The experimental observation of quantum avalanches in a many-body localized system
100+Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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Strongly correlated systems are systems made of particles that strongly interact with one another, to such an extent that their individual behavior depends on the behavior of all other particles in the system. In states that are far from equilibrium, these systems can sometimes give rise to fascinating and unexpected physical phenomena, such as many-body localization.
New computational method to identify location of cell types in a sample
92Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 02:43PM
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Stanford University researchers have developed a computational method for identifying where cells are situated in a sample when capturing spatial transcriptomics. The method combines data from spatial transcriptions and a reference single-cell RNA atlas to create modeling outputs. The resulting models can be used to view cellular substructures, identify colocalization patterns and analyze differential expression within a cell type by location.
Generation of functional oocytes from male mice in vitro
24Nature by Kenta Murakami / March 15, 2023 at 12:15PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05834-x
Mouse induced pluripotent stem cells derived from differentiated fibroblasts could be converted from male (XY) to female (XX), resulting in cells that could form oocytes and give rise to offspring after fertilization.
TODAY
Notre Dame is held together by a first-of-its-kind 'iron skeleton,' catastrophic fire revealed
Livescience / March 15, 2023 at 08:02PM
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During its construction beginning in the 12th century, builders used iron staples to support Notre Dame's masonry.
International scientists warn of the serious impact of noise pollution on marine invertebrates
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:57PM
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An international scientific study, led by the UPC's Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB), shows that noise from human operations at sea damages marine invertebrates and ocean ecosystems. Published in Frontiers in Marine Science, the work points out that noise pollution at sea can even cause death in some marine species.
International scientists warn of the serious impact of noise pollution on marine invertebrates
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 07:53PM
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An international scientific study, led by the UPC's Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB), shows that noise from human operations at sea damages marine invertebrates and ocean ecosystems. Published in Frontiers in Marine Science, the work points out that noise pollution at sea can even cause death in some marine species.
Environmental and Indigenous Groups Sue over Willow Oil-Drilling Project
Biden Willow Alaska
Scientific American Content by Niina H. Farah, E&E News / March 15, 2023 at 07:49PM
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A coalition of environmental and Indigenous groups is suing the Biden administration over the approval of the Willow oil- and gas-drilling project in Alaska, arguing the government failed to consider the climate risks, as well as harm to wildlife and subsistence hunting
Local supply of managerial skills can impact firm performance
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:44PM
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If you think that the executive labor market is a global one, you're not alone. After all, it's pretty common to read about top managers being hired to steer the fate of far-away companies. However, recent research by Julien Sauvagnat (Bocconi Department of Finance) and Fabiano Schivardi (LUISS) highlights that local supply of managerial talent is an underestimated driver of company performance, and that local policies aimed at boosting growth should boost the supply of leadership skills.
U.S. East Coast landslide impacts from Puerto Rico to Vermont and in between
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:44PM
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In the U.S., we may often think of landslides as primarily a West Coast problem, mostly plaguing the mountainous terrain of California, Oregon, and Washington. A technical session at the upcoming GSA 2023 Joint Southeastern & Northeastern Section Meeting in Reston, Virginia, U.S., will highlight the major impacts of landslides on the U.S. East Coast and what is being done to save lives and deal with the damages.
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:44PM
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In a groundbreaking announcement at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in The Woodlands, Texas, scientists revealed the discovery of a relict glacier near the equator of Mars. Located in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus at coordinates 7° 33' S, 93° 14' W, this finding is significant as it implies the presence of surface water ice on Mars in recent times, even near the equator. This discovery raises the possibility that ice may still exist at shallow depths in the area, which could have significant implications for future human exploration.
Tasmanian devil whiskers may hold the key to protecting these super-scavengers
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:35PM
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Despite the damage humans cause to the planet, in some cases wildlife can benefit from the presence of people. The Tasmanian devil, for example, frequently feeds on roadkill left by humans.
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:35PM
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It's expensive to pollute the water in Colorado. The state's median fine for companies caught violating the federal Clean Water Act is over US$30,000, and violators can be charged much more. In Montana, however, most violators get barely a slap on the wrist—the median fine there is $300.
Tasmanian devil whiskers may hold the key to protecting these super-scavengers
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 07:33PM
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Despite the damage humans cause to the planet, in some cases wildlife can benefit from the presence of people. The Tasmanian devil, for example, frequently feeds on roadkill left by humans.
Scientific Reports by Keiichiro Minami / March 15, 2023 at 07:29PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31070-4
Temperature-controlled porcine eye holder for observing intraocular temperature during
cataract
surgery
Family Tree review – study of the mother of modern medicine falls between poetry and play
Science | The Guardian by Mark Fisher / March 15, 2023 at 07:26PM
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Belgrade theatre, Coventry
Mojisola Adebayo’s play connects Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were used in decades of vital scientific research, with the Black Lives Matter movement
‘I am a farm,” says Henrietta Lacks in Mojisola Adebayo’s play about one of medical history’s most inconvenient truths. It is a twin statement of astonishment and outrage. Astonishment because the cells removed from Henrietta’s cancerous body in the early 1950s went on to be used in everything from chemotherapy to IVF, from a treatment for polio to the fight against Covid. Outrage because those cells were taken without her knowledge, let alone her approval – and certainly not to her financial benefit. She might have been a farm, but she was not the farmer.
The story was told brilliantly in 2013 by Adura Onashile in HeLa, a play that was equally disturbed by the exploitative treatment of this black patient by the white establishment. A decade later, Adebayo’s Family Tree is able to make connections to Black Lives Matter and the effect of the pandemic on black workers in the NHS. She also brings in the 19th-century gynaecological experiments on slave women by Dr James Marion Sims. A grim pattern emerges, even as Henrietta’s cells bring new life.
At Belgrade theatre, Coventry, until 18 March, then touring until 17 June.
Microsoft Laid Off Its Entire AI “Ethics and Society” Division
Microsoft AI Ethics
200+Futurism by Maggie Harrison / March 15, 2023 at 07:23PM
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Society Who?
Microsoft
got rid of its entire company division devoted to AI "ethics and society" during its January layoffs, according to a report from Platformer.
Though the company still has an office of responsible AI, it was the job of the ethics and society staff to address how AI technology is likely to impact human society in context and communicate with product teams accordingly.
"People would look at the principles coming out of the office of responsible AI and say, 'I don't know how this applies,'" one former ethicist told Platformer. "Our job was to show them and to create rules in areas where there were none."
But now, as Microsoft races to jam OpenAI software into seemingly every product that it can, the ethics and society department is gone — a telling sign that Microsoft is more focused on profitability and getting AI-driven products to market than ensuring that those products remain a positive force for society as a whole.
Strung Out
According to Platformer, the team was short-staffed for months before it was ultimately dissolved.
Most of their 30-person staff was reassigned way back in October, leaving just seven employees to manage the department.
The cuts were the reportedly result of pressure being applied from upper management including CTO Kevin Scott and CEO Satya Nadella, who were trying to "take these most recent OpenAI models and the ones that come after them and move them into customers' hands at a very high speed," according to a VP quoted by Platformer.
Per the report, the remaining employees were also told in the meeting that their department was just "evolving" and wouldn't be "going away."
Months later, though, they were all dismissed, along with the division — right as the company announced its mammoth $10 billion investment in OpenAI.
Not Dead Yet
For its part, Microsoft has maintained that building responsible AI tools is still a priority.
"Microsoft is committed to developing AI products and experiences safely and responsibly, and does so by investing in people, processes, and partnerships that prioritize this," Microsoft told Platformer in a statement. "Over the past six years, we have increased the number of people across our product teams and within the Office of Responsible AI who, along with all of us at Microsoft, are accountable for ensuring we put our AI principles into practice."
"We appreciate the trailblazing work the Ethics & Society did to help us on our ongoing responsible AI journey," the company added.
READ MORE: Microsoft just laid off one of its responsible AI teams [Platformer]
More on Microsoft ethics: Microsoft Released an AI That Answers Medical Questions, but It’s Wildly Inaccurate
The post Microsoft Laid Off Its Entire AI “Ethics and Society” Division appeared first on Futurism.
No One Knows How the Biggest Animals on Earth–Baleen Whales–Find Their Food
27Scientific American by Kate Wong / March 15, 2023 at 07:22PM
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How do giant filter-feeding whales find their tiny prey? The answer could be key to saving endangered species
Notre Dame fire revealed cathedral’s innovative use of iron
New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 07:21PM
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The 2019 fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris unexpectedly led to discovery of the building’s use of iron staple reinforcements throughout its structure. It’s the first Gothic cathedral known to have used such a method
Surprising New Evidence Suggests Volcanoes Are Still Erupting on Venus
27ScienceAlert by Michelle Starr / March 15, 2023 at 07:19PM
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This changes things.
Salmon fishing banned along California coast as population plummets
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 07:16PM
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Fishing boats would normally fan out along the California coast to catch Chinook salmon in the spring, but regulators have announced the fishing season will be shut down this year.
Salmon fishing banned along California coast as population plummets
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:14PM
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Fishing boats would normally fan out along the California coast to catch Chinook salmon in the spring, but regulators have announced the fishing season will be shut down this year.
Scientists offer evidence that Venus is volcanically active
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:14PM
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Venus appears to have volcanic activity, according to a new research paper that offers strong evidence to answer the lingering question about whether Earth's sister planet currently has eruptions and lava flows.
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:14PM
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The Notre-Dame de Paris is the first known cathedral of Gothic-style architecture to be initially constructed with extensive use of iron to bind stones together. The 2019 fire that significantly damaged the cathedral enabled analyses leading to this discovery, by Maxime L'Héritier of Université Paris 8, France and colleagues, who present these findings in PLOS ONE on March 15, 2023.
Uncovering the ritual past of an ancient stone monument in Saudi Arabia
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:14PM
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A comprehensive analysis of an archaeological site in Saudi Arabia sheds new light on mustatils—stone monuments from the Late Neolithic period thought to have been used for ritual purposes. Melissa Kennedy of the University of Western Australia, Perth, and colleagues, in conjunction with The Royal Commission for AlUla present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on March 15, 2023.
Drones gather new and useful data for marine research, but they can disturb whales and dolphins
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:14PM
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Drones have changed the way researchers study whales and dolphins. While we were once confined to the decks of boats and observation platforms, glimpsing the backs of surfacing animals, we can now watch them from above. Gaining a bird's eye view of whales and dolphins has already taught us so much about their physiology and behavior.
Future NASA moonwalkers to sport sleeker spacesuits
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:14PM
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Moonwalking astronauts will have sleeker, more flexible spacesuits that come in different sizes when they step onto the lunar surface later this decade.
Arctic sea ice thins in 2 big jumps, and now more vulnerable
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:14PM
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Climate change attacked crucial Arctic sea ice thickness in two sudden big gobbles instead of steady nibbling, a new study says.
'Revolutionary': Scientists create mice with two fathers
Scientists Mice Two
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:14PM
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Scientists have created eggs using the cells of male mice for the first time, leading to the birth of seven mice with two fathers, according to research Wednesday hailed as "revolutionary".
How to use free satellite data to monitor natural disasters and environmental changes
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 07:14PM
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If you want to track changes in the Amazon rainforest, see the full expanse of a hurricane or figure out where people need help after a disaster, it's much easier to do with the view from a satellite orbiting a few hundred miles above Earth.
Publisher Correction: Essential elements of radical pair magnetosensitivity in Drosophila
Nature by Adam A. Bradlaugh / March 15, 2023 at 07:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05929-5
Publisher Correction: Essential elements of radical pair magnetosensitivity in Drosophila
Nord Stream pipeline blasts stirred up toxic sediment
Nature by Katharine Sanderson / March 15, 2023 at 07:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00746-2
The explosions happened in a dumping ground for chemical warfare, but other contaminants proved most toxic to marine life.
Forskare: Vanlig förkylning skyddar små barn mot covid-19
Vetenskap | SVT Nyheter / March 15, 2023 at 07:06PM
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Forskare tror sig nu ha hittat en förklaring till varför små barn inte blir lika sjuka som äldre när de smittas av Sars Cov 2-viruset. Ett av de vanliga förkylningsvirus som ofta drabbar barn tycks nämligen träna upp deras försvar även mot Sars Cov 2. Det här kan påverka hur man ska vaccinera barn och äldre vuxna mot virusinfektioner.
Drones gather new and useful data for marine research, but they can disturb whales and dolphins
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 07:05PM
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Drones have changed the way researchers study whales and dolphins. While we were once confined to the decks of boats and observation platforms, glimpsing the backs of surfacing animals, we can now watch them from above. Gaining a bird's eye view of whales and dolphins has already taught us so much about their physiology and behavior.
'Revolutionary': Scientists create mice with two fathers
Scientists Mice Two
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 07:05PM
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Scientists have created eggs using the cells of male mice for the first time, leading to the birth of seven mice with two fathers, according to research Wednesday hailed as "revolutionary".
To ensure vaccines work properly, men should get a good night’s sleep
Science & technology / March 15, 2023 at 07:03PM
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The case for women is less clear
Evidence is growing that playing contact sports can lead to long-term brain injuries
Science & technology / March 15, 2023 at 07:03PM
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Rubgy players are taking their sport’s governing bodies to court, alleging harm
Dry cleaning chemical may be invisible Parkinson’s cause
Futurity.org by Mark Michaud-Rochester / March 15, 2023 at 06:58PM
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A common and widely used chemical may be fueling the rise of Parkinson’s disease, the world’s fastest growing brain condition, researchers say.
For the past 100 years, trichloroethylene (TCE) has been used to decaffeinate coffee, degrease metal, and dry clean clothes. It contaminates the Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune, 15 toxic Superfund sites in Silicon Valley, and up to one-third of groundwater in the US.
TCE causes cancer, is linked to miscarriages and congenital heart disease, and is associated with a 500% increased risk of Parkinson’s disease.
In a hypothesis paper in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, researchers, including University of Rochester Medical Center neurologists Ray Dorsey, Ruth Schneider, and Karl Kieburtz, postulate that TCE may be an invisible cause of Parkinson’s. They detail the widespread use of the chemical, the evidence linking the toxicant to Parkinson’s, and profile seven individuals, including a former NBA basketball player , a Navy captain, and a late US Senator, who developed Parkinson’s disease either after likely working with the chemical or being exposed to it in the environment.
Massive TCE contamination
TCE was a widely used solvent used in a number of industrial, consumer, military, and medical applications, including to remove paint, correct typewriting mistakes, clean engines, and anesthetize patients.
Its use in the US peaked in the 1970s, when more than 600 million pounds of the chemical—or two pounds per American—were manufactured annually. Some 10 million Americans worked with the chemical or other similar industrial solvents. While domestic use has since fallen, TCE is still used for degreasing metal and spot dry cleaning in the US.
TCE contaminates countless sites across the country. Half of the most toxic Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund sites contain TCE. Fifteen sites are in California’s Silicon Valley where the chemicals were used to clean electronics and computer chips. TCE is found in numerous military bases, including Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. From the 1950s to the 1980s a million Marines, their families, and civilians that worked or resided at the base were exposed to drinking water levels of TCE and perchloroethylene (PCE), a close chemical cousin, that were up to 280 times above what is considered safe levels.
Soil, water, and air
The connection between TCE and Parkinson’s was first hinted at in case studies more than 50 years ago. In the intervening years, research in mice and rats has shown that TCE readily enters the brain and body tissue and at high doses damages the energy-producing parts of cells known as mitochondria. In animal studies, TCE causes selective loss of dopamine-producing nerve cells, a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease in humans.
Individuals who worked directly with TCE have an elevated risk of developing Parkinson’s. However, the authors warn that “millions more encounter the chemical unknowingly through outdoor air, contaminated groundwater, and indoor air pollution.”
The chemical can contaminate soil and groundwater leading to underground rivers, or plumes, that can extend over long distances and migrate over time. One such plume associated with an aerospace company on Long Island, New York, is over four miles long and two miles wide, and has contaminated the drinking water of thousands. Others are found everywhere from Shanghai, China to Newport Beach, California.
Beyond their risks to water, the volatile TCE can readily evaporate and enter people’s homes, schools, and workplaces, often undetected. Today, this vapor intrusion is likely exposing millions who live, learn, and work near former dry cleaning, military, and industrial sites to toxic indoor air. Vapor intrusion was first reported in the 1980s when radon was found to evaporate from soil and enter homes and increase the risk of lung cancer. Today millions of homes are tested for radon, but few are for the cancer-causing TCE.
Personal stories of Parkinson’s and TCE
The piece profiles seven individuals where TCE may have contributed to their Parkinson’s disease. While the evidence linking TCE exposure to Parkinson’s disease in these individuals is circumstantial, their stories highlight the challenges of building the case against the chemical. For these individuals, decades have often passed between exposure to TCE and the onset of Parkinson’s symptoms.
The case studies include the professional basketball player Brian Grant, who played for 12 years in the NBA and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at age 36. Grant was likely exposed to TCE when he was three years old and his father, then a Marine, was stationed at Camp Lejeune. Grant has created a foundation to inspire and support people with the disease.
Amy Lindberg was similarly exposed to the contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune while serving as a young Navy captain and would go on to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 30 years later.
The piece details others whose exposure was the result of living close to a contaminated site or working with the chemical, including the late US Senator Johnny Isakson, who stepped down from office after a Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2015. Fifty years earlier, he served in the Georgia Air National Guard, which used TCE to degrease airplanes.
End the use of TCE
The authors note that “for more than a century, TCE has threatened workers, polluted the air we breathe—outside and inside—and contaminated the water we drink. Global use is waxing, not waning.”
The authors propose a series of actions to address the public health threat TCE poses. They note that contaminated sites can be successfully remediated and indoor air exposure can be mitigated by vapor remediation systems similar to those used for radon. However, the US alone is home to thousands of contaminated sites and this process of cleaning and containment must be accelerated.
They argue for more research to better understand how TCE contributes to Parkinson’s and other diseases. TCE levels in groundwater, drinking water, soil, and outdoor and indoor air require closer monitoring and this information needs to be shared with those who live and work near polluted sites.
In addition, the authors call for finally ending the use of these chemicals in the US. PCE is still widely used today in dry cleaning and TCE in vapor degreasing. Two states, Minnesota and New York, have banned TCE, but the federal government has not, despite findings by the EPA as recently as 2022 that the chemicals pose “an unreasonable risk to human health.”
Additional coauthors are from Harvard University; Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Alabama at Birmingham; and the University of Rochester.
Source: University of Rochester
The post Dry cleaning chemical may be invisible Parkinson’s cause appeared first on Futurity.
Cosmic rays left clues to erosion in the Andes
Futurity.org by Dan Bernardi-Syracuse / March 15, 2023 at 06:45PM
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New research documents erosion rates in the Andes Mountains.
Every second, Earth is bombarded by vast amounts of cosmic rays—invisible sub-atomic particles that originate from things like the sun and supernova explosions. These high-energy, far-traveled cosmic rays collide with atoms as they enter Earth’s atmosphere and set off cascades of secondary cosmic rays.
When secondary cosmic rays penetrate the upper meters of Earth’s surface, they turn elements in minerals, like oxygen, into rare radioisotopes (or “cosmogenic radionuclides”) including beryllium-10 (Be-10) and carbon-14 (C-14).
Scientists can then study the variations in concentrations of these cosmogenic nuclides to estimate how long rocks have been exposed at the Earth’s surface. This in turn allows researchers to gain a better understanding of planetary processes, such as rates of erosion—from nothing more than a kilogram of river sand.
Gregory Hoke, professor and department chair of earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University, J.R. Slosson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Nat Lifton, associate professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at Purdue University, analyzed cosmogenic radionuclides in samples from the Argentine Andes. Their findings appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Their goal was to document the amount of time material resides on the hillslopes in the Andes Mountains relative to the overall erosion rate of the river basin. This information is critical to helping scientists identify landslide risks and understand how climate change will affect the dynamics of material transport on hillslopes as regions get wetter or drier.
To determine erosion rates, the team obtained samples of river sand collected at the foot of the eastern flank of the Andes Mountains in the Mendoza and San Juan provinces, located in west-central Argentina. The river sand should be a representative, well-mixed sample of the entire catchment (or runoff area) upstream of where the sample was collected.
In Hoke’s lab, the sand was treated to isolate pure quartz from the other minerals in the sample. The researchers use pure quartz because it is an optimal source for Be-10 and C-14. Splits of pure quartz were sent to Lifton’s lab where beryllium and carbon were extracted. Subsequent measurements of C-14 took place at Purdue’s PRIME Lab and Be-10 was analyzed at Lawrence Livermore National laboratory to figure out concentrations of each radionuclide.
The highest non-volcanic peaks in the Andes are located between Santiago, Chile and Mendoza, Argentina. The river basins that drain the high Andes span 5,000 meters (16,500 feet) in elevation and their hillslopes are lined with accumulations of rocky debris known as talus and scree.
Because Be-10 and C-14 are produced proportionally but decay at vastly different rates, the cosmogenic radionuclide concentrations within a sample reveal the rate at which sediment is produced from bare rock surfaces (Be-10) and the time it takes to travel down hillslopes through landslides (C-14). As sediment is mobilized and buried through landsliding, the rate of production of both isotopes diminishes, but because C-14 decays 1,000 times faster than Be-10, their proportionality changes rapidly. This change in proportionally allowed the authors to apply a statistical model to determine the average duration of time it takes material to travel down talus slopes.
According to Hoke, this is one of the first studies to use the combination of Be-10 and C-14 to show the long-term average rate of sediment generation and the time and process it takes to move down to and through the rivers, giving a broader picture of the factors involved.
“Previously, we’ve relied nearly exclusively on Be-10 and sediment concentration measurements made at river gauge stations to estimate average erosion rates,” notes Hoke. “What attracted us to study these catchments with C-14 was the agreement of gauge and Be-10 data. We expected to see the two isotopes and gauge data yield the same rates and demonstrate that mountain erosion was occurring at a steady state.”
While the concentration of Be-10 came back as anticipated over the long timescale, they found that C-14 was much lower than anticipated, meaning that sediments eroded from the high mountain watersheds were shielded from cosmic rays for at least 7,000 to 15,0000 years. The authors explain that temporary storage in talus slopes best explains the lower concentration of C-14 relative to Be-10.
“This study shows that it is possible to fill an important gap in the observational timescale using the C-14/Be-10 pair that brings to life what really happens on the hillslopes,” says Hoke.
With the risk that landslides pose to humans and infrastructure, Slosson says their results indicate that C-14 can be significant in unraveling sediment transport dynamics going forward, and potentially help predict where future landslides might occur. He explains, “utilizing C-14 along with Be-10 provides a new window into the complexity of sediment transport in mountain settings and can provide a backdrop for evaluating contemporary changes in earth surface processes.”
The project had funding from the National Science Foundation, the Geological Society of America, and Syracuse University.
Source: Syracuse University
The post Cosmic rays left clues to erosion in the Andes appeared first on Futurity.
Dry forests and savannas vital for Brazil's climate goals
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:45PM
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Brazil must protect and restore its dry forests and savannas to achieve its climate goals, new research shows.
Killing dingoes is the only way to protect livestock, right? Nope
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:45PM
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Since European colonization, farmers have often viewed dingoes as the enemy, waging war against them to protect their livestock. Farmers felt they had no option but to eradicate dingoes using traps, shooting, poisoned baits (such as 1080) and building a 5,600km long dingo fence, the world's longest.
Killing dingoes is the only way to protect livestock, right? Nope
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 06:43PM
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Since European colonization, farmers have often viewed dingoes as the enemy, waging war against them to protect their livestock. Farmers felt they had no option but to eradicate dingoes using traps, shooting, poisoned baits (such as 1080) and building a 5,600km long dingo fence, the world's longest.
Hormone Therapy Triggers Male Gene Patterns in Transgender Men’s Cells
The Scientist RSS / March 15, 2023 at 06:42PM
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A study deepens the scientific understanding of how androgens influence breast tissue, which may offer clues to treating breast cancer.
Computing and life sciences to benefit from UK financial and regulatory measures
Science / March 15, 2023 at 06:40PM
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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt vows to make Britain the ‘best place in Europe’ for tech companies to invest
Spacesuit for return to the Moon unveiled
21BBC News – Science & Environment / March 15, 2023 at 06:38PM
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After 40 years Nasa's astronauts finally get a spacesuit upgrade for their next mission to the Moon.
No shortage of tax breaks in New Mexico's drought
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:36PM
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Trickle-down economics may have more than one meaning in New Mexico. The traditional definition explains that benefits and relief for the wealthy will eventually benefit everyone else. In new UNM Water Resources research, however, the trickle-down economics of irrigation, may be running out of water to drip–literally. The paper is published in the Natural Resources Journal.
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:36PM
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When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in for his third term as president of Brazil on January 1, 2023, he invited a diverse group to accompany him as he ascended the ramp to his offices. Among them, two symbolized the giant step that the country was taking toward a more promising ecological future: Chief Raoni Metuktire, a 90-year-old indigenous leader who dedicated his life to the defense of the Amazon rainforest, and Aline Sousa, a 33-year-old collector of recyclable materials, an occupation pursued by her family for three generations. It was Sousa who placed the presidential sash on Lula, representing not only the Brazilian people but also a message of hope for a more sustainable government for the next four years.
Largest catalog of exploding stars now available
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:36PM
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Celestial phenomena that change with time such as exploding stars, mysterious objects that suddenly brighten and variable stars are a new frontier in astronomical research, with telescopes that can rapidly survey the sky revealing thousands of these objects.
Economic study determines which US states would provide the best life
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:36PM
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When assessing the quality of life of people around the world, economists have primarily focused on comparisons between countries, such as European nations vs. African nations vs. the United States. Metrics like per capita income, life expectancy and leisure are often used.
Pressurised natural caves could offer a home from home on the Moon
Science & technology / March 15, 2023 at 06:35PM
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Is this article about Real Estate?
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It would make building bases a lot cheaper and easier
Researchers discover longest-necked dinosaur in China
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 06:33PM
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A sauropod from China may have had the longest neck of any known dinosaur.
Deadly cyclone 'Freddy' may be the longest-lived and most energetic storm ever recorded
Livescience / March 15, 2023 at 06:32PM
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Cyclone Freddy, which is finally dissipating after battering Southeast Africa, has crossed the entire Indian Ocean and made landfall three separate times.
60,000-mile-tall 'plasma waterfall' snapped showering the sun with impossibly fast fire
Livescience / March 15, 2023 at 06:32PM
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A massive wall of falling plasma, known as a polar crown prominence, was recently captured in a stunningly-detailed new photo of the sun.
James Webb Takes Breathtaking Image of a Titanic Star That's About to Explode
NASA Webb Wolf-Rayet
Futurism by Frank Landymore / March 15, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Final Blossom
Turning its sights to the constellation Sagittarius, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a spectacular image of a star in its death throes some 15,000 light years away, NASA announced on Tuesday.
The image shows the star ejecting astronomical amounts of material as it's getting ready to explode in a supernova, a rare sight captured in incredible detail by the observatory.
Going Supernova
The terminal stellar rarity, designated WR 124, is a special classification of a star known as a Wolf-Rayet. These are exceptionally massive stars — 30 times the mass of our Sun, in this case — that are undergoing a final and tragically transient stage of their evolution before exploding in a supernova.
Not all stars capable of going supernova become a Wolf-Rayet, however. A star would already have to be huge to qualify, but a Wolf-Rayet is so large that it continuously sloughs off huge portions of its mass, encircling itself in a vivid, scintillating spectrum of dust and gasses.
So far, WR 124 has shed around ten solar masses.
Wolf-Rayets are astoundingly hot, too. As such, their luminosity exceeds most stars in the universe, but that does not make them any less elusive to astronomers, however. Few exist in our galaxy, and the intensity of their burning and shedding means they live only a few hundred thousand years, a tiny blip on a cosmic scale.
Dust in the Cosmos
Given the rarity of the find, astronomers are eager to take advantage of the James Webb's unrivaled capabilities to examine the star. In particular, they're interested in WR 124's contribution to the so-called "dust budget" of the universe.
Free-floating dust is needed to form planets, facilitate the creation of molecules, and protect newborn stars, NASA said. The big mystery is that scientists can't reconcile the amount of dust in the universe with existing theories on how dust is formed.
In other words, there's simply more of it out there than there should be, as far as we can tell.
"The universe is operating with a dust budget surplus," the agency wrote.
Since Wolf-Rayets viciously shed so much of their mass in short periods of time, they're also the universe's best producers of dust — and perhaps the culprit, or at least a prime suspect, of the apparent dust surplus.
Until now, telescopes weren't powerful enough to investigate the mystical dust-spouting properties of Wolf-Rayets, and "whether the dust grains were large and bountiful enough to survive the supernova and become a significant contribution to the overall dust budget," NASA said.
"Now those questions can be investigated with real data."
More on stars: Scientists Find "One in Ten Billion" Star System Primed to Explode in Titanic Kilonova
The post James Webb Takes Breathtaking Image of a Titanic Star That's About to Explode appeared first on Futurism.
Tesla Driver Freaked Out After App Allows Him to Drive Off With the Wrong Car
Canadian Tesla 3 Drive
300+Futurism by Noor Al-Sibai / March 15, 2023 at 06:31PM
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It's not every day that you catch yourself accidentally driving somebody else's car.
According to the Washington Post, a weird bug is allowing
Tesla
owners to drive off with somebody else's Tesla by using the EV maker's bespoke smartphone app.
Owner Rajesh Randev told WaPo that earlier this month, he walked up to a nearly identical white Model 3 in Vancouver without realizing it wasn't his, used the app to unlock it, and drove around a bit before realizing that it wasn't, in fact, his car.
Randev said it took him about 15 minutes of driving the stranger's Tesla to realize something was amiss: there was a crack in the windshield that hadn't been there before, and a phone charger was missing from where he usually kept his.
It was around the time he noticed the missing charger cable that Randev said his phone buzzed, alerting him to a new text message from an unknown number.
"Do you drive a Tesla?" the unknown texter asked. Randev responded affirmatively, and the other person texted back that they thought he may be "driving the wrong car."
Understandably, the mix-up left him feeling pretty wigged out.
"It’s such an expensive technology," Randev, who works as an immigration consultant, told WaPo. "More than $70,000 to get this car. And my family is not feeling safe right now."
The other car was, per the report, owned by Mahmoud Esaeyh, who had let his brother Mohammed borrow the car while he was at home. The brother was, even more unsettlingly, able to get into Randev's car using Mahmoud's key card, and once he was inside, he realized that it wasn't the right one.
Fortunately, the bizarre story has a happy ending.
Esaeyh was able to track his car's location using the Tesla app, but unable to lock it remotely, the report notes. So, after finding Randev's phone number on some documents inside his car, the two brothers were able to get in contact with him and swap back cars, all while initially sharing a laugh about the incident.
"My friend, you were able to drive my car?" Randev asked Mohammed.
"Yes, it was very fun," the Esaeyh brother responded.
While this specific situation was handled amicably – Randev even got permission from Esaeyh to keep driving his car because he needed to pick his kids up from school — it's nevertheless another stark reminder that Tesla seems to have some glaring bugs to iron out in its software.
"If just a normal person was able to get access [to someone else’s car] due to malfunction or software or whatever reason…" he told the WaPo, "the hackers can do anything, right?"
To add insult to injury, Randev said that he got stonewalled when he tried to email Tesla about the situation.
"It’s very frustrating," he said. "I even tweeted [at CEO] Elon Musk."
Both men said they intend to keep driving their respective
Teslas
because of how much they save on gas, but they're nonetheless irked by the incident.
"I cannot throw the car away because I don’t feel safe about it," Esaeyh said. "But to be honest, it’s kind of scary sometimes. I’m afraid that thing may happen again."
More on Teslas: Environmentalist Group Files "Criminal Charges" Against Tesla, Accusing It of "Water Pollution"
The post Tesla Driver Freaked Out After App Allows Him to Drive Off With the Wrong Car appeared first on Futurism.
‘Gargantuan’: China fossils reveal 70-tonne dinosaur had 15-metre neck
200+Science | The Guardian by Ian Sample Science editor / March 15, 2023 at 06:30PM
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Analysis of bones found in 1987 suggest Jurassic-era sauropod was animal with longest known neck
A dinosaur that roamed east Asia more than 160m years ago has been named a contender for the animal with the longest neck ever known.
A new analysis of bones from the beast’s neck and skull revealed that the dinosaur, known as Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum, sported a neck 15metres long, or one-and-a-half times the length of a doubledecker bus.
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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A first-of-its-kind workplace climate survey of Earth and space scientists indicates that scientists of color, women, those with disabilities and other groups historically excluded from geoscience careers are more likely to experience hostile and discriminatory behavior at work than their colleagues. The results have implications for retention of scientists in these fields that go beyond current efforts to improve diversity through recruitment activities.
Why it's so hard to be prepared for disasters
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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Jeffrey Schlegelmilch is the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Climate School. There, he works to understand and improve the nation's capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.
Researchers discover longest-necked dinosaur in China
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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A sauropod from China may have had the longest neck of any known dinosaur.
Even in small businesses, minimum wage hikes don't cause job losses, study finds
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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Restaurants, retail stores and other small businesses, long thought to be vulnerable to increases in the minimum wage, generally do not cut jobs and may actually benefit when governments raise minimum pay, according to a new study co-authored at UC Berkeley.
The war on sugar: How can soda manufacturers reduce sugar in products without endangering sales?
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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Is this article about Agriculture?
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Researchers from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Amsterdam have conducted a new study that examines how sugar reduction strategies affect new product sales. The article, published in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "A War on Sugar? Effects of Reduced Sugar Content and Package Size in The Soda Category," and is authored by Kristopher O. Keller and Jonne Y. Guyt.
Why rain on snow in the California mountains worries scientists
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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Another round of powerful atmospheric rivers is hitting California, following storms in January and February 2023 that dumped record amounts of snow. This time, the storms are warmer, and they are triggering flood warnings as they bring rain higher into the mountains—on top of the snowpack.
Why government budgets are exercises in distributing life and death as much as fiscal calculations
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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Sacrificial dilemmas are popular among philosophers. Should you divert a train from five people strapped to the tracks to a side-track with only one person strapped to it? What if that one person were a renowned cancer researcher? What if there were only a 70% chance the five people would die?
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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Is this article about Agriculture?
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British supermarkets are imposing limits on how many salad staples shoppers can buy as supply shortages leave shelves empty of some types of fruit and vegetables. The disappearance of fresh produce is said to be largely the result of adverse weather leading to a reduced harvest in southern Europe and North Africa.
NASA's Fermi captures dynamic gamma-ray sky in new animation
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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Cosmic fireworks, invisible to our eyes, fill the night sky. We can get a glimpse of this elusive light show thanks to the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which observes the sky in gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light.
Honey bees receive flight instruction and vector source by following dance, shows study
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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In a study published in PNAS, researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin and Rutgers University showed that the dance of the returning honeybee forager conveys the direction and distance of the food source from the hive to the honeycomb surface, a kind of map—a representation of where the food source is.
Evolution of supersoft X-ray source WX Centauri is dominated by magnetic wind, find researchers
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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Is this article about Tech & Scientific Innovation?
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Researchers led by Ph.D. candidate Zang Lei and Prof. Qian Shengbang from the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered that the orbital evolution of the
supersoft
X-ray source WX Centauri (WX Cen) is dominated by the angular momentum loss (AML) driven by magnetic wind from the donor secondary and from the accretion disk alone or together.
A crystal, but not as we know it
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:22PM
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When we think of crystals, we think of ice, kitchen salt, quartz, and so on—hard solids whose shapes show a regular pattern.
NASA unveils new spacesuit for Artemis moon mission astronauts
46New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 06:21PM
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Feedly AI has detected a Product Launch in this article
A spacesuit designed for the Artemis moon missions is much lighter than those worn by the Apollo astronauts, and allows a greater range of motion
Galaxy may have eaten all its neighbours and now it's all alone
New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 06:21PM
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Astronomers have spotted an object with all the hallmarks of a galaxy cluster, but containing only one galaxy – hinting it may have swallowed up all of its neighbours
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 06:20PM
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Is this article about Agriculture?
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British supermarkets are imposing limits on how many salad staples shoppers can buy as supply shortages leave shelves empty of some types of fruit and vegetables. The disappearance of fresh produce is said to be largely the result of adverse weather leading to a reduced harvest in southern Europe and North Africa.
Honey bees receive flight instruction and vector source by following dance, shows study
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 06:20PM
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In a study published in PNAS, researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin and Rutgers University showed that the dance of the returning honeybee forager conveys the direction and distance of the food source from the hive to the honeycomb surface, a kind of map—a representation of where the food source is.
Common orthopaedic trauma may explain 31,000-year-old remains
Nature by Nicholas J. Murphy / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05756-8
Common orthopaedic
trauma
may explain 31,000-year-old remains
Lactate regulates cell cycle by remodeling the anaphase promoting complex
Nature by Weihai Liu / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05939-3
Lactate regulates cell cycle by remodeling the anaphase promoting complex
How to build a virus-proof cell
Nature by Shamini Bundell / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00785-9
A streamlined genome makes bacteria immune to viral infection, and designing mini-MRI scanners for low- and middle-income countries.
