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The 'Crisis of Noosphere'
The ‘crisis of noosphere’ as a limiting factor to achieve the point of technological singularity Rafael Lahoz-Beltra Department of Applied Mathematics (Biomathematics). Faculty of Biological Sciences. Complutense University of Madrid. 28040 Madrid, Spain. [email protected] 1. Introduction One of the most significant developments in the history of human being is the invention of a way of keeping records of human knowledge, thoughts and ideas. The storage of knowledge is a sign of civilization, which has its origins in ancient visual languages e.g. in the cuneiform scripts and hieroglyphs until the achievement of phonetic languages with the invention of Gutenberg press. In 1926, the work of several thinkers such as Edouard Le Roy, Vladimir Ver- nadsky and Teilhard de Chardin led to the concept of noosphere, thus the idea that human cognition and knowledge transforms the biosphere coming to be something like the planet’s thinking layer. At present, is commonly accepted by some thinkers that the Internet is the medium that brings life to noosphere. Hereinafter, this essay will assume that the words Internet and noosphere refer to the same concept, analogy which will be justified later. 2 In 2005 Ray Kurzweil published the book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology predicting an exponential increase of computers and also an exponential progress in different disciplines such as genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence. The exponential evolution of these technologies is what is called Kurzweil’s “Law of Accelerating Returns”. The result of this rapid progress will lead to human beings what is known as tech- nological singularity. -
Elementary Functions: Towards Automatically Generated, Efficient
Elementary functions : towards automatically generated, efficient, and vectorizable implementations Hugues De Lassus Saint-Genies To cite this version: Hugues De Lassus Saint-Genies. Elementary functions : towards automatically generated, efficient, and vectorizable implementations. Other [cs.OH]. Université de Perpignan, 2018. English. NNT : 2018PERP0010. tel-01841424 HAL Id: tel-01841424 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01841424 Submitted on 17 Jul 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Délivré par l’Université de Perpignan Via Domitia Préparée au sein de l’école doctorale 305 – Énergie et Environnement Et de l’unité de recherche DALI – LIRMM – CNRS UMR 5506 Spécialité: Informatique Présentée par Hugues de Lassus Saint-Geniès [email protected] Elementary functions: towards automatically generated, efficient, and vectorizable implementations Version soumise aux rapporteurs. Jury composé de : M. Florent de Dinechin Pr. INSA Lyon Rapporteur Mme Fabienne Jézéquel MC, HDR UParis 2 Rapporteur M. Marc Daumas Pr. UPVD Examinateur M. Lionel Lacassagne Pr. UParis 6 Examinateur M. Daniel Menard Pr. INSA Rennes Examinateur M. Éric Petit Ph.D. Intel Examinateur M. David Defour MC, HDR UPVD Directeur M. Guillaume Revy MC UPVD Codirecteur À la mémoire de ma grand-mère Françoise Lapergue et de Jos Perrot, marin-pêcheur bigouden. -
~Umbers the BOO K O F Umbers
TH E BOOK OF ~umbers THE BOO K o F umbers John H. Conway • Richard K. Guy c COPERNICUS AN IMPRINT OF SPRINGER-VERLAG © 1996 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re trieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published in the United States by Copernicus, an imprint of Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. Copernicus Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY lOOlO Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Conway, John Horton. The book of numbers / John Horton Conway, Richard K. Guy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-8488-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-4072-3 DOl: 10.l007/978-1-4612-4072-3 1. Number theory-Popular works. I. Guy, Richard K. II. Title. QA241.C6897 1995 512'.7-dc20 95-32588 Manufactured in the United States of America. Printed on acid-free paper. 9 8 765 4 Preface he Book ofNumbers seems an obvious choice for our title, since T its undoubted success can be followed by Deuteronomy,Joshua, and so on; indeed the only risk is that there may be a demand for the earlier books in the series. More seriously, our aim is to bring to the inquisitive reader without particular mathematical background an ex planation of the multitudinous ways in which the word "number" is used. -
Mitigating Javascript's Overhead with Webassembly
