Science, Technology & Health: August 2010 Archives
There are a host of technical problems that this project faces, but it's at least interesting to read about applying swarm intelligence to power generation.
The "marine energy" industry has come up with a number of ideas to make use of the movement of water around the globe, be it from ocean waves, tides slipping into and out of inlets, or regular ocean currents like the Gulf Stream.The more common solution to the problem has been to build large turbines, to be anchored to the seabed.
But the nature of the Gulf Stream presents different challenges, said Professor White.
"Even though the Gulf Stream is constrained between two bodies of land, the flow rate and location of peak velocity will change, based on seasonal and weather conditions."
The solution, Professor White and his team suggest, are autonomous turbines with so-called "swarm intelligence" that can navigate through the ocean currents, similar to a school of fish searching for food.
"Swarm intelligence can achieve two goals. One is to find the 'sweet spot' of the Gulf Stream, which is the location where the array will achieve maximum power output," he said.
"The other goal is to find the array orientation and alignment that provides optimal efficiency."
Problems:
1. How do swarm members communicate underwater?
2. How do mobile turbines hundreds of meters under the middle of the ocean transmit the power they generate to consumers?
(HT: MG.)
Yes, the term "death panel" is pretty loaded, but it's also hard to deny the accuracy of the words when you read about government bureaucrats making medical decisions for the rest of us.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is on the verge of taking the highly unusual step of “decertifying” the cancer drug Avastin that it had previously approved. In addition to sparking concerns that this is another step towards medical rationing, the FDA’s proposal will worsen another important but less-frequently recognized danger of government-run health care — namely, the politicization of health benefits. Both problems will accelerate under ObamaCare unless our politicians repudiate the principle of government-run health care.Avastin is used to help lengthen and improve the quality of life of patients with late-stage cancers of the colon, lung, kidney, and brain. (It cannot cure these terminal cancers.) As the Washington Post recently reported, the FDA had also approved it for late-stage breast cancer, but based on recommendations from its scientific advisory panel it is considering rescinding that approval on the grounds that the risks outweigh the benefits.
Paul Hsieh hits the nail on the head and points out that there is no reasonable way for the government to make medical decisions for everyone.
The basic problem is that government should not be making these sorts of medical coverage decisions at all. Neither the FDA, the USPSTF, the IPAB, nor any other alphabet-soup government agency should decide what treatments and procedures you may (or may not) receive when your life is at stake. Instead, patients should be allowed to purchase the treatments they wish (in consultation with their physicians) in a free market based on their own individual priorities and preferences.
People should be free to make these decisions themselves. Some people will make bad decisions, yes, but putting the government in charge of everyone just to protect bad-decision-makers from themselves is unjust and tyrannical.
English is not typically considered a tonal language, but the following seven-word sentence can give you an idea for how difficult it can be to program a computer to understand the nuances that humans take for granted. As you read the following sentence, consider how the meaning shifts depending on which of the seven words you emphasize -- seven words, seven different interpretations for the sentence.
"I never said she stole my money."
I encountered this sentence several times while studying linguistics and artificial intelligence because it is a simple demonstration of why language is so difficult for computers to understand or generate. Wikipedia offers these seven interpretations.
- "I never said she stole my money" - Someone else said it, but I didn't.
- "I never said she stole my money" - I simply didn't ever say it.
- "I never said she stole my money" - I might have implied it in some way, but I never explicitly said it.
- "I never said she stole my money" - I said someone took it; I didn't say it was she.
- "I never said she stole my money" - I just said she probably borrowed it.
- "I never said she stole my money" - I said she stole someone else's money.
- "I never said she stole my money" - I said she stole something of mine, but not my money.
Perhaps you can think of even more? Consider the ways that authors attempt to evoke these interpretations without resorting to italics or bolding. It's not trivial! Consider how quickly children learn to differentiate and utilize these forms. In this case, intonation is being used to indicate the target of the sentence's overall negation, but that's just one way that English uses tone. No wonder it's hard to make machines that can understand natural language!
