Genetic algorithms.
Older than 15 years:
Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
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Re: Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
#52Does Internet qualify? :) Probably the greatest thing that has happened in our lifetime.
The internet is definitely a great example. But I guess what I had in mind was more along the lines of things that haven't borne their fruit quite yet. Things that in retrospect people will see as seminal, but that are currently still hidden in research journals.
> things that haven't borne their fruit quite yet.
Well, what about web 3.0?
Re: Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
#53"When the transistor was first introduced in the late 40s there was quite a bit of hype surrounding it, but I wonder if anyone fully appreciated the significance of the development at the time."
Uh. From what I've read, it was on page twenty-something of the NYT, with a blurb about how it might be used in hearing aids.
Re: Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
#54Machine translation of language. In 10-15 years time, given improvement and dissemination of the technology, we might massively open up the world's communication. This could be significant as we massively increase the marketplace of ideas and communication.
Are you a MT practitioner? Email me (email in profile).
Nope. Purely an interested bystander on this one. While I hate saying leave it to Google they are working quite hard on this one and they have quite a lot of data.
Re: Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
#55Re: Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you a MT practitioner? Email me (email in profile).
Nope. Purely an interested bystander on this one. While I hate saying leave it to Google they are working quite hard on this one and they have quite a lot of data.
Are you in a startup? I'm working on something in this area... that's why I ask. You were the first one who mentioned this (that I saw) on n.yc.
Re: Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
#571) Measuring the age of the universe to a few percent ~14 billion years. 2) Determining the dark energy (70%) / dark matter (25%) / regular matter (5%) breakdown of the universe to a few percent. 3) The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Hubble Space Telescope and Wilkinson Probe I'm purposely being biased :)
Forgot one really important one:
The discovery of planets outside our solar system.
Re: Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why single out support vector machines? Sure, the kernel trick is neat but there's really nothing about them that stands out above other classification methods. It would make more sense just to say "the field of machine learning".
It's a practical (especially for small to medium sized data sets), effective way of doing machine learning that has a highly sound theory behind it and doesn't require arcane tricks that are rarely or never written down, unlike old-style artificial neural networks. The interest in kernel methods is proof that there's nothing more practical than a good theory. :)
At the same time, I think it's astounding how often k-nearest neighbors (a method considerably simpler than SVMs) is either the best or second-best classifier for a dataset. I'm not trying to pit SVMs vs. neural networks...rather I'm saying most methods of machine learning (neural nets, SVMs, gaussian mixture, kNN, what have you) can be effective and none stand out above the rest.
Re: Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
While RT-fMRI is an incremental technological advance (it's just faster data collection with some spiffy signal processing) it hugely broadens the scope of fMRI's usability. The hemodynamic delays of traditional fMRI are atrocious. For the first time fMRI is giving us access to when brain activity happens, which is nearly as importnat as knowing where . If you look at the biofeedback work being done with RT-fMRI you'…
I don't know about the BOLD delay being "atrocious". We get good temporal resolution and it's getting better and better (hundreds of milliseconds for some paradigms). I agree though - the biofeedback stuff is very exciting. As for below the first few centimeters, that's where the control network is in mid-brain structures. That's kind of important, and if EROS can't penetrate deeper and with precision it's not likely…
I think part of the reason neuro-imaging is so preoccupied with midbrain structures at the moment is because their activity is simpler and easier to correlate to the brain's inputs or outputs. With the huge boost in both spatial and temporal resolution EROS provides we can put more focus where the cognitive action is (the cortex).
Re: Major research breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years
#60Stem cell research and cloning. Growing replacement organs and/or cell sets to "repair in place" damaged parts of the human body is going to have the greatest impact in the long haul.
The mechanical heart is another wonder from medical science as well.