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Submission + - The Neuroscience of Computer Programming

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Chris Parnin has an interesting read about an international team of scientists lead by Dr. Janet Siegmund using brain imaging with fMRI to understand the programmer's mind and to compare and contrast different cognitive tasks used in programming by analyzing differences in brain locations that are activated by different tasks. One recent debate illuminated by their studies is recent legislation that considers offering foreign-language credits for students learning programming languages. There have been many strong reactions across the software-developer community. Some developers consider the effort laudable but misguided and proclaim programming is not at all like human language and is much closer to mathematics. Siegmund observed 17 participants inside an fMRI scanner while they were comprehending short source-code snippets and found a clear, distinct activation pattern of five brain regions, which are related to language processing, working memory, and attention. The programmers in the study recruited parts of the brain typically associated with language processing and verbal oriented processing (ventral lateral prefrontal cortex). At least for the simple code snippets presented, programmers could use existing language regions of the brain to understand code without requiring more complex mental models to be constructed and manipulated. "Interestingly, even though there was code that involve mathematical operations, conditionals, and loop iteration, for these particular tasks, programming had less in common with mathematics and more in common with language (PDF)," writes Parnin. "Mathematical calculations typically take place in the intraparietal sulcus, mathematical reasoning in the right frontal pole, and logical reasoning in the left frontal pole. These areas were not strongly activated in comprehending source code." The new research results are a much needed, but only a first step in revealing the neuroscience of programming. Other questions remain including: Can we finally provide a neurological basis for a programmer's flow? How relevant is the mastery of language skills for programming? Are there certain programming activities that should never be mixed, due to higher chance of cognitive failure (and resulting bugs)? Do code visualizations or live programming environments really reduce mental load? "Programming involves a rich set of cognitive processes," concludes Parnin. "Although the study found a particular pathway that was strongly associated with language processing, there may be other pathways associated with other common activities related to programming (debugging, editing, refactoring, etc)."

Comment Relief (Score 1) 208

by olborro (#42117833) Attached to: Canada Creates Cap On Liability For File Sharing Lawsuits
This will be a relief for all those who will fall victim to the upcoming "crackdown" mentioned on slashdot in this article: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/11/27/230215/canada-prepares-for-crackdown-on-bittorrent-movie-pirates From my point of view it's just a typical money grab move, first lower the "fines" to acceptable levels so no major backlash from public will be involved, then you just go big game hunting (as in big $$).
IBM

Submission + - IBM Reports Carbon Nanotube Chip Breakthrough (nytimes.com)

Submitted by yawaramin
yawaramin writes: IBM has apparently made a breakthrough in arranging carbon nanotubes into the logic gates necessary to make a chip. This should help miniaturise and speed up processors beyond what today's silicon-based technologies are capable of. The article notes though that perfecting the carbon nanotube technology could take up the rest of this decade.
Robotics

Swarmanoid 'Bots Rule Air, Land, Bookshelves 41

Posted by Soulskill from the just-don't-tell-them-where-the-guns-are dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The notion of distributed processing isn't new, and its application to robotics leads naturally to the idea of a swarm of robots. However, most swarm-oriented robots are composed of many identical robots (such as The Kilobots). In this case, there are three types of robots: a 'hand-bot,' which can climb bookcases and grab objects with hands; a 'foot-bot,' which can drive around and carry the hand-bot; and an 'eye-bot,' which flies around and perches on the ceiling to provide a perspective to the other bots." Another reader points out an unrelated but also-impressive video of Kinect being used to develop a user-friendly robot assistant.

Comment if only... (Score 1) 311

by olborro (#33656624) Attached to: LHC Spies Hints of Infant Universe

Researchers on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, have seen hints of what may be the hot, dense state of matter thought to have filled the universe in its first nanoseconds."

if only i could get a penny every time i read this in a news article mentioning LHC
Canada

Cheap Cancer Drug Finally Tested In Humans 363

Posted by timothy from the good-enough-for-the-likes-of-you dept.
John Bayko writes "Mentioned on Slashdot a couple of years ago, the drug dichloroacetate (DCA) has finally finished its first clinical trial against brain tumors in humans. Drug companies weren't willing to test a drug they could not patent, so money was raised in the community through donations, auctions, and finally government support, but the study was still limited to five patients. It showed extremely positive results in four of them. This episode raises the question of what happens to all the money donated to Canadian and other cancer societies, and especially the billions spent buying merchandise with little pink ribbons on it, if not to actual cancer research like this."
Image

Facebook Master Password Was "Chuck Norris" 319

Posted by samzenpus from the ad-nauseum-roundhouse dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."
Input Devices

Submission + - Apple To Launch Eye-Tracking Technology This Year?

Submitted by andylim
andylim writes: An article on recombu.com explores the possibility that Apple is gearing up to launch eye-tracking technology soon. Citing a patent filed in 2008 that mentions “gaze vectors” and a recent purchase of units from a Swedish eye-tracking company, the author suggests that the inclusion of eye-tracking tech in the company’s forthcoming tablet would be Job’s magnum opus. "What better flourish to a career that began with the popularisation of windows, icons, mouse and pointer than to usurp them all?"

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