Single molecule makes electronic switch

[Mr. McD]

A single molecule, trapped between two electrodes, acts as a switch and has a ‘memory’ of the type used in data storage, Swiss and US researchers have found.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2006/August/08080602.asp

[mcscajun]

1. Organic CPUs, here we come.

:)

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mcscajun]

3. Yeah...but we aren't fast enough. Yet.

:)

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Boojatta]

5. Let's slow down and consider this...

But our software and hardware are not designed to run other programs, hence we need to LEARN to do mathematics, for example.

I think the inability to learn is a greater handicap than the inevitable initial incompleteness of knowledge/software.

Some humans where the brain is configured in a quite different way from normal humans, I am referring here to high functioning autistic persons, can do amazing feats of rapid calculation and it does not appear that they ever really had to learn how to do it.

Aren't autistic people known for spending a lot of time alone focusing on things that do not interest most people? Couldn't they be using that time to learn?

There have been cases of young, severely mentally challenged people who could do calendar calculations. For example, they could quickly tell the day of the week of any given date in any year even though they had not been shown how to do that. Surely you don't think that they were born with a genetic mutation that caused part of their brains to spontaneously grow specialized areas for Gregorian calendar calculations? Surely they would need to have at least had opportunities to explore a few ordinary wall calendars?

[mainegreen]

6. Could you imagine the what the learning 'program' we have is like?

I think the inability to learn is a greater handicap than the inevitable initial incompleteness of knowledge/software.

Well, I'll just whip up a routine here. Lets see...

function learn_anything (variant Subject, variant Data) {

.
.
.
.
.

And I'm stuck. Honestly, I can't imagine how we do it.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Dead_Parrot]

8. We do a lot of trial-and-error

Where there are set rules - like how to solve a quadratic equation, say - it's easy enough to memorise the steps and run through them: It's therefore easy to "teach" a computer to do the same thing.

The key difference between us and a computer is, that we have a neural network to fall back on, that adjusts it's own wiring. Think of teaching a kid to catch a ball:

The first time you throw a ball at Josh, he'll just stand there;
The second time, he'll close his eyes;
the third time, he'll close their eye and stick his hand out;
the forth time, he'll stick a hand out and leave his eyes open...

Each iteration registers as better/worse and the brain makes an extra connection or 50: By the time Josh is six, he can catch the ball - which would require such mind-boggling feats of stereo optical analysis, trigonometry, calculus and spacial analysis of your own fingers that it would take years to do on paper: Even the most advanced robots can't play baseball, but Josh will get on fine in the little league.

Working out how our brains do this is the key to making computers learn: There seem to be rules for making up rules. Hence the rat-brain-cells on a chip thread the other day.

A while back there was a thread about a girl who'd just finished her PhD at age 20, or something equally scary: She was going off to study computational neurology, which is exactly this field. Maybe she'll suss it out.

[rman]

9. Not a program as such, rather a property of neural networks

(such as brains)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

Having an artificial neural network learn patterns for the purpose of pattern recognition if fairly trivial. Anything more advanced than insect intelligence is a lot harder to create.