Why? That analogy is so widely recognised and accepted that electronic engineers/neuroscientists are experimenting on computer circuit boards to assess the understanding of neuroscience.
"It does so by way of neuroscience’s favourite analogy: comparing the brain to a computer. Like brains, computers process information by shuffling electricity around complicated circuits."
Wires conduct signals unconditionally. Neurons may or may not transmit a signal depending on its complex network of inputs and internal state. A better technological analogy for neurons would be a signal processor.
Also, neurons interface using chemical messages in the form of many different neurotransmitters. The electrical phenomenon of cellular depolarization might as well be an implementation detail. If anything resembles a wire, it's the axon.
The article essentially says 'insects have very little computers in their heads'. To me at least, this doesn't meaningfully answer the question posed in the title. Furthermore, as per my comment, the BBC article characterizes neurons as 'wires', rather than the very sophisticated low-power processors they in fact are. Wetware implementing/running efficient algorithms honed by millions of years of evolution with (probably) trillions of test cases (all the insects that have ever lived).
I hate to be negative but this article is frustrating because it makes an argument without backing it up with evidence that can be followed up by the reader.
It makes claims such as 'it’s well documented that we rarely brainstorm brilliant ideas ... in a crowd.' but doesn't provide any link to these documents.
The only links it provides are ones to other BBC articles.
It also cites studies and references their data without providing a link to them.
It's a shame as I'm sure there may be a strong case against open offices but this is pretty lazy journalism and indicative of some major problems (in my opinion, anyway) with how science is reported (and used) in online articles.
Can't read the article because it's behind a paywall (sigh).
Any indication of how the researchers defined a 'major road'? Was it purely size or done by traffic throughput over time? Or did they be use air pollution / noise measurements instead?
Looks like a good varied bundle with lots of options for game development.
Just a note on the Unity book - it deals with 'UnityScript' and calls it 'Unity's Javascript', but just to call out that it's very much a language specific to Unity, and for that reason most people use C# with Unity because it's the standard C# implementation so can be used outside of Unity too. [1][2]
Good article. Couple of things I've found really useful whilst building a video game in my spare time:
1. If you like to listen to music whilst you code/work, check out focusatwill.com. It's basically the right kind of background music, ie: not engaging enough to distract you. I used to waste time trying to select music to play for my work sessions, now it's simple.
2. When you finish a work session, write a note to yourself saying where you're at. that way, when you come back to start work again, you can pick up where you left off without spending time trying to remember stuff. It's past you being nice to future you! (I got this from a writing tip that said you should always leave a sentence unfinished when taking a break, because then you can hop back in really easily because it's mid flow).
Really agree with the OP about exercise/well being. It's not a waste of time. For most (if not all) of these kinds of side projects, it's a marathon, not a sprint.
"universities and funding agencies [should].. stop rewarding researchers who publish copiously"
You have to look at the media as well. When was the last time you read an article about a failed experiment, ie: an hypothesis was DISPROVED? There's rare/no coverage of this yet it is an important aspect of science[1], and ties into what the OP talks about.
If we're going to improve how science is done, this is an equally important area to focus on because it's the current bias for positive results that plays a part in driving labs to produce lots of papers.
Agreed. It could be as simple as improving how negative results are reported. Mythbusters was all about disproving theories and the general public loves it.
(Yes, most disproved hypotheses don't involve explosions, but you can still make the reports interesting, because everything that is not true has broad implications)
We'll they do when there's common myths that get disproved. Like that guy who cracked his knuckles on only one hand for nearly all of his life. But yeah I get your point.
Thats the only time when things have a general interest. Negative results are very important to people directly involved in studying something but what general interest (or value) is there in a story "chemical xyz123 does not work as an effective catalyst for the reaction between abc123 and def678" for anyone not directly researching those things?
There is no interest to the general public. But that doesn't mean scientists can't carve out their own online community like Wikipedia and start to categorize all of this information. It would for them probably be what stackoverflow is to programmers.
Completely agree. This article helps highlight that one of your most important systems is your PIM (product information). without a decent PIM you can't server the right data to your PDP.
Unfortunately PIM upgrades aren't 'sexy' projects vs re-designing your website (for example) where you get to look at lots of lovely UI, so often it never gets neglected (in my experience).
https://www.gofundme.com/srinus-familyrecovery-support