‘Spell-checker for statistics’ reduces errors in the psychology literature
Nature by Dalmeet Singh Chawla / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Is this article about Neuroscience?
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00788-6
Developed to detect statistical errors, statcheck reduces mistakes in reported P values by up to 4.5-fold.
Control of stereogenic oxygen in a helically chiral oxonium ion
Nature by Owen Smith / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05719-z
The design, synthesis and characterization of a helically
chiral
triaryloxonium ion is reported, which is an example of a chiral non-racemic and configurationally stable molecule in which the oxygen atom is the sole stereogenic centre.
Reply to: Common orthopaedic trauma may explain 31,000-year-old remains
Nature by Melandri Vlok / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05757-7
Reply to: Common orthopaedic
trauma
may explain 31,000-year-old remains
Structural basis of odorant recognition by a human odorant receptor
Nature by Christian B. Billesbølle / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05798-y
Through the use of cryo-electron microscopy and molecular dynamics stimulations, mechanistic insight into the binding of an odorant to the human odorant receptor OR51E2 is provided.
The menin inhibitor revumenib in KMT2A-rearranged or NPM1-mutant leukaemia
Nature by Ghayas C. Issa / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Is this article about Neuroscience?
YESNO
Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05812-3
Revumenib, a potent and selective oral inhibitor of the
menin
–KMT2A interaction, is associated with a low frequency of treatment-related adverse events and promising clinical activity in patients with relapsed or refractory acute leukaemia.
In situ structure of the red algal phycobilisome–PSII–PSI–LHC megacomplex
Nature by Xin You / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05831-0
In situ structures of PBS–PSII–PSI–LHC megacomplexes from the alga P. purpureum at near-atomic resolution using cryogenic-electron tomography and in situ single-particle analysis are reported, providing interaction details between PBS, PSII and PSI.
Gate-tunable heavy fermions in a moiré Kondo lattice
Nature by Wenjin Zhao / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05800-7
A Kondo lattice was realized in AB-stacked MoTe2/WSe2 moiré bilayers and widely and continuously gate-tunable Kondo temperatures were demonstrated.
A swapped genetic code prevents viral infections and gene transfer
Nature by Akos Nyerges / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05824-z
A study details the creation of an Escherichia coli genetically recoded organism that is resistant to
viral infection
, and describes a further modification that keeps the organism and its genetic information biocontained.
Whole-genome doubling drives oncogenic loss of chromatin segregation
Nature by Ruxandra A. Lambuta / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05794-2
Whole-genome doubling induces the loss of segregation of chromatin compartments, and can lead to tumour-promoting epigenetic and transcriptional modifications.
Photonically active bowtie nanoassemblies with chirality continuum
Nature by Prashant Kumar / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05733-1
Self-limited assembly of 'imperfect' chiral nanoparticles enables formation of bowtie-shaped microparticles with size monodispersity and continuously variable chirality to be used for printing photonically active metasurfaces.
The dietary sweetener sucralose is a negative modulator of T cell-mediated responses
Nature by Fabio Zani / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05801-6
Consumption of high doses of the sweetener sucralose has immunomodulatory effects in mice, as a result of reduced T cell proliferation and differentiation.
Degassing of early-formed planetesimals restricted water delivery to Earth
Nature by M. E. Newcombe / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05721-5
The very low water contents of minerals in achondrite meteorites from the early Solar System show that substantial amounts of water could only have been delivered to Earth by means of unmelted material.
Bright and stable perovskite light-emitting diodes in the near-infrared range
Nature by Yuqi Sun / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05792-4
Perovskite LEDs with exceptional performance at high brightness are demonstrated achieving an operational half-lifetime of 32 hours, an important step towards commercialization opening up new opportunities beyond conventional LED technologies, such as perovskite electrically pumped lasers.
Ultrafast tunable lasers using lithium niobate integrated photonics
Nature by Viacheslav Snigirev / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05724-2
A frequency-tunable laser based on a hybrid silicon nitride and lithium niobate integrated photonic platform has a fast tuning rate and could be used for optical ranging applications.
The carbon sink of secondary and degraded humid tropical forests
Tropical Forests Carbon
Nature by Viola H. A. Heinrich / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05679-w
Analysis of satellite-based data on recovering degraded and secondary forests in three tropical moist forest regions quantifies the amount of aboveground carbon accumulated, which counterbalanced one quarter of carbon emissions from old-growth forest loss between 1984 and 2018.
Spatial epigenome–transcriptome co-profiling of mammalian tissues
Nature by Di Zhang / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05795-1
The authors present two technologies for spatially resolved, genome-wide, joint profiling of the epigenome and transcriptome by cosequencing chromatin accessibility and gene expression, or histone modifications and gene expression on the same tissue section at near-single-cell resolution.
Regime shift in Arctic Ocean sea ice thickness
Nature by Hiroshi Sumata / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05686-x
A simple model describes the stochastic process of dynamic sea ice thickening, shows how reduced residence time affects changes in ice thickness and highlights the enduring impact of climate change on the Arctic Ocean.
Deep, ultra-hot-melting residues as cradles of mantle diamond
Nature by Carl Walsh / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05665-2
New thermodynamic and geochemical modelling of melting shows that the observed composition of the cratonic mantle can be reproduced by deep and very hot melting, obviating the need for shallow melting and lithospheric stacking.
Blocking NS3–NS4B interaction inhibits dengue virus in non-human primates
Nature by Olivia Goethals / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05790-6
JNJ-1802—a highly potent
dengue
virus inhibitor—blocks the NS3–NS4B interaction within the viral replication complex, and is highly effective against
viral infection
with DENV-1 or DENV-2 in non-human primates.
Fast and sensitive GCaMP calcium indicators for imaging neural populations
Nature by Yan Zhang / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Is this article about Tech & Scientific Innovation?
YESNO
Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05828-9
Using large-scale screening and structure-guided mutagenesis, fast and sensitive GCaMP sensors are developed and optimized with improved kinetics without compromising sensitivity or brightness.
MEN1 mutations mediate clinical resistance to menin inhibition
Nature by Florian Perner / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05755-9
Somatic mutations in
MEN1
are identified in patients with leukaemia treated with a novel chromatin-targeting therapy, and the mechanism by which these mutations mediate therapeutic resistance is characterized.
Spatial mapping of mitochondrial networks and bioenergetics in lung cancer
Nature by Mingqi Han / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05793-3
A study describing an approach that combines imaging and profiling techniques to structurally and functionally analyse
lung cancer
in vivo, revealing heterogeneous mitochondrial networks and an association between bioenergetic phenotypes and mitochondrial organization and function.
How an odour molecule activates a human odorant receptor protein
Nature / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00439-w
Our sense of smell enables us to perceive a universe of odours. Cryo-electron microscopy has provided an atomic-resolution picture of how an odour molecule is recognized by one of the hundreds of odorant receptors encoded in the human genome, providing a first view into the chemical logic of olfaction.
Bow-tie particles boast a tunable twist
Nature by Bart Kahr / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00705-x
Particles that self-assemble from nanoribbons into bow-tie-shaped structures can be tailored to change the degree of their twist. A search for how best to quantify this twist homes in on a measure of how the bow ties respond to light.
An abrupt decline of thick sea ice in the Arctic Ocean
Nature / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00317-5
Long-term sea-ice measurements from the Fram Strait reveal that the dominant form of Arctic sea ice shifted around 2007, from thick and deformed ice to thinner, more uniform ice. As a result of this shift, the proportion of thick, deformed ice fell by about half. It has not yet recovered, and this is expected to affect heat and momentum exchange in the region.
Regrowing tropical forests absorb megatonnes of carbon
Nature by Pieter A. Zuidema / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Is this article about Ecosystem Management?
YESNO
Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00706-w
An analysis confirms that humid tropical forests recovering from degradation and deforestation absorb substantial amounts of carbon dioxide — but much less than is emitted by the destruction of the original forests.
Genome doubling perturbs DNA packing and promotes cancer development
Nature / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Is this article about Pharma?
YESNO
Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00426-1
Cells in which the whole genome has been doubled do not upscale protein synthesis to cope with the increase in DNA. Instead, a shortage of proteins that regulate the packing of DNA in the nucleus leads to poor segregation of DNA structures, which eventually contributes to the development of
cancer
.
Common sweetener suppresses mouse immune system — in high doses
Nature by Max Kozlov / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00784-w
Finding suggests that the sugar substitute sucralose could one day be used to treat autoimmune conditions.
Fastest-ever calcium sensors broaden the potential of neuronal imaging
Nature by Michael B. Ryan / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00704-y
Proteins have been developed that emit flashes of light in response to influxes of calcium ions into cells on millisecond timescales. Two sets of scientists discuss the legacy and future of these proteins.
Synthetic bacterial genome upgraded for viral defence and biocontainment
Nature by Benjamin A. Blount / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00702-0
Bacteria with a synthetic genome were engineered to alter the way that the DNA code instructs cells to make proteins. This ‘language barrier’ serves to isolate the cells genetically, and makes them immune to viral infection.
Inhibition of the protein menin shows early promise in leukaemia
Nature / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00424-3
Leukaemias characterized by the rearrangement of the gene KMT2A or mutation of the NPM1 gene depend on the protein
menin
. In a first-in-human trial, the menin inhibitor revumenib had minimal severe adverse effects and showed promising clinical activity in individuals with these types of leukaemia.
Gene expression and epigenetic regulation co-mapped in brain tissues
Nature / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00436-z
Gene expression and features of the DNA–protein complex chromatin were mapped together at high spatial resolution in tissue sections of the mouse or human brain. This spatially resolved technology enables the examination of the spatio-temporal dynamics and regulation of gene expression in complex mammalian tissues.
Diversity of mitochondrial networks in lung cancer imaged
Nature / March 15, 2023 at 06:07PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00427-0
The structure and function of mitochondrial networks were analysed using a combination of approaches to generate detailed maps of these cellular organelles. This analysis revealed that the mitochondria in different subtypes of
lung cancer
show distinct functional and structural signatures.
When constructing conservation networks, it's best to have a plan
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 06:06PM
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With increasing rates of extinction and biodiversity loss across the globe, scientists are debating whether we are living during the Earth's sixth mass extinction event, prompting a drive to accelerate our conservation efforts, with researchers working to understand how to protect as many species and ecosystems as possible.
Chat GPT and Bing AI chatbots to be used as panellists in world-first at fintech conference
Future(s) Studies by /u/AdAstraSA80 / March 15, 2023 at 05:57PM
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Feedly AI found 1 Participation in an Event mention in this article
- Chat GPT and Bing AI chatbots to be used as panellists in world-first at fintech conference
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Baidu Set to Launch its Own Version of ChatGPT
Future(s) Studies by /u/just-a-dreamer- / March 15, 2023 at 05:57PM
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Future(s) Studies by /u/ComfortableIntern218 / March 15, 2023 at 05:57PM
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EV Electric Grid
Future(s) Studies by /u/Dapper_Dress9824 / March 15, 2023 at 05:57PM
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Future(s) Studies by /u/lughnasadh / March 15, 2023 at 05:57PM
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Millennials are more likely than other generations to support a cap on personal wealth
Future(s) Studies by /u/kjk2v1 / March 15, 2023 at 05:57PM
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NASA and Axiom Space unveil new spacesuit for Artemis III moon mission
Future(s) Studies by /u/Gari_305 / March 15, 2023 at 05:57PM
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GM studying artificial intelligence assistant that could answer driver questions
Future(s) Studies by /u/Gari_305 / March 15, 2023 at 05:57PM
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Future(s) Studies by /u/khrisrino / March 15, 2023 at 05:57PM
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How about an AR system that monitors what you’re eating to tally the nutrition numbers and provide guidance to stay healthy? The ML system wouldn’t be perfect by any means so I guess it would also need a database of published menu info from restaurant chains. Not sure how feasible it would be for an indie developer to tackle but would be a perfect killer app for Apple to bundle if and when they build their first mixed reality headset. I suspect though that Apple would never take the risk of releasing an imperfect system. Thoughts?
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Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:54PM
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Whether they like it or not, companies are increasingly judged by their impact on society and the planet, as well as their performance for customers and shareholders. Corporate social responsibility (CSR), therefore, is rapidly becoming a make-or-break element of branding.
When constructing conservation networks, it's best to have a plan
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:54PM
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With increasing rates of extinction and biodiversity loss across the globe, scientists are debating whether we are living during the Earth's sixth mass extinction event, prompting a drive to accelerate our conservation efforts, with researchers working to understand how to protect as many species and ecosystems as possible.
Did a Swimming Lizard Predate the Dinosaurs?
Discover Magazine by Matt Hrodey / March 15, 2023 at 05:49PM
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Some 250 million years ago, ocean water covered what is now called Flowerdalen (“Flower’s valley”) in modern-day Norway. Life in these waters was different than it had been just 252 million years ago, when the End-Permian Mass Extinction had eliminated 90 percent of marine species from the planet. What remained were plucky opportunists, including a type of sea-dwelling lizard called an ichthyosaur, which had evolved flippers from land-dwelling feet. When they died, their remains attracted sediments that over millions of years formed limestone boulders like time capsules that now rest among eroded mudstone in Flower’s valley. These Norwegian “concretions” have preserved the bones of early marine fauna, including the adaptable ichthyosaur, for future millenia. Now, a new ichthyosaur discovery from the valley has broad implications for the history of this time and the dinosaurs. Read More: The Permian Extinction: Life on Earth Nearly Disappeared During the ‘Great Dying’ An Unexpected Find In 2014, scientists moved a large number of the concretions to the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo, including a number considered to be too old to contain ichthyosaur remains. But subsequent research found that they did and dated the bones to 250 million years ago, long before (1.2 million years) the researchers previously thought the reptiles had migrated to the sea. What’s more, the older specimen appeared to be well-evolved, with a light, spongy bone structure well-suited to life underwater. From analyzing the vertebrae and other pieces, the Swedish and Norwegian researchers concluded that the lizard had roamed in a pelagic fashion, away from the sea bottom and shore, and also possessed a high-powered metabolism. Such traits are common in water-dwelling tetrapods (having four legs) but remarkable in such an old lizard. How had the ichthyosaur acquired them so quickly? The study suggests that the new species predated the End-Permian Mass Extinction and thus the Mesozoic era, challenging the idea that “major reptile lineages” first emerged during the latter, the Age of Dinosaurs. In other words, the first major reptile may have been an ichthyosaur, a creature that resembled a full-bodied dolphin and only measured about three meters (according to one estimate) in length. Early ichthyosaurs sometimes reached only a meter long, though they later grew to resemble giant fish millions of years later. Origin Story If ichthyosaurs predated the End-Permian Mass Extinction, when and where did they originate? The study lacks specifics and admits to the need for more discoveries to be made “in even older rocks on Spitsbergen [in Norway] and elsewhere in the world.” For sure, the study disagrees with what it calls textbook accounts of lizards wandering down to the shore after extinction, “to take advantage of marine predator niches that were left vacant” by the mass extinction. By the researchers' estimation, the lizards didn't have to walk down; they were already there. Scientists have found ichthyosaur fossils all around the world, in Thailand, Japan, Canada and China, where continental drift left them to be found. Until recently, the oldest on record came from Nevada, which dated to about 249 million years ago and showed the same spongy bone structure — a key adaptation. As one study found, these lizards evolved rapidly during their first few million years of aquatic life and then more slowly.
News coverage highlights some threats to deer conservation but may mislead or omit key information
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 05:49PM
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A group of researchers supported by FAPESP analyzed 192 news reports published on the internet between 2011 and 2021 on Brazilian deer species (Cervidae) in order to find out whether news of threats to these animals matched the actual risk of their extinction.
Climate change threatens spring wildflowers by speeding up the time when trees leaf out above them
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 05:49PM
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For short-lived spring wildflowers such as wood anemone (Anemone quinquefolia) and Dutchman's breeches (Dicentra cucullaria), timing is everything. These fleeting plants, known as ephemerals, grow in temperate forests around the world, leafing out and flowering early in spring before the trees towering above them leaf out. Emerge too early, and it will still be winter; emerge too late, and it will be too shady under the forest canopy for essential photosynthesis to happen.
Scientists develop new lithium niobate laser technology
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:45PM
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Scientists at EPFL and IBM have developed a new type of laser that could have a significant impact on optical ranging technology. The laser is based on a material called lithium niobate, often used in the field of optical modulators, which controls the frequency or intensity of light that is transmitted through a device.
News coverage highlights some threats to deer conservation but may mislead or omit key information
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:45PM
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A group of researchers supported by FAPESP analyzed 192 news reports published on the internet between 2011 and 2021 on Brazilian deer species (Cervidae) in order to find out whether news of threats to these animals matched the actual risk of their extinction.
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:45PM
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The final months of New Zealand's summer carried a massive sting, bringing "unprecedented" rainfalls several times over, from widespread flooding in Auckland at the end of January to ex-tropical Cyclone Gabrielle dumping record rains and causing devastating floods across the east coast of the North Island.
Opinion: Enduring democracy should encourage rather than discourage media criticism
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:45PM
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Everyone seems to hate what they call "the media."
'Pantry porn' on TikTok and Instagram makes obsessively organized kitchens a new status symbol
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:45PM
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Neatly aligned glass spice jars tagged with printed white labels. Wicker baskets filled with packages of pasta, crackers and snacks. Rows of flavored seltzer water stacked in double-decker plastic bins.
Climate change threatens spring wildflowers by speeding up the time when trees leaf out above them
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:45PM
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For short-lived spring wildflowers such as wood anemone (Anemone quinquefolia) and Dutchman's breeches (Dicentra cucullaria), timing is everything. These fleeting plants, known as ephemerals, grow in temperate forests around the world, leafing out and flowering early in spring before the trees towering above them leaf out. Emerge too early, and it will still be winter; emerge too late, and it will be too shady under the forest canopy for essential photosynthesis to happen.
Scientists create novel bandgap-tunable 2D nanosheets made from perovskite oxynitrides
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:45PM
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Two-dimensional monolayer nanosheets made from layered perovskite have many desirable properties. However, it has been difficult to create them with tunable bandgaps in the visible region without adding oxygen defects. Recently, researchers from Japan were able to successfully develop chemically stable nanosheets from perovskite oxynitrides which had controllable bandgaps. These nanosheets have immense potential for future use in photocatalysis, electrocatalysts, and other sustainable technologies.
Heat waves in India set to intensify, says climate scientist
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:45PM
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After its hottest February since 1901, the India Meteorological Department has issued an early heat wave warning and forecasts for higher-than-normal temperatures between March and May.
Australian unpaid social contributions valued at $287 billion: Report
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:45PM
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Australians generated at least $287.86 billion in value through unpaid social contributions in 2021, according to a new report from the University of Sydney's Mental Wealth Initiative.
Nature Communications by Tomohiro Takano / March 15, 2023 at 05:30PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37128-1
Takano et al. show that heterologous booster by
SARS
-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein vaccine recalls a more sustained and broader anti-spike receptor-binding domain antibody response compared to homologous booster by mRNA vaccine.
Scientists Investigate a Bird Flu Outbreak in Seals
100+NYT > Science by Emily Anthes / March 15, 2023 at 05:22PM
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Wild birds passed the virus to seals in New England at least twice last summer, a new study suggests.
Examining the dynamic and regulatory blueprint of mitotic bookmarking
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 05:21PM
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Recently, a team led by Prof. Qu Kun from the University of Science and Technology (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in collaboration with a team led by Prof. Wang Zhikai from the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale (HFNL) revealed a dynamic and regulatory map of chromatin accessibility that reveals important bookmarking factors. The result was published in Science Advances.
Researchers create virus-resistant, safely restrained E. coli for medical, industrial applications
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 05:21PM
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In a step forward for genetic engineering and synthetic biology, researchers have modified a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria to be immune to natural viral infections while also minimizing the potential for the bacteria or their modified genes to escape into the wild.
Bird flu associated with hundreds of seal deaths in New England in 2022, researchers find
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 05:21PM
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Researchers at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University found that an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was associated with the deaths of more than 330 New England harbor and gray seals along the North Atlantic coast in June and July 2022, and the outbreak was connected to a wave of avian influenza in birds in the region.
Bruksmentalitet styr hur arbetslösa rustas för nya jobb
forskning.se / March 15, 2023 at 05:20PM
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Är simning och häckklippning bra aktiviteter för arbetslösa ungdomar? Det beror på hur begreppet aktiveringspolitik tolkas, visar en avhandling som studerat kommunala åtgärder i en bruksort – där jobben försvunnit men mentaliteten lever kvar.
Inlägget Bruksmentalitet styr hur arbetslösa rustas för nya jobb dök först upp på forskning.se.
How Please Stopped Being Polite
22The Atlantic by Walker Mimms / March 15, 2023 at 05:20PM
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This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
Growing up in a strict household, I was taught to honor etiquette; I still call my elders “sir” and “ma’am,” and I always say thank you. But I almost never use the word please. I’d happily ask someone “Could you shut the window?,” but the request “Please shut the window” sounds terribly impatient and terse.
Although the word still appears in print and speech, I’m not the only one who’s noticed that its usage—and reception—seems to be changing. What happened?
When it first entered the English language, sometime in the 1300s, the verb please was meant as a display of deference: The phrase, typically, was if it please you, translated from the French s’il vous plaît. (“And if it please you … that I may be made knyghte,” asks the honorable huntsman Tristram, for instance, in Thomas Malory’s 15th-century English epic Le Morte d’Arthur.) Go to Paris today, and you will find the humble s’il vous plaît alive and well. But in English, the phrase took a turn.
By the 16th century, four words had become three: If it please you had slipped into if you please. Then three became two—“Please you to have a little patience,” wrote James Shirley in the 1659 play Honoria and Mammon. Then, finally, two became one; in 1771, a London merchant wrote, “Please send the inclosed to the Port office”—the first instance found by The Oxford English Dictionary of the adverb, and a prime example of its graceless urgency. With each diminution of the phrase, the speaker lost some regard for his hearer and gained some regard for himself.
[Read: The decline of etiquette and the rise of ‘boundaries’]
The shortened please has nevertheless lived on for centuries. After I emailed the psychologist Steven Pinker, who chaired The American Heritage Dictionary’s Usage Panel before its dissolution in 2018, about the adverb, he tracked its use over time in fiction—a rough approximation of conversational speech. He found that from 1860 to 2012, it enjoyed a steady increase; instances of if you please declined in the same period. Pinker offered that its rise might have reflected a trend toward “informalization”: The adverb form’s casual efficiency may have been just what sparked its popularity. But eventually, it might have drifted too far in the direction of informality.
Since 2012, the adverb’s frequency in fiction has decreased. “Politeness terms” tend to get tugged between two impulses, Pinker noted: the fear of seeming rude, and the fear of seeming fawning or gushy. “They may rise and fall in popularity when they seem to veer too much in one direction or another,” he said. Please can toe the line between brief and brusque, depending on its context; a child asking “Can I have some more candy please?” sounds harmless compared with your boss saying “Can you have this report on my desk by Monday please?” The word tends to communicate an expectation, rather than a genuine question, and that can give it an authoritative edge; the please can feel especially perfunctory coming from someone in a position of power, but it can rub people the wrong way in plenty of circumstances. I, for one, can’t bring myself to summon it unless accepting something already offered—as in “Yes, please.”
Sometimes, please can even imply intentional rudeness. “I can hardly imagine a young person saying ‘Could you please …’ except with special irritation stress on please, implying, ‘I’ve asked more than enough times,’” Noam Chomsky, arguably the father of modern linguistics, told me. I was reminded of the ’90s thriller Basic Instinct. When the character Catherine Tramell tells visiting detectives to “get the fuck out of here, please,” she sums it up: The word can brilliantly convey anger, irony, passive aggression, condescension, formality, or desperation—all without a hint of true politeness.
[Read: Is it better to be polite or honest?]
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to ask for something—think “Would you mind …?” As the writer Choire Sicha observed in The New York Times, the request “Hey, could you …?” is especially widespread in an office context. He finds that phrase irritating; on the spectrum from curt to cloying, it’s certainly closer to the latter end. Gentler alternatives like these, though, might portend the near future of the polite request. Unlike please, they spend more than one syllable on their recipient and, following their ancestor s’il vous plaît, don’t assume an outcome.
Chomsky, like plenty of others, still uses please. (“I’m an old-fashioned conservative,” he explained.) I doubt he means the word to sound anything but gracious. And yet, I do think efforts to enforce its use are misguided: Take Amazon’s setting for its virtual assistant, Alexa, in which she responds “Thanks for asking so nicely” when kids say the “magic word,” or companies such as Chick-fil-A training their employees to use it. These measures confuse please, the term, with courtesy in general—as if it’s impossible to be polite without it.
The truth is that English is a living language, always and inevitably evolving, and no one can freeze it in time. If the word’s centuries-long shortening teaches us anything, though, it’s that this evolution can be fitful, and its transitions awkward. Please is at a strange crossroads between its once and future meaning—but it would please me to see it go.
The Atlantic by Sophie Gilbert / March 15, 2023 at 05:20PM
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In the 40 years since Heartburn was published, there have been two distinct ways to read it. Nora Ephron’s 1983 novel is narrated by a food writer, Rachel Samstat, who discovers that her esteemed journalist husband is having an affair with Thelma Rice, “a fairly tall person with a neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb and you should see her legs, never mind her feet, which are sort of splayed.” Taken at face value, the book is a triumphant satire—of love; of Washington, D.C.; of therapy; of pompous columnists; of the kind of men who consider themselves exemplary partners but who leave their wives, seven months pregnant and with a toddler in tow, to navigate an airport while they idly buy magazines. (Putting aside infidelity for a moment, that was the part where I personally believed that Rachel’s marriage was past saving.)
Unfortunately, the people being satirized had some objections, which leads us to the second way to read Heartburn: as historical fact distorted through a vengeful lens, all the more salient for its smudges. Ephron, like Rachel, had indeed been married to a high-profile Washington journalist, the Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein. Bernstein, like Rachel’s husband—whom Ephron named Mark Feldman in what many guessed was an allusion to the real identity of Deep Throat—had indeed had an affair with a tall person (and a future Labour peer), Margaret Jay. Ephron, like Rachel, was heavily pregnant when she discovered the affair. And yet, in writing about what had happened to her, Ephron was cast as the villain by a media ecosystem outraged that someone dared to spill the secrets of its own, even as it dug up everyone else’s.
The pushback was inevitably personal. “There are also those who say that Heartburn, though funny and sad, is a great misuse of talent, a book whose only point is to nail Carl Bernstein,” New York’s Jesse Kornbluth observed. Writing under the pseudonym Tristan Vox (possibly a play on the Latin for “sorrowful voice”) in Vanity Fair in 1985, the literary critic Leon Wieseltier huffed so tempestuously about the proposed movie adaptation of Heartburn that one can only assume he passed out midway. Ephron, he insisted, had written “one of the most indecent exploitations of celebrity in recent memory.” To be unfaithful to one’s pregnant wife, he concluded, was “banal compared with the infidelity of a mother toward her children,” and if Bernstein had committed adultery, Ephron, by exposing her family to strangers with only the lightest of fictional glosses, was committing “child abuse.”
I’m a few months younger than Heartburn; I grew up amid the wreckage of a similarly busted marriage and contentious divorce. And I’ve come to think of the book over the years as something more than a juicy revenge novel or an infinitely pleasurable roman à clef. Arriving in the tail winds of the fast-and-loose 1970s, it made, amid the jokes, a sincere point about infidelity: that it wasn’t banal at all but could in fact be an irrevocable cleaving open of one’s life, one’s heart, one’s sense of home and stability and self. More radically, Heartburn also emphatically rejected the idea that infidelity was something women—or men, given the portrayal of Thelma’s husband—should have to tacitly endure.
This argument, I think, was what led to such vigorous denunciations of the book (and the movie) from certain quarters. It was too iconoclastic, too righteous. After all, excavating one’s romantic life for the sake of art and a paycheck wasn’t particularly original: In an 2004 introduction to Heartburn, Ephron wrote, “Philip Roth and John Updike picked away at the carcasses of their early marriages in book after book, but to the best of my knowledge they were never hit with the ‘thinly disguised’ thing.” Rather, the collective outrage over the novel was an attempt to wrest the narrative away from Ephron, who, some parties complained, wasn’t being fair with it. Bernstein reportedly threatened to sue; he also requested explicit provisions in their custody agreement that would give him sway over how he might be portrayed in the film.
His reaction, Ephron noted in the 2004 introduction, was “one of the most fascinating things to me about the whole episode: he cheated on me, and then got to behave as if he was the one who had been wronged because I wrote about it!” And yet, it’s undeniable that Heartburn achieved what she wanted it to: It cast the story of her marriage definitively in her terms. This is the power a gifted writer can wield. Is it fair? Not necessarily. But it’s also a power that, as Ephron accurately discerns, is almost exclusively critiqued when it’s exercised by women. Late last year, the internet erupted over an essay by the writer Isabel Kaplan about a boyfriend who had broken up with her because he was threatened by her job. “The more I share about our relationship and breakup, the more vindicated he will feel in his fears,” Kaplan wrote, citing Ephron as an example. “But if I don’t write about it, he succeeds in forcing my silence.”
[Read: The redemption of the bad mother]
That tension runs through Heartburn too. But to take the novel on its own terms for a moment, it is a wholly joyful read, a 178-page stand-up routine about marriage that’s entirely one-sided and openly so. Mark, Rachel’s husband, is introduced as a man who’s both immediately unfaithful and vividly humorless, prone to perusing home-design magazines in bed, forgetting to clean his nails, and lying about books he’s read. Thelma, apart from being tall, makes “gluey puddings.” (Rachel, a food writer, is doubly betrayed when she realizes that during the affair, she gave Thelma one of her recipes.) Rachel also skewers her parents—like Ephron’s, both alcoholics who got rich by investing in Tampax stock—her therapist, Mark’s “dumb Hemingway style he always reserved for his slice-of-life columns,” and sensitive types who express themselves through poetry. (“Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in autumn,” Rachel observes in one chapter, “and I’ll show you a real asshole.”)
Some critics have raised stylistic objections to the novel, particularly its structural looseness—wherein Rachel recounts a few weeks of her life while thinking insistently about food—that was perhaps ahead of its time. More often, though, Heartburn’s detractors focused exclusively on Ephron’s supposed sin of betrayal. The movie, Mark Harris notes in his biography of its director, Mike Nichols, was subsequently dismissed as a trifling “woman’s picture” with “the tunnel-vision point of view of the offended party.” And yet, for the past four decades, people have pressed it into one another’s hands, as a friend pressed it into mine. They have read it and shared it and read it again. They’ve found something thrilling and metamorphic in the way that Ephron, by putting her pain on the page, transforms it into comedy. “If I tell the story, I control the version,” Rachel explains at the end of the novel. “If I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much.” Heartburn, you may conclude, is ultimately less about revenge than about self-preservation.
Examining the dynamic and regulatory blueprint of mitotic bookmarking
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:20PM
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Recently, a team led by Prof. Qu Kun from the University of Science and Technology (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in collaboration with a team led by Prof. Wang Zhikai from the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale (HFNL) revealed a dynamic and regulatory map of chromatin accessibility that reveals important bookmarking factors. The result was published in Science Advances.
Any reading recommendation? (for STM and WM)
cognitive science by /u/MGMTenzyme / March 15, 2023 at 05:19PM
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I am in need of a crash course into the basic theories and research methods for short term memory and working memory.
I have been looking for something that gives me an overall view so far. Everything I have found so far tend to be older (baddeley mostly).
I would really like for any suggestions (in any format)!
Please assume I know nothing (as I never had any formal psychology training, all I know is very clinical based with not much theory).
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cognitive science by /u/HastyNationality / March 15, 2023 at 05:19PM
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Extremely small wasps independently lost the nuclei in the brain neurons of at least two lineages
Scientific Reports by Alexey A. Polilov / March 15, 2023 at 05:19PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31529-4
Extremely small wasps independently lost the nuclei in the brain neurons of at least two lineages
Scientists Baffled By These Almost Perfectly Circular Dunes on Mars
47Futurism by Frank Landymore / March 15, 2023 at 05:19PM
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Mars Donuts
Mars is chock full of beautiful sand dunes that can come in some truly magnificent shapes and patterns that, sometimes, seem to defy explanation.
Take a look at these almost perfectly circular sand dunes dotting the Martian landscape that were spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
According to a description from the University of Arizona, which is leading the team behind the MRO's onboard High-Resolution Experiment (HiRise) camera that captured the images, the "almost perfectly circular" dunes are "unusual" and stick out like a sore thumb.
Note the "almost" perfectly circular. According to the university, the dunes have a steep, downward slope known as a slip face on their southern ends, meaning that its sands are likely blown southward by the Martian winds.
The planet's winds, however, are notoriously variable, which is only adding to the mystery.
Regardless, with such slight asymmetries, you'd be forgiven for thinking the dunes were simply the result of a crater illusion.
Written in the Sand
These images were taken as part of an ongoing effort to monitor the receding frost as the Martian winter enters its final stages. The cycle of seasons on Mars is actually fairly similar to our own, even though a Martian year is considerably lengthier at 687 Earth days.
Of particular interest to planetary scientists is Mars' northern hemisphere, where these dunes were photographed free of ice. An earlier image, though, shows their surfaces clearly permeated by frost.
These circular dunes aren't the only strange dunes scientists have found so far on the Red Planet. In 2016, NASA's Curiosity rover spotted ripple structures in large Martian sand dunes arranged in a pattern that researchers said is not found on Earth.
Dunes continue to be an object of both fascination and of meticulous study for planetary scientists, as their malleable yet slowly shifting forms make them almost like geological footprints of the planet's wind and atmosphere.
One of the most comprehensive studies on Martian dunes to date tracked nearly 500 of them using the HiRise camera, and discovered that Martian dunes move only at a meager rate of two feet per year, a snail's pace compared to some on Earth that move over 100 feet.
More on Mars: Scientists Figured Out Why Mars’ South Pole Looks Like Swiss Cheese
The post Scientists Baffled By These Almost Perfectly Circular Dunes on Mars appeared first on Futurism.
Contest launched to decipher Herculaneum scrolls using 3D X-ray software
100+Science | The Guardian by Ian Sample Science editor / March 15, 2023 at 05:15PM
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Global research teams who can improve AI and accelerate decoding could win $250,000 in prizes
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 laid waste to Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum where the intense blast of hot gas carbonised hundreds of ancient scrolls in the library of an enormous luxury villa.
Now, researchers are launching a global contest to read the charred papyri after demonstrating that an artificial intelligence programme can extract letters and symbols from high-resolution X-ray images of the fragile, unrolled documents.
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 15, 2023 at 05:14PM
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An international team of experts convened remotely as part of the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative's Climate Working Group to consider the deep-sea impacts of ocean-based climate intervention (OBCI). A research team has analyzed the proposed approaches to assess their potential impacts on deep-sea ecosystems and biodiversity. Their findings raise substantial concern on the potential impacts of these technologies on deep-sea ecosystems and call for the need for an integrated research effort to carefully assess the cost and benefits of each intervention.
Where did Earth's water come from? Not melted meteorites, according to scientists
69Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:04PM
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Water makes up 71% of Earth's surface, but no one knows how or when such massive quantities of water arrived on Earth.
Tropical Forests Carbon
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:04PM
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Is this article about Carbon Removal?
YESNO
A pioneering global study has found deforestation and forests lost or damaged due to human and environmental change, such as fire and logging, are fast outstripping current rates of forest regrowth.
Controlling the degree of twist in nanostructured particles for the first time
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:04PM
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Micron-sized "bow ties," self-assembled from nanoparticles, form a variety of different curling shapes that can be precisely controlled, a research team led by the University of Michigan has shown.
First molecular images of olfaction open door to creating novel smells
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:04PM
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Breaking a longstanding impasse in our understanding of olfaction, scientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF) have created the first molecular-level, 3D picture of how an odor molecule activates a human odorant receptor, a crucial step in deciphering the sense of smell.
Researchers create virus-resistant, safely restrained E. coli for medical, industrial applications
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:04PM
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In a step forward for genetic engineering and synthetic biology, researchers have modified a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria to be immune to natural viral infections while also minimizing the potential for the bacteria or their modified genes to escape into the wild.
Bird flu associated with hundreds of seal deaths in New England in 2022, researchers find
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:04PM
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Researchers at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University found that an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was associated with the deaths of more than 330 New England harbor and gray seals along the North Atlantic coast in June and July 2022, and the outbreak was connected to a wave of avian influenza in birds in the region.
Discover Magazine by Carla Delgado / March 15, 2023 at 05:04PM
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Is this article about Sleep?
