20 MAR 2018 by ideonexus

 Adult Physical Activity Keeps Immune System Young

It is widely accepted that aging is accompanied by remodelling of the immune system including thymic atrophy and increased frequency of senescent T cells, leading to immune compromise. However, physical activity, which influences immunity but declines dramatically with age, is not considered in this literature. We assessed immune profiles in 125 adults (55–79 years) who had maintained a high level of physical activity (cycling) for much of their adult lives, 75 age-matched older adults and ...
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24 MAY 2012 by TGAW

 H.G. Wells on Immunity and Natural Selection - The Birthr...

These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things--taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many--those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance--our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our mic...
Folksonomies: evolution
Folksonomies: evolution
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A great passage from War of the Worlds

02 JAN 2011 by ideonexus

 Natural Language Processing vs. Semantic Web

NLP works well statistically; the SW, in contrast, requires logic and doesn't yet make substantial use of statistics. Natural language is democratic, as expressed in the slogan 'meaning is use' (see Section 5.1 for more discussion of this). The equivalent in the SW of the words of natural language are logical terms, of which URIs are prominent. Thus we have an immediate disanalogy between NLP and the SW, which is that URIs, unlike words, have owners, and so can be regulated. That is not to sa...
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A short comparison of the difference between NLP and SW in terms of processing, algorithms, structure, and emergence. NLP is described as 'democratic', where the power of SW is that URIs 'have owners,' meaning they are a top-down construct. Perhaps this is the problem of the Semantic Web and why it may never catch on: the web favors emergent semantics and democratized development.