QT:{{”
In 1665, Christiaan Huygens [Huygens, 1673] noted “When we suspended two clocks so constructed from two hooks imbedded in the same wooden beam, the motions of each pendulum on opposite swings were so much in agreement that they never receded the least bit from each other and the sound of each was always heard simultaneously. Further, if this agreement was disturbed by some interference, it reestablished itself in a short time. For a long time I was amazed at this unexpected result, but after a careful examination finally found that the cause of this is due to the motion of the beam, even though this is hardly perceptible. The cause is that the oscillations of the pendula, in proportion to their weight, communicate some motion to the clocks. This motion, impressed onto the beam, necessarily has the effect of making the pendula come to a state of exactly contrary swings if it happened that they moved otherwise at first, and from this finally the motion of the beam completely ceases.” The study of coupled
oscillators has since become an active branch of mathematics, with applications in physics, biology, and chemistry. In physics, one encounters coupled oscillators in arrays of Josephson junctions [Chung et al., 1989, Blackburn et al., 1994], in modelling molecules [Sage, 1994], and in coupled lasers [Dente et al., 1990]. Coupled oscillators are also prevalent in biological systems. Most organisms appear to be coupled to various periodicities extant in our surroundings, such as the rotation of the earth about the sun, the alternation of night and day, or the tides. Not only do organisms exhibit periodicities due to their environment, but they also exhibit innate periodic behavior. Breathing, pumping blood, chewing, and galloping are examples of rhythmic patterns of motion…
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Posts Tagged ‘quote’
analogies between josephson junction linkage and huygens coupled pendulums
October 24, 2015Computer Vision and Computer Hallucinations » American Scientist
October 21, 2015Computer Vision
&…Hallucinationshttp://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.16420,y.2015,no.5,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx Instead of training a neural network, train an image to fit it. Dreams emerge
QT:{{”
“The algorithm behind the deep dream images was devised by Alexander Mordvintsev, a Google software engineer in Zurich. In the blog posts he was joined by two coauthors: Mike Tyka, a biochemist, artist, and Google software engineer in Seattle; and Christopher Olah of Toronto, a software engineering intern at Google.
Here’s a recipe for deep dreaming. Start by choosing a source image and a target layer within the neural network. Present the image to the network’s input layer, and allow the recognition process to proceed normally until it reaches the target layer. Then, starting at the target layer, apply the backpropagation algorithm that corrects errors during the training process. However, instead of adjusting connection weights to improve the accuracy of the network’s response, adjust the source image to increase the amplitude of the response in the target layer. This forward-backward cycle is then repeated a number of times, and at intervals the image is resampled to increase the number of pixels.”
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The 9 most popular coding languages
October 21, 2015Most popular coding languages, according to @GitHub are javascript (#1), Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, CSS, C++, C# & C
https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/08/the-9-most-popular-coding-languages
QT:{{”
“That means GitHub is a great place to gauge which of the world’s many thousands of programming languages are the most popular — especially since a popular programming language is always a good job skill for anybody to have in this age of technological transformation. Without further ado, here are the top programming languages on GitHub. No. 9 — C: The original C, invented in 1972, is still incredibly popular. That’s not least because it works on just about any computing platform ever made, and it’s super stable and understood by
programmers everywhere.
…
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LinkedIn’s Plan for World Domination
October 19, 2015LinkedIn’s Plan for World Domination http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/12/the-network-man No job security, everyone’s an entrepreneur, enlarging prof’l #networks is key
QT:{{"
“Manyika understood that not every chief executive in Silicon Valley could sign the statement, but he was gently trying to pull Hoffman to the left, and he knew how to frame the argument so that it would appeal to him. He went on, “We cannot ignore this problem. Right now, everybody’s punting. We know the share of income that goes to wages is a declining portion, compared with capital expenditures. What does that mean for jobs? Entrepreneurship is part of the answer. Mass-scale entrepreneurship. Before you even get to A.I.”
“You have to be able to let people adapt,” Hoffman said. “You have to have cheap resources to put across the whole system. How do you get inclusion within the tech ecosystem?”
“Very few of the programs have scale,” Manyika said.
“You have to scale to infinite,” Hoffman said.
