roboticists photos on Flickr

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Training to be a Nanite Systems roboticist!

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Training to be a Nanite Systems roboticist!

DC's Red Bee (Jenna Raleigh) by Numbuh1Nerd

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A roboticist and great-niece of the WWII-era hero Red Bee, Jenna Raleigh mysteriously received a package full of her great-uncle's notes on communicating with insects. Using those notes, she created an exoskeleton and a fleet of robotic bees, becoming the new Red Bee!

Alice (a bit over-gratuitous if you ask me but the shaping- gah) by Coconut Fella

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There, Fidget was able to stay with the family while Alice went to work. The situation worked out especially well as Anita Cullen was one of the most famed and respected roboticists in the field, and could perform regular maintenance on either Fidget or Alice if need be.

CONTEST ENTRIES (Anti-heroes / Villains) by The Lego Zealot | Zach

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These three are original Anti-heroes/villains created for Leo Piper's contest.

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On December 23rd, 2017, something had awoken. A monolith discovered in southern Africa had been dug up the previous week, and on it, alien carvings told stories of horrible monsters and technologies not previously known to man. The alien monolith had unleashed a storm. The worst storm in human history.

The monolith had one word carved in that humans could understand.

Ollphéist.

Irish for Monster.

On that day of December 23rd, three people in the United States were affected.

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From L-R:

FURY

Brandon Houldt, a motorcyclist, was passing a small county as a part of his week-long road trip with his brother, Michael. Michael, after being stuck by the storm, was thrown off his bike, resulting in his death. Stricken by grief, Brandon took up the alias of Fury, swearing to eradicate anyone who was affected by the lighting, convinced that they were to blame. He'd hunt them all down, even if it took him the rest of his life.

POWERS

- Various array of weapons

- Martial arts master

- Motorcyclist

PIXEL

Hunter Reiss was (and is) a teenager living at home with his abusive foster parent. Deemed an outcast by his peers at school and abused by his father, he confides in his one and only friend: his computer. After being hit by a bolt during the storm, Hunter awoke to a horrible reality. His computer was broken. However, after realising that he had the ability to command and weaponise machines and pixels, he costumed up and took up the name of Pixel - a crime fighting vigilante with one advantage - he's not afraid to kill to get the job done.

POWERS:

- Able to weaponise and manipulate technology

- Able to transform himself into pixels, allowing him to travel through technology

- Knows parkour

- Can shoot beams of pixels, known as a "stream"

VORTEX

Victoria Cliff was a geneticist and roboticist, specialising in robotic limb replacements. After being struck by the storm while her lab collapsed, Victoria had ended up losing both of her legs and an eye. After weeks of recovering, she decided to craft her own cybernetic replacements. Using her vast knowledge of technology, she harnesses the power of the storm, then taking up the name of Vortex.

POWERS:

- Able to control the storm and shoot bolts of lighting.

- Can run forever (cybernetic implants)

- Can see extremely far (cybernetic eye)

- Can scan for internal damages

- Extreme accuracy (replaced hand)

NASA Tests New Robotic Refueling Technologies by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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RROxiTT lead roboticist Alex Janas stands with the Oxidizer Nozzle Tool as he examines the work site.

Credit: NASA/Goddard/Chris Gunn

NASA has successfully concluded a remotely controlled test of new technologies that would empower future space robots to transfer hazardous oxidizer – a type of propellant – into the tanks of satellites in space today.

Concurrently on the ground, NASA is incorporating results from this test and the Robotic Refueling Mission on the International Space Station to prepare for an upcoming ground-based test of a full-sized robotic servicer system that will perform tasks on a mock satellite client.

Collectively, these efforts are part of an ongoing and aggressive technology development campaign to equip robots and humans with the tools and capabilities needed for spacecraft maintenance and repair, the assembly of large space telescopes, and extended human exploration.

NASA image use policy.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

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Rodney Brooks by Christopher Michel

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I photographed Dr. Rodney Brooks on September 17, 2021, at his high-rise condo on Vallejo Street in San Francisco. The soft light filtered through the large windows, casting a warm glow as we sat discussing the state of robotics.

At one point, he held Genghis on his lap—a six-legged robot he built at MIT in the 1980s. Genghis was a breakthrough in robotics, showing how intricate behaviors like crawling can arise from a system of basic, independently operating controllers. It was a fascinating moment, seeing the legendary roboticist reunited with one of his most influential creations.

Brooks, known for his work in artificial intelligence and robotics, has long championed the idea that intelligence is built from the ground up rather than imposed from above. His insights into embodied cognition and behavior-based robotics have reshaped the field, influencing everything from industrial automation to household robotics.

The conversation was a reflection of his lifelong curiosity and relentless pursuit of innovation. Even as we spoke about the challenges facing the industry today, his enthusiasm for the future of robotics remained palpable. A visionary in his field, Brooks continues to push the boundaries of what machines can do—and how they might one day coexist with us in everyday life.

Fluxx-verse | Flicker Fighters by Pip (Philip)

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So, in the Flickr Fighter discord, on the the main topics of conversation is parallel universe versions of the team. So I decided to make some versions of Fluxx from some of the alternate worlds we discussed. I didn't feel like editing so they aren't 100% accurate to how they maybe should look. But I was able to do alright with what Mecabricks has.

Bottom row L2R:

Phil from Accounting - Office Sitcom universe:

Phil is an average office worker who isn't very outgoing but does his best to enjoy his relatively-boring job and stay out of the drama around the office. At the end of the day he goes home and plays video games online with his coworkers.

[It's a little boring, but that's because I didn't add the whole plot Multi came up with about them forming an esports league. :P ]

0-G - Racing universe:

In a world... where racing is life... One kid builds a gravity defying hover car... And goes really, really fast.

Normal Fluxx - Normal Universe:

Just here for posterity.

Sir Delacroix the Silent - Steampunk/League of Gentlemen universe:

A mysterious individual that uses his skills of deduction, stealth and listening to help others. Hardly ever talks.

Phil the Janitor - High School universe:

So we made a universe that's basically a Disney sitcom. All the fighters are instead teenage stereotypes. I never went to school so I'm the wacky janitor. xP He mostly just dances to oldies while he cleans.

Top Row L2R:

Flow - Genderbend universe:

Very similar to Fluxx in personality and life. But she does have some differing tastes and interests.

Force - Flickr Scoundrel Universe:

In this universe, Fluxx tries to take a shortcut to gain better control of his powers by taking an experimental serum. But with the power increase came an increase in ego. (That, and it slowly corrupted his body with dark energy and changed his glow from white to red) He's powerful enough to beat almost anyone who could stand in his way. Because of this he thinks he should be worshiped by the mortals. Also, he's just a regular 'ol narcissistic jerk.

In summary, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Future Fluxx:

This isn't really an alternate universe exactly. More of a potential future for the character. A future in which he masters his powers and quits crime-fighting to find more peaceful ways to better the planet.

フラックス (Furakkusu) - Japanese/Anime universe:

This Fluxx is a young monk who grew up being taught the ways of peace and serenity. He devoted his life to mastering the secret technique of controlling the very law of gravity, which he uses to promote peace across the land.

Phi-1 - Apocalypse universe (Not shown):

Picture here: photos.app.goo.gl/xaXE2ADMZGhoPdp7A

Timid roboticist, Philip Delacorix, was tasked working on a secret governmental project. An intelligent robot. But when the disaster that shook the whole earth happened, his consciousness was ripped from his body and thrown into the robot he made. Now, having practically died already, he worries it could happen again and fears just about everything. Even ducks. Especially ducks. Despite being a hulking mass a metal he's a gentle giant and wouldn't hurt a fly. He also has electro-magnets in his hands that allow him to lift metal objects without even touching them.

What do you see? How do you see it? by Universal Art Factory

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NOT MY IMAGE

NOT MY COPYRIGHT

Modified colour for illustrative purposes: educational and informative use of image only.

The Animal Worlds That Lie Beyond Our Perception

August 5, 2022 by Betsy Mason

What is special about humans that sets us apart from other animals? Less than some of us would like to believe.

As scientists peer more deeply into the lives of other animals, they’re finding that our fellow creatures are far more emotionally, socially, and cognitively complex than we typically give them credit for. A deluge of innovative research is revealing that behavior we would call intelligent if humans did it can be found in virtually every corner of the animal kingdom. Already this year scientists have shown that Goffin's cockatoos can use multiple tools at once to solve a problem, Australian Magpies will cooperate to remove tracking devices harnessed to them by scientists, and a small brown songbird can sometimes keep time better than the average professional musician — and that’s just among birds.

This pileup of fascinating findings may be at least partly responsible for an increase in people’s interest in the lives of other animals — a trend that’s reflected in an apparent uptick in books and television shows on the topic, as well as in legislation concerning other species. Public sentiment in part pushed the National Institutes of Health to stop supporting biomedical research on chimpanzees in 2015. In Canada, an outcry led to a ban in 2019 on keeping cetaceans like dolphins and orcas in captivity. And earlier this year, the United Kingdom passed an animal welfare bill that officially recognizes that many animals are sentient beings capable of suffering, including invertebrates like octopuses and lobsters.

Many of these efforts are motivated by human empathy for animals we’ve come to see as intelligent, feeling beings like us, such as chimpanzees and dolphins. But how can we extend that concern to the millions of other species that share the planet with us?

Three recent books take on one of the major barriers to empathy for other animals: the particular way we sense and experience the world, or perceptual bias. Each of these books aims to break down our human-centered perspective by pointing out our sensory blind spots and using various strategies to illuminate the vast array of animal sensory realms that are often incredibly different from our own.

Ed Yong, a staff writer for The Atlantic and author of “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us,” points out that even the use of metaphors like “blind spots” betrays how heavily most humans depend on — and favor — the visual sense. “Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields,” Yong writes. “But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness.” Our fraction is dominated by vision.

Part of Yong’s strategy to help readers overcome this visual bent is to provide a truly immense amount of information about what science has learned about animal senses, from hearing and taste to echolocation and magnetoreception — down to the physics and biology of how some of those senses work. Along the way, he shows how much is going on around us that we cannot detect at all. Scientists are no exception, and Yong illustrates how their bias toward more familiar senses has limited what we know about other animals. “Experiments that might reveal how they use their senses are hard to design,” he writes, “especially when those senses are drastically different from ours.”

To guide readers on this jam-packed, fascinating tour of animal perception, he borrows the concept of the Umwelt, the unique sensory perspective of an individual species or organism. Developed by Baltic-German zoologist Jacob von Uexküll in the early 20th century, the Umwelt idea has long been employed by scientists, philosophers, writers, and even roboticists in their attempts to understand how the world is perceived with different kinds of eyes and ears, and wholly unfamiliar sensors as well.

“Stepping between Umwelten, or at least trying to, is like setting foot upon an alien planet,” Yong writes. What is it like to be an elephantfish, both creating and sensing electric fields? “A river full of electric fish must be like a cocktail party where no one ever shuts up, even when their mouths are full.” Or a mole pressing the walls of its burrow with an exquisitely touch-sensitive star-shaped snout? “With every press, its environment comes into focus in a starburst of textures. I imagine that each one adds to a continuous model of the tunnel that builds in the mole’s mind, like a pointillist image appearing dot by dot.”

As Yong warns in his introduction, imagining these alien worlds from within our human sensory bubble is challenging. And while his analogies are often fun and evocative, they can also feel unsatisfying. This is partly because his focus is on animals’ sensory experience, and he stops short of exploring their inner lives. But it may also be due to the inescapable nature of what he’s seeking to describe. Philosopher Thomas Nagel may have been right when he posited in his famous 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” that we can never really know. We may be able to imagine what it is like for a human to behave like a bat, “but that is not the question,” Nagel wrote. “I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat.”

Even so, Yong’s assertion that there is inherent value in attempting to understand what it’s like to be a bat, or any other being, is spot on. This is a crucial step toward enlarging our circle of empathy. And he does an impressive job of explaining the large and growing body of research that is getting us closer to at least a partial understanding of how other animals perceive the world.

In “Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses,” British author Jackie Higgins covers some of the same sensory territory as Yong — even interviewing a few of the same scientists and describing the same classic experiments — but through a very different lens. Her primary interest is exploring the sensory overlap between humans and other animals. And because she’s more interested in the human experience, she avoids the deep end of Nagel’s dilemma.

After disabusing her readers of the notion that humans have just five senses — there may in fact be dozens, depending on how you count them — Higgins devotes each of her 12 chapters to a different human sense, focusing on how each one works in another species. Through animals like the spookfish, the cheetah, and the bar-tailed godwit, she tells the stories of the scientists who made discoveries about these animals’ abilities to see in the dark, balance themselves, and sense direction. And she shows how those findings led to revelations about our own senses, such as the fact that humans have discrete senses of taste (similar to a catfish) and the possibility that we may be able to sense magnetic fields (like migrating birds).

Like Yong, her ultimate aim is to broaden and enliven our narrow human view of the world: “Through their eyes, ears, skins, tongues, and noses,” Higgins writes, “our familiar and ordinary become unfamiliar and extraordinary, and curious new senses emerge.”

But while Yong wants his readers to explore animal senses “to better understand their lives,” Higgins wants us to better understand and savor our own human capabilities. “We are guilty of underappreciating — and underestimating — our sensory powers,” she argues. Our eyes can see more than we think, our noses are more capable than we imagine, and we have extraordinarily sensitive hearing.

Higgins, a wildlife filmmaker with a degree in zoology, has both the science and storytelling chops to make “Sentient” a fun and enlightening read. She skillfully weaves together narratives about seminal discoveries in sensory science, cutting-edge research happening today, and people whose sensory worlds are unusual in some way.

In her fascinating chapter on the sense of time, she intertwines stories about research on the trashline orbweaver, a spider whose internal clock is just 18.5 hours; the 18th-century discovery that a mimosa plant knows the time of day even without the sun; a speleologist who spent months at a time in dark caves to reveal that humans also have an internal clock; a scientist who spent 10 days in a World War II bunker he converted into a lightproof, soundproof isolation unit; a British Army sergeant who suffered brain damage that rendered him “time blind”; and the discovery that mice and other mammals, including humans, have time-sensing cells in their eyes.

