HORACE —an artificial columnist

Low Entropy Coding with Unsupervised Neural Networks

The Green Paper. An Hypothesis to Explain the Delay in Its Appearance

In the DHSS, the Permanent Secretary, Sir Horace Appleby (brother of the better known Sir Humphrey) and Nigel (The Minister's Private Secretary) await the arrival of the new Minister of Health at his first appearance in the Department offices. Sir Horace: All ready to meet your new Minister, Nigel? Nigel: Yes, Sir Horace; but they do seem to change rather frequently and this one seems to be a v...

Unconditionally Secure Quantum Bit Commitment Is Possible

Bit commitment involves the submission of evidence from one party to another so that the evidence can be used to confirm a later revealed bit value by the first party, while the second party cannot determine the bit value from the evidence alone. An unconditionally secure bit commitment protocol utilizing quantum states is presented. The generality of previous proofs on the impossibility of qua...

Horace Barlow

Horace Barlow is retired Royal Society Research Professor of Physiology at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of the Royal Society. He graduated in Medicine at Cambridge in 1947 and stayed there doing research in vision until 1964. He then moved to the University of California at Berkeley, staying there until 1973 when he returned to Cambridge. His main interest has always been in vision, ...

Staying Afloat in the Rising Tide of Science

New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer discusses the challenges of effectively communicating with the public about science.