The Singularity

The Singularity Report in IEEE Spectrum is a full issue dealing with Ray Kurzweil's idea that machines will pass human intelligence by 2030. 

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Brain Stimulant: Neuromorphic Brain

 

DARPA has a five year program called Systems Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics or SyNAPSE for short. I already previously mentioned this project that the US military is undertaking in another blog post. Neuromorphic is basically the creation of digital neurons on a microchip that mimic the functioning of real neurons. Meaning they are creating computer hardware that can replicate how a neuron works and interacts with other neurons, like the synaptic connections and firing patterns. Ultimately it is hoped that neuromorphic chips will be able to process information in much the same way that a real brain can.

Brain Stimulant: Neuromorphic Brain

This article  discusses another attempt to mimic the human brain.  It seems to be more hardware oriented than 'blue brain'  but the goal is similiar

 

Technorati Tags: DARPA,Blue Brain,neuromorphic chips,SyNAPSE

Blue Brain and Consciousness

This podcast explains what is being done in the blue brain project to simulate the human brain.  Markram's goal is to build a model of the human brain within ten years.

 

http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/mp3/TalkingRobots-HenryMarkram.mp3

Misreading the mind - Los Angeles Times

 

Some of the most exciting endeavors in neuroscience right now are trying to move beyond reductionism. The Blue Brain Project, for example, a collaboration between the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and IBM, is in the process of constructing a biologically accurate model of the brain that can be used to simulate experience on a supercomputer. Henry Markram, the leader of the project, recently told me that he's convinced "reductionism peaked five years ago." While Markram is quick to add that the reductionism program isn't complete -- "There is still so much that we don't know about the brain," he says -- he's trying to solve a harder problem, which is figuring out how all these cellular details connect together. "The Blue Brain Project" he says, "is about showing people the whole." In other words, Markram wants to hear the music.
One day, we'll look back at the history of neuroscience and realize that reductionism was just the first phase. Each year, tens of thousands of neuroscience papers are published in scientific journals. The field is introduced to countless new acronyms, pathways and proteins. At a certain point, however, all of this detail starts to have diminishing returns. After all, the real paradox of the brain is why it feels like more than the sum of its parts. How does our pale gray matter become the Technicolor cinema of consciousness? What transforms the water of the brain into the wine of the mind? Where does the self come from?
Reductionism can't answer these questions. According to the facts of neuroscience, your head contains 100 billion electrical cells, but not one of them is you, or knows you or cares about you. In fact, you don't even exist. You are simply an elaborate cognitive illusion, an "epiphenomenon" of the cortex. Our mystery is denied.

Misreading the mind - Los Angeles Times

Ovarian cancer stem cells identified, characterized

This is another indication of stem cell involvement with cancer 

“Present chemotherapy modalities eliminate the bulk of the tumor cells, but cannot eliminate a core of these cancer stem cells that have a high capacity for renewal,” said Mor, who is also a member of the Yale Cancer Center. “Identification of these cells, as we have done here, is the first step in the development of therapeutic modalities.”

Mor and colleagues isolated cells from 80 human samples of either peritoneal fluid or solid tumors. The cancer stem cells that were identified were positive for traditional cancer stem cell markers including CD44 and MyD88. These cells also showed a high capacity for repair and self-renewal.

The isolated cells formed tumors 100 percent of the time. Within those tumors, 10 percent of the cells were positive for cancer stem cell marker CD44, while 90 percent were CD44 negative.

Mor and his team were able to isolate and clone the ovarian cancer stem cells. They found that these cells were highly resistant to conventional chemotherapy while the non-cancer stem cells responded to treatment. “Isolating and cloning these cells will lead to development of new treatments to target and eliminate the cancer stem cells and hopefully prevent recurrence,” said Mor.

Ovarian cancer stem cells identified, characterized

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Biology News Net - Email to a Friend

 

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2008/04/17/intelligence_and_rhythmic_accuracy_go_hand_in_hand.html

This is one more indicator of how the brain works

Biology News Net - Email to a Friend

Blue Brain Project

 

The Blue Brain project is the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations.

In July 2005, EPFL and IBM announced an exciting new research initiative - a project to create a biologically accurate, functional model of the brain using IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer. Analogous in scope to the Genome Project, the Blue Brain will provide a huge leap in our understanding of brain function and dysfunction and help us explore solutions to intractable problems in mental health and neurological disease.

At the end of 2006, the Blue Brain project had created a model of the basic functional unit of the brain, the neocortical column. At the push of a button, the model could reconstruct biologically accurate neurons based on detailed experimental data, and automatically connect them in a biological manner, a task that involves positioning around 30 million synapses in precise 3D locations.

In November, 2007, the Blue Brain project reached an important milestone and the conclusion of its first Phase, with the announcement of an entirely new data-driven process for creating, validating, and researching the neocortical column.

Blue Brain Project