Free Republic

A University of Washington computer scientist has led a statistical study of the Indus script, comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and nonlinguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language. The results, published online April 23 by the journal Science, found the Indus script's pattern is closer to that of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language... In 2004 a provocative paper titled The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis claimed that the short inscriptions have no linguistic content and are merely brief pictograms depicting religious or political symbols. That paper's lead...

GETTING INSIDE YOUR HEAD Mind-reading is often dismissed as nothing more than a charlatan trick, but scientists and researchers are trying to change this 'decoding of the brain' from quack-science to hard science. Indeed, significant advancements have been made in this area already. And now, University of Washington scientists have developed technology that allows a device to effectively read your mind. With a combination of brain implants and sophisticated software, the team was able to interpret their subjects' thoughts and extrapolate what their subjects were seeing. Thanks to this study, scientists were able to gain insight into how people are...

Communicating through your thoughts alone is possible — with a little technical assistance. Scientists at the University of Washington's Center for Neurotechnology have figured out how to network human minds together to collaborate to move Tetris-like shapes on a computer screen using only thoughts. It works like this: Three players, including one main player, sit in separate rooms and watch game pieces cascade down a computer screen. Using telepathy (and a lot of hardware, including a heavily wired brain cap), two players "tell" the main player which way to move the pieces to clear the bottom row. I know because...

Four-thousand years ago, an urban civilization lived and traded on what is now the border between Pakistan and India. During the past century, thousands of artifacts bearing hieroglyphics left by this prehistoric people have been discovered. Today, a team of Indian and American researchers are using mathematics and computer science to try to piece together information about the still-unknown script. The team led by a University of Washington researcher has used computers to extract patterns in ancient Indus symbols. The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows distinct patterns in the symbols'...