GENETIC MEMORY OF THE CAZADORES

CAZADORES

Spanish for “The Hunters”

Alphabetical Glossary of  Terms

Abkhaz (Аҧсуа бызшәа) is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken mainly by the Abkhaz people. It is the official language of Abkhazia where around 100,000 people speak it.

Algorithms, pattern recognition:

In machine learning, pattern recognition is the assignment of some sort of output value (or label) to a given input value.  Pattern recognition is a more general problem that encompasses other types of output as well.  Pattern recognition algorithms generally aim to provide a reasonable answer for all possible inputs and to do “fuzzy” matching of inputs.

Recent efforts by Philip Kellman and colleagues showed that perceptual learning can be systematically produced and accelerated using specific, computer-based technology. Their approach to perceptual learning methods take the form of perceptual learning modules (PLMs): sets of short, interactive trials that develop, in a particular domain, learners’ pattern recognition, classification abilities, and their abilities to map across multiple representations. Perceptual learning can offer a needed complement to conceptual and procedural instruction.

The Reverse Hierarchy Theory (RHT), proposed by Ahissar & Hochstein, aims to link between learning dynamics and specific underlying neuronal sites.  RHT proposes that naïve performance is based on responses at high-level cortical areas, where crude, categorical level representations of the environment are represented. Initial learning stages involve understanding global aspects of the task. Subsequent practice may yield better perceptual resolution as a consequence of accessing lower-level information via the ‘feedback’ connections going from high to low levels. Accessing the relevant low-level representations requires a backward search during which informative input populations of neurons in the low level are allocated. High-level representations of different individuals differ due to their prior experience and their initial learning patterns may have differed. RHT proposes that modifications at low levels will occur only when the backward search (from high to low levels of processing) is successful. Such success requires that the backward search will “know” which neurons in the lower level are informative. This “knowledge” is gained by training or repeated exposure to a limited set of stimuli, such that the same lower-level neuronal populations are informative during several trials. Recent studies found that mixing a broad range of stimuli may also yield effective learning.

Perceptual learning selection may be the unifying principles of perceptual learning at all levels even learning in the silicon neuromorphic environment.

Alluvial Fan:  Unconsolidated sedimentary deposit that accumulates at the mouth of a mountain canyon because of a diminution or cessation of sediment transport by the issuing stream. The deposits, which are generally fan-shaped in plain view, can develop under a wide range of climatic conditions.

They tend to be larger and more prominent in arid and semiarid regions, however, and generally are regarded as characteristic desert landforms. This is particularly true in the basin-and-range type of areas of parts of Iran and Central Asia, where the basic landscape configuration consists of mountains set against adjacent basins.

Artificial Neural Network: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

In most cases an artificial neural network (ANN), usually called neural network (NN), is a mathematical model or computational model that is inspired by the structure and/or functional aspects of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of an interconnected group of artificial neurons, and it processes information using a connectionist approach to computation. In most cases an ANN is an adaptive system that changes its structure based on external or internal information that flows through the network during the learning phase. Modern neural networks are non-linear statistical data modeling tools used to model complex relationships between inputs and outputs or to find patterns in data.

Avatar:

In Hinduism, an avatar (English: /ˈæv.ə.tɑːr/, from Sanskrit avatāra, अवतार in the Devanagari script, meaning “descent”) is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being (i.e., Vishnu for Vaishnavites) and is mostly translated into English as “incarnation,” but more accurately as “appearance” or “manifestation”.  Recent: Manifestation of a person or projection of individual personality into a character in the social internet game and virtual world of   “Second Life”.  Movie “Avatar”, James Cameron.

Bacchus & Adriadne:

BACCHUS was the son of Jupiter and Semele. Dionysus (Greek) was the god of wine and inspired madness, and a major figure of Greek mythology. He represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficial influences. The geographical origins of his cult were unknown, but almost all myths depicted him as having “foreign” (i.e. non-Greek) origins. In Roman time, he was thought to hail from Parthia in the north east of the Mediterranean.

He is the patron deity of agriculture and the theatre. He was also known as the Liberator (Eleutherios), freeing one from one’s normal self, by madness, ecstasy, or wine. The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the aulos and to bring an end to care and worry.

ARIADNE, the daughter of King Minos, after helping Theseus to escape from the labyrinth, was carried by him to the island of Naxos and was left there asleep. Adriadne, on waking and finding herself deserted, abandoned herself to grief. But Venus took pity on her, and consoled her with the promise that she should have an immortal lover, instead of the mortal one she had lost.

As Ariadne sat lamenting her fate, Bacchus found her, consoled her, and made her his wife. As a marriage present he gave her a golden crown, enriched with gems, and when she died, he took her crown and threw it up into the sky. As it mounted the gems grew brighter and were turned into stars, and preserving its form Ariadne’s crown remains fixed in the heavens as a constellation Corona Borealis.

Behaviorism: http://psychology.about.com/od/bindex/g/behaviorism.htm

Behaviorism holds that only observable behaviors should be studied, as cognition  and mood are too subjective. According to behaviorist theory, our responses to environmental stimuli shape our behaviors and may even be epigenetic. Important concepts such as classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and reinforcement have arisen from behaviorism.

Bell Curve:

In mathematics, a Gaussian function (named after Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss) is a function of the form:    ,  for some real constants a, b, c > 0, and e ≈ 2.718281828 (Euler’s number).

The graph of a Gaussian is a characteristic symmetric “bell curve” shape that quickly falls off towards plus/minus infinity. The parameter a is the height of the curve’s peak, b is the position of the centre of the peak, and c controls the width of the “bell”.

Gaussian functions are widely used in statistics where they describe the normal distributions. The statistical probability of occurrence diminishes as both ‘tails’, approach zero leading to fantastic improbability but never impossibility.

Biochemical Imprint:

Genomic imprinting refers to a genetic phenomenon whereby there is preferential expression of a gene from only one of the two parental alleles. This phenomenon of allele-specific expression results from allele-specific epigenetic modifications such as CpG dinucleotide methylation or histone methylation or histone acetylation. These modifications are referred to as epigenetic modifications (also referred to as epigenetic “marks”). In non-imprinted regions of the chromosomes, the parental epigenetic marks are erased in the germ cells only to be newly established in a parental-specific manner. Once the parental-specific epigenetic marks are established, they are maintained following fertilization. Transgenerational, environmental experience, biochemical protein induced sequences may be encoded and passed on to successive generations.

Biofeedback training:

Biofeedback is the process of becoming aware of various physiological functions using instruments that provide information on the activity of those same systems, with a goal of being able to manipulate them at will.  Processes that can be controlled include brainwaves, muscle tone, heart rate and pain perception.

Biofeedback may be used to improve health or performance, and the physiological changes often occur in conjunction with changes to thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Eventually, these changes can be maintained without the use of extra equipment.

Broca’s Area of the Brain:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca’s_area

This image shows Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area.

For a long time, it was assumed that the role of Broca’s area was more devoted to language production than language comprehension. However, recent evidence demonstrates that Broca’s area also plays a significant role in language comprehension.  Also, a number of neuroimaging studies have implicated an involvement of Broca’s area, particularly of the pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus, during the processing of complex sentences and abstract concepts.

Caucasus Orogenic Divide:  http://doc.rero.ch/lm.php?url=1000,43,2,20101207150448-TL/mos_crt.pdf

The Greater Caucasus is Europe’s highest mountain belt and results from the inversion of the Greater Caucasus back-arc-type basin due to the collision of Arabia and Eurasia. The orogenic processes that led to the present mountain chain started in the Early Cenozoic, accelerated during Pleistocene, and are still active as shown from present GPS studies and earthquake distribution.

