Many people think of IQ as a genetic trait like eye color, something you're born with and stuck with for life. But as Sue Shellenbarger explains on Lunch Break, evidence is mounting that IQ can change over an individual's lifetime.
Many people think of IQ as a genetic trait, like brown eyes or short legs: You're born with it and you're stuck with it. Now, a growing body of research is showing that a person's IQ can rise—and even fall—over the years.
Scores can change gradually or quickly, after as little as a few weeks of cognitive training, research shows. The increases are usually so incremental that they're not immediately perceptible to individuals, and the intelligence-boosting effects of cognitive training can fade after a few months.
In the latest study, 33 British students were given IQ tests and brain scans at ages 12 to 16 and again about four years later by researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London; 9% of the students showed a significant change of 15 points or more in IQ scores.
On a scale where 90 to 110 is considered average, one student's IQ rose 21 points to 128 from 107, lifting the student from the 68th percentile to the 97th compared with others the same age, says Cathy Price, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the center and co-author of the study, published last month in Nature. Another student's score skidded out of the "high average" category, to 96 from 114.
Swings in individual IQ scores are often written off as the product of measurement error or a test subject having a bad day. But MRIs in this study showed changes in gray matter in areas corresponding to fluctuations in the kids' skills, Dr. Price says. Although the sample size is small, the study drew wide attention because it is among the first to show how changes in IQ scores may be reflected in actual shifts in brain structure.
Testing Cognitive Skills
Pre-employment tests measure some cognitive abilities that are similar to those gauged by IQ tests and are used for selecting employees for many kinds of jobs. Try some sample questions.
"There are many myths about IQ, such as the notion that IQ is a fixed number or that it is a crystal ball for future performance," says Eric Rossen, director of professional development and standards for the National Association of School Psychologists in Bethesda, Md.
The first reliable tests of intelligence in the U.S. were published in the early 1900s, says Alan S. Kaufman, clinical professor of psychology at Yale University and co-author of several IQ tests. Scores compare people to others of the same age based on a wide range of cognitive questions and tasks, from processing information and analyzing patterns, to solving age-appropriate math problems and recalling facts or vocabulary. A score in the 90 to 110 range is considered average. A "genius" may score 140 and above, he says.
IQ tests have been a target of ongoing criticism. Their use led to the misclassification of many children as "intellectually disabled" in the 1970s and 1980s. Similar cognitive tests used by employers to screen recruits have been attacked as discriminatory against African-American and Hispanic job candidates.
Today in schools, individual IQ-type tests are limited mainly to helping plan instruction for some children with specific learning disabilities and helping identify students for gifted programs. Kathleen Lundquist, president of APTMetrics, a Darien, Conn., human-resources consulting firm, says cognitive tests in the workplace today are often revised to eliminate adverse effects on minorities and are most often used as a screening tool for entry-level jobs.
There are practical steps people can take to see longer-term IQ changes. A 30-year study at the National Institute of Mental Health found that people whose work involves complex relationships, setting up elaborate systems or dealing with people or difficult problems, tend to perform better over time on cognitive tests. Test scores of people whose jobs are simple and require little thought actually tend to decline, according to the research, published in 1999 in Psychology and Aging.
New tasks stimulate the brain most. When researchers at the University of Hamburg subjected 20 young adults to one month of intense training in juggling, they found an increase in the corresponding gray matter in the brain as early as seven days after the training began. The added gray matter receded when the training was stopped, although the participants were still able to juggle, says the study, published in 2008 in PLoS One.
IQ tests don't measure such abilities as creativity, common sense or social sensitivity. They do assess many kinds of knowledge and abilities, including abstract reasoning skills. Rising scores in abstract reasoning are the main reason average IQ scores have been increasing by about three points every decade since the 1930s, based on studies by James Flynn, a professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. That may be partly because children spend nearly twice as many years in school, on average, than children decades ago, says Wendy M. Williams, a professor in the department of human development at Cornell University.
Everett Collection
Fluctuations in IQ scores over time underscore the brain-boosting benefits of a complex job, musical training, advanced schooling and new experiences throughout a lifetime.
Schooling in general raises IQ by several points a year, based on research by Stephen Ceci, a professor of developmental psychology at Cornell, and others. "If you look at an IQ test, it asks things like, 'Who wrote Hamlet?' or 'Why do we pay for postage?' You are most likely to come across the answers in school," Dr. Ceci says. Even nonverbal abilities such as solving puzzles and spatial tasks may blossom because math classes today include visual reasoning with matrices, mazes, blocks or designs, he adds.
Intense training can raise scores. Using a method called "n-back," researchers at the University of Michigan had young adults practice recalling letter sequences by flashing a series of letters on a screen and asking them to press a key whenever they saw the same letter that appeared "n" times earlier, such as one or two times.
Training for about 25 minutes a day for eight to 19 days was linked to higher scores on tests of fluid intelligence, with gains increasing with the duration of the training, says Susanne Jaeggi, co-author of the study, published in 2008 in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.
The gains tend to fade after practice stops, based on studies of children, Dr. Jaeggi says. "You need some booster sessions" to maintain improvements, she says. Other research has found training people to switch mental tasks quickly also can lift scores.
Music lessons are linked to higher IQ throughout life, according to research by E. Glenn Schellenberg, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. Six years' lessons lifted children's IQ scores an average 7.5 points; those gains eroded to two points by college age, says a study published in 2006 in the Journal of Educational Psychology.
In a study this year, researchers at the University of Kansas found practicing musicians who are active for a decade or more continue to post higher IQs beyond age 60.
How you think about pain can have a major impact on how it feels.
That's the intriguing conclusion neuroscientists are reaching as scanning technologies let them see how the brain processes pain.
Alternative remedies for relief of chronic pain are getting new attention and respect these days. Melinda Beck has details on Lunch Break.
That's also the principle behind many mind-body approaches to chronic pain that are proving surprisingly effective in clinical trials.
