Publishing a redacted form of the manuscript would have satisfied the need for scientists to exchange general data to fight any future pandemic and yet protect security needs. Unfortunately, these changing times will force us to reevaluate and redesign our traditional approach to sharing scientific discoveries in favor of the greater good.
Claude E. Gagna
New York Institute of Technology
TWO-FACED BUG
In “The Ultimate Social Network,” Jennifer Ackerman writes about the “benefits” of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori on the digestive system and its possible role in controlling obesity. She describes H. pylori's maligned status in the medical world as a “nasty rap” because of its role in causing peptic ulcers.
Ackerman neglected to mention H. pylori's role in stomach cancer. Whereas only 1 to around 2 percent of H. pylori patients develop gastric cancer, H. pylori infection makes you nearly six times more likely to develop the disease.
This hits close to home for me. My father, brother and I were diagnosed with H. pylori, and I was found to have stage IV gastric cancer. Scientific research into the complex relation between H. pylori and humans is critical. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that this bug is a killer.
Mhari Saito
Shaker Heights, Ohio
INSPIRING INSECT
After reading Backyard Brains co-founder Greg Gage's description of his company's SpikerBox kit in “When Cockroach Legs Dance” [Advances], I immediately found a YouTube video of Gage hooking it up to his iPhone. His device allows you to hear the neural activity in a cockroach leg that is made to dance. I was amazed and thought how much I would have liked to use it in my classroom.
I taught seventh grade life science for 40 years and always believed it was essential to provide memorable interactive experiences. Our schedule included an 80-minute lab period each week, and it was my pleasure to fill that time with highly motivating hands-on activities. Frequently, when students from previous years came to visit, the conversation would turn to experiences they remembered from those activities. Often these students had gone on to careers related to biology.
I have been retired for a year now. The school administrators have done away with the weekly lab because of schedule changes. I am devastated that after all those years, they never understood the tremendous importance of all those hands-on lab experiences. They really need to see a dancing cockroach leg hooked up to an iPhone!
Pam Nester
Kutztown, Pa.
ERRATUM
In “The Right Way to Get It Wrong,” by David Kaiser and Angela N. H. Creager, Phycomyces is described as an alga. It is a fungus.
This article was originally published with the title Letters.
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3 Comments
Add Comment@Dmytro Taranovsky
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho says the human mind is non-deterministic?
Exactly. All evidence suggests the brain is deterministic while also being highly stochastic and that there is no such thing as free will; defined as non-caused behaviour. Deterministic and stochastic? Biological processes make the brain very noisy but neural networks have the unique feature that finds patterns in noise. It is these patterns that give rise to behaviour. What the brain does not seem to have is a way to create behaviour that is not derived from sensory stimuli and stored patterns. So there is no evidence for free will. Ultimately an android/gynoid will have just as much free will as you and I. It will be a product of its substrate and programming. Though I imagine that it will be far less stochastic and therefore more predictable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe way I see it there are two parallel paths that are slowly converging. The one path has biology being augmented and later enhanced by machinery. Pacemakers are one of the early examples of this. Prosthetics are another. Eventually the prosthetics will be better than the real thing and laws will be implemented to prevent people from discarding healthy tissue in favour of machined parts.
The second path is making machines that behave more like biology. Creating machines that think like people and other animals but that can do things too dangerous or boring for people to do. Our need to interface with them and their need to function in a world made for people will drive them to be more and more like us. But humans did not evolve in the modern world and so civilization can be somewhat difficult for us. The machines though will be custom built to live in our world. It will be a perfect fit. So what happens when you have two species sharing an environment and one is better adapted than the other? At the convergence of these two paths we loose the ability to distinguish between biology and technology. Perhaps that is when humanity builds his/her true legacy. Humans value their ideas and visions above their biology. I am not my bad back and body type. I am my personality and values. Yet if I were to have a child I would likely pass on my bad back and spend decades trying to pass on my values. Machines would be the other way around. We could give them what is best about us and leave behind the biology that makes us jealeous, greedy, lazy and spiteful.
A simple thing : Simulation of brain does not amounts to simulation of Mind. It is not possible to even map all the depths and mysteries of Mind in a single Human individual. Human mind does not follow the strict mechanistic model where its functions and behavour could be predicted. Any person can not predict with certainty regarding nature of thoughts arising in his/her mind even after 24 hours. Intelligent is not the only aspect of Mind. There are many many other aspects of mind -- memories, imagination, emotions, hopes/expectations, personality traits, intuition power and so on so on. which can not be even mapped completely in human mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeuro science follows a very simplistic approach when it traces the origin, evolution and history of Mind in Brain
It is difficult to conclude if Mind follows deterministic or free will path. I think whenever any thought is created, that could be the product of either free will or deterministic factors or both. We do not have any subjective or objective methodology to determine this.
In view of above, it appears that even if Human brain is simulated sometimes in future, this simulation shall be limited to some mechanistic functions only. But Mind apart from mechanistic functions is a deep respository of non-mechanistic functions. Leave aside simulations of Mind, it is not possible to manipulate Mind even thru neuro interventions. Had it been possible, all the hate, enmity, selfishness, distrust could be eliminated from World and many of its problems over