“Childhood’s End”, Arthur C. Clark:

Childhood’s End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival ends all war, helps a form a world government, and turns the planet into a near-utopia. Many questions are asked about the origins and mission of the aliens. Later, the Overlords eventually show themselves, and their impact on human culture leads to a Golden Age. The last generation of children on Earth begins to display powerful psychic abilities, heralding their evolution into a group mind, a transcendent form of life that eventually leaves the Planet.

 

“Clash of the Titans”: http://www.theoi.com/Titan/Titanes.html

The Titans were overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Olympians in the (“War of the Titans”) which affected a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks may have borrowed from the Ancient Near East. Not all the Titans chose to fight against the children of Kronos.  KHEIRON (or Chiron), son of Coronus, was the eldest and wisest of the Centaurs, a tribe of half-horse men. But unlike the rest of this tribe he was an immortal god, a son of the Titan Kronos and half-brother of Zeus. This is the primordial power struggle between man and his natural world and himself, individually and collectively. (A must see web-site).

Cognitive Anthropology:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_anthropology

Cognitive anthropology is an approach within cultural anthropology in which scholars seek to explain patterns of shared knowledge, cultural innovation, and transmission over time and space using the methods and theories of the cognitive sciences (especially experimental psychology and evolutionary biology) often through close collaboration with historians, ethnographers, archaeologists, linguists, musicologists and other specialists engaged in the description and interpretation of cultural forms. Cognitive anthropology is concerned with what people from different groups know and how that implicit knowledge changes the way people perceive and relate to the world around them.

Cognitive Computing Chip:

Scientists from IBM Research and five university partners are leading an effort to understand the complex wiring system of the brain and to build a computer that can simulate and emulate the brain’s abilities of sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition while rivaling its low power consumption and compact size. Using the Dawn Blue Gene/P supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with 147,456 processors and 144 terabytes of main memory, the team achieved a simulation with1 billion spiking neurons and 10 trillion individual learning synapses.  This is equivalent to 1,000 cognitive computing chips; each with 1 million neurons and 10 billion synapses, and exceeds the scale of cat cerebral cortex.  The team has also developed a new algorithm, BlueMatter, that exploits the Blue Gene supercomputing architecture to noninvasively measure and map the connections between all cortical and subcortical locations within the human brain using magnetic resonance imaging. Mapping the wiring diagram of the brain is crucial to untangling its vast communication network and understanding how it represents and processes information. Only recently has the technology increased sufficiently to match the density of neurons and synapses in real brains—around 10 billion to one square centimeter.

“Collective Conscious/Unconscious”: Carl Jung

 The term collective consciousness refers to the condition of the subject within the whole of society, and how any given individual comes to view herself as a part of any given group. The term has specifically been used by social theorists/psychoanalysts like Durkheim, Althusser, and Jung to explicate how an autonomous individual comes to identify with a larger group/structure. Definitively, “collective” means “formed by a collection of individual persons or things; constituting a collection; gathered into one; taken as a whole.” Likewise, “consciousness,” (a term which is slightly more complex to define with the entirety of its implications) signifies “Joint” or mutual knowledge. Internal knowledge is “The state or fact of being mentally conscious or aware of anything”. By combining the two terms, we can surmise that the phrase collective consciousness implies an internal knowing known by all, or a consciousness shared by a plurality of persons. The easiest way to think of the phrase (even with its extremely loaded historical content) is to regard it as being an idea or proclivity that we all share, whoever specifically “we” might entail. Genetic Memory may manifest itself in the Collective Unconscious.

In analytical psychology, the personal unconscious is Carl Jung‘s term for the Freudian unconscious, as contrasted with the collective unconscious. Often referred to by him as “No man’s land,” the personal unconscious is located at the fringe of consciousness, between two worlds: “the exterior or spacial world and the interior or psychic objective world” (Ellenberger, 707). As Charles Baudouin  states, “That the unconscious extends so far beyond consciousness is simply the counterpart of the fact that the exterior world extends so far beyond our visual field” (Ellenberger, 707).

The personal unconscious includes anything which is not presently conscious, but can be found. The personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten, repressed, or lost in time. The personal unconscious is like most people’s understanding of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for some reason or are otherwise inaccessible. Jung’s theory of a personal unconscious is quite similar to Freud’s creation of a region containing a person’s repressed, forgotten or ignored, or inaccessible experience, i.e., Genetic Memory.

Controlled Double Blind:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_experiment

“Double Blind” describes an especially stringent way of conducting an experiment, usually on human subjects, in an attempt to eliminate subjective bias on the part of both experimental subjects and the experimenters. In most cases, double-blind experiments are held to achieve a higher standard of scientific rigor.

Copper-Stone Age: http://notendur.hi.is/joner/eaps/tlhh.htm#Mesolithic

The beginning of the period is sometimes called the Chalcolithic Age, referring to the initial use of pure copper (along with its predecessor tool making material, stone). Scarce at first, copper was initially used only for small or precious objects. Its use was known in eastern Anatolia by 6500 BC, and it soon became widespread.

By the middle of the 4th millennium, a rapidly developing copper metallurgy, with cast tools and weapons, was a factor leading to urbanization in Mesopotamia. By 3000 the use of copper was well known in the Middle East, had extended westward into the Mediterranean area.

This early copper phase is commonly thought of as part of the Bronze Age, though true bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was used only rarely at first. During the 2nd millennium the use of true bronze greatly increased.

Cortical Center of the Brain:

The cerebral cortex is a sheet of neural tissue that is outermost to the cerebrum of the mammalian brain. It plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and “consciousness”. It is constituted of up to six horizontal layers, each of which has a different composition in terms of neurons and connectivity. The human cerebral cortex is 2–4 mm (0.08–0.16 inches) thick.

Neurons in various layers connect vertically to form small microcircuits, called columns. Different neocortical architectonic fields are distinguished upon variations in the thickness of these layers, their predominant cell type and other factors such as neurochemical markers.

Association areas function to produce a meaningful perceptual experience of the world, enable us to interact effectively, and support abstract thinking and language. The parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes – all located in the posterior part of the cortex – organize sensory information into a coherent perceptual model of our environment centered on our body image. The frontal lobe or prefrontal association complex is involved in planning actions and movement, as well as abstract thought.

Crassus, Marcus Licinius:

Marcus Licinius Crassus (Latin: M·LICINIVS·P·F·P·N·CRASSVS) (ca. 115 BC – 53 BC) was a Roman general and politician who commanded the left wing of Sulla‘s army at the Battle of the Colline Gate, suppressed the slave revolt led by Spartacus and entered into the political alliance known as the First Triumvirate, with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Gaius Julius Caesar. He allegedly owned more than 200,000,000 sestertii at the height of his fortune. One of the richest men of the era and still ranked in the top 10 List of most wealthy historical figures, Crassus still desired recognition for military victories in the shape of a triumph. This desire for a triumph led him into Parthia (Syria), where he was defeated and killed in the Roman defeat at Carrhae which was fought with the Parthian Spahbod Surena.

General Surena:   http://www.babylon.com/define/52/History-Dictionary.html

General Surena (84–52, son of Arakhsh (Arash in Persian) and Massis, was a famed commander of cavalry during the reign of the Arsacid dynasty, Orodes II (r. 57–38 BC).