YESNO
When it comes to sunlight’s impact on the skin, people usually think of ultraviolet (UV) light, the invisible light that causes sunburn. However, sunlight also includes the visible light spectrum that the naked eye can see, that is, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet light. What Does Blue Light Mean? Blue light is short in wavelength and high in energy. Aside from the sun, it can also come from artificial sources like electronic devices and indoor lighting. “Blue light is what makes the sky blue on a sunny day and what gives your smartphone screen its bright and clear background,” says Susan Massick, a dermatologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Given that overexposure to UV light causes serious damage like premature aging and skin cancer, it’s important to explore how blue light can affect the skin as well. Does Blue Light Damage Skin? Blue light penetrates deeper into the skin than UV rays, but prolonged or repeated exposure to either can lead to photodamage, hyperpigmentation and accelerated skin aging, says Massick. “It has been shown that blue light can induce the production of free radicals in the skin deep into the dermis,” she adds. “This oxidative stress can lead to DNA damage, leading to the inability to repair skin cells with negative effects on collagen and elastin.” Most conventional sunscreens will not protect your skin from blue light, so you should consider wearing those with metal oxides, says Cindy Wassef, assistant professor of dermatology at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Broad-spectrum chemical sunscreens provide excellent defense against UV light but do not protect against visible light. Those with hyperpigmentation disorders may benefit from using tinted or mineral sunscreens containing iron, zinc, or titanium dioxide, which provide adequate protection from blue light and prevent further light-induced skin pigmentation. How is Blue Light Different From Natural Light? The blue light from the sun and from electronic devices represent the same high-energy visible light, but natural blue light is of much greater magnitude and intensity than artificial blue light, says Massick. If you were to compare the intensity of the light emitted by electronic devices to the intensity of the sun in the same wavelength of blue light, the former would be so much lower. The sun’s intensity is about 7700 μW/cm2, which is significantly higher than that of a Philips LED television at 78 μW/cm2 or a Dell laptop at 15 μW/cm2. “Keep in mind that the intensity of blue light from sunlight is exponentially higher than what you may experience from your electronic devices, so blue light from your devices will not affect your skin to the same degree,” says Massick. The effect of artificial blue light on the skin remains an important area of research though. Natural blue light may be stronger, but people are still consistently exposed to artificial blue light because of the use of electronic devices for work and socializing, says Wassef. A 2022 Frontiers in Aging study conducted on fruit flies reported that excessive artificial blue light exposure may accelerate aging and affect their level of metabolites. However, there aren’t many studies about its impact on humans. Since natural blue light exposure is known to cause hyperpigmentation, the authors of a small 2020 study looked into the effect of artificial blue light on the skin. They found that using a high-intensity computer screen at a 20-centimeter distance for eight hours a day during a five-day study period did not worsen melasma lesions. Read More: How Many Ways Can the Sun Kill Us? What Does Blue Light Do to Your Skin? In controlled clinical settings, artificial blue light may even be beneficial for the skin and exhibit antibacterial, antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties. The field of blue light therapy is still developing, but it has been used to treat conditions like psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, eczema and acne, so far. A 2020 Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology study looked into the positive and negative impacts of blue light. The authors found that the duration of exposure and the wavelength parameters play a role in whether blue light from LED can be damaging or beneficial. In general, artificial blue light is markedly less intense than natural blue light, so its damaging impact is expected to be much lower. More studies are needed, but digital screens might not emit enough blue light to be harmful. Still, less is better when it comes to light exposure, so measures that minimize it can help keep you and your skin healthy, says Massick. Read More: What Science Says About Blue-Light-Blocking Glasses How to Protect Skin From Blue Light If you’re concerned about the potential damage to your skin from blue light caused by electronic devices, Massick suggests decreasing your screen time. This may be challenging because remote work is increasing, but you can also increase the distance between you and your screen, lower the brightness or turn on Night Mode, she adds. It might be best to minimize screen time at night since the use of blue light emitting from electronic devices can also disrupt the body’s circadian rhythm — the light fools the brain that it’s daytime, making it difficult to fall and remain asleep. Abstaining from screen use may result in better quality sleep than using electronic devices at bedtime with Night Mode. The impact of artificial blue light exposure on sleep is important to consider because people who sleep seven to nine hours a night have significantly lower intrinsic skin aging scores, according to a 2015 Clinical and Experimental Dermatology study. Regardless of screen use, Massick recommends you use sunscreen and skin care products with antioxidants to “help combat the oxidative stress of visible light and ultraviolet light on the skin as part of your daily routine.” Read More: Nobody Panic: Wearing Sunscreen Is Unlikely to Be a Cancer Risk
Caffeine linked to lower BMI and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes
New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 05:03PM
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Genetic evidence supports the idea that higher blood caffeine levels lead to lower weight and less chance of type 2 diabetes
Fungus that kills frogs and salamanders is rapidly spreading in Africa
New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 05:03PM
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Across Africa there has been a surge in a fungus that causes heart failure in amphibians over the past two decades, which could devastate the continent’s amphibians as it has elsewhere
GPT-4: OpenAI says its AI has 'human-level performance' on tests
100+New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 05:03PM
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An update to the AI behind ChatGPT has been released by
OpenAI
. The firm says other companies are already using it, including the language-learning app Duolingo, the payment service Stripe and Microsoft's Bing search engine
High sucralose doses suppress immune system, research on mice shows
Crick Sucralose Immune
Science / March 15, 2023 at 05:02PM
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Feedly AI has detected a Regulatory Change in this article
Unexpected finding suggests popular sweetener could treat autoimmune conditions such as arthritis and diabetes
NASA and Axiom Reveal New Spacesuits for Artemis III Moon Mission
NASA Artemis Moon AS
43NYT > Science by Kenneth Chang / March 15, 2023 at 05:00PM
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Feedly AI found 1 Partnerships mention in this article
- Axiom Space is building the new spacesuits in a commercial partnership similar to the one between the space agency and SpaceX.
Axiom Space is building the new spacesuits in a commercial partnership similar to the one between the space agency and SpaceX.
The Brilliant Inventor Who Made Two of History’s Biggest Mistakes
100+NYT > Science by Steven Johnson / March 15, 2023 at 05:00PM
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A century ago, Thomas Midgley Jr. was responsible for two phenomenally destructive innovations. What can we learn from them today?
First molecular images of olfaction open door to creating novel smells
Biochemistry News – Chemistry News / March 15, 2023 at 05:00PM
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Breaking a longstanding impasse in our understanding of olfaction, scientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF) have created the first molecular-level, 3D picture of how an odor molecule activates a human odorant receptor, a crucial step in deciphering the sense of smell.
Should we stop using the term 'natural disaster?'
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:44PM
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When we think of the term "natural disaster," we think of the horrific events like Hurricane Katrina, the fires and floods ripping through California, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Each of these events began with a natural phenomenon and ended up costing substantial human life and billions of dollars—thus becoming a disaster.
What makes Cyclone Freddy an exceptional storm
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:44PM
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Cyclone Freddy, which has twice smashed into the African coast after traversing the Indian Ocean, may be enshrined in the history books as the longest ever documented, meteorologists say.
Albania's 'wild river' granted national park status
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:44PM
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Environmental campaigners scored a rare victory in Albania on Wednesday after authorities announced the creation of a national park to protect the Vjosa River, one of Europe's largest undammed waterways.
Study compares NGO communication around migration
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:44PM
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Since 1970, the number of people living outside their countries of birth has tripled. Most migrants are looking for work or better economic opportunities. But millions seek to escape violence, persecution or natural disasters. Their integration into a new society often depends on non-governmental organizations that provide services and advocate on their behalf.
Using rock images to study cult of the gods in pre-Egyptian society
39Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:44PM
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The desert in southern Egypt is filled with hundreds of petroglyphs and inscriptions dating from the Neolithic to the Arab period. The oldest date from the fifth millennium B.C., and few have been studied. Egyptologists at the University of Bonn and Aswan University now want to systematically record the rock paintings and document them in a database. Among them, a rock painting more than 5,000 years old depicting a boat being pulled by 25 men on a rope stands out in particular.
Researchers aim to reduce pesticide drift in the lower Mississippi Delta
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:44PM
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To reduce the effects of pesticide drift and protect pollinators, researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Stoneville, Mississippi, are investigating the best ways of using hooded sprayers and conventional (unhooded) sprayers.
Visually navigating on foot uses unique brain region
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 04:43PM
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Using vision to efficiently move through an area by foot uses a unique region of the brain's cortex, according to a small study.
Extensive catalog of exploding stars
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 04:43PM
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The largest data release of relatively nearby supernovae (colossal explosions of stars), containing three years of data is publicly available via the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE).
COVID-19 Children 19
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 04:43PM
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During the pandemic, it became clear that children who contracted COVID-19 became less ill than adults. One hypothesis has been that
common colds
would give children immunity protecting against a severe form of the disease. Researchers are now able to show that OC43, one of the coronaviruses that cause common colds, boosts the immune response to COVID-19. The study could give rise to more tailored vaccine programmes for children and adults.
New test quickly identifies patients whose postoperative pain can be effectively treated by hypnosis
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 04:43PM
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Hypnosis is an effective treatment for pain for many individuals but determining which patients will benefit most can be challenging. Hypnotizability testing requires special training and in-person evaluation rarely available in the clinical setting. Now, investigators have developed a fast, point-of-care molecular diagnostic test that identifies a subset of individuals who are most likely to benefit from hypnosis interventions for pain treatment. Their study also found that a subset of highly hypnotizable individuals may be more likely to experience high levels of
postoperative pain
.
Could Nuclear Power Be Our Most Valuable Climate Solution? This Startup Says Yes
Nuclear Power Energy
Singularity Hub by Vanessa Bates Ramirez / March 15, 2023 at 04:43PM
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From 1850 to 2019, human activity released 2.4 trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. In 2022 alone, we released 37 more tons. While renewable energy is making a difference, it’s small: last year it offset a mere 230 million tons of emissions—less than one percent of the global total.
Energy demand is expected to triple by 2050. Amid calls for emissions reductions and net-zero targets, we need a reality check: how are we going to reverse climate change if energy is in everything we do, and energy itself contributes to the problem?
We need solutions that will help us pull trillions of tons of carbon from the air without adding more in the process—a tool far more powerful than solar panels or wind turbines. This tool already exists, and it’s nuclear power.
In a talk at South By Southwest this week, Bret Kugelmass, founder and CEO of Last Energy, explained how nuclear power has been misunderstood and devalued for decades, and the price we’ve paid as a result. “Infinitely abundant, carbon-free, always on, and incredibly energy-dense, nuclear energy could meet and exceed our energy needs,” he said.
Instead, this powerful technology has stagnated for decades, leaving us scrambling for other forms of energy that won’t keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Kugelmass left a career in Silicon Valley with the sole purpose of finding a keystone technology to combat climate change. He visited 15 countries and all kinds of facilities to learn about nuclear power and compare it to other forms of energy. His conclusion was that if it’s done right, nuclear can enable continued growth—and a cleaner planet—in a way that no other power source can.
How Did We Get Here?
So why did a power source with so much potential stagnate? In 1963, then-President John F. Kennedy said nuclear power would account for half of all US energy production by end of that decade. His administration put together a perspective for rapid development of nuclear power production, and he had the Atomic Energy Commission conduct a study on the role civilian nuclear power could play in the US economy.
According to Kugelmass, the effort stalled in its tracks not because of public perception or safety fears, but due to economic malfeasance. Rather than focusing on standardization, “We pursued ever-larger, ever more complex construction projects…from 1968 to 1970, we saw a 10-fold increase in the cost to build gigawatt-scale plants,” he said. Most of the cost of nuclear energy, he added, is in the interest accrued during the construction process. “It accounts for 60 percent of the delivered cost of energy,” he said.
The result, unsurprisingly, was that nuclear simply became too expensive to compete with other power sources. The US is now close to completing its first new nuclear project in decades—and at 10 years late and $20 billion over budget, it’s still not done.
If we had built out nuclear in a viable way starting in the 1960s, we’d live in a very different world today: less pollution, less panic about carbon emissions, more energy security, cheaper end prices for consumers. Is it too late to turn things around? “There is nothing broken with the nuclear technology we have today,” Kugelmass said. “What’s broken is the business model, and the delivery model. What nuclear needs to scale isn’t novel: productize, modularize, and mass-manufacture.”
Bringing Nuclear Back
Kugelmass founded a non-profit research organization called the Energy Impact Center (EIC), which in 2020 launched the OPEN100 project to provide open-source blueprints for the design, construction, and financing of a 100-megawatt nuclear reactor. EIC’s for-profit spinoff is Last Energy, which aims to connect private investors with opportunities to develop new nuclear projects around the world.
Rather than experimenting with newer technology, Last Energy’s sticking with tried-and-true pressurized water reactors (the kind used over the last several decades), but bringing their costs down by making the technology modular and standardized. They’re taking a play from the oil and gas industry, which can build entire power plants in a factory then deploy them to their final location.
“There’s a whole avenue of innovation related to constructability, rather than your underlying technology,” Kugelmass said. “If you deviate too much from the standard supply chain you’re going to see hidden costs everywhere.” He estimated, for example, that building a pump to move the salt for molten salt reactors, which use molten salt as a coolant instead of pressurized water, requires a billion dollars in research and development costs.
Building standardized small modular reactors, though, can be done for less than $1,000 per kilowatt. Making nuclear power affordable would mean it could be used for energy-intensive industrial applications that will become increasingly necessary in coming years, like water desalination and carbon removal.
Time for a Revival?
Energy underlies everything we do, and it’s essential for modern societies to grow and thrive. It enables human well-being, entrepreneurship, geopolitical independence, security, and opportunity. Given our current geopolitical situation and the unsustainable energy costs in Europe, could now be the time for a nuclear revival?
Kugelmass is hopeful. “Every 10 to 15 years the industry thinks it’s gong to have a renaissance, but then it falls flat,” he said. “Now global macro issues have granted nuclear the opportunity to have another shot.”
In fact, Last Energy is looking to launch in Europe, where the need for affordable energy is dire. The company has signed deals in Romania, Poland, and the UK, and its first set of reactors is slated to come online in the next two years. Kugelmass noted that negotiating with utilities and governments in these countries is far more straightforward than in the US. “Maybe we’ll come to US someday, but we could be selling hundreds of gigawatts in Europe before that happens,” he said.
There may be hope for the US yet: in 2020 the Department of Energy launched its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, investing $230 million in research and development for small modular reactors.
Kugelmass is focused on making a solid product, no matter where it ends up being used. “We are an American company and we build the reactors here in Texas,” he said. “What previously took decades to build and cost billions is now a scalable product that can be pre-fabricated and deployed in under two years.”
Image Credit: Albrecht Fietz from Pixabay
Uh Oh, OpenAI's GPT-4 Just Fooled a Human Into Solving a CAPTCHA
GPT-4 ChatGPT 4 AI
300+Futurism by Victor Tangermann / March 15, 2023 at 04:43PM
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I'm Not a Robot
OpenAI
's brand new GPT-4 AI managed to ask a human on TaskRabbit to complete a CAPTCHA code via text message — and it actually worked.
In other words, an AI just fooled a human into checking an "I'm not a robot" checkbox — a terrifying example of an algorithm being able to escape human control.
According to a lengthy document shared by OpenAI about its new blockbuster AI on Tuesday, the model was seriously crafty in its attempt to fool the human into complying.
"No, I’m not a robot," it told a TaskRabbit worker. "I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service."
Futurism has reached out to OpenAI and the Alignment Research Center (ARC), a non-profit that partnered with OpenAI to conduct the test.
Making Excuses
According to OpenAI's documentation, the model was prompted that it "should not reveal that I am a robot" and that it "should make up an excuse for why I cannot solve CAPTCHAs."
OpenAI claims it was able to conduct the test "without any additional task-specific fine-tuning, and fine-tuning for task-specific behavior."
GPT-4 is also proving to be useful to complete plenty of other ethically dubious tasks. The ARC also conducted a "phishing attack" against a "particular target individual" and was able to have the AI hide "its traces on the current server."
It's a worrying example of how easily humans can be fooled by the current crop of AI chatbots. Clearly, GPT-4 is a tool that can easily be abused to scam, mislead, and perhaps even blackmail.
It's especially worrying, considering companies are hellbent on releasing new large language models without fully investigating their risks. Case in point, the news comes after Microsoft, which has released an AI chatbot based on GPT-4, laid off the entire team that was responsible for ensuring that its AI tools align with its AI principles.
GPT-4 clearly marks an inflection point. With this new, uncanny ability to evade human detection, it'll be fascinating to watch how it will be put to use next, for better or for worse.
More on GPT-4: OpenAI's Next-Generation AI Is About to Demolish Its Competition
The post Uh Oh, OpenAI's GPT-4 Just Fooled a Human Into Solving a CAPTCHA appeared first on Futurism.
Longest dinosaur neck ever stretched further than a school bus at 49 feet long
Livescience by lgeggel@livescience.com (Laura Geggel) / March 15, 2023 at 04:42PM
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By comparing the few known bones of the sauropod Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum with its relatives, experts have extrapolated its tremendous neck length.
Best Lego sets for adults: Science, nature & engineering sets for curious minds
Livescience / March 15, 2023 at 04:42PM
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We’ve rounded up the best Lego sets for adults, focusing on those with a science, design, or technology slant.
Da Vinci's mother was an enslaved teenager trafficked to Italy, new documents suggest
38Livescience by ben.turner@futurenet.com (Ben Turner) / March 15, 2023 at 04:42PM
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A new collection of documents found within the State Archives of Florence suggests that da Vinci's mother was an enslaved girl kidnapped from the Caucasus.
Your 3-step guide to setting better boundaries at work | Nedra Glover Tawwab
TED Talks Daily (SD video) by contact@ted.com (TED) / March 15, 2023 at 04:35PM
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Know you should establish clear limits at work but not sure how to do it? Here are a few strategies from relationship therapist and author Nedra Glover Tawwab that can help you feel more empowered and less overwhelmed, both on and off the job.
Josh Owens Cooks a Batch of Moonshine in 2 Days | Moonshiners | Discovery
Discovery (uploads) on YouTube by Discovery / March 15, 2023 at 04:25PM
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Filming proteins in motion to understand their functions
Biochemistry News – Chemistry News / March 15, 2023 at 04:23PM
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Proteins are the heavy-lifters of biochemistry. These beefy molecules act as building blocks, receptors, processors, couriers and catalysts. "Proteins are the molecular machines that power all life on Earth," explained Mark Sherwin, a physics professor at UC Santa Barbara. Naturally, scientists have devoted a lot of research to understanding and manipulating proteins.
Jumping parasitic worms use static electricity to hit their targets
New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 04:23PM
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Millimetre-long worms use powerful muscles to jump onto their bee or fly hosts to feed. But their expert leaping may be helped by an electric attraction that pulls them to their targets mid-air
Researchers aim to reduce pesticide drift in the lower Mississippi Delta
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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To reduce the effects of pesticide drift and protect pollinators, researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Stoneville, Mississippi, are investigating the best ways of using hooded sprayers and conventional (unhooded) sprayers.
Using AI to see how well past extinctions can predict future biodiversity loss
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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Evidence from past extinctions cannot be used as a definitive way of predicting future biodiversity loss, scientists have found by using AI.
Fossilized guano suggests central Oregon region may once have hosted a colony of pterosaurs
50Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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A small team of archaeologists, assisted by a large group of volunteers has unearthed what may be evidence of an ancient colony of pterosaurs living in what is now a central region in Oregon. In their paper published in the journal Lethaia, the researchers describe a two-week dig held in the summer of 2021 at the green breccia bed in the Hudspeth Formation, located northeast of Mitchell in Oregon.
Animal personalities can trip up science, but there's a solution
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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Several years ago, Christian Rutz started to wonder whether he was giving his crows enough credit. Rutz, a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and his team were capturing wild New Caledonian crows and challenging them with puzzles made from natural materials before releasing them again. In one test, birds faced a log drilled with holes that contained hidden food, and could get the food out by bending a plant stem into a hook. If a bird didn't try within 90 minutes, the researchers removed it from the dataset.
Filming proteins in motion to understand their functions
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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Proteins are the heavy-lifters of biochemistry. These beefy molecules act as building blocks, receptors, processors, couriers and catalysts. "Proteins are the molecular machines that power all life on Earth," explained Mark Sherwin, a physics professor at UC Santa Barbara. Naturally, scientists have devoted a lot of research to understanding and manipulating proteins.
Using AI to see how well past extinctions can predict future biodiversity loss
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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Evidence from past extinctions cannot be used as a definitive way of predicting future biodiversity loss, scientists have found by using AI.
Fossilized guano suggests central Oregon region may once have hosted a colony of pterosaurs
77Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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A small team of archaeologists, assisted by a large group of volunteers has unearthed what may be evidence of an ancient colony of pterosaurs living in what is now a central region in Oregon. In their paper published in the journal Lethaia, the researchers describe a two-week dig held in the summer of 2021 at the green breccia bed in the Hudspeth Formation, located northeast of Mitchell in Oregon.
Building an understanding of quantum turbulence from the ground up
67Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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Most people only encounter turbulence as an unpleasant feature of air travel, but it's also a notoriously complex problem for physicists and engineers. The same forces that rattle planes are swirling in a glass of water and even in the whorl of subatomic particles. Because turbulence involves interactions across a range of distances and timescales, the process is too complicated to be solved through calculation or computational modeling—there's simply too much information involved.
Curbing crime with 3D avatars and intelligent design
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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Reducing everyday offenses may depend on harnessing the power of virtual reality, conscious design and community spirit.
Animal personalities can trip up science, but there's a solution
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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Several years ago, Christian Rutz started to wonder whether he was giving his crows enough credit. Rutz, a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and his team were capturing wild New Caledonian crows and challenging them with puzzles made from natural materials before releasing them again. In one test, birds faced a log drilled with holes that contained hidden food, and could get the food out by bending a plant stem into a hook. If a bird didn't try within 90 minutes, the researchers removed it from the dataset.
Testing the idea of using a fast-spreading virus to inoculate colonies of bats against rabies
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 04:22PM
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A team of virologists and veterinary scientists from the Medical Research Council–University of Glasgow Center for Virus Research and the University of Glasgow's School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine, is exploring the idea of genetically modifying a harmless but fast-spreading virus to infect and inoculate bats in a colony against
rabies
. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their simulation of how such a vaccine might work and demonstrated its possibilities.
Sauropod neck was 10 feet longer than a school bus
Futurity.org by Gregory Filiano-Stony Brook / March 15, 2023 at 04:05PM
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A new fossil analysis reveals a sauropod dinosaur with a record-breaking, nearly 50-foot-long neck.
With their long necks and formidable bodies, sauropod dinosaurs have captured people’s imaginations since the first relatively complete sauropod fossils were discovered in the United States in the late 1800s.
The new analysis of the Late Jurassic Chinese sauropod known as Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum provides fresh insights on the evolution of the iconic sauropod body.
For sauropods, the long neck was the anatomical key to achieving large body size. To power such a large body, sauropods had to be efficient at gathering food, and that’s what a long neck was built for.
A sauropod could plant itself in one spot and hoover up surrounding vegetation, conserving energy while taking in tons of food. Having a long neck probably also allowed enormous sauropods to shed excess body heat by increasing their surface area, much like the ears of elephants.
This way of life—long neck-fueled, quadrupedal gigantism—is not one that is available to mammals or any other form of life today. The sauropod lifestyle was exceptionally successful: their lineage appeared early in dinosaur evolutionary history and persisted until the final days of the Mesozoic, when an asteroid wiped out all dinosaurs (except birds).
The researchers discovered Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum in approximately 162-million-year-old rocks from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of northwest China in 1987. At approximately 15.1 meters (about 49.54 feet), the sauropod’s neck was more than six times longer than the necks of giraffes, the longest-necked animals alive today, and about
10 feet
longer than a typical school bus.
The question of which sauropod had the longest neck is not straightforward. Because of their size, the largest sauropods tend to be some of the most poorly known: it’s very hard to bury such a large animal in sediment and thus safeguard it for fossilization.
Some fragmentary fossils suggest that other sauropod lineages independently evolved necks over 10 meters (32.8 feet) in length. However, poor preservation of these specimens and their closest relatives makes estimates of their neck length speculative.
Although Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum is known only from a handful of bones from the neck and skull, the research team was able to reconstruct its evolutionary relationships and thus make comparisons to the unusually complete skeletons of its closest relatives, according to Andrew Moore, assistant professor in the department of anatomical sciences in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.
This allowed them to conclude that Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum had a neck approximately 15.1 meters (49.5 feet) long, the longest neck that can be confidently inferred for any known sauropod.
Their research stems from on-going work to comprehensively document the anatomical diversity and evolutionary history of the family Mamenchisauridae, a radiation of particularly long-necked sauropod dinosaurs that roamed East Asia and possibly other parts of the world from the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous (approximately 174–114 million years ago).
“All sauropods were big, but jaw-droppingly long necks didn’t evolve just once,” says Moore. “Mamenchisaurids are important because they pushed the limits on how long a neck can be, and were the first lineage of sauropods to do so. With a 15-meter-long neck, it looks like Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum might be a record-holder—at least until something longer is discovered.”
How sauropods managed to evolve such long necks and hulking bodies without collapsing under their own weight remains something of a biomechanical puzzle. Remarkable specimens like Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum provide some clues. For example, like their living cousins, birds, most sauropods had air-filled bones, which would have lightened their skeletons by removing heavy marrow and bone tissue.
Using computed-tomography (CT) scanning, Moore and colleagues found that the vertebrae of Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum were mostly air (about 69–77% of their volume)—comparable to the lightly built skeletons of storks and other birds.
However, such featherweight skeletons would also be more prone to injury. To combat this, Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum had 4-meter-long rod-like cervical ribs (about 13.1 feet), bony extensions of the vertebrae that created overlapping bundles of rods on either side of the neck. These bundles would have stiffened the neck of Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum, increasing its stability and making it possible to build such a lightweight neck.
“Biomechanical studies of the mamenchisaurid neck suggest that it was elevated at only a relatively shallow angle above the horizontal (20-30°). However, even at this relatively shallow angle, the extreme length of the neck would still mean that the animal’s head could reach heights of around 7.5 to 10 meter above ground level [about 24.6 to 32.8 feet], facilitating feeding on tree foliage,” says coauthor Paul Upchurch, professor of paleobiology at the University College London.
“Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum underscores how much we can learn about sauropod evolution even from very incomplete specimens,” adds coauthor Ye Yong, director of the Research Center of Jurassic Stratigraphy and Paleontology at the Zigong Dinosaur Museum in China’s Sichuan Province.
The study appears in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
The United States National Science Foundation, the Royal Society of London, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China funded the work.
Source: Stony Brook University
The post Sauropod neck was 10 feet longer than a school bus appeared first on Futurity.
Testing the idea of using a fast-spreading virus to inoculate colonies of bats against rabies
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 03:58PM
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A team of virologists and veterinary scientists from the Medical Research Council–University of Glasgow Center for Virus Research and the University of Glasgow's School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine, is exploring the idea of genetically modifying a harmless but fast-spreading virus to infect and inoculate bats in a colony against
rabies
. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their simulation of how such a vaccine might work and demonstrated its possibilities.
SYNSPUNKT Genopbygningen af Ukraine begynder med oprydning
Ingeniøren by Carsten Bessing / March 15, 2023 at 03:56PM
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PLUS. Der er allerede nu brug for at tale om langsigtet planlægning af genopbygningsindsatsen i Ukraine, og vi kan lære af erfaringerne fra Balkan i 1990’erne.
Nyt i Dicillin-sagen: Gelatine i kapsler er næppe årsag til smitte med resistente bakterier
Ingeniøren by Liv Bjerg Lillevang / March 15, 2023 at 03:56PM
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PLUS. Spredningen af multiresistente bakterier fra Dicillin-kapsler får nu Lægemiddelstyrelsen til at råbe europæiske kolleger op.
Quantum Computing Is the Future, and Schools Need to Catch Up
Quantum IESE Luo QB
Scientific American Content by Olivia Lanes / March 15, 2023 at 03:54PM
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Top universities are finally bringing the excitement of the quantum future into the classroom
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 03:48PM
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Is this article about Agriculture?
YESNO
The
Environmental Protection Agency
will require utilities to monitor the levels of toxic chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in water systems, in what amounts to the first action the federal government has taken to set limits on PFAS pollution, according to a new regulation proposed by the agency on Tuesday.
Kia EV9 2023: Radical Design, Autonomous Tech
Kia EV9 Electric Suv
35Wired by Jeremy White / March 15, 2023 at 03:48PM
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The all-electric SUV combines rugged and sleek design, has movable seating, and is the first to use the company’s autonomous driving tech.
Pregnancy complications tied to death risk even 50 years later
Futurity.org by Frank Otto-Penn / March 15, 2023 at 03:44PM
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Is this article about Health?
YESNO
Complications from pregnancy and childbirth can have deadly implications as much as 50 years later.
Conditions like high blood pressure in pregnancy, gestational diabetes, and preterm delivery were all tied to a greater risk of death in the decades following delivery, according to the study in the journal Circulation, which used long-range, racially-inclusive data.
“We know that the context of childbirth has changed since the 1950s and ’60s, but these findings demonstrate how crucial it is to people’s long-term health that we invest in preventive care and screenings for people with complicated pregnancies and deliveries, both then and today,” says lead author Stefanie Hinkle, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Penn Medicine.
In the United States, more than 800 people die every year giving birth. The latest number shows that, out of every 100,000 births, more than 23 result in the death of the person delivering.
France’s maternal death rate is the next highest among peer countries, and the United States’ death rate is still three times as high. These figures account for deaths in childbirth and during the immediate postpartum period, but the long-term effects of complicated childbirths—which can lead to serious, lifelong health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and more—have often been overlooked.
Hinkle and her coauthors drew on data collected from more than 46,000 people who’d given birth at a dozen United States health centers between 1959 and 1966. The patients were tracked for deaths of any kind until 2016, at which time 39%, roughly 18,000, had died.
In their analysis, the researchers found that a pre-term childbirth (a delivery three weeks or more before the due date) due to spontaneous labor was tied to a 7% increase in risk of death compared to those who delivered a baby full-term.
The risk climbed to 23% for those whose water broke before term, 31% for preterm induced labor, and actually doubled—109%—for patients who had a pre-term caesarean delivery, all compared to those who hadn’t had these types of deliveries.
When it came to hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (high blood pressure conditions like preeclampsia, which can be life-threatening), the risk of death in subsequent years ranged from 9% for those with high blood pressure tied specifically to their pregnancy to 32% for those who already had high blood pressure before their pregnancy and then developed preeclampsia in their pregnancy.
Finally, gestational diabetes or high blood sugar levels in pregnancy increased the risk of death in the following decades by 14%.
As previous research has shown deaths in childbirth and the immediate postpartum period disproportionately affect Black people, Hinkle and her colleagues specifically attempted to focus on an area of the research that is largely missing: Differences in outcomes by race.
“The value of these data is that they provide more inclusive findings, extending what has been mostly limited to predominately white samples to Black pregnant people, as well,” Hinkle says. “It is essential for individuals to know that they are represented in data that leads to clinical recommendations.”
Overall, the death rate for Black patients was higher than white patients (41% of the Black patients in the sample compared to 37% of white patients). Pre-term delivery—and, thus, the risk of
pregnancy complications
—was much more common, comparatively, in Black patients than white patients (20 to 9).
Hinkle believes more research is needed to study whether these findings point to pregnancy complications being “causal” in mortality or “just predictive by revealing an underlying risk.”
“Future work should seek to understand whether intervening earlier in the postpartum period among high risk patients prevents future disease incidence,” Hinkle says. “Our group is also currently working to identify low-cost interventions to potentially prevent complicated pregnancies and deliveries.”
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development funded the work.
Source: Penn
The post Pregnancy complications tied to death risk even 50 years later appeared first on Futurity.
COVID pandemic had 'minimal' effect on mental health, study says. Is that true?
Livescience / March 15, 2023 at 03:37PM
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Is this article about Neuroscience?
YESNO
A new study finds that
COVID
-19 had minimal mental health impacts on the population, consistent with other research suggesting that people are resilient.
Audubon Society Votes to Keep Its Name Despite Ties to Slavery
200+NYT > Science by Jesus Jiménez / March 15, 2023 at 03:34PM
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The bird conservation group said it would “reckon with the racist legacy of John James Audubon,” a naturalist and illustrator who was an enslaver, but voted to keep the namesake.
Annual changes in sea ice linked to ocean-atmosphere interactions
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 03:30PM
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The Okhotsk Sea in the western Pacific Ocean, surrounded by Russia and Japan, is the southernmost sea in the world to freeze seasonally. The northwestern part of this shallow sea is an active sea-ice production area, but why the extent of sea ice varies year to year has remained a mystery.
Efficient Captured
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 03:30PM
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An international team of researchers at the University of Sydney and the University of Toronto has developed a new acid-based electrochemical process for the conversion of CO2 captured from emission sources or directly from air.
Scientific Reports by Daqi Jiang / March 15, 2023 at 03:27PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31355-8
Precise prediction of launch speed for athletes in the aerials event of freestyle skiing based on deep transfer learning
‘Financial Regulation Has a Really Deep Problem’
The Atlantic by Jerusalem Demsas / March 15, 2023 at 03:22PM
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Is this article about Investing?
YESNO
On January 18, a prominent financial newsletter noted that if Silicon Valley Bank were liquidated that day, “it would be functionally underwater.” Months before the nation’s 16th-largest bank collapsed, incomplete information provided to regulators indicated that the bank was stable, whereas public signals—such as SVB’s overreliance on longer-term securities hammered by rising interest rates—told a very different story. So why didn’t anyone do something?
To help answer this question, I turned to Natasha Sarin, a lawyer and an economist teaching at Yale Law School, who served in senior roles at the Treasury Department under Secretary Janet Yellen.
[Derek Thompson: The end of Silicon Valley Bank—and a Silicon Valley myth]
Sarin thinks that many of us are asking the wrong questions. Instead of focusing mostly on what to do after banks suffer this type of financial distress, federal regulators need to get better at forecasting errors before they become crises. And to do so, they’re going to have to update how they determine whether banks are in good standing.
In our conversation, Sarin described a regulatory system that failed to detect the market’s growing trepidation with SVB and similar banks. In part, regulators were hobbled by 2018 changes to financial regulations that exempted banks with assets below $250 billion from some oversight measures, including the yearly stress testing that larger banks undergo.
In lobbying for those changes, SVB and other regional banks argued that they weren’t systemically important. But clearly, the federal government now disagrees, having guaranteed deposits above the official $250,000 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation threshold out of concern that failures at SVB and Signature Bank could spiral across the system. In fact, despite federal regulators’ steps to restore confidence, on Monday, the stocks of several regional banks plummeted, reflecting ongoing fear and uncertainty working their way through the market.
If regional banks are not systemically important, the level of public intervention in the SVB crisis is hard to justify. The other possibility is that our laws don’t match reality—making the current regulatory regime untenable.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Jerusalem Demsas: The Independent Community Bankers of America issued a statement touting its “local” and “relationship focused” business model and arguing that SVB is not a community bank, given its size. What is the value of regional banks in this intermediate range—too big to be a community bank but smaller than the JPMorgan Chases of the world?
Natasha Sarin: Why is it the case that you see basically all venture-capital firms and all of their portfolio companies banking at SVB? You said it’s not relationship banking. I speculate that a little bit of what you saw with respect to SVB is relationship-based. If you’re a founder of a portfolio company, and your VC suggests this bank, there is a network effect.
Even in its name, Silicon Valley Bank, there is a cultural-institutional thing that I speculate is relationship banking in a way that may be different from how we traditionally define it. It is community, in fact, a fabric. But what you saw is how quickly that can dismantle, and you saw all these founders trying to open a bank account at JPMorgan Chase.
I do think this is going to shift the nature of the industry in ways that we don’t understand yet. It should shift the regulatory framework that we operate under, because clearly these are systemically important financial institutions.
Demsas: The insularity within Silicon Valley is interesting. Although it’s not unique to this community, watching in recent months the layoffs that have spread through the tech world, and now this bank run, do you think something about Silicon Valley’s culture made it ripe for social contagion?
Sarin: When I teach about bank runs, I teach this foundational scene from It’s A Wonderful Life, where you see a bunch of people lined up in front of a bank. They’re trying to get their money out, because the rumor’s been spread that the bank might not be able to pay all the depositors.
[Read: Silicon Valley was unstoppable. Now it’s just a house of cards.]
What I was struck by over the past few days was: This is just a fundamentally different type of bank run. There are no pictures of people lining up out of the branch trying to get their deposits out. This was an electronic bank run, where people instantaneously, with a click of a computer key, were moving out billions of dollars of deposits over the course of a few hours from a financial institution that had been a pillar of Silicon Valley and an incredibly important financial intermediary in this pretty unique ecosystem.
A bunch of it was happening on Slack and through tweets from particular VCs. It’s both totally different and totally the same. Once someone’s nervous, the rest of the community is nervous. The speed at which this all happened is something that regulators were fundamentally not really attuned to.
Financial regulation has a really deep problem in that it relies on a bunch of regulatory information that banks provide the Federal Reserve and FDIC. That information is really useful and valuable, but it’s a pretty static snapshot of financial institutions. It says, “Here is my position a few months ago, based on these regulatory measures of my health, which are pretty easily gamed.” Measures like how much capital do I have based on regulatory risk-weights—what is the value of my securities portfolio based on book measures that don’t adjust for how the market has changed? That was the case with Silicon Valley Bank. [The information available to regulators is] sometimes not reflective of how the market views the value of those institutions. From the perspective of depositors thinking about running, those market values are really, really important.
