Five Historical Geniuses Alleged to be Autistic - http://clapway.com/2015/08/14/five-historical-geniuses-alleged-to-be-autistic123/

There have been many studies to suggest that development disorders, such as Autism are very common in creative thinkers. In fact, some of the biggest thinkers in history have been suspected to have been autistic. Let’s take a look…

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Citing the physicist’s educational slowness and his delayed development of language, University of Cambridge psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has posited that the legendary physicist may have been a high-functioning autistic. Einstein – whose name, of course, is synonymous with genius – was also better at processing visual information than verbal information and obsessively repeated sentences as a child, characteristics of many autistic people.

CHARLES DARWIN

The theory of evolution’s father may have been an Aspie, according to Professor Michael Fitzgerald of Trinity College in Dublin. Citing the scientist’s social awkwardness and strange obsessions, Fitzgerald has said “Asperger’s syndrome gave Darwin the capacity to hyperfocus, the extra capacity for persistence, the enormous ability to see detail that other people missed, the endless energy for a lifetime dedication to a narrow task, and the independence of mind so critical to original research.”

MICHELANGELO

Research by Fitzgerald and Dr. Muhammad Ashad in 2004 suggested that the Renaissance man may have been autistic. Though art historian and Michelangelo expert James Hall criticized the claims, some of the polymath’s personality traits – poor social skills, narrow interests and hyperfocused work method – are consistent with the typical autistic person. As Ashad noted, “He was a loner, self-absorbed, and gave his undivided attention to his masterpieces — a feature of autism.”

ISAAC NEWTON

According to a BBC article on the topic, Oxford and Cambridge researchers on the subject believe Newton had “classic signs” of Asperger’s syndrome. Far from socially adept, Newton was extremely quiet and treated the few friends he had poorly. The physicist, who has also been suspected of having bipolar disorder, had a nervous breakdown when he was 50 due to paranoia and depression.

ALAN TURING

The legendary cryptanalyst has been alleged by the British mathematician Ioan James to been autistic. As Michael Gerson pointed out at the Washington Post, Benedict Cumberbatch certainly played him like an Aspie in The Imitation Game. The film’s director said in an interview with The Independent that “From a lot of the research we did, we had people say that he probably had some version of autism or Asperger’s or something like that.”

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Five Historical Geniuses Alleged to be Autistic

This mommy #robot OWNS #NaturalSelection. - http://clapway.com/2015/08/12/robot-mother-builds-children-and-mimics-natural-selection-425/

Cambridge University scientists have made a “mother” robot that creates cube robot children, evaluates them based on task performance, and improves the next generation accordingly.

ROBOT TESTING: IF YOU THOUGHT YOUR MOM WAS BAD…

Equipped with a Universal Robots UR5 robotic arm and gripper, the mother robot built and tested ten generations of “cube babies” in five experiments. Designing and creating each robot took about 10 minutes for the mother, who designed them based on five rules guiding their construction, motor command and shape.

ONLY BEING HERCULES IS GOOD ENOUGH?

Each cube robot was tasked to travel the longest possible distance from a starting point in a certain amount of time. Depending on their performance evaluations, some of the “children” underwent no changes in the successive generation and others had their “genomes” altered and mutated.

The researchers found that the mother was adept at improving each generation so that the later generations would not have the genomes deemed defective. The last robots the mother created performed the task twice as quickly as the first generation.

As its lead researcher pointed out, the study effectively imitated natural selection.

PROGRAMMABLE NATURAL SELECTION TO MAKE DARWIN PROUD

“Natural selection is basically reproduction, assessment, reproduction, assessment and so on,” Dr. Fumiya Iida, the project’s lead researcher, explained in a press release. “That’s essentially what this robot is doing – we can actually watch the improvement and diversification of the species.”

The project was completed at Cambridge in collaboration with researchers from ETH Zurich. It’s an example of evolutionary robotics, “a growing field which allows for the creation of autonomous robots without human intervention” according to Cambridge University.

The origin of intelligence is a mystery to many biologists, and a question that Iida and his team were interested in exploring. “One of the big questions in biology is how intelligence came about – we’re using robotics to explore this mystery,” said Iida, a lecturer at Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “We think of robots as performing repetitive tasks, and they’re typically designed for mass production instead of mass customisation, but we want to see robots that are capable of innovation and creativity.”

You can read the full results of the study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

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ON INTELLIGENCE… PLAY WITH A.I. WITH MUSIO:

Robot Mother Builds Children and Mimics Natural Selection

Hummingbird/Peacock -Like ancient bird begs the question: Form over function or function over form? - http://clapway.com/2015/06/04/brazil-peacock-like-ancient-bird-species-tail-feathers-have-weird-implications-123/

If there were ever a reason to proudly wear your colors, this ancient Northeast Brazilian bird species has got all the persuasion. Its color split-tail with ribbon-like, arrow-like feathers forces it to stand out despite its diminutive size.

Ancient Bird Species Like a Hummingbird Peacock

Paleontologists have discovered an new bird species from about 150 million years ago. So this Mesozoic era (about 115-million-years ago) bird is more of an ancient bird species than a new. But this is precisely why it is able to tell us so much about the evolution of our world — especially because its ornamental feathers remind of Charles Darwin’s biggest challenger to natural selection, the peacock.

Not unlike the peacock of Darwin’s nightmares, this ancient bird could aptly be described with the expression “form over function”. Probably geared toward sexual attractiveness and visual communication, its feathers do not optimize its natural aerodynamics. Fortunately, it’s only about 5.5 inches, much like a hummingbird — in size anyway.

Araripe Basin and A Supercontinent Called Gondwana

This ancient bird’s fossils were found in the Araripe Basin in Brazil in 2011. The Araripe Basin has already been a hub of paleontological discovery. Researchers have been able to find fossils of ancient reptiles, insects, fish, and plants pretty commonly.

As it stands, it is considered one of the oldest bird fossils ever discovered. The research by Ismar de Souza Carvalho, a professor of paleontology as well as geology at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is enthusiastic about the fossils ability to teach us more about terrestrial ecosystems of the Mesozoic era in this region of the world.

During the time of this ancient bird’s existence on Earth, the continents as we know it had not formed. Gondwana, the home of this ancient bird, was the name of the more southern of the two continents part of Pangea. Consisting of Africa, Antarctica, Australia, India and South America, Gondwana formed before Pangea and then became a part of Pangea. Eventually Gondwana separated from Pangea after Pangea broke into many continents.

What Can Be Learned From Ancient Bird Species Fossil?

The fossil’s properties suggests this bird species died young, but the causes were indeterminable. It was dateable to the Early Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era. In the past, fossils from ancient bird species with these types of arrow-like tail feathers were found, but only in China. In theory, this bird could have migrated despite its feathers. If this turned out to be the case, form and function might not be mutually exclusive for once.

Brazil: Peacock-Like Ancient Bird Species Tail Feathers Have Weird Implications