Archive for January, 2009
Yet another computing language, R the language of statistics
Yet another year, yet another dozen languages. Some times it seems as if all my time gets sapped up learning new languages. R is growing rapidly in popularity making news on Slashdot and the NYT late last year.
R provides a graphics package for visualizing your data, a data editor, data manipulation and has C/C++ interfaces. When R is open it provides a set of windows allowing you to interact with your data. The instruction manuals, tutorials, source code for Linux, OSX and Windows are available for free at the R Project site
R is also the name of a popular programming language used by a growing number of data analysts inside corporations and academia. It is becoming their lingua franca partly because data mining has entered a golden age, whether being used to set ad prices, find new drugs more quickly or fine-tune financial models. Companies as diverse as Google, Pfizer, Merck, Bank of America, the InterContinental Hotels Group and Shell use it.
But R has also quickly found a following because statisticians, engineers and scientists without computer programming skills find it easy to use.
“R is really important to the point that it’s hard to overvalue it,” said Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google, which uses the software widely. “It allows statisticians to do very intricate and complicated analyses without knowing the blood and guts of computing systems.”
It is also free. R is an open-source program, and its popularity reflects a shift in the type of software used inside corporations. Open-source software is free for anyone to use and modify. I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard and Dell make billions of dollars a year selling servers that run the open-source Linux operating system, which competes with Windows from Microsoft. Most Web sites are displayed using an open-source application called Apache, and companies increasingly rely on the open-source MySQL database to store their critical information. Many people view the end results of all this technology via the Firefox Web browser, also open-source software. R, the software, finds fans in data analysts read more . . .
The R Project for Statistical Computing
Revolutions: How R is disrupting a billion dollar market
The iGraph Library for Complex Network Research
SPOT: An R Package for Automatic and Interactive Tuning of Optimization Algorithms by Sequential Parameter Optimization (Download SPOT)
Electrodes implanted in the brain
We know that our brains work by sending electrical signals along our neurons. Sometimes the built in damping mechanism for the signals fails to work and things like Parkinsons and epilepsy strike the victim. Much like a pacemaker for hearts, electric implants in the brain can smooth out signals and treat these illnesses.
Over 35,000 people have successfully had their Parkinsons disease treated this way, some with results lasting over seven years.
Surprisingly brain illnesses not commonly associated with electric signal problems also can be treated with implanted electrodes; depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, among them.
Patients can also be treated with electrodes placed outside the skull but the results tend to be very short term. It is thought that the brain learns to rewire itself with the electrodes implanted and helps to cure itself.
Occasionally electrodes can be bumped, covered in scar tissure and fail to keep working. One group of scientists has come up with an implant that moves itself to the strongest near signal hoping to over come this problem.
See also:
Moving brain implant seeks out signals
Wireheads: Healing the brain with electricity
Mind Hacks: Brain electrodes awake brain injured man
Technology Review: Tiny electrodes for the brain
Brain surgery helps a mute man speak
Brain surgery helps a mute man speak
This is your brain on electricity
How long before the government can read your mind?
Maybe soon, perhaps never, but recent advances have brought mind reading closer to reality.
An fMRI is a machine that takes pictures inside your body, like the familiar CAT scanner but in much greater detail. While you are in the machine scans your brain and can see which areas of your brain are getting more blood flow.
Had you sat in the machine while you looked at images or thought specific thoughts, a computer attached to the fMRI could learn which parts of your brain get active when you look at a specific photo or think a specific thought. Then the next time you entered the machine and thought those same thoughts it could recognize the pattern.
All our brains are different, not unlike our finger prints and so don’t all behave exactly the same. But they are a like enough that in time, with lots and lots of data, researchers might some day have a general mind map.
Perhaps your defense could be that you store murder weapons in a different part of your brain than the average person and so therefore are not guilty as charged. It’s too soon to know, but perhaps not as far away as we’d like.
News Stories;
fMRI Brain Scan Debate Neurology Research in Interrogations, Courtroom, Office
Scary or Sensational, A machine that can look into the mind
Can brain scans read our minds?