In Life of Crassus 21, written c. 225 years after the commander’s time, Plutarch described Surena as “an extremely distinguished man. In wealth, birth, and in the honor paid to him, he ranked next after the king; in courage and ability he was the foremost Parthian of his time; and in stature and personal beauty he had no equal.

In 53 BC, the Romans advanced on the western Arsacid vassalaries. In response, Orodes II sent his cavalry units under Surena to combat them. The two armies subsequently met at Battle of Carrhae (at Harrân in present-day Turkey), where the superior equipment and clever tactics of the Parthians to lure the Romans out into the middle of the desert enabled them to defeat the numerically superior Romans.

 Cro-Magnon Man: Homo sapiens sapiens

Our ancestor, the Cro Magnon Man is the earliest known modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens. They lived from about 45,000 to 10,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic period of the Pleistocene epoch. Cro- Magnon probably developed in Asia, migrated to Europe, and co-existed with Neanderthal man for a time (eventually they drove the Neanderthals into extinction). By convention, Cro-Magnon times (the Upper Paleolithic) ended together with Pleistocene 11,000 years ago.

They were tall like modern humans, their skull had no brow ridges, was thin, rounded, with a high forehead, with a projecting chin. Average brain size: about 1,350 milliliters (same as today). As their oral anatomy was identical to modern humans, they could probably speak. They were our pre-history ancestors.  Physiologically, they were us.

Cyber-ancestor(s): www.geneticmemoryofthecazadores.com A new word proposed in the book “Genetic Memory of the Cazadores”, by J.W. Reed, refers to meeting ones ancestors in cyberspace created by downloading inherited or ‘genetic’ memories of one’s ancestors, (epigenetic transgenerational memory predecessor(s), with the aid of super computers, neuromorphic chips, cranial implants, and bio-feedback training. “Cyber-ancestors” are avatars that exist digitally in Cyberspace and are more real than actual memories in that they and the environments in which they lived may be simultaneously experienced by others.  Their existence, their lives and their exploits may be digitally recorded for later viewing.

Cyrus the Great: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great

Cyrus the Great was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much of Central Asia, parts of Europe and Caucasus. From the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east, Cyrus the Great created the largest empire the world had yet seen.

Cyrus the Great respected the customs and religions of the lands he conquered. It is said that in universal history, the role of the Achaemenid empire founded by Cyrus lies in its very successful model for centralized administration and establishing a government working to the advantage and profit of its subjects. He did not believe slavery a conditional means to create wealth.

Déjà vu:  (French pronunciation: [deʒav y] , literally “already seen” is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. The term was coined by a French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac (1851–1917) in his book L’Avenir des sciences psychiques (“The Future of Psychic Sciences”), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of “eeriness”, “strangeness”, and “weirdness. The “previous” experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past, non-digital enhanced Genetic Memory.

Della Porta’s lensing device:

Giambattista della Porta (1535? – 4 February 1615), was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Scientific Revolution and Reformation.  Della Porta claimed to have invented the first telescope, but died while preparing the treatise (De telescopiis) in support of his claim. His efforts were also overshadowed by Galileo Galilei‘s improvement of the telescope in 1609, following its introduction in the Netherlands in 1608.  The optics of Galileo’s telescope:

Dendrite, Axon & Synapse:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrite

Dendrites (from Greek δένδρον déndron, “tree”) are the branched projections of a neuron that act to conduct the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the neuron from which the dendrites project. Electrical stimulation is transmitted onto dendrites by upstream neurons via synapses which are located at various points throughout the dendritic arbor. Dendrites play a critical role in integrating these synaptic inputs and in determining the extent to which action potentials are produced by the neuron. Recent research has also found that dendrites can support action potentials and release neurotransmitters, a property that was originally believed to be specific to axons.

Denisovan Creature:

Many of Asia’s distinct populations have genetic heritage in common with a 40,000-year-old hominins found in Denisova Cave in southern Russia in 2008. “Denisova hominins”, are Paleolithic-Era members of the genus Homo that may belong to a previously unknown species. In March 2010, scientists announced the discovery of a finger bone fragment of a juvenile female that lived about 41,000 years ago, found in Denisova Cave in Altai Krai. An initial morphological characterization of the bone fragment led to the suggestion that it may have belonged to a Neanderthal-Denisovan hybrid individual, although a critic suggested the morphology was inconclusive. This region may also have been inhabited at about the same time by Neanderthals and perhaps modern humans.

 

Digital Micrograph:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_electron_microscopy

A digital microscope uses optics and a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera to output a digital image to a computer monitor. A digital microscope differs from an optical microscope in that there is no provision to observe the sample directly through an eyepiece. Since optical image is projected directly on the CCD camera, the entire system is designed for the monitor, digital, image.

DNA, Human:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid (/diˌɒksiˌraɪbɵ.njuːˌkleɪ.ɨk ˈæsɪd/ ,or DNA, is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms (with the exception of RNA viruses). The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information through multiple generations. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints, like a recipe or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information. Along with RNA and proteins, DNA is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life.

Dresden Codex:  Also known as the Codex Dresdensis, is a pre-Columbian Maya book of the eleventh or twelfth century of the Yucatan Maya.

The Dresden Codex contains astronomical tables of outstanding accuracy. It is most famous for its Lunar Series and Venus table. The lunar series has intervals correlating with eclipses. The Venus Table correlates with the apparent movements of the planet. The codex also contains almanacs, astronomical and astrological tables, and ritual schedules. The Dresden Codex contains predictions for agriculturally-favorable timing. It has information on rainy seasons, floods, illness and medicine. It also seems to show conjunctions of constellations, planets and the moon.

Durant, Wil & Ariel: William James Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife Ariel Durant and published between 1935 and 1975. Will and Ariel Durant were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

“ Do we really know what the past was, what actually happened, or is history a ‘fable’ not quite “agreed upon”?  Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious fervor. “Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.”  Even the historian who presumes to rise above partiality for his country, race, creed, or class betrays his secret predilection in his choice of archival material, and in the nuances of his adjectives. “The historian always oversimplifies, and hastily selects a manageable minority of facts and faces out of a crowd of millions of souls and events whose multitudinous complexity he can never quite embrace or comprehend.”

Electro-biochemical code: http://books.google.com/books?id=LKy0weDEFp8C&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183&dq=electro+biochemical+code&source=bl&ots=4ZogyB8GaP&sig=cJzAoaGW9QwNBtxkYm4d5xrRFqc&hl=en&ei=DgL4TZTDG5GltwfdkPXPCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBzgU#v=onepage&q=electro%20biochemical%20code&f=false

Textbook of Biochemistry and Human Biology By; L. M. Srivastav, pages 183 -184 “The Biological Aspects of Memory”.

Einstein & Zen: learning to learn; By Conrad P. Pritscher, pages 190 – 192.

Electrostatic sequencing: http://wolynes.ucsd.edu/Wolynes_Papers/Flycasting_304.pdf

Fly-Casting in Protein–DNA Binding: Frustration between Protein Folding and Electrostatics Facilitates Target Recognition: Yaakov Levy,*,†,‡ Jose´ N. Onuchic,† and Peter G. Wolynes .

The first of the theories suggested that they may affect electrostatic interactions between the histone tails and DNA to “loosen” chromatin structure. Later it was proposed that combinations of these modifications may create binding epitopes with which to recruit other proteins. Recently, given that more modifications have been found in the structured regions of histones, it has been put forward that these modifications may affect histone-DNA and histone-histone interactions within the nucleosome core. The information stored in this way is considered epigenetic, since it is not encoded in the DNA but is still inherited to daughter cells.

