Hawkins, who will continue to work as chief technical officer of Treo maker palmOne (nasdaq: PLMO - news - people ), already has his own research lab to study the neocortex, a massive part of the brain thought to hold such higher level functions as language, learning, memory and complex thought.

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The prefrontal cortex has enabled us to have a number of advanced behaviors, including social behavior, tool making, language, and higher-level consciousness.

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The advent of modern optimizing compilers and many fold enhancements in computing hardware performance have now eliminated the need to use an assembly language in most applications and most applications are now written in higher level languages.

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