Some are as old as meditation, hypnosis and tai chi, while others are far more high tech. In studies at Stanford University's Neuroscience and Pain Lab, subjects can watch their own brains react to pain in real-time and learn to control their response—much like building up a muscle. When subjects focused on something distracting instead of the pain, they had more activity in the higher-thinking parts of their brains. When they "re-evaluated" their pain emotionally—"Yes, my back hurts, but I won't let that stop me"—they had more activity in the deep brain structures that process emotion. Either way, they were able to ease their own pain significantly, according to a study in the journal Anesthesiology last month.
While some of these therapies have been used successfully for years, "we are only now starting to understand the brain basis of how they work, and how they work differently from each other," says Sean Mackey, chief of the division of pain management at Stanford.
He and his colleagues were just awarded a $9 million grant to study mind-based therapies for chronic low back pain from the government's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).
Some 116 million American adults—one-third of the population—struggle with chronic pain, and many are inadequately treated, according to a report by the Institute of Medicine in July.
Yet abuse of pain medication is rampant. Annual deaths due to overdoses of painkillers quadrupled, to 14,800, between 1998 and 2008, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The painkiller Vicodin is now the most prescribed drug in the U.S.
"There is a growing recognition that drugs are only part of the solution and that people who live with chronic pain have to develop a strategy that calls upon some inner resources," says Josephine Briggs, director of NCCAM, which has funded much of the research into alternative approaches to pain relief.
Already, neuroscientists know that how people perceive pain is highly individual, involving heredity, stress, anxiety, fear, depression, previous experience and general health. Motivation also plays a huge role—and helps explain why a gravely wounded soldier can ignore his own pain to save his buddies while someone who is depressed may feel incapacitated by a minor sprain.
"We are all walking around carrying the baggage, both good and bad, from our past experience and we use that information to make projections about what we expect to happen in the future," says Robert Coghill, a neuroscientist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Dr. Coghill gives a personal example: "I'm periodically trying to get into shape—I go to the gym and work out way too much and my muscles are really sore, but I interpret that as a positive. I'm thinking, 'I've really worked hard.' " A person with fibromyalgia might be getting similar pain signals, he says, but experience them very differently, particularly if she fears she will never get better.
Dr. Mackey says patients' emotional states can even predict how they will respond to an illness. For example, people who are anxious are more likely to experience pain after surgery or develop lingering nerve pain after a case of shingles.
That doesn't mean that the pain is imaginary, experts stress. In fact, brain scans show that chronic pain (defined as pain that lasts at least 12 weeks or a long time after the injury has healed) represents a malfunction in the brain's pain processing systems. The pain signals take detours into areas of the brain involved with emotion, attention and perception of danger and can cause gray matter to atrophy. That may explain why some chronic pain sufferers lose some cognitive ability, which is often thought to be a side effect of pain medication.
The dysfunction "feeds on itself," says Dr. Mackey. "You get into a vicious circle of more pain, more anxiety, more fear, more depression. We need to interrupt that cycle."
One technique is attention distraction, simply directing your mind away from the pain. "It's like having a flashlight in the dark—you choose what you want to focus on. We have that same power with our mind," says Ravi Prasad, a pain psychologist at Stanford.
Guided imagery, in which a patient imagines, say, floating on a cloud, also works in part by diverting attention away from pain. So does mindfulness meditation. In a study in the Journal of Neuroscience in April, researchers at Wake Forest taught 15 adults how to meditate for 20 minutes a day for four days and subjected them to painful stimuli (a probe heated to 120 degrees Fahrenheit on the leg).
Brain scans before and after showed that while they were meditating, they had less activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, the part of the brain that registers where pain is coming from, and greater activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which plays a role in handling unpleasant feelings. Subjects also reported feeling 40% less pain intensity and 57% less unpleasantness while meditating.
"Our subjects really looked at pain differently after meditating. Some said, 'I didn't need to say ouch,' " says Fadel Zeidan, the lead investigator.
Techniques that help patients "emotionally reappraise" their pain rather than ignore it are particularly helpful when patients are afraid they will suffer further injury and become sedentary, experts say.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, which is offered at many pain-management programs, teaches patients to challenge their negative thoughts about their pain and substitute more positive behaviors.
Even getting therapy by telephone for six months helped British patients with fibromyalgia, according to a study published online this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Nearly 30% of patients receiving the therapy reported less pain, compared with 8% of those getting conventional treatments. The study noted that in the U.K., no drugs are approved for use in fibromyalgia and access to therapy or exercise programs is limited, if available at all.
Anticipating relief also seems to make it happen, research into the placebo effect has shown. In another NCCAM-funded study, 48 subjects were given either real or simulated acupuncture and then exposed to heat stimuli.
Both groups reported similar levels of pain relief—but brain scans showed that actual acupuncture interrupted pain signals in the spinal cord while the sham version, which didn't penetrate the skin, activated parts of the brain associated with mood and expectation, according to a 2009 study in the journal Neuroimage.
One of Dr. Mackey's favorite pain-relieving techniques is love. He and colleagues recruited 15 Stanford undergraduates and had them bring in photos of their beloved and another friend. Then he scanned their brains while applying pain stimuli from a hot probe. On average, the subject reported feeling 44% less pain while focusing on their loved one than on their friend. Brain images showed they had strong activity in the nucleus accumbens, an area deep in the brain involved with dopamine and reward circuits.
Experts stress that much still isn't known about pain and the brain, including whom these mind-body therapies are most appropriate for. They also say it's important that anyone who is in pain get a thorough medical examination. "You can't just say, 'Go take a yoga class.' That's not a thoughtful approach to pain management," says Dr. Briggs.
Bill Gates Just Spent $150 Million on These 2 Stocks
Financial media firm Forbes just came out with the Forbes 400, which ranks the 400 richest Americans. Bill Gates topped the list with an estimated net worth of $59 billion. This impressive amount of wealth also qualified him for second in the world, behind only telecom mogul Carlos Slim of Mexico and his net worth of $74 billion.
Gates’ fortune, of course, stems Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), which grew to dominate the market for computer software across the globe. But a significant portion of Gates’ wealth has shifted to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The foundation received significant further support when Gates’ long-time friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett committed to donating a significant portion of his $47 billion net worth to the foundation.