Epigenetic biochemical imprints: (Epigenetic Memories) Transgenerational epigenetics.  Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- (Greek: επί- over, above, outer) –genetics.  Such changes may be transgenerational may find expression outside the double helix. Novel proteins may be involved in epigenetic modification in the brain. Epigenetic modifications can promote behavioral changes that last a lifetime. Epigenetic changes produced in a gene in one generation, may, in effect, be handed down to the next generation.

The term epigenetics was first coined by Conrad Waddington in 1939 to define the unfolding of the genetic program during development. He coined the term epigenotype to define “the total developmental system consisting of interrelated developmental pathways through which the adult form of an organism is realized”. Clearly this definition encompasses a broad range of concepts dealing with genetics, inheritance and development and possibly memory. Is there transgenerational transmission of experience?

Today the term epigenetics is used to define the mechanism by which changes in the pattern of inherited gene expression occur in the absence (outside) of alterations or changes in the nucleotide composition of a given gene. A literal interpretation is that epigenetics mean “in addition to and external to changes in genome sequence.”

Emperor:  An emperor (through Old French empereor from Latin imperator) is a (male) monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm.

Julius Caesar held the Republican offices of consul four times and dictator five times, was appointed dictator in perpetuity (dictator perpetuo) in 45 BC and had been “pontifex maximus” for several decades. He gained these positions by Senatorial consent. By the time of his assassination in 44 BC he was the most powerful man in Rome.

Eridu: 

The Mesopotamian city of Eridu (now called Tell Abu Shahrain) is located about 22 kilometers south of Nasiriya in Iraq, and it was occupied between about 5000+  and 2000 BC, during the Ubaid through Ur periods of southern Mesopotamia. Eridu is the oldest Sumerian city known, a capital of the Early Dynastic Period, and, according to Sumerian tradition was the city that belonged to the god Enki.

Enmerkar:  According to the Sumerian king list, was the builder of Uruk in Sumer. Enmerkar is also known from a few other Sumerian legends, most notably Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, where a previous confusion of the languages of mankind is mentioned. Aside from founding Uruk, Enmerkar is said here to have had a temple built at Eridu, (the Tower of Babel) and is even credited with the invention of writing on clay tablets. Enmerkar restored the disrupted linguistic unity of the inhabited regions around Uruk.

 

Garden of Eden:

The Valley of Tran

Long before Genesis was written the physical Eden had vanished under the waters of the ‘Persian’ Gulf. Man had lived happily there. But then, about 5000+ to 4000 B.C. came a worldwide phenomenon called the Flandrian Transgression, which caused a sudden rise in sea level. The Gulf began to fill with water and actually reached its modern-day level about 4000 B.C., having swallowed Eden and all the settlements along the coastline of the Gulf. But it didn’t stop there. It kept  on rising, moving upward into the southern regions of today’s Iraq & Iran.

The Sumerians always claimed that their ancestors came ‘out of the sea’. They retreated northward into Mesopotamia from the encroaching waters of the Gulf, where they had lived for thousands of years.”

Hal 9000:  is the antagonist in Arthur C. Clarke‘s science fiction Space Odyssey saga. HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer is an artificial intelligence that interacts with the astronaut crew of the Discovery One spacecraft. “HAL” speaks in a soft voice with a   conversational manner. In addition to maintaining the Discovery One spacecraft systems during the interplanetary mission to Jupiter, HAL is capable of speech, speech recognition, facial recognition, natural language processing, lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting and reproducing emotional behaviors, and displays many of the attributes of human consciousness. “Will I dream, Dave?”

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08.htm

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.
Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927.

This is a succinct statement of the “uncertainty relation” between the position and the momentum (mass times velocity) of a subatomic particle, such as an electron.

Hammurabi:  1810 -1750 BC

Hammurabi is known for the set of laws called Hammurabi’s Code, one of the first written codes of law in recorded history.  It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. The sixth Babylonian king enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay tablets. The Code consists of 282 laws, with scaled punishments, adjusting “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (lex talionis).

Heuristic Software:  Heuristic Evaluation:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic evaluation

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2011/03/15/heuristics-programs-that-learn.aspx

How do we develop strategy in games, in work, in our daily lives? We store information and we use information from the past to decide what will happen in the future. In software we use heuristics to create software that learns from past successes and discards failures.

Hippocampus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus

The discovery of place cells in the 1970s led to a theory that the hippocampus might act as a cognitive map—a neural representation of the layout of the environment. The hippocampus is a major component of the brains of humans and other mammals. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation. Some researchers view the hippocampus as part of a larger medial temporal lobe memory system responsible for general declarative memory (memories that can be explicitly verbalized—these would include, for example, memory for facts in addition to episodic memory.

Homeostatic: a relatively stable state of equilibrium or a tendency toward such a state between the different but interdependent elements or groups of elements of an organism, population, or group.  The human body manages a multitude of highly complex interactions to maintain balance or return systems to functioning within a normal range. These interactions within the body facilitate compensatory changes supportive of physical and psychological functioning. This process is essential to the survival of the person and to our species.

Huxley, Aldous: was a humanist, pacifist, and satirist, and he was latterly interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. He is also well known for advocating the use of psychedelics. His most popular book was, “ Brave New World”.

By the end of his life Huxley was considered, in some academic circles, a leader of modern thought and an intellectual of the highest rank, and highly regarded as one of the most prominent explorers of visual communication and sight-related theories as well.

“ID, Ego, & Superego”: Sigmund Freud  Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud’s structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual impulses; the ego is the organized, realistic part; and the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role. The id is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. It is filled with energy reaching out of primordial instinct. The super-ego controls our sense of right and wrong and guilt. It helps us fit into society by getting us to act in socially acceptable ways. The super-ego’s demands often oppose the id’s, so the ego sometimes has a hard time in reconciling the two and psychopathic and sociopathic behavior ensues.

Iterated fractal formulae & neural clusters: http://www.fractal.org/Life-Science-Technology/Publications/Fractal-Neural-Networks.htm

Biological central nervous systems with their massive parallel structures and recurrent projections show fractal characteristics in structural and functional parameters (Babloyantz and Louren¸ 1994 ). Julia sets and the Mandelbrot set are the well known classical fractals with all their harmony, deterministic chaos and beauty, generated by iterated non – linear functions .The according algorithms may be transposed, based on their geometrical interpretation, directly into the massive parallel structure of neural networks working on recurrent projections. Structural organization and functional properties of those networks, their ability to process data and correspondences to biological neural networks is manifest….

J. Vissarianvich Dzhugashvili:  “Stalin” was born Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on 21 December 1879 in Gori, the Republic of Georgia, 40 miles west of Tbilisi. Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution in1917.  Following the death of Lenin and the purge of Trotsky, Stalin held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953.

In 1928, Stalin replaced the New Economic Policy of the 1920s with a highly centralized command economy and Five-Year Plans, launching a period of rapid industrialization and economic collectivization in the countryside. As a result, the USSR was transformed from a largely agrarian society into a great industrial power, and the basis was provided for its emergence as the world’s second largest economy behind the US, after World War II. However, during this period of rapid economic and social changes, millions of people were sent to penal labor camps, including many political convicts, and millions were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union. In 1937–38, a campaign against former members of the communist opposition, potential rivals in the party, and other alleged enemies of the regime culminated in the Great Purge, a period of mass repression in which hundreds of thousands of people were executed.  If famine victims are included, a minimum of around 10 million deaths—6 million from famine and 4 million from other causes—are attributable to Stalin’s regime, with a number of recent historians suggesting a likely total of around 20 million, citing much higher victim totals from executions, gulags, deportations, and other causes.