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Human Genome Project: Twenty-five years of big biology
October 17, 2015HGP: 25yrs of big biology
http://www.nature.com/news/human-genome-project-twenty-five-years-of-big-biology-1.18436 6 lessons: embrace Partnering, data Sharing & Analytics + Tech & ELSI; be Bold & Flexible
QT:{{”
Embrace partnerships. By necessity, the HGP broke the mould of individual researchers toiling away in isolation to answer a small set of scientific questions. It also ran against the grain of
hypothesis-driven research, focusing instead on the discovery of fundamental information that would inform many follow-on
investigations.
…
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The pain when children fly the nest
October 13, 2015The pain when children fly the nest by @AdamGopnik
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22207482 Eloquent description of an asymmetrical relationship
QT:{{”
“The new and more scientific explanation for the asymmetry is that it is all in our inheritance. Our genes are just using us to make more of them. (That Dawkinsian idea of selfish genes always gives me an image of the galley slaves on a Roman ship, peering and panting out of their little window and then, with a silent nod to each other, deciding where to steer the ship while the captain frets helplessly above.)” “}}
DR. ELLIOT D. WEITZMAN, EXPERT ON SLEEP, DIES – NYTimes.com
October 12, 2015QT:{{”
Dr. Weitzman … joined the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, of which the Institute of Chronobiology is part, last year.
Chronobiology is the study of the biological rhythms of life processes.
Previously, he had directed the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center, a diagnosis and treatment facility, at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and was professor of neurology and neurosciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, also in the Bronx. Studied Night Workers
In 1961, he joined Einstein, becoming chairman of the department of neurology in 1971. He was named chief of the department of neurology at Montefiore in 1969. At Montefiore, Dr. Weitzman also directed the Laboratory for Human Chronophysiology, a research unit.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/16/obituaries/dr-elliot-d-weitzman-expert-on-sleep-dies.html
Norbert Wiener. Quotes.
October 11, 2015Also, forgot he moved into a new home….
http://dalido.narod.ru/NW/NW-quote5.html
QT:{{”
Wiener as a prototype of an “absent-minded professor”.
These anecdotes (collected by Howard Eves, a math historian) are told about him:
He went to a conference and parked his car in the big lot. When the conference was over, he went to the lot but forgot where he parked his car. He even forgot was his car looked like. So he waited until all the other cars were driven away, then took the car that was left. When he and his family moved to a new house a few blocks away, his wife gave him written directions on how to reach it, since she knew he was absent-minded. But when he was leaving his office at the end of the day, he couldn’t remember where he put her note, and he couldn’t remember where the new house was. So he drove to his old neighborhood instead. He saw a young child and asked her, “Little girl, can you tell me where the Wieners moved?” “Yes, Daddy,” came the reply, “Mommy said you’d probably be here, so she sent me to show you the way home”.
One day he was sitting in the campus lounge, intensely studying a paper on the table. Several times he’d get up, pace a bit, then return to the paper. Everyone was impressed by the enormous mental effort reflected on his face. Once again he rose from his paper, took some rapid steps around the room, and collided with a student. The student said, “Good afternoon, Professor Wiener.” Wiener stopped, stared, clapped a hand to his forehead, said “Wiener – that’s the word,” and ran back to the table to fill the word “wiener” in the crossword puzzle he was working on.
He drove 150 miles to a math conference at Yale University. When the conference was over, he forgot he came by car, so he returned home by bus. The next morning, he went out to his garage to get his car, discovered it was missing, and complained the police that while he was away, someone stole his car.
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Scientists discover we don’t need all of out 20,000 genes to survive
October 10, 2015QT:{{”
“We have around 24,000 genes that make us uniquely human and, until now, it was thought that if any were missing it could cause serious problems.
But new research has found that around 200 of these genes may in fact be completely redundant, without posing any such risk.
By studying the genomes of 2,500 people, researchers have said they were surprised to see around one per cent of these genes were missing entirely in some participants.
More importantly, these particular people had no significant health defects that would be explained by the missing genes.
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Mixed Signals For Church St. South Families | New Haven Independent
October 9, 2015QT:{{”
“Because this is an extremely complicated process, moving hundreds of families stranded in a decrepit complex where mold, leaks and crumbling staircases threaten their health.”
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http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/ccs_follow2/
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