changes the brain itself.



As we change through childhood and grow older through adulthood, our personalities and identities, morph. What causes these changes and how will it affect me personally? I am especially interested in brain function and more importantly... dis-function, because of the age group I occupy and the fact that there will be so few to support so many in the coming years. The world is coming when those in "The Boomer" group will be “dependent” upon so few others, that I personally want to avoid this situation as long as possible. Understanding brain function (and what's coming) might just help.

Sebastian Seung Homepage
Find conact info and good links on this page.

H. Sebastian Seung Publications
Lists of publications by Dr. Seung

About BCS Research Academics
"Seeing Connectomes" Dr.Seung discusses the need for mapping brain function and the reasons new machines need to be developed.

Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer on Strange Beliefs


He talks about “strange beliefs”, things like seeing the virgin Mary on toast as being something that we want to believe is there, and that we take whatever it is and almost twist it to suit what we would like to see.

I agree with him that some things people want to believe in are things that we look to hard at and almost fool ourselves into believing. He had some lyrics to a song that he played backwards. The audience only caught the word “Satan”, but when he played the song backwards again, but this time presented a whole set of lyrics, the words that didn’t make sense, suddenly seemed crystal clear. That, and things like wanting to, and perhaps because it’s wired biologically into us to, see faces in things that don’t have a face (like Mars). That part of his talk I agree with. Other things he’s skeptic of, I tend to think that while no science can back it up yet, it shouldn’t be discounted. While I personally agree with some of his views, I think that he has long since decided to close off a certain degree of open-mindedness many people still have.



Three links associated with the individual or talk:

The work of Michael Shermer
It is his website. Specifically, this link is to his about page and shows books he’s written, education, and television programs he has been a part of.

Skeptic Magazine
The online front page of Skeptic magazine that Michael Shermer helped start. It is probably a very good representation of the things he believes (or rather doesn’t) in.


Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time
It’s the amazon.com page to buy Michael Shermer’s book “Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time”. The book itself seems to be a longer, better articulated version of his talk at TED.

Srikumar Rao

Srikumar Rao

Plug into your hard-wired happiness

Srikumar Rao explained that people spend most of their lives learning to be unhappy, even as they strive for happiness. He teaches people how to break free of the "I'd be happy if..." its a mental model and how to embrace your hard-wired happiness.

My impressions with this video was that it was a good way to show that people are always trying to find better happiness, when in reality they have it right there in front of them. Rao explained that people come up with these mental models of the world, like for example people always use the if...than...model than they will be happy. Models are flawed, he says that your actions are within your control, outcome is outside your control, people think of how to define their life, here I am... ,here is where I want to go... , & if I succeed... You want to invest in the process of your life not In the outcome, because your outcome could be totally different of what you wanted to happen, or vise versa. A question he told everyone was to ask yourself " Is this a journey I want to take, does this take me to a place I want to spend my time?" If you do find this, you will find that people you meet, movies you go to, books you read, and places you go everything changes, so begin by focusing on the process and not the outcome...

Three links associated with the individual or talk:

What makes us happy?

"The Pursuit of Happiness" was 2004's conference theme, TED speakers over many years have continued this quest, and what actually makes us happy.

Unconventional Explanations

Sometimes the best way to reach the right answer is to be unafraid of asking the question sideways. Take Jonathan Haidt, who looks to psychology to explain our current political climate.

How the mind works

It's important to step back and consider the engine that creates them: the human mind. How exactly does the brain, a three-pound snarl of electrochemically frantic nervous tissue, create inspired inventions, the feeling of hunger, the experience of beauty, or the sense of self, and how reliable is it?