Samuli Ylenius Mitigating JavaScript’s overhead with WebAssembly Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences M. Sc. thesis March 2020 ABSTRACT Samuli Ylenius: Mitigating JavaScript’s overhead with WebAssembly M. Sc. thesis Tampere University Master’s Degree Programme in Software Development March 2020 The web and web development have evolved considerably during its short history. As a result, complex applications aren’t limited to desktop applications anymore, but many of them have found themselves in the web. While JavaScript can meet the requirements of most web applications, its performance has been deemed to be inconsistent in applications that require top performance. There have been multiple attempts to bring native speed to the web, and the most recent promising one has been the open standard, WebAssembly. In this thesis, the target was to examine WebAssembly, its design, features, background, relationship with JavaScript, and evaluate the current status of Web- Assembly, and its future. Furthermore, to evaluate the overhead differences between JavaScript and WebAssembly, a Game of Life sample application was implemented in three splits, fully in JavaScript, mix of JavaScript and WebAssembly, and fully in WebAssembly. This allowed to not only compare the performance differences between JavaScript and WebAssembly but also evaluate the performance differences between different implementation splits. Based on the results, WebAssembly came ahead of JavaScript especially in terms of pure execution times, although, similar benefits were gained from asm.js, a predecessor to WebAssembly. However, WebAssembly outperformed asm.js in size and load times. In addition, there was minimal additional benefit from doing a WebAssembly-only implementation, as just porting bottleneck functions from JavaScript to WebAssembly had similar performance benefits. -
Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science Or Volunteered Geographic Information? the Current State of Crowdsourced Geographic Information
International Journal of Geo-Information Article Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science or Volunteered Geographic Information? The Current State of Crowdsourced Geographic Information Linda See 1,*, Peter Mooney 2, Giles Foody 3, Lucy Bastin 4, Alexis Comber 5, Jacinto Estima 6, Steffen Fritz 1, Norman Kerle 7, Bin Jiang 8, Mari Laakso 9, Hai-Ying Liu 10, Grega Milˇcinski 11, Matej Nikšiˇc 12, Marco Painho 6, Andrea P˝odör 13, Ana-Maria Olteanu-Raimond 14 and Martin Rutzinger 15 1 International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, Laxenburg A2361, Austria; [email protected] 2 Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University, Maynooth W23 F2H6, Ireland; [email protected] 3 School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK; [email protected] 4 School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK; [email protected] 5 School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK; [email protected] 6 NOVA IMS, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL), 1070-312 Lisboa, Portugal; [email protected] (J.E.); [email protected] (M.P.) 7 Department of Earth Systems Analysis, ITC/University of Twente, Enschede 7500 AE, The Netherlands; [email protected] 8 Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Division of GIScience, University of Gävle, Gävle 80176, Sweden; [email protected] 9 Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, Kirkkonummi 02430, Finland; mari.laakso@nls.fi 10 Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), Kjeller 2027, Norway; [email protected] -
John Horton Conway
Obituary John Horton Conway (1937–2020) Playful master of games who transformed mathematics. ohn Horton Conway was one of the Monstrous Moonshine conjectures. These, most versatile mathematicians of the for the first time, seriously connected finite past century, who made influential con- symmetry groups to analysis — and thus dis- tributions to group theory, analysis, crete maths to non-discrete maths. Today, topology, number theory, geometry, the Moonshine conjectures play a key part Jalgebra and combinatorial game theory. His in physics — including in the understanding deep yet accessible work, larger-than-life of black holes in string theory — inspiring a personality, quirky sense of humour and wave of further such discoveries connecting ability to talk about mathematics with any and algebra, analysis, physics and beyond. all who would listen made him the centre of Conway’s discovery of a new knot invariant attention and a pop icon everywhere he went, — used to tell different knots apart — called the among mathematicians and amateurs alike. Conway polynomial became an important His lectures about numbers, games, magic, topic of research in topology. In geometry, he knots, rainbows, tilings, free will and more made key discoveries in the study of symme- captured the public’s imagination. tries, sphere packings, lattices, polyhedra and Conway, who died at the age of 82 from tilings, including properties of quasi-periodic complications related to COVID-19, was a tilings as developed by Roger Penrose. lover of games of all kinds. He spent hours In algebra, Conway discovered another in the common rooms of the University of important system of numbers, the icosians, Cambridge, UK, and Princeton University with his long-time collaborator Neil Sloane. -
The Book of Numbers