One of the most intriguing case studies is that of Ian Waterman, who as a young man lost his sense of proprioception — the ability to sense where your body is in space — leaving him unable to move from the neck down. “It was as if I had been disembodied,” he told Higgins. Waterman gradually relearned how to move and walk, keeping track of where his limbs are by watching them. The octopus might use conscious attention in a similar way to assert control over its eight limbs that are otherwise free to explore on their own like semi-autonomous individual beings, she writes: “It is a consciousness that seems to shape-shift like the octopus’s body.”

But with so many captivating and relatable stories of extraordinary human Umwelten, Higgins misses an opportunity to push readers to be more open to different ways of being in the world and to feel a closer connection to the animals whose sensory worlds she describes.

Both Yong and Higgins close on a forward-looking note, but with different messages. Higgins looks ahead to “a new dawn for the human senses,” enabled by our brain’s neuroplasticity and aided by technology. She notes that we’re already seeing the development of implants that cure blindness by recruiting the tongue to “see,” and vibration vests to help deaf people “feel” sound. And biohackers are looking for sensory enhancements. “We see only a ten-trillionth of the electromagnetic spectrum; imagine extending our range to perceive infrared heat like a rattlesnake or see ultraviolet light like a honeybee,” she writes. It’s up to us to decide what we want our reality to be.

Yong concludes with a more urgent and compelling message: We need to care enough about the sensory worlds of other animals to help save those worlds before it’s too late. “Through centuries of effort, people have learned much about the sensory worlds of other species,” he writes. “But in a fraction of that time, we have upended these worlds.” With light, sound and chemical pollution, we’re drowning out the sensory cues animals use to communicate and survive. “Instead of stepping into the Umwelten of other animals, we have forced them to live in ours by barraging them with stimuli of our own making.”

In “Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction,” biologist David George Haskell drives this point home even more forcefully by delving deeply into a smaller slice of the sensory landscape: the way humans and other animals sense sound. He explores the sonic world from every angle — physiology, evolution, conservation, culture, history, philosophy. He does an admirable job describing soundscapes across the globe through words — not an easy task — and starkly lays out how those sounds are threatened.

He takes readers to the eastern slope of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where the unique, low-frequency sound the wind makes roaring through pine and spruce trees has shaped the red crossbill’s song, which is higher-pitched than other birds of its size. “The bird keeps singing, somehow penetrating the fog of noise,” he writes. “The song’s fine brushwork stands out, strokes of luminous pigment against the gray wash of wind.” In the Amazon, he layers descriptions of individual species of birds, insects, and frogs, building up a sense of the “extreme blast of sensory diversity that stuns my auditory palate.”

We also learn about soundscapes that humans can’t hear without technology. Electronic sensors clipped to the stems and branches of vegetation reveal the vibratory communication of leafhoppers and treehoppers, each species specifically tuned to the sonic qualities of its preferred plant. By dropping an underwater microphone into a salt marsh, the acoustic world of snapping shrimp bursts to life, like a pan of sizzling bacon fat. “Sparkles surround me, a sonic shimmer,” Haskell writes. “Every glistening fragment is a fleck of sunlit copper, warm and flashing.”

Throughout the book, he shows how humans are mucking up these intricate combinations of sound that animals make, hear, and rely upon to flourish. The revelations are upsetting, but his description of what’s happening underwater may be the most devastating. “If there is an acoustic hell, it is in today’s oceans,” Haskell writes.

The lives of orcas in the Salish Sea, for example, are being degraded by human noise pollution, drowning out their distinct vocal cultures. In combination with other threats, including chemical pollution, this auditory infringement is pushing them toward population collapse. “Here off the coast of San Juan Island, the whales’ voices are like fine silk stitched into a thick denim of propeller and motor sound,” he writes, “clicks and whistles sometimes audible, but often disappearing into the tight weave of engines.”

Reestablishing a connection with the sounds of the natural world is a critical step toward changing this damaging trajectory, Haskell argues. But we must also overcome the barrier between ourselves and the creatures whose sensory worlds lie beyond our perceptual abilities, and expand our moral circle to include them.

“Our senses bias us toward feelings of kinship with species whose communicative sounds most closely resemble ours,” he writes. “Because concern follows closely on the heels of empathic connection, our senses shape our ethics.”

Betsy Mason is a freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay area and a 2022 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow reporting on how the science of animal minds is changing how we think about us and them.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Termite Hill as big as a Man by Lancashire Photographer

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Termite hills

Mound-building termites are a group of termite species that live in mounds. These termites live in Africa, Australia and South America. The mounds sometimes have a diameter of 30 metres (98 ft). Most of the mounds are in well-drained areas. Termite mounds usually outlive the colonies themselves.

Collective Mind in the Mound: How Do Termites Build Their Huge Structures?

Termites move a fourth of a metric ton of dirt to build mounds that can reach 17 feet (5 meters) and higher.

A single termite can be barely bigger than the moon of a fingernail, its semi-transparent exoskeleton as vulnerable to sunlight as to being crushed by a child in flip-flops. But in groups of a million or two, termites are formidable architects, building mounds that can reach 17 feet (5 meters) and higher. The 33 pounds (15 kilograms) or so of termites in a typical mound will, in an average year, move a fourth of a metric ton (about 550 pounds) of soil and several tons of water.

The termites also "farm" a symbiotic fungus that occupies eight times more of the nest than the insects do. And some termites eat as much grass each year as an 880-pound (400-kilogram) cow.

Like ants, bees, and other social insects, termites live in societies where the collective power of the colony far outstrips that of the individual. Being part of a super-organism gives the tiny termite superpowers. But a termite mound is like a construction site without a foreman—no one termite is in charge of the project. Is there a "collective plan" encoded in the collective mind of the colony?

In addition to experimenting in the mounds, Turner designs computer simulations to explore deeper patterns in termite behaviour. It wouldn't be wrong to say he's been searching for the psyche of the super-organism, but it wouldn't fully get at the richness of all of the other things he's noticed along the way—including clues to how humans might build more energy-efficient buildings, how we might design robots to build on places like Mars, and even peculiar termite behaviours that might help us understand how our own brains work.

The life of the termite is a race against rain, Turner says. Termite mounds can take four to five years to build, but a really heavy downpour might cause a third of the mounds to collapse. So termites are always scurrying to rebuild their mounds as fast as the weather erodes them.

To demonstrate the rebuilding process, Turner uses an auger, a tool that looks like a big corkscrew, to cut into the rock-hard surface of a mound. As he pulls a six-inch (15-centimeter) plug of dirt from the side, termites pour out of the hole. Soldiers fan out with their pinching mandibles ready for battle, and workers with mouths full of dirt run to plug the hole. How do they know there's a hole in the mound?

Termites are "novelty detectors," attuned to excitement and always on alert, says Turner. (When there isn't external stimulation, termites sometimes stand in little clusters, massaging each other's antennae.) Experiments in Turner's lab suggest they respond to slight air movements and changes in humidity and concentrations of gases like carbon dioxide.

At the first sign of a disturbance, a termite runs to communicate the news with touch and vibrations. Roused, masses of termites fill their mouths with dirt and head toward the source of the problem. The commotion attracts more termites with more dirt, and within an hour or so the hole is patched.

Peering Inside

The only way to get a glimpse of the termite super-organism in action is to rip the side off a mound. And so one morning Turner, along with entomologist Eugene Marais of the National Museum of Namibia, takes a backhoe to the test fields. With a single swoop, the backhoe removes the top of a mound and then precisely dismantles the rest, like pulling the walls off a dollhouse.

The termites are not happy that their walls have suddenly disappeared, and they swarm frantically around the exposed structure. Marais dislodges a chunk of dense soil about the size of a squashed soccer ball—the queen's chamber.

After repeated blows of a hand pick, the capsule breaks open suddenly, revealing a saucer about five inches (almost 13 centimeters) across containing the queen. Her sweating body is swollen to the size of a human finger. A coterie of workers carries the eggs she produces—at the staggering rate of one every three seconds—to nearby nurseries, while others feed and clean her.

The queen herself, once a relatively normal size, retains her original legs, but they are now nearly useless. Her pale body pulsates, the caramel-colored fats and liquids inside swirling under her skin.

The title "queen" leads people to imagine that she is in charge of the mound, but this is a misconception. "The queen is not in charge," says Marais. "She's really a slave." The queen is the epitome of the super-organism: one for all and all for one. She is a captive ovary, producing hundreds of millions of eggs over her life span of up to 15 years to populate the mound.

Farming Fungus

Below the queen's chamber lies the super-organism's largest organ: the fungus garden. In a symbiotic relationship dating back millions of years, the termites exit the mound through long foraging tunnels and return with their "intestines full of chewed grass and wood, which they defecate upon their return, and other workers assemble these 'pseudo-feces' into several mazelike fungus combs," Turner explains.

The termites then seed the comb with spores of fungus, which sprout and dissolve the tough cellulose into a high-energy mixture of partially digested wood and grass. For the termites, the fungus functions as a sort of external stomach, but the fungus gets the better deal. Ensconced in elaborate termite-built combs and constantly tended, the fungus receives multiple benefits, including food, water, shelter, and protection.

In fact, the deal is so lopsided that it calls into question just who's in charge of the relationship. Collectively, the colony's fungus accounts for nearly 85 percent of the total metabolism inside the mound, and Turner speculates that the fungus may send chemical signals to the termites that influence—control?—the way they build the mound. "I like to tell people that this may not be a termite-built structure," he says. "It may actually be a fungus-built structure."

Living Quarters

Which brings us to the most extraordinary organ: the mound itself. Contrary to common notions, termite mounds are not high-rise residence halls. Rather, they are "accessory organs of gas exchange," in Turner's words, designed to serve the respiratory needs of the subterranean colony located several feet (a meter or two) below the mound.

For many years, researchers looked at termite mounds and supposed that the spires worked like chimneys, drawing hot air up and out. But Turner discovered that mounds function more like lungs, inhaling and exhaling through walls that appear impenetrable but are actually quite porous.

Inside the mound, a series of bubble-like chambers connected to branching passages absorb changes in outside pressure or wind and pass them through the mound. To regulate the mix of gases and maintain a stable nest environment, the termites are forever remodeling the mound in response to changing conditions.

"A termite mound is like a living thing," says Turner, "dynamic and constantly maintained."

Wet Kisses

While studying termite building behavior, Turner noticed that his subjects seemed to be kissing each other, mouth to mouth, after a complicated ritual that included grooming and begging. Curious, he added fluorescent green dye to their water and discovered that all this "kissing" was actually a bucket brigade, transferring large amounts of water across the mound. A termite can drink half its own weight in water, scurry to a drier part of the mound, and distribute it to other termites. In addition to rebalancing the mound's moisture level, moving all of this water dramatically changes its shape.

Turner's work with termites has attracted some notable collaborators, among them British engineer Rupert Soar. Inspired in part by termite mounds, Soar has plans to build energy-efficient houses with porous walls that make use of passive wind energy. He's also looked into using termite-style building methods to help robots build structures in remote locations using only local materials.

Group Brain

Termites may even change the way we think about thinking. A research project at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering brought computer scientists and roboticists to Turner's site to observe termite behavior with a range of sophisticated scanners and software.

Harvard professor of robotics Radhika Nagpal makes an analogy between the behavior of termites and the brain. Individual termites react rather than think, but at a group level they exhibit a kind of cognition and awareness of their surroundings. Similarly, in the brain, individual neurons don't think, but thinking arises in the connections between them. (Single neurons, for example, may recognize a baseball bat and the smell of hot dogs, but working in concert they let you know you're at a baseball game.)

Nagpal's team set up dozens of experiments to try to observe just where this collective cognition arose. "What program are they running?" mused Harvard physicist Justin Werfel, comparing the termites to robots. "Can we get a stochastic model of a stateless automaton that has no memory but reacts to what it encounters?"

Nagpal, Werfel, and Kirstin Peterson, also from Harvard, recently used termite behavior as a model to build a small swarm of robots (named TERMES) that assembles a structure without any instructions.

"This is a system where complexity is of the essence," Turner says of the termites' behavior. "If you don't capture the complexity, there's no hope of understanding it." And so the quest continues for the elusive mind in the mound.

Mr. C.L.E.A.N. by Ribbitz

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A maintenance bot of the punny variety. 'C.L.E.A.N.' stands for Cleaning, Lighting and Engineering Android, Newtype. A rather unimaginative roboticist decided the main camera should be mounted on what looked like a broom.

My entry for Round 3 of the NPU Contest.

Second Life - St Machars Cemetery Aberdeen Scotland 2017 by DanoAberdeen

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Visiting the Cemetery this evening a sliver of sun shone through the clouds and lit up this fine strong dominating tree that towers the external back wall of the graveyard, like a super trooper.

It caught my eye and provoked some thoughts of life after death, hence this capture, posting to Flickr to archive the moment and enjoy time and again.

Resurrection

Resurrection is the concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of ancient religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and resurrects. The death and resurrection of Jesus, an example of resurrection, is the central focus of Christianity.

As a religious concept, it is used in two distinct respects: a belief in the resurrection of individual souls that is current and ongoing (Christian idealism, realized eschatology), or else a belief in a singular resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The resurrection of the dead is a standard eschatological belief in the Abrahamic religions.

Some believe the soul is the actual vehicle by which people are resurrected.

Christian theological debate ensues with regard to what kind of resurrection is factual – either a spiritual resurrection with a spirit body into Heaven, or a material resurrection with a restored human body. While most Christians believe Jesus' resurrection from the dead and ascension to Heaven was in a material body, a very small minority believe it was spiritual.

There are documented rare cases of the return to life of the clinically dead which are classified scientifically as examples of the Lazarus syndrome, a term originating from the Biblical story of the Resurrection of Lazarus.

Etymology

Resurrection, from the Latin noun resurrectio -onis, from the verb rego, "to make straight, rule" + preposition sub, "under", altered to subrigo and contracted to surgo, surrexi, surrectum + preposition re-, "again", thus literally "a straightening from under again".

