Machines Like Us – Science News

Thoughware.TV
A repository of scientific and technoprogressive multimedia from around the globe, which aims to spread knowledge and positive memes of future technological advancements in order to educate the public on scientific progress and the potential of enhancing the human condition.

Asimo: The Honda Humanoid Robot
ASIMO, the world's most advanced humanoid robot, features the ability to pursue key tasks in real-life environments.

The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online
The complete evolutionary works of Charles Darwin have gone online, including the stolen notebook he carried in his pocket around the Galapagos Islands. Tens of thousands of pages of text and pictures and audio files have been made available, including some previously unpublished manuscripts and diaries of the great British scientist.

Heading Backwards: The American Rejection of Science (140 kb pdf)
by Dr. Marcia Angell
In this speech -- presented at Columbia Univesity on March 15, 2006 -- Dr. Angell articulates her concerns about the decline of science education in America, coinciding with the growing exceptance of religious fundamentalism.

Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
by David Chalmers
Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain.

Resource: 4640 Free Online Papers on Consciousness
By David Chalmers
Here Chalmers has compiled a the best directory of online papers on consciousness and related topics to date. Most papers are by academic philosophers or scientists.

Why Won't God Heal Amputees?
by Marshall Brain
If God promises to answer prayers, and if God is healing cancers and solving all of these other problems in response to prayer, then why can't we also pray to God to restore amputated limbs?

The Contents of Conscousness: A Neuropsychological Conjecture
by Jeffrey A. Gray
A neuropsychological hypothesis is proposed for the generation of the contents of consciousness. It is suggested that these correspond to the outputs of a comparator that, on a moment-by-moment basis, compares the current state of the organism's perceptual world with a predicted state.

TED
Inspired video talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers.

Harmonic Resonance Theory: An Alternative to the "Neuron Doctrine" of Neurocomputation to Address gestalt Properties of Perception
By Steven Lehar
The conventional view of neuroscience, known as the neuron doctrine, is based on the assumption that neurocomputation involves discrete signals communicated along fixed transmission lines between discrete computational elements. This concept is shown to be inadequate to account for invariance in recognition, as well as for the holistic global aspects of perception identified by Gestalt theory. A Harmonic Resonance theory is presented as an alternative paradigm of neurocomputation, that exhibits both the property of invariance, and the emergent Gestalt properties of perception, not as special mechanisms contrived to achieve those properties, but as natural properties of the resonance itself.

The Dimensions of Conscious Experience: A Quantitative Phenomenology
By Steven Lehar
Psychology was originally formulated as the science of the psyche, i.e. the subjective side of the mind / brain barrier. However time and again it has been diverted from this objective in the supposed interest of scientific rigor. This paper proposes a quantitative phenomenolgy to express the dimensions of conscious experience in information theoretic terms.

The Dimensions of Visual Experience: A Quantitative Analysis (50 MB Powerpoint presentation, with audio narration)
By Steven Lehar
In a presentation given at the Tuscon 2006 Consciousness Conference, Steven Lehar asks: What are the dimensions of visual experinience? Is it possible to express the content of consciousness in quantitative terms?

Evolution Shift
Strategic advisor/blogger David Houle examines the Ultra-Trends that are reorganizing human society, combined with the ever accelerating technological and electronic connectedness that could well be creating the possibility for a coming Evolution Shift.

Mr. Science
A delightful general science blog.

Intelligent Machines
A blog dedicated to machine learning and artificial intelligence. It aims at providing information about up-to-date tools and methods of the domain to the casual user.

SENS
A practical approach to developing real anti-aging medicine.

New Humanist and New Humanist Blog
The London based magazine of the Rationalist Association, promoting reason, debate and free thought since 1885.

The HAL Project
By Joe Makenzie
Stanley Kubrick would be proud. This website's slick graphics recreate the look and feel of HAL 9000 from the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Interiors and consoles from the spaceship Discovery are recreated in exquisite detail.