springer.com Mathematics : Number Theory Conway, John H., Guy, Richard The Book of Numbers Journey through the world of numbers with the foremost authorities and writers in the field. John Horton Conway and Richard K. Guy are two of the most accomplished, creative, and engaging number theorists any mathematically minded reader could hope to encounter. In this book, Conway and Guy lead the reader on an imaginative, often astonishing tour of the landscape of numbers. The Book of Numbers is just that - an engagingly written, heavily illustrated introduction to the fascinating, sometimes surprising properties of numbers and number patterns. The book opens up a world of topics, theories, and applications, exploring intriguing aspects of real numbers, systems, arrays and sequences, and much more. Readers will be able to use figures to figure out figures, rub elbows with famous families of numbers, prove the primacy of primes, fathom the fruitfulness of fractions, imagine imaginary numbers, investigate the infinite and infinitesimal and more. Order online at springer.com/booksellers Copernicus Springer Nature Customer Service Center LLC 1996, IX, 310 p. 233 Spring Street 1st New York, NY 10013 edition USA T: +1-800-SPRINGER NATURE (777-4643) or 212-460-1500 Printed book [email protected] Hardcover Printed book Hardcover ISBN 978-0-387-97993-9 $ 49,99 Available Discount group Trade Books (1) Product category Popular science Other renditions Softcover ISBN 978-1-4612-8488-8 Prices and other details are subject to change without notice. All errors and omissions excepted. Americas: Tax will be added where applicable. Canadian residents please add PST, QST or GST. -
Interview with John Horton Conway
Interview with John Horton Conway Dierk Schleicher his is an edited version of an interview with John Horton Conway conducted in July 2011 at the first International Math- ematical Summer School for Students at Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany, Tand slightly extended afterwards. The interviewer, Dierk Schleicher, professor of mathematics at Jacobs University, served on the organizing com- mittee and the scientific committee for the summer school. The second summer school took place in August 2012 at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France, and the next one is planned for July 2013, again at Jacobs University. Further information about the summer school is available at http://www.math.jacobs-university.de/ summerschool. John Horton Conway in August 2012 lecturing John H. Conway is one of the preeminent the- on FRACTRAN at Jacobs University Bremen. orists in the study of finite groups and one of the world’s foremost knot theorists. He has written or co-written more than ten books and more than one- received the Pólya Prize of the London Mathemati- hundred thirty journal articles on a wide variety cal Society and the Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize of mathematical subjects. He has done important in Mathematics of Northwestern University. work in number theory, game theory, coding the- Schleicher: John Conway, welcome to the Interna- ory, tiling, and the creation of new number systems, tional Mathematical Summer School for Students including the “surreal numbers”. He is also widely here at Jacobs University in Bremen. Why did you known as the inventor of the “Game of Life”, a com- accept the invitation to participate? puter simulation of simple cellular “life” governed Conway: I like teaching, and I like talking to young by simple rules that give rise to complex behavior. -
Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust'
H-Nilas Copeland on Sax, 'Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust' Review published on Sunday, April 1, 2001 Boria Sax. Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust. Foreword by Klaus P. Fischer. New York and London: Continuum, 2000. 175 pp. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8264-1289-8. Reviewed by Marion W. Copeland (Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy)Published on H- Nilas (April, 2001) History Can Repeat Itself History Can Repeat Itself Historians have been even more reluctant to look at Nazi animal protection legislation than at Nazi science. It was first examined in Sax and Arluke, "Understanding Nazi Animal Protection and the Holocaust," in 1992 in Anthrozoos, the journal of the International Society of Anthrozoology (ISAZ). ISAZ is a scholarly organization dedicated, as NILAS is, to the study of the human/animal bond. The essay met with controversy and accusation, the most disturbing of which accused the authors of trivializing what is rightly seen as the center of Nazi activity--the Holocaust and the attempted extermination of Europe's Jews and other non-Aryans under the guise of racial purity and racial and ethnic cleansing--by their focus on nonhuman animals. As Sax concludes inAnimals in the Third Reich: "That the Nazis might be capable of humane legislation was such a disconcerting idea that even the detached, academic style of our paper could not make it acceptable to many people. The topic of animals, like the Holocaust itself, evokes passions of great intensity and confusion." (p. 164) Actually, in the essay as well as in this study, Sax makes two major claims. -
Consciousness and the End of Materialism: Seeking Identity and Harmony in a Dark Era
