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LATEST ARTICLES ( 295 )

• Wiener on Robots

  An essay by Norbert Wiener written in 1949 intended for the New York Times was recently uncovered.  He pretty much had it right 64 years ago. Below is the rathe... Read more

  Posted on 21 May 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Most of Neuroscience is Wrong

  John Ioannidis has a recent paper in Nature Reviews Neuroscience arguing that many results in neuroscience are wrong. The argument follows his previous papers o... Read more

  Posted on 20 May 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Bayesian Model Comparison Part 2

  

  In a previous post, I summarized the Bayesian approach to model comparison, which requires the calculation of the Bayes factor between two models. Read more

  Posted on 11 May 2013 SCIENCE

• Discounting the Obvious

  The main events in the history of science have involved new ideas overthrowing conventional wisdom. The notion that the earth was the center of the universe... Read more

  Posted on 24 April 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• New Paper on Fat

  Sex-Associated Differences in Free Fatty Acid Flux of Obese Adolescents.Diane C Adler-Wailes, Vipul Periwal, Asem H Ali, Sheila M Brady, Jennifer R McDuffie,... Read more

  Posted on 19 April 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Slides for Hopkins Talk

  I gave the Bodian Seminar at the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute of Johns Hopkins today. I talked about cortical dynamics in the presence of conflicting... Read more

  Posted on 15 April 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Hepatitis C and the Folly of Prizes

  The scientific world was set slightly aflutter when Michael Houghton turned down the prestigious Gairdner Award for the the discovery of Hepatitis C. Harvey... Read more

  Posted on 04 April 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• New Paper on Neural Networks

  Michael Buice and I have just published a review paper of our work on how to go beyond mean field theory for systems of coupled neurons. The paper can be... Read more

  Posted on 22 March 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Failure at All Scales

  The premise of most political systems since the enlightenment is that the individual is a rational actor. The classical liberal (now called libertarian)... Read more

  Posted on 12 March 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Activity Map

  The biggest news for neuroscientists in President Obama’s State of the Union Address was the announcement of the Brain Activity Map (BAM) project (e.g. see... Read more

  Posted on 26 February 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Minimum Wage and the Efficient Market

  The current debate about the effect of raising the minimum wage on employment poses an interesting question about how efficient the labour market is. Read more

  Posted on 20 February 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mass

  

  Since the putative discovery of the Higgs boson this past summer, I have heard and read multiple attempts at explaining what exactly this discovery  means. Read more

  Posted on 11 February 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• New Paper on Finite Size Effects in Spiking Neural Networks

  Michael Buice and I have finally published our paper entitled “Dynamic finite size effects in spiking neural networks” in PLoS Computational Biology (link here). Read more

  Posted on 25 January 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Creating Vs Treating a Brain

  The NAND (Not AND) gate is all you need to build a universal computer. In other words, any computation that can be done by your desktop computer, can be... Read more

  Posted on 23 January 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Spawn of SPAUN

  

  SPAUN (Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network) is a model of a functioning brain out of Chris Eliasmith’s group at the University of Waterloo. Read more

  Posted on 16 January 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Saving Large Animals

  One  story in the news lately is the dramatic increase in the poaching of African elephants (e.g. New York Times). Elephant numbers have plunged dramatically... Read more

  Posted on 11 January 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Two New Papers

  I have two new papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry:Z Zhang, Y Sun, YW Cho, CC Chow, SS Simons. PA1 Protein, a New Competitive Decelerator Acting at... Read more

  Posted on 10 January 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Misconceptions About the Debt

  The US National Debt is currently slightly above the US GDP, which has the pundit class up in arms about how we will be imposing a huge cost on our children... Read more

  Posted on 04 January 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Land Sub Experiment

  Gary Taubes penned a column in Nature last month arguing for a rigorous test of the energy balance hypothesis versus what he calls the hormonal hypothesis for... Read more

  Posted on 02 January 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Is Irrationality Necessary?

  Much has been made lately of the anti-science stance of a large segment of the US population. (See for example Chris Mooney’s book). Read more

  Posted on 22 December 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE