scholarly journals The Scientific Quest for Lasting Youth: Prospects for Curing Aging

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 458-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
João Pedro de Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Quest

scholarly journals Letter to Turing

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 73-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Longo
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Method ◽  
Reaction Diffusion ◽  
Neural Nets ◽  
Scientific Letter ◽  
Alan Turing ◽  
Diffusion Dynamics ◽  
Human Attitude ◽  
Scientific Quest ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Made In

This personal, yet scientific, letter to Alan Turing, reflects on Turing's personality in order to better understand his scientific quest. It then focuses on the impact of his work today. By joining human attitude and particular scientific method, Turing is able to “immerse himself” into the phenomena on which he works. This peculiar blend justifies the epistolary style. Turing makes himself a “human computer”, he lives the dramatic quest for an undetectable imitation of a man, a woman, a machine. He makes us see the continuous deformations of a material action/reaction/diffusion dynamics of hardware with no software. Each of these investigations opens the way to new scientific paths with major consequences for contemporary live and for knowledge. The uses and the effects of these investigations will be discussed: the passage from classical AI to today's neural nets, the relevance of non-linearity in biological dynamics, but also their abuses, such as the myth of a computational world, from a Turing-machine like universe to an encoded homunculus in the DNA. It is shown that these latter ideas, which are sometimes even made in Turing's name, contradict his views.

scholarly journals Automatic Inundation Mapping Using Sentinel-2 Data Applicable to Both Camargue and Doñana Biosphere Reserves

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 2251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgios A. Kordelas ◽  
Ioannis Manakos ◽  
Gaëtan Lefebvre ◽  
Brigitte Poulin
Keyword(s):  
Biosphere Reserve ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Monitoring Networks ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Local Thresholding ◽  
Inundation Mapping ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Scientific Quest ◽  
Sentinel 2

Flooding periodicity is crucial for biomass production and ecosystem functions in wetland areas. Local monitoring networks may be enriched by spaceborne derived products with a temporal resolution of a few days. Unsupervised computer vision techniques are preferred, since human interference and the use of training data may be kept to a minimum. Recently, a novel automatic local thresholding unsupervised methodology for separating inundated areas from non-inundated ones led to successful results for the Doñana Biosphere Reserve. This study examines the applicability of this approach to Camarque Biosphere Reserve, and proposes alternatives to the original approach to enhance accuracy and applicability for both Camargue and Doñana wetlands in a scientific quest for methods that may serve accurately biomes at both protected areas. In particular, it examines alternative inputs for automatically estimating thresholds while applying various algorithms for estimating the splitting thresholds. Reference maps for Camargue are provided by local authorities, and generated using Sentinel-2 Band 8A (NIR) and Band 12 (SWIR-2). The alternative approaches examined led to high inundation mapping accuracy. In particular, for the Camargue study area and 39 different dates, the alternative approach with the highest overall Kappa coefficient is 0.84, while, for the Doñana Biosphere Reserve and Doñana marshland (a subset of Doñana Reserve) and 7 different dates, is 0.85 and 0.94, respectively. Moreover, there are alternative approaches with high overall Kappa for all areas, i.e., at 0.79 for Camargue, over 0.91 for Doñana marshland, and over 0.82 for Doñana Reserve. Additionally, this study identifies the alternative approaches that perform better when the study area is extensively covered by temporary flooded and emergent vegetation areas (i.e., Camargue Reserve and Doñana marshland) or when it contains a large percentage of dry areas (i.e., Doñana Reserve). The development of credible automatic thresholding techniques that can be applied to different wetlands could lead to a higher degree of automation for map production, while enhancing service utilization by non-trained personnel.

scholarly journals Studying the cognitive states of animals: Epistemology, ethology and ethics

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 369-422
Author(s):  
Otto Lehto
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Cognitive Ethology ◽  
Evolutionary Account ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Quest ◽  
Selection Of

The question of cognitive endowment in animals has been fiercely debated in the scientific community during the last couple of decades (for example, in cognitive ethology and behaviourism), and indeed, all throughout the long history of natural philosophy (from Plato and Aristotle, via Descartes, to Darwin). The scientific quest for an empirical, evolutionary account of the development and emergence of cognition has met with many philosophical objections, blind alleys and epistemological quandaries. I will argue that we are dealing with conflicting philosophical world views as well as conflicting empirical paradigms of research. After looking at some examples from the relevant literature of animal studies to elucidate the nature of the conflicts that arise, I propose, in strict Darwinian orthodoxy, that cognitive endowments in nature are subject to the sort of continuum and gradation that natural selection of fit variant forms tends to generate. Somewhere between the myth of “free” humans and the myth of “behaviourally conditioned” animals lies the reality of animal behaviour and cognition. In the end, I hope to have softened up some of those deep-seated philosophical problems (and many quasi-problems) that puzzle and dazzle laymen, scientists and philosophers alike in their quest for knowledge about the natural world.

scholarly journals A Hard Scientific Quest: Understanding Voluntary Movements

Daedalus ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 144 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilio Bizzi ◽  
Robert Ajemian
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Voluntary Movements ◽  
Functional Modules ◽  
Neural Signals ◽  
Afferent Information ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
Pattern Formations ◽  
The Many ◽  
Scientific Quest ◽  
The Brain

In this article we explore the complexities of what goes on in the brain when one wishes to perform even the simplest everyday movements. In doing so, we describe experiments indicating that the spinal cord interneurons are organized in functional modules and that each module activates a distinct set of muscles. Through these modules the central nervous system has found a simple solution to controlling the large number of muscle fibers active even during the execution of the simplest action. We also explore the many different neural signals that contribute to pattern formations, including afferent information from the limbs and information of motor memories.

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