The Gates Foundation has a mission to fund grants to support causes such as global health and related charitable gifting for many years to come. And given the serious commitments and long-term goals the foundation has set, it must be careful with its endowment, investing in such a way as to grow the portfolio significantly while also limiting risk.
As such, it represents the ideal long-term portfolio individual investors may want to emulate. The foundation recently established several notable new positions, all of which represented a bold move into the cable television industry.
The largest new position was in cable operator Liberty Global. Liberty is the largest cable television company outside of the United States. It operates in 14 countries (primarily in Europe, Chile and Australia) and serves 31.4 million homes, offering a combination of video, voice and Internet services.
The company is growing rapidly. Revenue reached $6.7 billion last year, up close to 40% from $4.9 billion five years ago. The company generated $365 million, or $1.44 per share last year in free cash flow, up 30% from $281 million five years ago.
Liberty Global offers three different share classes. The foundation bought a 2.1 million share position in Liberty Global Class A (Nasdaq: LBTYA), which have shareholder voting rights, and a 706,507 share position in Liberty Global Class C (Nasdaq: LBTYK), which do not have voting rights. The quarter end market value of these two positions was $125.5 million, or less than 1% of the total foundation. Despite being small initial position sizes, they still represent a substantial sum by most measures. Also, the foundation has been known to build its stakes over time and hold onto its positions for a very long time.
Overall, Liberty represents a great way to play the growing market for cable TV internationally, and few players have its expertise to gain market share overseas. Last year, for example, it acquired Unitymedia to enter the German market. Management has experience in boosting subscribers in the markets in which it operates, serving to boost profitability and the ability to generate capital for future growth and acquisitions.
Given Gates’ ties to Buffett, his foundation is certain to find Liberty’s cash flow generation capabilities very appealing. Most investors likely miss Liberty’s profit appeal, given reported earnings tend to be low. Last year, the company reported decent earnings of $1.15 per share, but each of the last three years saw earnings losses, even though free cash flow was positive in all these periods. This is because running a cable TV firm requires high fixed costs. This comes in the form of high depreciation and amortization expenses, which reduces earnings, but is considered a non-cash charge, meaning cash flow generation is actually high.
Continuing on this theme, the Gates Foundation also bought stakes in domestic cable operator Comcast. Comcast also has multiple share classes. The foundation acquired nearly $23 million of class A shares of Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSK), which don’t carry any voting rights, and a smaller $1.5 million stake in special class AComcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA), which have some voting rights.
Comcast is the largest cable provider in the United States, boasting 23 million cable customers at the end of 2010. It also reported 17 million Internet users and 9 million phone customers to offer what has become an appealing offering of a “triple-play” of services. Domestic cable has proven surprisingly resilient in the face of a down economy and with growing competition from television programming from the Internet.
Steve Wozniak co-founder of Apple Computers.
At
7:29 PM +0000 8/24/10, staff@adbico-Hi Steve Wozniak- I was wondering
what you think of the IPAD versus the new Dell- Streak which is a
smaller 5inch IPAD. The new Streak also has a phone ,camera its like a
Android tablet, I think it is great but I need your opinion. Anyway
tell me whats up and PLEASE give me your opinion of the new Dell Streak
versus the IPAD. Give me your professional advice I want to purchase
either of them. Steve Wozniak- I don't know sounds like the Streak is pretty good.
It
sounded like you were describing a full-sized pad (whatever full-sized
is) with a removable phone. But this Streak is just a large smart phone
at no better price than an iPhone. Duh.
Sorry,
I bought a Droid X to replace my Incredible in the Android world. The
Droid X has a large screen and HDMI out and looks nicer and you aren't
stuck with the Dell name and reputation.
You
should trade your Streak in. At least when I traded in my used
Incredible for the new Droid X, Verizon they didn't charge me anything
but a $35 restocking fee. And because my name was Steve Wozniak, they
gave me all the accessories (car kit, HDMI cables) at half price. I'd
like to see Dell do that. I'll ask Michael sometime. He's an investor
in our company, Fusion-io.
Dell's Android-powered Streak is awkward phone, so-so tablet By Rachel Metz Associated Press Posted: 08/25/2010 04:22:12 PM PDT Click photo to enlarge In this Aug. 24, 2010 photo, an Associated Press reporter holds the Dell Streak... ( Jeff Chiu ) SAN FRANCISCO -- Lately I've been feeling very self-conscious when talking on the phone in public, and it's not because I'm worried about strangers listening in on my private conversations. Rather, it's because the cell phone I'm using -- the just-released Dell Streak -- is actually a touch-screen tablet device that makes some of the clunkiest handsets from the late '90s look diminutive by comparison. The Streak ($300 with a two-year AT&T contract) is a complicated gadget. For a tablet computer, it is fairly small and thin -- a fraction the size of Apple's popular iPad. Its face is dominated by a touch screen that is 5 inches diagonally, compared with the iPad's 9.7-inch display. Yet Dell insists it is also a phone, and as such it is fairly enormous and uncomfortable to talk on. Beyond that, it comes with an older version of Google Inc.'s Android software. Overall, it's just too awkward to bear. The Streak's hugeness is inescapable. It's a little less than 6 inches long and 3 inches across, so it looked mammoth in my petite hands. I felt like a little kid holding her father's smart phone. It was clear from the start that carrying around the black gadget would be a chore. It fit into the back pockets of my jeans, but protruded noticeably. I was afraid it would fall out or be filched by some tablet-phone-hungry thief. As a result, I had to carry it in a bag or hold it in my hand if I wanted to tote it around, and this latter Still, I figured the Streak's size would be great for at least one thing: watching videos. As expected, videos streamed well from such sites as YouTube and Funny or Die, probably helped by the device's 1 GHz processor. Images looked sharp and bright on the screen. They didn't look quite as stellar as they do on Apple's latest iPhone or Samsung's new Galaxy S smart phones, though. There is plenty of storage space on the Streak for the videos you want to watch (and for photos and songs, too), as it includes a 16-gigabyte microSD memory card. And the device's battery seemed to have no problem getting through a day filled with video and music streaming, Web surfing and chatting. The screen was also a swell surface for checking out Google Maps and other websites. I liked having extra real