InternationalCow - Slashdot User

Submission + - Jeff Hawkins' Cortex Simulation Platform Available

Submitted by

UnreasonableMan

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @05:28PM

UnreasonableMan writes: "Jeff Hawkins is best known for founding Palm Computing and Handspring, but for the last eighteen months he's been working on his third company, Numenta. In his 2005 book, On Intelligence, Hawkins laid out a theoretical framework describing how the neocortex processes sensory inputs and provides outputs back to the body. Numenta's goal is to build a software model of the human brain capable of face recognition, object identification, driving, and other tasks currently better suited to humans.

For an overview see Hawkins' 2005 presentation at UC Berkeley. It includes a demonstration of an early version of the software that can recognize handwritten letters and distinguish between stick figure dogs and cats. Whitepapers are available at Numenta's website.

Numenta wisely decided to build a community of developers rather than try to make everything proprietary. Yesterday they released the first version of their free development platform and the source code for their algorithms to anyone who wants to download it."

Milky Way's Black Hole a Gamma Source? 100

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @04:56PM from the high-energy-pinball dept.

eldavojohn writes "A paper recently accepted for publication (preprint here) proposes a sound explanation for the source of the gamma rays that permeate our galaxy. The Milky Way's central object Sagittarius A*, widely believed to be a supermassive black hole, is now suspected to be the source. To test this theory, two scientists created a computer model to track the protons, flung outward with energies up to 100 TeV by the intense magnetic fields near the event horizon, as they make a random walk through the plasma environment. It can take thousands of years for them to travel 10 light-years from the black hole, where they collide with lower-energy protons to form pions. These decay into gamma radiation emanating from a torus-shaped region around the central object."

Submission + - Nielson Results Reveal Consoles on the Rise

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:42AM

eldavojohn writes: "Nielson ratings are in and the results are that gaming is continuing its steady trend upward. From the article, "In a study released on Monday entitled, "The State of the Console," Nielsen Media Research found that 41.1 percent of households with televisions in the U.S. now have gaming consoles. That number represents an 18.5 percent increase since 2004, according the research firm, who used a sample of 12,000 TV-viewing households for its report." More ammo for Jack Thompson or simply proof that game consoles are universally enjoyed?"

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