Blogging, memory codes, Phoenix, this and that….
Posted on July 11, 2007
Filed Under All, Photos, Weblogging, Technology |
We’ve been really busy lately, lots of things on the plate, and it’s been hard to get down the list to blogging. Work has been particularly busy, we’re about to re-do our back yard and patio (we just don’t seem to want to end the pain of re-modeling), I sold a car, etc. etc.
But, things that have caught my interest include fascinating research from Boston U., where researchers believe they have identified how memories are encoded in the mouse brain. It’s on the cover of this month’s (newly redesigned) Scientific American (the nation’s oldest magazine).
A lot of work remains to be done before we’ll know if this structure - basic blocks called ‘neuron cliques’ that can be digitized and mathematically manipulated - is also present in the human brain, but suddenly, some ‘out there’ notions about silicon substrates for intelligence seem a bit more likely. I may write about this a bit more if I get the chance.
There’s also Phoenix, another NASA ‘better, faster, cheaper’ spacecraft cobbled together from leftover parts, that’s headed to a (thought to be) watery part of Mars. I’m hoping NASA can get this one on the ground intact (’better, faster, cheaper’ hasn’t had a great track record), and scientists can begin to parse the mystery of water on Mars. So there’s lots of stuff I’d love to dig into and blog… as usual, focus means saying ‘no’…
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Actually, Phoenix is a Scout project - managed by a university.
It still sounds a lot like ‘better faster cheaper’ from the engineering perspective…