estate to look up directions and see pages that contained both photos and text. But using it to instant message my friends was more difficult than on other touch-screen keyboards I've used; despite the Streak's size, I kept hitting the wrong keys. Using the Streak to make phone calls was a new experience. I felt weird holding it up to my ear, imagining quizzical looks as I walked down the street. The Streak didn't sound bad, but it didn't sound great, either. Calls sounded kind of fuzzy on my end, and in one frustrating exchange the screen kept changing orientation while I was on the phone, which also meant that the physical button that allowed me to turn the sound up and down kept reversing functions. Beyond the Streak's basic awkwardness, its biggest flaw is that it relies on old software. Despite the inclusion of a swift processor, the Streak is saddled with an older version of the Android operating software -- version 1.6 -- which means it is missing some of latest features and can't run some applications that call for newer operating software. It also lacks Adobe's Flash Player 10.1 for watching Flash videos. Dell Inc. says the Streak will get what is currently the latest Android software, version 2.2, later this year and will get Flash 10.1, too. I'm stymied by decision to not even start out the Streak with version 2.1, which is available on a number of current smart phones. Another odd handicap: Although the Streak has a low-resolution front-facing camera, which could be used for video chatting, it's only currently enabled for taking photos and videos. Video chat is expected to work when the device gets the Android software update, but for now it feels like quite a tease. Fortunately, the Streak comes with fully functional 5-megapixel digital camera on its back. The camera takes sharp images and has a bright flash, and the display functions as perhaps the biggest viewfinder you've ever used. There are plenty of options for adjusting your shots, and I was able to take a bunch of crisp shots. You'll need to hold it steady while snapping, though, because the Streak takes a long time to take a photo after you've pressed its shutter button. And you'll probably want to use headphones with the Streak, as the quality of its built-in speaker is dismal. When watching a Ted Leo And The Pharmacists music video online, the sound was muddled, even at a low volume. Because the speaker is located on the Streak's back, it gets even harder to hear when you set the gadget down. Fresher software will surely improve the Streak, but whether you're looking for a phone, a tablet computer or both, the Streak falls short. Performance-wise, that is; in reality, it's anything but. ------ Rachel Metz can be reached at rmetz(at)ap.org. Need help with a technology question? Ask us at gadgetgurus(at)ap.org. DELL STREAK THE PRODUCT: Dell's Streak device ($300 with a two-year contract from AT&T) is both a tablet computer and a cell phone. THE FEATURES: The Streak includes a huge 5-inch touch screen and runs Google's Android operating software. It has a 5-megapixel digital camera and includes a 16-gigabyte microSD memory card for storing videos, photos and music. THE BOTTOM LINE: The Streak is good for watching videos, but its operating software -- version 1.6 of Android -- is relatively old. It's also uncomfortable to make calls on. Overall, the phone is simply too awkward.
Entanglement like many
quantum effects violates some of our deepest intuitions about the
world. It may also undermine Einstien"s special theory of
relativity. In the universe we experience it and we can directly effect
only objects we can touch thus the world seems local. Quantum mechanics
however embraces action at a distance with a property called
entanglement in which two particles behave synchronously with no
intermediary it is local. This nonlocal effect is not merely
counterintuitive it presents a serious problem to Einstien"s special
theory of realitivity, thus shaking the foundations of physics.This
is a little quote from a great utterer of koans "A human being is part
of a whole,called by us the "Universe,'a part limited in time and
space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something
seperated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of our conciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our
personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our
task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles
of compassion to embrace all livivng creatures and the whole of nature
in its beauty" (Albert Einstien)
A holiday quote from Warren Buffet. " If someone is fearful be greedy, if someone is greedy be fearful"Fast Lane Daily/ Koenigsegg Agera, Ferrari 599 Hybrid, F1 SLS Gullwing Pace car - 3/01/2010http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skvwht-eJYI
In Search for Intelligence,
a Silicon Brain Twitches.By Replicating a Rat's Gray Matter, Scientists
Discover Simulated Cells That Self-Organize but Lack Certain
Smarts By GAUTAM NAIK For
the last four years, Henry Markram has been building a biologically
accurate artificial brain. Powered by a supercomputer, his software
model closely mimics the activity of a vital section of a rat's gray
matter.Dubbed Blue Brain, the simulation shows some strange behavior.
The artificial "cells" respond to stimuli and suddenly pulse and flash
in spooky unison, a pattern that isn't programmed but emerges
spontaneously.
"It's the neuronal equivalent of a Mexican wave," says Dr. Markram,
referring to what happens when successive clusters of stadium
spectators briefly stand and raise their arms, creating a ripple
effect. Such synchronized behavior is common in flesh-and-blood brains,
where it's believed to be a basic step necessary for decision making.
But when it arises in an artificial system, it's more surprising.
Photos: Artificial Intelligence
See images of artificial neurons in Blue Brain, a biologically accurate artificial brain powered by a supercomputer.
Meet Blue Brain, a "brain" made up entirely of
silicon and housed inside an IBM supercomputer. An astonishing advance,
the artificial brain may be the first step toward manmade higher
behavior, WSJ's Gautam Naik reports.
Blue Brain is based at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
in Switzerland. The project hopes to tackle one of the most perplexing
mysteries of neuroscience: How does human intelligence emerge? The Blue
Brain scientists hope their computer model can shed light on the
puzzle, and possibly even replicate intelligence in some way.
"We're building the brain from the bottom up, but in silicon," says
Dr. Markram, the leader of Blue Brain, which is powered by a
supercomputer provided by International Business Machines Corp. "We
want to understand how the brain learns, how it perceives things, how
intelligence emerges."
Blue Brain is controversial, and its success is far from assured.
Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology, a scientist
who studies consciousness, says the Swiss project provides vital data
about how part of the brain works. But he says that Dr. Markram's
approach is still missing algorithms, the biological programming that
yields higher-level functions.
"You need to have a theory about how a particular circuit in the
brain" can trigger complex, higher-order properties, Dr. Koch argues.
"You can't assemble ever larger data fields and shake it and say, 'Ah,
that's how consciousness emerges.'"
