Posts

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For my chaotic dreams

Philippe Faure and Henri Korn, “ Is there chaos in the brain? I. Concepts of nonlinear dynamics and methods of investigation,” Life Sciences 324 (2001) 773–793.

Henri Korn and Philippe Faure, “ Is there chaos in the brain? II. Experimental evidence and related models,” C. R. Biologies 326 (2003), pp. 787–840.

Stanley Krippner and Allan Combs, “Self-organization in the dreaming brain,” Journal of Mind and Behavior, 21, 2000, pp. 399-412.

There are also some more like:

David Kahn, Allan Combs and Stanley Krippner, “Dreaming as a Function of Chaos-Like Stochastic Processes in the Self-Organizing Brain,” Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, 2002.

which I liked to read, but I had to be subscribed to the journal that I am not from home (the University must be subscribed (true)). I prefer free science publication that the way it is going on.

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RLAI Tea-time Talks

Starting today, we will have a RLAI Tea-time talks almost everyday. I do not know how effective this will be; but if it becomes effective (=many good relevant presentations), it can be quite joyful.
I heard from a friend that this idea of tea-time talks comes from Richard Hamming who forces his students to present their research in a similar fashion. However, I doubt about it (I even guess these kinds of things have been existed from the ancient Greek time; imagine Aristotle and Plato talking with each other about the world’s most recent findings (e.g. Archimedes, “Eureka!,” Hellenic Journal of Natural Sciences, 220BC (*)) and Aristotle does not accept vague metaphysical viewpoints of Plato).

(*): Aristotle could not talk about Eureka! paper of Archimedes as this latter one did not publish his paper very soon. Actually, he was born much after those mentioned philosophers.

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Feelings

-Have I evered told you how do I feel about you?!
+No fool.
-I hate you!

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A Quintessential Introduction to Dark Energy

There are a whole lot of things in the world that I do not know that much. It is true that I cannot learn all of them (or even a small portion of them) in my lifetime. Actually, it is not necessary for most cases, e.g. I do not need to know how that technology works if I do not want to use it. However, some kinds of knowledge is just essential. They shape our viewpoint to the world and “may” answer questions like “where do you live?”, “how do you live?”, and etc.
All intro. things said, I want to read this paper later. You may like to take a look at it some time:

Paul J. Steinhardt, A Quintessential Introduction to Dark Energy

Abstract:Most of the energy in the universe consists of some form of dark energy that is gravitationally self-repulsive and that is causing the expansion rate of the universe to accelerate. The possible can-didates are a vacuum energy density (or, equivalently, a cosmological constant) and quintessence, a time-evolving, spatially inhomogeneous component with negative pressure. In this review, we focus on quintessence and ideas on how it might solve the cosmic coincidence problem, how it might be distinguished observationally from a cosmological constant, and how it may affect the overall cosmic history of the universe.

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Pascal Poupart

Last week, Pascal Poupart came to our university. He gave two talks and had several private meetings.
I wanted to talk to him sometime but unfortunately I could only attend one of his talks as the previous week was a hazard for me.
I was curious to talk to him about POMDP (which is his speciallity) and try to see the similarities/differences between POMDP and the concept of partial observablity in control theory from his perspective. For sure, both of them are talking about the same thing, but the goal of investigating PO is not completely the same. One reason might be due to discrete/continuous state differences between those two which leads to different approaches of the problem, i.e. state reconstruction might be easier if we assume that the dynamical system obeys some regularities such as linearity. Anyway …

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Thoughts

Sometimes we think,
and sometime we think about our thoughts.
Is there any difference between these two?

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My Political Act

You may excuse me for my recent non-scientific posts. I try to write more about science and my scientific thoughts soon, but I think these political posts are still going to appear here in near future. The reason is simply that in my opinion, human-being is more important than human-made things; and right now, I do feel bad about the possible future war and killing of many people.

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Don’t Attack Iran

Don't Attack Iran
If you are concerned about global peace, and if you want to take an action against the possible future war, you may sign this petition:

Dear President Bush and Vice President Cheney,

We write to you from all over the United States and all over the world to urge you to obey both international and U.S. law, which forbid aggressive attacks on other nations. We oppose your proposal to attack Iran. Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, just as Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons. If Iran had such weapons, that would not justify the use of force, any more than any other nation would be justified in launching a war against the world’s greatest possesor of nuclear arms, the United States. The most effective way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons would be to closely monitor its nuclear energy program, and to improve diplomatic relations — two tasks made much more difficult by threatening to bomb Iranian territory. We urge you to lead the way to peace, not war, and to begin by making clear that you will not commit the highest international crime by aggressively attacking Iran. (sign)