Kohinoor Diamond:

Such precious gems cannot be bought; either they fall to one’s possession by arbitrament of the flashing sword, which is an expression of divine will, or else they come through the grace of mighty monarchs.”

 

 

Kundalini Yoga:  In Hindu thought, kundalini refers to the psychic or cosmic energy that lies dormant in most people. It is sometimes identified with Shakti, the Great Goddess who is equated with divine energy. This is said to result in union with Shakti (divine energy) or atman (the cosmic Self), which is accompanied by an extraordinary state of awareness and bliss. The practice of kundalini yoga centers on raising the kundalini, or dormant psychic energy, through the body’s seven major chakras, or centers of consciousness. Svadhishthana chakra is located near the genital organs.

Lebensborn: (Spring of Life, in antiquated German) was a Nazi programme set up by SS leader Heinrich Himmler that provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers, and also ran orphanages and relocation programmes for children.

Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded into several occupied European countries during the Second World War. In line with the racial and eugenic policies of Nazi Germany, the Lebensborn programme was restricted to individuals who were deemed to be “biologically fit” and “racially pure”, “Aryans”, – SS members.

After World War II, it was reported that Lebensborn was a breeding program. While individuals were not forced to have sex with selected partners, the programme did aim to promote the growth of “superior” Aryan populations through providing excellent health care and by restricting ‘ethnic’ access to the programme with medical selections that applied eugenic and “race” criteria.

“La Mordida”: Translation, “the bite” is the term used for a bribe in Mexico.  Bribing a cop, a judge or a permit agent is not the exclusive domain of Mexico where it is the traditional and customary way of getting things done. The bureaucrat who does your bidding takes a bite out of the cost of completing your objective.

La ri: The lari is the currency of Georgia. It is divided into 100 tetri. The name lari is an old Georgian word denoting a hoard property, while tetri is an old Georgian monetary term used from the 13th century.

LINUX Software: The development of Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration: the underlying source code may be used, modified, and distributed—commercially or non-commercially—by anyone. Linux distributions are also commonly used as operating systems for supercomputers. Since November 2010^[update], out of the top 500 systems, 459 (91.8%) run a Linux distribution. Linux was also selected as the operating system for the world’s most powerful supercomputer, IBM’s Sequoia.

Megafauna:  In terrestrial zoology, megafauna are “giant”, “very large” or “large” animals. In practice the most common usage encountered in academic and popular writing describes land animals roughly larger than a human which are not (solely) domesticated. The term is especially associated with the Pleistocene  megafauna — the giant and very large land animals considered archetypical of the last ice age such as mammoths and Mastadons. Megafauna — in the sense of the largest mammals and birds — generally have great longevity, slow population growth rates, low death rates, and few or no natural predators capable of killing adults. These characteristics, although not exclusive to such megafauna, made them highly vulnerable to human over-exploitation.

Menelaus:  Menelaus was the son of Atreus and the brother of Agamemnon. He was married to Helen, and became the ruler of Helen’s homeland, Lacedaemon; the couple had a daughter, Hermione. Helen’s abduction by Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, was the cause of the Trojan War.

Menelaus fought bravely at Troy, although he did not occupy as important a position as his brother Agamemnon, who was the commander-in-chief of the Greek forces. At one point he agreed to settle the conflict by single combat with Paris, but Aphrodite interfered to prevent the duel from being decisive, and Athena prompted a resumption of hostilities.

During his return from Troy, Menelaus’ ships were becalmed on the island of Pharos, near Egypt. In order to discover what he should do to obtain fair winds for the journey, Menelaus had to consult Proteus, the old man of the sea. Menelaus eventually returned safely to Lacedaemon.

 

Mirror Neuron:   http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=brainBriefings_MirrorNeurons

“Society for Neuroscience”; “Mirror Neurons”:  Mirror neuron research is helping scientists reinterpret the neurological underpinning of social interactions. These studies are leading to new insight into how and why we develop empathy for others and a new theory about the evolution of language.  Message from the author:   Click on this site.

Mnemonic hardware architecture (silicon connections):

Mnemonics symbolize processing steps (instructions), processor registers, memory locations, and other language features. An assembly language is thus specific to certain physical (or virtual) computer architecture(s). In a basic sense, they might be self-writing.

Morph: vb

1. (Electronics & Computer Science / Computer Science) to undergo or cause to undergo morphing 2. to transform or be transformed completely in appearance or character.

n (Electronics & Computer Science / Computer Science) a morphed image.

Multiple Regression Analysis:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=0&oq=multiple+regression+analysis&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADRA_enUS423US423&q=multiple+regression+analysis

Multiple regression is a flexible method of statistical data analysis that may be appropriate whenever a quantitative variable (the dependent or criterion variable) is to be examined in relationship to any other factors (expressed as independent or predictor variables). Depending on the confidence interval, this statistical technique may demonstrate correlations between collective human behavorial variables in economics and sociology.

Natufian Culture:

Radiocarbon dating places this culture from the terminal Pleistocene to the very beginning of the Holocene, from 12,500 to 9,500 BC. The Natu were a Mesolithic culture that existed in the  region east around the Black Sea. It was unusual in that it was sedentary, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture. The Natufian communities are possibly the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. There is some evidence for the deliberate cultivation of cereals, specifically rye, by the Natufian culture, at the Tell Abu Hureyra site, the site for earliest evidence of agriculture in the world. Generally, though, Natufians made use of wild cereals. Animals hunted include gazelles and onagers.

Nebuchadnezzar: II 604 BC – 562 BC

Nebuchadnezzar II became king after the death of his father.  Nebuchadnezzar was a patron of the cities and a spectacular builder. He rebuilt all of Babylonia’s major cities on a lavish scale. His building activity at Babylon was what turned it into the immense and beautiful city of legend. His city of Babylon covered more than three square miles, surrounded by moats and ringed by a double circuit of walls. The Euphrates flowed through the center of the city, spanned by a beautiful stone bridge.

A capable leader, Nebuchadnezzar II, conducted successful military campaigns in Syria and Phoenicia. In 601 BC Nebuchadnezzar II was involved in a major, but inconclusive battle, against the Egyptians. In 599 BC he invaded Arabia and routed the Arabs at Qedar. In 597 BC he invaded Judah and captured Jerusalem and deposed its king Jehoiachin. Egyptian and Babylonian armies fought each other for control of the near east throughout much of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, and this encouraged king Zedekiah of Israel to revolt. After an 18 month siege Jerusalem was captured in 587 BC, thousands of Jews were deported to Babylon and Solomon’s Temple was razed to the ground.

Nebuchadnezzar fought the Pharaohs Psammetichus II and Apries throughout his reign, and during the reign of Pharaoh Amasis in 568 BC it is speculated that he may have set foot in Egypt itself. By 572 Nebuchadnezzar was in full control of Babylonia, Assyria, Phoenicia, Israel, Philistinia, northern Arabia and parts of Asia Minor.

Mnemosyne:

 Zeus and Mnemosyne slept together for nine consecutive nights and thereby created the nine Muses. According to a series of 4th century BC Greek funerary inscriptions Mnemosyne presided over a pool where dead souls drank so they would remember their past lives when reincarnated. Kings and poets receive their powers of authoritative speech from their possession of Mnemosyne and their special relationship with the Muses.

