Philosopher Aaron Sloman claims that symbol grounding is impossible. I say it is possible, indeed necessary, for strong AI. Yet my own approach may be compatible with Sloman's.

Sloman equates "symbol grounding" with concept empiricism, thus rendering it impossible. However, I don't see the need to equate all symbol grounding to concept empiricism. And what Sloman calls "symbol tethering" may be what I call "symbol grounding," or at least a type of symbol grounding.

Firstly, as Sloman says about concept empiricism [1]:
Kant refuted this in 1781, roughly by arguing that experience without prior concepts (e.g. of space, time, ordering, causation) is impossible. -->

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There has been much activity in the news by those who have been promoting various ideas on paths to a manned presence on Mars. In some ways the approaches are all similar, except for one where volunteers are sought for a one-way trip to Mars with enough supplies for a sufficient amount of time to become self-sufficient ... or, well, that's too bad, but it was a good try.

The initiative is by a Dutch firm and is called Mars One, with the goal of people to Mars by 2022.
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Health care is shifting to be more like traditional service industries and that means more value will (and must be) delivered through technology and lesser-trained clinical personnel. 

With increased government control of health care, a predicted shortage of 65,000 primary care physicians (PCPs) by 2025 will mean a greater need for leveraging technology solutions. The role of the primary care physician, though not eliminated, will certainly change. 

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Alzheimer's research is always big news. The reason is simple: people are living longer and they also want to be living better. While progress in general health issues for seniors marches on, the brain remains trickier stuff. Instead of less Alzheimer's than in the past, we have more, thanks to better diagnosis and greater longevity. Once you reach a certain age, you are almost certain to have someone in your family with it. 
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The term 'living fossil' is a topic for argument among scientists because it appears to suggest that some organisms have stopped evolving. Like 'missing link' or 'God particle' the concern is the colloquial meaning has overtaken the science one.

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The number of Americans diagnosed with asthma is up to 26 million and a new paper says a majority, nearly two-thirds or more of all asthmatics, also have an allergy.  Asthma is frequently associated with children but 3 percent or more of adults 60 years and older also have it. The number may be higher, because older people did not grow up in a diagnosis culture, so asthma could be under-diagnosed in older adults. 

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A team of astronomers led by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have succeeded in observing the death throws of a giant star in unprecedented detail.

In February of 1987 astronomers were observing the nearby dwarf galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud when they discovered what looked like a new star.

It wasn't new, instead it was the end of one and it was the brightest supernova seen from Earth in the four centuries since the telescope was invented. By the next morning news of the discovery had spread across the globe and southern hemisphere stargazers began watching the aftermath of this enormous stellar explosion.

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The mediatic effect of the Higgs boson discovery of last July is clear to everybody. And CERN has been very good at exploiting it, making fundamental physics a familiar topic and creating interest worldwide. Yet I think we can do more. The gap between basic research in physics and the public is wide, and we are doing still too little to fill it.
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I recently watched a program on the Science Channel entitled "Human Nature: Born to Kill".  In this episode, part of the objective was to explore humans killing other humans.  Of course, the usual array of topics were raised, from evolutionary psychology to genes [i.e. the "warrior gene"] and even the "nature vs nurture debate".

However, there were a few points that I felt were muddled and confused.
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"Organic" food and products is a $29 billion big business and its marketing power is very strong: studies have shown that this simple label can lead us to think that a food is healthier, what is known as the 'health halo effect'.  Marketing attempts to penalize conventional food would also capitalize on that bias, making genetically modified food seem less healthy.  

A new paper by Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab out to to determine if an organic label can influence much more than health views: they found hat perceptions of taste, calories and value can be significantly altered when a food is labeled "organic". And certain people are more susceptible to 'health halo' marketing.

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Men with Lynch syndrome, an inherited genetic condition linked to a higher risk of several types of cancer, face a higher lifetime risk of developing prostate cancer and appear to develop the disease at an earlier age, according to a new study.

