CFI Forums

BAM! (aka the BRAIN iniative)

2013-05-22T21:38:52-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRAIN_Initiative

Man, I hope this comes to fruition. If it does, the potential benefits could outshine those of the Human Genome Mapping, the building of the Interstate Highway system, and the Lunar Landing combined.

Non stop engine

2013-01-01T20:25:41-05:00

Dears,

I am investigating a way to make an engine that can run continuously. Currently, my result is so positive.

1. Tools and facilities:
- The main component of this model is a wooden toy with dragonfly shape. Its head is a rectangle which is curved upward, with long tail
- A sharp pillar
- A medium sizes magnet (In attached screenshot it is the round and black piece)
- A tiny magnet

2. Model
- Stick the tiny magnet under the tail of dragonfly shaped specimen. The gravity of magnet makes this specimen settles down toward the tail.
- Then, touch the sharp peak of the rectangle head of the specimen very slightly into the top of the pillar. It makes the balance status of this dragonfly toy is very unstable. It is very easy to drop down as seen in attached screenshot
- Put the medium sized magnet at the base of the pillar so that its upward pole is the same as the downward pole of the tiny one (i.e. south to south, or north to north), and they are face to face as shown in attached screenshot
- Keep the whole system in an insolated room, with all doors and windows are closed to prevent air wing influence.

3. Operation:
- The attraction force between 2 magnets makes the tail of the specimen is pulled down slightly, before it is up again. Then a new period starts with the up and down movement of the specimen tail, again and again etc.
- The position of the medium sized magnet is adjustable so that it can give best result to the movement of the specimen. If the distance between magnets is so far, the force intensity is so weak to result in movement. Otherwise, the strong attraction force from the medium sized will also prevent the specimen from moving.

I let my model there overnight to make sure that there is no stopping. And luckily it does not stop until now.

I post my article here so that any interesting individual can follow and replicate my experiments.

All of my expectation that you can contact me and replicate my experiment

You can view my clip on youtube for reference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4weSLjuvok&feature=youtu.be

Thinh from Vietnam

Speaking of videos: cool climate change lectures, by real experts

2013-04-16T21:37:16-05:00

Here’s a collection of my favorite climate change education videos…

April 8, 2013
A video and lecture tour of our Global Heat Distribution Engine…
http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-video-and-lecture-tour-of-our-global.html
... a scientific review of the folds within folds of harmonic complexity that make up the ‘valves’ and ‘pistons’ of our global climate system.
~ ~ ~
~NASA: Earth From Space (HD)
NASA: “An epic quest to discover the invisible forces and occurrences that sustain life
on this planet and - for the first time -
see these processes in action in EARTH FROM SPACE.
~ Wacky Weather and Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice:
Are They Connected?
Breckenridge Weather and Climate Summit - Day 3, Session 6
Dr. Jennifer Francis, Rutger’s University
~ The Arctic Paradox
Dr. Jennifer Francis: Breckenridge Weather and Climate Summit - Day 5, Session 9
~ Climate Change Impacts Are Happening Faster and Faster-
Greenland, Sea Level Rise and Some Atmospheric Chemistry
Breckenridge Weather and Climate Summit - Day 5, Session 10
Dr. Jim White, University of Colorado
~ From HMS Challenger to ARGO, Ocean Temperatures
Dr. Dean Roemmich, Scripps physical oceanographer - UCTV
~ The Fingerprints of Sea Level Change
Dr. Mitrovica April 2011 at the AAAS Auditorium

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
April 15, 2013
Videos of scientist’s lectures: Global Warming Education
http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2013/04/videos-of-scientists-lectures-global.html
~ ~ ~
~ It’s Not About The Hockey Stick
Dr. Richard Alley
~ Slip Slidin’ Away - Ice sheets and sea level in a warming world
Dr. Richard Alley
~ Ben Santer at Chico State
climate models and more
~ Stephen H. Schneider ~ Is the Science of Global Warming Settled Enough for Policy?
~ The General Public: Why Such Resistance?
Ben Santer, discusses the recent problems with the use of the freedom of information act
~ Answering Climate Change Skeptics
Dr. Naomi Oreskes, author and professor of history and science studies

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
April 15, 2013
More videos: What We Knew In 1988, plus a few updates
http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2013/04/more-videos-what-we-knew-in-1988-plus.html
~ ~ ~
~ Greenhouse Effect - 1988 BBC Documentary
Does a good job of explaining the state of the science in 1988
~ The Rise of Interdisciplinary Climate Research
Spencer Weart, AIP Center for History of Physics; history of our AGW understanding
~ 1. Climate Change—the scientific debate
The Peter Hadfield series at YouTube’s Potholer54

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
April 15, 2013
More videos: “The Machinery of Climate Anti-Science” plus…
http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2013/04/more-videos-machinery-of-climate-anti.html
~ ~ ~
~ The Machinery of Climate Anti-Science
Dr. John Mashey, exposes the underhanded, but effective PR/lobbying tactics of the anti-science campaign.
~ Science Under Attack (BBC Horizon Documentary)
Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse (President of the Royal Society) examines why science appears to be under attack.
~ Pirate Television: Naomi Oreskes - Merchants of Doubt
Naomi Oreskes discusses the 2010 book she wrote together with Erik M. Conway.

Will there ever be a conscious robot?

2013-06-05T23:39:08-05:00

I think so. Maybe not in my lifetime, but quite possiby in the lifetime of some younger forum readers.

I think that Eugene Izikevich with the Brain Corporation (also curator of Scholarpedia) is on the right track. And there are already robots that can learn in various rudimentary situations in which they have been programmed to learn.

I think that reverse enginerring the biological neurological model is the way to go. I think that making robots that have multi-sensory faculties are the way to go.

I think that, for the development of consciousness, robots will require the ability to integrate multi sensory faculties.

And ultimately (for the development of sophisticated consciousness) I think that robots will need to be able to learn how to learn, in general, but especially to learn how to learn verbal behavior. And this would require, I believe, that robots become social creatures, i.e., coming under the influence of general reinforcement and punishment by others, but also learning through social reinforcement and punishment.

Ape genius.

2013-06-13T03:06:09-05:00

Well, some chimpanzees have become spear hunters and cn be taught very complex procedures, even in cooperation with each other.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/ape-genius.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/cooperative-apes.html

Seeing sunlight

2013-06-13T14:50:33-05:00

Does anyone have an understanding of how sunlight works?

Tell me if I am wrong.

The sunlight travels in waves.
The length of the waves is how the eye sees color, the rainbow effect.

Everything in the universe vibrates at different wave lengths. Like heat has wave lengths is the reason ultraviolet light goggles work. (Wavelength is inversely proportional to the wave frequency) off the web.

Sunlight contains the spectrum of visible light.

So, a ray of sunlight hits a leaf on the tree. Sunlight hits that leaf and the light that is the same wave of the leaf is absorbed into the leaf.

Sunlight that is of a different wave length is reflected away.

Question; is the leaf really red in color and what we are looking at is the color the leaf is not? The waves that cannot penetrate and are reflected away and that is what enters the eye.

So, if that is the case then if we change the light source then the color of objects should change, for example using a black light or colored lights. It seems to work.

So are tree leafs really red and we are seeing the colors things are not?

Oooooh! Some of the Coolest Science Programming is Now on YouTube!

2013-04-14T21:25:02-05:00

James Burke has put all of his TV shows on YouTube for free! Who’s James Burke you might ask? He’s the guy that did Connections, The Day the Universe Changed, Connections 2, and Connections 3, to name the shows ‘Merkins will be most familiar with. The Connections series show how one invention led to another, and then to another, and so on, with many of them being accidental. The Day the Universe Changed shows how various scientific discoveries changed societies. Absolutely fascinating stuff, and well worth rewatching if you haven’t seen it in a while. (I hadn’t seen the original Connections series since it first aired back in the 70s. The last episode pretty well nails the development of the internet and some of the issues around privacy, long before most people ever thought of such things.)

Discovering the Technology of Drilling a Square Hole

2013-06-08T06:31:58-05:00

Working at Northrop Grumman as a Tool & Die machinist with some of the best machinist in the world sometimes got pretty boring when you have to be by a machine for hours machining a part. The company discouraged you from reading a newspaper while operating machinery. There were always the football pools and handicapping the horses. And little home projects. These guys were always building something and getting a patent on it. But it had be something that you would not get caught building at work.

My project was to make a drill bit that would drill a square hole.

The entire machine shop was helping and over a two year period I bet we tried fifty different designs that did not work. We even had top engineers involved.

The conclusion was that it is impossible to drill a square hole with a round drill bit. And it sort of became a saying around the shop.

Years latter I’m in this old tool crib at General Dynamics in San Diego that probably had not been use since WWII. Guess what I found, yep, a round drill bit that drilled a square hole. It was patented in 1910.

Oldest-Known Primate Fossil Found in China

2013-06-11T18:06:09-05:00

An international team of paleontologists has discovered a well-preserved skeleton of a new tiny, tree-dwelling primate named Archicebus achilles that lived in what is now central China during Eocene about 55 million years ago.

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/article01133-archicebus-achilles-primate-china.html

The Egg Came First

2013-06-01T10:15:39-05:00

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/31/new-feathered-dino-may-be-world-first-bird/?intcmp=trending

Never mind that today’s birds are the evolutionary descendants of the creature pictured above. I think that we can now safely assume the answer to the age old question: Which came first?: Some descendant of the above creature evolved to be remarkably like, but not quite, what we consider to be today’s chicken. That descendent laid an egg and inside was developing a mutated version of itself, that became the world’s first chicken. Thus, the chicken came second. Its egg was first. Ta da!