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| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | | | Cleveland zoo realizes after 50 years that Mary the giant tortoise is a boy | |
Nov 19, 2009 - 4:11 AM - by KingStubby |
CLEVELAND, Ohio ? Mary the giant tortoise came out of her shell in a very unladylike way last week at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. There's a reason, though: She's a he.
 Giant Tortoise!
After more than a half-century at the zoo, the 400-pound tortoise showed veterinarians something extra during a routine physical exam. The find left the medical staff a little shell-shocked. Nobody ever viewed Mary as a male, zoo Director Steve Taylor said. (It's often difficult to determine the sex of an Aldabra tortoise because its reproductive organs usually aren't visible.)
The zoo long ago labeled Mary with an incorrect gender because of feminine characteristics: a smaller size, a flatter lower shell and shorter tail. Mary also looked nothing like Tom and Tim, the other boys in the zoo's tortoise enclosure.
Basically, dude looks like a lady . . . but there's absolutely no doubt now that Mary's a Gary.
read more here.
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1 Reply | 22 Views | | IBM takes a (feline) step toward thinking machines | |
Nov 18, 2009 - 3:54 AM - by KingStubby |
SAN FRANCISCO -
Scientists say they've made a breakthrough in their pursuit of computers that "think" like a living thing's brain ? an effort that tests the limits of technology.
 This is your cat's brain on Computer.
Even the world's most powerful supercomputers can't replicate basic aspects of the human mind. The machines can't imagine a wall painted a different color, for instance, or picture a person's face and connect that to an emotion.
If researchers can make computers operate more like a brain thinks ? by reasoning and dealing with abstractions, among other things ? they could unleash tremendous insights in such diverse fields as medicine and economics.
A computer with the power of a human brain is not yet near. But this week researchers from IBM Corp. are reporting that they've simulated a cat's cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, using a massive supercomputer. The computer has 147,456 processors (most modern PCs have just one or two processors) and 144 terabytes of main memory ? 100,000 times as much as your computer has.
The scientists had previously simulated 40 percent of a mouse's brain in 2006, a rat's full brain in 2007, and 1 percent of a human's cerebral cortex this year, using progressively bigger supercomputers.
Read more here. | |
6 Replies | 74 Views | | | » Shoutbox! | | | | » Recent Threads | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