Religion

Ancient religions in the Near East

See also: Dying-and-rising god

The concept of resurrection is found in the writings of some ancient non-Abrahamic religions in the Middle East. A few extant Egyptian and Canaanite writings allude to dying and rising gods such as Osiris and Baal. Sir James Frazer in his book The Golden Bough relates to these dying and rising gods, but many of his examples, according to various scholars, distort the sources. Taking a more positive position, Tryggve Mettinger argues in his recent book that the category of rise and return to life is significant for the following deities: Ugaritic Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Osiris and Dumuzi.

Ancient Greek religion

In ancient Greek religion a number of men and women were made physically immortal as they were resurrected from the dead. Asclepius was killed by Zeus, only to be resurrected and transformed into a major deity. Achilles, after being killed, was snatched from his funeral pyre by his divine mother Thetis and resurrected, brought to an immortal existence in either Leuce, Elysian plains or the Islands of the Blessed. Memnon, who was killed by Achilles, seems to have received a similar fate. Alcmene, Castor, Heracles, and Melicertes, were also among the figures sometimes considered to have been resurrected to physical immortality. According to Herodotus's Histories, the seventh century BC sage Aristeas of Proconnesus was first found dead, after which his body disappeared from a locked room. Later he found not only to have been resurrected but to have gained immortality.

Many other figures, like a great part of those who fought in the Trojan and Theban wars, Menelaus, and the historical pugilist Cleomedes of Astupalaea, were also believed to have been made physically immortal, but without having died in the first place. Indeed, in Greek religion, immortality originally always included an eternal union of body and soul. The philosophical idea of an immortal soul was a later invention, which, although influential, never had a breakthrough in the Greek world. As may be witnessed even into the Christian era, not least by the complaints of various philosophers over popular beliefs, traditional Greek believers maintained the conviction that certain individuals were resurrected from the dead and made physically immortal and that for the rest of us, we could only look forward to an existence as disembodied and dead souls.

This traditional religious belief in physical immortality was generally denied by the Greek philosophers. Writing his Lives of Illustrious Men (Parallel Lives) in the first century CE, the Middle Platonic philosopher Plutarch's chapter on Romulus gave an account of the mysterious disappearance and subsequent deification of this first king of Rome, comparing it to traditional Greek beliefs such as the resurrection and physical immortalization of Alcmene and Aristeas the Proconnesian, "for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton." Plutarch openly scorned such beliefs held in traditional ancient Greek religion, writing, "many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal."

The parallel between these traditional beliefs and the later resurrection of Jesus was not lost on the early Christians, as Justin Martyr argued: "when we say ... Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus." (1 Apol. 21). There is, however, no belief in a general resurrection in ancient Greek religion, as the Greeks held that not even the gods were able to recreate flesh that had been lost to decay, fire or consumption.

The notion of a general resurrection of the dead was therefore apparently quite preposterous to the Greeks. This is made clear in Paul's Areopagus discourse. After having first told about the resurrection of Jesus, which makes the Athenians interested to hear more, Paul goes on, relating how this event relates to a general resurrection of the dead:

"Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, `We shall hear you again concerning this."

Christianity

Resurrection of Jesus

In Christianity, resurrection most critically concerns the Resurrection of Jesus, but also includes the resurrection of Judgment Day known as the Resurrection of the Dead by those Christians who subscribe to the Nicene Creed (which is the majority or Mainstream Christianity), as well as the resurrection miracles done by Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament. Some churches distinguish between raising the dead (a resumption of mortal life) and a resurrection (the beginning of an immortal life).

Resurrection of Jesus

Christians regard the resurrection of Jesus as the central doctrine in Christianity. Others take the Incarnation of Jesus to be more central; however, it is the miracles – and particularly his Resurrection – which provide validation of his incarnation. According to Paul, the entire Christian faith hinges upon the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus and the hope for a life after death. The Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians: If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Resurrection

Miracles of Jesus § Resurrection of the dead

During the Ministry of Jesus on earth, before his death, Jesus commissioned his Twelve Apostles to, among other things, raise the dead. In the New Testament, Jesus is said to have raised several persons from death. These resurrections included the daughter of Jairus shortly after death, a young man in the midst of his own funeral procession, and Lazarus, who had been buried for four days. According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus's resurrection, many of those previously dead came out of their tombs and entered Jerusalem, where they appeared to many.

Similar resurrections are credited to Christian apostles and saints. Peter allegedly raised a woman named Dorcas (called Tabitha), and Paul the Apostle revived a man named Eutychus who had fallen asleep and fell from a window to his death, according to the book of Acts. Proceeding the apostolic era, many saints were said to resurrect the dead, as recorded in Orthodox Christian hagiographies.[citation needed] St Columba supposedly raised a boy from the dead in the land of Picts .

Most Christians understand these miraculous resurrections to be of a different nature than the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead. The raising of Lazarus and others from the dead could also be called "resuscitations" or "reanimations", since the life given to them is presumably temporary in nature—there is no suggestion in the Bible or hagiographic traditions that these people became truly immortal. In contrast, the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead will abolish death once and for all (see Isaiah 25:8, 1 Corinthians 15:26, 2 Timothy 1:10, Revelation 21:4).

Resurrection of the Dead

Christianity started as a religious movement within 1st-century Judaism (late Second Temple Judaism), and it retains what the New Testament itself claims was the Pharisaic belief in the afterlife and Resurrection of the Dead. Whereas this belief was only one of many beliefs held about the World to Come in Second Temple Judaism, and was notably rejected by both the Sadducees and, according to Josephus, the Pharisees, this belief became dominant within Early Christianity and already in the Gospels of Luke and John included an insistence on the resurrection of the flesh. This was later rejected by gnostic teachings, which instead continued the Pauline insistence that flesh and bones had no place in heaven.

Most modern Christian churches continue to uphold the belief that there will be a final Resurrection of the Dead and World to Come, perhaps as prophesied by the Apostle Paul when he said: "...he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world..." (Acts 17:31 KJV) and "...there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." (Acts 24:15 KJV).

Belief in the Resurrection of the Dead, and Jesus's role as judge, is codified in the Apostles' Creed, which is the fundamental creed of Christian baptismal faith. The Book of Revelation also makes many references about the Day of Judgment when the dead will be raised up.

Difference From Platonic philosophy

In Platonic philosophy and other Greek philosophical thought, at death the soul was said to leave the inferior body behind. The idea that Jesus was resurrected spiritually rather than physically even gained popularity among some Christian teachers, whom the author of 1 John declared to be antichrists. Similar beliefs appeared in the early church as Gnosticism. However, in Luke 24:39, the resurrected Jesus expressly states "behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."

Islam

Belief in the "Day of Resurrection", Yawm al-Qiyāmah (Arabic: ‫يوم القيامة‬‎‎) is also crucial for Muslims. They believe the time of Qiyāmah is preordained by God but unknown to man. The trials and tribulations preceding and during the Qiyāmah are described in the Qur'an and the hadith, and also in the commentaries of scholars. The Qur'an emphasizes bodily resurrection, a break from the pre-Islamic Arabian understanding of death.

Judaism and Samaritanism

There are three explicit examples in the Hebrew Bible of people being resurrected from the dead:

* The prophet Elijah prays and God raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17:17-24)

* Elisha raises the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:32-37); this was the very same child whose birth he previously foretold (2 Kings 4:8-16)

* A dead man's body that was thrown into the dead Elisha's tomb is resurrected when the body touches Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:21)

During the period of the Second Temple, there developed a diversity of beliefs concerning the resurrection. The concept of resurrection of the physical body is found in 2 Maccabees, according to which it will happen through recreation of the flesh.[17] Resurrection of the dead also appears in detail in the extra-canonical books of Enoch,[18] in Apocalypse of Baruch, and 2 Esdras. According to the British scholar in ancient Judaism Philip R. Davies, there is “little or no clear reference … either to immortality or to resurrection from the dead” in the Dead Sea scrolls texts.

Both Josephus and the New Testament record that the Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife, but the sources vary on the beliefs of the Pharisees. The New Testament claims that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection, but does not specify whether this included the flesh or not. According to Josephus, who himself was a Pharisee, the Pharisees held that only the soul was immortal and the souls of good people will be reincarnated and “pass into other bodies,” while “the souls of the wicked will suffer eternal punishment.” Paul, who also was a Pharisee, said that at the resurrection what is "sown as a natural body is raised a spiritual body." Jubilees seems to refer to the resurrection of the soul only, or to a more general idea of an immortal soul.

According to Herbert C. Brichto, writing in Reform Judaism's Hebrew Union College Annual, the family tomb is the central concept in understanding biblical views of the afterlife. Brichto states that it is "not mere sentimental respect for the physical remains that is...the motivation for the practice, but rather an assumed connection between proper sepulture and the condition of happiness of the deceased in the afterlife".

According to Brichto, the early Israelites apparently believed that the graves of family, or tribe, united into one, and that this unified collectivity is to what the Biblical Hebrew term Sheol refers, the common Grave of humans. Although not well defined in the Tanakh, Sheol in this view was a subterranean underworld where the souls of the dead went after the body died. The Babylonians had a similar underworld called Aralu, and the Greeks had one known as Hades. For biblical references to Sheol see Genesis 42:38, Isaiah 14:11, Psalm 141:7, Daniel 12:2, Proverbs 7:27 and Job 10:21,22, and 17:16, among others. According to Brichto, other Biblical names for Sheol were: Abaddon (ruin), found in Psalm 88:11, Job 28:22 and Proverbs 15:11; Bor (the pit), found in Isaiah 14:15, 24:22, Ezekiel 26:20; and Shakhat (corruption), found in Isaiah 38:17, Ezekiel 28:8.

Zen Buddhism

There are stories in Buddhism where the power of resurrection was allegedly demonstrated in Chan or Zen tradition. One is the legend of Bodhidharma, the Indian master who brought the Ekayana school of India to China that subsequently became Chan Buddhism.

The other is the passing of Chinese Chan master Puhua (J., Fuke) and is recounted in the Record of Linji (J., Rinzai). Puhua was known for his unusual behavior and teaching style so it is no wonder that he is associated with an event that breaks the usual prohibition on displaying such powers. Here is the account from Irmgard Schloegl's "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai".

"One day at the street market Fuke was begging all and sundry to give him a robe. Everybody offered him one, but he did not want any of them. The master [Linji] made the superior buy a coffin, and when Fuke returned, said to him: "There, I had this robe made for you." Fuke shouldered the coffin, and went back to the street market, calling loudly: "Rinzai had this robe made for me! I am off to the East Gate to enter transformation" (to die)." The people of the market crowded after him, eager to look. Fuke said: "No, not today. Tomorrow, I shall go to the South Gate to enter transformation." And so for three days. Nobody believed it any longer. On the fourth day, and now without any spectators, Fuke went alone outside the city walls, and laid himself into the coffin. He asked a traveler who chanced by to nail down the lid.

The news spread at once, and the people of the market rushed there. On opening the coffin, they found that the body had vanished, but from high up in the sky they heard the ring of his hand bell."

Technological resurrection

Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryonics procedures ideally begin within minutes of cardiac arrest, and use cryoprotectants to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation.

However, the idea of cryonics also includes preservation of people long after death because of the possibility that brain encoding memory structure and personality may still persist or be inferable in the future. Whether sufficient brain information still exists for cryonics to successfully preserve may be intrinsically unprovable by present knowledge. Therefore, most proponents of cryonics see it as an intervention with prospects for success that vary widely depending on circumstances.

Russian Cosmist Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov advocated resurrection of the dead using scientific methods. Fedorov tried to plan specific actions for scientific research of the possibility of restoring life and making it infinite. His first project is connected with collecting and synthesizing decayed remains of dead based on "knowledge and control over all atoms and molecules of the world".

The second method described by Fedorov is genetic-hereditary. The revival could be done successively in the ancestral line: sons and daughters restore their fathers and mothers, they in turn restore their parents and so on. This means restoring the ancestors using the hereditary information that they passed on to their children. Using this genetic method it is only possible to create a genetic twin of the dead person. It is necessary to give back the revived person his old mind, his personality. Fedorov speculates about the idea of "radial images" that may contain the personalities of the people and survive after death. Nevertheless, Fedorov noted that even if a soul is destroyed after death, Man will learn to restore it whole by mastering the forces of decay and fragmentation.

In his 1994 book The Physics of Immortality, American physicist Frank J. Tipler, an expert on the general theory of relativity, presented his Omega Point Theory which outlines how a resurrection of the dead could take place at the end of the cosmos. He posits that humans will evolve into robots which will turn the entire cosmos into a supercomputer which will, shortly before the big crunch, perform the resurrection within its cyberspace, reconstructing formerly dead humans (from information captured by the supercomputer from the past light cone of the cosmos) as avatars within its metaverse.

David Deutsch, British physicist and pioneer in the field of quantum computing, agrees with Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the idea of resurrecting deceased people with the help of quantum computer but he is critical of Tipler's theological views.

Italian physicist and computer scientist Giulio Prisco presents the idea of "quantum archaeology", "reconstructing the life, thoughts, memories, and feelings of any person in the past, up to any desired level of detail, and thus resurrecting the original person via 'copying to the future'".

In his book Mind Children, roboticist Hans Moravec proposed that a future supercomputer might be able to resurrect long-dead minds from the information that still survived. For example, this information can be in the form of memories, filmstrips, medical records, and DNA.

Ray Kurzweil, American inventor and futurist, believes that when his concept of singularity comes to pass, it will be possible to resurrect the dead by digital recreation.

In their science fiction novel The Light of Other Days, Sir Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter imagine a future civilization resurrecting the dead of past ages by reaching into the past, through micro wormholes and with nanorobots, to download full snapshots of brain states and memories.

Both the Church of Perpetual Life and the Terasem Movement consider themselves transreligions and advocate for the use of technology to indefinitely extend the human lifespan.

Zombies

A zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe) can be either a fictional undead monster or a person in an entranced state believed to be controlled by a bokor or wizard. These latter are the original zombies, occurring in the West African Vodun religion and its American offshoots Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo.

Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely because of the success of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and they have appeared as plot devices in various books, films and in television shows. Zombie fiction is now a sizable subgenre of horror, usually describing a breakdown of civilization occurring when most of the population become flesh-eating zombies – a zombie apocalypse. The monsters are usually hungry for human flesh, often specifically brains. Sometimes they are victims of a fictional pandemic illness causing the dead to reanimate or the living to behave this way, but often no cause is given in the story.

Disappearances (as distinct from resurrection)

As knowledge of different religions has grown, so have claims of bodily disappearance of some religious and mythological figures. In ancient Greek religion, this was a way the gods made some physically immortal, including such figures as Cleitus, Ganymede, Menelaus, and Tithonus. After his death, Cycnus was changed into a swan and vanished. In his chapter on Romulus from Parallel Lives, Plutarch criticises the continuous belief in such disappearances, referring to the allegedly miraculous disappearance of the historical figures Romulus, Cleomedes of Astypalaea, and Croesus. In ancient times, Greek and Roman pagan similarities were explained by the early Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr, as the work of demons, with the intention of leading Christians astray.

In somewhat recent years it has been learned that Gesar, the Savior of Tibet, at the end, chants on a mountain top and his clothes fall empty to the ground. The body of the first Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak Dev, is said to have disappeared and flowers were left in place of his dead body.

Lord Raglan's Hero Pattern lists many religious figures whose bodies disappear, or have more than one sepulchre. B. Traven, author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, wrote that the Inca Virococha arrived at Cusco (in modern-day Peru) and the Pacific seacoast where he walked across the water and vanished.[46] It has been thought that teachings regarding the purity and incorruptibility of the hero's human body are linked to this phenomenon. Perhaps, this is also to deter the practice of disturbing and collecting the hero's remains. They are safely protected if they have disappeared.

The first such case mentioned in the Bible is that of Enoch (son of Jared, great-grandfather of Noah, and father of Methuselah). Enoch is said to have lived a life where he "walked with God", after which "he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:1–18).

In Deuteronomy (34:6) Moses is secretly buried. Elijah vanishes in a whirlwind 2 Kings (2:11). After hundreds of years these two earlier Biblical heroes suddenly reappear, and are seen walking with Jesus, then again vanish. Mark (9:2–8), Matthew (17:1–8) and Luke (9:28–33). The last time he is seen, Luke (24:51) alone tells of Jesus leaving his disciples by ascending into the sky.

St Machar's Cathedral (or, more formally, the Cathedral Church of St Machar) is a Church of Scotland church in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is located to the north of the city centre, in the former burgh of Old Aberdeen. Technically, St Machar's is no longer a cathedral but rather a high kirk, as it has not been the seat of a bishopsince 1690.

St Machar is said to have been a companion of St Columba on his journey to Iona. A fourteenth-century legend tells how God (or St Columba) told Machar to establish a church where a river bends into the shape of a bishop's crosier before flowing into the sea.

The River Don bends in this way just below where the Cathedral now stands. According to legend, St Machar founded a site of worship in Old Aberdeen in about 580. Machar's church was superseded by a Norman cathedral in 1131, shortly after David I transferred the See from Mortlach to Aberdeen.

Almost nothing of that original cathedral survives; a lozenge-decorated base for a capital supporting one of the architraves can be seen in the Charter Room in the present church.

After the execution of William Wallace in 1305, his body was cut up and sent to different corners of the country to warn other dissenters. His left quarter ended up in Aberdeen and is buried in the walls of the cathedral.

At the end of the thirteenth century Bishop Henry Cheyne decided to extend the church, but the work was interrupted by the Scottish Wars of Independence. Cheyne's progress included piers for an extended choir at the transept crossing. These pillars, with decorated capitals of red sandstone, are still visible at the east end of the present church.

Though worn by exposure to the elements after the collapse of the cathedral's central tower, these capitals are among the finest stone carvings of their date to survive in Scotland.

Bishop Alexander Kininmund II demolished the Norman cathedral in the late 14th century, and began the nave, including the granite columns and the towers at the western end. Bishop Henry Lichtoun completed the nave, the west front and the northern transept, and made a start on the central tower.

Bishop Ingram Lindsay completed the roof and the paving stones in the later part of the fifteenth century. Further work was done over the next fifty years by Thomas Spens, William Elphinstone and Gavin Dunbar; Dunbar is responsible for the heraldic ceiling and the two western spires.

The chancel was demolished in 1560 during the Scottish Reformation. The bells and lead from the roof were sent to be sold in Holland, but the ship sank near Girdle Ness.

The central tower and spire collapsed in 1688, in a storm, and this destroyed the choir and transepts. The west arch of the crossing was then filled in, and worship carried on in the nave only; the current church consists only of the nave and aisles of the earlier building.

The ruined transepts and crossing are under the care of Historic Scotland, and contain an important group of late medieval bishops' tombs, protected from the weather by modern canopies. The Cathedral is chiefly built of outlayer granite. On the unique flat panelled ceiling of the nave (first half of the 16th Century) are the heraldic shields of the contemporary kings of Europe, and the chief earls and bishops of Scotland.

The Cathedral is a fine example of a fortified kirk, with twin towers built in the fashion of fourteenth-century tower houses. Their walls have the strength to hold spiral staircases to the upper floors and battlements. The spires which presently crown the

Though worn by exposure to the elements after the collapse of the cathedral's central tower, these capitals are among the finest stone carvings of their date to survive in Scotland.

Bishop Alexander Kininmund II demolished the Norman cathedral in the late 14th century, and began the nave, including the granite columns and the towers at the western end. Bishop Henry Lichtoun completed the nave, the west front and the northern transept, and made a start on the central tower.

Bishop Ingram Lindsay completed the roof and the paving stones in the later part of the fifteenth century. Further work was done over the next fifty years by Thomas Spens, William Elphinstone and Gavin Dunbar; Dunbar is responsible for the heraldic ceiling and the two western spires.

The chancel was demolished in 1560 during the Scottish Reformation. The bells and lead from the roof were sent to be sold in Holland, but the ship sank near Girdle Ness.

The central tower and spire collapsed in 1688, in a storm, and this destroyed the choir and transepts. The west arch of the crossing was then filled in, and worship carried on in the nave only; the current church consists only of the nave and aisles of the earlier building.

The ruined transepts and crossing are under the care of Historic Scotland, and contain an important group of late medieval bishops' tombs, protected from the weather by modern canopies. The Cathedral is chiefly built of outlayer granite. On the unique flat panelled ceiling of the nave (first half of the 16th Century) are the heraldic shields of the contemporary kings of Europe, and the chief earls and bishops of Scotland.

Bishops Gavin Dunbar and Alexander Galloway built the western towers and installed the heraldic ceiling, featuring 48 coats of arms in three rows of sixteen. Among those shown are:

* Pope Leo X's coat of arms in the centre, followed in order of importance by those of the Scottish archbishops and bishops.

* the Prior of St Andrews, representing other Church orders.

* King's College, the westernmost shield.

* Henry VIII of England, James V of Scotland and multiple instances for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was also King of Spain, Aragon, Navarre and Sicily at the time the ceiling was created.

* St Margaret of Scotland, possibly as a stand-in for Margaret Tudor, James V's mother, whose own arms would have been the marshalled arms of England and Scotland.

* the arms of Aberdeen and of the families Gordon, Lindsay, Hay and Keith.

The ceiling is set off by a frieze which starts at the north-west corner of the nave and lists the bishops of the see from Nechtan in 1131 to William Gordon at the Reformation in 1560. This is followed by the Scottish monarchs from Máel Coluim II to Mary, Queen of Scots.

Notable figures buried in the cathedral cemetery include the author J.J. Bell, Robert Brough, Gavin Dunbar, Robert Laws, a missionary to Malawi and William Ogilvie of Pittensear—the ‘rebel professor’.

There has been considerable investment in recent years in restoration work and the improvement of the display of historic artefacts at the Cathedral.

The battlements of the western towers, incomplete for several centuries, have been renewed to their original height and design, greatly improving the appearance of the exterior. Meanwhile, within the building, a number of important stone monuments have been displayed to advantage.

These include a possibly 7th-8th century cross-slab from Seaton (the only surviving evidence from Aberdeen of Christianity at such an early date); a rare 12th century sanctuary cross-head; and several well-preserved late medieval effigies of Cathedral clergy, valuable for their detailed representation of contemporary dress.

A notable modern addition to the Cathedral's artistic treasures is a carved wooden triptych commemorating John Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen (d. 1395), author of The Brus.

The Marvel ZealotVerse #1: Showtime by The Lego Zealot | Zach

35 7

Tony Stark = Bold

Jarvis = Italics

Crowd = Normal

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright. Now's the time. I look down, straighten the cuffs on both of my sleeves, and straighten my tie.

"10 seconds to curtain call sir."

I look at Jarvis and nod. I stare at him and survey his large helmet.

"Something wrong sir?"

"Nope. Think they'll buy it?"

"Of course sir. 5 seconds to curtain call."

Alright.

5...4...3...2...1...

Showtime.

The curtains raise and I swing my hands in the air. The crowd goes wild. As usual. A voice comes on in the loudspeaker.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IT'S THE ONE, THE ONLY, TONY STARK!!!!!!!!!"

"Thank you, thank you!"

I sway my arms to calm down the crowd. Jarvis steps up to my left. The crowd then settles.

"Alright. Thank you to everyone for coming today. Does anyone know what we're here for today?"

Murmurs in the crowd. Good.

"I guess that's a yes then."

I can hear laughter in the crowd. I'm sweating profusely. I want to wipe it away, but it'd show the buyers I'm not serious about this. I want them to know I am.

"Anyways, let's talk about the elephant in the room. Literally."

The large hatch on the ground behind me opens up. A large, metallic beast rises out of the ground, tightened and secured to the floor with metallic plates. I make eye contact with the investors in the back of the auditorium.

"Here we go. This, ladies and gentleman, is the S.P.D.R. The Special Police Defence Robot. Outfitted with thrusters, thermal sensors, cameras, movement and heartbeat trackers, and armed with 20mm or 7.62mm ammunition, this thing - this massive hunk of metal, is the future of police riot control as we know it."

Everyone in the crowd stands up and claps. Including the investors. Score.

"Now, any questions?"

The reporters in the front row raise their hands. I point at the lady in the front row.

"Tony, what SKTer model is standing next to you?"

"Oh him? That's Jarvis. He's the unreleased MK5. He's also my butler."

Laughter again. I point at another reporter.

"Rumor has it that you're developing a new series of drones. Is that true?"

I smirk.

"Maybe."

The crowd stands up and begins to clap and take pictures.

Everything was going fine until the gunshot.

"STARK!"

I look at the hooded, masked man with the strange, glowing gun. It seemed vaguely familia...

"HEY!"

Jarvis steps in front of me and aims his gun.

"Step back Mr. Stark. Authorities have been notified."

The hooded man raises his weapon and aims it straight at Jarvis. Straight at me.

"SIR, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM VIOLENCE. I WILL BE FORCED TO OPEN FIRE ."

"Screw you Stark! You ruined me!"

He pulls the trigger, firing off an orange beam into Jarvis. Metal shards explode from the back of his armor, sending shrapnel straight into my chest. I fly back and hit the wall with a loud thump. My vision is blurred, and the pain in my chest is killing me.

I hear another gunshot, this time from the wounded Jarvis. I see the hooded man's face burst in an explosion of red.

At least I know the MK5 is accurate.

Jarvis rushes over to me and puts the gun on his shattered back. It fits with a small click

"Hold on sir. An ambulance has been called. They will be here shor..."

I don't hear him finish his sentence before I black out.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So yeah! Issue 1 of the Marvel ZealotVerse! Anyways, I got the idea oh Tony being attacked at a conference from TheFilmGMR. Now that that's out of the way, I got the idea of Stark being a roboticist after realising I have a lego-robot-building-addiction yesterday. So yeah. I'll try to prioritise this over Contagion, unless you guys see more of that. Spider-Man or Daredevil will be introduced / easter egged next.

Check out TheFilmGMR in the tagged section.

Asteroid Redirect Mission Update by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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Dr. Holdren (center) operates a robotic arm within the Robotic Operations Center (ROC) as roboticist Justin Brannan (left) describes the ROC’s simulation capabilities. Christyl Johnson, Deputy Center Director for Technology and Research Investments at Goddard (right), observes the demonstration. Within the ROC's black walls, NASA is testing technologies and operational procedures for science and exploration missions, including the Restore-L satellite servicing mission and the Asteroid Redirect Mission.

More info: Asteroid Redirect Mission Update – On Sept. 14, 2016, NASA provided an update on the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and how it contributes to the agency’s journey to Mars and protection of Earth. The presentation took place in the Robotic Operations Center at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Dr. John P. Holdren, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and NASA’s ARM Program Director, Dr. Michele Gates discussed the latest update regarding the mission. They explained the mission’s scientific and technological benefits and how ARM will demonstrate technology for defending Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids. The briefing aired live on NASA TV and the agency’s website. For more information about ARM go to www.nasa.gov/arm.

Credit: NASA/Goddard/Debbie Mccallum

NASA image use policy.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

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Hans Peter Brøndmo by Christopher Michel

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Over the past decade, I have photographed Norwegian entrepreneur and roboticist Hans Peter Brøndmo many times, capturing him in settings that mirror his dual nature as both a visionary engineer and an artist at heart. This particular portrait was taken aboard the R/V Kinfish in the high Arctic, where the stark, elemental beauty of the surroundings seemed to reflect his own blend of precision and imagination.

Hans Peter is a rare subject—an inspirational leader in engineering and a dear friend. We share a deep passion for photography and art, and our conversations often drift between the mechanics of robotic autonomy and the aesthetics of light and form. His work at Everyday Robots for Google was transformational, leading efforts to create learning-based, adaptive robots that could navigate complex human environments. By integrating advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and embodied cognition, he sought to push beyond conventional automation and into a future where robots could assist in meaningful, intuitive ways.