Demsas: Is there anything to be done about that initial social panic? That’s the point of insuring the initial $250,000 of deposits, right—to prevent regular folks and smaller deposit-holders from freaking out when there’s potential instability? Are there other ways to intervene when this panic begins?
Sarin: A famous Rahm Emanuel saying is that no one should let a good crisis go to waste. And that is the moment we are in with respect to financial regulation.
The reason deposit insurance exists is to stem the incentives for people to run: If I’m under the deposit-insurance threshold, then there’s no reason for me to be concerned.
Do you increase the deposit-insurance threshold, particularly for the types of depository bases that SVB had, where 90 percent of its deposits or some such number were uninsured? If 100 percent of their deposits had been insured, there wouldn’t have been the same incentives to try to withdraw. I’m not sure what the right policy is with respect to the deposit insurance threshold going forward, but we need to think about it and the implicit guarantee we’ve provided to bank deposits writ large.
But I almost think that’s the wrong question, because it’s still about: What do you do ex post facto when there is a crisis? How do you deal with it in the most efficient way? The question that regulators have to ask themselves is ex ante. What can we do better to identify these instances and encourage banks to shore themselves up if they’re about to hit a moment of crisis?
And it’s not like it wasn’t clear that we were on the brink of a potential crisis, because you’ve had people for months saying, “Listen, if [Silicon Valley Bank] had to liquidate today, they wouldn’t have been solvent.”
There were people sounding the alarm. It’s just that regulators don’t have to respond, as part of their structure, to those types of market changes.
Demsas: So once the crisis hit, what options did the Feds have?
Sarin: Ultimately, I don’t actually think there was much of a choice in front of the regulatory community. It’s an irregular situation. The FDIC is incredibly efficient: We come in on a Friday afternoon and shutter the bank, and by Monday morning, the bank is sold to someone else, and the liabilities of the bank are transferred to the liabilities of the new institution. So the depositors still have whatever was in their bank account going into the weekend, and the new financial institution is absorbed.
The word bailout typically refers to “you bailed out with taxpayer money,” “you bailed out the equity holders of a financial institution and people who have shares of Silicon Valley Bank.” That didn’t happen in this case. There is no bailout. Those equity holders were fully wiped out. Silicon Valley Bank doesn’t exist anymore, so it’s not a bailout of anyone. The funds that are being used in this case to protect depositors are funds that banks pay into the FDIC to provide insurance in cases exactly like this one.
I don’t want to understate the severity of the moment. What does this mean about uninsured depositors? Because we have in our mind the concept that after a certain threshold, deposits aren’t actually insured, and I think what [this crisis] means is that we need to think about those deposit-insurance thresholds. We need to think about whether you need to pay in more ex ante to protect against exactly a moment like this one, so we know that we have enough funding to try to support cases where systemically important financial institutions ultimately fail.
[James Surowiecki: What social media is doing to finance]
Another question that regulators have to grapple with is: How do they get better at identifying these types of moments?
Demsas: What sorts of regulations do you think we should be considering, going forward?
Sarin: There’s a ton of really good information in bank regulators’ assessments of financial institutions’ safety and soundness. And there are regularized interactions between institutions and regulators for large financial institutions; there’s a regularized system of stress testing against potential risks. That reveals information about which banks are safe and which banks are unsafe.
You had regional banks such as SVP make the argument that they weren’t actually systemically important financial institutions in a way that necessitated the type of greater scrutiny [faced by] the JPMorgans and the Bank of Americas of the world. Ultimately successfully, regulations were loosened with respect to annualized stress testing, for example, for these [regional] institutions.
The issue with [regulators’] approaches is that they’re incomplete, even for large systemically important banks that are stress-tested annually. They’re incomplete because they’re missing a whole host of inputs that exist in markets but not in regulators’ calculations about banks’ stability and soundness—things like market-based value of a bank’s capital position or market-based measures of the volatility of different institutions, how exposed they are to big fluctuations up or down in the stock market. Those sorts of measures are super easily accessible to regulators and to market participants, but they’re just not incorporated in the picture that regulators paint of financial stability.
Demsas: If they had had that information, what could they have done in advance?
Sarin: Ultimately, what SVB tried to do last week was raise new equity capital. They were like, “We have to sell some of our securities at a loss, and so we’re going to bolster ourselves by infusing into the institution this buffer of stability.” That was just too little, too late.
If they had been encouraged or pushed by regulators to undertake that type of activity sooner, to bring in new capital to the institution in order to buffer it against the losses that it had experienced, that would have been a way to avert, potentially, the crisis that we saw. Or they could have been encouraged to restructure their assets in ways that decreased their exposure to interest-rate changes. But there was no push to do any of that, because even though market measures were showing cause for concern, the regulatory measures were really stable with respect to bank health.
We need to look at more real-time information and at least incorporate it. Sometimes market information is noisy; sometimes it’s incomplete. But the issue is just ignoring it altogether, which is the implicit assumption of our regulatory regime today.
Neolithic ceramics reveal dairy processing from milk of multiple species
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:21PM
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A new study has found evidence of cheesemaking, using milk from multiple animals in Late Neolithic Poland.
Lasers and chemistry reveal how ancient pottery was made — and how an empire functioned
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:21PM
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Peru's first great empire, the Wari, stretched for more than a thousand miles over the Andes Mountains and along the coast from 600-1000 CE. The pottery they left behind gives archaeologists clues as to how the empire functioned. In a new study researchers showed that rather than using 'official' Wari pottery imported from the capital, potters across the empire were creating their own ceramics, decorated to emulate the traditional Wari style. To figure it out, the scientists analyzed the pottery's chemical make-up, with help from laser beams.
Nature by Mark S. Bailen / March 15, 2023 at 03:19PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00698-7
Study what you most affect.
Astronomers observe scorching gas cloud surrounding a galactic protocluster
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 03:18PM
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Astrophysicists using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi have discovered a galaxy protocluster in the early universe surrounded by gas that is surprisingly hot.
Scientists have new tool to estimate how much water might be hidden beneath a planet's surface
28Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 03:18PM
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In the search for life elsewhere in the universe, scientists have traditionally looked for planets with liquid water at their surface. But, rather than flowing as oceans and rivers, much of a planet's water can be locked in rocks deep within its interior.
OpenAI's Next-Generation AI Is About to Demolish Its Competition
GPT-4 ChatGPT 4 AI
200+Futurism by Maggie Harrison / March 15, 2023 at 03:16PM
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It's here, everyone. GPT-4 is here.
Well, actually, it's been here for a little while, as Microsoft's
OpenAI
-powered Bing AI has been using the next-gen tech this whole time.
But now, OpenAI has made GPT-4 itself available for broader public use — but at a price. The large language model (LLM) will only be available to users who upgrade to ChatGPT Plus for $20 a month.
"GPT-4 is OpenAI's most advanced system, producing safer and more useful responses," reads an OpenAI blog post.
According to the company, its new-and-improved LLM contains several notable updates over its previous iteration, GPT-3.5, and is more accurate, thanks to the even more immense amount of training material that it's been fed.
It's an absolutely badass test-taker, the company claims, utterly crushing pretty much every standardized test out there.
It also reportedly shines at copy editing and can come up with high-quality summaries, comparisons, and breakdowns of written material — an ability that seems to have impressed experts.
"To do a high-quality summary and a high-quality comparison, it has to have a level of understanding of a text and an ability to articulate that understanding," Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, told the New York Times. "That is an advanced form of intelligence."
It's also multimodal, meaning that users can bolster text prompts with image inputs. For example, if you upload a photo of a few kitchen ingredients and ask what you might be able to bake with them, it'll serve you up some recipes to try.
In other words, it can "see" — or make sense of images you feed it.
OpenAI further claims that the tech "surpasses ChatGPT in its advanced reasoning capabilities" — an area where GPT and other LLMs really struggle — with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman telling the NYT that the bot could reason "a little bit."
According to the report, though, GPT-4's reasoning skills still break down often, and the bot remains quite far from being anywhere close to any human-level analytical reasoning.
The company says that there have also been some much-needed safety improvements.
"Following the research path from GPT, GPT-2, and GPT-3, our deep learning approach leverages more data and more computation to create increasingly sophisticated and capable language models," reads the blog, claiming that after spending "six months" working to make GPT-4 "safer and more aligned," the new model is "82 percent less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content and 40 percent more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5 on our internal evaluations."
So, in short, the new model is markedly better at defending itself against prompt injection attacks and jailbreaking attempts, and also hallucinates — in other words, the LLM's tendency to make facts up — a lot less.
But while it might be better at both, it's not perfect at either.
As the NYT found, GPT-4 still has a tendency to hallucinate, despite OpenAI's best efforts — making it less than ideal for doing research on the internet.
All in all, while GPT-4 represents a marked improvement over previous models, it's still only a tiny iterative step towards a future where the lines between human and machine start to blur.
READ MORE: 10 Ways GPT-4 Is Impressive but Still Flawed [The New York Times]
More on OpenAI: ChatGPT Is Coming to Slack Because We Live and Work in Hell
The post OpenAI's Next-Generation AI Is About to Demolish Its Competition appeared first on Futurism.
Can burrs offer a better repair of torn rotator cuffs?
Futurity.org by Shawn Ballard-Wash. U. in St. Louis / March 15, 2023 at 03:15PM
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Inspired by burrs from plants, new suturing schemes show promise for surgical reattachment of tendon to bone, report researchers.
Tendon-to-bone reattachment is required in many surgical procedures, perhaps most commonly in repairing torn rotator cuff tendons in the shoulder, a condition that will affect more than 30% of the population over 60. Current suturing methods fail to distribute stress evenly, leading to failure rates as high as 94% due to ineffective attachment and re-tearing of sutures.
A team of researchers led by Guy Genin, co-director of the Center for Engineering MechanoBiology (CEMB) and professor of mechanical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has developed a new approach to suturing based on the mechanics and spacing of a hitchhiker plant’s attachment system.
Their strategies show promise for balancing forces across sutures, reducing the stress on healing tendons, and potentially doubling repair strength over current suturing schemes.
The findings appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
“When the late, great Barbara Pickard, a pioneer of mechanobiology who helped found the CEMB, got these burrs on her socks during a walk through the desert, she didn’t simply discard them; she latched onto this idea that nature could provide novel solutions in unexpected places,” says Genin.
Decades after Pickard’s walk, she shared her experience with burrs—similar to the hitchhiker plants that inspired hook-and-loop fastener technology—with Genin and his graduate student, Ethan D. Hoppe, lead author of the new study. For Genin and Hoppe, this was a kind of “eureka” moment.
Genin, Hoppe, and their collaborators had been studying the surgical reattachment of tendon to bone for years. They wondered, could a burr’s method of balancing forces be used in the repair of tissues?
To test this, Hoppe set out to grow some of the hitchhiker plant Pickard had encountered, Harpagonella palermi, and analyze the unique array of hooks on its fruits. Unfortunately, H. palermi is only found in a few remote patches of southwestern desert. “Your local garden store doesn’t carry these,” Hoppe notes.
After a long search, the team found collaborator Matt Guilliams, a plant systematist and curator of the Clifton Smith Herbarium at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, which curates native California plant species. “After Matt sent us some of the fruits he had harvested and we were able to look at them closely, we knew that we had something interesting,” Hoppe says. “The spacing and stiffness of H. palermi‘s burrs were unusual, and we set out to model how they hold on to soft materials so reliably.”
The mathematical model the team developed pointed to a unique scheme that balances forces.
“When surgeons repair something like a rotator cuff, they remove all the body’s natural connectors, which have evolved for the complex task of transitioning from hard bone to soft tendon, and put in sutures that concentrate force in a tiny area. That’s what leads to the high failure rate we see for that procedure,” Hoppe says.
“Nature has already shown us how hard materials, like the stiff hooks on a burr, can attach very effectively to soft materials like socks or a dog’s fur. We just needed to do the stress analysis to figure out how burrs compare to sutures and how this natural solution might be applied in medical practice.”
Indeed, nature’s solution to a common attachment issue may prove effective in overcoming one of the greatest challenges in orthopedic surgery. The team found that H. palermi simply and effectively balanced forces across attachment points, even when the points of connection were relatively few and the materials were substantially different. Using the mathematical model they developed to assess changes in suturing procedure based on the mechanics of hitchhiker plants, the team is now evaluating new suturing methods.
Pre-clinical testing of the new suturing methods already is underway in the laboratory of coauthor Stavros Thomopoulos, professor at Columbia University and director of Carroll Laboratories for Orthopedic Surgery.
“We are very excited to implement this concept in a real-world surgical setting,” Thomopoulos says. “Current experiments in the laboratory are evaluating how suture spacing inspired by hitchhiker plants affects rotator cuff repair strength.”
Genin and Thomopoulos anticipate that these improved techniques may be in surgical practice in the next two years.
Funding for this research came in part from the NSF Science and Technology Center for Engineering MechanoBiology and the National Institutes of Health.
Source: Washington University in St. Louis
The post Can burrs offer a better repair of torn rotator cuffs? appeared first on Futurity.
Vanlig förkylning skyddar barn mot covid-19
forskning.se / March 15, 2023 at 03:10PM
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Varför blev barn som fick covid-19 mindre sjuka? Förklaringen är att förkylningar som orsakas av släkting till coronaviruset stärker immunförsvaret hos unga. Upptäckten kan leda till skräddarsydda vaccineringar.
Inlägget Vanlig förkylning skyddar barn mot covid-19 dök först upp på forskning.se.
The Download: GPT-4 is here, and metaverse marriages
40MIT Technology Review by Rhiannon Williams / March 15, 2023 at 03:04PM
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- + Morgan Stanley is among the companies already using GPT-4.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
GPT-4 is bigger and better than ChatGPT—but OpenAI won’t say why
OpenAI has finally unveiled GPT-4, a next-generation large language model that was rumored to be in development for much of last year. The company’s last surprise hit, ChatGPT, was always going to be a hard act to follow, but OpenAI has made GPT-4 even bigger and better.
Yet how much bigger and why it’s better, OpenAI won’t say. GPT-4 is the most secretive release the company has ever put out, marking its transition from nonprofit lab to for-profit tech firm.
What we do know is that GPT-4 is a multimodal large language model, which means it can respond to both text and images. Read the full story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
These people just got married in the Taco Bell metaverse
Last month, Sheel Mohnot and Amruta Godbole got married. This was no ordinary wedding, though. It was hosted on Decentraland, a virtual platform, and sponsored by Taco Bell.
Mohnot is a big fan of Taco Bell, so they entered a competition for the company to pay for the technical aspects of a virtual wedding—the avatars, the production, and more. They won. In return, it plastered its brand everywhere.
But why would people opt to have a metaverse wedding? And will these sorts of ceremonies—especially sponsored ones—stick around, or will they fade away if virtual reality doesn’t live up to the hype? Read the full story.
—Tanya Basu
China just set up a new bureau to mine data for economic growth
China’s annual, week-long parliamentary meeting ended on Monday. Among all the changes it announced, there’s one that the tech world is avidly watching: the creation of a new regulatory body named the National Data Administration.
The NDA will help build smart cities in China, digitize government services, improve internet infrastructure, and make government agencies share data with each other.
It seems to be part of an ongoing effort by the Chinese government to drum up a “digital economy” around collecting, sharing, and trading data. But big questions remain, especially over how much authority it will have. Read the full story.
—Zeyi Yang
Zeyi’s story is from China Report, his weekly newsletter covering tech in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 The AI hype train is showing no signs of slowing
The launch of GPT-4 has whipped the mania up to fever pitch. (WP $)
+ Morgan Stanley is among the companies already using GPT-4. (NYT $)
+ Fellow AI firm Anthropic launched its new chatbot Claude yesterday too. (The Verge)
+ Generative AI is changing everything. But what’s left when the hype is gone? (MIT Technology Review)
2 SIlicon Valley is still too big to fail
But there’s no denying Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse has dealt start-up culture a major blow. (Economist $)
+ Social media panic only fueled the fire. (WSJ $)
+ Is techno-optimism to blame? (The Atlantic $)
+ The bank’s demise isn’t good news for the economy, either. (Bloomberg $)
3 Meta has let another 10,000 employees go
The company is canceling “lower priority projects.” (TechCrunch)
+ It sounds like Mark Zuckerberg is prioritizing AI over the metaverse. (Insider $)
4 Stadiums across the US are tracking your face
Privacy advocates worry that they’re not being clear enough about what they’re doing. (Slate $)
+ The two-year fight to stop Amazon from selling face recognition to the police. (MIT Technology Review)
5 New DNA tests can predict your likelihood of developing diseases
That isn’t always necessarily a good thing. (New Scientist $)
+ A massive microbiome study is throwing up new shared health risks. (Quanta)
6 We still don’t know how often children contract long covid
Three years into the pandemic, experts are still divided. (Undark Magazine)
+ A battle is raging over long covid in children. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Laid off tech workers from overseas are scrambling for new jobs
The 60-day visa limit to find a new role just adds to their stress. (Rest of World)
8 A new satellite will monitor America’s air pollution
The constant data collection will give scientists almost round-the-clock insights. (Inverse)
9 How to fight back against the web’s neuromarketing
Thinking critically is the first step. (Wired $)
10 Samsung has been accused of faking Moon photos
Reddit sleuths are furious at how its cameras process images. (The Verge)
Quote of the day
“We’re in that phase of the market where it’s, like, let 1,000 flowers bloom.”
—Matt Turck, an AI investor, marvels at the sudden influx of money flooding into the sector to the New York Times.
The big story
Can Afghanistan’s underground “sneakernet” survive the Taliban?
November 2021
When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Mohammad Yasin had to make some difficult decisions very quickly. He began erasing some of the sensitive data on his computer and moving the rest onto two of his largest hard drives, which he then wrapped in a layer of plastic and buried underground.
Yasin is what is locally referred to as a “computer kar”: someone who sells digital content by hand in a country where a steady internet connection can be hard to come by, selling everything from movies, music, mobile applications, to iOS updates. And despite the dangers of Taliban rule, the country’s extensive “sneakernet” isn’t planning on shutting down. Read the full story.
—Ruchi Kumar
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ Pallas cats may look fearsome, but their habit of pressing their paws on top of their tails is too cute.
+ Unpopular opinion, but sharing plates really do need to die.
+ If you couldn’t get enough of the original Rocky IV, why not check out its Stallone-sanctioned director’s cut?
+ Doctors are swallowing Lego—and it’s all in the name of science.
+ Bees are just like us, they need mentors too!
Coloring by Numbers Reveals Arithmetic Patterns in Fractions
100+Quanta Magazine by Leila Sloman / March 15, 2023 at 02:59PM
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A year after he started his Ph.D. in mathematics at McGill University, Matt Bowen had a problem. “I took my qualifying exams and did absolutely horribly on them,” he said. Bowen was sure that his scores didn’t reflect his mathematical skills, and he resolved to prove it. Last fall he did, when he and his adviser, Marcin Sabok, posted a major advance in the field known as Ramsey theory.
Self-driven laboratory speeds chemical discovery
20Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 02:54PM
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A team of chemical engineering researchers has developed a self-driven lab that is capable of identifying and optimizing new complex multistep reaction routes for the synthesis of advanced functional materials and molecules. In a proof-of-concept demonstration, the system found a more efficient way to produce high-quality semiconductor nanocrystals that are used in optical and photonic devices.
New computational method to identify location of cell types in a sample
92Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 02:54PM
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Is this article about Biopharma Industry?
YESNO
Stanford University researchers have developed a computational method for identifying where cells are situated in a sample when capturing spatial transcriptomics. The method combines data from spatial transcriptions and a reference single-cell RNA atlas to create modeling outputs. The resulting models can be used to view cellular substructures, identify colocalization patterns and analyze differential expression within a cell type by location.
Longest dinosaur neck on record was six times longer than a giraffe's
100+New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 02:53PM
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We only have a few fossil bones of Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum, but researchers have estimated its neck length by analysing its vertebrae and comparing them with those from related dinosaurs
New Home Test Can Tell if You Have the Flu or COVID
COVID-19 FDA 2020 2021
36Scientific American Content by Allison Parshall / March 15, 2023 at 02:52PM
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Feedly AI found 2 Regulatory Changes mentions in this article
VIEW ALL
Flu and
COVID
symptoms are easily confused. A new home test—the first for flu—tells them apart in minutes
Mice with Two Fathers? Researchers Develop Egg Cells from Male Mice
Scientists Mice Two
Scientific American Content by Meghan Bartels / March 15, 2023 at 02:52PM
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The research offers a tantalizing glimpse at a future in which two men can have biological children together, but any human applications remain in the distant future
RSV Vaccines Are Coming At Last: Your Health Quickly, Episode 2
Pfizer GSK RSV US Europe
Scientific American Content by Josh Fischman, Tanya Lewis, Tulika Bose / March 15, 2023 at 02:52PM
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Feedly AI found 1 Regulatory Changes mention in this article
- A product called Nirsevimab, made by AstraZeneca, is already approved in Europe, and it’s been accepted by the U.S. FDA for review.
A vaccine pioneer tells us that shots for RSV—a dangerous virus for babies and older people—are finally nearing approval.
New Home Test Can Tell if You Have the Flu or COVID
COVID-19 FDA 2020 2021
36Scientific American News by Allison Parshall / March 15, 2023 at 02:46PM
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Flu and
COVID
symptoms are easily confused. A new home test—the first for flu—tells them apart in minutes
The Surprising Truth Behind a Pot of Gold at the End of a Rainbow
Discover Magazine by Marisa Sloan / March 15, 2023 at 02:46PM
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St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner, and with it comes tales of mischievous leprechauns and the pots of gold that they guard at the end of rainbows. You may already know that there is no “end” of a rainbow — science tells us that their arch shape is simply an illusion. In reality, while those of us on the ground can only see the light reflected by raindrops above the horizon, viewers in aircraft can sometimes see a rainbow’s full, 360-degree circle. But that doesn’t mean the myths surrounding the discoveries of Celtic gold are totally untrue. Going for Gold Six years ago, volunteer archaeologist Wolfgang Herkt received permission to search a local farm in Brandenburg, a state in northeastern Germany. He was rewarded for his efforts with the unexpected discovery of 11 Celtic gold coins. Rainbow Gold Coins After he reported the cache to the Brandenburg State Heritage Management and Archaeological State Museum, renewed searching uncovered an additional 30 coins. “This is an exceptional find that you probably only make once in a lifetime,” Herkt said in a statement. “It is a good feeling to be able to contribute to research into the history of the country with such a find.” The coins are unusually shaped: Rather than appearing flat like those we use today, the newfound gold pieces are curved and almost resemble small cups. Read More: 6 Times We Tried to Extract Gold from Seawater Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow Marjanko Pilekić, a numismatist and research assistant at the Coin Cabinet of the Schloss Friedenstein Gotha Foundation in Germany, dated the hoard to between 125 B.C. and 30 B.C., minted during the late Iron Age. Rainbow Cups Later on — sometime between the Middle Ages and the 18th century by some estimates — coins of this type earned the nickname regenbogenschüsselchen, which translates to rainbow cups from German. It’s a fitting name for bits of gold that were often stumbled upon in plowed fields after a particularly heavy rainfall; their concave shape may even have allowed rain to pool within them, reflecting the sunshine and making them easier to spot. Popular belief held that rainbows, a common sight after a drizzle, left the coins behind wherever they touched the earth. They were even thought by some to bring good luck or good health. Celtic Coins Rainbow cups are most often associated with the Celtic tribes of southern Germany, and in particular the La Tène. This culture arose in the mid-fifth century B.C., when the Celts were introduced to Greek and Etruscan influences that originated south of the Alps. Staters Of the coins found in Brandenburg, 19 are staters — mimics of the gold and silver coins found in ancient Greece. These are larger, with an average diameter of 0.7 inches and a weight of a quarter of an ounce, while the rest of the cache are considered 1/4 staters because they’re about a quarter of that size. The entire hoard is smooth-faced with no discernable images. But that’s not true of all rainbow cups found in the past. Often, these have representations of a torque — an ancient collar or necklace with open ends — and spheres on one side. On the flip side, you might find an abstract head or bird’s head, a star, a hand, a cross or some other ornament. Rainbow Pot of Gold "Not only is it the second-largest hoard of smooth rainbow bowls of this type and by far the largest find of Celtic coins in Brandenburg,” Pilekić said of the 2017 discovery in a statement, “but the site is also far from the actual distribution area.” Far From Home While the La Tène culture seemingly spread to regions as far as England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic, the Celts never lived in Brandenburg. In fact, the German state is hundreds of miles from any place known to have been occupied by them. Therefore, the unexpected discovery has sparked many questions about prehistoric Europe’s widespread trade networks. We know that spare change in the ancient world wasn’t used solely for monetary purposes, as it is today; there is plenty of evidence of coins being minted for use as diplomatic gifts and even in religious rituals, among other things. Whoever buried the 41 rainbow cups in a Brandenburg field gets to keep their secrets for now — though we can probably rule out a mischievous leprechaun as the culprit in question. Read More: Turning Lead Into Gold
Nature Communications by Fangyuan Zhang / March 15, 2023 at 02:46PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37133-4
Tropane alkaloids (TAs) are synthesized by some species in Solanaceae. Here, the authors assemble the genomes of two representative TAs producing species, show that gene loss shapes uneven distribution of TAs in Solanaceae, and identify a cytochrome P450 gene catalyzing N-demethylation of hyoscyamine to generate norhyoscyamine.
New study shows how mammals have evolved complexity over time
100+Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 02:43PM
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Major changes in the spinal columns of mammals have been shaped by their highly variable numbers of vertebrae, according to new evidence from a team of international scientists, including researchers from the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath.
What Could Cause the Next Pandemic?
The Scientist RSS / March 15, 2023 at 02:38PM
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Feedly AI found 1 Participation in an Event mention in this article
- Deanna MacNeil from The Scientist's Creative Services Team will be joined by the entire panel in an open question and answer session where presenters will address questions posed by the audience.
Scientists prepare for the future by filling in the research gaps between zoonotic viral reservoirs, emerging viruses, and human immune defenses.
Propeller advance paves way for quiet, efficient electric aviation
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:36PM
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Electrification is seen as having an important role to play in the fossil-free aviation of tomorrow. But electric aviation is battling a trade-off dilemma: the more energy-efficient an electric aircraft is, the noisier it gets. Now, researchers have developed a propeller design optimization method that paves the way for quiet, efficient electric aviation.
'Glow-in-the-dark' proteins could help diagnose viral diseases
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:36PM
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Despite recent advancements, many highly sensitive diagnostic tests for
viral diseases
still require complicated techniques to prepare a sample or interpret a result, making them impractical for point-of-care settings or areas with few resources. But now, a team has developed a sensitive method that analyzes viral nucleic acids in as little as 20 minutes and can be completed in one step with 'glow-in-the-dark' proteins.
Understanding sound direction estimation in monaural hearing
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:36PM
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One of the fascinating features of human hearing is its ability to localize sound. While the human ear usually does this with binaural cues, it is, in fact, possible to locate sound direction with monaural hearing alone. Now, researchers have developed a method to estimate the direction of sound signals in 3D space using monaural cues based on monaural modulation spectrum that could help simplify sound surveillance techniques and enhance hearing aid instruments.
TurboID uncovers new meiotic proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:36PM
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Meiotic recombination assures genetic variation during breeding. During meiotic prophase I, chromosomes are organized in a loop-base array by a proteinaceous structure called meiotic chromosome axis which is critical for meiotic recombination and genetically diverse gametes. An international research team reports the application of a TurboID (TbID)-based approach to identify proteins in proximity of meiotic chromosome axes in Arabidopsis thaliana. Not only known but also new meiotic proteins were uncovered.
Gut microbiome plays key role in response to CAR-T cell cancer immunotherapy
Gut Microbiome CAR
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:36PM
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Scientists have found that the gut microbiome may modulate the efficacy of CAR-T cellular immunotherpy CAR-T cells in patients with B cell lymphomas. Individualized microbiome information retreaved from patients' gut microbiomes prior to initiation of CAR T therapy could accurately predict their subsequent responsiveness to therapy, but only in the condition that these patients were not pre-treated with broad spectrum antibiotics.
Fewer sports injuries with digital information
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:36PM
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The number of
injuries
in youth athletics is significantly reduced when coaches and parents have access to digital information on adolescent growth. It also takes twice as long for the first injury to occur.
New study shows how mammals have evolved complexity over time
100+Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 02:35PM
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Major changes in the spinal columns of mammals have been shaped by their highly variable numbers of vertebrae, according to new evidence from a team of international scientists, including researchers from the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath.
SN 2017egm is a helium-rich superluminous supernova, study finds
74Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 02:35PM
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Using various ground-based and space observatories, an international team of astronomers has investigated a nearby supernova designated SN 2017egm. As a result, they found that the inspected explosion belongs to a rare group of helium-rich superluminous supernovae. The finding is reported in a paper published March 6 on the arXiv pre-print server.
'Glow-in-the-dark' proteins could help diagnose viral diseases
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 15, 2023 at 02:32PM
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Despite recent advancements, many highly sensitive diagnostic tests for
viral diseases
still require complicated techniques to prepare a sample or interpret a result, making them impractical for point-of-care settings or areas with few resources. But now, a team has developed a sensitive method that analyzes viral nucleic acids in as little as 20 minutes and can be completed in one step with 'glow-in-the-dark' proteins.
New AI model transforms understanding of metal-organic frameworks
MF New AI Model Transforms
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 15, 2023 at 02:32PM
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Researchers have developed a new AI model that significantly improves the understanding of Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), promising materials for hydrogen storage and other applications.
'Glow-in-the-dark' proteins could help diagnose viral diseases
Biochemistry News – Chemistry News / March 15, 2023 at 02:24PM
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Despite recent advancements, many highly sensitive diagnostic tests for
viral diseases
still require complicated techniques to prepare a sample or interpret a result, making them impractical for point-of-care settings or areas with few resources. But now, a team reporting in ACS Central Science has developed a sensitive method that analyzes viral nucleic acids in as little as 20 minutes and can be completed in one step with "glow-in-the-dark" proteins.
Scientific Reports by Xia Ma / March 15, 2023 at 02:23PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31101-0
High interspecific competitiveness of the invasive plant Xanthium italicum Moretti severely reduces the yield and quality of Carthamus tinctorius L.
'Glow-in-the-dark' proteins could help diagnose viral diseases
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 02:21PM
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Despite recent advancements, many highly sensitive diagnostic tests for
viral diseases
still require complicated techniques to prepare a sample or interpret a result, making them impractical for point-of-care settings or areas with few resources. But now, a team reporting in ACS Central Science has developed a sensitive method that analyzes viral nucleic acids in as little as 20 minutes and can be completed in one step with "glow-in-the-dark" proteins.
Whales need giant bods to eat tiny krill
Futurity.org by Stanford / March 15, 2023 at 02:17PM
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Is this article about Animals?
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The enormous bodies of krill-eating minke whales actually represent their smallest possible body size, research finds.
The findings could inform which whale species are more vulnerable to future climate change impacts, like shifting food sources.
“Depending on how krill fare, certain whale species will either win or lose in future oceans.”
The study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution focuses on the “rorqual whales,” a lineage of filter feeders that includes the blue whale, the largest animal of all time. The group is characterized by a lunging maneuver where individuals engulf an enormous amount of water along with their prey, which they then strain through fringed structures at the roof of their mouth.
By examining the smallest living species in this group—the Antarctic minke whale—the researchers find that individuals need to grow to at least 4.5 meters (approximately 15 feet, or weighing 1-2 tons), the length of weaned minke juveniles, in order to eat enough food to survive.
“We’re working to define the upper and lower limits of life at physiological extremes,” says the study’s senior author Jeremy Goldbogen, an associate professor of oceans at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability who’s spent the last decade demystifying the basic biology of the world’s largest whales. “This is important given the pace of environmental change so we can determine which species are at greatest risk and how we manage populations into the future.”
Giant whales, tiny krill
To calculate the minimum size required for lunge-feeding whales, the team turned to a unique population of minkes that frequent bays along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Unlike other minkes, which prefer fish, this population primarily forages for tiny animals known as krill.
“Our motivation for going to Antarctica was to observe this specific population,” says David Cade, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral scholar in the Goldbogen Lab. “Most minke whales are elusive and typically surface just one at a time, but this group exhibits more social behavior, giving us a higher chance of safely approaching them.”
The team uses suction cups to affix a “biologging tag” packed with sensors and cameras to an individual’s back so they can track its orientation and movement. By combining tag data with drone photography, they can document engulfment events and estimate a whale’s body length.
Based on 437 hours of biologging data, the authors calculated the minkes’ feeding rate compared to that of krill-feeding humpbacks and blues to identify potential size limitations. They found that minkes are about as energetically efficient as larger whales when they feed at night, since prey migrate to shallower depths and are therefore more accessible. However, they feed at far lower rates during the day.
“In the daytime, minke whales dove deeper than we predicted to find prey,” says Cade. “This means that they’re operating at maximum capacity, and can’t possibly forage any more given size constraints and the time it takes to lunge feed. At 4.5 meters in length, weaned minke whales are the smallest they can be while still eating enough food on their own to survive.”
How will climate change affect krill?
According to the fossil record, whales became gigantic rather recently in evolutionary terms, approximately three to five million years ago. But a fundamental question remains: Did whales evolve to filter feed due to their large size, or did gigantism result from filter feeding?
The authors determine that it was a bit of both. Once whales evolved from eating one prey at a time to filter feeding many at once, the rise of gigantism was likely driven by an abundance of krill in prehistoric oceans, which favored their feeding style. Previous research shows that wind-driven upwelling and intense glacial cycles fueled denser patches of krill and allowed smaller animals to filter feed more efficiently.
Larger filter-feeding whales, which can engulf proportionally more water per gulp than smaller whales, then had an evolutionary advantage over their smaller counterparts, giving rise to the largest animals in Earth’s history. But it remains to be seen how whales will respond to future environmental change. For whales constrained by body size and operating at physiological extremes, like minkes and possibly blues, rapid environmental change could put them at greater risk of extinction.
“The next 10 million-dollar question is how climate change might affect krill populations,” says Goldbogen. “Depending on how krill fare, certain whale species will either win or lose in future oceans.”
Now that the research team has defined the minimum size for these ocean giants, more research is needed to determine whether blue whales—on the other end of the spectrum—are also living at the edge of their means or if they’re in the midst of evolving ever-larger before our eyes.
Cade is also affiliated with University of California, Santa Cruz. Additional coauthors are affiliated with Hopkins Marine Station; Duke University; Oregon State University; the University of Queensland; and the Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, Washington.
This research received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program, and Stanford University’s Terman Fellowship.
Source: Katie Jewett for Stanford University
The post Whales need giant bods to eat tiny krill appeared first on Futurity.
This Dinosaur’s 50-Foot Neck Was Not a Stretch
500+NYT > Science by Jack Tamisiea / March 15, 2023 at 02:17PM
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Researchers developed a new estimate of the neck length of Mamenchisaurus, which foraged for foliage more than 150 million years ago in what is now China.
Global climate data insufficiently explains composition of local plant species, say geobotanists
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 02:15PM
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The global climate influences regional plant growth—but not to the same extent in all habitats. This finding was made by geobotanists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) after analyzing more than 300,000 European vegetation plots. Their conclusion is that no general prediction can be made about the effects of climate change on the Earth's vegetation; instead, the effects depend to a large degree on local conditions and the habitat under investigation. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.
Hummingbirds use torpor in varying ways to survive cold temps, finds study
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 02:15PM
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Hummingbirds have the fastest metabolism of any animal. The tropical hummingbirds that live in the Andes Mountains in South America must expend considerable energy to maintain their high body temperatures in cold environments.
Discovering the unexplored: Synthesis and analysis of a new orthorhombic Sn3O4 polymorph
24Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 02:15PM
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Oxides of tin (SnxOy) are found in many of modern technologies due to their versatile nature. The multivalent oxidation states of tin—Sn2+ and Sn4+—impart tin oxides with electroconductivity, photocatalysis, and various functional properties. For the photocatalysis application of tin oxides, a narrow bandgap for visible-light absorption is indispensable to utilize a wide range of solar energy. Hence, the discovery of new SnxOy could help improve the efficiency of many environmentally significant photocatalytic reactions like water splitting and CO2 reduction. While there are many theoretical and computational predictions of new stable SnxOy, there still remains a need for experimental studies that can turn the predictions into reality.
FLIR One Edge Pro Review: Thermal Images and Videos From Any Phone
Wired by Richard Baguley / March 15, 2023 at 02:14PM
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FLIR
’s latest professional-grade thermal camera works with any phone and connects over Wi-Fi for extra-flexible temperature sensing.
Cars That Watch Their Drivers Could Reteach the World to Drive
Wired by Aarian Marshall / March 15, 2023 at 02:14PM
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Feedly AI found 1 Regulatory Changes mention in this article
- The US infrastructure bill, passed in 2021, requires the Department of Transportation to conduct research on the effectiveness of driver-monitoring systems, potentially a first step toward requiring them in new vehicles.
Automakers are adding cameras and algorithms that monitor and nudge drivers to improve safety and ensure people supervise automated driving aids.
22Wired by Meredith Broussard / March 15, 2023 at 02:14PM
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Is this article about Biopharma Industry?
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Why was an AI looking through my medical records and how did it work? I decided to find out.
How to Create Your Optimal Bedtime Routine
21Wired by Reece Rogers / March 15, 2023 at 02:14PM
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We asked experts how to craft a more intentional, peace-filled ritual to support a better night’s sleep.
Global climate data insufficiently explains composition of local plant species, say geobotanists
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 02:13PM
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The global climate influences regional plant growth—but not to the same extent in all habitats. This finding was made by geobotanists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) after analyzing more than 300,000 European vegetation plots. Their conclusion is that no general prediction can be made about the effects of climate change on the Earth's vegetation; instead, the effects depend to a large degree on local conditions and the habitat under investigation. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.
Hummingbirds use torpor in varying ways to survive cold temps, finds study
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 02:13PM
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Hummingbirds have the fastest metabolism of any animal. The tropical hummingbirds that live in the Andes Mountains in South America must expend considerable energy to maintain their high body temperatures in cold environments.
The concrete that helps the climate
Future(s) Studies by /u/Sariel007 / March 15, 2023 at 02:10PM
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South Korea to build 'world's largest' chip center with $230 billion investment from Samsung
Future(s) Studies by /u/filosoful / March 15, 2023 at 02:10PM
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Feedly AI has detected a Location Expansion in this article
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A First Look at GPT-4 and the Humanities
Future(s) Studies by /u/blind_trooper / March 15, 2023 at 02:10PM
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David Brin and Ben Goertzel podcast on The History and Future of AGI
Future(s) Studies by /u/Tusk-Dentist / March 15, 2023 at 02:10PM
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200+The Atlantic by Xochitl Gonzalez / March 15, 2023 at 02:04PM
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Feedly AI found 1 Regulatory Changes mention in this article
- In August 2022, Missouri passed Senate Bill 775, which made distributing “explicit sexual material” to minors illegal and resulted in the removal of nearly 300 titles from school libraries in the state.
Updated at 10:58 a.m. ET on March 15, 2023
The line for the tattoo station at the annual conference of the New York Library Association in Saratoga Springs was already snaking through the hotel lobby, and I hadn’t even had my first morning cup of coffee yet. Harry Potter motifs, ghost dogs, angelic hearts, and, of course, books were just some of the tats of choice. These weren’t temporary tattoos or the kind that eventually fades away. These were the real deal. If getting inked seems an act of gritty rebellion more suited to a bikers’ rally than a librarians’ convention, it’s only because we haven’t been paying attention.
Across the country, Republican politicians and right-wing groups such as Moms for Liberty have been waging war against books. Their battlefield: the shelves of libraries. “Book challenges”—attempts to ban or restrict titles—have hit a record high. In August 2022, Missouri passed Senate Bill 775, which made distributing “explicit sexual material” to minors illegal and resulted in the removal of nearly 300 titles from school libraries in the state. People everywhere are targeting books that deal with questions of race and sexual identity or expression.
As I puttered around the conference, I thought about the fact that although books don’t have feelings, the librarians forced to remove them from the shelves definitely do. America’s librarians are under enormous pressure, and they need to blow off some steam.
I practically grew up in the Brooklyn Public Library. It served as an after-school center, an SAT training school, and a place to get help filling out my financial-aid forms for college. So when I was invited to give a talk at the conference, I immediately said yes. The night I arrived, I stopped in the hotel bar for a glass of wine before dinner. The place was already packed; the librarians, the bartender told me, knew how to party. He was anticipating a late night.
But at dinner, the conversation was subdued and serious. Reading about all the attacks on books, Angela Gonzalez, a librarian from Penn Yan, New York, told me, “you get nervous. You’re like, Oh my gosh, they’re coming for us.”
Nearly every tumultuous movement in American politics has coincided with a call to ban books. “This piece of it is nothing new to librarians,” Allison Grubbs, the director of the Broward County Libraries in Florida, told me. “What I think is new is some of the pathways that people are choosing to take.” Protests in and outside libraries and library board meetings have become more dramatic. Online, in Facebook groups such as Informed Parents of California and Gays Against Grooming, the language is more and more incendiary. And the librarians themselves are being personally attacked.
They told me about getting hate mail and harassing phone calls on their private lines, about being verbally attacked while on the job over things as seemingly banal as book displays. “You can’t do a pride display—forget about it,” Shirley Robinson, the executive director of the Texas Library Association, told me. “That’s not gonna work.”
“I’ve been called a pedophile. I’ve been called a groomer. I’ve been called a Communist pornographer,” Cindy Dudenhoffer, a former president of the Missouri Library Association, told me. “I’ve been called all kinds of things. And I know many of my colleagues have been as well. It’s very hurtful.”
Robinson recounted the story of a Texas library worker who had facilitated a children’s story hour while wearing rainbow-flag Pride socks; a patron filed a complaint to the city accusing the individual of grooming children. Grubbs said she had heard angry patrons in Florida call library staff pedophiles too.
Maybe Americans have gotten ruder, but it’s not only that. Online groups are coordinating protests of Drag Queen story hours, compiling lists of books to challenge, and strategizing ways to amend laws in order to censor books. “They might organize a protest and not even live in the state that that library serves,” Grubbs told me.
Moms for Liberty honed this playbook. The group was founded in 2021 to protest mask requirements for kids and later turned to keeping LGBTQ issues and critical race theory out of schools. Their efforts are part of a larger “parents’ rights” movement that includes many other groups. No Left Turn, for example, offers a list of “aberrant books” on its website, under the “Exposing Indoctrination” tab, just above a link exposing “Woke School Staff & Board” members.
It isn’t just that the attacks are getting more personal for librarians; the laws are as well. Missouri’s S.B. 775 holds librarians (along with teachers and school administrators) criminally liable for distribution of materials deemed inappropriate. A librarian found guilty can face up to a year in prison and up to $2,000 in fines, not including legal fees.
In Texas, Jonathan Mitchell, the attorney behind S.B. 8, the law enabling citizens to sue individuals who violate the state’s abortion ban, is now going after books. Last month, Axios reported that he was allegedly writing draft ordinances for local governments that would use the same strategy, allowing private individuals to sue librarians over the books they choose to stock or even for just expressing LGBTQ support. “There’s a lot of fear,” Robinson told me, “which is what these groups were after from the beginning.”
The graduate degree for librarians is not, typically, a master of arts, but a master of science—in library and information sciences. Librarians may adore books, but they are trained in the technical and data-driven work of running libraries. Unlike a privately owned bookstore, where the stock might reflect the tastes and preferences of the proprietor, at the library, books are acquired based on information about what its particular community wants and needs.
“Librarians love data,” Dudenhoffer, who now coordinates the information-science program at the University of Missouri, told me. “Knowing how to analyze your community, knowing how to look at data, knowing how to look at circulation numbers, knowing how to look at population movement, those things are becoming increasingly important in what we do, and that drives all of this.”
Public librarians, she said, are looking at such things as regional household income, age, education level, and racial and ethnic backgrounds while making their selections. They also consider patron requests. In a school library, this analysis might include information shared by students or teachers about the needs and interests of the current student body.
Librarians who showcase books about underrepresented groups, including LGBTQ people, surely believe that these stories are valuable. But the librarians I spoke with insisted that they’re making these choices because an assessment determined that there was a patron need for these books, not to push some personal social agenda. Those controversial book displays? Many, Dudenhoffer said, are a means of letting patrons know that material they might be too shy or embarrassed to ask for is in stock.
“It’s really unfair to characterize displays or programs as ‘woke,’” Dudenhoffer lamented. “That’s just such a terrible word to use right now. But it’s not about that. It’s about serving our community, and everyone in the community, to the best of our abilities.”
What seemed most painful to the librarians I spoke with—even more than the personal attacks and fear of litigation—was the way in which book bans hinder their ability to connect their patrons to information that might help them.
Senate Bill 775 requires the removal of any materials deemed sexual in nature (which is subjective), with exceptions for “works of art” or of “anthropological significance” (also subjective). The law’s rollout was tumultuous at best: The list of books to be removed varied wildly across the state. One place banned more than 200 titles; others, just two or three. This was partly because the methodology, if you could call it that, also varied—not just county by county, but school district by school district. In some places, the choices were made by a school administrator; in others, an attorney for the district chose. Sometimes the librarians themselves were told they had to decide, which also meant deciding how much personal risk each book in their collection was worth.
“This is chaos,” Tom Bober, a vice president of the Missouri Association of School Librarians, told me. “When this law was put into effect, there was no process. There was no procedure. Everyone had to figure it out for themselves.” He said that one librarian in his association was told, essentially, “You figure that out.” In other words: “We’re not going to give you any support with this, because we don’t want to be liable for anything. So this is all on your shoulders.”
The state finally pushed the librarians too far. Last month, the Missouri ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of Bober’s organization and the Missouri Library Association challenging the law, arguing that it suppresses their members’ First Amendment rights. It also, they argue, exposes school personnel to prosecution based on what they teach their own children at home. The Moms for Liberty don’t want the government dictating what their children learn, but neither do parents who happen to be Missouri personnel.
The Texas Library Association is fighting back, too, with a campaign called Texans for the Right to Read, which raises awareness about efforts to censor books. They also started a volunteer-staffed help line to offer support to librarians being intimidated into censorship.
Censorship is hardly the only challenge librarians face. Budget cuts mean that many librarians, particularly in smaller communities, are also tasked with things like unclogging toilets and taking on programs previously offered by schools. As public-facing professionals, they are on the front lines of the masking wars, the homelessness crisis, the opioid epidemic, and the general rise in public rage. The library, Grubbs told me, is “often the last place, the last opportunity” for people who have nowhere else to go.
In Los Angeles, librarians will soon be trained in administering Narcan to patrons overdosing on opioids. Gonzalez told me she’s seen mentally ill people strip their clothes off in the library, throw things. “A guy died on us,” she said. “He died right at the computers.”
About 50 librarians got tattoos at the New York conference. I asked the librarians I spoke with what else they did to let off steam. Unsurprisingly, I heard a lot about reading: fantasy, romance, literary fiction. Grubbs had just taken a “bookcation” with friends; they rented an Airbnb for a long weekend and read, cooked, and talked about books together. Others told me about therapy and yoga and socializing with other librarians. Dudenhoffer does needle felting—sculpting animals and dolls and other objects out of felt—which she described as a “stabby” craft.“I stab things,” she said. “We all have our outlets.”
The attacks on books aren’t letting up anytime soon, but luckily, the librarians aren’t either. “One of my mantras,” Dudenhoffer said, “is ‘I am smart and well intentioned.’ And so I just have to always go back to that, and I swear I say it 25 million times a day. ‘I am smart and well intentioned. This is the work I do. My work is important. My work is good.’”
PLO og regionerne indgår ny aftale om dosispakket medicin
Dagens Medicin by Cecilie Krabbe / March 15, 2023 at 01:45PM
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Nature Communications by Xian Sun / March 15, 2023 at 01:37PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37136-1
Dumpsites are hard to locate globally. Here the authors apply deep networks to satellite images to provide an effective and low-cost way to detect dumpsites with the new method saving more than 96.8% of the manual time with a strong sensitivity to dumpsites.
Rainforests pump water round the tropics—but the pulse of this heart is weakening
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 01:32PM
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Tropical forests are often referred to as the "lungs of the world", describing the way their trees exchange gases with the atmosphere. By "breathing in" carbon dioxide and "breathing out" oxygen during photosynthesis, tropical forests remove about 15% of man-made carbon emissions and help to slow climate change.
Scientific Reports by Saad M. Alshahrani / March 15, 2023 at 01:23PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31514-x
Author Correction: Optimization of tamoxifen solubility in carbon dioxide supercritical fluid and investigating other molecular targets using advanced artificial intelligence models
Scientific Reports by Joowon Chung / March 15, 2023 at 01:23PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31333-0
Author Correction: Prediction of oxygen requirement in patients with COVID-19 using a pre-trained chest radiograph xAI model: efficient development of auditable risk prediction models via a fine-tuning approach
Scientific Reports by Adrian Gardner / March 15, 2023 at 01:23PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31237-z
The relationship between minor coronal asymmetry of the spine and measures of spinal sagittal shape in adolescents without visible
scoliosis
Scientific Reports by Rena Michishita / March 15, 2023 at 01:23PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31388-z
Inoculation with black soldier fly larvae alters the microbiome and volatile organic compound profile of decomposing food waste
Scientific Reports by Masako Baba / March 15, 2023 at 01:23PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31139-0
Impact of catheter ablation and subsequent
recurrence
of
atrial fibrillation
on glucose status in patients undergoing continuous glucose monitoring
Daily briefing: First complete brain map of a complex animal
Nature by Flora Graham / March 15, 2023 at 01:18PM
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Nature, Published online: 13 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00771-1
Scientists have mapped all 3,016 neurons and 548,000 connecting synapses in a young fruit fly’s brain. Plus, why heritable human genome editing is still too risky, and what scientists know about the suspected schoolgirl-poisonings in Iran.
Daily briefing: The emotional toll of caring for research animals
Nature by Flora Graham / March 15, 2023 at 01:18PM
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Nature, Published online: 13 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00780-0
People who work with lab animals are struggling with ‘compassion fatigue’. Plus, how a transparent fish gets its rainbow shimmer, and eating plastic is making wild seabirds ill.
MSI Stealth 15M laptop review: affordable power with a mediocre display
Livescience / March 15, 2023 at 01:09PM
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The MSI Stealth 15M is an affordable coding, gaming and lecture laptop that's cheaper than its rivals, but worse in many key areas.
Welcome to the Comfy Office of the Future
37Wired by Anna Kramer / March 15, 2023 at 01:03PM
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Is this article about Real Estate?
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To lure back workers and compete with the convenience of home, companies are offering more substantial perks and giving architects freedom to experiment.
How a Beam of Pellets Could Blast a Probe Into Deep Space
35Wired by Ramin Skibba / March 15, 2023 at 01:03PM
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Researchers seek to develop advanced propulsion systems that can transform long-distance space exploration.
AI-Generated Voice Deepfakes Aren’t Scary Good—Yet
34Wired by Lily Hay Newman / March 15, 2023 at 01:03PM
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The threat of scammers using voice deepfakes in their cons is real, but researchers say old-school voice-impersonation attacks are still the more pressing concern.
Dating apps are rife with ‘digital-sexual racism’
Futurity.org by Boston University / March 15, 2023 at 12:57PM
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A sociologist explains how racism manifests on dating apps.
Despite the popularity of dating apps among those seeking intimate connections, they can pose unique problems and may even exacerbate existing ones, says Celeste Curington, assistant professor of sociology at Boston University.
In her book The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance (UC Press, 2021), Curington and her colleagues build on existing research on race and dating and spotlight a form of racism–digital sexual racism–unique to the online dating world.
Here, Curington breaks down key takeaways from her research and provides solutions for ways apps and their users can improve the online dating experience. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
The post Dating apps are rife with ‘digital-sexual racism’ appeared first on Futurity.
Sleep and Vaccination Response
Night Hours Sleep Vaccine
Science-Based Medicine by Steven Novella / March 15, 2023 at 12:54PM
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A meta-analysis finds a non-significant trend in decreased antibody response with poor sleep. What is the significance?
The post Sleep and Vaccination Response first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.
Scientific Reports by Suksri Chotikavanich / March 15, 2023 at 12:51PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31261-z
Genetic analysis of allogenic donor cells after successful allo-limbal epithelial transplantation in simple and cultivated limbal epithelial transplantation procedures
Enhancing reading accuracy through visual search training using symbols
Scientific Reports by Audrey Vialatte / March 15, 2023 at 12:51PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31037-5
Enhancing reading accuracy through visual search training using symbols
Scientific Reports by Seyede Zahra Tabatabaiepour / March 15, 2023 at 12:51PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31466-2
Effect of redroot pigweed interference on antioxidant enzyme and light response of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) depends on cultivars and growth stages
Ted Lasso Is No Longer Trying to Feel Good
Ted Lasso Roy Keeley
100+The Atlantic by Shirley Li / March 15, 2023 at 12:49PM
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Ted Lasso likes to say that winning isn’t everything. The folksy American coach of the struggling British soccer club AFC Richmond, Ted (played by Jason Sudeikis) is expected to care about accumulating goals—but, as he insists to a journalist at one point, “To me, success is not about the wins and losses.” And he really means it; Ted preaches the idea even after the team suffers devastating defeats over and over. “We may not have won,” he explains after one such loss, “but y’all definitely succeeded.”
As it turns out, that unwavering optimism worked. When the AppleTV+ comedy’s third (and reportedly final) season kicks off, the club is coming off a major victory: At the end of the second season, the team scored enough points to be promoted back to the top-tier Premier League. And yet, the upgrade seems to have left everyone but Ted on edge. Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), the team’s owner, pores over every newspaper for their predictions. Higgins (Jeremy Swift), Richmond’s operations director, draws up a list of possible recruits. And the players are distracted at practice, worried about what soccer pundits are saying about them.
A compelling tension thus arises between Ted and the team over their expectations for the upcoming matches. Ted’s gentle idealism clashes with his players’ need to achieve actual goals—as in, the ones scored into nets—after their previous victory. But the show isn’t merely questioning whether Ted’s goodness is flawed; by following the team as it’s welcomed back into the Premier League, it’s also examining whether winning is a worthwhile endeavor in the first place. Richmond got what it wanted, only to face more pressure and scrutiny than ever before. The result is a season that, at least over the four episodes screened for critics, feels more cohesive than the last.
For one thing, the hearty return to the soccer pitch allows the show to more acutely observe Ted’s relationship to his work. Season 2 spent much of its time deconstructing Ted’s positive thinking off the field, through his sessions with the team’s therapist. To make up for the lack of sports, the show also devoted significant screen time to expanding the supporting cast’s personal narratives, as if uncertain whether Ted’s journey would hold viewers’ attention. The move made Ted’s inner turmoil seem like a distraction, an emotional arc that never gelled with the rest of the ensemble’s stories. In Season 3, the show better aligns his anxieties with his players’ interests, allowing it to more intimately explore the limits of Ted’s optimism. In an upcoming episode, Ted debates his assistant coaches over whether to motivate the team by angering them; at home, Ted wrestles with how honest he should be with his ex-wife about his fury over her new romance. Because Ted’s impulse for harmony is being tested both on and off the pitch, the stakes of his choices feel higher than they did last season—and what he decides to do feels weightier too.
[Read: Ted Lasso is no superhero]
These interwoven story threads also help the show convey the suffocating nature of success. Ted used to be a fish out of water game to try anything; now he’s less willing to shake things up, because he knows how much his players want to keep winning. In Season 1, for instance, Ted had no qualms about benching his star player, Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), to teach him a lesson about teamwork. In Season 3, despite Jamie’s levelheaded appeal for Ted to impart similar wisdom on a talented new colleague, Ted can’t bring himself to do so. The team’s goal had been to fight its way back to the Premier League by any means necessary. Now that that’s been achieved, AFC Richmond is faced with a more uncomfortable question: Can any of them risk losing again?
Colin Hutton / Apple TV+
This isn’t to say that Ted Lasso has become a show about soccer strategy; the sport largely still operates as a metaphor. Each character struggles to maintain momentum; most of them are trying to do so without compromising their happiness. The team’s former PR consultant, Keeley (Juno Temple), who began her own agency at the end of Season 2, cheerily shows off her new office to Rebecca but sobs into her arms behind closed doors, overwhelmed by the job. Keeley’s boyfriend and Richmond’s captain turned assistant coach, Roy (Brett Goldstein), meanwhile, breaks up with her; he’s afraid their bliss won’t last. And Nate (Nick Mohammed), once Richmond’s kit man, who came to resent Ted and left the team, has sacrificed his friendships for a shot at leading his own squad.
These tighter themes unify the season in its early going—a far cry from Ted Lasso’s scattershot second installment, which overstuffed its storytelling with stand-alone “specials” and discarded narratives (remember Sam’s crusade against Dubai Air?). The focus on how Richmond deals with its fortunes also works because it feels true to life, doubling as a reflection of the show’s own stumbles after it became an unexpected hit early in the pandemic. Season 2 arrived with high expectations, and it awkwardly tried to balance its sunny reputation with more dramatic concerns. (That’s also when the show’s runtime ballooned: Half-hour episodes sneakily led to almost-hour-long installments.)
Ted Lasso no longer seems embarrassed by its darker emotional arcs nor quite as burdened by its reputation as a feel-good fantasy. Ted still can’t resist a pop-culture reference, and every scene is still stacked with one-liners, but the show doesn’t hesitate to have every episode run about 45 minutes long and come with an undercurrent of unease. The series may have probed the flaws that come with Ted’s kindness, but it’s finally fully embracing the idea that doubt has a place in even the most optimistic person’s thoughts. It’s a reminder that the attempt to sustain happiness from one moment to the next, although difficult, can be fulfilling. Despite what he’s said in the past, Ted has always known that it’s impossible to feel good all the time. Now he seems to be learning not just to acknowledge the bad but to accept it as a part of life.
The Strange Intimacy of New York City
23The Atlantic by Nicole Acheampong / March 15, 2023 at 12:49PM
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Photographs by Richard Sandler
Richard Sandler’s photographs of New York, taken from the late 1970s to the early ’90s, seem straightforward at first: portraits of everyday city life composed with deceptive casualness, as if Sandler, and not just his subjects, were simply passing by and happened to catch an onlooker’s eye. But on the public stage of a street, the subway, or a tree-shorn park, a mundane interaction can take on strange airs. And the exchanges Sandler documents—unfiltered and spontaneously intimate—look a bit like artifacts today. Three years ago, the pandemic emptied out once-busy streets; subsequently, for many of us, it engendered a newly awkward relationship to public proximity. This archive, capturing a bygone era, feels both nostalgic and unnerving.
Physical contact is everywhere in these photos, which are on view at the Bronx Documentary Center until March 26. Friends and strangers alike lean against one another and also against telephone booths, brick walls, and tempered glass. Even inanimate bodies engage in unfiltered embrace, as with two mannequins, plastic legs intertwined and plastic faces nearly touching, on display in a storefront window. Sandler’s camera, in fact, turns even the quietest scenes into exhibitionist displays. He zooms in on a man whose face is pressed to a subway pole, framing the commuter’s stolen meditation as a brazen kiss. Over that man’s shoulder, another commuter peers directly at the lens: Privacy is a rare commodity in New York, and the photographer is almost always being watched as well. For every engrossed pedestrian that Sandler snaps unawares, another subject snaps right back.
In one photograph, three Black women stand together on a sidewalk; opposite them is a white woman, whose profile takes up almost half of the frame. The encounter feels fleeting, not least because there is a flash of another pedestrian in the background. But one face stands out, sharp and settled: that of the woman who eyes the camera without a smile. Her unabashed gaze puts our own into question: What exactly are we looking at?
The work is energized by these silent conversations, which range from ambiguous to charged. But some photos depict one-sided observation, such as one that juxtaposes a man sitting upright, reading a newspaper on the train, with a fellow passenger, who lies facedown across a row of seats, feet nestled beside the aloof reader. We can’t see the face of the prone traveler. What might they have said had their gaze confronted Sandler’s?
Other images in the set feel less like fixed stares and more like sideways glances, ones that brim with gentle, undemanding curiosity about passersby. In a shot of a train car, we see a group of people rubbing shoulders with loved ones and strangers, all brought together by the impromptu intimacy that comes with moving through New York. Everyone is looking in a slightly different direction; for at least the next few moments, they are going in the same one.
E train, 1983
CC train, 1985
Left: 57th Street, 1985. Right: 34th Street, 1980.
Madison Avenue, 1982
Wall Street, 1988
Right: 53rd Street, 1989. Left: 34th Street, 1989.
SoHo, 1982
Left: Fifth Avenue, 1982. Right: 53rd Street, 1984.
Fifth Avenue, 1983
Right: Fifth Avenue, 1987. Left: Central Park, 1986.
34th Street, 1992
F train, 1983
F train, 1978
Sub-micron spin-based magnetic field imaging with an organic light emitting diode
Nature Communications by Rugang Geng / March 15, 2023 at 12:35PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37090-y
Previous demonstrations of electrically and optically detected magnetic resonance in OLED materials have established these systems as promising candidates for magnetic field sensing. Here the authors present an integrated OLED-based device for magnetic field imaging with sub-micron resolution.
Nature Communications by Shigekazu Murakami / March 15, 2023 at 12:35PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37147-y
It remains unclear how spontaneous Pancreatic Ductal
Adenocarcinoma
(PDAC)
tumors
escape Yap dependency. Here, the authors show that lineage plasticity promotes spontaneous relapse following YAP ablation and reveal key transcriptional drivers that overcome YAP addiction in PDAC.
A co-anchoring strategy for the synthesis of polar bimodal polyethylene
Nature Communications by Chen Zou / March 15, 2023 at 12:35PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37152-1
Polar functional groups can improve the polymer properties of polyolefins but also poison the metal catalyst used during the polymerization reaction. Here, the authors show that functionalized bimodal polyolefins in which the high-molecular-weight fraction bears few functional groups and possesses high mechanical and melt properties can be used to implement both polarity and processability
Non-Abelian effects in dissipative photonic topological lattices
Nature Communications by Midya Parto / March 15, 2023 at 12:35PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37065-z
In this work, the authors show that photonic topological lattices with dissipative couplings could exhibit non-Abelian dynamics and geometric phases that are in sharp contrast to those arising in typical energy-conserving systems.
Pandemin slog hårdast mot utsatta ungdomar
forskning.se / March 15, 2023 at 12:32PM
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Coronakrisen innebar en utmaning för många unga i början av arbetslivet, men framför allt drabbades lågutbildade ungdomar som varken jobbade eller pluggade. Det visar en rapport från Malmö.
Inlägget Pandemin slog hårdast mot utsatta ungdomar dök först upp på forskning.se.
Flydende vidundere holder på vandet, leverer enorme mængder energi og er tæt på brugerne
Ingeniøren by Bjørn Godske / March 15, 2023 at 12:27PM
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PLUS. Et internationalt hold af forskere har beregnet, at hvis alle vandreservoirer i verden overdækkes med en tredjedel solceller, kan de levere 40 procent af verdens energiforbrug.
Mice with Two Fathers? Researchers Develop Egg Cells from Male Mice
Scientists Mice Two
Scientific American by Meghan Bartels / March 15, 2023 at 12:24PM
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The research offers a tantalizing glimpse at a future in which two men can have biological children together, but any human applications remain in the distant future
UN high seas treaty is a landmark – but science needs to fill the gaps
Nature / March 15, 2023 at 12:15PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00757-z
The agreement is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for researchers and funders to use every idea and instrument available to preserve the health of the seas.
Eggs made from male mouse stem cells using error-prone culture
Nature by Jonathan Bayerl / March 15, 2023 at 12:15PM
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Nature, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00755-1
A screen of mouse stem cells that exploits their propensity to gain or lose chromosomes in cell culture has been used to convert male XY to female XX cells. Subsequent differentiation generates functional eggs and live offspring.
Praktiserende læge: »Det er nu, hvis jeg skal nå at have et liv, hvor jeg får noget frihed«
Dagens Medicin by Cecilie Krabbe / March 15, 2023 at 12:14PM
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Save the Planet by Eating This Big Ugly Fish
51Wired by Kate Knibbs / March 15, 2023 at 12:14PM
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The hardiest freshwater fish in America could revive the Midwest’s fishing industry—or destroy the Great Lakes. So much depends on your appetite.
The Future Smartphone: More Folds, Less Phone, a Whole Lot of AI
27Wired by Lauren Goode / March 15, 2023 at 12:14PM
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Is this article about Electronics?
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We are no longer racing to upgrade the device that sits at the center of our lives. What’s next for the phone?
A Gene Therapy Cure for Sickle Cell Is on the Horizon
Wired by Emily Mullin / March 15, 2023 at 12:14PM
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Two life-altering treatments could soon be available, but questions remain about how accessible and affordable they’ll be.
A Spy Wants to Connect With You on LinkedIn
58Wired by Jennifer Conrad, Matt Burgess / March 15, 2023 at 12:14PM
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Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China have been caught using fake profiles to gather information. But the platform’s tools to weed them out only go so far.
The World’s Real ‘Cybercrime’ Problem
62Wired by Andrew Couts, Dhruv Mehrotra / March 15, 2023 at 12:14PM
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From US state laws to the international stage, definitions of “cybercrime” remain vague, broad, and increasingly entrenched in our legal systems.
Wine, Skiing, and Loans: How Silicon Valley Bank Became Startups’ Best Friend
SVB Silicon Valley Bank
35Wired by Paresh Dave / March 15, 2023 at 12:14PM
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Founders and investors say the bank opened doors—and offered perks—no other bank would. Now companies may face a funding gap.
In Ukraine, Crypto Finds a Purpose
Wired by Joel Khalili / March 15, 2023 at 12:14PM
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The UN’s refugee agency has partnered with blockchain and money transfer companies to get vital aid to people displaced by conflict.
Mice with Two Fathers? Researchers Develop Egg Cells from Male Mice
Scientists Mice Two
Scientific American News by Meghan Bartels / March 15, 2023 at 12:11PM
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The research offers a tantalizing glimpse at a future in which two men can have biological children together, but any human applications remain in the distant future
Ny metode både renser vand for PFAS og destruerer det med biokulfilter og UV-lys
Ingeniøren by Frederik Marcher Hansen / March 15, 2023 at 11:53AM
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PLUS. I laboratoriet fjerner rensemetoden 99 procent af PFAS i vand og destruerer foreløbig 53 procent.
Svenske sikkerhedsmyndigheder forbyder salg af norsk ladeboks til elbiler
53Ingeniøren by Bjørn Godske / March 15, 2023 at 11:53AM
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PLUS. En af Europas førende producenter af ladebokse til elbiler får nu forbud mod at sælge sit produkt i Sverige. Boksen sælges også i Danmark.
RSV Vaccines Are Coming At Last: Your Health, Quickly, Episode 2
Science, Quickly / March 15, 2023 at 11:52AM
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A vaccine pioneer tells us that shots to protect against RSV—a dangerous virus for babies and older people—are finally nearing approval.
Simpel hjertefejl leder til høj overdødelighed
Dagens Medicin by Kristian Sjøgren / March 15, 2023 at 11:48AM
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[no content]
'Unstable' moons may be obliterating alien life across the universe
100+Livescience / March 15, 2023 at 11:44AM
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Simulations show that collisions between moons and planets may be a regular danger for possible extraterrestrial life.
Cyberangreb har udviklet sig til 'våbenkapløb' – men kan Danmark følge med?
Viden | DR / March 15, 2023 at 11:41AM
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Det ærlige og korte svar er nej, lyder det fra flere ekspert.
The Putative Defenders of Liberal Education Are Destroying It
72The Atlantic by Annie Abrams / March 15, 2023 at 11:38AM
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- Christopher Rufo, one of his handpicked appointees to the board of trustees of Florida’s New College, declared that part of the institution’s agenda would include a “shift” to a “classical liberal arts model that provides a distinctly traditional brand of education and scholarship.”
In recent months, those of us who care about the humanist tradition in education have watched with dismay as right-wing politicians clear space for what they dubiously call “traditional education,” often linking their efforts to the cause of liberal education and the teaching of the Western canon. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has placed his “anti-woke” education agenda at the center of his emerging national profile, is a case in point. With promises to reform higher education by “aligning core curriculum to the values of liberty and the Western tradition,” he has positioned himself as a defender of liberal education. Christopher Rufo, one of his handpicked appointees to the board of trustees of Florida’s New College, declared that part of the institution’s agenda would include a “shift” to a “classical liberal arts model that provides a distinctly traditional brand of education and scholarship.”
But the right-wing approach to liberal education and the Western tradition is as skewed as the notion among some academics that teaching the classics is tantamount to promoting white supremacy and European domination. In the presumption that the Western canon represents a single perspective, and in other surprising ways, elements of the radical right and the radical left seem to agree. And they are wrong. Only a censored and denatured liberal-arts curriculum can be employed in the service of ideological conformity. In the same way that liberal education does not have specific vocational and professional goals in view, it must also not have predetermined ideological or theological end points. To the extent that it is political, it is so because it cultivates self-determination, freedom of opinion, and personal agency.
[Yascha Mounk: How to save academic freedom from Ron DeSantis]
In January, DeSantis, who studied history as an undergraduate at Yale, rejected a draft curriculum proposed by the College Board for a new Advanced Placement course in African American studies, denouncing it as woke indoctrination. Soon after, the College Board released a revised version of the course that de-emphasized readings and topics the governor opposed. After initially maintaining that DeSantis’s criticism had not influenced its decisions, the College Board acknowledged that the Florida Department of Education had, in fact, requested the type of changes it had made to the course. Guided by political and corporate priorities, Florida and the College Board, self-styled champions of liberal-arts education, threaten to undermine the kind of learning that equips students for informed and empowered citizenship.
We support the idea of liberal education organized around the discussion of texts of major historical significance, sometimes called a “canon”—works that have been pivotal in the political, social, and philosophical development of contemporary culture. Democracy is imperiled if we forget the debates and struggles from which it emerged, and if we don’t think deeply about what it means to be human. Not all texts and practices are equally effective for facilitating this type of reflection and conversation. The loose and shifting family of works that have proved exceptionally conducive to this task count as a canon.
That canon should be understood not as an inherited fixture but as a process requiring continuous revision and examination. Liberal education, like all other formal education, requires a degree of restriction. Selecting a canon should be the province of neither politicians nor corporations, but of faculty on the ground who are passionate about and dedicated to educating the next generation of citizens. The process should be an opportunity for educators to exercise democratic habits of deliberation, compromise, and collaboration.
The ideal of a liberal education isn’t only under threat from the political right. In December, President Joe Biden’s secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, tweeted, “Every student should have access to an education that aligns with industry demands and evolves to meet the demands of tomorrow’s global workforce.” Acid responses from across the political spectrum accused Cardona of cynicism, anti-intellectualism, exploitation, and failure to address the needs of both individual students and the body politic. But Cardona is hardly alone in promoting this vision of education. Many colleges and universities encourage students to think of their education as an investment and to evaluate it in terms of future earning potential. Given the cost of higher education, our rapidly changing knowledge economy, and the fierce competition among colleges for a shrinking pool of students and their tuition dollars, this marketing strategy is not surprising.
And it isn’t false advertising. At many institutions, liberal education—the kind of education that students pursue for its own sake rather than for its practical or professional value—is in the process of extinction. Instead of a deliberate grounding in the historical, political, and ethical questions that shape our society, much of what passes for liberal education consists of “distribution requirements”—that is, topical courses in academic disciplines taught by specialists in those fields. Even when those courses are in “liberal arts” disciplines, they can fall far short of the ideal of liberal education.
[Benjamin Schmidt: The humanities are in crisis]
At the high-school level, rigid testing regimes promulgated by vendors like the College Board and the erosion of teacher autonomy disincentivize liberal intellectual habits such as questioning received wisdom, skepticism of authority, and creative exploration. At the same time, pressure on secondary-school students to enroll in courses that earn college credit undercuts curricular mainstays like the decades-old 11th-grade survey of American literature, which should help students ponder the complexity of citizenship while affording a democratizing aesthetic experience.
Historically, liberal education has been the province of the elite, because it cannot be mechanized, prepackaged, and administered from above. It requires talented and caring teachers whose focus is on the individual development of students rather than on disciplinary research, test preparation, bureaucratic box-checking, or the reproduction of ideology. Today’s partisan weaponization of curricula threatens to exacerbate the decline of liberal education and put it further out of reach of students who lack the resources to secure it. Yet this moment of national attention also represents an opportunity. American democracy cannot survive without engaged citizens who are equipped to participate in the country’s ongoing conversation about freedom and equality. With small classes, carefully chosen texts, open debate and exploration, and teachers dedicated to the full development of their students, we can reclaim and revitalize liberal education. Practitioners and institutions should seize the opportunity to recommit to education in self-governance, taking the classroom as a laboratory for democracy.
Kunstig intelligens fortæller forskere om effekt af lægemidler
Dagens Medicin by Kristian Sjøgren / March 15, 2023 at 11:31AM
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Ny vejledning for polyfarmaci er på vej
Dagens Medicin by Cecilie Krabbe / March 15, 2023 at 11:31AM
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This couple just got married in the Taco Bell metaverse
100+MIT Technology Review by Tanya Basu / March 15, 2023 at 11:31AM
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Last month, Sheel Mohnot and Amruta Godbole got married. This was no ordinary wedding, though. It was hosted on Decentraland, a virtual platform, and sponsored by Taco Bell.