Despite the challenges, the push to understand, replicate and even
re-enact higher behaviors in the brain has become one of the hottest
areas of neuroscience. With the help of a $4.9 million grant from the
U.S. Department of Defense, IBM is working on a separate project with
five U.S. universities to build a tiny, low-power microchip that
simulates the behavior of one million neurons and ten billion synapses.
The goal, says IBM, is to develop brainy computers that can better
predict the behavior of complex systems, such as weather or the
financial markets.
The Chinese government has provided about $1.5 million to a team at
Xiamen University to create artificial-brain robots with microcircuits
that evolve, learn and adapt to real-world situations. Similarly, Jeff
Krichmar and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine,
Calif., have built an artificial-brain robot that learns to sharpen its
visual perception when moving around in a lab environment, another form
of emergent behavior, a form of spontaneous self-organization. And
researchers at Sensopac, a project backed by a grant of €6.7 million
($9.3 million) from the European Union, have built part of an
artificial mouse brain.
The scientists behind Blue Brain hope to have a virtual human brain
functioning in ten years -- a lengthy time period that underscores the
scientific challenge. The human brain has 100 billion neurons that send
electrical signals to each other via a network of at least 100 trillion
connections, or synapses. How could this dizzying complexity ever be
recreated in a virtual model?
Dr. Markram has adopted a systematic, if painstaking approach. He
decided to work out the blueprint of its wiring and then use that map
to rebuild the brain in an artificial form. He focused on a rat's
neocortical column, or NCC, an elementary building block of the brain's
neocortex, which is responsible for higher functions and thought. In a
rat's case, that includes planning to obtain food.
A rat's NCC, comprised of about 10,000 neurons and their 10 million
connections, functions much like a computer microprocessor. All mammals
have NCCs, and the ones in humans aren't all that different from the
ones in rats. However, humans have far more NCCs, which means far
greater brain power. Dr. Markram figured that if a rat simulation did a
good job of correctly mimicking activity in a real rat's brain, he
could use the same model as a road map for simulating the human brain.
Dr. Markram began by collecting detailed information about the rat's
NCC, down to the level of genes, proteins, molecules and the electrical
signals that connect one neuron to another. These complex relationships
were then turned into millions of equations, written in software. He
then recorded real-world data -- the strength and path of each
electrical signal -- directly from rat brains to test the accuracy of
the software.
At the Lausanne lab one recent afternoon, a pink sliver of rat brain
sat in a beaker containing a colorless liquid. The neurons in the brain
slice were still alive and actively communicating with each other.
Nearby, a modified microscope recorded some of this inner activity in
another brain slice. "We're intercepting the electro-chemical messages"
in the cells, then testing the software against it for accuracy, said
Dr. Markram.
The rat's NCC has 10,000 neurons, and it takes the power of one
desktop computer to mimic the behavior of a single neuron. To model the
entire NCC, Dr. Markram relies on an IBM computer that can perform 22.8
trillion operations a second. This enables the simulation to be
rendered as a three-dimensional object. Thus, when Blue Brain is
running, its deepest inner workings are seen in astonishing detail, in
the form of a 3-D simulation that unfolds on a computer screen.
In a darkened room, Blue Brain displays a virtual NCC as a
column-like structure, its blue color signifying a state of rest. When
zapped by a simulated electrical current, the neurons start to signal
to each other and their wiring progressively sparks to life different
colors. Tests indicate the same areas light up in the model as do in a
real rat's brain, suggesting that Blue Brain is accurate, says Dr.
Markram.
More complex things start to happen. First there's a burst of red,
then white, then red again, as the NCC's wiring fills up with a cascade
of myriad signals. There are so many connections, the NCC looks like an
incredibly dense tangle of undergrowth.
Then, two successive waves of yellow color suddenly race through
Blue Brain. It's a sign that the neurons have synchronized their
behavior on their own. "The cells start to take on a life of their
own," says Dr. Markram. "That's what your brain is [and when such
patterns become sophisticated] it becomes your personality."
If Blue Brain ever gets sophisticated enough to closely mimic the
human brain, will it exhibit consciousness? Says Dr. Markram: "If it
does emerge, we'll be able to tell you how it emerged. If it doesn't,
we'll know that it's the result of more than just 100 billion neurons
interacting."
Corrections & Amplifications: There are 10
million neuronal connections in the neocortical column of a rat brain.
A previous version of this article incorrectly said there were 10
billion such connections.
NEW ENERGY BREAKTHROUGH OCTILLION OCTL- Uniform silicon nanoparticles could make solar efficient enough to sweep the mainstream practically overnight. Windows remain transparent and allow sunlight to filter through. A Personal Power Plant that can be sprayed on your homes windows. The window is gathering up the suns photon's and converting them to energy that's powering your toaster,TV, lights, and computer. Tiny particles a billionth of a meter in size, Octillion High Quantum, Silicon nanoparticle.
Webonomics is taking us over with its unstoppable impregnability phantasmagorical flow. Ning network has a you can pay as you go for infrastructure. Viral Expansion Loop, business excelerant, no advertising or marketing budget, no sales force, and venture capitalists that will kill for the chance to throw money at you. Tell them Adbico.com sent you. Also Blue Cloud from IBM, is in the cloud hidden whereabouts unkown stage of develoement in Viral Clouds for infrastucture that Amazon has deveoped already. Android from Google has a better phone coming out at the end of this year that will do in the Iphone from Apple. It has an open, no blockage from visiting certain sites or downloading specific applications or content. This is the reason why the whole mobile phone internet hasn"t taken off, there is no control of platform.
Amazon is out Googling Google.The more open it is the more powerful it is. Jeff Bezo created the World"s most versatle tech platform. Outsource your infrastructure to Amazon. No precious cash to be tied up in soon to be obsolete silicon. Rent hardware for pennyies and no worry of breaking down. Amazon Web Services hardware on left side of front page . A tool for monitoring your hardware and your virtual stack with an Iphone. IBM has also a new project called Blue Cloud this spring that targets financial services.
Intellectual property holds a key to our future
2:57p ET October 20, 2008 (MarketWatch)
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- As we confront the smoldering rubble of our financial institutions and the overheated rhetoric in the presidential campaign, we have to realize that this too shall pass.
