Read a rather fascinating article ”Slime Mold Grows Network Just Like Tokyo Rail System” in which scientists have drawn parallels with the Tokyo railway network is laid out and the way slime mold (Physarum polycephalum) forms nutrient tunnels between food sources. The research intially seems to have been directed at analysing the efficiency of the nework layout for the Tokyo rail system, and surprisingly it appears to be fairly effective. Of course, the slime mold... Read more...
So once again ant behaviour is being used to drive the protocols we rely on for the Internet. In a paper entitled ”The Regulation of Ant Colony Foraging Activity without Spatial Information” researchers from Standford University have spotted a relationship between the way Harvester ants forage and the ubiquitous TCP. Of course TCP was designed back in the 1970s and the specific behaviours: slow start, congestion control, were later added as a result of network... Read more...
An article on Hacker News caught my attention this afternoon: Your Brain Can Be Hacked. Initially I clicked on the link because I thought it was going to be an article about some subtle psycological manipulation technique. Boy was I wrong. The actual underlying paper On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces has an even scaryer title, with brown trouser causing implications. EEG devices for gaming? Perhaps I live in a closet but... Read more...
Our existing systems for processing this data are becoming increasingly poor as the signal to noise ration drops. When you consider all of the social media feeds that we feel we need to hook into just so that we can allow ourselves to believe we are still relevant is it any wonder that we begin to feel increasingly stressed about our inability to keep up with it all. Something has to give because if we... Read more...
On the one hand, that we are able to begin mimicing natural behaviours in the body astounds me, and clearly the possibilities are there for improved healthcare whilst minimising potential side effects for the patient. Treatments such as Chemotherapy have come a long way from their original inception but they can still leave the patient very ill and susceptible to other diseases. Targetted treatment which is able to operate at the cellular level will surely... Read more...