Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for September 19, 2019

Towards a handheld device that can diagnose skin cancer; Astronomers' first picture of an interstellar comet; A lost continent 1,000 miles below Europe; An AI that composed "Mahleresque" music; and a Steem essay arguing for a theory of consciousness as mapped by 10 major movements of modern art (MOMA)

---

Fresh and Informative Content Daily: Welcome to my little corner of the blockchain

Straight from my RSS feed

Whatever gets my attention

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

---

1. Stevens researchers to develop handheld device to diagnose skin cancer - Using millimeter wave radiation, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have created a method to diagnose skin cancer by measuring the reflectivity of the tissue. This is a similar strategy to the one used by airport security scanners for detecting metal objects. So far, the technique has been used in a proof of concept device, and the project leader, Negar Tavassolian, says that it's a strong first step towards their ultimate goal of developing a handheld device, and it is expected to have a manufacturing cost of less than $1,000. The work is reported in the September issue of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.


2. This is our first picture of a second interstellar object as it zips through the solar system - Believed to be the second interstallar object that's been observed from Earth, C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), was named for the amateur astronomer who discovered it. The fact that it has a tail indicates that it is a comet, and it's speed is too fast for solar orbit, so it is likely that it originated outside of the solar system. Click through for the multicolored image. The work is described in in arXiv. The object will reach its closest to Earth on December 10.


3. A lost 8th continent is hidden nearly 1,000 miles under Europe, new research shows. Scientists named it 'Greater Adria. - Starting from a single land mass, Pangea, over the course of several hundreds of millions of years the continents that we see today have gradually drifted apart to their current positions. A new study suggests that during the course of that time, one section of the original land mass - called Greater Adria - has been squeezed below the modern European land mass. The study further suggests that this submerged land mass is responsible for the mountains in 30 European countries. These mountain ranges include: "the Apennines in Italy, the Dinarides in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Swiss Alps, the Zagros mountains of Iran, and the Himalayas. " The researchers reached this conclusion by studying ancient magnetic rocks from 2,300 sites and feeding that data into a computer simulation. According to the simulation, the Greenland sized continent broke off from Africa 240 million years ago, and was buried up to 932 miles under Europe by about 100 million years ago. In addition to theory development, this knowledge may also be useful for businesses who can use it to identify promising mining locations.


4. AI as good as Mahler? Austrian orchestra performs symphony with twist - On Friday, September 6, in Linz, Austria, Mahler's unfinished Symphony Number 10 was played, followed by 6 minutes of "Mahleresque" music that was generated by Ali Nikrang using the AI program, MuseNet. According to Nikrang, the AI was fed the opening 10 notes of the Mahler symphony, and it responded with four possible extensions. Nikrang chose one of the four, and the AI offered another four options for the next segment, and so on. Nikrang completed this process several times before selecting the work that the audience would hear. Nikrang reports that even this highly selective process was still clearly distinguishable from Mahler's work, especially due to the lack of emotion. Some audience members, however, said that they couldn't tell the difference. h/t Communications of the ACM


5. STEEM A New Theory of Consciousness - In the account's premiere post, @artcognition creates an unusual mix of art and philosophy, asking the question, "Is there a map of our cognitive processes in the Movements of Modern Art?" and argues that modern art's 10 major movements can offer a "highly accurate representation" of how human cognitive processes work. In this model, the author maps art movements from conceptual art, minimalism, and pop art through a path to futurism and cubism, then associates each of those artistic movements with an aspect of cognition covering things like: thoughts, memory, self-gratification, emotions, language, and sensory-motor scaffolding, for example. It then goes through a similar process mapping the movements of art to cognitive activities from thought through action and unconscious through conscious. According to the theory that is detailed here, the human experience is comprised entirely of two types of sense data: abstract sense data, and imaginary sense data. If the whole essay can be summarized succinctly, perhaps this excerpt does it: "These differences led modern 20th-century artists down the Monet’s rabbit hole - the outward painterly expression of inner subjective interpretations - allowing them to collectively map human cognitive processes albeit unbeknownst to themselves." (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @artcognition.)

---

In order to help make Steem the go to place for timely information on diverse topics, I invite you to discuss any of these links in the comments and/or your own response post.

Beneficiaries

• Burn Steem/SBD - @null - 5%
• Cited author(s) - @artcognition - 10%
• Fundraising for the Rustin Golden Knights Marching Band - @rgkmb-unofficial - 10%
• Posting and/or scheduling service (steempeak.com) - @steempeak - 5%
• Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) curation on Steem - @steemstem - 5%
• Steem/API services (anyx.io) - anyx - 5%
• Steem/RSS services (steemrss.com) - torrey.blog - 5%

---

My other open posts

(as of Wednesday evening)

@remlaps

@remlaps-lite

• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for September 18, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Business, leadership, and management micro-summaries for September 18, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Music and entertainment micro-summaries for September 17, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for September 17, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Business, leadership, and management micro-summaries for September 17, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for September 16, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Business, leadership, and management micro-summaries for September 16, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for September 15, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Business, leadership, and management micro-summaries for September 15, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for September 14, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Business, leadership, and management micro-summaries for September 14, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for September 13, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Business, leadership, and management micro-summaries for September 13, 2019
  

Fundraising for the Rustin Golden Knights Marching Band by @rgkmb-unofficial

• September 13, 2019: Rustin Golden Knights at Oxford Hornets Football Game
  
• Rustin Golden Knights at Oxford Hornets Football - Final score
  
• Rustin Golden Knights at Oxford Hornets Football - Half time update
  

---

About this series

---

Sharing a link does not imply endorsement or agreement, and I receive no incentives for sharing from any of the content creators.

Follow on steem: @remlaps-lite, @remlaps
If you are not on Steem yet, you can follow through RSS: remlaps-lite, remlaps.

---

Thanks to SteemRSS from philipkoon, doriitamar, and torrey.blog for the Steem RSS feeds!