Beyond Everyday Robots, Hans Peter’s entrepreneurial career has been defined by a deep understanding of both technology and human experience. As a serial entrepreneur, he has founded and led multiple ventures at the cutting edge of robotics, AI, and digital media. His ability to bridge technical breakthroughs with real-world applications has made him a sought-after leader in the field. Early in his career, he worked on pioneering internet technologies and later shifted his focus to robotics, recognizing the profound impact intelligent machines could have on industries ranging from healthcare to environmental monitoring.

His approach to robotics is as much philosophical as it is technical. He often speaks of the importance of creating systems that adapt, learn, and evolve—machines that are not rigidly programmed but instead develop a kind of digital intuition. One of his key lessons from years of work in the field is that the best robots are not those that seek to replace humans but those that enhance human capability, allowing people to focus on creativity, connection, and problem-solving.

There are few people who move so effortlessly between disciplines, who can speak as fluently about neural networks as they can about composition and exposure. Hans Peter embodies that rare synthesis of logic and intuition, of rigorous engineering and boundless creativity. Whether on the deck of a research vessel or in the depths of a machine-learning lab, he carries the same spark of curiosity—a restless pursuit of the next great challenge.

Brainstorming about Jeff Hawkins’ latest book — A Thousand Brains by Steve Jurvetson

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Building on his first book, On Intelligence, Jeff bravely presents a framework for how the brain works to produce intelligence from neurons organized into ~150 thousand cortical columns.

His decades of self-funded dedication to studying how the brain works affords a possibly unique and unifying perspective. In both books, though, he loses his way when speculating on the artificial brains of the future (with logical inconsistencies and overgeneralizations anchored on our biology). I think the first 112 pages are the best part of his new book. I’ll focus on that and save a brief critique of his AI constraints for the end.

In his first book, Hawkins presents a memory-prediction framework for intelligence. The neurons in the neocortex provide a vast amount of memory that learns a model of the world. These models continuously make low-level predictions in parallel across all of our senses. We only notice them when a prediction is incorrect. Higher in the hierarchy, we make predictions at higher levels of abstraction (the crux of intelligence, creativity and all that we consider being human), but the structures are fundamentally the same.

If that is not mind-bending enough, in his new book, Jeff extends the memory framework to the construct of “reference frames”. Everything we perceive is a constructed reality, a cortical consensus from competing internal models resident in many cortical columns, the amalgam of 1000 brains. Those models are updated by data streaming from the senses. But our reality resides in the models.

Here are the best parts of his new book, in my opinion. I revisit them to learn. Travelling without moving, as we’ll see…

“The cells in your head are reading these words. Think how remarkable that is.”

“If you ignore folds and creases, then the neocortex looks like one large sheet of cells, with no obvious divisions. The neocortex looks similar everywhere. Every part of the neocortex generates movement. In every region we have examined, scientists have found cells that project to some part of the old brain related to movement. The complex circuitry seen everywhere in the neocortex performs a sensory-motor task. There are no pure motor regions and no pure sensory regions.”

The cortex is relatively new development by evolutionary time scales. After a long period of simple reflexes and reptilian instincts, only mammals evolved a neocortex. “At some point millions of years ago, a new piece of the brain appears that we now call the neocortex. It starts small, but then grows larger, not by creating anything new, but by copying a basic circuit over and over. As the neocortex grows, it gets larger in area but not in thickness.” Given the recency, it’s “probably not enough time for multiple new complex capabilities to be discovered by evolution, but it’s plenty of time for evolution to make more copies of the same thing.”

• Vernon Mountcastle’s proposition from 1978: “All the things we associate with intelligence, which on the surface appear to be different, are, in reality, manifestations of the same underlying cortical algorithm. Darwin proposed that the diversity of life is due to one basic algorithm (evolution). Mountcastle proposed that the diversity of intelligence is due to one basic algorithm.”

Beyond the evolutionary time-scale argument, the brains’ vast flexibility to accept different, even prosthetic, sensory input changes and its ability to learn many different things point to a universal framework for learning.

• Cortical Columns are “the largest and most important piece of the puzzle.” They are roughly one square millimeter in size with 100K neurons. A mouse has one column per whisker. “Every cortical column is making predictions. We are not aware of the vast majority of these predictions unless the input to the brain does not match.”

• Learning through movement: “The brain learns its model of the world by observing how its inputs change over time. There isn’t another way to learn. Every time we take a step, move a limb, move our eyes, tilt our head, or utter a sound, the input from our sensors change. For example, our eyes make rapid movements, called saccades, about three times a second. With each saccade, our eyes fixate on a new point in the world and the information from the eyes to the brain changes completely.” We don’t perceive any of this because we are living in the model, which is predicting the next input to come, across all the senses. “Vision is an interactive process, dependent on movement. Only by moving can we learn a model of the object.”

“To avoid hallucinating, the brain needs to keep its predictions separate from reality. We are not aware of most of the predictions made by the brain unless an error occurs.”

“Thoughts and experiences are always the result of a set of neurons that are active at the same time (about 2% of the total). Individual neurons can participate in many different thoughts or experiences. Everything we know is stored in the connections between neurons. Every day, many of the synapses on an individual neuron will disappear and new ones will replace them. Thus, much of learning occurs by forming new connections between neurons that were not previously connected.”

Sequence memory (like predicting the next note in a melody or a common sequence of behaviors): “Sequence memory is also used for language. Recognizing a spoken work is like recognizing a short melody.”

• Locus of Predictions: “Oddly, less than 10% of the pyramidal cell’s synapses are in the proximal area. The other 90% are too far away to trigger a spike. For many years, no one knew what 90% of the synapses in the neocortex did. The big insight I had was that dendrite spikes are predictions. A dendrite spike occurs when a set of synapses close to each other on a distal dendrite get input at the same time, and it means the neuron had recognized a pattern of activity in some other neurons. When the pattern of activity is detected, it raises the voltage at the cell body, putting the cell into what we call a predictive state. The cell is primed to spike… and the cell spikes a little bit sooner than if it would have if the neuron was not in a predictive state.” And this inhibits other neurons from ever firing, the ones who were behind in that race. “When an input arrives that is unexpected, then neurons fire at once. If the input is predicted, then only the predictive-state neurons become active. This is a common observation about the neocortex: unexpected inputs cause a lot more activity than expected ones.” Predictions prime the pump, sub-threshold. “Predictions are not sent along a cell’s axon to other neurons, which explains why we are unaware of most of them.”

“Most predictions occur inside neurons. With thousands of distal synapses, each neuron can recognize hundreds of patterns that predict when the neuron should become active. Prediction is built into the fabric of the neocortex. As few as 20,000 neurons can learn thousands of complete sequences. The sequence memory continued to work even if 30% of the neurons died or the input was noisy.”

• Reference Frames: “The secret of the cortical column is reference frames. A reference frame is like an invisible, 3D-grid surrounding and attached to something” (like a map)

“Predicting the next input in a sequence and predicting the next input when we move are similar problems. Our sequence-memory circuit could make both types of predictions if the neurons were given an additional input that represented how the sensor was moving.”

“Most of the circuitry is there to create reference frames and track locations. The brain builds models of the world by associating sensory input with locations in reference frames. You need a reference frame to specify the relative position and structure of objects. Roboticists rely on them to plan the movements of a robot’s arm or body. Reference frames were the missing ingredient, the key to unraveling the mystery of the neocortex and to understanding intelligence. We showed that a single cortical column could learn the 3D shape of objects by sensing and moving and sensing and moving. Each cortical column must know the location of its input relative to the object being sensed. To do that, a cortical column requires a reference frame that is fixed to the object. The brain must have neurons whose activity represents the location of every object that we perceive.”

“Mammals have a powerful internal navigation system. There are neurons in the old part of our brain that are known to learn maps of the places we have visited” — the hippocampus and enthorhinal cortex, organs roughly the size of a finger.

“Place cells tell a rat where it is based on sensory inputs, but planning movement requires grid cells. Grid cells form a grid pattern. The two types of cells work together to create a complete model of the rat’s environment. Every time a rat enters an environment, the grid cells create a new reference frame to specify locations and plan movements.” In the new brain, these same cells and structures create models of objects instead of environments.

“Every cortical column learns models of complete objects. The columns do this using the same basic method that the old brain uses to learn models of environments. It is as if nature stripped down the hippocampus to a minimal form, made tens of thousands of copies, and arranged them side by side in cortical columns. That became the neocortex. Each patch of your skin and each patch of your retina has its own reference frame in the neocortex. Your five fingertips touching a cup are like five rats exploring a box.”

“Not all cortical columns are modeling objects. Language and other high-level cognitive abilities are, at some fundamental level, the same as seeing, touching, and hearing. The reference frames that are most useful for certain concepts have more than three dimensions.”

• Thinking is a form of movement: “The brain arranges all knowledge using reference frames, and thinking is a form of moving. Thinking occurs when we activate successive locations in reference frames.”

“A cortical column is just a mechanism that tries to discover and model the structure of whatever is causing its inputs to change” whether the structure of environments, physical objects or conceptual objects. “Reference frames are not an optional component of intelligence; they are the structure in which all information is stored in the brain. Every fact you know is paired with a location in a reference frame. Organizing knowledge this way makes the facts actionable” to “determine what actions are needed to achieve a goal.”

“To recall stored knowledge, we have to activate the appropriate locations in the appropriate reference frames. Thinking occurs when the neurons invoke location after location in a reference frame, bringing to mind what was stored in each location. The succession of thoughts we experience when thinking is analogous to the succession of sensations we experience when touching an object with a finger, or the succession of things we see when we walk about a town.”

• What and Where Pathways. “Your brain has two vision systems. If you follow the optic nerve as it travels from the eye to the neocortex, you will see that it leads to two parallel vision systems, called the ‘what’ visual pathway and the ‘where’ visual pathway.” If you disable one, you can identify what something is but not where, or vice versa. “Similar pathways also exist for other senses. There are what and where regions for seeing, touching, and hearing.”

“Cortical grid cells in What columns attach reference frames to objects. Cortical grid cells in Where columns attach reference frames to you body.” The distinction depends on where the inputs come from. “If a cortical column gets input from the body, such as the neurons that detect the joint angles of the limbs, it will automatically create a reference frame anchored to the body.”

“Your body is just another object in the world. However, unlike external objects, your body is always present. A significant portion of the neocortex — the Where regions — is dedicated to modeling your body and the space around your body.”

For abstract concepts like mathematics, there are difference reference frames one could use to learn. “Part of learning is discovering what is a good reference frame, including the number of dimensions.” History can be learned on a timeline, or geographically. “They lead to different ways of thinking about history. They might lead to different conclusions and different predictions. Becoming an expert in a field of study requires discovering a good framework to represent the associated data and facts. Discovering a useful reference frame is most difficult part of learning, even though most of the time we are not consciously aware of it. The correct reference frame to understand how the brain works is reference frames.” It's no surprise that the memory trick called the method of loci, or memory palace, is a good method for remembering a large sequential list of nouns.

From fMRI studies, “the process of storing items in a reference frame and recalling them via ‘movement’ is the same.”

“Nested structure and recursion are key attributes of language. Each cortical column has to be able to learn nested and recursive structure. Cortical columns create reference frames for every object they know. Reference frames are then populated with links to other reference frames. The brain models the world using reference frames that are populated with reference frames; it’s reference frames all the way down.”

• The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence: The prevailing view of the neocortex was a hierarchy of feature detectors, from edge detectors up to face detectors. Jeff argues that each and every column is a sensory-motor system. “When the eyes saccade from one fixation point to another, some of the neurons in the V1 and V2 visual regions do something remarkable. They seem to know what they will be seeing before the eyes have stopped moving. These neurons become active as if they can see new input, but the input hasn’t yet arrived. There are connections between low-level visual regions and low-level touch regions.” Mouse vision occurs in the V1 region; it does not depend on a hierarchy of vision abstractions.

“All cortical columns, even in low-level sensory regions, are capable of learning and recognizing complete objects. A column that senses only a small part of an object (e.g., from a patch of retina) can learn a model of the entire object by integrating its inputs over time.”

“Learning is not a separate process from sensing and acting. We learn continuously. When a neuron learns a new pattern, it forms new synapses on one dendrite branch. The new synapses don’t affect previously learned ones on other branches. Thus, learning doesn’t force the neuron to forget or modify something it learned earlier.” It’s additive.

“What a column learns is limited by its inputs. Columns in V1 can recognize letters and words in the smallest font. V1 and V2 learn models of objects, such as letters and words, but the models differ by scale.”

“Knowledge of something is distributed in thousands of columns, but these are a small subset of all the columns. This is why we call it the Thousand Brains Theory: knowledge of any particular item is distributed among thousands of complimentary models. The columns are not redundant, and each is a complete sensory-motor system.”

• The Solution to Sensor Fusion and the Binding Problem: “Columns vote. Your perception is the consensus the columns reach by voting.”

“If you touch something with only one finger, then you have to move it to recognize the object. But if you grasp the object with your entire hand, then you can usually recognize the object at once. In almost all cases, using five fingers will require less movement than using one.” (made me think of reading Braille with multiple fingers). “Voting works across sensory modalities (sight, touch, etc.)”

How? “Cells in some layers send axons long distances within the neocortex” between left and right-hand brain regions or between V1 and A1, the primary vision and auditory regions. “These cells with long-distance connections are voting. Cells that represent what object is being sensed can vote and will project broadly. Often a column will be uncertain, in which case its neurons will send multiple possibilities at the same time. Simultaneously, the column receives projections from other columns representing their guesses. The most common guesses suppress the least common ones until the entire network settles on one answer. The voting mechanism works well even if the long-distance axons connect to a small, randomly chosen subset of other columns”

• The Stability of Perception with ever-changing inputs: “What we perceive is based on the stable voting neurons. We are not consciously aware of the changing activity in each column.” Roughly 98% are silent at any given time and 2% are continuously firing. Consider the experience of an optical illusion duality (like the drawing of a pair of faces or vase); you can only see one at a time, and there is a delay if you force yourself to switch. “Recognizing an object in one sensory modality leads to predictions in other sensory modalities.”

• Attention: We have the perception of multiple objects in our visual field even though we can only attend to one at a time. “Attention plays an essential role in how the brain learns models. The brain can attend to smaller or larger parts of the visual field. Exactly how the brain does this is not well understood, but it involves a part of the brain called the thalamus, which is tightly connected to all areas of the neocortex. It is so intimately connected to the neocortex that I consider it an extension of the neocortex.”