Consciousness and Existence as a Process (884 kb pdf)
By Recardo Manzotti
This paper presents a view of direct conscious perception that supposes that there is a unity between the activity in the brain and the events in the external world.

Synchronous Firing and its Influence on the Brain's Electromagnetic Field: Evidence for an Electromagnetic Field Theory of Consciousness (148 kb pdf)
By Johnjoe McFadden
The human brain consists of approximately 100 billion electrically active neurons that generate an endogenous electromagnetic (em) field. This paper proposes that the brain's em information field is the physical substrate of conscious awarness.

The Conscious Electromagnetic Information (Cemi) Field Theory: The Hard Problem Made Easy? (112 kb pdf)
By Johnjoe McFadden
This paper demonstrates that the Electromagnetic Information (Cemi) Field Theory is robust to criticisms. It further explores implications of the theory particularly as regards to the relationship between electromagnetic fields, information, the phenomenology of consciousness and the meaning of free will.

Resource: The Evolution of Complex Systems
By Umur Ozkul
A directory of online papers dealing with the Evolution of Complex Systems. More >>

Difficulties with the Electromagnetic Field Theory of Consciousness (64 kb pdf)
By Susan Pockett
The author's version of the electromagnetic field theory of consciousness is stated briefly and then three difficulties with the theory are discussed.

Does Consciousness Cause Behavior? (124 kb pdf)
By Susan Pockett
The prevailing folk-psychology of modern Western humans holds that (1) an individual person or self can be identified with that individual's consciousness and that (2) consciousness can cause behavior. This paper assembles a body of experimental and philosophical evidence suggesting that both of these beliefs might be mistaken.

TechnoSpere: 'Real" Time, 'Artificial' Life
By Jane Prophet, Gordon Selley and Mark Hurry
This paper focuses on the real-time 3D version of the artificial life art piece, TechnoSphere. It begins by positioning TechnoSphere’s simulated landscapes in relationship to the English landscape and its tradition in painting, and problematises ideas of ‘the natural’. The TechnoSphere creatures are evaluated as both artificial wildlife and domesticated animals, before considering the relationship between creature and environment. This is followed by a comparison of the Internet and real-time versions of TechnoSphere, and concludes by outlining the work-in-progress – a merging of the two systems.

RobotCub
RobotCub is a 5 years long project funded by the European Commission through Unit E5 "Cognition." Their main goal is to study cognition through the implementation of real robotic artifacts. This is an open project in many different ways: it will distribute its platform openly, it will develop software open-source, and is open to including new partners and form collaboration worldwide.

The Humanist Society of Santa Barbara
Those at the Humanist Society of Santa Barbara share the conviction that rational inquiry can provide the best foundation for human progress.

Life, the Universe, And Everything: An Interview with Douglas Adams
by David Silverman
If you describe yourself as “Atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘Agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god -- in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference).

Takanishi Laboratory: Department of Engineering, Waseda University
Research includes a biped humanoid robot, a multipurpose biped locomotor, an emotion expression humanoid robot, an anthropomorthic talking robot, and a robot system for measuring carotid arterial blood flow.

Neurofuture: Brain Sciences and the Culture of Future
Neurofuture is a blog highlighting neuroscience and related research, with an emphasis on futurism, art, transhumanism and the media. Examines current trends as well as the unusual, intriguing and just plain nifty.

World Science
This informative science site proposes to have "the world's most exciting science news, long before it's in the papers."

Android World
A site devoted to anthropomophic (human-like) robots. Covers the word's greatest android projects in detail.

Amy Alkon
An outspoken atheist and science advocate, columnist Amy Alkon tells it like it is.

Environment News -- Global Warming Tips, Environment Education Articles | Information
Environment Education News -- 4ecotips provides Global Warming News and Tips, Environment issues news articles, global warming information and eco travel with eco friendly tips, Environmental and Economics history from UK, Europe.

Alexmbcm's Blog
Blogging about artificial life, hacking, science, technology and current events.