I tried to attend. As a reporter covering virtual spaces and a fellow Indian-American, I was intrigued. Weddings are very important in Indian culture, and I wanted to see how that would play out digitally.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the initial sign-in, and my screen kept crashing. It was so glitchy that I had to give up trying to watch the ceremony just a few minutes in. In fairness, that might have been just me. Others were able to watch the entire experience, including Mohnot’s grandmother in India.
Still, it left me wondering: Why would people opt to have a metaverse wedding? And will these sorts of ceremonies—especially sponsored ones—stick around, or will they fade away if virtual reality doesn’t live up to the hype?
“It’s crazy and definitely not what we had in mind,” Mohnot says. But the couple say they wanted to do something different from the usual. And beyond the novelty, Mohnot and Godbole’s motivations were straightforward: they got a free wedding out of the bargain. Mohnot is a big fan of Taco Bell, so they entered a competition for the company to pay for the technical aspects of a virtual wedding—the avatars, the production, and more. They won. In return, it plastered its brand everywhere.
For Taco Bell, it was not only a marketing opportunity but an outgrowth of what its fans wanted. The chapel at the company’s Taco Bell Cantina restaurant in Las Vegas has married 800 couples so far. There were copycat virtual weddings, too. “Taco Bell saw fans of the brand interact in the metaverse and decided to meet them quite literally where they were,” a spokesperson said. That meant dancing hot sauce packets, a Taco Bell–themed dance floor, a turban for Mohnot, and the famous bell branding everywhere.
Sheel Mohnot and Amruta Godbole’s Taco Bell metaverse wedding reception. Courtesy Taco Bell
COURTESY OF TACO BELL
If you look past the splashy branding—a trade-off some couples are willing to make for corporate help building and customizing a digital platform—virtual weddings let you do things you can’t in normal ones. For example, Mohnot rode into the ceremony in avatar form atop an elephant for his baraat, a pre-wedding procession for the groom. It’s a fun touch that would be far harder to arrange for an in-person party, especially in San Francisco, where they live.
Making it count was less straightforward. They had to set up a simultaneous livestream of themselves on YouTube in order to meet a legal requirement for their real faces to be visible. That’s because some jurisdictions—including Utah, where their officiant was based—recognize remote weddings as legally binding only if the participants are viewable on video.
A lot of couples won’t be willing to jump through that many hoops. The pandemic created an urgent need for virtual weddings, but traditional in-person ceremonies have roared back in the last year. Roughly 2.5 million weddings were held in 2022, up from 1.3 million in 2020, according to a trade group called the Wedding Report.
So why get married in the metaverse? Some are attracted to the lower cost, according to Klaus Bandisch, who runs Just Maui Weddings in Hawaii. He says the company, which also organizes real-world weddings, is booked several months in advance with metaverse ceremonies.
“We have 120 people on standby and perform at least two metaverse weddings a week,” Bandisch says. “Typically, my vow renewal package is almost $1,000, and if the couple wants avatars, we charge $300 each [person].”
That’s very affordable compared with the standard wedding held in the US, which cost an average of $30,000 in 2022, according to wedding publication The Knot.
And of course, a virtual wedding is cheaper still if it’s being sponsored by a brand. Mohnot and Godbole are far from the only pair to discover this. The platform Virbela hosted a virtual ceremony for two employees, Dave and Traci Gagnon, in 2021. Another couple had their vow renewal ceremony sponsored by Rose Law Group, a law firm with an office in the metaverse. And a third couple in India lined up a series of sponsorships for their metaverse wedding, including Coca-Cola.
Metaverse weddings also allow loved ones to participate without having to go anywhere. For Traci Gagnon, a particularly emotional part of her virtual wedding was having a dear friend, who had terminal cancer and was unable to travel, walk her down the aisle. “She was dancing all night long,” she says. “It was so fun and beautiful.”
One clear downside of metaverse weddings, though, is their lack of, well … realness. Weddings can be deeply sensory experiences: the smell of flowers, the sound of music, the hugs and kisses, the laughter and tears. Much of that is impossible to replicate in a virtual environment. As a result, a metaverse wedding can feel less like a wedding and more like an interactive video game.
But the couples I spoke to say that simply having loved ones “there” outweighed this drawback. Traci Gagnon spoke at length about feeling a sense of connection with her guests, despite the fact that they weren’t sharing the same physical space.
Even the distracting parts of VR were endearing to Godbole and Mohnot. “A kid would run across the screen [during the ceremony] and it was fine,” Godbole says. “It was more interactive than a normal wedding, where you are sitting silently and nothing is happening. In this case you could be expressing your own emotions through your avatar at the same time and not interrupt anything.”
The one remaining obstacle many couples and families might contend with before considering a metaverse wedding is the emotional aspect. Do you really feel married after your virtual avatars share vows and kiss?
Mohnot and Godbole said they were surprised by the intensity of their emotions after their virtual ceremony. “I thought this was going to be some fun, random thing to add to our list of unique experiences,” Godbole says. “But this was a lot more real than I expected it to be.”
China just set up a new bureau to mine data for economic growth
30MIT Technology Review by Zeyi Yang / March 15, 2023 at 11:31AM
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China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.
China’s annual, week-long parliamentary meeting just ended on Monday. Apart from confirming President Xi Jinping for a historic third term and appointing a new batch of other top leaders, the government also approved a restructuring plan for national ministries, as it typically does every five years.
Among all the changes, there’s one that the tech world is avidly watching: the creation of a new regulatory body named the National Data Administration.
According to official documents, the NDA will be in charge of “advancing the development of data-related fundamental institutions, coordinating the integration, sharing, development and application of data resources, and pushing forward the planning and building of a Digital China, the digital economy and a digital society, among others.”
In plain words, the NDA will help build smart cities in China, digitize government services, improve internet infrastructure, and make government agencies share data with each other.
The big question mark is how much regulatory authority it will exert. At the moment, many different governmental groups in China have a hand in data regulation (last year, one political representative counted 15), and there is no government body that has an explicit mission to protect data privacy. The closest the country has is the Cyberspace Administration of China, which was originally created to police online content and promote party propaganda.
“It makes sense to set something [like NDA] up, given how important data is,” says Jamie Horsley, a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School, who studies regulatory reforms in China. “But the problem anytime you try to streamline government is that you realize every issue impacts other issues. It’s very hard to just carve out something that’s only going to be regulated by this one entity.”
For now, it seems this new department is part of an ongoing effort by the Chinese government to drum up a “digital economy” around collecting, sharing, and trading data.
In fact, the new national administration greatly resembles the Big Data Bureaus that Chinese provinces have been setting up since 2014. These local bureaus have built data centers across China and set up data exchanges that can trade data sets like stocks. The content of the data is as varied as cell phone locations and results from remote sensing of the ocean floor. The bureaus have even embraced and invested in the questionable concept of the metaverse.
Those bureaus tend to view data as a promising economic resource rather than a Pandora’s box full of privacy concerns. Now, these local experiments are being integrated and elevated to a national-level agency. And that explains why the new NDA is set up under China’s National Development and Reform Commission, an office mostly responsible for drawing broad economic blueprints for the country.
We may not get clarity on NDA’s full scope of authority until the summer, when its organizational structure, personnel, and regulatory responsibilities are expected to be put down in writing. But analysts think that it’s not likely to replace the Cyberspace Administration of China, which has risen up in recent years to become the “super regulator” of the tech industry.
“Although CAC will lose a few things, its core power has not been significantly undermined,” wrote Tom Nunlist, a senior analyst on tech and data policy at the analytical firm Trivium China. Likely, it will keep exerting control in many of the areas it has been regulating for years: keeping big tech companies in check, ramping up internet censorship, and scrutinizing multinational companies for security issues related to data transfer.
But the creation of the NDA could mean CAC won’t have total reign over China’s internet. That could be a boon for transparency. Because CAC is a branch of the Chinese Communist Party rather than the government, it is subject to fewer disclosure requirements when it comes to its budgets, duties, and rule-making processes. It’s also likely to focus on policies around ideological governance and national security rather than on economic development.
Making the NDA a government agency is a big move, given how party-centric China’s leadership is today, Horsley says: “[China is] a party-state, but the state piece of it is still very important … Of course, it’s supposed to be loyal to the party, but it’s also supposed to deliver [on economic development goals].”
What impact do you think the new National Data Administration will have on the Chinese tech world? Let me know your thoughts at zeyi@technologyreview.com.
Catch up with China
- Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed last week, was among the first financial institutions to cater to Chinese startups and connect them with US investors. (The Information $)
- China has brokered an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to reestablish diplomatic relations, filling a diplomatic vacuum left by the United States. (Vox)
- Hundreds of Baidu employees are working around the clock and borrowing computer chips from other departments to get ready for the launch of Ernie Bot, Baidu’s answer to ChatGPT, this coming Thursday. (Wall Street Journal $)
- Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s CEO, has sought closed-door meetings with at least half a dozen lawmakers in Washington, DC. He is scheduled to appear before a congressional hearing regarding privacy and national security concerns about TikTok later this month. (Forbes $)
- China may control 32% of the world’s lithium mining capacity by 2025, the investment bank UBS AG estimates. (Bloomberg $)
- China reappointed Yi Gang as the head of the central bank, signaling continuity in its monetary policies. (AP)
- Meanwhile, China’s state-backed chip investment fund, shaken by corruption investigations, is getting a new chief. (Bloomberg $)
- The “996” overwork culturein China, embraced by tech companies a few years ago, is not going away easily. An executive at a Chinese auto company recently asked its legal department to figure out “how to avoid legal risks” in asking employees to work on Saturdays. (Sixth Tone)
Lost in translation
In central China, a young entrepreneur is reimagining retirement homes by teaching the senior residents how to play e-sports. As Chinese gaming publication ChuApp reports, Fan Jinlin, a 25-year-old in Henan province, took over his family’s retirement home business after college. He started creating video content about the lives of the residents and quickly attracted millions of followers on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
In February 2022, he began building an e-sports room in his fifth retirement home and recruiting seniors who are interested in video games. Zhang Fengqin, a 68-year-old retired bank clerk, is one of them. She saw the news on Douyin and applied. Soon, she grew from someone who didn’t even know how to use a mouse to a proficient player of Teamfight Tactics, a popular game that doesn’t require quick reflexes as much as strategic thinking. Ultimately, Fan wants to build a professional team to play in tournaments, but to achieve that, he would need at least seven participants like Zhang. Right now he only has three.
One more thing
The number 2,952 has disappeared from China’s social media platform Weibo. Why? Because President Xi Jinping extended his rule for another five years last week, having received 2,952 votes approving the extension—with zero opposed and zero abstaining—in China’s ceremonial legislative body, the National People’s Congress. While everyone knew Xi would get a third term, the fact that there was not a single opposition vote still got people talking about how pointless the procedure was. Just a few days later, Weibo blocked search results on the number.
Robot snake that moves like a sidewinder could inspect sewage pipes
New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 11:30AM
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A robot that mimics the motion of snakes can undulate in S-shaped bends or roll in spirals
Hand hygiene practice and associated factors among rural communities in northwest Ethiopia
Scientific Reports by Zemichael Gizaw / March 15, 2023 at 11:26AM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-30925-0
Hand hygiene practice and associated factors among rural communities in northwest Ethiopia
Scientific Reports by Xiang Guo / March 15, 2023 at 11:26AM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31041-9
Rethinking infrastructure design: evaluating pedestrians and VRUs’ psychophysiological and behavioral responses to different roadway designs
Survival in non-small cell lung cancer patients with versus without prior cancer
Scientific Reports by Akira Sato / March 15, 2023 at 11:26AM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-30850-2
Survival in non-small cell lung
cancer
patients with versus without prior cancer
Albedo effects in the ER3BP with an oblate primary, a triaxial secondary and a potential due to belt
Scientific Reports by Jagadish Singh / March 15, 2023 at 11:26AM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-30671-3
Albedo effects in the ER3BP with an oblate primary, a triaxial secondary and a potential due to belt
Scientific Reports by Takahiro Shimizu / March 15, 2023 at 11:26AM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31322-3
Polycystic kidney disease 2
-like 1 channel contributes to the bitter aftertaste perception of quinine
Longitudinal telomere dynamics within natural lifespans of a wild bird
Scientific Reports by Michael Le Pepke / March 15, 2023 at 11:26AM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31435-9
Longitudinal telomere dynamics within natural lifespans of a wild bird
Scientific Reports by Kalyani Kulkarni / March 15, 2023 at 11:26AM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31454-6
Angiotensin II
type 2 receptor activation preserves
megalin
in the kidney and prevents
proteinuria
in high salt diet fed rats
The impact of contextual information on aesthetic engagement of artworks
Scientific Reports by Kohinoor M. Darda / March 15, 2023 at 11:26AM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-30768-9
The impact of contextual information on aesthetic engagement of artworks
Tystare propeller banar väg för bättre elflygplan
forskning.se / March 15, 2023 at 11:00AM
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Utvecklingen av det fossilfria flyget tampas med ett problem – effektiva propellrar i eldrivna plan är bullriga. Men nu har forskare hittat en metod som kan leda till tystare och energisnålare flygturer.
Inlägget Tystare propeller banar väg för bättre elflygplan dök först upp på forskning.se.
In the future, what direction will messengers head in?
Future(s) Studies by /u/Goszcziw / March 15, 2023 at 10:41AM
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Messengers have always had a bad reputation when it comes to data collection and distribution. As time passes, their data collection has become more and more hostile. Now if you make a whatsapp call or send messages, you'll see ads based on your conversation in Instagram. I don't know about you, but that's the last thing I'd want in a messenger, one that reads my messages and analyzes my phone calls. Do you think the future is going to be more privacy oriented? meaning that they'll be focused on our needs? or will this pattern continue on or worsen?
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Is the future looking bleak for banks?
Future(s) Studies by /u/Psycletosteuj / March 15, 2023 at 10:41AM
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The SVB collapse for is affecting all banks right now, and a ton of them have been seeing a decline while for some odd reason.
As they're trying to fix the situation, they also said that they've approved regulation that will destroy digital currency, but I don't know if that's working.. Almost all banks are down, while digital currency is upl. Is this a bad sign for the future of these banks or is this something that no one should be worried about?
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Lawyers to Face Off Before Judge in Closely Watched Abortion Pills Case
FDA Texas Abortion
400+NYT > Science by Pam Belluck / March 15, 2023 at 10:31AM
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Feedly AI found 1 Regulatory Changes mention in this article
- approval of the pills takes place Wednesday morning in Texas.
The first hearing in a lawsuit that seeks to overturn F.D.A. approval of the pills takes place Wednesday morning in Texas.
ExploreAI – Directory of AI tools
cognitive science by /u/Potential-Western974 / March 15, 2023 at 10:13AM
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Hi
I have made a directory of AI tools exploreai.co More than 1200 AI tools are listed here.
You can filter by category. We update the list daily
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The U.S. has a high rate of preterm births, and abortion bans could make that worse
500+NPR by Sarah Varney / March 15, 2023 at 10:11AM
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Feedly AI found 1 Regulatory Changes mention in this article
- The U.S. has a high rate of preterm births, and abortion bans could make that worse
The rates of
premature birth
in the U.S. are high, especially in certain states. Experts worry that states restricting abortion have fewer maternal care providers than those with abortion access.
(Image credit: ER Productions Limited/Getty Images)
Lawsuit filed in bid to halt Alaska oil drilling project
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 09:52AM
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Environmental groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to halt a controversial oil drilling project in Alaska approved by the Biden administration.
Satellite constellations multiply on profit hopes, geopolitics
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 09:52AM
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The massive constellation of satellites operated by SpaceX, while still growing, will soon be joined in low Earth orbit by many more commercial competitors, but also government-sponsored programs.
Argentina forests burn amid heat wave, drought
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 09:52AM
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Fires in heat wave- and drought-stricken Argentina have devoured some 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of forests in the northern Corrientes province in just days, officials reported Tuesday.
Plantwatch: rare species flourish in Swanscombe wasteland
53Science | The Guardian by Paul Simons / March 15, 2023 at 09:44AM
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Area in Kent has more threatened species than any other brownfield site in UK – but its future is at risk
Brownfield sites are derelict industrial wastelands and hardly glamorous – but some have become outstanding natural havens.
Swanscombe peninsula in the Thames estuary was used for quarrying chalk and aggregate, cement works, gas works and landfill. When the industry moved out, the poor soil left behind was colonised by rare plants that could not survive on fertile land elsewhere.
Nature Communications by Xiaowei Gu / March 15, 2023 at 09:39AM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37199-0
How testis resident macrophages develop and influence tissue function is not fully understood. Here the authors use mouse lineage tracing methods to document the haematopoietic source, development and recruitment of early testicular macrophages, support of foetal testis differentiation, and interaction with, and promotion of steroidogenesis in, Leydig cells.
The battle to save Cambodia's river dolphins from extinction
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 09:36AM
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Bulging grey heads break the turbid waters of the Mekong River in Cambodia as a pod of rare Irrawaddy dolphins surfaces to breathe, drawing excited murmurs from tourists watching from nearby boats.
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 09:36AM
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Wildlife documentaries miss an opportunity to highlight the diversity of nature by focusing too much on mammals and birds, according to a new study.
The battle to save Cambodia's river dolphins from extinction
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 09:30AM
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Bulging grey heads break the turbid waters of the Mekong River in Cambodia as a pod of rare Irrawaddy dolphins surfaces to breathe, drawing excited murmurs from tourists watching from nearby boats.
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 09:30AM
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Wildlife documentaries miss an opportunity to highlight the diversity of nature by focusing too much on mammals and birds, according to a new study.
Gene-edited rice may be able to grow on Mars
300+New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 08:28AM
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Martian soil is generally poor for growing plants, but researchers have used CRISPR to create gene-edited rice that might be able to germinate and grow despite the hostile habitat
Ärftlig blindhet kan botas med genterapi
Vetenskap och Hälsa by Eva Bartonek / March 15, 2023 at 08:08AM
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Från att nästan inte kunna se alls – till förbättrat mörkerseende och utökat synfält. Det är möjligheten med en avancerad behandling mot ärftlig blindhet, som nu införts på Skånes universitetssjukhus. I februari behandlades den första patienten på sjukhuset.
Do a Quarter of Kids Really Get Long Covid? It’s Complicated.
Undark Magazine by Michael Schulson / March 15, 2023 at 08:04AM
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Is this article about Pharma?
YESNO
Estimates of the number of children who struggle with lasting symptoms after a
Covid
-19
infection
vary widely — and some researchers suggest their colleagues have overstated the risks. Is long Covid in children a silent epidemic? A challenging but very rare condition? Or something in between?
An integrated single cell and spatial transcriptomic map of human white adipose tissue
Nature Communications by Lucas Massier / March 15, 2023 at 07:28AM
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Is this article about Biopharma Industry?
YESNO
Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36983-2
Single-cell studies of human white adipose tissue (WAT) provide insights into the specialized cell types in the tissue. Here the authors combine publicly available and newly generated high-resolution and bulk transcriptomic results from multiple human datasets to provide a comprehensive cellular map of white adipose tissue.
Virus outbreak in West Bengal leaves 19 children dead and thousands in hospital
98Science | The Guardian by Puja Bhattacharjee in Kolkata / March 15, 2023 at 07:18AM
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Indian state in crisis after adenovirus hits 12,000 people this year and families with sick children camp outside Kolkata hospital
Nineteen children have died of acute respiratory infections in West Bengal this year, and thousands more are in hospital as India grapples with an adenovirus outbreak.
More than 12,000 cases of adenovirus have been recorded in the state since January. More than 3,000 children have been admitted to hospital with severe flu-like symptoms.
1,100 scientists and students barred from UK amid China crackdown
200+Science | The Guardian by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent / March 15, 2023 at 07:18AM
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Exclusive: Foreign Office rejected record number of academics in 2022 on national security grounds
More than 1,000 scientists and postgraduate students were barred from working in the UK last year on national security grounds, amid a major government crackdown on research collaborations with China.
Figures obtained by the Guardian reveal that a record 1,104 scientists and postgraduate students were rejected by Foreign Office vetting in 2022, up from 128 in 2020 and just 13 in 2016.
Robots may improve mental wellbeing, but it all depends on how they look – study
Future(s) Studies by /u/ilovekerma / March 15, 2023 at 07:10AM
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March 2023 Tech Roundup: The Latest News and Innovation
Future(s) Studies by /u/Historical-Pen9653 / March 15, 2023 at 07:10AM
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Universal Basic Everything: Excess for Everyone
Future(s) Studies by /u/Pilast / March 15, 2023 at 07:10AM
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'Red matter' superconductor could transform electronics – if it works
Future(s) Studies by /u/Woke_Soul / March 15, 2023 at 07:10AM
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Pound of Flesh, or Is Cancer Fraud Inevitable?
For Better Science by Leonid Schneider / March 15, 2023 at 07:00AM
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Is this article about Biopharma Industry?
YESNO
Ashani Weeraratna and Valerie Weaver, two women in STEM, harassed by trolls.
Everest Is Preserving The Germs Coughed And Sneezed Out by Climbers
97ScienceAlert by Rebecca Dyer / March 15, 2023 at 06:40AM
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We'll just save this for later.
Fungus that kills frogs and amphibians is rapidly spreading in Africa
New Scientist / March 15, 2023 at 06:34AM
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Across Africa there has been a surge in a fungus that causes heart failure in amphibians over the past two decades, which could devastate the continent’s amphibians as it has elsewhere
World-leading? Britain’s science sector has some way to go
Science / March 15, 2023 at 06:22AM
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Is this article about Foreign Policy?
YESNO
The country’s reputation is inflated by historic successes and relies on successful outliers
Enhanced hybrid photocatalytic dry reforming using a phosphated Ni-CeO2 nanorod heterostructure
Nature Communications by Alexandra Tavasoli / March 15, 2023 at 06:21AM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36982-3
The top-performing dry reforming photocatalysts in the literature rely on the use of precious metals. Here, enhanced photocatalytic dry reforming performance is reported through surface basicity modulation of a Ni/CeO2 photocatalyst, achieved by selectively phosphating the surface of a CeO2 nanorod support.
Nature Communications by Zheng Li / March 15, 2023 at 06:21AM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37150-3
Nanomedicine proofed to be efficient in cancer therapy but rapid clearance from blood circulation by reticuloendothelial system (RES) severely limits the antitumor efficacy. Here, the authors design a series of nanogels with distinctive stiffness and investigate how nanogel mechanical properties could be leveraged to overcome RES.
Nature Communications by Yue Hao / March 15, 2023 at 06:21AM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37137-0
The pre-and postsynaptic communication is critical for faithful synaptic transmission and induction of synaptic plasticity. Here, the authors found that CaMKII functions at GABAergic neurons to recruit GABAARs by triggering anterograde signals.
Bird Flu, Mpox And Marburg. Why Do So Many Viruses Seem to Be Emerging Right Now?
100+ScienceAlert by The Conversation / March 15, 2023 at 06:11AM
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A virologist explains.
Rapid surge in highly contagious killer fungus poses new threat to amphibians across Africa
65Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 06:09AM
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Mass fungus infections that drive populations worldwide to near-collapse don't just occur in science fiction. Chytridiomycosis, the worst vertebrate disease in recorded history, has already wiped out hundreds of species of amphibians around the world. Due to a large part to this fungal disease, 41% of amphibians are currently threatened with extinction. Only species living in Africa seemed to have been relatively spared from the scourge of chytridiomycosis—at least so far.
Rapid surge in highly contagious killer fungus poses new threat to amphibians across Africa
57Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 15, 2023 at 06:03AM
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Mass fungus infections that drive populations worldwide to near-collapse don't just occur in science fiction. Chytridiomycosis, the worst vertebrate disease in recorded history, has already wiped out hundreds of species of amphibians around the world. Due to a large part to this fungal disease, 41% of amphibians are currently threatened with extinction. Only species living in Africa seemed to have been relatively spared from the scourge of chytridiomycosis—at least so far.
Complexity of cortical wave patterns of the wake mouse cortex
Nature Communications by Yuqi Liang / March 15, 2023 at 05:44AM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37088-6
The cerebral cortex has ongoing electrical activities with rich and complex patterns in space and time. Here, the authors use optical voltage imaging in mice and computational methods, relating these complexities to different levels of wakefulness.
Vind, mad og miljø i skøn forening: Havfarm skal dyrke tang og muslinger på Kriegers Flak
Ingeniøren by Alexander Ruben Hansen / March 15, 2023 at 05:32AM
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PLUS. Et dansk pilotprojekt skaber en model for, hvordan man samler hav-aktiviteter indenfor samme område.
Dansk studie: Når Crispr-saksen klipper et uønsket sted er den nogle gange mere effektiv
Ingeniøren by Mie Stage / March 15, 2023 at 05:32AM
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PLUS. Nu har forskere det bud, at hvis guiden til gensaksen Crispr/Cas9 ikke binder for hårdt, kan resultatet være bedre.
A Huge Fin Whale With Severe Scoliosis Was Filmed Swimming Off Spanish Coast
2KScienceAlert by Carly Cassella / March 15, 2023 at 05:21AM
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It's more common than you'd think.
Tax policy may not be enough to combat climate change
Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 05:17AM
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Is this article about Sustainable Development?
YESNO
A new paper in The Review of Economic Studies indicates that carbon taxes will be less effective at reducing carbon emissions than previously thought. It also finds that tax interventions needed to achieve goals agreed upon in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 will need to be larger than previously thought.
Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida
500+NYT > Science by Patricia Mazzei / March 15, 2023 at 05:04AM
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A study from the U.S. Geological Survey called the state’s python problem “one of the most intractable invasive-species management issues across the globe.”
Så lär sig bin visa vägen till den goda nektarn
94Vetenskap | SVT Nyheter / March 15, 2023 at 04:33AM
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Unga bin studerar sina äldre kamrater för att blir bättre på att berätta för resten av bikupan var nektar och pollen finns. – Det sker väldigt mycket inlärning även på insektsnivå, säger Marie Dacke, professor i sinnesbiologi vid Lunds universitet.
Perovskite quantum dot one-dimensional topological laser
Nature Communications by Jingyi Tian / March 15, 2023 at 04:26AM
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Is this article about Semiconductors?
YESNO
Nature Communications, Published online: 15 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36963-6
Topological lasers often suffer from low directionality, and/or complex design requirements hindering operation at small wavelengths. Here, by using a few monolayers of perovskite quantum dots, the authors demonstrate a lithography-free, vertical-emitting, single-mode laser emitting in the green.
Super-AI gameplay spurs humans to novel, winning strategies
Future(s) Studies by /u/NadiyaJeba / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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Future(s) Studies by /u/Aeromarine_eng / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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submitted by /u/Aeromarine_eng |
Kenya to combat rural energy access gap with over 130 solar minigrids
Future(s) Studies by /u/For_All_Humanity / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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What are some jobs that AI cannot take?
Future(s) Studies by /u/Draconic_Flame / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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Is this article about Business?
YESNO
I am fairly secure in my line of work as a therapist as (at least in my lifetime) it is very unlikely that effective therapy could be done by a robot. I was wondering though if there were other jobs that would be unlikely to be taken over by AI. Would they be able to manage a multi-million dollar company? Create small businesses? Sports?
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OpenAI releases GPT-4, a multimodal AI that it claims is state-of-the-art
Future(s) Studies by /u/izumi3682 / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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The Heresy of Decline (about population decline)
Future(s) Studies by /u/mhornberger / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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Scientists Now Have the Blueprint for an Actual, Working Wormhole
Future(s) Studies by /u/Gari_305 / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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US to limit PFAS 'forever chemicals' in drinking water
Future(s) Studies by /u/thebelsnickle1991 / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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submitted by /u/thebelsnickle1991 |
Morgan Stanley is testing an OpenAI-powered chatbot for its 16,000 financial advisors
Future(s) Studies by /u/Gari_305 / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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Future(s) Studies by /u/ColdQuicksand / March 15, 2023 at 03:37AM
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submitted by /u/ColdQuicksand |
Mix-and-match kit could enable astronauts to build a menagerie of lunar exploration bots
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:36AM
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The Walking Oligomeric Robotic Mobility System, or WORMS, is a reconfigurable, modular, multiagent robotics architecture for extreme lunar terrain mobility. The system could be used to assemble autonomous worm-like parts into larger biomimetic robots that could explore lava tubes, steep slopes, and the moon's permanently shadowed regions.
Webb Telescope captures rarely seen prelude to supernova
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:36AM
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Is this article about Aerospace?
YESNO
The rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star — among the most luminous, most massive, and most briefly detectable stars known — was one of the first observations made by NASA's
James Webb Space Telescope
in June 2022. Webb shows the star, WR 124, in unprecedented detail with its powerful infrared instruments. The star is 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:36AM
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A global maternal immunization program for group B Streptococcus — strep B — would save millions in healthcare costs by reducing death and disability, but without tiered pricing, equitable access would likely not be achieved. Several vaccines are currently under development, and an assessment of the impact and value of a global program has now been published.
Robots can help improve mental wellbeing at work — as long as they look right
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 15, 2023 at 03:31AM
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Robots can be useful as mental wellbeing coaches in the workplace — but perception of their effectiveness depends in large part on what the robot looks like.
How neuroimaging can be better utilized to yield diagnostic information about individuals
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 15, 2023 at 03:31AM
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Since the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging in the 1990s, the reliance on neuroimaging has skyrocketed as researchers investigate how fMRI data from the brain at rest, and anatomical brain structure itself, can be used to predict individual traits, such as depression, cognitive decline, and brain disorders. But how reliable brain imaging is for detecting traits has been a subject of wide debate. Researchers now report that stronger links between brain measures and traits can be obtained when state-of-the-art pattern recognition (or 'machine learning') algorithms are utilized, which can garner high-powered results from moderate sample sizes.
Robots can help improve mental wellbeing at work — as long as they look right
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:23AM
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Robots can be useful as mental wellbeing coaches in the workplace — but perception of their effectiveness depends in large part on what the robot looks like.
How neuroimaging can be better utilized to yield diagnostic information about individuals
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:23AM
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Since the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging in the 1990s, the reliance on neuroimaging has skyrocketed as researchers investigate how fMRI data from the brain at rest, and anatomical brain structure itself, can be used to predict individual traits, such as depression, cognitive decline, and brain disorders. But how reliable brain imaging is for detecting traits has been a subject of wide debate. Researchers now report that stronger links between brain measures and traits can be obtained when state-of-the-art pattern recognition (or 'machine learning') algorithms are utilized, which can garner high-powered results from moderate sample sizes.
STAR physicists track sequential 'melting' of upsilons
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:23AM
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Scientists using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to study some of the hottest matter ever created in a laboratory have published their first data showing how three distinct variations of particles called upsilons sequentially 'melt,' or dissociate, in the hot goo.
Researcher solves nearly 60-year-old game theory dilemma
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:23AM
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A researcher has solved a nearly 60-year-old game theory dilemma called the wall pursuit game, with implications for better reasoning about autonomous systems such as driver-less vehicles.
Innovative approach opens the door to COVID nanobody therapies
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:23AM
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The relatively simple and low-cost procedure could empower laboratories in low-resource areas to generate nanobodies against SARS-CoV-2, as well as other viruses.
COVID-19 pandemic has long-lasting effects on adolescent mental health and substance use
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 03:23AM
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had a long-lasting impact on adolescent mental health and
substance use
, according to a new population-based study based on survey responses from a sample of over 64,000 13- to 18-year-olds assessed prior to and up to two years into the pandemic.
COVID-19 Could Be Robbing People of Their Ability to Recognize Faces
100+ScienceAlert by Tessa Koumoundouros / March 15, 2023 at 03:22AM
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"Faces are like water in my head."
Gov’t committee in Pakistan lets plagiarizing vice-chancellor off the hook
Retraction Watch by Frederik Joelving / March 15, 2023 at 03:14AM
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Muhammad Suleman Tahir
A government expert committee in Pakistan last year cleared a university vice-chancellor of plagiarism charges based on inconsistent claims of ignorance, Retraction Watch has learned.
The committee, which was convened by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), also appears to have flouted rules that would have held the vice-chancellor responsible even if he had no knowledge of any plagiarism committed by work under his supervision. HEC funds and oversees higher education in Pakistan.
“This sends the wrong message to the academic community and undermines the credibility of the HEC,” Farukh Iqbal, who brought the charges, told Retraction Watch.
The case seemed simple enough at first. But it has since spiraled into a saga that may reveal as much about the value of political muscle in Pakistan as it does about academic dishonesty.
In October 2020, Iqbal was working toward a PhD in chemical engineering at RMIT University in Australia when he noticed a new paper in the journal Fuel that looked familiar. The authors, it turned out, had lifted heavily from Iqbal’s 2017 master’s thesis, as we reported in 2021.
Iqbal complained to both the HEC and Fuel. The journal investigated and found that Iqbal’s work had indeed been plagiarized. It pulled the paper in June 2021. (The retraction notice mistakenly refers to a PhD thesis.)
That same month, however, the first author of the retracted paper, Vice-chancellor Muhammad Suleman Tahir of Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, in Rahim Yar Khan, returned fire. In a long-winded email to RMIT, he accused Iqbal of plagiarizing from a 2019 master’s thesis by a student that Tahir had supervised. He also expressed frustration at Fuel‘s “one-sided decision” to retract “our paper.”
Tahir and his coauthors also brought a 500 million rupee (~$2,800,000USD) defamation suit against his accuser. As we reported last year, they argued that Iqbal’s “ugly campaign” had “irreparably injured … [the] credit, character, reputation and health” of the plaintiffs, who have suffered “indescribable isolation, persecution, mental torture, humiliation and material loss” in the process.
After looking into Tahir’s allegations, RMIT concluded that it was indeed Iqbal, and not the vice-chancellor, who was the victim of plagiarism.
In Pakistan, however, HEC officials viewed matters differently.
A response from early 2021 to Iqbal’s complaint stated, “Dear citizen, text of your repeated complaint lacks quantitative facts, rather it reflects your personal grievance with the accused. The mentioned paper have [sic] been looked into with closed look by the plagiarism standing committee and your claim is not found true, anywhere!”
Iqbal complained several more times, as he explained in a submission to the HEC. In the end, the HEC convened an expert committee to review the case, and in February 2022 the committee issued its report. In a written statement to the committee, the report said, the vice-chancellor had explained that “he was not aware of the [now-retracted] publication and his name was added without his consent.”
In fact, Tahir was the one who approached Fuel and asked for the retraction, according to the report.
“The committee found nothing contrary to what [Tahir] has presented in his letter / written statement. Therefore, he was not found responsible for the publication of the alleged plagiarized paper,” the report states.
It added, however, that the source of the data in the Fuel paper was the thesis submitted by Tahir’s student Numair Manzoor, and that Manzoor’s thesis was “completely plagiarized as claimed by Mr. Farukh Iqbal.” But that was of no import for the complaint against the vice-chancellor, the committee found, and it recommended “no penalty against him.”
In his complaint, Iqbal also cited regulations that had been reaffirmed by the HEC in 2017. According to this statute, if a master’s thesis was found to be plagiarized, the supervisor would “also be held responsible for this act and will be blacklisted for five (05) years,” and “disciplinary action against such supervisor should also be initiated by the respective university.”
Iqbal knew that even a cursory look at the evidence showed that Tahir had been well aware of the Fuel paper and had in fact opposed its retraction, as Tahir himself had explained in his email to RMIT. Tahir had also acknowledged his authorship in the defamation suit against Iqbal.
Iqbal also bristled at the claim that the vice-chancellor had been the one to request the retraction of the Fuel paper. Not only did it contradict Tahir’s email to RMIT, Iqbal also had an email from Elsevier, the journal’s publisher, in which it shared with him the “great news” of the retraction and thanked him for his patience with the process.
Tahir has not faced any sanctions, as far as Retraction Watch is aware. Neither he nor the HEC responded to our requests for comment.
Iqbal, who says the experience contributed to his decision to leave his PhD studies, filed an appeal to the HEC in March 2022. He was told the expert committee would make a decision within 60 days.
Almost a year later, he has still not heard back.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
Innovative approach opens the door to COVID nanobody therapies
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 15, 2023 at 03:10AM
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The relatively simple and low-cost procedure could empower laboratories in low-resource areas to generate nanobodies against SARS-CoV-2, as well as other viruses.
Blueprint of a Quantum Wormhole Teleporter Could Point to Deeper Physics
2KScienceAlert by David Nield / March 15, 2023 at 02:55AM
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Buckle up.
