What is consciousness, and could machines have it?

Consciousness - - What Is It ?

Conventionally, there is a tendency to view consciousness as simply a property or activity of the brain. One can explain a lot about consciousness in this way – but not everything. In this article, we draw attention to certain aspects of consciousness that resist the conventional interpretation including, in particular, out-of-body experiences, past-life memories, the apparent linked consciousn...

Federal health policy response to Hurricane Katrina: what it was and what it could have been.

ONE YEAR AGO, THE UNITED STATES EXPERIENCED one of the worst natural disasters in its history. Hurricane Katr ina caused wel l documented, widespread death and destruction, reducing hospital capacity by 80% and safety-net clinics by 75% in New Orleans alone. The hurricane also created a diaspora of more than a million evacuees to every state in the nation. This disaster could be viewed as an is...

health communication what it is and what is not

What if Machines Could be Creative?

Computational creativity is the field of research that is concerned with making computers creative. In this paper, we focus on a particular subfield of this domain, combinatorial creativity. This subfield is concerned with combining components of existing concepts into new concepts. For example, we can combine the concept of a watch with the capabilities of a smartphone – and obtain a smartwatc...

Affective Forecasting: What is it, and what influences can it have in a medical context?