Electronic memes for 2009-04-04

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The evolution of time.

Ok, well not really the evolution of time in the sense that time is everwhere in the universe and is an innate feature of it. Instead this video shows the evolution of a clock. It is a very elegant representation of how a genetic algorithm can evolve surprising and different solutions to a problem. For anyone that doesn’t really understand genetic algorithms this video can give you a feel for how they work. It is quite exciting to see a solution evolve from a simple program.

This video actually comments on the long standing debate between creationism vs evolution. I do not wish to comment on that debate, I simply want to educate on the use of evolutionary algorithms. We can leave creationism vs evolution to those who enjoy the debate. If you would like to jump ahead to the beginning of the experiment go to 1:34 in the video.

Electronic memes for 2009-04-03

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Discovery! By a robot?

Achieving a scientific discovery has been the sole domain of humans for quite some time. However, artificial intelligence is starting to catch up. Enter “Adam” an artificially intelligent robot with the tools to analyze biological data, formulate a novel hypothesis about that data, derive a set of tests to verify the hypothesis and then carry out those tests, and present conclusions from the data!

Adam’s repeated experiments resulted in the system identifying a few unknown genes in baker’s yeast that work together to form an orphan enzyme, this relationship was not previously known and Adam independently identified it.

Tools like this can allow human researchers to think at even higher levels, theorizing about broad spectrum experiments and leaving the systems to explore the frontier for them.

Technology update

Doing a little technical work with Automatons Adrift right now. I just upgraded the wordpress to 2.7.1. I might even change the theme. Though if I can’t find something I really like I will probably alter the code of this theme instead.

Just an FYI!