TONA   |   ANOT h e r     d a y

Spanish sentence of the day

La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla.

posted by Miki @ 12:43 0 comments

Short tale of the day

Y cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.

posted by Miki @ 12:08 0 comments

Spanish sentence of the day

Cuando el río suena, agua lleva.

posted by Miki @ 23:38 0 comments

Interesting science beyond lasers..

To continue the series (started by Miki) of interesting scientific problems going beyond our direct activities, I would like to draw your attention to the current issue of Nature (Vol 436 from 7 July 2005).

I would like to recommend the following articles:

The vocal tract and the sound of a didgeridoo
Acoustic measurements show how a player can extract a range of timbres from this primitive instrument.

When instability makes sense
Peter Ashwin and Marc Timme
Mathematical models that use instabilities to describe changes of weather patterns or spacecraft trajectories are well established. Could such principles apply to the sense of smell, and to other aspects of neural computation?

Dynamic predictive coding by the retina
Toshihiko Hosoya, Stephen A. Baccus & Markus Meister
Retinal ganglion cells convey the visual image from the eye to the brain. They generally encode local differences in space and changes in time rather than the raw image intensity. This can be seen as a strategy of predictive coding, adapted through evolution to the average image statistics of the natural environment. Yet animals encounter many environments with visual statistics different from the average scene. Here we show that when this happens, the retina adjusts its processing dynamically. The spatio-temporal receptive fields of retinal ganglion cells change after a few seconds in a new environment. The changes are adaptive, in that the new receptive field improves predictive coding under the new image statistics. We show that a network model with plastic synapses can account for the large variety of observed adaptations.

posted by ingo @ 17:39 0 comments

Privcay and webcams

Are you being watched? If you have passed building D recently, you have been, in any case. Our good friends at EDUCO have decided to put a webcam there. Too bad there are not more of these at the VUB - one to see how the food looks, for example. Or what is happening in the lab, or if the printer has decided to print your job yet.

posted by multiplex @ 08:04 0 comments

Spanish sentence of the week

Me voy de vacaciones.

posted by Miki @ 20:12 1 comments

125th Anniversary Issue: Science Online Special Feature

125th Anniversary Issue: Science Online Special Feature
A selection of questions to be answered in the future (by Science). Not to be missed.
Do you already know the answers to some of these fundamental questions? If so, share them with your colleagues ;)

posted by Miki @ 20:11 0 comments