 
Neuromorphic Chips:   http://www.neurdon.com/2010/08/12/neuromorphic-systems-silicon-neurons-and-neural-arrays-for-emulating-the-nervous-system/

Neuromorphic complex silicon computer circuits that are better at emulating human senses capturing more of the dynamics and behaviors of their biological counterparts (Culurciello 2006, Zaghloul 2006, Hamilton 2008, Wen 2009) as a result of advances in integrated circuit technologies. Click on this link.

Neanderthal Man:

Neanderthals are presently classified as a different species of modern humans, (Homo neanderthalensis).  Neanderthal males stood about 65–66 in, and were heavily built with robust bone structure. They were much stronger than Homo sapiens, having particularly strong arms and hands.

Neanderthals were better adapted biologically to cold weather than H. sapiens and at times displaced H. sapiens in parts of the Middle East when the climate got cold enough.

Homo sapiens appear to have been the only human species extant in the Nile River Valley during these periods.

In 2008 Richard E. Green et al. from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany published the full sequence of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and suggested “Neanderthals had long-term effective population size magnitudes smaller than that of modern humans.” Writing in Nature about Green et al.’s findings, James Morgan asserted the mtDNA sequence contained clues that Neanderthals lived in “small and isolated populations, and probably did not interbreed with their ‘Sapiens’ human neighbors or may have been barren when such union may have occurred.”

Homo neanderthalensis was particularly well suited for his environment at the ending of the last ice age.

Neuromorphic Computer Systems: Silicon neurons and neural arrays for emulating the nervous system.  By Fopefolu Folowosele | August 12, 2010

Oedipus and the Spinx: 

The Spinx, guarding the way to the city preys on all who can not answer her riddle: “What creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?” To this Oedipus replied, “Man” (who crawls on all fours as an infant, walks upright in life, and needs a walking stick in old age), and so the distraught Sphinx threw herself off the cliff. Oedipus’ reward for freeing the kingdom of Thebes from her curse was    the kingship and the hand of Queen Dowager Jocasta, his biological mother.

“So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this. You [Oedipus] with your precious eyes, you’re blind to the corruption of your life…” (Robert Fagles 1984).

Onager: The Onager (Equus hemionus) is a large member of the genus Equus of the family Equidae (horse family) native to the deserts of Iran, Pakistan, and Tibet. It is sometimes known as the Wild Asian Ass. Equids were used in ancient Sumer to pull wagons circa 2600 BC, and then chariots on the Standard of Ur, circa 2000 BC.

Russel, Bertraund: is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy. In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, “in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.”

“In former days, men sold themselves to the Devil to acquire magical powers. Nowadays they acquire those powers from science, and find themselves compelled to become devils. There is no hope for the world unless (scientific) power can be tamed, and brought into the service, not of this or that group of fanatical tyrants, but of the whole human race, white and yellow and black, socialist, fascist, communist and democrat; for science has made it inevitable that all must live or all must die.”

“To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.”

Parthian Campaign: 

The Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus led an invasion of Mesopotamia in 53 BC with catastrophic results; he and his son Publius were killed at the Battle of Carrhae by the Parthians under General Surena. This was the worst Roman defeat and forever stemmed the expansion of the Roman Empire into the east. The Parthians raided Syria the following year, and mounted a major invasion in 51 BC, but their army was caught in an ambush near Antigonea by the Romans, and they were driven back. A military stalemate ensued over the centuries.

Patricians:  Titus Tatius

In the beginning of the Roman Republic, all priesthoods were closed to non-patricians. There was a belief that patricians communicated better with the gods, so they alone could perform the sacred rites and take the auspices. This view had political consequences.  Patricians were bestowed special status as Roman citizens. In the old Republic, they were better represented in the Roman assemblies. The Comitia Centuriata, the main legislative body, was divided into 193 voting centuriae. The first two houses (which consisted largely of patricians) together had 98 centuriae, a number which was enough to obtain a majority. It was not forbidden for plebeians to hold magistracies, but patrician class dominated the Ancient Roman political scene for centuries.

Philistine Traders:

The Philistines are the best known of the marauding maritime groups who cause havoc in the 13th century BC and who are referred to collectively as the Sea Peoples. The Philistines were an advanced culture relative to their contemporary Canaanite neighbors. Modern archaeology in Israel has shown that Philistine urban structure, commercial complexity and technology (pottery/iron) were more advanced than that of other contemporary Canaanites. Most telling of all comes from 1 Samuel where the Jews (still a Bronze Age society) describe the resentment of trading-dependence with the Philistines for obtaining and re-sharpening of iron agricultural tools. This command of iron (and unwillingness to trade iron weaponry) allowed the far smaller Philistine culture to survive the perpetual warfare with their Hebrew neighbors.

The Pleistocene (symbol P_S):

Is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 12,000 years BP that spans the world’s recent period of repeated glaciations. The name Pleistocene is derived from the Greek πλεῖστος (pleistos “most”) and καινός (kainos “new”).

The Pleistocene Epoch follows the Pliocene Epoch and is followed by the Holocene Epoch. The Pleistocene is the first epoch of the Quaternary Period or 6th epoch of the Cenozoic Era. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the retreat of the last continental glacier. It also corresponds with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology.

The Pleistocene has been dated from 2.588 million (±5,000) to 12,000 years before present (BP), with the end date expressed in radiocarbon years as 10,000 carbon-14 years BP.  It covers most of the latest period of repeated glaciation, up to and including the Younger Dryas cold spell. The end of the Younger Dryas has been dated to about 9640 BC (11,590 calendar years BP.

Psycholinguistics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics also neurolinguistics.

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned. Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and information theory to study how the brain processes language. There are a number of subdisciplines with non-invasive techniques for studying the neurological workings of the brain; for example, neurolinguistics has become a field in its own right.

Quatirinalis:

Quirinalis Collis: the most northerly of the traditional seven hills of Rome.

Quantitative Analysis: (Mathematical Psychology):  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_psychology

Mathematical psychology is an approach to psychological research that is based on mathematical modeling of perceptual, cognitive and motor processes, and on the establishment of law-like rules that relate quantifiable stimulus characteristics with quantifiable behavior. In practice “quantifiable behavior” is often constituted by “task performance”.

As quantification of behavior is fundamental in this endeavor, the theory of measurement is a central topic in mathematical psychology. Mathematical psychology is therefore closely related to psychometrics. However, where psychometrics is concerned with individual differences (or population structure) in mostly static variables, mathematical psychology focuses on process models of perceptual, cognitive and motor processes as inferred from the ‘average individual’. Like computational neuroscience and econometrics, mathematical psychology theory often uses statistical optimality as a guiding principle.

Ravel’s Bolero:  Boléro is a one-movement orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Originally composed as a ballet commissioned by Russian ballerina Ida Rubinstein, the piece, which premiered in 1928, is Ravel’s most famous musical composition.

Retinal images:

Neuromorphic Image sensors: Eugenio Culurciello Yale University, EENG427

Robust Confidence Interval:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_confidence_intervals

In statistics a robust confidence interval is a robust modification of confidence intervals, meaning that one modifies the non-robust calculations of the confidence interval so that they are not badly affected by outlying or aberrant observations in a data-set.

Rosetta Stone: 

Rosetta Stone: is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts, cross translation provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

 

 

Russel, Bertraund:  is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy. 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, “in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.

