kevgnulldev

sorry for the late reply... just saw your post: http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/book/978-3-540-88008-0

Totally, my error for not adding value with some additional information in my last comment. Thank you. :)

1) some introductory material on receptor theory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receptor_theory

Yes, I know Wikipedia, a more comprehensive intro to basic neuro is "Principles of Neural Science, 5th Ed" (http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0071390111)... It's large book but the de facto standard.

2) a reference to some basic pharmacology with respect to opioid receptors that includes a summary discussion on receptor interactions (i.e. full agonists/antagonists/partial agonists):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64236/

3) some explanation per the specifics of the mu receptor (click on this only if you are truly thirsting for knowledge on the mu receptor):

http://www.iuphar-db.org/DATABASE/ObjectDisplayForward?objec...

Have a nice night!

I didn't say that it targets different receptors. I said it targets them (i.e. the same receptors) differently. I failed to go into the details of how it targets them differently (wasn't sure if that LOD was called for, or in good taste, considering that this is not a site about pharmacology or neurochemistry). I did see the wiki link... (I wouldn't have posted it if I hadn't.) Thank you for clarifying though! (BTW, I think that you meant somewhat not someone in your final sentence.)

Soboxone targets opioid receptors differently than heroin and, while it is technically a "replacement therapy" it is almost impossible to overdose on and more difficult to use on a continual basis for recreational purposes (the "positive" effects of the drug decay rapidly with continual use. To answer the question, one does experience withdrawal effects if they use Buprenorphine for a long enough time, however some professionals in the Recovery Industry (tm) use it to do a "fast taper" which is a more aggressive treatment over a short period of time in which the patient only takes Buprenorphine for a week or so to reduce the pain of heroin withdrawal (but not completely eliminate it) and then taper the dose of suboxone quickly before the patient has time to grow dependent. Yesterday's discussion of Wikipedia's accuracy notwithstanding, the link below actually does give some useful jumping off points.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buprenorphine

In short, users can get "strung out" on suboxone but if used in certain ways (I.e not for the long term "maintenance" that the pharma companies make their money on, but as a short therapy to quiet some of the discomfort experienced during opiate withdrawal, it can be effective and safe and not lead to long term use.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150159/

While I have reservations about this particular instantiation, discussion does seem to notions, at least vaguely (superficially?), to ideas that do have merit and are being successfully implemented in some US medical schools... (Emphasis on vague/superficial)... At the risk of enlarging the conversation beyond its intended scope, I'm thinking along lines of pedagogy that address some of these ideas:

http://learning.media.mit.edu/content/publications/EA.Piaget...

A move that I'd like to see but that this particular project only tips its hat to.

You're welcome. You might like this as well (the PDF is just the front matter of the book):

http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/967/bfm%253A978-3-64...

Related (albeit a bit dusty):

http://www.advogato.org/article/1069.html

Of related interest: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/minimum-description-length-pri...

http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0406077

I completely agree. A solid typeface evaporates between the page and the retina. Its shapes ease reading and allow the reader's vision to soften around the text and concentrate on the signal rather than the delivery modality. This is especially clear in mathematical typesetting and no discussion of type on a site with hacker in the name would be complete without a nod to the godfather (Donald Knuth) of both digital type and typography (both micro and macro see:

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_elements_of_typograp...

for a discussion of LOD in typography from a master designer)

To properly design his multi-volume set of CS/mathematics books:

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/taocp.html

Knuth developed an entire software toolchain that spans type face creation (metafont) to the document layout programming language TeX (yup, it's an actual Turing complete language!):

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=67555

He is also responsible for the creation of "literate programming"... All this in his spare time, of course, while he wasn't occupied with his responsibilities as a CS professor at Stanford, teaching, doing research (on things other than digital typography, e.g. the content of his books, combinatorics, etc. (...). Truly an inspiration!

Along similar lines, but a more focused book (no learning, etc) is the classic Cover and Thomas:

http://www.elementsofinformationtheory.com/

I do a bit of algorithmic composition as well (mostly microsound/granular synthesis) using NN and other graphical models (e.g. HMMs) for higher level compositional control... for grammar inference check out:

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/neco.1992.4....

Abstract: We show that a recurrent, second-order neural network using a real-time, forward training algorithm readily learns to infer small regular grammars from positive and negative string training samples. We present simulations that show the effect of initial conditions, training set size and order, and neural network architecture...

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell