Barack Obama and Psychology

Honestly speaking Obama is a president full of different working styles when compared to former US presidents (at least I think so).

One I believe is his choice of psychology application to a lately established(? see below) government section called Consumer Financial Protection Agency( CFPA) to help US recover from 2009 great depression. Insterestingly I've not found it at US gov website. However, US Chamber of Commerce has established a website to tell mass "STOP the CFPA".

Whatever, this department has an origin deeply rooted in psychology with Nobel Laureate Kahneman's research at the intersection between psychology and economics. It's called behavioral economics in economics or decision making in experimental psychology. And thanks to Kahneman's collaborator Sunstein, a law professor once in Chicago with B. Obama, this field has been introduced to US government.

Further information could be read at websites listed below:

1. http://www.douban.com/subject/3541320/ (the book "Nudge")
   
2. http://www.douban.com/subject/4022709/ (the book "Nudge" Chinese)
   
3. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124545477468032915.html(WSJ)
4. http://chn.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/06/24/20090624000030.html (Chinese introduction)
   

Cold spring harbour asia conference center

Suzhou

Cold Spring Harbor Asia conferences will be held at Suzhou Dushu Lake Conference Center in Suzhou, China, sixty miles west of Shanghai and in easy reach of international and domestic airports. Suzhou is an ancient city known as the Venice of China, famous for its canals and private gardens and home to scholars for more than two millenia. Symposia, conferences and summer schools follow the Cold Spring Harbor tradition in showcasing merit-based scientific advances in an informal but intense atmosphere.

To encourage participation by significant international participation from throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas, the language of all programs will be English.

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And this place intends to cooperate with Shanghai neuroscience insitute, Chinese academy of sciences according to MumingPU at here（Chinese）

What's Neurotech?

I created this blog about 1 year ago, and today it's almost one year(01/31/09-01/23/10, GMT+8). Cauz this anniversary, I've recently read about IC(Intelligence Community)'s report on neurotech from emerging cognitive neuroscience(uploaded in Google group) and will tell readers briefly what neurotech will cover according to it.

The report offered a complete framework on cognitive neuroscience fields including:

-Detection of deception tech with the help of neuroimaging

-Neuroimaging systems with real time brain activity measurement and implications for coaching and mind control esp. for military purpose

-Neuropsychopharmacology and nanobiomedicine tech to develop enhancers like cognitive, affective and sensory

-Computational biological models and artificial intelligence which work hard to replicate "mind" outside human body

-Distributed human machine system
-Brain computer interface
-Cyborg which means part of human body (usually motor system) is replaced by machine
-Cognitive Cyborg which means part of human advanced brain function is replaced
-Intelligent robot assistant

And within those tech, drug enhancers and distributed human machine system are predicted to be closest to reality and maybe societal change.

Neuroengineering institute in China

Neuroengineering is the subfield of biomedical engineering. It seems more related to NBIC and Psychology.

Here is the list without institute ranking information:

1.Tianjin Neural Engineering Research Center, TNERC
2.Institute of Neural Engineering, TsingHua University
3.Research Center of Neural Engineering, Shenzheng Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
4.Wuhan Insitute of Neuroscience & Neuroengineering, South Central University of Nationalities
5.Research Center of Neuroscience & Neuroengineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University Med-X Institute

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East China Normal University also has an institute named nbic.ecnu.edu.cn(only a mail server, but offers a lot).

Can monkeys help your investment?

Quote "This article mainly focuses on the debate on monkey's investment ability and its anecdotes. I've sent it to my friends in finance department but no reply, and to 52brain.com neuroeconomics forum also no rely. What's wrong? The research made by psychologist is interesting and it may cover such topics like the book "Nudge" & behavioral portfolio (company) by famous decision making research scientist Thaler. Huge gap, huh?"

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In "Quirkology", prof. Richard Wiseman mentioned two famous/infamous psychological experiment about monkey like portfolio on stocks. In both two experiments, one invested by a little girl via picking up scraps of paper and another by a champzine called Aula(in Chinese edition, "奥拉") via dart throwing, so called random selections beat financial professionals.

I was surprised at that time. How could this happen? As I know, financial professionals use logical/statistical mathematical tools analyse the stock information and gain market insights. Among them, Black-Scholes Option Pricing model may be the most widely used one. And this field is not magic but has a formal academic name called "Econophysics"(see this book in Chinese). In this industry, Renaissance hedge fund may be the most famous company based on such models and gain great market success as well. Most of its employees are mathematical graduates from top US universities(however they lack Wall Street working background, and Wall Street is the famous place where top financial companies locate). They call themselves "Quants"(in Chinese 宽客）(see this book in Chinese).

Based on these facts, I think it isn't possible for them (those who use rigid mathematical models like Renaissance, not those in Wall Street) to lose. As for those in Wall street, indeed, Wall Street Journal established a contest between random selection of stocks and those financial professionals from 1988 to 2002. It is to respond prof. Burton Malkiel's "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". The contest ended without delaration of any winner. More details can be found here and here. The 14 contest's outcome seems interesting (the graph can be found here).

Though professionals beat the "monkeys" (dart selection), the percentages they outperform over them aren't larger enough.

I hope these words will help readers and myself as well:). For more info, pls google for keywords
"飞镖选股法", "darts portfolio" and "monkey business".

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Term explanation

- In English, monkey business originally means fraud business like Bernard Madoff but here it is really made by monkeys or random dart throwing.

In movie: Nano-robot

About 2 months ago I watched a movie: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (in chinese: 特种部队：眼镜蛇的崛起). I was impressed by the weapon which crimes use to destroy Paris (exactly Eiffel Tower）in just 10 seconds (time in the movie). Which sci-fi weapon has this kind of power? Maybe it's nano-robot. These guys are self reproducible and if without any control, like after n times of self reproduction all guys will detroy themselves, they will soon ruin earth (not only the surface). Gezhi.org has an interesting article on "how to use nano-robot to destroy earth"(in chinese). It mentioned a movie at here ( http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/23426 ). Watch it(from youtube)! It's amazing.

Below is a sci-fi snapshot of nano-robot by artist Adam Baines. Imaging this guy come into your brain, will it be OK?

http://www.321design.com.cn/blog/attachments/month_0912/i20091215111917.jpg

Neural prosthesis and neural engineering

In medicine there are two ways to save people's lives. One is medicine which uses drug to cure without any damage of human body. The other is surgery which uses invasive operation.

Thus we can divide neural scientific applications into those two ways.

Biomedical engineering has a subfield called neural prosthesis, neural regeneration, or neural restoration.(in chinese:神经修复）

Two important techs of neural prosthesis, cyborg( BCI or HMI ) and brain function enhancement drugs, are very similar to them. The former belongs to surgery, and the latter belongs to medicine.

I guess as for some molecule level, surgical operations will be useless because biostructure is too small. But at cell level, it seems both ways are OK. For larger biostructure, surgical operations will take its role. Am I right? Pls tell me your opinion. It would be highly appreciated.

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If disabled people use BCI they get cured. If normal people get it they become cyborg or human v2.0.

If psychiatric patient and those who have brain function disorder get enhancement drugs they get cured. If normal get them they become (no formal term) "superman"?

From patient to normal, neural prosthesis becomes neural engineering.