I'm often confused by dating apps that pair people that are as close to carbon copies as possible. My wife and I are a great pair because we are so different that her strengths cover my weaknesses and vice versa. I can't imagine it working if we both had the same issues or all the same views and so never made the other think and evolve.

It is binary at one stage of processing. when a neuron has enough input it fires an action potential which is a binary one or zero. that then gets "read" by the synaptic terminal and turns back into an analog signal to a "post synaptic" neuron.
As you said, how this signal is then processed by the next neuron depends on a lot of factors including the effects of other neurons. Synaptic strength refers to the amount of electricity the post synaptic neuron sees given this binary 1 or 0 and is often measured at rest. However, if other neurons are firing it can go up or down, amplifying or shrinking it by activating other voltage sensitive ion channels or by increasing the conductance across the lipid bilayer of the cell so that the electricity leaks out of the dendrite of the neuron before it is processed at the soma (the cell body where a new action potential can be generated)

Hey, dubious. I don't know nearly as much about the details as you do, but I was skeptical when he made the claim to the grad student that inter-neuron transmission was binary. My layman's understanding is that there's a sort of "signal strength" between neurons that can decay or be amplified depending on how those pathways get used. Each signal affects others, and so on--it's much more a very complex feedback system utterly different than the binary instruction pathways used by our current computers.

I'm a bit surprised the grad student or expert didn't discuss neuromodulators more. The fact is we already have the full connectome of a much simpler system, a worm (C Elegans). And this full mapping is considered insufficient to fully understand the simplified worm behavior because it doesn't fully capture the diversity of different neuromodulators and how they effect processing in neurons. It matters if the neuron is releasing dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, etc. There are ways to approximate these from EM images by analyzing the synapse properties, but ultimately it leads to a much larger problem in understanding neural processing.

In a similar light, the connectome project does not do a good job capturing synaptic strength. We don't really know just from the electron microscopy how strong the connections are. We can try and approximate it by looking at the size/formation of the synapse but ultimately this falls short.

For instance, my memory is that thalamocortical projections (thalamic nuclei to L4 of the cortex) do not make up the primary inputs to L4 on a structural connectivity level, but the strength of those connections are much stronger then the more numerous cortico cortical connections. I don't think the connectome from EM images will be able to pull that out.

The connectome is important, the same way knowing the human genome is important. However, it's really not going to tell us how to simulate a person. It's an important step to be sure, one we are still a good ways away from finishing last I checked (which was three years ago ...)

Synthol injections. It hardens in-between the muscle fibers to separate them and make your arms look bigger. It's dangerous, and does not increase strength or muscle tissue size.

It's basically breast implants for men. So yes, just like you said, they don't seem real because they aren't

Nice, but the password advice is already slightly behind the times. There was a paper doing the rounds recently (http://www.netmux.com/blog/cracking-12-character-above-passwords) where they test the time to crack different password strengths. The 'four random word' one can take up to 4 days, but in their example took just 5 and a half hour.

The only easy way to have a secure password is to use a password generator like lastpass (if you don't want to put too much effort in), or my choice KeepassX.

I took fencing in college, and had some preconceived ideas about men probably being better at it on average due to higher strength on average.

At least for foil fencing, that turned out to be quite wrong. With foils, strength is far less important than dexterity and footwork skill, which in my class the girls tended to be noticeably better at.

...However, aggressiveness / competitiveness / "killer instinct" was in many ways more important than either strength OR dexterity, and the males tended to exhibit those qualities far more than the females in my class. So even though the women were more technically proficient, the men tended to win matches at a much higher rate.

I found that interesting. Can't say that my experiences would speak to any sort of universal trend, but it was the clear trend in my beginner's level course.

Not sure how to put this in the context of the video, but...

My gf was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months back and has just finished chemo... now prepping for surgery, radio, and hormone therapy. I know that's a world apart from chronic leukemia - like flu and aids are both viruses - but her attitude was/is:
"Ok, I'm sick, I've got to go through some crap and I'll be better than I am now, even if I'm not fully cured. There's no point raging out about the big fight, or raging inwardly about how unfair it is. I've just got to do some stuff.

"Sick or not, going to work is annoying but necessary. When I need to take care of my child or bf it can be annoying, but necessary. There's no promise that life is easy, but you just do what you can."

I think it's great that people have the strength of character to rage against the disease and not give in to depression, but I will forever be astounded and impressed by my gf's incredibly practical "meh" attitude.

She's Russian. They're a strange people with the weirdest and most practical dark sense of humour, but it's amazing how practical that whole side is.

As good as this game looks, I can't figure out who on earth would pay top dollar just to get teabagged by some Saudi oil baron's son who had the requisite 3 million dollars to get the best stuff..

In all seriousness though - I don't understand how the real money investment is going to be justified in terms of gameplay. If you pay top top money then you expect the game to work, be good fun, and have a big advantage over all the people who can't afford all the good stuff (AKA "pwning newbs" in the parlance of our time). But if they don't keep the newbs playing the game, the game world will be empty, no economy or trade, it'll be a dead game - who wants to keep playing a game where some pay2win kid runs circles round you all day? So how do you keep newbies interested and keep them playing, whilst also still ensuring people who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars will have their huge advantage over everyone else? How will an economy work within that system too?

I feel like it's a recipe for either a dead game, or some seriously pissed off rich people. If the rich people don't mind dropping 100k on a game, will they mind dropping 100k on suing the developers? The frankly ridiculous buy-ins may have given them some very big headaches before the game has even started, in terms of economy and relative strength of the players. Starting to get no man's sky vibes.

To be fair, you were taught this in school if you were taught wave particle duality and the double slit experiment. Look at this. Now imagine a particle bouncing along in very small steps (quantum leaps if you will), and the direction it goes depends on the strength and orientation of the wave where it lands. You may never have been told to think about it like that, but that's what makes physics so amazing that sometimes all it takes is for someone to think about it slightly differently. The information was there all along, but who would imagine the 'particle' bit of an electron interacting with the 'wave' bit - the electron interacts with itself?

I absolutely love it, it's amazing, and simple and beautiful. It may provide insights into new ways we can model quantum behaviour, it might open up new questions to ask.

There's things I'd like to know. First, if the standing waves generated at each step in the droplet's progression interact with each other, the droplet is reacting according to waves it made in the past - what implications does that have for the notion of real particles in a spacetime continuum? For the double slits experiment to work in that model - in the ball on a rubber sheet sense - the sheet would have to stay warped to some extent after the ball had passed. In the quantum sense of the real double slits experiment, we would say it IS a wave, passes through both slits and appears according to statistical probability (the diffraction pattern).

Presumably several droplets released along the same path would go on to take a different route through the slits, to create a diffraction pattern as it must. Perhaps because of fluctuations in the temperature or density of the water at different locations? Is that a limitation of the model or an indicator about the nature of the fabric of spacetime? Perhaps even due to quantum fluctuations in the water particles - the water is never the same twice even if its perfectly still each time - which would potentially mean we're cyclically using quantum mechanics to explain quantum mechanics and we actually haven't explained very much.

The philosophy bit: But this reaches to the heart of the issue with quantum mechanics and perhaps science in general. How accurately can we model reality? The reality is beyond our ability to see, so we can only recreate simpler versions that are always wrong in some way... our idea of what happens - our models - can never be 100% because only a particle in spacetime can perfectly represent a particle in spacetime.

Scientific results and definitions are always defined with limits - "it works like this, within these confines, under these conditions, with these assumptions." There are always error margins. We are always only ever communicating an idea between different consciousnesses, and that idea will never be as true to life as life itself.

Sorry for the wall of text, it's a great and provocative experiment.

@Stormsinger If you trust Bernie, then follow Bernie. That is just a cold stone truth.

If you don't trust Bernie, then don't follow Bernie.

Bernie is closer to the reality of the situation then you or I will ever be. He has worked with Clinton. He knows her weaknesses and her strengths and her basic trustworthiness.

So yeah. IF IF IF you think Bernie was the only good choice for President because of his basic integrity and his desire to work towards progressive goals, and Bernie says vote for Clinton to protect progressive gains? Then you either trust him or you don't. He either has integrity or he doesn't.

I call that voting your conscience. You don't like my choice of words. But you know what? Voting your conscience means you do the hard thing sometimes. Not the easy thing. Voting for Clinton is a hard thing to do, when you want Bernie.

It is the right thing to do though. Stopping Trump is of paramount importance. Bernie, Mr Integrity himself, knows that. You think it is easy for him to fight so hard for the Presidential nomination and then say vote for Clinton? No, it isn't. But it is the right thing to do. And he has the integrity to say so.

Of course, if you don't admire Bernie, if you don't think he is smart enough to make an intelligent choice, then of course, vote your "conscience."

If you do admire him, then there is no other choice but to vote for Clinton. You either trust him or you don't.

Bill was impeached for lying under oath. Not for the his locker room banter.
When Bill was POTUS the left was all saying ...Hey noting to see here.

This is nothing new and you leftist and just pissed that Trump will be accepted on this issue.


AT the end of the day it is about leadership and Trump still had better leadership and strength of character needed to be president.

Sometimes I feel like I live on a different planet to other people. People keep telling me 'that's what men do' but I'm a man and that's not what I've ever done. But I'm not going to bang on and on about Trump, it's all been said before.

Because I'm so used to the kind of trash Trump comes out with, what shocked me from this video is that Oliver would suggest Clinton is the end point of a century old quest for female equality. She is from a powerful, rich family with connections and funding from some of the shadiest, rapacious industries/organisations in the world. Her victory wouldn't be a triumph for women, it would be a triumph for money and the elite ruling classes.

A triumph for women would be a rise to status based on merit and hard work, battling oppression every step of the way to change opinions and break new ground for anyone who follows. The success of Hillary's career mirrored Bill's and as his power and wealth increased so did her's.

What does this say? Work hard and you can overcome the prejudices of a male dominated society? No - it says if you're from the right family and know the right people, you can be president. Called Bush or Clinton? You're in with a shot. Hillary winning doesn't change the game, it doesn't pioneer a new path for females.

It is bullshit and it riles me because it's a manipulation of virtue. Hey everyone, vote for our FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT, what an amazing and equal country we are, you're sexist if you don't want it! This has been a centuries long struggle but finally a strong enough woman has achieved what no other woman could do, it's time to recognise her strength of character! FUCK OFF. There have been millions of women more qualified and appropriate than her who never got even a sniff of a chance because they didn't anchor themselves to the right man, they weren't born into a particular family and spent childhood holidays with the sons and daughters of fossil fuel barons, investment companies, etc. The system is biased and wrong and Hillary winning only confirms that.

Alternate title: How to see if you have core strength.

Agreed, the levels matter....that said, 10 m^2 is quite a lot, while 1kg of water is 1 liter. Multiply by 3.785, then again by over 250000000...that's what they've admitted was dumped into the drinking water. Let's say for discussions sake that it's diluted to 1/10 that strength...so every 10 liters of water you drink is equivalent to breathing 10 m^2 with unsafe levels of radon....now think about how many liters an orange tree uses per day. They're going to have to do continuous independent testing with believable results to make me feel safe eating or drinking anything from Florida from now on. It could take years for the contamination to surface...aquifers are convoluted.