• Consciousness: “Neurons form a continuous memory of both our thoughts and actions. It is this accessibility of the past — the ability to jump back in time and slide forward again to the present — that gives us our sense of presence and awareness. This is the core of what it means to be conscious. If we couldn’t replay our recent thoughts and experiences, then we would be unaware we are alive.”

“The neocortex does not directly control any muscles. The neocortex has to be attached to something that already has sensors and already has behaviors (the primitive brain). It does not create completely new behaviors; it learns how to string together existing ones in new and useful ways.”

“Instead of the neocortex using a hierarchy to assemble features into a recognized object, it uses hierarchy to assemble objects into more complex objects.” The assumption of hierarchy has been stumbling block for neuroscience for many decades.

“Reverse engineering the brain and understanding intelligence is the most important scientific quest humans will ever undertake. At one point I debated whether I should end right there. A framework for understanding the neocortex is certainly ambitious enough for one book.”

Yes, perhaps he should have. AI has been his failing. And, more abstractly, it is one of the grand challenges of biomimicry. While the brain provides the existence proof of an iterative algorithm compounding complexity and generating intelligence, it is a non-trivial exercise to capture the right level of abstraction when instantiating on a silicon substrate. Jeff seems to anchor on our biology to the point of having the wrong reference frame, so to speak, for his intuition. He asserts that certain aspects of our biology must be replicated in all artificial intelligences (e.g., a physically moving vision sensor vs a raster scan saccade) while dismissing countless other aspects of our biology, from ion channels to the goal setting regions of the brain.

We can logically see many idiosyncratic limitations in our biology, constrained by cellular sensors and compute, and need not replicate them in silicon. Similarly, there are limits in our silicon substrates (e.g., number of metal layers and lack of dynamic interconnect) that we need to address if synaptic fanout and long-range voting circuits are fundamental elements.

He is not alone is anchoring on the wrong elements of biomimicry. Neuromorphic spiking compute comes to mind. And this is why I did not even present his AI arguments, as they seemed so riddled with misguided leaps of intuition. You can see how he lost his way in his first book when he asserted that we could generate an AI, and then cut and paste key blocks of functionality like the ability to speak French from one AI to another.

Nevertheless, I am curious about his self-funded work on the brain, which might be a meaningful contribution on the biological side.

Roboticist Rodney Brooks by Christopher Michel

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Choices... Scifoo '06 by Steve Jurvetson

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At Google this weekend. Seeing a CMU telepresence robot now.

Some details from the scifoo Wiki:

I'd like to discuss an idea I'm formulating to improve climate modeling called "Global Swarming." The core idea is to deploy tens of thousands of ocean probes by leveraging the creative smarts and logistics coordination of the web.

As someone who served as an expert witness in the Dover "Intelligent Design" trial, and who has worked in the "creation-evolution" arena for a long time, if there is any interest I would be happy to run a session on "What happens post-Dover?" What will be the next wave of anti-evolutionism and anti-science? What needs to be done to combat it and raise the American public's awareness of the evidence for evolution? Why is this issue critical to the success of basic research in this country? How do scientists, educators, and tech folks fit in?

I'd like to brainstorm about programmable matter ProgrammableMatter. Programmable matter is any substance which can be programmed to change its shape or physical properties. We are currently working on constructing programmable matter and investigating how to program it. I would be most interested in talking about how one might program ensembles.

I’d like to present on OpenWetWare, a wiki promoting open research among biologists and biological engineers. With 65 labs and 1200 users on OpenWetWare, I can provide practical examples of how scientists are currently making use of the web(2.0) to support research and education in new ways. I’ll also talk about where the site is headed in the future, and how foocampers could help make it easier for scientists to share more of their secrets online.

I'll bring a memory stick with the recent radar images of what appear to be hydrocarbon-filled lakes on Saturn's moon, Titan, and some movies from Titan. I'm also happy to discuss the interesting phenomenon of "instant public science" done by enthusiasts everywhere who have instant access to the latest space science data from the web. BTW, Nature magazine's piece on exciting questions in chemistry (this week) included a mention of Titan, which should be on every organic chemists' hit list for places to visit.

I am interested in discussing the dichotomy of design and evolutionary search as divergent paths in complex systems development. - jurvetson.blogspot.com

I could begin a session about Systems Biology, with a general theme of building towards whole cell or whole organisms models in biology. I have some (whacky) ideas about this in addition to having done some real science on this subject.

I could present about novel circuit-focused neurotechnologies I'm developing, for advancing the study of brain function and consciousness, and for treating neurological and psychiatric disorders. Although I've been exploring this question in academic research settings – and I'm gearing up to set up my own university laboratory – I'd like to brainstorm about how to build the significant community of clinicians, engineers, scientists, and psychologists that we'd need to make strong scientific progress on the timeless, unyielding problem of understanding the nature of consciousness.

I could talk about/demonstrate: digital fabrication in the lab and its impact in field fab labs around the world, mathematical programs as a programming model for enormous/unreliable/extended systems and their application in analog logic circuits and Internet 0 networks, and microfluidic logic to integrate chemistry with computation

I could contribute to a session on powerlaws in nature, markets and human affairs. They're found nearly everywhere, from earthquakes to species distributions to cities to wars. We used to think the world was mostly defined by gaussian distributions (bell curves) with neat medians and standard deviations. But now we see that powerlaws, where low-frequency events have the highest amplitude, are far more common, and they're infinite functions where concepts like "average" are meaningless. What are the factors that create powerlaws and what does nature have in common with economics and social networking in this instance?

I'd like to talk to the assembled folks about a project we are running to help scientists move large datasets without using the internet (which can be very slow or expensive.

I hope to demo a viral database and talk about efforts to build real time surveillance via the WHO.

I'd like to discuss the range of applications being discussed in HE (HigherEd) that permit faculty and research groups to store and share a wide range of scholarly assets, including research data, texts (articles such as pre-prints and post-prints), images, and other media. These next generation academic apps provide support for tagging, community-of-use definitions, discovery, rights assertions via CC, and new models of peer review and commentary. Early designs typically implicate heavy use of atom or gdata for posting and retrieval, lucene, and ajax.

I can offer a brief introduction to the Human Genome, and the field of Comparative Genomics which focuses on comparing our own genome to that of other species. I'll try to give a taste of some of the startling revelations, seeming paradoxes, and many open questions that make working with this three billion letter string a ball.

I could offer the opposite point of view, looking at the very simplest organisms, what they do, how they work, and what life looks like when the genome fits on a floppy.

I would like to talk about the future of the scientific method. How the scientific method was one invention the Chinese did not make before the west, and how the process of science has changed in the last 400 years and will change even more in the next 50 years. I'd love to hear others' ideas of where the science method is headed.

I could offer some (possibly naive) ideas on how we could design evolvability into the scientific process by learning from the evolution of cellular complexity. I can also include some examples from language evolution and software evolution.

I can describe our general approach for open collaborative biomedical research at The Synaptic Leap.

I have in mind a presentation related to my project on Milestones in the History of Data Visualization – an attempt to provide a comprehensive catalog documenting and illustrating the historical developments leading to modern data visualization and visual thinking. The talk might encompass some of (a) some great moments in the history of data visualization, (b) 'statistical historiography': the study of history as 'data', (c) a self-referential Q: how to visualize this history. The goal would be more to suggest questions and aproaches than to provide answers – in fact a main reason to present would be to hear other people's reactions.

As we're on the topic of visualizations, I could give a talk about the rise of the geobrowser/virtual globe and how it is revolutionizing the geospatial visualization of information. I can showcase some of the best examples of scientific visualizations, show how geobrowsers are helping humanitarian causes and discuss the social-software aspect of Google Earth and other expected 'mirror worlds', where geospatial information is shared, wiki-like. Above all, I would love to brainstorm the possible use of geobrowsers in the projects of other campers.

I'm willing to give a talk about imaging projects in the Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory, such as our large array of cameras, our handheld camera whose photographs you can refocus after you take the picture, and our work on multi-perspective panoramas (the Google-funded Stanford CityBlock Project). These projects are part of a trend towards "computational photography", in which computers play a significant role in image formation.

I'm a Hugo Award-winning science-fiction writer, and I'm working on a trilogy (my 18th through 20th novels) about the World Wide Web spontaneously gaining consciousness once the number of interconnections it has exceeds the number in a human brain. I'd love to talk a bit about my ideas of how such a consciousness, at first an epiphenomenon supervening on top of the web infrastructure, might actually come to access the documents and input sources available online and how it might perceive external reality, and I'd love to brainstorm with people about what sort of interactions and relationships humanity might have with such an entity.

I could talk about the current and future generation of astronomical surveys that will map the sky every three nights or so (e.g. the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope). They are designed to be able to address multiple science goals from the same data set (e.g. understanding cosmology and dark energy through to indentifying moving sources such as asteroids in our Solar System). With hundreds of thousands of variable sources detected each year (on top of the ten billion non-variables) the flow of data presents a number of challenges for how we follow up these sources.

I could talk about insights gained as part of the NSF-funded Pathways research project (Cornell U, LANL) that looks at scholarly communication as a global workflow across heterogeneous repositories and tries to identify a lightweight interoperability framework to facilitate the emergence of a natively digital scholarly communication system. Think introspecting on the evolution of science by traversing a scholarly communication graph that jumps across repositories. I could also talk about work we have been doing with scholarly usage information: aggregating it across repositories, and using the aggregated data to generate recommendations and metrics.

I'd love to show the prototype of an NSF-sponsored web-based simulation designed to help students learn about the nature of science. I'll bring the server on my laptop; we can all connect and play cosmologist. Advice welcome. More at NatureOfScienceGame

Making Open Access Affordable (free): There is a move afoot to put all science literature in the public domain (it is mostly funded with tax-free or tax money). There is a move afoot to put all science data in the public domain (ditto). These are unfunded mandates. We can not do much about the funding, but we computer scientists can do a LOT to drive the needed funds to zero by making it EASY to publish, organize, search, and display literature and data online. This also dovetails with Jill Mesirov's approach to reproducable science – future science literature will be a multi-layer summary of the source data – words, graphs, pictures on top and derivations + data underneath. Many working on these issues will be at this event. We should have a group-grope.

Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) for small labs with BIG data. It is embarrassing how many scientists use Excel as their database system – but even more embarrassing is how many use paper notebooks as their database. New science instruments (aka sensors) produce more data and more diverse data than will fit in a paper notebook, a table in a paper, or in Excel. How does "small science" work in this new world where it takes 3 super-programmers per ecologist to deploy some temperature and moisture sensors in a small ecosystem? We think we have an answer to this in the form of pre-canned LIMS applications.

Related to this I could talk a bit about how our work on myGrid has been aiming at taking the escience capabilities offered to large well funded groups down to a more 'grass roots' level - grid based science is traditionally the realm of people and groups with serious money but we don't think this has to be the case.

I could present a software demo of a new web-based collaborative environment for sharing drug discovery data – initially focused on developing world infectious disease research (such as Malaria, Chagas Disease, African Sleeping Sickness) with technology that should be equally applicable for scientists collaborating around any private or public therapeutic area. This demo is a collaboration initiated between Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc and Prof. McKerrow at UCSF which could shift drug discovery efforts away from today's fragmented, secretive, individual lab model to an integrated, distributed model while maintaining data and IP protection.

Our present vaccine production infrastructure leaves us woefully unprepared to deal with either natural or artificial surprises – think SARS and avian influenza (H5N1), which can both easily outpace our technological response. There are superior technological alternatives that will not be widely available for years to come due to regulatory issues, and I would like engage the other campers on ways to address this problem. In particular, I would like to explore the potential contribution of distributed, low cost science – garage science – to improving our safety and preparedness.

The "Encyclopedia of Life" is a buzz phrase being bandied around by biologists – the idea is having an online resource that tells you what we know about each species of organism on the planet. It's an idea that seems obvious, but how would we achieve this given the scale of the task (number of known species about 2 million, those waiting to be found maybe 2-100, we really don't know), the rapidly dwindling number of experts who can tells us something about those organisms, the size of the literature (unlike most sciences, taxonomists care about stuff published back as far as the 18th century), and the widely distributed, often poorly digitized sources of information? I'd willing to chat about some of the issues involved, and some possible solutions

I would like to share briefly with you the results of a five year project to create and publish the world’s first totally integrated Encyclopedic vision of food – its origins, variations, complexity,nutrients, dimensions, meanings, enjoyment, history and a thousand and one stories about food. The result is a new kind of truly multidimensional Encyclopedia of Food and Culture that I edited with a whole team of scientists and scholars, and Scribner’s (Gale /Thompson) published in 2003. The Encyclopedia has been well reviewed and we won, among many awards, the Dartmouth Medal (the top prize in the reference world) in July 2004. I am bringing a three volume HARD copy with me and will put it on display at the “Table” for everyone to peruse at your leisure -(it is designed to ‘catch you’ – so if you are a browser and you love food you may have trouble giving it up for others to read!)I would also be delighted to talk about a new kind of World Food Museum that is designed to make the Encyclopedia come alive (please seem my bio statement for more).

I would like to present Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Citizen Science work as an example of several of the broader citizen science interests described in the Wiki. These include: Challenges of involving the public in data collection for professional research, scientific tradeoffs and possibilities, internet data collection tools, dynamic graphing and mapping tools, data mining, sustainability, webcommunity building plans for the future, and recruitment models within the contexts of conservation science and ornithology.

I would also like to demonstrate the new Pulluin software chip that fits in a TREO palm cell phone. It has a bird ID tool, lets you hear vocalizations, see pictures, and enter data into one of our citizen science projects, eBird. The ideal way to show you this toy would be to take interested campers on an early morning bird walk. If I can get enough signups, I will try to get eBird project leader, Brian Sullivan, to come up from Monterey, providing he is available. We would probably carpool to the shore to bird. If you are interested, email me and tell me which days, Sat., Sun., or both, you would be available.

