The Group is pleased to report the success of yet another pioneering initiative.

Following this success, including a demonstration of a powerful, commercially available pattern recognition technology based on a quantum model and other earlier independently organised conferences in both Japan, the United States, (and elsewhwere?) plus a rapidly expanding scientific literature, it is clear that the area of quantum neural information processing is at least as important scientifically and technologically, as qubit quantum computing. Evidence for this, includes the recently published Chapline postulate. This postulate says that theoretical physics in the form quantum mechanics, re-interpreted as a theory of pattern cognition, defined through quantum holography, is the same as mathematics, and membrane string theory in cosmology. That is, it is a theory of Everything, explaining "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in physics.

The BCSCMsG symposium was both well attended and attracted some outstanding speakers.

In particular, we were privileged to have Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo Astronaut, sixth man to walk on the moon, and founder of Institute of Noetic Sciences, with us for five days, as both a symposium and principal plenary conference speaker. One of the Earth's great explorers (see his book ,"The Way of the Explorer") and farsighted scientists, Dr. Mitchell is no stranger to controversy. He founded the Institute, postulating a science of consciousness, over twenty years before the concept of such a science, became a respectable scientific endeavour. This time, however, he found overwhelming support among delegates for his thesis, based on his (and colleagues) assessment of the scientific evidence and of the overwhelming body of human experience, that science and technology, was in a major paradigm change; a change, that would unlock mankind from many of the limitations, which until now the current scientific paradigm had taught us were inescapable. This thesis stems from the fact that quantum understanding is now in expansion from the microscale to all scales, including that of the Universe itself. Thus our models of the world currently in general use, underwritten by classical science of the last two centuries, are merely a subset, dynamical invariants, of the larger, more all embracing, he believes, quantum holographic model. This breaking of the science barrier, of which, for example, the laboratory demonstation of quantum teleportation is a prime example, leads not only, he was convinced, to a science of consciousness, mind, the self, and mind -body processes (as well as how the brain is structured, and processes information semantically), but to a better understanding of mankind's place in the universe, and to technology that could take us out of the solar system to the stars - something that even now agencies like NASA are investigating, through the work of Professor Hal Puthoff , colleagues, and other groups.

Our second, and plenary speaker, was Professor Karl Pribram, the eminent Stanford neurophysologist, who many years ago conceived of the brain working holographically, based on his experience of how, despite extensive damage, the brain very often continued to function quite normally. He described his extensive career, of how the postulate of brain holography, was his third pioneering venture into new concepts for brain functioning, and of how each venture had prompted ridicule from his colleagues. Even though in the first two cases, the scientific evidence had proved him correct. He then explained how the evidence was once again accumulating in favour of the brain working quantum holographically. (So much so, that Pribram, who has now his own brain research institute at Radford University in Virginia, has, at eighty, been appointed to a new professorship at the prestigeous Georgetown University in Washington, DC. to work with them on just such research !)

Finally our third and plenary speaker, was Dr John Sutherland of the AND Corporation. He described and demonstrated the quantum holographic neural net technology, they had developed. This was no longer, a first order neural net approach based on the concept of the biological snapse as a weighting function, but a second order one, based on the dentrite, neuron, axon structure as an multiple input/output learning device. Here, each input/output is expressed in terms of a complex amplitude/phase treated via quantum mechanical rules. As a mathematical projection from the quantum to the classical, this model allows a simulation via existing computer technology. The demonstrations with respect to accuracy, rapidity and memory utilization of facial recognition, applied in real-time to delegates' faces, was most impressive. It had been compared with existing first order neural net approaches and exceeded their performance by several orders of magnitude, demonstrating the advantages of quantum mechanical over classical rules, even using existing technology. Once quantum information processing technology comes on-line, it should be directly applicable and even more impressive. In particular, it confirms George Chapline's (Lawrence Livermore) recent hypothesis, cited above, that quantum mechanics can be interpreted as a canonical method for solving pattern recognition problems, in line with Walter Schempp's for the description of synthetic aperature radars and functional magnetic resonance imaging systems. Indeed this hypothesis was implicit in the work of nearly all the symposium's speakers, ie the Pribram and the da Fonseca groups', Walter Schempp's and my own, Daniel Dubois', George Farre's, Mitja Perus', for biological brains and neuron nets; Salvatore Santoli, in relation to nano-biology and -technology, and Edgar Mitchell's in relation to mind/mind and mind/matter interactions, etc. And it is, of course, in line with the more well known work of Roger Penrose, and Stuart Hameroff.

The concept of a several day symposium investigating yet another quantum information processing frontier for the BCS, following on from Pathfinder in relation to qubit and quantum algorithmic computing, was therefore a great success. On both scientific and technology fronts, there was strong almost conclusive evidence that this frontier of quantum mechanics as a canonical method for pattern recognition problem solving, should again be a further area, where extensive funding ought to be available, if Europe and the UK is not again to fall behind, in the race with the USA and Japan. This area, could in the my opinion be even more significant than that of qubit quantum computing, since there are now very strong indications, both inside and outside the Liege symposiums findings that quantum holography is not only the quantum mechanical model for solving pattern recognition applicable in biological systems, but is isomorphic with membrane string theory in cosmology! That is, it is a serious candidate for both explaining how brains work, and for a theory of Everything, which are the two outstanding unsolved scientific problems of the age, and this is already being taken seriously as such, outside Europe.

It also demonstrated the cost efficiency of holding such a symposium , within the format of a much larger international event. The BCSCMsG was largely freed of a) the cost of administeration of the event, b) the cost of accomodating the event, and c) the cost of producing the proceedings, which however must now be purchased from the organisers. The CMsG was therefore, able to hold the event within its budget for the year, thanks largely to the generosity of its plenary speakers, and the conference organisers, without the need to ask for risk capital beforehand.

Peter Marcer, BCSCMsG chair and symposium organiser. 15.9.99