People with Lynch syndrome have up to 80 percent lifetime risk of colorectal cancer and are also more likely to develop endometrial, gastric, ovarian, urinary tract, pancreatic and brain tumors. Overall, about 1 in 440 people are carriers for the genetic mutation, making it one of the most common inherited cancer conditions.

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An experiment using microvesicles generated from mesenchymal bone marrow cells to treat cancer, neurological researchers at Henry Ford Hospital have discovered a novel approach for treatment of tumor.

Specifically, the research team found that introducing genetic material produced by mesenchymal bone marrow cells significantly reduced a particularly resistant form of malignant brain tumor in living lab rats.

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This is a fairly new problem, being traced back to as recently as 2003. However, it also has the kind of counter-intuitive solution that has made it a favourite on mathematical websites and forums. In its various retellings, it sometimes suffers from a lack of stringent conditions that result in rather imaginative solutions; perfectly legitimate solutions within the parameters set but not always the ‘classic’ one. If you’ve seen this before, then speed-read to the end where we take the side of the jailer!

The problem
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What looks like a tantalizing signal of the rare two-muon decay of the Higgs boson has been evidenced in an analysis of 2011+2012 data just sent to PRL by the CMS collaboration. This analysis targeted supersymmetric neutral Higgs bosons, whose decay to muon pairs is enhanced for some values of the SUSY parameters, but was not expecting to see any signal in the 25 inverse femtobarns of collisions that the CMS experiment has so far collected.
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When making holiday plans, golf is number 938 on my to-do list. Sure I can appreciate the energy transformations involved in swinging a club, deforming the ball and projecting it along a parabolic trajectory while dimples reduce drag. Indeed, the consistency of body mechanics and correct choice of club increase the likelihood that the ball will reach the right altitude and take the most direct path to the green. Psychologically, yes, it's nice to control one's emotions and play more efficiently, but I get a bigger thrill from finding someone else's ball in the woods than from sinking a long putt. -->

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So you want to be in the energy biz. Do you have what it takes? It’s April Fools' Day--- test your energy IQ and find out where you belong in the dynamic energy sector.

Prefabricated Housing
1) Is prefabricated housing cheaper and/or greener than stud built construction?
2) Did a Chinese developer build a prefabricated 30 story hotel in 15 days?

Oil Pipelines
3) Canada has a glut of oil and gives the United States bargain pricing. So, why does the United States buy oil from Venezuela?
4) For the Keystone XL Pipeline, what does the XL stand for? Hint, don’t confuse pipelines with men’s boxer shorts. -->

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Globally existential threats due to ‘overpopulation momentum’ together with the top-heavy age structure leave by now no alternative to radical technological adaptation for anything that wants to survive 'long term'.  It is strictly too late to ‘go green’ except via a novel take on what constitutes ‘green’, including synthetic biology.  Hyped for a long time, nanoscience is still largely in its pioneering phase.  However, it matures as we speak and soon, as it becomes true nanotechnology, it will leave the hype far behind.

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When I was a kid, I would happily play around with both words and numbers – I still do. Both have their aesthetic appeal. Whether it is constructing and deconstructing mathematical puzzles or cryptic crosswords, they appear as small artefacts that reveal a grander architecture. Combine this with the serendipity of the internet, and Pi Day was just a hop, skip and jump away from Richard Feynman and pilish poetry.
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Cross-disciplinary  academic progress in vagueness has recently been augmented  with a paper from Prof. PhDr. Jarmila Tárnyiková CSc. at Palacký University, in Olomouc, Czech Republic.

The professor has authored one of the very few papers to examine and compare English and Czech Non-numerical Vague Quantifiers (also known as Vague Non-numerical Quantifiers – VnQs).
Some examples from the paper :

• Piles of
• Oodles of
• Mountains of
• A Smidgen of
• A Dash of
• A Pinch of
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