Monthly Archives: August 2010

Thinking Outside the Box

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"The Great Recession has really knocked the stuffing out of our industry," declared Paul Kellet of RIA. The robotics industry has responded by targeting different markets and focusing on technological improvements that make robotics a good fit for applications like food or pharmaceutical processing.

Rigging the Game

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The petroleum industry is unique in its long-term outlook. As fossil fuel production inevitably faces the back side of peak oil, drillers will need to start finding other ways to make a living. Carbon sequestration's need for new wells and work-overs may be the answer — the ideal solution in a

Missile Defense for Passenger Aircraft

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The vulnerability of planes to terrorists wielding shoulder-fired missiles is an "an imminent and acute threat" according to the Federation of American Scientists, which obtained the unpublished U.S. Homeland Security Department report via a Freedom of Information Act request. Airlines oppose instal

IBM maps Macaque brain network

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We're another step closer to reverse-engineering the human brain: IBM scientists have created the most comprehensive map of a brain’s network. The image above, called "The Mandala of the Mind," portrays the long-distance network of the Macaque monkey brain, spanning the cortex, thalamus, and basal ganglia, showing 6,602 long-distance connections between 383 brain regions.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a landmark paper entitled “Network architecture of the long-distance pathways in the macaque brain” (an open-access paper) by Dharmendra S. Modha (IBM Almaden) and Raghavendra Singh (IBM Research-India) with major implications for reverse-engineering the brain and developing a network of cognitive-computing chips.

Dr. Modha writes:

We have successfully uncovered and mapped the most comprehensive long-distance network of the Macaque monkey brain, which is essential for understanding the brain’s behavior, complexity, dynamics and computation. We can now gain unprecedented insight into how information travels and is processed across the brain. We have collated a comprehensive, consistent, concise, coherent, and colossal network spanning the entire brain and grounded in anatomical tracing studies that is a stepping stone to both fundamental and applied research in neuroscience and cognitive computing.

Link.

Hughes: What are reproductive rights?

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IEET executive director James Hughes has posted some of his responses to a journalist’s questions about reproductive rights. Highlights:

Do you really think there will be equal access for this technology? Why wouldn’t it create a caste system of the enhanced and the non-enhanced?

Equal access to any technological enablement is the result of ongoing political struggle. Societies with stronger civil liberties, trade unions and social democratic parties will provide better universal technological access, from sewers to the Net to gene therapy. In other more unequal societies genetic therapies may exacerbate inequality. The difference in outcomes will be determined by the strengthen of democratic movements and parties, however, not by policies governing the access to technologies. Because of the growth of medical tourism banning access to a technology will simply restrict access to the wealthy, and will not stem the emergence of a two-tier society.

Why do you dislike the term “designer babies”?

“Designer babies” impugns the motivations of parents, who are generally trying to ensure the best possible lives for their children. If parents provide food, exercise and education for children to ensure that they are smart and healthy we praise them as responsible. When they try to ensure the same goods for their children with reproductive technology we imply that they have twisted, malign, instrumental values.

Even in the case of reproductive choices which are cosmetic, such as eye or hair color, we do not slander parents for how they dress or groom their children, but we do if they exercise a simple cosmetic choice before birth. We should stop using the term.

Totally agree with J's point about rooting out the 'designer babies' term. It totally trivializes and demeans the pending practice. In its place I've been using the term 'human trait selection.'

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