But what comes next? How will we rebuild the economy, create new jobs, tap domestic energy, reduce global warming, and improve health care? The answer, as always in America, involves innovation.
Innovation is embedded in our constitution, history, economy, technology, and culture. Both presidential candidates recognize this in their core message of change, and call for technology innovation to solve our problems at home and abroad. How do we move beyond rhetoric about change and innovation to put that ideal into practice? One way is to build upon a tried and true foundation of progress -- intellectual property.
In recognition of its rising importance, both presidential candidates mention intellectual property, promising to protect patents and copyrights worldwide, increase funding for the Patent and Trademark Office, and streamlining patent litigation. Legislative reforms to patent and copyright law have been hotly debated in Congress. But recent political debates about IP look too narrow, and off balance. There is a more fundamental linkage between innovation and intellectual property, and if we grasp it, intellectual property may hold a key to our future.
Concern with innovation and intellectual property has old roots. The Venetians passed the first patent law over 500 years ago, and patents and copyrights are recognized in the U.S. Constitution. Abraham Lincoln recognized 150 years ago that America's strength combined both physical labor and intellectual pursuits.
In researching my book "Driving Innovation," I discovered a series of speeches Lincoln gave commenting on the New America rising out of global trade. He argued that innovation helps end a "slavery of the mind," and "emancipates the mind," so people "get a habit of freedom of thought." It is remarkable that on the eve of the Civil War, at a time when the nation's attention was focused on the problem of slavery, Lincoln recognized the relationships between the issues of globalization, innovation, intellectual property, and freedom that are front page news today.
The opportunities and challenges presented by the intellectual property system have never been greater. Intellectual property drives and channels innovation, giving innovators the limited right to exclude others from using their creations, while permitting limited access by the public. The most successful companies are those that invest in new ideas and develop them into commercial products confident that IP protections will give them a competitive advantage over those who follow.
This dynamic balance between exclusion and access drives the innovation cycle and brings us new drugs while older ones become generic, new sources of energy and new ways to use existing resources, new information, music and entertainment, and new ways to access them, and countless other improvements to our lives.
Intellectual property has long been viewed as an instrument of competitiveness and economic growth, with innovative output linked to the gross domestic product. Intellectual property can also be seen as an instrument by which innovators express choices regarding their creations. In this light, intellectual property contributes not just to economic development, but also to freedom -- of personal choice, of individual responsibility, of free expression, and free trade.
The government's role should be to ensure that the intellectual property system maintains an effective balance between the freedom of an innovator to exclude others, and the freedom of others to access the innovation. An intellectual property system can provide a higher degree of individual freedom than a centralized system of grants, incentives, and prizes awarded by governments and philanthropies. Such incentive systems may have the desired effect of driving innovation in particular directions, but at the cost of individual choice and flexibility.
Joseph Schumpeter coined the term "creative destruction" to describe the turbulence that replaces old products, companies, and industries with new ones. Creative human endeavor overcomes such adversity.
Every day, around the world, in private and public communities, people write new books, sing new songs, make new movies, develop new drugs, find new energy sources, and improve electronics and communications. Only a few new ideas mature and survive, and the rest are lost or left undeveloped. Old ideas are swept away. There are winners and unhappy losers. Even when the larger system is healthy, this may bring little comfort to an individual, a company, an industry, or a nation that is left behind -- until they can benefit from the next innovation.
No one is free in the sense that they can escape the larger system of competition, but we can seek to ensure that the system is fair. "Nudge," a new book co-authored by Barack Obama advisor Cass Sunstein, argues that government can augment free choice by making it easier for citizens and companies to take wiser actions. In this view, an effective intellectual property system marries free market forces with sensible regulation. It promotes both individual independence and community interdependence, balancing the innovator's freedom to exclude against the public's freedom to use the innovation.
To enjoy the fruits of innovation tomorrow, we must cultivate the trees that grow them, today. Some countries, notably Canada and China, have established national innovation policies recognizing intellectual property as a tool and measure of national success. Let us debate an integrated innovation strategy for the U.S. as well.
Michael Gollin is a partner in the patent group of in Washington, D.C. and author of "Driving Innovation: Intellectual Property Strategies for a Dynamic World."
Time to Leave the Laptop Behind
For more mobile workers, phones increasingly give them much of what they need -- with a lot less hassle
It's time to think about leaving your laptop at home.
For years, mobile workers have been ditching their desktop computers for laptops that they can take wherever they go. Now road warriors are starting to realize that they can get even more portability -- and lots of computing punch -- from smart phones.
These souped-up cousins of ordinary cellphones, with email and other Internet functions, have become much more powerful in the past year. So powerful, in fact, that they can handle nearly every computing chore that many business travelers need to do, from checking warehouse inventory levels to watching movies on airplanes. Best of all, users can do those tasks with a pocket-size gadget that weighs a few ounces, instead of a five-pound hunk of plastic that goes into a shoulder bag.
Mobile Computing
JOURNAL PODCAST: Listen to Journal reporter Nick Wingfield discuss the pros and cons of relying more on a smart phone and less on a laptop.
The result: Many travelers are now using smart phones the way they once used laptops -- and laptops the way they once used desktop computers. Mobile workers rely on their laptops to create PowerPoint presentations and do other heavy-duty computing. But then they leave the laptops in their offices, homes or hotel rooms and take their smart phones out into the world -- to client meetings, say, or factory visits.
In some cases, road warriors are going even further, ditching their laptops entirely and doing all their mobile work from smart phones. And many travelers say they'd be willing to take the same step as technology improves -- which it's been doing by leaps and bounds lately.
Faster Internet connections over wireless 3G networks are getting more pervasive. Cutting-edge devices like Apple Inc.'s iPhone are sporting bigger, touch-sensing screens that make it easier to surf the Web. And mobile software is finally getting good enough for users to get their work done when they're on the go.
Carry On
Of course, laptops won't be disappearing anytime soon. Sales of the devices are brisk, and their capacious screens and keyboards will likely remain superior to those on smart phones for a long time, making them the device of choice for creating a presentation or writing an article like this one.
Even doing otherwise simple jobs on a smart phone -- such as extensive note taking -- would drive most users batty. The research and consulting firm Gartner Inc. has actually warned its corporate clients to discourage employees from relying entirely on their smart phones, largely because of the potential for errors and overlooked information when users are editing and reading word-processing documents, spreadsheets and other files on the small screens of mobile phones.
It's little surprise, then, that the number of people ditching their laptops completely in favor of smart phones is small. In a report published in January by research firm In-Stat based on a survey of 1,402 technology users, only 3% of smart-phone users said they rely exclusively on a smart phone when they're on the road. Indeed, 7% of respondents to the survey admitted to some remarkable pack-mule habits, saying they regularly carry two laptops with them -- one each for personal and business use.
Slimming Down
Even so, roughly 52% of respondents to the In-Stat survey said they could envision using a smart phone in the future as their sole computing device, provided handset companies make improvements like better keyboards, expandable screens and applications that work as well as they do on PCs. And it's clear that a sizable number of users already are starting to see their smart phone as a replacement for their laptop for at least some of their needs. In a survey of 460 iPhone users from March by Rubicon Consulting Inc., more than 28% of respondents strongly agreed and 29% mildly agreed when asked whether the iPhone was replacing their use of laptops.
The credit for the change in attitude lies, in many respects, in the iPhone's combination of cutting-edge hardware and software, which is based on Apple's Mac operating system. Reviewers have praised the device's Web browser, which lets users zoom in on text with simple finger strokes. And there's a huge library of iPhone software on Apple's App Store, from games to physicians' reference guides.
Steve Ward is one mobile worker who's relying more on his iPhone these days. Mr. Ward, the president of Vievu LLC, a Seattle-based maker of portable video cameras for law enforcement and other users, has an iPhone 3G, the new version of Apple's smart phone that cruises the Internet wirelessly at broadband speeds. He also owns one of the lightest, thinnest laptops made, Apple's three-pound MacBook Air.
On his frequent business trips to Asia and Europe, Mr. Ward usually leaves the laptop behind in his hotel room. During visits with customers and manufacturing partners, he uses his iPhone to check his email, visit Web sites and tap into his company's accounting, shipping and customer-relationship-management records through an online service offered by NetSuite Inc. of San Mateo, Calif. When he's on planes, he watches episodes of "Lost" and "The Office" on the iPhone's 3.5-inch display, rarely cracking his MacBook Air anymore to watch DVDs -- a big plus in economy-class seating.
Mr. Ward dislikes bringing the MacBook Air with him on trips in part because of tedious airport-security procedures that require him to remove the laptop from his bag and place it in its own bin for scanning. He'd leave the laptop back home if he didn't sometimes need it to do business presentations.
"Everything I do all day is on the iPhone," he says, speaking on his iPhone during a business trip in London.
Other smart phones are starting to make inroads as laptop replacements, too, thanks to "software as a service." In this arrangement, companies like NetSuite and San Francisco-basedSalesforce.com Inc. store sensitive business information for clients, such as inventory and accounting data, on servers accessible over the Internet using a simple smart-phone interface.
Russo Valenzuela, a district sales manager for Astra Tech Inc., a division of AstraZeneca PLC that makes health-care devices and medical implants, spends nearly all of his workweek roaming the Houston area with a smart phone made by Taiwan's HTC Corp. loaded with a Salesforce.com application. Before he heads into clients' offices, he can see a complete record of their ordering history so he knows which kinds of supplies to pitch to them.
Mr. Valenzuela brings his laptop only when he knows that he needs to do a PowerPoint presentation to clients. "If I know I don't need it, I won't take it," he says.
Pole Position
Some companies are making even bigger commitments to smart phones. About a year and a half ago, telecommunications provider Verizon Communications Inc. of New York started testing BlackBerry smart phones from Research In Motion Ltd. of Waterloo, Ontario. The devices were given to Verizon field technicians, who use online applications to manage their daily work flow and to test the condition of telephone lines.
Previously, the technicians did those same chores on laptops or, in some cases, older, proprietary hand-held devices that Verizon is phasing out. The laptops -- eight-pound Panasonic Toughbooks that are "ruggedized" to withstand shocks -- are especially awkward for the technicians, who sometimes need to shimmy up poles and work in tight-squeeze locations with the notebooks slung over their shoulders.
Bob Mudge, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Verizon Telecom, says the technicians raved about the convenience of the pocket-size, five-ounce BlackBerrys.
John Weber
"The technician feedback was like nothing I had heard in 25 years in business," Mr. Mudge says.
By the end of the year, Mr. Mudge plans to switch about 12,000 of Verizon's field technicians over to BlackBerrys. He estimates the move will replace 1,500 laptops that Verizon technicians were already using and eliminate the need to buy 5,000 to 7,000 laptops in the near future, which would have been needed as the company continues to phase out its proprietary hand-held devices.
Besides the ergonomic benefits of the smart phone, Mr. Mudge says the first-year costs of a BlackBerry, including the device itself and wireless service, are just under $1,300, compared with about $3,500 in first-year costs for a laptop with wireless service. Replacing a lost or damaged BlackBerry costs about $129, compared with more than $2,000 for the laptops Verizon was using, Mr. Mudge says.
He says the BlackBerry is more efficient, too. Laptops can require several minutes to start up and shut down, plus a minute or so longer for users to log onto a wireless network and connect securely to Verizon's corporate applications. The BlackBerrys, in contrast, are "always on" -- both powered up and able to provide almost instantaneous access to Verizon's online applications.
Verizon Communications is part owner, with Vodafone Group PLC, of Verizon Wireless, which provides cellular service to BlackBerrys. But Mr. Mudge says the decision to use BlackBerrys was unrelated to the relationship between the two companies. Verizon Wireless also makes money selling high-speed wireless Internet service for laptops.
For many business users, smart phones offer another advantage: coverage. Users can access the Internet anywhere they can get a cellphone signal. And they can often tap into wide-area high-speed wireless Internet service.
With laptops, wide-area Internet access is typically an add-on that requires a separate antenna and service plan. A far more common wireless technology in laptops, Wi-Fi, is typically limited to local hot spots in hotel lobbies, airports and cafés.
A Better Substitute
So, what's coming next for smart phones? Silicon Valley companies are cooking up new ways of making smart phones better laptop substitutes.
Some new smart phones, including some models based on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile operating system, are starting to come with ports that let users connect the devices to digital projectors through a cable for giving presentations. "These smart phones are as powerful as laptops from a few years ago," says Scott Rockfeld, group product manager for Windows Mobile.
Palm Inc., the company that pioneered the smart-phone market with the Treo, developed a "mobile companion" product called Foleo that acted as a laptop-size keyboard and screen for mobile phones. Palm shelved the project last year to focus on other products, but has said it might release Foleo someday.
Celio Corp. of Salt Lake City, offers a $199 mobile companion called the Redfly. The company won't provide sales totals for the Redfly but says several enterprises are deploying "multiple hundreds of units" and one business is deploying 1,200 Redflys.
At the same time, hardware makers are creating slimmer, smaller classes of computers that get ever closer to the size of smart phones. There are ultramobile PCs, or UMPCs, likeAsustek Computer Inc.'s Eee PC, and even smaller mobile Internet devices, or MIDs, likeNokia Corp.'s N800 Internet Tablet, that are about the size of a small paperback book.
One heavy smart-phone user, Jim Malloy, vice president of sales for Miyachi Unitek Corp., a Japanese manufacturer of welding and other industrial equipment, believes the distinction between smart phones and laptops will get less clear, especially as the former get larger screens.
"Laptops seem to be getting smaller and smaller," says Mr. Malloy. "Smart phones are getting bigger and bigger. There's a melding or mixing happening."
Many
people can watch videos on their cellphones. But not everyone can do it
like Avi Gulranjani. The 30-year-old Manhattan physician often reaches
for his Apple
Inc. iPhone during work breaks. But instead checking out sports
highlights or three-minute clips, he watches New York Yankees games and
hourlong episodes of “The West Wing.”
Mr. Gulranjani has been able to watch longer programming on his
iPhone since he began using a software application from EchoStar
Communication Corp. subsidiary Sling Media. “I didn’t think I would get
used to watching an hour or 30-minute show on my phone, but I’m
hooked,” he says.
John Ueland
Until
recently, cellphones’ video capability was limited to short clips, and
the video selection was tiny. But now, people can watch full network
and cable-TV shows and long movies.
The change is being driven by the arrival of new smart phones—the iPhone, Palm Inc.’s Pre and Nokia
Corp.’s N-series phones, for instance—with big screens that make
watching longer TV shows and movies on small devices more tolerable. At
the same time, services such as Sling Media’s Mobile Player, CBS
Corp.’s TV.com and Nero Inc.’s Move It have begun providing ways for
consumers to view everything from live sports events to “Project
Runway” on their phones. These services let people use hand-held
devices either to retrieve videos stored on their digital video
recorders at home or to gain access to large libraries of long-form
content owned by independent media producers.
In May, for instance, Sling Media launched its Sling Media Mobile
Player for the iPhone. The service lets people send TV shows, DVR
recordings and other media to their phones. For between $200 and $300,
users get a device called a Slingbox, which connects to a cable or
satellite set-top box, as well as software for the phone. Sling says
nearly a million people have signed up for the service on the iPhone.
Also in May, TV.com launched a cellphone video-watching service,
which people can access by downloading free software to their mobile
phone. Using the software, consumers can play full episodes of TV
series such as “Gossip Girl” and cult favorites like the original “Star
Trek.”
So far, the increase in video options hasn’t boosted mobile-video
viewership. According to Nielsen Co., mobile viewership is flat from a
year ago, when about 13 million people watched videos on their
cellphones.
That’s partly because smart phones like the iPhone and Nokia’s N97
remain a small portion of the overall cellphone market. Only about 18%
of the 270 million cellphone users in the U.S. have smart phones,
according to Nielsen. Most other cellphones still have small screens
and hard-to-reach buttons, says Roger Entner, a Nielsen analyst. The
screens of smart phones like the iPhone or the Palm Pre measure more
than than 3 inches diagonally—nearly an inch bigger than the screen of
the Motorola Razr V8 and some other flip-model phones.
Ira Frimere, portfolio manager for Nokia, says the company has
worked to improve the video-viewing experience. For some of its smart
phones, Nokia now includes a kickstand—a kind of mini-tripod—to allow
hands-free viewing, as well as software that gives people the option of
horizontal or vertical viewing. Nokia has also added memory and
processing power to some phones in order to make images appear smoother
and more fluid on the screen, Mr. Frimere says.
The new mobile-TV services aren’t hassle-free. Watching a movie on a
phone consumes a lot of bandwidth—the capacity of a communications
channel—and that limits where some of the new services can be used. For
instance, Sling Media’s iPhone service is limited to hot spots, or
public areas that provide wireless Internet access, which often have
greater network capacity than cellphone networks. Consumers can’t
access the service using AT&T Inc.’s wireless cellphone network.
When watching some mobile-TV services on cellular networks,
consumers can run into “jitter”—that is, a video’s quality becomes
degraded and hard to view, with images freezing or not appearing at
all. Daren Gill, general manager of Veveo Inc.’s vTap service, which
powers TV.com mobile, recommends that people generally watch TV on
their phones at a hot spot.
Also, some of the video services require a lot of power, which can
drain a phone’s battery life. Phones with high-resolution screens,
which offer better picture quality, use as much as twice as much energy
as a standard phone would need.
Some of the mobile-TV services don’t allow people to transfer music
videos or movies from another hand-held device such as an iPod or Sony
Playstation Portable. Such transfers also require some technical
know-how to get the videos to work.
To make such moves easier, media software company Nero introduced
its Move It service in March. The software, which costs about $40 and
can be downloaded to a phone, lets consumers move content between
cellphones and other hand-held devices. It also takes care of technical
issues like resizing video for a cellphone screen.
Kertis Henderson, 31, a software developer in Burlington, N.C.,
started using Move It about a month ago to transfer episodes of
“M*A*S*H” from his iPod touch to his HTC Corp. Touch phone. “I didn’t
think I would have an easy experience transferring some of my videos to
my phone, but [Move It] makes the process really simple,” he say
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John Weber
John Ueland