Who are we? I'd like to give a short talk to argue for the importance of addressing an old question with a new meaning: What is it like to be human? Why do we dare, care and share? Why are we curious, generous and open? We have to deal with these questions before artifical intelligence, genetic engineering and the globalisation of cultures have changed us irreversibly. Many areas of activity in science, technology and the arts offer new perspectives: Sexual selection, algorithmic information theory, perception, nutrition, experimental economics, game theory and network theory, etc. They point to a coherent view of humans as flows and processes, rather than things and objects. Openness is essential. Attention is essential. Time is ripe for a new collective effort at producing a view of human being relevant to our age.

Robotics for the Masses – I would like to present two new technologies that we are public-domaining imminently. One is Gigapan, a technology for taking ultra-high-resolution panoramic images with low-cost equipment. We can generate time lapses of an entire field with enough detail to see individual petals in detail as they bloom and wither. The second is the TeRK site, which is designed to enable non-roboticists to make robots for tools without becoming robotics experts. I will bring Gigapans and TeRK robots with me and would love to show them doing their techie things. Both of these strands have the potential to be useful scientific tools.

Science, not near as much fun as math! :~) But without it the world remains untouchable. Do you want your child with maximum understanding? We better equip the rest to understand her, so that she is heard when speaking about this exquisite world. But how to reach as many as can be reached? Free is not near enough, full access comes close. The challenge is to deliver science, as the compelling, engaging, tantalizing world that it is, the very first frontier to cross into who we are. The quality of that experience needs freedom of expression. NASA World Wind is a bold step towards that. We are delighted to share the not-so-secret secrets thereof.

I could discuss how our fundamental discoveries on bipedal bugs and octopuses, gripping geckos and galloping ghost crabs have provided biological inspiration for the design of robots, artificial muscles and adhesives. I can include a demo of artificial muscles from Artificial Muscle Incorporated. I will bring two robots in development – a gecko-like climbing robot from our collaboration with Stanford and an insect-like hexapedal robot built by our UPenn colleagues. I will carry with me live death-head cockroaches that serve as our inspiration. I could facilitate a discussion of neuromechanical control architectures. I will introduce briefly our new center at Berkeley (CIBER – Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research) and a new journal - Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. I welcome this group’s creative suggestions not only for the next generation of robots, but also for novel designs using tunable skeletal structures, artificial muscles and dry adhesives

I would be interested in discussing and debating technical and nontechnical issue involving Social Semantic Search and Analytics. There is a significant interest in Social Search, and some interest in Semantic Search. Here is a scenario that probably involves more futuristic capabilities but a modest verion of this can lead to lower hanging fruits involving "little semantics" and "weak semantics" which would involve less infrastructure in creating and maintaining ontologies (albeit my experience shows building and maintaining large ontologies is doable, see Semantic Web: A different perspective on what works and what doesn't: (a) a research paper is published ;Eg: Semantics Analytics on Social Networks www2006.org/programme/item.php?id=4068], (b) there is a popular press article with numerous factual errors and unsupported conjuctures e.g., this one, (c) there are several versions on popular web sites along with numerous blog postings containing emotional reactions See for example, (d) Tim O'Reilly digs into the facts and sets the record staight in Datamining Social Networking Sites. How can we track the string of these stories along various dimensions [thematic, spatial, temporal] while provding overview, ranking based on various criteria, contextual linking, insights on individual postings, and more? I am interested in more than clustering and linking through statistical analysis which are good to put some stories in font of a reader,but would not sufficiently help someone who needs to creat a cogent understanding of an event or a situation.

I'd like to discuss the planning of a Mountain View Consensus, in response to Bjørn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus, a ranking of where to spend money on the world's biggest problems. The frustrating thing about the Copenhagen Consensus is that it is published as a report – so if you think the compund interest rate should be 2% higher, you can only speculate on what the effect would be of changing it. For the Mountain View Consensus we would publish findings as a collaborative spreadsheet, with annotations for the values that different participants place on each variable, and the opportunity for anyone to add annotations. Also, while Lomborg invited only economists, we would include scientists and engineers who understand the technologies, and venture capitalists who understand risk factors and chances of technology bets.

I have two projects I'd like to share at Science Foo–and i'm eager to hear your thoughts on how best to build and deploy them both:

1) An open source project–the Family Medical History Tool –that could graphically capture essential medical data and which could be shared by family members (with this goes a myriad of challenging issues around privacy, HIPPA laws, etc.

2) We're initiating a "citizen science" approach to a retrospective clinical trial providing open and transparent results real-time. We believe that additional data could be rapidly collected to demonstrate a correlation between drug metabolism and genotype for the 2D6 gene and the drug tamoxifen. Preliminary data shows that 5-10 % of women who are 2D6 poor metabolizers taking tamoxifen (to avoid a reoccurrence of cancer) may be getting nothing more than a placebo effect, and worse, run a 3 times greater risk of a cancer reoccurrence.

I could give a talk and lead a discussion on the status and prospects for advanced nanotechnologies based on digital control of molecular assembly. I'd start by describing machines that already do this (in biology) and how they are being exploited to make nanostructures. I'd then outline a path forward to some very powerful technologies that today can be studied only by means of physical modeling and computational simulation. There are potential applications on a scale relevant to the climate change problem.

43/52 Robot by Eric Marchand

6 2

week 43 : "tools of the trade" in "52 weeks: the 2016 edition"

As a roboticist, my tools are ... robots (usually bigger than this one...)

Roboticist Rodney Brooks by Christopher Michel

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Harvard’s Octobot by dtn_kannan

For years roboticists have been looking into using softer materials for parts rather than the usual metal and plastic — sometimes even building entirely soft robots. But this Octobot from Harvard is the first that not only contains no hard parts but is also entirely autonomous.

Robert Wood and Jennifer Lewis, both at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, describe the Octobot in a paper published today in Nature. The creation won’t be winning any awards for agility, but given that autonomy is generally created by a computer governing a robot’s movements, this is a significant milestone.

Bandana-Clad Roboticist by Dave Wilson

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A member of FRC team 6800, Valor, seen in the pits during the FIRST in Texas District Competition at Dripping Springs High School, March 5th, 2022.

Find all my pictures from this event at davewilson.smugmug.com/Robotics/FIT-Texas-District-Drippi...

Instagram | Pixels | SmugMug | ImageKind

AI for Good Global Summit 2023 by UN Geneva

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Desdemona the musician robot at the AI for Good Global Summit, Geneva, Switzerland, UN Photo / Elma Okic

Desdemona is a humanoid robot and the lead vocalist of the Jam Galaxy Band. Created by master artist and roboticist David Hanson and his team at Hanson Robotics, The band’s live shows showcase Desdemona’s AI-generated spoken word poetry and music, all the while supporting their mission to revolutionise the music industry through decentralised systems and blockchain technology.

AI for Good Global Summit 2023 by UN Geneva

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Desdemona the musician robot at the AI for Good Global Summit, Geneva, Switzerland, UN Photo / Elma Okic

Desdemona is a humanoid robot and the lead vocalist of the Jam Galaxy Band. Created by master artist and roboticist David Hanson and his team at Hanson Robotics, The band’s live shows showcase Desdemona’s AI-generated spoken word poetry and music, all the while supporting their mission to revolutionise the music industry through decentralised systems and blockchain technology.

Baron Von Mustache and DROV by Charles Alex Cunnigham

4 1

Baron Von Mustache is a criminal artist and genius inventor. His greatest creation and partner in crime, the Dapper Robot of Villainy (DROV for short), is always close by to help his master in whatever evil endeavors he has planned.

Born Edward Livingston, the man who would later be know as Baron Von Mustache started life as aspiring artist and mechanical designer. He was bright and well liked for his talents. However, that all changed one day when a freak accident at a junior roboticist completion left him with a large unsightly scar on his face. Becoming the source of of much ridicule for his injury, Edward decided that he now had the perfect back story to become a villain. He changed his name to the ridiculous moniker Baron Von Mustache and dedicated his life to becoming a criminal master mind.

He now applies his talents to committing audaciously grand crimes. Using the enormous sums of money he steals to invent dastardly contraptions to put on even larger “shows”. Largely motivated by the fame he's gaining more so than the wealth he's acquiring, Baron Von Mustache's plans continue to get bigger and bigger.

Data the Robot (sitting) by The Next List

Data sits quietly as Heather is interviewed.

Roboticist Carol Reiley by USA Science & Engineering Festival

Data the Robot by The Next List

Data is a robot that performs comedy with Heather Knight.

20130509Navy_Yard by Cesar Jung-Harada

www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/nyregion/brooklyn-navy-yard-is...

Amid Navy Yard’s Ruins, Space for a Comeback in Manufacturing

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

A large cooperative space will include a full metal shop, a wood shop and 3-D printers. It is expected to be finished as early as summer 2014.

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

Published: May 8, 2013

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Across the partition from the roboticist who was making coffee tables with magnetized cubes, an artist was boxing up woodcuts that, when held to the ear, sounded like a forest. Beyond him, just past the software designer on the treadmill, a muscular man in a T-shirt tinkered with his design for a motorcycle.

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Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

In a smaller space that is to be unveiled on Thursday, Jessica Banks worked on a chandelier that expands and contracts in response to ambient sound.

This eclectic mix of entrepreneurs, among the first tenants of a communal space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, did not in any way resemble workers in a traditional factory, but their landlords and city officials hope they represent the seedlings of a rebirth of manufacturing in New York City.

The loftlike space, known as New Lab, is to be unveiled by local and state officials on Thursday. It is a precursor to a much bigger manufacturing cooperative scheduled to open in about 18 months in a neighboring building.

The idea driving the project was to bring together a variety of creative people and have them share equipment, like laser cutters and three-dimensional printers, that would be too costly for them to rent or buy on their own. David Belt, the developer of New Lab, said he hoped to do for manufacturers what the M.I.T. Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass., had done for technology researchers.

“New York City is supposed to be sort of a design hub,” Mr. Belt said in an interview. “I was frustrated seeing so much time and effort pumped into software. I’m more interested in products and hardware.”

Manufacturing in the city has been dying a long, slow death as a source of jobs and prosperity. The Navy Yard, where thousands of men built battleships for World War II, is helping Brooklyn buck that trend.

In the last three years, Brooklyn has been the only borough in the city to add manufacturing jobs, according to the Center for an Urban Future, a research organization. Though it gained just 39 manufacturing jobs from 2010 to 2012, that was a sharp reversal from the previous decade, when Brooklyn lost nearly 24,000 jobs in manufacturing.

“This is probably one of the most positive signs in manufacturing in years,” said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future. “We’re seeing for the first time in a while a real entrepreneurial boom in manufacturing in Brooklyn. The question is, will it continue?”

The activity in Brooklyn has not been purely organic: It has been fertilized with infusions of money and other financial support from city and state agencies.

All told, about $1 billion has been invested in transforming the Navy Yard into an industrial park on the East River, and about a quarter of that money has come from public sources, said Andrew H. Kimball, the chief executive of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation.

The cost of renovating the bigger building that will house New Lab will be about $60 million, about $42 million of which is coming from private sources and a package of tax credits, Mr. Kimball said. The rest was supplied by a regional council of the Empire State Development Corporation, the City Council and the Brooklyn borough president’s office.

Once the building is ready, possibly by the summer of 2014, Mr. Belt plans to spend an additional $21 million outfitting 84,000 square feet that could be home to as many as 350 jobs. Some of that money, too, is expected to come from the regional council.

The bigger space will include a full metal shop, a wood shop, and 3-D printers for making and honing prototypes of new products, Mr. Belt said. He said that communal core, which will fill about 40 percent of the space, would be operated by a nonprofit company.

Already, Mr. Belt said, there is a waiting list of potential tenants in the smaller lab, which he calls the beta space. He said he needed to choose carefully to bring together people with the most mutually beneficial array of skills and knowledge.

His first set of tenants revealed his leaning toward the intellectual side of product design.

At one end of the room, Jessica Banks of RockPaperRobot was shaping cubes of wood to be parts of a “float table” held together with magnets and steel cables. Close by, Eric J. Forman had been up all night producing TreeShell, a disc of birch that produces sounds of the forest, much like a seashell that suggests the sounds of the sea. He was racing a deadline to deliver to the MoMA Design Store.

Several work spaces away sat Edward Jacobs of D.N.I., a design consulting company, who was working on several projects at once. He was designing a motorcycle chassis for Triumph, a system for producing photosynthesis for an underground park and a line of small gadgets like pocketknives.

“The ability to have manufacturing at your fingertips is really a dream come true for anybody that deals with concept design,” said Mr. Jacobs, who like many of the new tenants of the Navy Yard, lives nearby in Brooklyn.

Normally, he said, the cost of making prototypes is 10 to 20 times the cost of mass producing the same piece. “To be able to have those facilities here really allows you to get to market much faster and it allows you an affordable way to materialize your concepts.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 9, 2013, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Amid Navy Yard’s Ruins, Space for a Comeback In Manufacturing.

Assaf Biderman | Superpedestrian by Peter Durand

Assaf Biderman is a technology inventor, author, and entrepreneur.

He is the Founder of Superpedestrian, a technology company that focuses on the future of personal urban mobility. He teamed up with a group of veteran roboticists to develop their first product: The Copenhagen Wheel - Senseable City Lab's award winning bicycle project. Superpedestrian has received multiple awards including the 2014 Red Dot: Luminary - the highest Red Dot distinction, the 2014 Deutscher Werkbund and Time Magazine's 25 Best Inventions of 2014. He also teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is the associate director of the SENSEable City Laboratory - a research group that explores the "real-time city" by studying the increasing deployment of sensors and networked miniaturized electronics, as well as their relationship to the built environment.

www.superpedestrian.com/

Robobees by Cesar Jung-Harada

1

robobees.seas.harvard.edu/

Courtesy of

Robert Wood (Principal Investigator)

Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering

Harvard SEAS

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering

Gu-Yeon Wei

Professor of Electrical Engineering

Harvard SEAS

Radhika Nagpal

Associate Professor of Computer Science

Harvard SEAS

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering

Greg Morrisett

Allen B. Cutting Professor of Computer Science

Associate Dean for Computer Science and Engineering

Harvard SEAS

Joseph Ayers

Professor

Dept. of Biology and Marine Science Center

Northeastern University

David Brooks

Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science

Harvard SEAS

Stacey Combes

Assistant Professor of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology

Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

L. Mahadevan

Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics

Harvard SEAS

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering

Shriram Ramanathan

Associate Professor of Materials Science

Harvard SEAS

Todd Zickler

Professor of Electrical Engineering

Harvard SEAS

I own no rights on this image, for educational purpose only

---

Overview of the Micro Air Vehicles Project

INSPIRED by the biology of a bee and the insect’s hive behavior ...

we aim to push advances in miniature robotics and the design of compact high-energy power sources; spur innovations in ultra-low-power computing and electronic “smart” sensors; and refine coordination algorithms to manage multiple, independent machines.

