Found in Translation: Universal Brain Activity When People Find Meaning in Stories, Regardless of Language and CODE?

Found in Translation: Universal Brain Activity When People Find Meaning in Stories, Regardless of Language

 Abstract
Decoding the neural representation of story meanings across languages
 
Drawing from a common lexicon of semantic units, humans fashion narratives whose meaning transcends that of their individual utterances. However, while brain regions that represent lower-level semantic units, such as words and sentences, have been identified, questions remain about the neural representation of narrative comprehension, which involves inferring cumulative meaning. 

To address these questions, we exposed English, Mandarin, and Farsi native speakers to native language translations of the same stories during fMRI scanning. Using a new technique in natural language processing, we calculated the distributed representations of these stories (capturing the meaning of the stories in high-dimensional semantic space), and demonstrate that using these representations we can identify the specific story a participant was reading from the neural data. Notably, this was possible even when the distributed representations were calculated using stories in a different language than the participant was reading. Our results reveal that identification relied on a collection of brain regions most prominently located in the default mode network. These results demonstrate that neuro-semantic encoding of narratives happens at levels higher than individual semantic units and that this encoding is systematic across both individuals and languages.

“Decoding the neural representation of story meanings across languages” by Morteza Dehghani, Reihane Boghrati, Kingson Man, Joe Hoover, Sarah I. Gimbel, Ashish Vaswani, Jason D. Zevin, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Andrew S. Gordon, Antonio Damasio, and Jonas T. Kaplan in Human Brain Mapping. Published online September 20 2017 doi:10.1002/hbm.23814

WHAT IS CODE?

BUSINESSWEEK JUNE 11, 2015

BY PAUL FORD

Israel Finds $240 Billion Gas Hoard Under The Mediterranean Sea.

Israel, reliant on imported energy since the state’s foundation in 1948, now has more natural gas than it can handle.

Noble Energy Inc. (NBL), Delek Group Ltd. (DLEKG) and other explorers have discovered enough gas under the Mediterranean Sea to supply Israel’s needs for 150 years. To profit from the finds sooner, the companies want to export the gas by pipeline or ship. As the Ministry of Energy prepares to publish a blueprint for developing the fields later this month, officials say the country’s economy and security must come first and shipments abroad should be limited.

Consequences To Expect If The U.S. Invades Iran

Exploding Oil Prices

The U.S. has had a ban on Iranian oil imports since 1979, however, Iran still supplies about 5% of the global oil market.  This might not seem like much, but Iran also has the means and ability to shut down the Straight of Hormuz, which is one of two major petroleum choke points in the world.  Around 17 million barrels of oil per day are shipped through the Straight of Hormuz, or about 20% of all oil traded worldwide.

In 2006, during the last major Iran war scare, experts predicted gasoline price increases in excess of $10 a gallon if Iran was invaded.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/07/news/international/iran_oil/

This would devastate the U.S. economy, which is already hanging by a thin thread.  Iran has announced this past weekend it will cease all oil shipments to Britain and France in protest of their support of economic sanctions.  This alone is causing oil to spike today.  A global energy crisis will financially decimate average citizens who will have their savings sapped by extreme price inflation, not just in gasoline, but in all goods that require the use of gasoline in their production and shipping.  If you like this idea, then by all means, support an invasion of Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met energy executives last month and said he would take steps to strengthen the potential of gas exports.

‘Many Reforms’

“We need to make many reforms and maintain a responsible framework for the state” in the energy market, Netanyahu said in a statement after the meeting.

The debate in Israel is similar to that in the U.S., where gas-hungry companies including Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co. have lobbied lawmakers to prevent exports on a scale that risks driving up natural-gas prices.

Noble discovered the Leviathan gas field in Israel’s deep waters in 2010 and at the time it was the world’s largest find of its kind in a decade. The Houston-based explorer is looking for a partner to develop an LNG project, which may cost as much as $5 billion. It also plans a deeper well next year to search for Israel’s first offshore crude finds, Chief Executive Officer Charles Davidson said on a July 26 conference call with investors.

“We’ve found far more natural gas that can ever be used in Israel,” Davidson said at a conference in May.   MORE FROM Bloomberg

Bloomberg Makes Case for Gay Marriage

This is complete crap that Mayor Bloomberg is threatening , basically blackmailing the Senate, with the you don’t want to have the rep of being called racist when you don’t vote for something you see as unnatural, and that is exactly what I intend on doing if you don’t vote the Gay way. I’m also a little ashamed of the Senate who is more powerful then a ‘Mayor’ if they 
stoop down to this

Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned state lawmakers Thursday that if they oppose legalizing gay marriage they may be remembered as civil rights obstructionists similar to those who opposed the abolition of slavery and fought against giving women the right to vote. "The question for every New York state lawmaker is: Do you want to be remembered as a leader on civil rights? Or an obstructionist? On matters of freedom and equality, history has not remembered obstructionists kindly," Bloomberg said in his speech at Manhattan's The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Bloomberg argued that failing to legalize gay marriage in New York, which he called the birthplace of the gay-rights movement, would have economic consequences as well as human ones. "As other states recognize the rights of same-sex couples to marry, we cannot stand by and watch. To do so would be to betray our civic values and history — and it would harm our competitive edge in the global economy," he said. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been pushing the Legislature to make gay marriage legal, but has said he wouldn't bring the issue to a vote unless he felt it would pass. The mayor argued that the state's residents deserve to see where their legislators stand, whatever the outcome. Senate Republicans, who are key to the effort, also are closely watching polls, which for the first time in months are showing an apparent slight erosion of public support for gay marriage after months of steady gains. State Sen. Ruben Diaz, a Democrat from the Bronx, has been arguing against the measure. He said Thursday that legislators, rather than residents, imposed gay marriage in states where it is legal. "When people have been given the chance to vote, they have rejected it," Diaz said.more