The Antikythera Mechanism: The Prove of the Accuracy of the Astronomical Calculations Based on It

The Antikythera Mechanism is the oldest extant complex geared device, an amazing analogue computer. It was built approximately 2,150 years ago. The device was operated manually by a user, setting a date in a dial. All necessary calculations were made using a set of gears (at least 39), while the results were displayed on several scientific scales. The Mechanism was used to calculate astronomical phenomena, such as solar and lunar eclipses. After an extensive description of the Mechanism, the main objective of the following paragraphs is to demonstrate the accuracy of its predictions.

What Is Consciousness? -Artificial Intelligence, Real Intelligence, Quantum Mind, and Qualia

We approach the question, "What is Consciousness?'' in a new way, not as Descartes' "systematic doubt'', but as how organisms find their way in their world. Finding one's way involves finding possible uses of features of the world that might be beneficial or avoiding those that might be harmful. "Possible uses of X to accomplish Y'' are "Affordances''. The number of uses of X is indefinite, the different uses are unordered and are not deducible from one another. All biological adaptations are either affordances seized by heritable variation and selection or, far faster, by the organism acting in its world finding uses of X to accomplish Y. Based on this, we reach rather astonishing conclusions: 1) Strong AI is not possible. Universal Turing Machines cannot "find'' novel affordances. 2) Brain-mind is not purely classical physics for no classical physics system can be an analogue computer whose dynamical behavior can be isomorphic to "possible uses''. 3) Brain mind must be partly quantum - supported by increasing evidence at 6.0 sigma to 7.3 Sigma. 4) Based on Heisenberg's interpretation of the quantum state as "Potentia'' converted to "Actuals'' by Measurement, a natural hypothesis is that mind actualizes Potentia. This is supported at 5.2 Sigma. Then Mind's actualization of entangled brain-mind-world states are experienced as qualia and allow "seeing'' or "perceiving'' of uses of X to accomplish Y. We can and do jury-rig. Computers cannot. 5) Beyond familiar quantum computers, we consider Trans-Turing-Systems.

The Electrical Analogue Computer of Microtubule’s Protofilament

Microtubules as essential biopolymers implicated into electrical intracellular transport open a lot of questions about their intrinsic character of dynamic instability. Both experimental and theoretical investigations are used to understand their behavior in order to mimic and build powerful and smart biomaterials. So, in this paper, by analytical and computational approaches, we proposed an electrical analogue computer of microtubule’s protofilament drawing from the partial differential equation which describes microtubule’s motion. Using the computing elements, namely, operational amplifiers, capacitors, and resistors, we designed analytically the bioelectronic circuit of the microtubule’s protofilament. To validate our model, Runge–Kutta code was used to solve the partial differential equation of MT’s motion on software Matlab, and then, the results obtained are used as a controller to fit and validate numerical results obtained by running the bioelectronic circuit on software PSpice. It is shown that the analogue circuit displayed spontaneous electrical activity consistent with self-sustained electrical oscillations. We found out that two behaviors were exhibited by the voltage generated from the electrical analogue computer of MT’s protofilament; amplification and damping behaviors are modulated by the values of the resistor of the summing operational amplifier. From our study, it is shown that low values of the resistor promote damping behavior while high values of the resistor promote an amplification behavior. So microtubule’s protofilament exhibits different spontaneous regimes leading to different oscillatory modes. This study put forward the possibility to build microtubule’s protofilament as a biotransistor.

Heat transfer and mapping of THz radiation absorption in biological tissue using Mathematica based Simulink transform

This work is built on the Mathematica-Simulink transformed modeling which emphasizes on the rate of heat generation when occurs radiation absorption with low scattering in attenuation against tissue radial and axial depth. Experimental based data and prediction of thermal distribution owing to absorption has applied a closed-form system known in principle as an analogue computer model. There are assumptions which considered to modeling principle and sample conditions such as static tissue with no blood supply with response to homeostatic regulation of body temperature equilibrium. Thermal transfer of different power densities indicates that it penetrates the axial or radial depth with the small heat change difference for several types of tissue, i.e., skin, fat, tumor, and muscle. The results for time intervals of one second or longer show a steady-state centered about one temperature. By contrast, milliseconds to picoseconds time ranges display a small but significant temperature change as the depth varies correlated with the contrasting tissue structures. The dimensionless temperature used for finding indifference of tissue thermal characteristics that gives the heat mapping in different contours of the dimensionless temperature. This indicates that the THz regime has a good prospect for clinical purpose and medical therapy as well as imaging.

Quantum analogue computing

We briefly review what a quantum computer is, what it promises to do for us and why it is so hard to build one. Among the first applications anticipated to bear fruit is the quantum simulation of quantum systems. While most quantum computation is an extension of classical digital computation, quantum simulation differs fundamentally in how the data are encoded in the quantum computer. To perform a quantum simulation, the Hilbert space of the system to be simulated is mapped directly onto the Hilbert space of the (logical) qubits in the quantum computer. This type of direct correspondence is how data are encoded in a classical analogue computer. There is no binary encoding, and increasing precision becomes exponentially costly: an extra bit of precision doubles the size of the computer. This has important consequences for both the precision and error-correction requirements of quantum simulation, and significant open questions remain about its practicality. It also means that the quantum version of analogue computers, continuous-variable quantum computers, becomes an equally efficient architecture for quantum simulation. Lessons from past use of classical analogue computers can help us to build better quantum simulators in future.