Rural Relaxation - Getting one's feet wet

In March last year I posted this picture (A Rainfall Crisis looming in Eastern England) which was actually chosen to show how low the water had got in the College Lake Nature Reserve near Tring! College Lake is actually a disused chalk pit and when quarrying was abandoned it was estimated that that water entering the lake would seep away through the chalk. The calculations as to the equilibrium level were badly wrong and the water rose to flood the track through this gateway some years ago. However they had seem to stabilize and during the drought of 2011 and early 2012 the water actually dropped to revel about an extra foot of this gate.

Did the Neanderthals die out because humans had a better culture?

Two recent news items, coupled with earlier reports that Neanderthal children matured faster than human children, could be relevant to Neanderthal intelligence and perhaps to the species becoming extinct.

The paper New insights into differences in brain organization between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans by Eiluned Pearce, Chris Stringer and R. I. M. Dunbar notes that while the Neanderthal brain size was similar to Homo sapiens, more of the brain was devoted to sight and controlling a larger body.

The paper Barium distributions in teeth reveal early-life dietary transitions in primates by Christine Austin et al examined a Neanderthal tooth as estimated that breast feeding in Neanderthals may have only continued for about 14 months compared with 30 months in human non-industrial societies.

More about the Denisovans DNA - and interbreeding

Following my previous post I am most interested to see the post Denisova and aDNA: an embarrassment of riches on The Rocks Remain and New Denisova and Neanderthal DNA results reported on John Hawkes Weblog. There is clear evidence that there was interbreeding between Denisovans and Neanderthals - but there is also evidence of yet another human subspecies.

Human Evolution - Asian or African Origins and Family Trees

The current New Scientist contains an article Our Asian Origins by Colin Barras which suggests that our ancestors might have moved from Africa to Asian and then moved back again and illustrates it with a modified classic human family tree – when evidence is rapidly accumulating that such a view is over-simplistic.

A typical classic human family tree
with no cousin links.
From The Quest for Human Origins

In order to understand human evolution we need to get a grip on the mechanisms – and to realise that we will never have more that a fraction of a millionth of the information we would need to get a complete picture, and the fragments of bones we find represent only some of the environments our early ancestors lived, with some environments being totally unrepresentative. Remains from different places with different features and from different dates are given different species names – but this does not automatically mean that the living creatures could not have interbred, had it been possible for them to meet.

A Simple Guide to the Relationship between Neurons, Natural Language and CODIL

I have posted the detailed discussion paper Fromthe Neuron to Human Intelligence: Part 1: The “Ideal Brain” Model and my idea is to supplement it with brief notes examining various topics, including any raised by comments. This is the first of those notes

A noun such as Macbeth, or Dagger, or Author is represented in the brain as a somewhat amorphous network of neurons which I have called a memode.

Memodes contain other lower level memodes. Thus Murderer will contain Macbeth and Crippen, while Author will contain Shelly and Shakespeare. People will contain sets such as Murderer and Author and individuals such as Churchill.

A memode may also represent a context where several nouns are associated. An example of a context would be Macbeth; Duncan; Dagger. Another might be Macbeth; Shakespeare.

The ideal brain model connect up the links – so the above two examples can be merged as Macbeth; Duncan; Dagger; Shakespeare.

As Macbeth is a Murderer we can expand the above to the context Murderer  Macbeth; Victim  Duncan; Weapon  Dagger; Author  Shakespeare. While we are only using nouns it is easy to relate this to a natural language statement such as “According to Shakespeare Macbeth used a Dagger to kill Duncan.”

CODIL was a blue sky project to try and provide a fundamentally human friendly information processor for handling a range of non-mathematical tasks. In MicroCODIL (a demonstration version that runs on the BBC Microcomputer and uses colour) the above example would be represented as

1 MURDER = Macbeth,

2   VICTIM = Duncan,

3     WEAPON = Dagger,

4       AUTHOR = Shakespeare.

While the ideal brain model works by making links within a network of neurons, and CODIL works by moving symbols around a digital store, the two processes are equivalent.

The CODIL idea was triggered by research on a very large commercial data processing system, and has been trialed in medium sized poorly structured data bases (medical and historical data), providing online tutorial material for classes in excess of 100, as a schools package for demonstrating a wide range of information processing ideas, and in the area of artificial intelligence. A package called TANTALIZE used CODIL to solve 15 consecutive Tantalizers (now called Enigma) published weekly in the New Scientist.

The parallel between the ideal brain model and CODIL suggests that the ideal brain model could probably support a reasonable level of natural language skills – but more research is required. The bottleneck as far as the basic ideal brain model is concerned relates to the speed of learning – and this issue will be addressed in Part2: Evolution and Language.

Evolution and Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace

Last night I watched part 2 of Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero - a two part BBC TV series on the life of Alfred Russel Wallace - and immediately it finished I switched to the BBC Iplayer to watch part 1. If you are interested in the origins of the ideas behind evolution, and the difficulties of persuading the establishment to change its way of thinking I am sure you will find the programmes really interesting - as I did.

From the Neuron to Human Intelligence: Developing an “Ideal Brain” Model

I have just posted a discussion paper: From the Neuron to Human Intelligence: Part 1:The “Ideal Brain” Model which will shortly be followed by Part 2: Evolution and Learning. In these papers I propose a model which suggests how the electrical activities of neurons in the brain may be related, via evolutionary probable pathways to high level activities such as language and intelligence. If the model is even reasonably accurate it could have implications in many different specialist areas where an understanding of how the brain works is relevant.

It is clear that more research is needed to establish the validity of the model and my problem is how to go about both publishing and organising any further research, especially as some of the ideas are counter-intuitive – which can make communicating them difficult. If I was a young academic just starting out on a research career and working in a supportive university there would be some relatively obvious options. However I am 75 years old, my only resource is a personal computer with access to the internet, and I currently have no active contacts with any major academic institution. As a scientist through and through I feel the idea should be followed up, and as an old age pensioner I would be happy to hand the matter over to a younger generation and enjoy retirement.

Bearing in mind my limitations the approach I have taken is to use this blog as the means of stimulating discussion of the issues and disseminating information about the research.

1. The two papers have been kept comparatively short to make them more readable. If I tried to address every possible research issue that might be relevant it would take me far too long and the texts would become unreadable.
2. Anyone who want to see more examples of how CODIL works, its applications, etc. can look at the many CODIL papers already online. In addition I have other reports (some only in draft form) and actual computer listing of other applications – and these can be posted online if appropriate.
3. If anyone has difficulty in understanding any points, and/or has specific questions – I will be happy to answer them via this blog. In particular if you are doing some brain related research (in the widest sense) send me details (remembering I may have problems with pay walls) and I will happily give you my suggestions. After all a good test of my ideas is whether I can answer your questions convincingly.
4. If there is enough interest I will try and make arrangements to make MicroCODIL software and manuals available to anyone who has access to a BBC Microcomputer. (Because the computer has become something of a cult survival second hand ones are often available.)
5. Should I be able to help an existing university research project by giving a talk, attending a seminar, etc., I am happy to do so. Even if you don't agree with me exposure to controversial ideas can help everyone to start thinking outside the box.
6. If a particular research group wanted to resurrect any of the CODIL programs and applications, or use them as a basis for an “ideal brain” simulation I would be happy to advise.

Rigid Legal Rules can Kill

Some of you may not realise the symbolism behind this site's logo. Occasionally a news item can bring back sad memories.  This evening Channel 4 News reported that:

Two mothers, both of whose 17-year-old sons committed suicide after being detained by the police, wept in court today as a judge ruled the treatment of 17-year-olds in police custody is unlawful.