International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science No. 2, Year 2/2018 CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE END OF MATERIALISM: SEEKING IDENTITY AND HARMONY IN A DARK ERA Ph.D. Spyridon I. KAKOS National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Athens, GREECE Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT “I am me”, but what does this mean? For centuries humans identified themselves as conscious beings with free will, beings that are important in the cosmos they live in. However, modern science has been trying to reduce us into unimportant pawns in a cold universe and diminish our sense of consciousness into a mere illusion generated by lifeless matter. Our identity in the cosmos is nothing more than a deception and all the scientific evidence seem to support this idea. Or is it not? The goal of this paper is to discard current underlying dogmatism (axioms taken for granted as "self-evident") of modern mind research and to show that consciousness seems to be the ultimate frontier that will cause a major change in the way exact sciences think. If we want to re-discover our identity as luminous beings in the cosmos, we must first try to pinpoint our prejudices and discard them. Materialism is an obsolete philosophical dogma and modern scientists should try to also use other premises as the foundation of their theories to approach the mysteries of the self. Exact sciences need to examine the world with a more open mind, accepting potentially different interpretations of existing experimental data in the fields of brain research, which are currently not considered simply on the basis of a strong anti-spiritual dogmatism. -
An Aperiodic Convex Space-Filler Is Discovered
\ olume IJ. :"umller 6 The Ne\\ stetter of the :\Iathematical Association of America Den'mller )9l)J An Aperiodic Convex Space-filler is Discovered Earlier this year, Princeton mathematician Conway's discovery was announced at the John Horton Conway discovered a convex Regional Geometry Institute held this past polyhedron that will fill space, but only summer at Smith College. There, the par aperiodically. The space-filler is a biprism, ticipants(over 100,includingundergraduate that is, two slant triangular prisms fused REU participants, graduate students, high together (its faces are four congruent tri school teachers, and research mathemati angles and four congruentparallelograms). ~ cians) assembled cardboard models of the Several years ago, Peter Schmitt, at the ~ biprism and stacked them to witness the University of Vienna, described a non-con- § aperiodic space-filling. One participant, vex aperiodic space-filler, and Conway's ~ Ludwig Danzer, of the University of biprism fills space in a similar manner. First, ~ Dortmund, noted that Conway's tiling was ~ copies of the tile fill a layer (and in this single g not face-to-face, and quickly devised an layer, the tiling is periodic), and layers are ~ "improved" version. The parallelogram stacked to fill space. However, adjacentlay- E: faces ofDanzer's biprismare inscribedwith ers must be rotated with respect to each An example ofConway s tiling built at the Regional congruent triangles (which are considered other by a fixed irrational angle, thereby Geometry Institute at Smith College as faces) and when his polyhedronis stacked ensuring that the tiling is aperiodic. in the same manner as Conway's, the tiling is aperiodic and also face-to-face. -
Bibliography Manuscript Collections Anita Baldwin Papers, Huntington
Bibliography Manuscript Collections Anita Baldwin Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA Rosalie Edge Papers, WesternCollection, Denver Public Library,Denver, CO Minnie MaddernFiske Papers, Libraryof Congress, Washington, DC Simon Flexner Papers, AmericanPhilosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA Ellen Glasgow Papers, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA W. Williams KeenPapers, CoUege of Physicians, Philadelphia, PA Frederic S. LeePapers, Archives and SpecialCollections, A. C. Long Health Sciences Library, Columbia University, New York, NY Jack London Papers, Huntington Library, SanMarino, CA Samuel McCuneLindsay Papers, Columbia University Library, New York, New York Enos Mills Papers, WesternCollection, Denver Public Library, Denver, CO S. Weir Mitchell Papers, College of Physicians, Philadelphia, PA Alice ParlePapers, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA Agnes Repplier Collection,University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia, PA TheodoreRoosevelt Collection, Widener Library, Harvard University, Boston, MA F. Peyton Rous Papers, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, PA Richard Welling Papers, New York Public Library,New York, NY Organizational Archives American Anti-Vivisection Society, Jenkintown, PA AmericanSociety forthe Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, New York, NY Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Los Angeles, CA Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Boston, MA Pennsylvania Society forthe Prevention of Crueltyto Animals, Philadelphia, PA PeMsylvania