Cognitive Labs

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It's a Harvard Business School style case study for an emerging space AI business. It's good to use your imagination.

Nute Gunray is CEO of AITrade, a start up interstellar trade-exchange for droid parts and other salvage neurocognitive materials. His business plan calls for AI to buy low, and sell high. But there is one nano problem-the market is developing with the speed of somebody frozen in carbonite.

His investor, Galactic Ventures has made bets all over the galaxy but is really high on clean tech. Luckily, Nute trains his brain everyday at brain.com. Yes, the brain.com.


He's quite aggressive and visionary, but puts his pants on one leg at a time. Still, he's careful not to antagonize Mr.Vader, the board member from Galactic.

Vader has been known to cause CEO's to get tongue-tied, or choked-up, at strategy review meetings. After getting a Blackberry blast from Gunray with the latest numbers, Vader locks himself in his pod to contemplate.

On the way to Jamba Juice for an Energy smoothie after his meditation, he bumps into Mr. Sidious, the managing partner and founder of Galactic, and gives him a heads-up about AITrade...



Sidious decides its best to assign a new hotshot to AI Trade to "re-invigorate" the company and take an active role in its development. A holographic meeting is set to break the news to Gunray...


The question is, what should Gunray do now?

a) Speed-read Obi-wan's classic book on lightsaber play...
b) Climb into an escape pod and push the button...
c) Find out what makes Maul tick and use the Force to re-invigorate the reinvigorator...

Inquiring minds want to know

Labels: braindotcom, carbonite, gunray, harvard, nute, vader

WASHINGTON (AP) — Researchers have uncovered a new clue to the cause of Alzheimer's disease. The brains of people with the memory-robbing form of dementia are cluttered with a plaque made up of beta-amyloid, a sticky protein. But there long has been a question whether this is a cause of the disease or a side effect. Also involved are tangles of a protein called tau; some scientists suspect this is the cause.

Now, researchers have caused Alzheimer's symptoms in rats by injecting them with one particular form of beta-amyloid. Injections with other forms of beta-amyloid did not cause illness, which may explain why some people have beta-amyloid plaque in their brains but do not show disease symptoms.

Full story on Google News

On Nature Medicine

Labels: alzheimers, amyloid, harvard, rats, selkoe, shankar, Tau

Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals in DNA — may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it.

read more at yahoo

-Foundation for Advanced Molecular Evolution

Labels: artificial_life, benner, harvard, Szosta