“To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.”

Sumner:   (Samarran)

The Ubaidians were the first civilizing force in Sumer, draining the marshes for agriculture, developing trade, and establishing industries, including weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, masonry, and pottery.

The cities of Sumer were the first civilization to practice intensive, year-round agriculture, by perhaps c. 5000 BC+ showing the use of core agricultural techniques, including large-scale intensive cultivation of land and organized irrigation. The surplus of storable food created by this economy allowed the population to settle in one place, instead of migrating after crops and grazing land. It also allowed for a much greater population density, and in turn required an extensive labor force and division of labor. Sumer was also the site of early development of writing, progressing from a stage of proto-writing in the mid 4th millennium BC.

The Samarran Culture “Tell Sawwan”, was the precursor to the Mesopotamian culture of the Ubaid period.

Buffered by the Caucasus Mountains, and benefiting from the ameliorating effects of the Black Sea, the region appears to have served as a biogeographical refugium throughout the Pleistocene. These geographic features spared the Southern Caucasus from the severe climatic oscillations and allowed humans to prosper throughout much of the region for millennia.

Salience landscape:

The salience (also called saliency) of an item – be it an object, a person, a pixel, etc – is the state or quality by which it stands out relative to its neighbors, noticeable. Saliency detection is considered to be a key attentional mechanism that facilitates learning and survival by enabling organisms to focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the most pertinent subset of the available sensory data.

Saliency typically arises from contrasts between items and their context such as a red dot surrounded by white dots, a flickering message indicator of an answering machine, or a loud noise in an otherwise quiet environment. Saliency detection is often studied in the context of the visual system, but similar mechanisms operate in other sensory systems.

When attention deployment is driven by salient stimuli, it is considered to be bottom-up, memory-free, and reactive. Attention can also be guided by top-down, memory-dependent, or anticipatory mechanisms, such as when looking ahead of moving objects or sideways before crossing streets. Humans and other animals cannot pay attention to more than one or very few items simultaneously, so they are faced with the challenge of continuously integrating and prioritizing different bottom-up and top-down influences, i.e., deductive vs inductive reasoning.

Silicon Circuits:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327172322.htm

Foldable And Stretchable, Silicon Circuits Conform To Many Shapes

ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008) — Scientists have developed a new form of stretchable silicon integrated circuit that can wrap around complex shapes… and mimic biological neural structures.

Spatial Neural Networks Based on Fractal Algorithms
Biomorph Nets of Nets of …

Thomas Kromer, Zentrum für Psychiatrie, Münsterklinik Zwiefalten, Germany

Biological central nervous systems with their massive parallel structures and recurrent projections show fractal characteristics in structural and functional parameters (Babloyantz and Louren¸o 1994). Julia sets and the Mandelbrot set are the well known classical fractals with all their harmony, deterministic chaos and beauty, generated by iterated non – linear functions .The according algorithms may be transposed, based on their geometrical interpretation, directly into the massive parallel structure of neural networks working on recurrent projections. Structural organization and functional properties of those networks, their ability to process data and correspondences to biological neural networks… possibly resulting in the interpolation in a silicon medium.

Sociometrics:  http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-sociometrics.htm

Psychotherapist Jacob Moreno is credited with the development of sociometrics. Sociometrics is described as a science that involves the study and measurement of relationships, social structures, and mental health. It involves the measurement of groups and the behavior and status of individuals within such groups.

Sumner:

Was a late Mesolithic civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia during the Copper and early Bronze Age. The area was first settled between c.5000+ BC  by a people now called proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians, and had evolved from the Samarra culture  of northern Mesopotamia. The Ubaidians were the first civilizing force in Sumer, draining the marshes for agriculture, developing trade, and establishing industries, including weaving, leatherwork, copper metalwork, masonry, and pottery.

Between the Tigris and Euphrates (Iraq)

The cities states of Sumer were the first civilization to practice intensive, year-round agriculture, by perhaps including large-scale intensive cultivation of land, organized irrigation, and the use of a specialized division of labor. The surplus of storable food created by this economy allowed the population to settle in one place, instead of migrating after crops and grazing land. Sumer was also the site of early development of writing, progressing from a stage of proto-writing in the mid 4th millennium BC.

Super Computers:  Scalar Super Computer (Exascale X- Stack Computer Systems): Six PetaGigs of Memory, Cray XT (X-Stack) and “BlueGene/P”

Allowing tree construction to scale massively parallel systems like the IBM Blue Gene, the entire Human genome can be indexed on 1024 processors in less than 15 minutes.  A massively parallel computer, each Blue Gene/L node is attached to three parallel communications networks: a 3D toroidal network for peer-to-peer communication between compute nodes, a collective network for collective communication, and a global interrupt network for fast barriers. The I/O nodes, which run the Linux operating system, provide communication with the world via an Ethernet, Cloud network. The I/O nodes also handle the filesystem operations on behalf of the compute nodes. This configuration lends itself to be applied to the study of biomolecular phenomena such as protein folding.  The last known supercomputer design in the Blue Gene series, Blue Gene/Q reached 20 Petaflops in the 2012 time frame. Blue Gene/L and /P architectures continued to expand with higher frequency at much improved performance per watt. Blue Gene/Q has a similar number of nodes but many more cores per node. The 65,536-processor machine can sustain 280.6 trillion calculations per second, called 280.6 teraflops. That’s the top end of the range IBM forecast and more than twice the previous Blue Gene/L record of 136.8 teraflops, set when only half the machine was installed.

Boundaries between state of the art and revolutionary innovation constitute the computing frontiers that must be pushed forward to provide the support required for the advancement of science, engineering and information technology. Cognitive computing, the ultimate goal, is to put the neural computing power of the human brain in a small package of silicon. This may result in an alternative architecture uncommon to nearly every computer since the beginning.

 

 

 

Systems Biology:  The study of biological systems taking into account the interactions of the key elements such as DNA, RNA, proteins, and cells with respect to one another. The integration of this information may be by enhanced computer matrices.

Tell:

A Tell is a type of archaeological mound created by human occupation and abandonment of a geographical site over many centuries. A classic tell looks like a low, truncated mound with a flat top and sloping sides.

Excavating a tell reveals buried structures located at different depths depending on their date of use. They often overlap, horizontally, vertically, or both. Archaeologists excavate tell sites to interpret architecture, purpose, and date of occupation.  Sonar and mathematical models can be employed to determine layers and dating without excavation.

Once the filter is computed, from the matrix of autocorrelations of the received signals, R, and the vector of received signals, it can be used to calculate the reflectivity function. This expression is ripe for numerical computation with the right vector and matrix handling routines. In fact, looking at the definition for R it is has the triangle-like symmetry of a Toeplitz matrix which can be inverted using a Levinson recursion algorithm.

Human habitation can be determined with sonar like probing of shallow ground substrates.

Tenth Second Coordinates:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_coordinate_system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on the Earth to be specified by a set of numbers. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represent vertical position, and two or three of the numbers represent horizontal position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation.

 

Thermite Demolition Device:

Thermite hand grenades and charges are typically used by armed forces in both an anti-materiel role and in the partial destruction of equipment; the latter being common when time is not available for safer or more thorough methods.  For example, thermite can be used for the emergency destruction of cryptographic equipment or the engine of a tank when there is a danger that it might be captured by enemy troops. Thermate-TH3  composition by weight is generally about 68.7% thermite, 29.0% barium nitrate, 2.0% sulfur, and 0.3% of a binder (such as PBAN).  The addition of barium nitrate to thermite increases its thermal effect, produces a larger flame, and significantly reduces the ignition temperature.

“Thesis, Anti-Thesis & Synthesis”: is often used to describe the thought of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The triad is often said to have been extended and adopted by the political philosophies of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

The triad is usually described in the following way:

• The thesis is an intellectual proposition.  Politically, the ideal and tension against the status quo. (Czars)
• The antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis, a reaction to the proposition. The negation of the ideal, usually after widespread popular embracement of the ideal.  The Conservative reaction.
• The synthesis resolves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling, or not, their common truths, and forming a new proposition.  No resolution results in revolution. December, 1917.

Such was the philosophical intellectual, process, and later justification for the Communist Revolution and the subsequent creation of the Soviet Empire.  The process is doomed to repeat itself over and over without a paradigm shift exemplified either in political power (nuclear weapons), or thought, (genetic memory).

“Method is the absolute, unique, supreme, infinite force, which no object can resist; it is the tendency of reason to find itself again, to recognize itself in every object.” Hegel.

“Total Recall”, Arnold Schwarzenegger:

Total Recall is a 1990 American science fiction action film.  In 2084, Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a construction worker on Earth, married to his wife Lori (Sharon Stone). Fantasizing of traveling to Mars, he visits “Rekall”, a company that can implant memories of a virtual vacation. Quaid opts for a trip to Mars, including the option of being a secret agent and discovering alien technology as part of his virtual experience. When Quaid is sedated and put into the implant machine, the technicians discover he has already undergone a previous memory wipe. Quaid wakes up, frenzied and disoriented. He attacks them in an attempt to escape, but they manage to subdue and sedate him again, wiping the memory of his visit to Recall and sending him home.  Quaid goes to Mars and unravels a plot to keep the discovery of ancient Martians a secret and maintain control of the Martian colony.  “Hey, Buddy.  It’s all in your head.”

Tomographic Array Transponder:  A revolutionary laboratory nanotomography (nano-CT) scanner with spatial resolution in the range of hundreds of nanometers. This spatial resolution in volume terms is equal to or better than that of synchrotron tomography. For the first time true sub-micron tomographic imaging is available in a laboratory instrument. The 2011 nano-CT employs an open-type X-ray source with a LaB6 cathode which achieves the unprecedented focal spot size of <400nm. At this small spot size, small-angle scattering enhances object details down to 150-200nm. It can image specific neural connections which can be translated for duplication in silicone.

Troy: located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida.

Before excavations began, the mound rose to a height of 105 feet (32 metres) above the plain. “Ilium” contained a vast accumulation of debris that was made up of many clearly distinguishable layers. Schliemann and Dörpfeld identified a sequence of nine principal strata, representing nine periods during which houses were built, occupied, and ultimately destroyed.  This city came to an end through fire, and Schliemann identified the Tell with Homer’s Troy. In the “burnt layer’s” debris were found a trove of gold jewelry and ornaments and gold, silver, copper, bronze, and ceramic vessels that Schliemann named “Priam’s treasure.”  Aegean lands were rich in precious metals. The considerable deposits of treasure found in the earliest prehistoric strata on the site of Troy are not likely to be later than 2000 bc and maybe from earlier habitation.

Defeated by the Ancient Greeks, Ilium was partially restored by the Roman general Sulla in his siege against the Parthians.  The Romanized town, known as Troy IX, received fine public buildings from the emperor Augustus and his immediate successors, who traced their ancestry back to the Trojan Aeneas.

Universal Time Atomic Clock: Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world’s most precise clock, more than twice as precise as the previous pacesetter based on a mercury atom. The new aluminum clock would neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years, according to measurements to be reported in Physical Review Letters.

Clocks have myriad applications. The extreme precision offered by optical clocks is already providing record measurements of possible changes in the fundamental “constants” of nature, a line of inquiry that has important implications for cosmology and tests of the laws of physics, such as Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity.

 

 

 

Ur: Coordinates: 30°57′45″N 46°06′11″E / 30.9625°N 46.10306°E / 30.9625; 46.10306

Ur was an important city-state in ancient Sumer located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq‘s Dhi Qar Governorate. Once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, Ur is now well inland, south of the Euphrates on its right bank. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an early occupation at Ur during the Ubaid period.

Although the early centuries (first half of the third millennium and earlier) are still poorly understood, the archaeological discoveries have shown unequivocally that Ur was a major early urban center on the Mesopotamian plain.

Ur Ziggurat.

Virtual Reality Telepresence:

Telepresence refers to a user interacting with another live, real place, and is distinct from virtual presence, where the user is given the impression of being in a simulated environment. Telepresence and virtual presence rely on similar user-interface equipment, and they share the common feature that the relevant portions of the user’s experience at some point in the process will be transmitted in an abstract (usually digital) representation. The main functional difference is the entity on the other end: a real environment in the case of telepresence, vs. a computer in the case of immersive virtual reality.

The sensation of total immersion in virtual reality (VR) can be described as implied complete presence within an insinuated space of a virtual surrounding where everything within that sphere relates necessarily to the proposed “reality” of that world’s cyberspace and where the immersant is seemingly altogether disconnected from exterior physical space.

Blue Brain Project is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level.

The aim of the project, founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland) is to study the brain’s architectural and functional principles. Using a Blue Gene supercomputer running  NEURON software, the simulation does not consist simply of an artificial neural network, but involves a biologically realistic model of neurons. It is hoped that it will eventually shed light on the nature of consciousness.

Wadi Kaffir:  Wadi (Arabic: وادي‎ wādī; also: Vadi) is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some cases, it may refer to a dry (ephemeral) riverbed that contains water only during times of heavy rain or simply an intermittent stream.

Wells, Spencer: Stanford Geneticist: wrote the book The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (2002), which explains how genetic data has been used to trace human migrations over the past 50,000 years, when modern humans first migrated outside of Africa. According to Wells, one group took a southern route and populated southern India and southeast Asia, then Australia. The other group, accounting for 90% of the world’s non-African population (some 5 billion people as of late 2006), took a northern route, eventually peopling most of Eurasia (largely displacing the aboriginals in southern India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia in the process), North Africa and the Americas.

He is quoted as saying: “As often happens in science, technology has opened up a field to new ways of answering old questions—often providing startling answers.”

Spencer Wells is the Director of “The Genographic Project” that relies on the identification of genetic markers. Most human DNA is a shuffled combination of genetic material passed down the generations. There are, however, parts of the human genome that pass unshuffled from parent to child.  The foundation hypothesis of “The Genetic Memory of the Cazadores” is that, like the human genome, genetic memory can pass unshuffled from parent to child.

Xerxes:  Xerxes was crowned and succeeded his father, Darius in December 486 BC.

For thousands of years Persians have been creating beauty. They have been a watershed of civilization, pouring their blood and thought and art and religion eastward and westward into the world. For the first time in known history an empire almost as extensive as the United States received an orderly government, a competence of administration, a web of swift communications, a security of movement by men and goods on majestic roads, equaled before our time only by the zenith of Imperial Rome.”
Wil Durant

Zama, Battle of: 

The Battle of Zama, fought around October 19, 202 BC, marked the final and decisive end of the Second Punic War. A Roman army led by Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus defeated a Carthaginian force led by the legendary commander Hannibal. Soon after this defeat on their home ground, the Carthaginian senate sued for peace, which was given to them by the Roman Republic on rather humiliating terms, ending the 17-year punic war.  Were you there?