Archive for September, 2018
BBC – Earth – The strange link between the human mind and quantum physics
Sunday, September 23rd, 2018The strange link between the human mind & quantum physics
http://www.BBC.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-quantum-physics Wave packet collapse & decision making. A potential connection between #QuantumComputing & #Neuroscience
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“As a result, physicists are often embarrassed to even mention the words “quantum” and “consciousness” in the same sentence.
But setting that aside, the idea has a long history. Ever since the “observer effect” and the mind first insinuated themselves into quantum theory in the early days, it has been devilishly hard to kick them out. A few researchers think we might never manage to do so. …
One particularly puzzling question is how our conscious minds can experience unique sensations, such as the colour red or the smell of frying bacon. With the exception of people with visual impairments, we all know what red is like, but we have no way to communicate the sensation and there is nothing in physics that tells us what it should be like.
Sensations like this are called “qualia”. We perceive them as unified properties of the outside world, but in fact they are products of our consciousness – and that is hard to explain. Indeed, in 1995 philosopher David Chalmers dubbed it “the hard problem” of
consciousness.
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This has prompted him to suggest that “we could make some progress on understanding the problem of the evolution of consciousness if we supposed that consciousnesses alters (albeit perhaps very slightly and subtly) quantum probabilities.””
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Faculty and Research Support | Giving to Yale
Sunday, September 23rd, 2018https://giving.yale.edu/priorities/faculty-and-research-support
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Endowed chairs enable Yale to attract outstanding academic talent to the faculty. Because the endowment secures the position itself, it enables Yale to appoint a distinguished professor whenever a position becomes vacant, building a tradition of leadership in the selected discipline. The endowed chair is widely recognized as the most prestigious honor a university can bestow on an accomplished faculty member.
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A brief history of data science
Saturday, September 22nd, 2018Want To Live Longer? Take Up Tennis.
Saturday, September 22nd, 20188 Ways to Make Your Flight Better – The New York Times
Saturday, September 22nd, 2018Getting started with Apple’s new Shortcuts app | iMore
Saturday, September 22nd, 2018Jack Belliveau, Explorer of the Brain Using M.R.I., Dies at 55
Saturday, September 22nd, 2018Anticipating the upcoming #NobelPrize announcements, here’s someone who probably should have won the prize for discovering fMRI had he not
died so young https://www.NYTimes.com/2014/03/10/science/jack-belliveau-explorer-of-the-brain-dies-at-55.html Jack Belliveau, Explorer of the Brain Using MRI, Dies at 55
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“Dr. Belliveau was a 30-year-old graduate student at the Martinos Center when he hatched a scheme to “see” the neural trace of brain activity. …
Dr. Belliveau tried a different approach. He had developed a technique to track blood flow, called dynamic susceptibility contrast, using an M.R.I. scanner that took split-second images, faster than was usual at the time. This would become a standard technique for assessing blood perfusion in stroke patients and others, but Dr. Belliveau thought he would try it to spy on a normal brain in the act of thinking or perceiving.
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“He went out to RadioShack and bought a strobe light, like you’d see in a disco,” said Dr. Bruce Rosen, director of the Martinos Center and one of Dr. Belliveau’s advisers at the time. “He thought the strobe would help image the visual areas of the brain, where there was a lot of interest.”
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