Tools for brain hackers

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/11/features/seeing-the-light?page=all

Ed Boyden, an engineer turned neuroscientist, makes tools for brain hackers. From his lab at MIT, he is building technology that will vastly expand the range of experiments that other scientists can pull off. His latest invention is a classic example: a robot that patch-clamps as well as a human scientist, with none of the fatigue or variability. It works all day. It does not need lunch breaks. It has transformed a technique that had only been mastered by an elite few into something that anyone can do, and hundreds of labs are queuing up to buy or make an auto-patcher of their own. Boyden published a description of the robot in May this year. He says, "After our paper came out, I got an email saying, 'I just spent a year learning how to do that. Thanks. There goes that'."

Ray Kurzweil’s Dubious New Theory of Mind

Ray Kurzweil is, by all accounts, a genius. He holds nineteen honorary doctorates, has founded a half-dozen successful companies, and was a major contributor to the field of artificial intelligence. He built some of the first practical systems for recognizing speech and scanning text. Time magazine recently featured Kurzweil on its cover, and Fortune described him as “a legendary inventor with a history of mind-blowing ideas.” And now he has a new book, with a subtitle that suggests he has found another such idea: “How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.”

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/ray-kurzweils-dubious-new-theory-of-mind.html#ixzz2D8IFJYt3

New publishing ventures aim to make peer review easier and less painful | Inside Higher Ed

New publishing ventures aim to make peer review easier and less painful | Inside Higher Ed

Measured Innovation in Peer Review

Steve Kolowich Inside Higher Ed

Conversations about the future of academic publishing often revolve around the pros and cons of open peer review. Would a new mechanism for vetting research that relies on the wisdom of crowds, rather than a select few editors and reviewers, lead to a scholarly renaissance or to chaos?

Now several publishers are trying to find a balance. Drawing from both the traditional peer review and open-access models, PeerJ and Rubriq are looking to use the architecture of the Web to build community-oriented platforms that are accessible and empowering, yet stable and habitable — walled gardens, but with windows that open from the outside.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/01/new-publishing-ventures-aim-make-peer-review-easier-and-less-painful#ixzz2B2STnIQW