Practical Applications

Coordinated agile robotic insects can be used for a variety of purposes including:

autonomously pollinating a field of crops;

search and rescue (e.g., in the aftermath of a natural disaster);

hazardous environment exploration;

military surveillance;

high resolution weather and climate mapping; and

traffic monitoring.

These are the ubiquitous applications typically invoked in the development of autonomous robots. However, in mimicking the physical and behavioral robustness of insect groups by coordinating large numbers of small, agile robots, we will be able to accomplish such tasks faster, more reliably, and more efficiently.

Vision and Aims

The collaborators envision that the Nature-inspired research could lead to a greater understanding of how to artificially mimic the collective behavior and “intelligence” of a bee colony; foster novel methods for designing and building an electronic surrogate nervous system able to deftly sense and adapt to changing environments; and advance work on the construction of small-scale flying mechanical devices.

More broadly, the scientists anticipate the devices will open up a wide range of discoveries and practical innovations, advancing fields ranging from entomology and developmental biology to amorphous computing and electrical engineering.

Through a relationship with the Museum of Science, Boston, the team will also create an interactive exhibit to teach and inspire future scientists and engineers.

Body, Brain, and Colony

From flies to fish to lobsters, small insects and animals have long been ideal models for roboticists and computer scientists. Bees, for example, possess unmatched elegance in flight, zipping from flower to flower with ease and hovering stably with heavy payloads.

Body

By leveraging existing breakthroughs from Professor Wood’s Microrobotics Lab, which conducted the first successful flight of a life-sized robotic fly in 2007, the team will explore ways to emulate such aerobatic feats in their proposed devices. In addition, achieving autonomous flight will require compact high-energy power sources and associated electronics, integrated seamlessly into the ‘body’ of the machine.

Brain

One of the most complicated areas of exploration the scientists will undertake will be the creation of a suite of artificial “smart” sensors, akin to a bee’s eyes and antennae. Professor Wei explains that the ultimate aim is to design dynamic hardware and software that serves as the device’s ‘brain,’ controlling and monitoring flight, sensing objects such as fellow devices and other objects, and coordinating simple decision-making.

Colony

Finally, to mimic the sophisticated behavior of a real colony of insects will involve the development of sophisticated coordination algorithms, communications methods (i.e., the ability for individual machines to ‘talk’ to one another and the hive), and global-to-local programming tools to simulate the ways groups of real bees rely upon one another to scout, forage, and plan.

The Team

The investigators, primarily based at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, will coordinate efforts with faculty from the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and Northeastern University’s Department of Biology.

In addition, Centeye, a microelectronics firm in Washington, D.C., specializing in vision chip and visual sensor technology, will contribute technical knowledge.

A number of the collaborators are core faculty members of the newly created Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. As the work fits particularly well with Wyss’s mission of “creating new materials and devices using Nature’s design principles,” the Institute, along with SEAS, will play a critical role in supporting the research, providing laboratory space and in-kind financial support.

Funding

Harvard is one of three lead institutions receiving the latest round of awards under the NSF’s Expeditions in Computing program.

The program, established last year by the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), provides the CISE research and education community with the opportunity to pursue ambitious, fundamental research agendas that promise to define the future of computing and information and render great benefit to society. Funded at levels up to $2,000,000 per year for five years, Expeditions represent some of the largest single investments currently made by the directorate.

Roboticist Carol Reiley by USA Science & Engineering Festival

Daniela Rodriguez, Middle School student, roboticist and REC Foundation STEM Hall of Fame Inductee, spoke to fans at VEX Worlds by VEX Robotics

img_4224 by Steve Rainwater

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Ron Grant shows an interested young roboticist and his mother the electronics inside his animatronic Toucan in the DPRG Robot Petting Zoo at All-Con 2009.

Daniela Rodriguez, Middle School student, roboticist and REC Foundation STEM Hall of Fame Inductee, spoke to fans at VEX Worlds by VEX Robotics

We like #tools of all kinds... by Anderson Anderson

We like #tools of all kinds, of course, but our favorite is the #wrench. So when I needed a tool for forming #Crackers, I asked our resident #roboticist Wi Jia to print me up a #WrenchCookieCutter on the cool little robot he brought in as a companion to our #LaserCutter. This may be the beginning of something #beautiful. Stay tuned.

19 Likes on Instagram

1 Comments on Instagram:

andersonandersonarchitecture: By the way, I did research food safety and 3d printing, and consulted our #OrganicChemist father. Best to use #PLA plastic, since it is derived from starch and sugars.

INTERVIEW GUESTS- ZERO-G: SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY & HISTORICAL RADIO SHOW 3RRR FM MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - PROFESSOR HIROSHI ISHIGURO'S TELENOID R1 (C) by ROB JAN

3

Okay, here I am with Osaka roboticist Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro's remotely operated Telenoid R1 creation.

The biomechanical parameters mean that you automatically tend to hold and interact with it as you would a comparable sized human, although it reminded me of the mechanical torso that you use for First Aid CPR training too.

It also, of course, brings to mind some of the unholy medical experiments we used to whip up in the lair. Sorry, that's so old school! Nowadays off course we use electronic cattle prods...

Uh, that's me on the RIGHT....

Heather Knight and Data (sitting) by The Next List

Heather and Data pose for photos in Fort Green Park.

hexacopter with dji stabilization by Ed Schipul

stabilization without any gps - just a DJI naza stabilizer from a few years ago between the receiver and the ESCs on the Hex (drone 6). And please don't ask about the other 5. Just file it under "life of roboticists who push the limits because we can't help ourselves".)

Heather, Kristyn, Data, and Carlos by The Next List

Kristyn helps hold up Data as Heather tries out some line. Photographer Carlos Martinelli gets the shot from behind.

Protei hackathon in Hong Kong by Cesar Jung-Harada

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www.facebook.com/events/615138761892851/

1. Learn the basic of naval architecture

學習造船學的基本知識

2. Design and build your own sailing robot!

設計和製造屬於你自己的機械船

3. Sail it in the Kwun Tong Ferry pier waters !

在觀塘渡輪碼頭起航！

Come to learn, design and sail your own robot!

We will teach you the basics of maritime architecture, we help you design your own remote control boat, build and sail it in the water, all in one day!

我們會教你們造船學的基本知識，協助你們在一天內，設計，製造和起航屬於你們的機械船，請踴躍參加！

You need to get the ticket here so we could prepare all materials easily:

www.eventbrite.hk/e/build-and-sail-your-boat-in-one-day-p...

請在以上的網址索取門票表示參加，以便我們統計人數及預備材料。

The ocean cover more than 70% of our planets, they are where all life comes from and are the future of our food, energy, transport, communication and security. But the oceans are dying : Overfishing, acidification, plastic pollution, radioactive leaks, oil spills… We need better, more reliable and affordable sailing robots. We will also introduce you to Protei the Open Hardware Shape Shifting sailing robot and more.

海洋，有70% 的植物，是所有生物不可缺少的資源。它為我們提供食物，能源，交通，通訊和安全。但隨著我們地發展，各種的污染，包括：過度捕魚，酸化，塑膠污染，放射性物體洩漏和石油洩漏等，為海洋帶來了極大的污染......

我們需要更加有效，可靠和實惠的船隻去淨化海洋，所以我們會向你們介紹 Protei 的設計和創作理念。

This workshop is open to beginners as well as experts of all ages.

歡迎任何人士參加

Instructors & Partners

Cesar HARADA : ex-MIT researcher , TED Senior fellow, Ocean roboticist, Guillaume DUPONT : Future Naval Architect, Mechanical Engineering, Agnes Kwanyuk KY CHAN : Product Design, Ricky LongMing SZETO : Product Design

Roboticists by Carnegie Mellon University

Behind the Scenes: HERB and Oreo

Mr. C.L.E.A.N. by Ribbitz

5 6

A maintenance bot of the punny variety. 'C.L.E.A.N.' stands for Cleaning, Lighting and Engineering Android, Newtype. A rather unimaginative roboticist decided the main camera should be mounted on what looked like a broom.

My entry for Round 3 of the NPU contest.

Daniel H. Wilson: Author reading by PNCA Pacific Northwest College of Art

Daniel H. Wilson: Author reading

Daniel H. Wilson, author of a series of science fiction novels, many about a robot uprising. Wilson is a roboticist with a degree from Carnegie Mellon, and now a novelist who has also created a game/app and a graphic novel, and been involved in various aspects of the Hollywood film industry.

He is also a tribally registered Cherokee native.

Tuesday, 4/28

6:30

Mediatheque

An article in Tribal College: Journal of American Indians in Higher Education, offers an overview to the history of Native Americans writing science fiction, with a highlight on Wilson's work:

www.tribalcollegejournal.org/archives/28527

The author writes, "We’re living in a time that’s witnessing a range of American Indian voices unlike any other in history. These artists are challenging, and thereby changing, the boundaries of what constitutes a Native text and nowhere is that more prevalent than in the world of science fiction. Last year, George Lucas’sStar Wars: A New Hope was dubbed in Navajo, and the fact that this endeavor was so well-received shows that American Indian audiences are unified behind mainstream media that depicts their individual cultures in a positive light. If current book sales are any indication, the sci-fi community is united behind the movement. Let’s work to ensure that tribal college students find these texts. A new frontier for Native fiction is upon us, and they should be exploring it."

Photos by Joseph Greer

Here's the first-ever #pie built by... by Anderson Anderson

Here's the first-ever #pie built by Wu Jia in our newly upcycled kitchen, which is--no surprise--part of our shop. As a #tool lover and experienced cook, Wu Jia was fascinated by the measuring spoons and cups I introduced--which he claims don't exist in #Chinese kitchens. Interesting.

12 Likes on Instagram

5 Comments on Instagram:

andersonandersonarchitecture: When will Wu Jia's alma mater the #CCArts think tank called #CCA.Digital.Craft.Lab start turning out students with #marketable skills, like maybe how to make the world's first ever #pielattice robot? I throw down the #gauntlet, and propose a man-vs-machine #pielattice #smackdown. Are any #roboticists man or machine enough to take up this challenge? We will see.

andersonandersonarchitecture: I throw down the #gauntlet. Are any #roboticists man or #machine enough to take up the man-vs-machine #pielattice robot smackdown?

sschoepp: I must say your obsession with lattice topped pies intrigues me. I've always thought that lattice tops, while visually interesting, fall far short in terms of taste and texture. The junction where the strips meet is often not as flaky, and sometimes doughy.

andersonandersonarchitecture: Are you one of those #flakey piemakers? I like a good chew in my crusts. Overly flakey pies are too effete and sissy for my taste, but suit yourself.

Australia's Chief Scientists visit QUT robotics labs by QUT Faculty of Science Engagement

Front (L-R): Dr Feras Dayoub (QUT); Professor Denzil Miller, Director Antarctic Tasmania, Science and Research (Tasmanian Government); Dr Grahame Webb, Managing Director, Wildlife Management International (Northern Territory); Professor Peter Klinken, Chief Scientist of Western Australia; Professor Gordon Wyeth, Executive Dean, QUT Science and Engineering Faculty; Ms Leonie Walsh, Victoria Lead Scientist; Dr Leanna Read, Chief Scientist of South Australia; Professor Peter Coaldrake, Vice-Chancellor of QUT.

Back (L-R) QUT roboticists, Dr Matt Dunbabin; Professor Jonathan Roberts; Associate Professor Ben Upcroft and Professor Tristan Perez.

Protei hackathon in Hong Kong by Cesar Jung-Harada

www.facebook.com/events/615138761892851/

1. Learn the basic of naval architecture

學習造船學的基本知識

2. Design and build your own sailing robot!

設計和製造屬於你自己的機械船

3. Sail it in the Kwun Tong Ferry pier waters !

在觀塘渡輪碼頭起航！

Come to learn, design and sail your own robot!

We will teach you the basics of maritime architecture, we help you design your own remote control boat, build and sail it in the water, all in one day!

我們會教你們造船學的基本知識，協助你們在一天內，設計，製造和起航屬於你們的機械船，請踴躍參加！

You need to get the ticket here so we could prepare all materials easily:

www.eventbrite.hk/e/build-and-sail-your-boat-in-one-day-p...

請在以上的網址索取門票表示參加，以便我們統計人數及預備材料。

The ocean cover more than 70% of our planets, they are where all life comes from and are the future of our food, energy, transport, communication and security. But the oceans are dying : Overfishing, acidification, plastic pollution, radioactive leaks, oil spills… We need better, more reliable and affordable sailing robots. We will also introduce you to Protei the Open Hardware Shape Shifting sailing robot and more.

海洋，有70% 的植物，是所有生物不可缺少的資源。它為我們提供食物，能源，交通，通訊和安全。但隨著我們地發展，各種的污染，包括：過度捕魚，酸化，塑膠污染，放射性物體洩漏和石油洩漏等，為海洋帶來了極大的污染......

我們需要更加有效，可靠和實惠的船隻去淨化海洋，所以我們會向你們介紹 Protei 的設計和創作理念。

This workshop is open to beginners as well as experts of all ages.

歡迎任何人士參加

Instructors & Partners

Cesar HARADA : ex-MIT researcher , TED Senior fellow, Ocean roboticist, Guillaume DUPONT : Future Naval Architect, Mechanical Engineering, Agnes Kwanyuk KY CHAN : Product Design, Ricky LongMing SZETO : Product Design

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