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Category: education – Page 183

On route to Singularity with Bahai.

When I reflect on the Baha’i teachings, which stunningly prefigure many of the discoveries of modern physics, I see an interesting pattern.

As a physicist, I’ve noticed that most of the clearest scientific expressions and explanations in the Baha’i teachings come from the writings and talks of Abdu’l-Baha. Looking carefully, those explanations usually trace back to the original concept provided by Baha’u’llah. However, ultimately Abdu’l-Baha seems uniquely capable of pulling these concepts out, explaining them in clear, modern language, and rendering them intelligible to us—or at least to me.

For example on the question of the ultimate substance of matter, in Baha’u’llah’s “Tablet of Wisdom” we can see the presence of the ideas later expressed by Abdu’l-Baha:

Continue reading “Quantum Mechanics, Modern Physics and the Baha’i Teachings” | >

Recently, I saw an article making big deal that a robot can now write. Ok, it only took us 253 years to enhance it a little. Meet the Automaton from Sweden that could write and was designed to look like a young boy. Made in 1774 and still writes today.

We had Automaton that did this since 1774. 1st one was from Sweden and made in 1775.

See more @ One of three surviving automata from the 18th century built by Jaquet Droz, this is ”The Writer” and is the most famou… The Writer Automaton A 240 year old doll that can write, a clockwork creation by Pierre Jaquet-Droz. Pierre Jaquet-Droz (1721−1790) was a Swiss-born watchmaker of the late eighteenth century. He lived in Paris, London, and… On you will find a DVD named ”The Jaquet-Droz androids”. This documentary tells the story of Pierre Jaquet-Droz a sw… From the bestselling children’s novel ”The Invention of Hugo Cabret” to the Oscar nominated film ”Hugo,” automatons — mechanical marvels from a time gone by… Jaquet Droz The Writer Automaton From 1774 In Action: Inspired Hugo Movie. Automato escrevendo no museu do automato e da caixinha de musica em Sainte-Croix, Suiça… identica ao automato visto no filme Hugo Automaton writing in the… A demonstration of the Maillardet’s Automaton at The Franklin Inst.

Continue reading “‘The Writer’ Automaton” | >

Bill and Melinda Gates say “the future will surprise the pessimists.”

They discovered childhood mortality is a symptom of other issues

Children’s deaths are often a result of lack of birth control, gender inequality, and poor women’s health. Melinda wrote, “Virtually all advances in society—nutrition, education, access to contraceptives, gender equity, economic growth—show up as gains in the childhood mortality chart, and every gain in this chart shows up in gains for society.”

Bill added, “When women in developing countries space their births by at least three years, their babies are almost twice as likely to reach their first birthday. Over time, the ability of women to use contraceptives and space their pregnancies will become one of the largest contributors in cutting childhood deaths.” In fact, the Gates Foundation reports “no country in the last 50 years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.”

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“As academics we can sign petitions, but it is not enough.”

As academics we can sign petitions, but it is not enough. Scott Aaronson wrote very eloquently about this issue after the initial ban was announced (see also Terry Tao). My department has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of applicants in general and not just from Iran. We were just informed that we can no longer make Teaching Assistant offers for students who are unlikely to get a visa to come here.

The Department of Homeland Security has demonstrated its blatant disregard for moral norms. Why should we trust its scientific norms? What confidence do we have that funding will not be used in some coercive way? What does it say to our students when we ask them to work for DHS? Yes, the government is big, but at some point the argument that it’s mostly the guy at the top who is bad but the rest of the agency is still committed to good science becomes just too hard to swallow. I decided that I can’t square that circle. Each one of us should think hard about whether we want to.

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Luv this.

Australian entrepreneur reveals brain-controlled telepresence robot. Teleport utilizes brain controlling interface to follow the focal point of a user’s mind and serve various fields of life.

Australian Developer has released a telepresent robot that will let the users attend school or work distantly. People, with a limited mobility of upper limb, will remotely attend tasks through this off-the-shelf mind controlling interface costing 200 UDDs.

Melbourne-based firm Aubot has created the brain controlling robot that is telepresent for doing the user’s task. The dubbed Teleport makes in using the MindWave brain controlling system to track the user’s mind focus. It works on the thinking pattern of the user when he/she focus over a particular entrance, the telepresent assistant moves.

Continue reading “Australian entrepreneur reveals ‘brain-controlled’ telepresence robot” | >

At school you may have been taught that helium was a noble gas because it was totally unreactive.

But, new research suggests it might not be as virtuous as we first thought.

An international team of scientists has created a stable helium compound which is composed of both helium and sodium atoms, and say their discovery marks a ‘new frontier of chemistry.’

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By Jonathan Latham, PhD

Test your understanding of the living world with this simple question. What kind of biomolecule is found in all living organisms? If your answer is “DNA”, you are incorrect. The mistake is very forgiveable though. The standard English-language biology education casts DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid) as the master molecule of life, coordinating and controlling most, if not all, living functions. This master molecule concept is popular. It is plausible. It is taught in every university and high school. But it is wrong. DNA is no master controller, nor is it even at the centre of biology. Instead, science overwhelmingly shows that life is self-organised and thus the pieces are in place for biology to undergo the ultimate paradigm shift.

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Cara Guilfoyle, M.D., FACS, leads the Coordinated Health Breast Center, which covers all aspects of diagnosis and treatment of a broad range of breast conditions. Breast Center services are available at Coordinated Health locations in Allentown and Pittston.

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women; however, thanks to new diagnostic imaging tools and better patient education, more women are surviving it than ever before.

According to Coordinated Health breast surgeon Cara Guilfoyle, M.D., FACS, the earlier that women are diagnosed with breast cancer, the better their prognosis.

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Bohr’s atomic model was utterly revolutionary when it was presented in 1913 but, although it is still taught in schools, it became obsolete decades ago. However, its creator also developed a much wider-ranging and less known quantum theory, the principles of which changed over time. Researchers at the University of Barcelona have now analysed the development in the Danish physicist’s thought — a real example of how scientific theories are shaped.

Most schools still teach the atomic model, in which electrons orbit around the nucleus like the planets do around the sun. The model was proposed more than a century ago by Danish physicist Niels Bohr based on Rutherford’s first model, the principles of classical mechanics and emerging ideas about ‘quantisation’ (equations to apply initial quantum hypotheses to classical physical systems) advanced by Max Planck and Albert Einstein.

As Blai Pié i Valls, a physicist at the University of Barcelona, explains: “Bohr published his model in 1913 and, although it was revolutionary, it was a proposal that did little to explain highly varied experimental results, so between 1918 and 1923 he established a much more wide-ranging, well-informed theory which incorporated his previous model.”

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