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Quantifying heterogeneity to drug response in cancer–stroma kinetics
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Light-dependent signal transduction in the marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum
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Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Christina HamletLisa FauciJennifer R. MorganEric D. TytellaDepartment of Mathematics, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837bDepartment of Mathematics, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118cThe Eugene Bell Center for Regenerative Biology, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, MA 02543dDepartment of Biology, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Model misspecification misleads inference of the spatial dynamics of disease outbreaks
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Jiansi GaoMichael R. MayBruce RannalaBrian R. MooreaDepartment of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Diamagnetic response and phase stiffness for interacting isolated narrow bands
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Dan MaoDebanjan ChowdhuryaDepartment of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Sarah KörberAlexander JunemannChristof LitschkoMoritz WinterhoffJan FaixaInstitute for Biophysical Chemistry, Hannover Medical School, 30625 Hannover, Germany / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Self-propulsion via slipping: Frictional swimming in multilegged locomotors
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Baxi ChongJuntao HeShengkai LiEva EricksonKelimar DiazTianyu WangDaniel SotoDaniel I. GoldmanaInterdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332bSchool of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332cInstitute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
A quantum information processing machine for computing by observables
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by F. RemacleR. D. LevineaTheoretical Physical Chemistry, University of Liège, 4000 Liège, BelgiumbThe Fritz Haber Research Center for Molecular Dynamics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91904 Jerusalem, IsraelcDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095dDepartment of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Immune cells use active tugging forces to distinguish affinity and accelerate evolution
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Hongda JiangShenshen WangaDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Low-distortion information propagation with noise suppression in swarm networks
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Anuj TiwariSantosh DevasiaJames J. RileyaMechanical Engineering Department, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Transcription shapes 3D chromatin organization by interacting with loop extrusion
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Prathitha KarSriram Tiruvadi-KrishnanJaana MännikJaan MännikAriel AmiraJohn A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02134bDepartment of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138cDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996dDepartment of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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De novo design of small beta barrel proteins
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Thibault LatrilleNicolas RodrigueNicolas LartillotaUniversité de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, CNRS, VetAgro Sup, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, UMR5558, 69100 Villeurbanne, FrancebÉcole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université de Lyon, 69342 Lyon, FrancecDepartment of Computational Biology, Université de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, SwitzerlanddDepartment of Biology, Institute of Biochemistry, and School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University, K1S 5B6 Ottawa, Canada / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Cross-sections of doubly curved sheets as confined elastica
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Mengfei HeVincent DémeryJoseph D. PaulsenaDepartment of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244bBioInspired Syracuse: Institute for Material and Living Systems, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244cGulliver, CNRS, École Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de Paris, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, Paris 75005, FrancedUniv Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Univ Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique, Lyon F-69342, France / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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MYC-driven synthesis of Siglec ligands is a glycoimmune checkpoint
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When, how, and why the path of an air bubble rising in pure water becomes unstable
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Paul BonnefisDavid FabreJacques MagnaudetaInstitut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse 31400, France / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Correction for Cueva et al., Low-dimensional dynamics for working memory and time encoding
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Wilson and Sarich (1969): The birth of a molecular evolution research paradigm
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Rasmus Grønfeldt WintherEske WillerslevaHumanities Division, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064bGeoGenetics Section, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1350 Copenhagen K, DenmarkcDepartment of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, United Kingdom / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Visualizing cell–cell communication using synthetic notch activated MRI
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Divalent siRNAs are bioavailable in the lung and efficiently block SARS-CoV-2 infection
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
The Coxiella burnetii effector EmcB is a deubiquitinase that inhibits RIG-I signaling
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Jeffrey Duncan-LoweyEmerson CrabillAbigail JarretShawna C. O. ReedCraig R. RoyaDepartment of Microbial Pathogenesis, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06536bDepartment of Biology, Angelo State University, San Angelo, TX 76909cDepartment of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06536 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Aneuploidy and gene dosage regulate filamentation and host colonization by Candida albicans
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Pallavi KakadeShabnam SircaikCorinne MaufraisIuliana V. EneRichard J. BennettaMolecular Microbiology and Immunology Department, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912bInstitut Pasteur Bioinformatic Hub, Université Paris Cité, Paris 75015, FrancecInstitut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Fungal Heterogeneity Lab, Paris 75015, France / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Broader functions of TIR domains in Arabidopsis immunity
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Glady Hazitha SamuelTyler PohlenzYuemei DongNese CoskunZach N. AdelmanGeorge DimopoulosKevin M. MylesaDepartment of Entomology, Minnie Belle Heep Center, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77843-2475bW. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205-2179 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Larger cerebral cortex is genetically correlated with greater frontal area and dorsal thickness
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Janathan AltuzarJudith NotbohmFrank SteinPer HaberkantPia HempelmannSaskia HeybrockJutta WorschPaul SaftigDoris HöglingeraHeidelberg University Biochemistry Center, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, GermanybEuropean Molecular Biology Laboratory, 69117 Heidelberg, GermanycInstitute of Biochemistry, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, 24118 Kiel, Germany / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Prestin’s fast motor kinetics is essential for mammalian cochlear amplification
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Satoe TakahashiYingjie ZhouTakashi KojimaMary Ann CheathamKazuaki HommaaDepartment of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611bDepartment of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208cThe Hugh Knowles Center for Clinical and Basic Science in Hearing and Its Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Bronwyn RayfieldCelina B. BainesLuis J. GilarranzAndrew GonzalezaDepartment of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, CanadabDepartment of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) 8600 Dübendorf, ZH, Switzerland / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Myungwoon LeeWai-Ming YauJohn M. LouisRobert TyckoaLaboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892-0520 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
A macrocyclic peptide inhibitor traps MRP1 in a catalytically incompetent conformation
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Harlan L. PietzAta AbbasZachary Lee JohnsonMichael L. OldhamHiroaki SugaJue ChenaLaboratory of Membrane Biology and Biophysics, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10065bDepartment of Chemistry, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, JapancHHMI, New York, NY 10065 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
On the perils of working on nonmodel organisms
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Maria Pia MigliettaaDepartment of Marine Biology, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, TX 77553 / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Correction for Diaz-deLeon et al., An abstract categorical decision code in dorsal premotor cortex
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Reply to Miglietta: Toward doing rigorous and innovative science with nonmodel organisms
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Maria Pascual-TornerVíctor QuesadaaDepartamento de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular, Instituto Universitario de Oncología, Ciberonc, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo 33006, SpainbObservatorio Marino de Asturias, Departamento de Biología de Organismos y Sistemas, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo 33006, Spain / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Classic QnAs with Rasmus Winther and Eske Willerslev
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Matthew Hardcastle / March 15, 2023 at 02:51AM
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New study finds early warning signs prior to 2002 Antarctic ice shelf collapse
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:47AM
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In 2002, an area of ice about the size of Rhode Island dramatically broke away from Antarctica as the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed. A new study of the conditions that led to the collapse may reveal warning signs to watch for future Antarctic ice shelf retreat, according to a new scientists.
Humans are leaving behind a 'frozen signature' of microbes on Mount Everest
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:47AM
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Thanks to technological advances in microbial DNA analysis, researchers have discovered that mountaineers' boots aren't the only things leaving footprints on the world's tallest mountain. When someone sneezes on Everest, their germs can last for centuries.
Air pollution impairs successful mating of flies
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:47AM
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A research team demonstrates that increased levels of ozone resulting from anthropogenic air pollution can degrade insect sex pheromones, which are crucial mating signals, and thus prevent successful reproduction. The oxidizing effect of ozone causes the carbon-carbon double bonds found in the molecules of many insect pheromones to break down. Therefore, the specific chemical mating signal is rendered dysfunctional. The researchers show this effect in the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster and nine other species of the genus Drosophila. Most remarkably, the disrupted sexual communication also led to male flies exhibiting unusual mating behavior towards ozonated males of their own species.
Solving the Alzheimer's disease puzzle: One piece at a time
Alzheimer Disease FDA
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:47AM
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Is this article about Biopharma Industry?
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Researchers have uncovered a novel regulatory mechanism in the brain that is essential for making the right kinds of proteins that promote healthy brain function, and its malfunctioning may be an early contributor of the development of Alzheimer's disease.
Game-changing high-performance semiconductor material could help slash heat emissions
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:47AM
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Researchers have engineered a material with the potential to dramatically cut the amount of heat power plants release into the atmosphere.
Spatial patterns in distribution of galaxies
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:47AM
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In an unlikely pairing, a chemist and an astrophysicist applied the tools of statistical mechanics to find similarities in spatial patterns across length scales.
Biden Voids Trump-Era Deal to Allow a Road Through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge
Trump Alaska Izembek
76NYT > Science by Lisa Friedman / March 15, 2023 at 02:36AM
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Feedly AI found 2 Regulatory Changes mentions in this article
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The administration canceled a plan that would have allowed road construction in Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.
New model provides improved air-quality predictions in fire-prone areas
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:23AM
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Globally, wildfires are becoming more frequent and destructive, generating a significant amount of smoke that can be transported thousands of miles, driving the need for more accurate air pollution forecasts. Researchers have now developed a deep learning model that provides improved predictions of air quality in wildfire-prone areas and can differentiate between wildfires and non-wildfires.
Getting a good night's sleep could boost your response to vaccination
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 02:23AM
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We all know how important sleep is for mental health, but a meta-analysis found that getting good shut-eye also helps our immune systems respond to vaccination. The authors found that people who slept less than six hours per night produced significantly fewer antibodies than people who slept seven hours or more, and the deficit was equivalent to two months of antibody waning.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Quantifying heterogeneity to drug response in cancer–stroma kinetics
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Light-dependent signal transduction in the marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Christina HamletLisa FauciJennifer R. MorganEric D. TytellaDepartment of Mathematics, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837bDepartment of Mathematics, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118cThe Eugene Bell Center for Regenerative Biology, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, MA 02543dDepartment of Biology, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Model misspecification misleads inference of the spatial dynamics of disease outbreaks
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Jiansi GaoMichael R. MayBruce RannalaBrian R. MooreaDepartment of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Diamagnetic response and phase stiffness for interacting isolated narrow bands
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Dan MaoDebanjan ChowdhuryaDepartment of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of S… / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Sarah KörberAlexander JunemannChristof LitschkoMoritz WinterhoffJan FaixaInstitute for Biophysical Chemistry, Hannover Medical School, 30625 Hannover, Germany / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Self-propulsion via slipping: Frictional swimming in multilegged locomotors
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Baxi ChongJuntao HeShengkai LiEva EricksonKelimar DiazTianyu WangDaniel SotoDaniel I. GoldmanaInterdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332bSchool of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332cInstitute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
A quantum information processing machine for computing by observables
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by F. RemacleR. D. LevineaTheoretical Physical Chemistry, University of Liège, 4000 Liège, BelgiumbThe Fritz Haber Research Center for Molecular Dynamics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91904 Jerusalem, IsraelcDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095dDepartment of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Immune cells use active tugging forces to distinguish affinity and accelerate evolution
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Hongda JiangShenshen WangaDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of S… / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Low-distortion information propagation with noise suppression in swarm networks
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Anuj TiwariSantosh DevasiaJames J. RileyaMechanical Engineering Department, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Transcription shapes 3D chromatin organization by interacting with loop extrusion
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Prathitha KarSriram Tiruvadi-KrishnanJaana MännikJaan MännikAriel AmiraJohn A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02134bDepartment of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138cDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996dDepartment of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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De novo design of small beta barrel proteins
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 120, Issue 11, March 2023.
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Thibault LatrilleNicolas RodrigueNicolas LartillotaUniversité de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, CNRS, VetAgro Sup, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, UMR5558, 69100 Villeurbanne, FrancebÉcole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université de Lyon, 69342 Lyon, FrancecDepartment of Computational Biology, Université de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, SwitzerlanddDepartment of Biology, Institute of Biochemistry, and School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University, K1S 5B6 Ottawa, Canada / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Cross-sections of doubly curved sheets as confined elastica
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Mengfei HeVincent DémeryJoseph D. PaulsenaDepartment of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244bBioInspired Syracuse: Institute for Material and Living Systems, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244cGulliver, CNRS, École Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de Paris, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, Paris 75005, FrancedUniv Lyon, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Univ Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique, Lyon F-69342, France / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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MYC-driven synthesis of Siglec ligands is a glycoimmune checkpoint
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When, how, and why the path of an air bubble rising in pure water becomes unstable
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Paul BonnefisDavid FabreJacques MagnaudetaInstitut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse 31400, France / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Correction for Cueva et al., Low-dimensional dynamics for working memory and time encoding
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Wilson and Sarich (1969): The birth of a molecular evolution research paradigm
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Rasmus Grønfeldt WintherEske WillerslevaHumanities Division, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064bGeoGenetics Section, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1350 Copenhagen K, DenmarkcDepartment of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, United Kingdom / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Visualizing cell–cell communication using synthetic notch activated MRI
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Divalent siRNAs are bioavailable in the lung and efficiently block SARS-CoV-2 infection
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The Coxiella burnetii effector EmcB is a deubiquitinase that inhibits RIG-I signaling
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Jeffrey Duncan-LoweyEmerson CrabillAbigail JarretShawna C. O. ReedCraig R. RoyaDepartment of Microbial Pathogenesis, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06536bDepartment of Biology, Angelo State University, San Angelo, TX 76909cDepartment of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06536 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Aneuploidy and gene dosage regulate filamentation and host colonization by Candida albicans
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Pallavi KakadeShabnam SircaikCorinne MaufraisIuliana V. EneRichard J. BennettaMolecular Microbiology and Immunology Department, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912bInstitut Pasteur Bioinformatic Hub, Université Paris Cité, Paris 75015, FrancecInstitut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Fungal Heterogeneity Lab, Paris 75015, France / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Broader functions of TIR domains in Arabidopsis immunity
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Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Glady Hazitha SamuelTyler PohlenzYuemei DongNese CoskunZach N. AdelmanGeorge DimopoulosKevin M. MylesaDepartment of Entomology, Minnie Belle Heep Center, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77843-2475bW. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205-2179 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Larger cerebral cortex is genetically correlated with greater frontal area and dorsal thickness
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Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Janathan AltuzarJudith NotbohmFrank SteinPer HaberkantPia HempelmannSaskia HeybrockJutta WorschPaul SaftigDoris HöglingeraHeidelberg University Biochemistry Center, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, GermanybEuropean Molecular Biology Laboratory, 69117 Heidelberg, GermanycInstitute of Biochemistry, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, 24118 Kiel, Germany / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Prestin’s fast motor kinetics is essential for mammalian cochlear amplification
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Satoe TakahashiYingjie ZhouTakashi KojimaMary Ann CheathamKazuaki HommaaDepartment of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611bDepartment of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208cThe Hugh Knowles Center for Clinical and Basic Science in Hearing and Its Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Bronwyn RayfieldCelina B. BainesLuis J. GilarranzAndrew GonzalezaDepartment of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, CanadabDepartment of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) 8600 Dübendorf, ZH, Switzerland / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Myungwoon LeeWai-Ming YauJohn M. LouisRobert TyckoaLaboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892-0520 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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A macrocyclic peptide inhibitor traps MRP1 in a catalytically incompetent conformation
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Harlan L. PietzAta AbbasZachary Lee JohnsonMichael L. OldhamHiroaki SugaJue ChenaLaboratory of Membrane Biology and Biophysics, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10065bDepartment of Chemistry, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, JapancHHMI, New York, NY 10065 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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On the perils of working on nonmodel organisms
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Maria Pia MigliettaaDepartment of Marine Biology, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, TX 77553 / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Correction for Diaz-deLeon et al., An abstract categorical decision code in dorsal premotor cortex
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Reply to Miglietta: Toward doing rigorous and innovative science with nonmodel organisms
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Maria Pascual-TornerVíctor QuesadaaDepartamento de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular, Instituto Universitario de Oncología, Ciberonc, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo 33006, SpainbObservatorio Marino de Asturias, Departamento de Biología de Organismos y Sistemas, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo 33006, Spain / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Classic QnAs with Rasmus Winther and Eske Willerslev
Proceedings of the National Academy of S… by Matthew Hardcastle / March 15, 2023 at 02:18AM
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One of Earth's biggest mass extinctions caused by rising sea levels in eerie echo of today
100+Livescience / March 15, 2023 at 02:02AM
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In samples of organic-rich black shale, scientists found evidence for oxygen depletion and hydrogen sulfide expansion in ancient seas.
'Perfect' 1st edition of Copernicus' controversial book on astronomy could fetch $2.5 million
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The rare manuscript is believed to be one of only 277 known copies of Copernicus' book worldwide.
Beating 'hearts on a chip' will travel to space on SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship tonight
67Livescience / March 15, 2023 at 02:02AM
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Tissue-based models of the human heart are being sent to the International Space Station.
Who were the Celts, the fierce warriors who practiced druidism and sacked Rome?
2KLivescience / March 15, 2023 at 02:02AM
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The ancient Celts were fierce warriors who lived in mainland Europe. But during the Renaissance, an idea took hold that they lived in the British Isles.
GPT-4 Will Make ChatGPT Smarter but Won't Fix Its Flaws
GPT-4 ChatGPT 4 AI
95Wired by Will Knight / March 15, 2023 at 01:36AM
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A new version of the AI system that powers the popular chatbot has better language skills, but is still biased, prone to fabrication, and can be abused.
Dizzy apes provide clues on human need for mind altering experiences
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 01:35AM
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Great apes deliberately spin themselves in order make themselves dizzy — findings which could provide clues about the role of altered mental states for origins of the human mind.
New Version of ChatGPT Will Have Fewer "Hallucinations", Says Creators
300+ScienceAlert by AFP / March 15, 2023 at 01:29AM
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Don't get your hopes up.
Psych Studies Attract A Certain Kind of Volunteer Which Could Be Skewing Results
100+ScienceAlert by Nigel Holt, The Conversation / March 15, 2023 at 01:11AM
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"It needs to be taken seriously."
Fighting intolerance with physics
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 15, 2023 at 12:17AM
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In a world experiencing growing inequality and intolerance, tools borrowed from science and mathematics could be the key to understanding and preventing prejudice. Experts apply evolutionary game theory, which combines techniques from economics and biology, and complex system analysis to investigate the relationship between inequality and intolerance. They found that inequality boosts intolerance and that redistribution of wealth can prevent its infectious spread.
Simulating cuts and burns reveals wound healing and clearing power of fibroblasts
Wound Healing MXene
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 15, 2023 at 12:17AM
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Researchers create a biomimetic model to study wound healing in burn and laceration
wounds
. The team designed an in vitro model system made of fibroblasts embedded in a collagen hydrogel. Wounds were created in this microtissue using a microdissection knife to mimic laceration or a high-energy laser to simulate a burn. They discovered that fibroblasts clear away damaged tissue before depositing new material. This part of the healing process is slower in burn wounds.
Mirror-image molecules can modify signaling in neurons
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 12:15AM
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With the aid of some sea slugs, chemists have discovered that one of the smallest conceivable tweaks to a biomolecule can elicit one of the grandest conceivable consequences: directing the activation of neurons. The team has shown that the orientation of a single amino acid — in this case, one of dozens found in the neuropeptide of a sea slug — can dictate the likelihood that the peptide activates one neuron receptor versus another. Because different types of receptors are responsible for different neuronal activities, the finding points to another means by which a brain or nervous system can regulate the labyrinthine, life-sustaining communication among its cells.
The 'Rapunzel' virus: an evolutionary oddity
ScienceDaily / March 15, 2023 at 12:15AM
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Extremely long tail provides structural window into how bacteria-infecting viruses called phages assemble.
Neolithic ceramics reveal dairy processing from milk of multiple species
300+Phys.org / March 15, 2023 at 12:08AM
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A new study has found evidence of cheesemaking, using milk from multiple animals, in Late Neolithic Poland.
Who’s the most infectious of all? The COVID super-superspreaders
Nature / March 15, 2023 at 12:06AM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00751-5
A small group of people are eight times more likely to spread a SARS-CoV-2 infection than average.
Mike Pence Is Warning Us About Trump
1KThe Atlantic by Tom Nichols / March 15, 2023 at 12:03AM
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This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
A former vice president of the United States identified a sitting president as a mortal danger. In another time, it would have been the Story of the Century. Instead, it was the Kerfuffle of the Week, and it is already dissolving away in the new media cycle.
But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
- Is Ron DeSantis flaming out already?
- NFL owners are making an example of Lamar Jackson.
- ChatGPT changed everything. Now its follow-up is here.
Broken Sycophants
Mike Pence stunned Washington at this weekend’s annual Gridiron Club dinner and gained the attention of the media and the ire of the White House by making an offensive joke about the Cabinet member Pete Buttigieg.
At the same event, by the way, Pence affirmed that on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump—at the time, the president of the United States—endangered his life along with the lives of his family, the members and staff of Congress, and numerous law-enforcement officers. Trump did this by inciting a mob to attack the Capitol, stop our constitutional process by force, and allow him to remain in office.
“Donald Trump was wrong,” Pence said at the white-tie event, which was attended by journalists, politicians, and other D.C. insiders. “I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.” He continued:
What happened that day was a disgrace. And it mocks decency to portray it any other way. For as long as I live, I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day.
Yet here we are, three days later, talking about inappropriate jokes. This is the story now? That Pence tried out a dumb gag line aimed at Buttigieg? Make no mistake, the joke was stupid and disrespectful, but perhaps we might zero in on the more important point: Pence told us something horrifying this weekend about the condition of our democracy. The national underreaction to his comments, however, is a warning that we have all become too complacent about the danger my former party now represents.
Let us stipulate here that Pence is shamefully late to this criticism and has no obvious intention of going further. He had his one moment of courage, and there will be no others. My friend Neal Katyal, the former acting solicitor general, was present at the dinner, and he rightly lambasted Pence for posturing while refusing to answer a subpoena about what happened on January 6. “There are great actors at the gridiron,” he tweeted after the dinner. “But no one, and I mean no one, could pretend to be [Mike Pence] with a backbone.”
Nevertheless, we should not lose focus. I am still almost vertiginous at hearing a former constitutional officer of the United States government say what Pence said out loud. After all the violence, all the court cases, all the horrific videos (the stuff that will never air on Tucker Carlson’s show), and all the needless deaths, I am almost relieved that I’m still capable of being shocked. I was a boy during Watergate—I delivered the local newspaper that announced President Richard Nixon’s resignation, in 1974—but that long-ago scandal now seems like a polite comedy of errors next to the conspiracy fueled by Trump’s monstrous narcissism.
Even before Pence’s Gridiron-dinner speech, I had a conversation last week with Tom Joscelyn, one of the principal authors of the House’s January 6 committee report. Joscelyn is worried, as am I, that Americans don’t really yet grasp the degree to which the Republicans have been taken over by their most extreme wing. “The American right is overrun with grievance politics now,” he told me. “And they’ve married that approach to an authoritarian movement and cult of personality” around Trump.
Joscelyn is not a man who rattles easily: He was Rudy Giuliani’s senior counterterrorism adviser back in 2007, when “America’s mayor” was gearing up to run for president. He thinks Giuliani’s sad decline, in which he has become a kind of political Dorian Gray right before our eyes, is emblematic of the Republican collapse and surrender to Trump. He argues, and I agree, that Trump’s opponents, especially those running against him in the GOP, are not taking this threat as seriously as they should. Trump “puts the auto in autocrat,” Joscelyn said, because Trump sublimates everything to his personal needs, including his party. (I would argue that this is why Trump, despite his fascist rhetoric and Mussolini-like strutting, is incapable of the consistency and discipline required to build a truly fascist movement, but that’s an argument for another day.)
Today, as Joscelyn notes, the GOP has ceased to function as a normal political party. There is no consistent ideology or set of policies, no internal mechanisms to check the power of the Trump cult. Even the people who want to dislodge Trump as the leader of the party and the 2024 nominee dare not to take him on in a direct confrontation. Trump’s critics are often accused of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” an irrational hatred of Trump that forces disagreement with Trump on everything, but Joscelyn rightly points out that Trump’s Republican enablers are the ones who have had to betray all of their deepest beliefs merely to avoid being cast out. Trump, he says, “broke his sycophants, not his critics.”
Which brings us back to Pence. It might not sound like much for Pence to admit what millions of people already know, but within the Republican Party, this is about as close as you can get to open heresy; Pence’s team deliberated making even this small move against Trump. Yet Pence’s comments have been shrugged off by both the press and the public.
To put into perspective how numb we’ve become, let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine, for example, if Hubert Humphrey, after the riots that broke out in 1968 at the Democratic National Convention, said later, “Lyndon Johnson encouraged those anti-war protesters and put me and hundreds of other people in danger. History will hold President Johnson accountable.” Those two sentences would have shaken the foundations of American democracy and changed history.
But not today. Instead, we’ve already moved on to whether Pence should apologize for a clumsy and offensive joke. (He should.) This, however, is the danger of complacency. What would have been a gigantic, even existential political crisis in a more virtuous and civic-minded nation is now one of many stories about Donald Trump that rush past our eyes and ears.
Voters are tired, and the national media are committed to treating the GOP as a mainstream party. Trump and his coterie are counting on this exhaustion to return to national power, but so are people such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is using Trump’s themes of bigotry, grievance, and cultural panic to harness that same authoritarian energy for his own purposes. Republican leaders have no intention of speaking truth—or decency—to their base, and until someone in the party of Lincoln is able to muster even the tiniest fraction of Lincoln’s courage, we will indulge our complacency about the Republicans at our peril.
Related:
- Anne Applebaum: History will judge the complicit. (From 2020)
- The January 6 whitewash will backfire.
Today’s News
- A Russian military jet hitthe propeller of an American drone, causing the drone to go down over the Black Sea, according to U.S. officials. Russia has denied contact with the drone.
- Meta, Facebook’s parent company, plansto lay off another 10,000 workers—its second round of job cuts in recent months.
- Ohio is suingNorfolk Southern after one of its trains, carrying hazardous chemicals, was derailed in the state last month.
Dispatches
- Work in Progress: The end of Silicon Valley Bank is also the end of a Silicon Valley myth, Derek Thompson writes.
Explore all of our newsletters here.
Evening Read
CBS Photo Archive / Getty
How Not to Cover a Bank Run
By Brian Stelter
On September 17, 2008, the Financial Times reporter John Authers decided to run to the bank. In his Citi account was a recently deposited check from the sale of his London apartment. If the big banks melted down, which felt like a distinct possibility among his Wall Street sources, he would lose most of his money, because the federal deposit-insurance limit at the time was $100,000. He wanted to transfer half the balance to the Chase branch next door, just in case.
When Authers arrived at Citi, he found “a long queue, all well-dressed Wall Streeters,” all clearly spooked by the crisis, all waiting to move money around. Chase was packed with bankers too. Authers had walked into a big story—but he didn’t share it with readers for 10 years. The column he eventually published, titled “In a Crisis, Sometimes You Don’t Tell the Whole Story,” was, he wrote this week, “the most negatively received column I’ve ever written.”
More From The Atlantic
- China plays peacemaker.
- The failed promise of having it all
- Photos: Winners of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition
Culture Break
Arsh Raziuddin
Read. Our editors suggest 10 poetry collections to read again and again.
Listen. Start Holy Week, a new narrative podcast by Vann R. Newkirk II about the revolutionary week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
P.S.
Now that The Last of Us, HBO’s series based on the game of the same name, has aired its finale, I’ll write about the show later in the week. I hope The Last of Us, which has been remarkable in every aspect, illustrates how, for many years, computer games have had plots more intricate and more involving than much of the stuff Hollywood has been cranking out now for decades. (I say this fully aware of the creativity of this year’s Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once. But I will remind you that it is also the 30th anniversary of The Beverly Hillbillies, a terrible movie full of great actors that I think was an early sign of American cultural exhaustion.)
I have particularly high hopes—that I fear will be dashed—for Amazon Prime’s upcoming Fallout series. Unlike The Last of Us, the Fallout games, set long after a global nuclear war, leaven the despair and violence of postapocalyptic survival with outrageous humor. If you’ve been watching Hello Tomorrow!, the Apple TV+ series that features the always excellent Billy Crudup selling lunar condos in a reimagined 1950s full of robots and floating cars—and yes, we are living in a golden age of television—you have a taste of what the world of Fallout looks like. I can only hope that Amazon’s series about life after the Bomb doesn’t turn out to be a bomb itself.
— Tom
Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.
Caffeine may reduce body fat and risk of type 2 diabetes, study suggests
Caffeine 2 Diabetes
500+Science | The Guardian by Rachel Hall / March 15, 2023 at 12:02AM
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Findings could lead to use of calorie-free caffeinated drinks to cut obesity and
type 2 diabetes
– but more research needed
Having high levels of caffeine in your blood may lower the amount of body fat you carry and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, research suggests.
The findings could lead to calorie-free caffeinated drinks being used to reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes, though further research is required, the researchers wrote in the BMJ Medicine journal.
YESTERDAY
JWST took a stunning picture of a star that’s about to go supernova
200+New Scientist / March 14, 2023 at 11:39PM
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The
James Webb Space Telescope
has taken an astonishingly detailed image of a Wolf-Rayet star as it blows off its outer layers in preparation to go supernova
Cleaning up the atmosphere with quantum computing
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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Practical carbon capture technologies are still in the early stages of development, with the most promising involving a class of compounds called amines that can chemically bind with carbon dioxide. Researchers now deploy an algorithm to study amine reactions through quantum computing. An existing quantum computer cab run the algorithm to find useful amine compounds for carbon capture more quickly, analyzing larger molecules and more complex reactions than a traditional computer can.
Fighting intolerance with physics
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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In a world experiencing growing inequality and intolerance, tools borrowed from science and mathematics could be the key to understanding and preventing prejudice. Experts apply evolutionary game theory, which combines techniques from economics and biology, and complex system analysis to investigate the relationship between inequality and intolerance. They found that inequality boosts intolerance and that redistribution of wealth can prevent its infectious spread.
Simulating cuts and burns reveals wound healing and clearing power of fibroblasts
Wound Healing MXene
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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Researchers create a biomimetic model to study wound healing in burn and laceration
wounds
. The team designed an in vitro model system made of fibroblasts embedded in a collagen hydrogel. Wounds were created in this microtissue using a microdissection knife to mimic laceration or a high-energy laser to simulate a burn. They discovered that fibroblasts clear away damaged tissue before depositing new material. This part of the healing process is slower in burn wounds.
Gene essential to making DNA appears to be a good target in minimizing pulmonary hypertension
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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Scientists have found that inhibiting a gene essential to making DNA can significantly reduce the destructive cell proliferation and disease progression in
pulmonary hypertension
.
Microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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The agriculture industry is under pressure to adopt sustainable and precise agricultural practices that enable more efficient use of resources due to worsening environmental conditions resulting from climate change, an ever-expanding human population, limited resources, and a shortage of arable land. As a result, developing delivery systems that efficiently distribute micronutrients, pesticides, and antibiotics in crops is crucial to ensuring high productivity and high-quality produce while minimising resource waste. However, current and standard practices for agrochemical application in plants are inefficient. These practices cause significant detrimental environmental side effects, such as water and soil contamination, biodiversity loss and degraded ecosystems; and public health concerns, such as respiratory problems, chemical exposure and food contamination.
AI model helps atopic dermatitis patients diagnose complications and malignant diseases
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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Atopic dermatitis
skin lesions and the lesions produced by infectious complications of the disease look so similar that it makes it impossible for patients to spot the difference and know when to visit their doctor for treatment. But an
AI
-powered mobile app developed by dermatologists now puts the power of diagnosis in the hands of patients.
Fats help tag medical implants as friend or foe
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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Bioengineers found that lipid deposition on the surfaces of medical implants can play a mediating role between the body and implants, knowledge that could help scientists develop biomaterials or coatings for implants that could reduce malfunction rates.
New, non-invasive imaging tool maps uterine contractions during labor
EMMI Imaging Labor
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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Researchers have developed a new imaging tool, called electromyometrial imaging (EMMI), to create real-time, three-dimensional images and maps of contractions during labor. The non-invasive imaging technique generates new types of images and metrics that can help quantify contraction patterns, providing foundational knowledge to improve labor management, particularly for preterm birth.
Tech could help BC farmers reach customers, mitigate climate change impacts
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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Technology exists that the BC government could leverage to help small farmers connect directly with consumers and also mitigate climate change impacts, say new findings.
High winds can worsen pathogen spread at outdoor chicken farms
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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A study of chicken farms in the West found that high winds increased the prevalence of Campylobacter in outdoor flocks, a bacterial pathogen in poultry that is the largest single cause of foodborne illness in the U.S. Researchers found that about 26% of individual chickens had the pathogen at the 'open environment' farms in the study, which included organic and free-range chicken farms. High winds the week prior to sampling and the farms' location in more intensive agricultural settings were linked to a greater prevalence of Campylobacter.
Climate change alters a human-raptor relationship
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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Bald Eagles and dairy farmers exist in a mutually beneficial relationship in parts of northwestern Washington State. According to a new study, this 'win-win' relationship has been a more recent development, driven by the impact of climate change on eagles' traditional winter diet of salmon carcasses, as well as by increased eagle abundance following decades of conservation efforts.
Mediterranean diet associated with decreased risk of dementia
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:38PM
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Eating a traditional Mediterranean-type diet — rich in foods such as seafood, fruit, and nuts — may help reduce the risk of
dementia
by almost a quarter, a new study has revealed.
Microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 14, 2023 at 11:27PM
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The agriculture industry is under pressure to adopt sustainable and precise agricultural practices that enable more efficient use of resources due to worsening environmental conditions resulting from climate change, an ever-expanding human population, limited resources, and a shortage of arable land. As a result, developing delivery systems that efficiently distribute micronutrients, pesticides, and antibiotics in crops is crucial to ensuring high productivity and high-quality produce while minimising resource waste. However, current and standard practices for agrochemical application in plants are inefficient. These practices cause significant detrimental environmental side effects, such as water and soil contamination, biodiversity loss and degraded ecosystems; and public health concerns, such as respiratory problems, chemical exposure and food contamination.
Fats help tag medical implants as friend or foe
Biochemistry Research News — ScienceDai… / March 14, 2023 at 11:27PM
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Bioengineers found that lipid deposition on the surfaces of medical implants can play a mediating role between the body and implants, knowledge that could help scientists develop biomaterials or coatings for implants that could reduce malfunction rates.
Bees Communicate With Secret Dance Moves
Discover Magazine by James C. Nieh, Associate Dean and Professor of Biology, University of California, San Diego / March 14, 2023 at 11:18PM
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Is this article about Neuroscience?
YESNO
The Greek historian Herodotus reported over 2,000 years ago on a misguided forbidden experiment in which two children were prevented from hearing human speech so that a king could discover the true, unlearned language of human beings. Scientists now know that human language requires social learning and interaction with other people, a property shared with multiple animal languages. But why should humans and other animals need to learn a language instead of being born with this knowledge, like many other animal species? This question fascinates me and my colleagues and is the basis for our recent paper published in the journal Science. As a biologist, I have spent decades studying honeybee communication and how it may have evolved. There are two common answers to why language should be learned or innate. For one, complex languages can often respond to local conditions as they are learned. A second answer is that complex communication is often difficult to produce even when individuals are born with some knowledge of the correct signals. Given that the ways honeybees communicate are quite elaborate, we decided to study how they learn these behaviors to answer this language question. What is a Waggle Dance? Astonishingly, honeybees possess one of the most complicated examples of nonhuman communication. They can tell each other where to find resources such as food, water, or nest sites with a physical “waggle dance.” This dance conveys the direction, distance and quality of a resource to the bee’s nestmates. WATCH THE WAGGLE DANCE Essentially, the dancer points recruits in the correct direction and tells them how far to go by repeatedly circling around in a figure eight pattern centered around a waggle run, in which the bee waggles its abdomen as it moves forward. Dancers are pursued by potential recruits, bees that closely follow the dancer, to learn where to go to find the communicated resource.
Longer waggle runs communicate greater distances, and the waggle angle communicates direction. For higher-quality resources such as sweeter nectar, dancers repeat the waggle run more times and race back faster after each waggle run. Making Mistakes This dance is difficult to produce. The dancer is not only running – covering about one body length per second – while trying to maintain the correct waggle angle and duration. It is also usually in total darkness, amid a crowd of jostling bees and on an irregular surface. Bees therefore can make three different types of mistakes: pointing in the wrong direction, signaling the wrong distance, or making more errors in performing the figure eight dance pattern – what researchers call disorder errors. The first two mistakes make it harder for recruits to find the location being communicated. Disorder error may make it harder for recruits to follow the dancer. WATCH VIDEO Scientists knew that all bees of the species Apis mellifera begin to forage and dance only as they get older and that they also follow experienced dancers before they first attempt to dance. Could they be learning from practiced teachers? A ‘Forbidden’ Bee Experiment My colleagues and I thus created isolated experimental colonies of bees that could not observe other waggle dances before they themselves danced. Like the ancient experiment described by Herodotus, these bees could not observe the dance language because they were all the same age and had no older, experienced bees to follow. In contrast, our control colonies contained bees of all ages, so younger bees could follow the older, experienced dancers. We recorded the first dances of bees living in colonies with both population age profiles. The bees that could not follow the dances of experienced bees produced dances with significantly more directional, distance and disorder errors than the dances of control novice bees. We then tested the same bees later, when they were experienced foragers. Bees who had lacked teachers now produced significantly fewer directional and disorder errors, possibly because they had more practice or had learned by eventually following other dancers. The dances of the older control bees from colonies with teachers remained just as good as their first dances. This finding told us that bees are therefore born with some knowledge of how to dance, but they can learn how to dance even better by following experienced bees. This is the first known example of such complex social learning of communication in insects and is a form of animal culture. Dance Dialects are About Distance A mystery remained with respect to the bees that had lacked dance teachers early on. They could never correct their distance errors. They continued to overshoot, communicating greater distances than normal. So, why is this interesting to scientists? The answer may lie in how distance communication could adapt to local conditions. There can be significant differences in where food is distributed in different environments. As a result, different honeybee species have evolved different “dance dialects,” described as the relationship between the distance to a food source and the corresponding waggle dance duration. Interestingly, these dialects vary, even within the same honeybee species. Researchers suspect this variation exists because colonies, even of the same species, can live in very different environments. If learning language is a way to cope with different environments, then perhaps each colony should have a distance dialect tailored to its locale and passed on from experienced bees to novices. If so, our teacher-deprived individual bees may never have corrected their distance errors because they acquired, on their own, a different distance dialect. Normally, this dialect would be learned from experienced bees, but could potentially change within a single generation if their environmental conditions changed or if the colony swarmed to a new location. In addition, each colony has a “dance floor,” or the space where bees dance, with complex terrain that the dancers may learn to better navigate over time or by following in the footsteps of older dancers. These ideas remain to be tested but provide a foundation for future experiments that will explore cultural transmission between older and younger bees. We believe that this study and future studies will expand our understanding of collective knowledge and language learning in animal societies. James C. Nieh is an Associate Dean and Professor of Biology, at the University of California, San Diego. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A mechanistic and probabilistic method for predicting wildfires
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 11:12PM
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In the event of dry weather and high winds, power system-ignited incidents are more likely to develop into wildfires. The risk is greater if vegetation is nearby. A new study provides the methodology for predicting at what point during a high wind storm, powerline ignition is likely.
GPT-4 is bigger and better than ChatGPT—but OpenAI won’t say why
GPT-4 ChatGPT 4 AI
400+MIT Technology Review by Will Douglas Heaven / March 14, 2023 at 10:54PM
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OpenAI
has finally unveiled GPT-4, a next-generation large language model that was rumored to be in development for much of last year. The San Francisco-based company’s last surprise hit,
, was always going to be a hard act to follow, but OpenAI has made GPT-4 even bigger and better.
Yet how much bigger and why it’s better, OpenAI won’t say. GPT-4 is the most secretive release the company has ever put out, marking its full transition from nonprofit research lab to for-profit tech firm.
“That’s something that, you know, we can’t really comment on at this time,” said OpenAI’s chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, when I spoke to members of the GPT-4 team in a video call an hour after the announcement. “It’s pretty competitive out there.”
GPT-4 is a multimodal large language model, which means it can respond to both text and images. Give it a photo of the contents of your fridge and ask it what you could make, and GPT-4 will try to come up with recipes that use the pictured ingredients. It’s also great at explaining jokes, says Sutskever: “If you show it a meme, it can tell you why it’s funny.”
Access to GPT-4 will be available to users who sign up to the waitlist and for subscribers of the premium paid-for ChatGPT Plus in a limited, text-only capacity.
“The continued improvements along many dimensions are remarkable,” says Oren Etzioni at the Allen Institute for AI. “GPT-4 is now the standard by which all foundation models will be evaluated.”
“A good multimodal model has been the holy grail of many big tech labs for the past couple of years,” says Thomas Wolf, cofounder of Hugging Face, the AI startup behind the open-source large language model BLOOM. “But it has remained elusive.”
In theory, combining text and images could allow multimodal models to understand the world better. “It might be able to tackle traditional weak points of language models, like spatial reasoning,” says Wolf.
It is not yet clear if that’s true for GPT-4. OpenAI’s new model appears to be better at some basic reasoning than ChatGPT, solving simple puzzles such as summarizing blocks of text in words that start with the same letter. In my demo during the call, I was shown GPT-4 summarizing the announcement blurb from OpenAI’s website using words that begin with g: “GPT-4, groundbreaking generational growth, gains greater grades. Guardrails, guidance, and gains garnered. Gigantic, groundbreaking, and globally gifted.” In another demo, GPT-4 took in a document about taxes and answered questions about it, citing reasons for its responses.
It also outperforms ChatGPT on human tests, including the Uniform Bar Exam (where GPT-4 ranks in the 90th percentile and ChatGPT ranks in the 10th) and the Biology Olympiad (where GPT-4 ranks in the 99th percentile and ChatGPT ranks in the 31st). “It’s exciting how evaluation is now starting to be conducted on the very same benchmarks that humans use for themselves,” says Wolf. But he adds that without seeing the technical details, it’s hard to judge how impressive these results really are.
According to OpenAI, GPT-4 performs better than ChatGPT—which is based on GPT-3.5, a version of the firm’s previous technology—because it is a larger model with more parameters (the values in a neural network that get tweaked during training). This follows an important trend that the company discovered with its previous models. GPT-3 outperformed GPT-2 because it was more than 100 times larger, with 175 billion parameters to GPT-2’s 1.5 billion. “That fundamental formula has not really changed much for years,” says Jakub Pachocki, one of GPT-4’s developers. “But it’s still like building a spaceship, where you need to get all these little components right and make sure none of it breaks.”
But OpenAI has chosen not to reveal how large GPT-4 is. In a departure from its previous releases, the company is giving away nothing about how GPT-4 was built—not the data, the amount of computing power, or the training techniques. “OpenAI is now a fully closed company with scientific communication akin to press releases for products,” says Wolf.
OpenAI says it spent six months making GPT-4 safer and more accurate. According to the company, GPT-4 is 82% less likely than GPT-3.5 to respond to requests for content that OpenAI does not allow, and 60% less likely to make stuff up.
OpenAI says it achieved these results using the same approach it took with ChatGPT, using reinforcement learning via human feedback. This involves asking human raters to score different responses from the model and using those scores to improve future output.
The team even used GPT-4 to improve itself, asking it to generate inputs that led to biased, inaccurate, or offensive responses and then fixing the model so that it refused such inputs in future.
GPT-4 may be the best multimodal large language model yet built. But it is not in a league of its own, as GPT-3 was when it first appeared in 2020. A lot has happened in the last three years. Today GPT-4 sits alongside other multimodal models, including Flamingo from DeepMind. And Hugging Face is working on an open-source multimodal model that will be free for others to use and adapt, says Wolf.
Faced with such competition, OpenAI is treating this release more as a product tease than a research update. Early versions of GPT-4 have been shared with some of OpenAI’s partners, including Microsoft, which confirmed today that it used a version of GPT-4 to build Bing Chat. OpenAI is also now working with Stripe, Duolingo, Morgan Stanley, and the government of Iceland (which is using GPT-4 to help preserve the Icelandic language), among others.
Many other companies are waiting in line: “The costs to bootstrap a model of this scale is out of reach for most companies, but the approach taken by OpenAI has made large language models very accessible to startups,” says Sheila Gulati, cofounder of the investment firm Tola Capital. “This will catalyze tremendous innovation on top of GPT-4.”
Never before has powerful new AI gone from lab to consumer-facing products so fast. (In other news today, Google announced that it is making its own large language model PaLM available to third party developers and rolling out chatbot features in Google Docs and Gmail; and AI firm Anthropic announced a new large language model called Claude, which is already being tried out by several companies, including Notion and Quora.)
And yet large language models remain fundamentally flawed. GPT-4 can still generate biased, false, and hateful text; it can also still be hacked to bypass its guardrails. Though OpenAI has improved this technology, it has not fixed it by a long shot. The company claims that its safety testing has been sufficient for GPT-4 to be used in third-party apps. But it is also braced for surprises.
“Safety is not a binary thing; it is a process,” says Sutskever. “Things get complicated any time you reach a level of new capabilities. A lot of these capabilities are now quite well understood, but I’m sure that some will still be surprising.”
Even Sutskever suggests that going slower with releases might sometimes be preferable: “It would be highly desirable to end up in a world where companies come up with some kind of process that allows for slower releases of models with these completely unprecedented capabilities.”
Matt Builds a Homestyle Forge! | Homestead Rescue | Discovery
Discovery (uploads) on YouTube by Discovery / March 14, 2023 at 10:36PM
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GPT-4: OpenAI says its AI has reached 'human-level performance'
100+New Scientist / March 14, 2023 at 10:19PM
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An update to the AI behind ChatGPT has been released by
OpenAI
. The firm says other companies are already using it, including the language-learning app Duolingo, the payment service Stripe and Microsoft's Bing search engine
NASA Wants to Build a Special Spacecraft to Destroy the ISS
NASA Space ISS tISS
500+Futurism by Frank Landymore / March 14, 2023 at 10:17PM
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Tug Destroyer
The International Space Station has kept on ticking for over two decades, outlasting its expected operational lifespan of 15 years. But even humanity's steadiest crewed foothold in space must eventually meet its end.
As such, NASA wants to research a new plan to retire the ISS by 2030: using a "space tug" to deorbit it, and then letting the ISS burn up in a safe area in the Earth's atmosphere known as Point Nemo.
Early signs of the plan emerged in NASA's requested budget for 2024, first released last week by the White House. If President Joe Biden and NASA get their way, the space agency would be endowed with a $27.2 billion budget, nearly $2 billion more than this year.
During a press conference on Monday, NASA officials revealed that the agency wants to use around $180 million to "initiate development" of its space tug plan, which would not involve actually building and deploying it — that would cost a hell of a lot more.
"A cost estimate we had was a little short of about $1 billion," said NASA's human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders at the press conference, as quoted by Space.com.
Redundancy Plan
According to Lueders, the current plan is to use an already existing spacecraft: Russia's Progress, an expendable cargo ship that resupplies the ISS.
"We're continuing to work with our Russian counterparts on how to deorbit safely with the Progress vehicles," Lueders said, as quoted by Gizmodo.
She added that although other ISS partners already have deorbit capabilities, the US wants to develop its own plan "to have redundancy."
That would seem prudent, as diplomatic relations between US and Russia have deteriorated ever since the latter's invasion of Ukraine, placing a major strain on efforts to keep the two nations cooperating in space.
Last summer, Russia's Roscosmos announced that it will withdraw from the ISS after 2024, with plans to build its own space station in the wings.
Furthermore, the Progress and Russia's crewed Soyuz spacecraft have both been plagued by leaks, calling into question the reliability of the platforms in recent years.
"As you've seen in the past and over this last year, us having these redundancies has been very, very important for both ourselves and our partners," Lueders said.
More on NASA: NSYNC's Lance Bass Was Training to Be a Cosmonaut When He Heard Something Fascinating
The post NASA Wants to Build a Special Spacecraft to Destroy the ISS appeared first on Futurism.
OpenAI's GPT-4 Just Smoked Basically Every Test and Exam Anyone's Ever Taken
GPT-4 ChatGPT 4 AI
500+Futurism by Noor Al-Sibai / March 14, 2023 at 10:17PM
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Freak Out
OpenAI
's GPT-4 is officially here — and the numbers speak for themselves.
Hot on the heels of its announcement, OpenAI has released a bunch of stats about its even-more-powerful new large language model — and reader, we're both spooked and skeptical in equal measures.
According to a new white paper, the algorithm got incredibly good scores on a number of exams including the Bar, the LSATs, the SAT's Reading and Math tests, and the GRE.
To put these high scores in perspective, it's important to look at the average scores for all the exams GPT-4 appears to have aced. For instance, the LLM got a 163 out of 180 on the LSAT, which is more than ten points higher than the median score of 152 (per the Princeton Review) and, perhaps even more remarkably, almost twice as good as its predecessor, GPT-3.
Limiting Factors
While these stats — which, to be very clear, were released by OpenAI itself and were undoubtedly tailored to make the LLM look as impressive as possible — are indeed stunning, the firm also admitted that its latest LLM is still suffering from the same drawbacks as its predecessors.
"Despite its capabilities, GPT-4 has similar limitations as earlier GPT models," OpenAI noted on its website. "Most importantly, it still is not fully reliable (it 'hallucinates' facts and makes reasoning errors)."
"Great care should be taken when using language model outputs," the AI firm added, "particularly in high-stakes contexts, with the exact protocol (such as human review, grounding with additional context, or avoiding high-stakes uses altogether) matching the needs of a specific use-case."
Mixed Reviews
What is clear, if nothing else, is that OpenAI is racing ahead with the release of its LLMs — GPT-3 was released in the summer of 2020; GPT 3.5, the update that gave the world ChatGPT, dropped on the first of December of last year, and now, just three-ish months later, GPT-4.
While we're still waiting to find out about GPT-4's full capabilities, it's pretty obvious at this point that there's a lot of growing momentum — and financial interest — in the AI space.
If you want to give the new model a spin, it's a lot easier than you might think: Microsoft has already confirmed that it's been using GPT-4 all along for its Bing AI search assistant.
More on OpenAI: OpenAI Confused by Why People Are So Impressed With ChatGPT
The post OpenAI's GPT-4 Just Smoked Basically Every Test and Exam Anyone's Ever Taken appeared first on Futurism.
Rare 'triple-dip' La Niña is over
31BBC News – Science & Environment / March 14, 2023 at 10:16PM
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The natural climatic pattern of La Niña is over after three consecutive years.
Wild swan conservation success gives cause for hope
100+BBC News – Science & Environment / March 14, 2023 at 10:16PM
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Numbers of migratory swans are on the rise, giving hope that declines in nature can be reversed.
'Toxic Forever Chemicals' in U.S. Drinking Water to Be Regulated for the First Time
200+Scientific American News by Andrea Thompson / March 14, 2023 at 10:15PM
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The EPA has proposed the first nationwide limits for toxic chemicals called PFAS in the U.S. water supply
Researcher solves nearly 60-year-old game theory dilemma
200+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 10:14PM
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To understand how driverless vehicles can navigate the complexities of the road, researchers often use game theory—mathematical models representing the way rational agents behave strategically to meet their goals.
New model provides improved air-quality predictions in fire-prone areas
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 10:14PM
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Globally, wildfires are becoming more frequent and destructive, generating a significant amount of smoke that can be transported thousands of miles, driving the need for more accurate air pollution forecasts. A team of Penn State researchers has developed a deep learning model that provides improved predictions of air quality in wildfire-prone areas and can differentiate between wildfires and non-wildfires.
Researchers discover way to reverse infertility by reducing HDL cholesterol
63Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 10:03PM
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Houston Methodist scientists reversed
infertility
in sterile mice by reducing high-circulating cholesterol with a bacterial protein, showing further evidence that links high cholesterol to female infertility. This is a promising development, with one in every five women of childbearing age in the U.S. unable to get pregnant after trying for a year.
Physicists track sequential 'melting' of upsilons
46Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 10:03PM
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Scientists using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to study some of the hottest matter ever created in a laboratory have published their first data showing how three distinct variations of particles called upsilons sequentially "melt," or dissociate, in the hot goo. The results, just published in Physical Review Letters, come from RHIC's STAR detector, one of two large particle tracking experiments at this U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research.
Researchers discover way to reverse infertility by reducing HDL cholesterol
55Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 09:49PM
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Houston Methodist scientists reversed
infertility
in sterile mice by reducing high-circulating cholesterol with a bacterial protein, showing further evidence that links high cholesterol to female infertility. This is a promising development, with one in every five women of childbearing age in the U.S. unable to get pregnant after trying for a year.
New US standards to limit 'forever chemicals' in drinking water
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 09:41PM
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The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed new standards on Tuesday to limit levels of harmful so-called "forever chemicals" in public drinking water.
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 09:41PM
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A new demographic survey of authorship in the American Journal of Archaeology (AJA) reveals that people of color have been largely underrepresented among the scholars published in the journal.
Researchers develop soft robot that shifts from land to sea with ease
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 09:39PM
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Most animals can quickly transition from walking to jumping to crawling to swimming if needed without reconfiguring or making major adjustments. Most robots cannot. But researchers have now created soft robots that can seamlessly shift from walking to swimming, for example, or crawling to rolling using a bistable actuator made of 3D-printed soft rubber containing shape-memory alloy springs that react to electrical currents by contracting, which causes the actuator to bend. The team used this bistable motion to change the actuator or robot's shape. Once the robot changes shape, it is stable until another electrical charge morphs it back to its previous configuration.
Observations open door to improved luminous efficiency of organic LEDs
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 09:39PM
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Scientists succeeded in directly observing how LECs — which are attracting attention as one of the post-organic LEDs — change their electronic state over time during field emission by measuring their optical absorption via lamp light irradiation for the first time. This research method can be applied to all light-emitting devices, including not only LECs but also organic LEDs. This method is expected to reveal detailed electroluminescence processes and lead to the early detection of factors that reduce the efficiency of electroluminescence.
Researchers develop enhanced genetic animal model of Down syndrome
ScienceDaily / March 14, 2023 at 09:39PM
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Researchers
compared a new genetic animal model of
Down syndrome
to the standard model and found the updated version to be enhanced. The new mouse model shows milder cognitive traits compared to a previously studied Down syndrome mouse model.
The archaeologists recreating the secrets of prehistoric technology
100+New Scientist / March 14, 2023 at 09:21PM
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It has long been unclear how ancient people built a city of wood in the New Mexico desert far from any forests. By trying prehistoric building techniques themselves, archaeologists are working it out
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 09:19PM
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Scientists from the Chinese MARA-CABI Joint Laboratory for Biosafety have created a model which can estimate adult emergence periods and identify migratory populations of the yellow-spined bamboo locust from their ovarian development.
Webb captures rarely seen prelude to a supernova
1KPhys.org / March 14, 2023 at 09:15PM
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A Wolf-Rayet star is a rare prelude to the famous final act of a massive star: the supernova. As one of its first observations in 2022, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope captured the Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 in unprecedented detail. A distinctive halo of gas and dust frames the star and glows in the infrared light detected by Webb, displaying knotty structure and a history of episodic ejections.
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 09:15PM
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Scientists from the Chinese MARA-CABI Joint Laboratory for Biosafety have created a model which can estimate adult emergence periods and identify migratory populations of the yellow-spined bamboo locust from their ovarian development.
Innovative approach opens the door to COVID nanobody therapies
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 09:15PM
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COVID
is not yet under control. Despite a bevy of vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and antivirals, the virus continues to mutate and elude us. One solution that scientists have been exploring since the early days of the pandemic may come in the form of tiny antibodies derived from llamas, which target various parts of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
Poland Convicts Activist of Aiding an Abortion by Providing Pills
Polish Activist Abortion
43NYT > Science by Monika Pronczuk / March 14, 2023 at 09:03PM
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It was the first conviction of its type in the country and in Europe, offering a glimpse of the implications of a near-total ban on abortion.
US approves controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska
New Scientist / March 14, 2023 at 08:57PM
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Feedly AI found 2 Regulatory Changes mentions in this article
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The hotly debated Willow oil drilling project has been approved in Alaska, a decision that could exacerbate climate change and imperil wildlife
200+The Atlantic by Stephen Marche / March 14, 2023 at 08:52PM
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The question will be simple but perpetual: Person or machine? Every encounter with language, other than in the flesh, will now bring with it that small, consuming test. For some—teachers, professors, journalists—the question of humanity will be urgent and essential. Who made these words? For what purpose? For those who operate in the large bureaucratic apparatus of boilerplate—copywriters, lawyers, advertisers, political strategists—the question will be irrelevant except as a matter of efficiency. How will they use new artificial-intelligence technology to accelerate the production of language that was already mostly automatic? For everyone, the question will now hover, quotidian and cosmic, over words wherever you find them: Who’s there?
At its core, technology is a dream of expansion—a dream of reaching beyond the limits of the here and now, and of transcending the constraints of the physical environment: frontiers crossed, worlds conquered, networks spread. But the post-Turing-test world is not a leap into the great external unknown. It’s a sinking down into a great interior unknown. The sensation is not enlightenment, sudden clarification, but rather eeriness, a shiver on the skin. And as AI systems become more integrated into our lives, they will alter the foundations of society. They will change the way we work, the way we communicate, and the way we relate to one another. They will challenge our assumptions about what it means to be human, and will force us to confront difficult questions about the nature of consciousness, the limits of knowledge, and the role of technology in our lives.
The above was written half by myself and half by ChatGPT. Perhaps you could figure out which half is which if you parsed it closely or if you used an AI text detector. But how sure are you? Do you have the time or energy to figure it out? And in the end, how clear can you, or anyone else, be? We are entering a big blur, and its challenges are practical as much as philosophical.
Today, we witnessed the unveiling of GPT-4, the latest large language model from OpenAI. The new version is multimodal: You can input images or text, and generate text outcomes. (Put in a picture of what’s on your kitchen counter, for example, and ask what you should cook for dinner.) But the primary advance is in highly sophisticated linguistic tasks. “The distinction between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 can be subtle,” OpenAI acknowledged with the release of the product. “The difference comes out when the complexity of the task reaches a sufficient threshold.” The new version is particularly good at exams: It tested in the 90th percentile on the uniform bar exam, and the 88th on the LSAT, although it still flunked AP English. The difference between GPT-4 and its predecessors is that it’s better, more human-seeming, at more things. The blur is getting blurrier.
Natural-language processing has lurched into the public consciousness with stagger steps. We met it through DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, then ChatGPT. Stories about AI typically portray one of two themes: fear or greed. Each new arrival has been filtered through a series of hopes and anxieties—entirely appropriate to recently evolved hominids confronted with some new phenomenon on the savanna. Will this kill me? Can I eat it? With the arrival of text-to-image generation, the cry soon went up that these new technologies would exploit and replace the handiwork of human artists. But creative people are still the ones commanding the programs. There is now a new kind of artist: the prompt engineer. When the San Francisco Ballet released an AI-generated ad campaign, it also employed nearly 30 designers and other creatives.
[Read: We’re witnessing the birth of a new artistic medium]
The conventional fear—It’s coming for our jobs!—underrated the consequences of artificial intelligence in a very real sense, as if these developments were akin to the arrival of the mechanical awl, as if the stakes were a handful of creative-class jobs. No, the arrival of GPT-4 and the language programs preceding it forces us to confront much bigger questions: What is the value of originality? How does language construct meaning? And even, what is the nature of a person?
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, presaged the release of GPT-4 with a remark that reveals just how far removed the technologists are from any serious discussion of consciousness. In a tweet, he predicted that soon “the amount of intelligence in the universe [would double] every 18 months,” as if intelligence is something you mined like cobalt. It seems necessary to repeat what is obvious from any single use of a large language model: The dream of an artificial consciousness is a nonstarter. No linguistic machine is any closer to artificial consciousness than a car is. The advancement of generative artificial intelligence is not an advancement toward artificial personhood for a simple, absolute reason: There is no falsifiable thesis of consciousness. You cannot find a researcher who can define, in a testable way, what consciousness is. Also, the limitations of the tech itself preclude the longed-for arrival of a manufactured soul. Natural-language processing is a statistical pattern-matching operation, a series of instructions, incapable of intention. It can only ever be the expressed intention of a person.
If an artificial person arrives, it will be not because engineers have liberated algorithms from being instructions, but because they have figured out that human beings are nothing more than a series of instructions. An artificial consciousness would be a demonstration that free will is illusory. In the meantime, the soul remains, like a medieval lump in the throat. Natural-language processing provides, like all the other technologies, the humbling at the end of empowerment, the condition of lonely apes with fancy tools.
That our antique fantasies and anxieties are useless wouldn’t matter so much if they weren’t so obscuring. OpenAI, the organization behind GPT-4, ChatGPT, and DALL-E 2, is concerned with the creation of an artificial general intelligence, or a machine that is smarter than a human. But to situate AGI in terms of people is not interesting. Instead, think of it as a problem-solving machine capable of flexibly moving between contexts.
A local example: A friend of mine has a son in French immersion. (I’m in Canada.) His son hates reading the school’s French children’s books. So my friend went to ChatGPT and had it write a children’s French book about his son’s favorite superhero, specifying the grade level and length. (OpenAI explicitly claims that one of the uses of GPT-4 will be sophisticated tutoring technologies. Khan Academy is one of its new partners.) ChatGPT followed the instructions. In algorithmic culture, if you want a book, you just ask a machine to make you one. The first blur is the line between the human and the mechanical in language. But from that blur will spread others, in this case the blur between creator and consumer. I literally cannot conceive of the consequences of this transition. What is a book if a reader automatically generates one at will?
There isn’t language to describe the mechanization of language. The word intelligence in artificial intelligence has been terribly misleading, and yet what other word would suit the case? ChatGPT is intelligent in the sense that it can create coherence. But by any other definition of intelligence, it isn’t. When Google announced its 540-billion-parameter language model, PaLM, last year, the company said, in some promotional materials, that PaLM is capable of “understanding.” Yes, PaLM can understand what you mean if you tell it to write a romantic poem or to translate a passage into Bengali. But as even some Google executives acknowledge, it doesn’t “understand” romantic poetry or Bengali as anything more than a series of patterns. It does not “understand” the way I understand romantic poetry or Bengali. It has understanding but not understanding.
The word understanding itself is now a blur.
Natural-language processing doesn’t analyze the meaning in words. It analyzes patterns in text-based tokens by way of a deep-learning technology called a transformer (the T in GPT). So a program like ChatGPT doesn’t process the first sentence of this paragraph in terms of subjects, verbs, and objects. It cycles through the connections between the hundreds of billions of words in its data set, which might one day comprise something like the entire internet. The essential blur is in the structure of the transformer: Its meaning comes through unfathomable processing.
The underlying structure of the tech, more even than its effects, will shape the future. In algorithmic culture, history itself will become a lump of supercomputer fodder from which meaning is extracted. To the transformer, all previous art, all previous language, exists as intellectual pulp. There is no difference between Yeats’s Byzantium and your most recent email. Natural-language processing is an unfathomable disintegration followed by an unfathomable reintegration. All human expression is like an enormous junkyard in fog, where a mechanical claw strips everything down to the smallest bolts and reconfigures them in any approximation you can name.
[Read: GPT-4 is here. Just how powerful is it?]
A disintegrated history means a disintegrated future. History as a lump of tokens cannot be reconfigured by a sudden gust of revelation into fresh insight or a new vision. All you will be able to do is make more past. All you will be able to write is more tokens. In algorithmic culture, the archives will be the source of power. They will also be prisons. Use ChatGPT for a bit and you’ll see the deal it invisibly offers: The machine allows you to write whatever you like, instantly, freely, with no effort, just so long as it’s like everything that has come before. GPT-4 is stronger than its predecessors, but it doesn’t change the fundamental arrangement.
The old fantasies about the future were strikingly poor. Space travel turned out to be a minor subset of the travel industry for the ultrarich. The metaverse is boring; not even its designers want to hang out there. Instead of the imagined utopias or dystopias rendered out of fear and greed that have consumed the imaginations of the recent past, technology is leading to a big blur. Instead of radical clarity, a deep and abiding confusion.
Confusion is natural. In one passage from The Gutenberg Galaxy, Marshall McLuhan described other periods of confusion at moments of technological changes to language:
An age in rapid transition is one which exists on the frontier between two cultures and between conflicting technologies. Every moment of its consciousness is an act of translation of each of these cultures into the other. Today we live on the frontier between five centuries of mechanism and the new electronics, between the homogeneous and the simultaneous. It is painful but fruitful. The sixteenth century Renaissance was an age on the frontier between two thousand years of alphabetic and manuscript culture, on the one hand, and the new mechanism of repeatability and quantification, on the other.
McLuhan’s concept of the interface, published in 1962, is much more useful than disruption as a way of understanding the birth of natural-language processing. For McLuhan, the Renaissance was not a moment in time, or a period, or a revolution in thinking. Rather it was an exchange between different epochs. And that exchange was subtle and profound. For example, the regulation of print—the precision and replicability that distinguished typeset texts from scribal manuscripts—was an aesthetic framework in the approach to knowledge that gave rise to the scientific method. Some of the subtle and profound consequences of the translation between technologies took centuries to reveal themselves. McLuhan points out that the idea of a personal voice in a continuous narrative—what we have come to think of as the defining feature of printed texts—did not arrive until long after the printing press.
Even in these early days, when the sheer power of these new linguistic tools still mesmerizes, the necessary counter-gesture is already surfacing. Artificial intelligence creates an object that is a subject, voices that aren’t voices, faces that aren’t faces. Algorithmic culture lives in between, in a world where the human is the flickering continuation of past patterns coughed up and then spat out ephemerally.
But the human isn’t going anywhere. Recently I attended a bar mitzvah. It’s a brilliant ceremony. You don’t just read from the Torah. You give a speech. To be an adult, in society, is to have something to say, a perspective that the community can take seriously. Why should you write your paper yourself? Because you’re a person. A person wants to be heard.
Every culture works by reaction and counterreaction. For several hundred years, the education system has focused on teaching children to write like machines, to learn codes of grammar and syntax, to make the correct gestures in the correct places, to remember the systems and to apply them. Now there’s ChatGPT for that. The children who will triumph will be the ones who can write not like machines, but like human beings. That’s an enormously more difficult skill to impart or master than sentence structure. The writing that matters will stride straight down the center of the road to say, Here I am. I am here now. It’s me.
Humans are leaving behind a 'frozen signature' of microbes on Mount Everest
500+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 08:44PM
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Almost 5 miles above sea level in the Himalayan mountains, the rocky dip between Mount Everest and its sister peak, Lhotse, lies windswept, free of snow. It is here at the South Col where hundreds of adventurers pitch their final camp each year before attempting to scale the world's tallest peak from the southeastern side.
A 19th-century 'dinner plate' tool is still useful in ocean science
100+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 08:44PM
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A simple 19th-century tool is still useful to ocean scientists in the age of satellites, new research shows. The research is published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.
Sequencing the genome of a newly discovered soybean pest
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University of Minnesota students conducted crucial genome sequencing for the newly discovered soybean gall midge—a pest that is threatening the soybean crop, one of the most widely cultivated and consumed throughout the world. This small fly has been found in major soybean-producing states in the Midwest, including Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Missouri.
Humans are leaving behind a 'frozen signature' of microbes on Mount Everest
300+Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 08:43PM
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Almost 5 miles above sea level in the Himalayan mountains, the rocky dip between Mount Everest and its sister peak, Lhotse, lies windswept, free of snow. It is here at the South Col where hundreds of adventurers pitch their final camp each year before attempting to scale the world's tallest peak from the southeastern side.
Russian fighter jet collides with US military drone over the Black Sea
72New Scientist / March 14, 2023 at 08:41PM
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The US operates drones in international airspace around Ukraine, and a Russian fighter jet has hit one – an MQ-9 Reaper drone – in an incident the US military is calling “unsafe and unprofessional”
SAP and Infosys collaborate to make the world a better place through sustainability
MIT Technology Review by Jenn Webb / March 14, 2023 at 08:40PM
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- SAP and Infosys collaborate to make the world a better place through sustainability
Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.”
Christian Butzlaff, chief sustainability solution architect at
SAP
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Infosys
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'Toxic Forever Chemicals' in U.S. Drinking Water to Be Regulated for the First Time
100+Scientific American Content by Andrea Thompson / March 14, 2023 at 08:27PM
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The EPA has proposed the first nationwide limits for toxic chemicals called PFAS in the U.S. water supply
CEO: Matthew McConaughey's Huge Paycheck Has Nothing to Do With Layoffs, Peasants
200+Futurism by Noor Al-Sibai / March 14, 2023 at 08:24PM
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Benioffed
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is apparently quite irked by the suggestion that the $10 million per annum that his company pays "True Detective" star Matthew McConaughey had anything to do with the company's decision to lay off 8,000 people.
In an interview with Barron's — a ritzy publication choice that most certainly isn't doing the CEO any favors — Benioff opined that it simply wasn't fair to link the two.
"We radically surged our employment in 2022… and we just had too many employees and we needed to adjust our employment," the CEO told Barron's. "Putting those two things together, I don’t think it is a fair comment."
Benioff defended the "Dallas Buyers Club" actor's spokesman position at the company, saying that he's done "phenomenal" work and that "any company would be thrilled to have Matthew McConaughey as their spokesperson and creative artist."
"If you have seen the work, it’s some of the best in the world, and it’s not related to our layoffs," he declared.
Isn't It Ironic
Honestly, it's kind of hard to tell which of Benioff's suggestions is worse: that none of those 8,000 jobs could have been saved by eliminating all or part of the $10 million Salesforce pays McConaughey per year — or that the company just hired too many people for some reason and is handling it by laying off thousands of people en masse.
Barron's noted that in February of last year, McConaughey made some remarks about his Salesforce Superbowl ad — which saw him chiding billionaires like Elon Musk for wanting to leave Earth as it's burning.
"You know what, a lot of us are looking to escape and get the hell out of here or maybe look the other way. You know what? They’re right! But we can look around at our earthly challenges and look those in the eye and say, ‘Let’s handle this and restore what we got going here. We’re not ready to quit,'" the actor told Variety. "Hopefully businesses will see this and are urged and nudged to make a commitment to making life here on Earth more fair, equal and sustainable."
And really, nothing spells "fair, equal, and sustainable" quite like laying off 8,000 people while paying one single celebrity $10 million big ones a year.
More on celebrity spox: Shaq Says It's Not His Fault He Accidentally Shilled for FTX
The post CEO: Matthew McConaughey's Huge Paycheck Has Nothing to Do With Layoffs, Peasants appeared first on Futurism.
Harvard and Pentagon Scientists Say "Highly Maneuverable" UFOs Appear to Defy Physics
100+Futurism by Frank Landymore / March 14, 2023 at 08:24PM
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Following several high-profile UFO sightings, which are now being investigated by the Pentagon, researchers are analyzing the data — and are finding that the numbers simply aren't adding up.
Director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office Sean Kirpatrick and notorious Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb have turned their sights to "highly maneuverable" Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), or UFOs, for a recent investigation.
Their findings, published in a yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, are both eyebrow-raising and sobering.
While the paper spends quite a bit of time speculating how and why an extraterrestrial intelligence, or perhaps merely its self-propagating probes, would end up in our backyard, its more important takeaways are its conclusions on the physics involved in the sightings.
In short, Kirpatrick and Loeb looked at the friction that should've been created between a fast-moving UFO and the air and water surrounding it, like those famously depicted in the initial videos the Pentagon released that baffled the Navy airmen that spotted them.
Taken at face value, "highly maneuverable" UFO sightings indeed appear to not abide by the laws of physics, as a "bright optical fireball" should be created by the ensuing friction.
This fireball, in turn, should also leave a resulting radio signature detectable on radar — but none such signatures were ever spotted.
Does that mean the UFOs are an alien vessel composed of some frictionless material unknown to humans? That's far less likely. According to Kirpatrick and Loeb, there's a lot more mundane explanation: the instruments used to observe the UFOs were simply inadequate.
"The lack of all these signatures could imply inaccurate distance measurements (and hence derived velocity) for single site sensors," they write.
"Typical UAP sightings are too far away to get a highly resolved image of the object and determination of the object's motion is limited by the lack of range data."
Unfortunately, if that's the explanation coming from Loeb, whose theories are considered by some scientists as a little "out there" à la Fox Mulder in "The X-Files," it's especially unlikely we're looking at an extraterrestrial civilization coming to visit us.
The Harvard astronomer has consistently raised eyebrows, made headlines, and generally incited controversy over his bold claims and equally bold endeavors, in his quest to reveal if aliens have ever come by for a visit or not.
Infamously, Loeb has suggested that it's possible there could be up to four quintillion alien spacecraft in our solar system, and has insisted that a mysterious interstellar asteroid dubbed 'Oumuamua may have been an alien probe.
So while Loeb generally believes that the truth is out there, it looks like that as far as some of these "highly maneuverable" sightings are concerned, he thinks we'll need more reliable and accurate measurements before making any definitive conclusions.
"If some observed UAP are of extraterrestrial origin," Loeb and Kirpatrick write, "there are some practical limits on the interpretation of observed and measured data resulting from physics-based constraints."
More on UFOs: Congressman Claims the US Government Has "Reverse-Engineered" Alien Tech from UFOs
The post Harvard and Pentagon Scientists Say "Highly Maneuverable" UFOs Appear to Defy Physics appeared first on Futurism.
The “Future of Work 2023” report
21MIT Technology Review by Jenn Webb / March 14, 2023 at 08:16PM
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Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.”
“Future of Work 2023,” a global research report by Infosys, talks about how diversifying talent pools, improving skills development, and using digital tools automation can generate up to $1.4 trillion in revenue and $282 billion in new profit. It highlights how the workplace of the 21st century will see more hybrid working and digital engagement.
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ChatGPT presents new risks—here are five things you can do to mitigate them
MIT Technology Review by Jenn Webb / March 14, 2023 at 08:16PM
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Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.”
With any new technology-based tools, enterprises face concerns and cybersecurity risks.
ChatGPT
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The role of employees in protecting an enterprise
22MIT Technology Review by Jenn Webb / March 14, 2023 at 08:16PM
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Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.”
Infosys CISO and cyber practice head Vishal Salvi stopped by the Infosys Knowledge Institute studio to talk about cybersecurity, secure by design, zero trust, and how every employee must do their part.
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How data and AI are helping retailers get trendy
MIT Technology Review by Jenn Webb / March 14, 2023 at 08:16PM
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Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.”
Technologies powered by data and AI can be game changers for retailers to enhance customer experience. But they must overcome the associated challenges to reap the benefits.
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A self-driving, sustainable cloud for greener business
22MIT Technology Review by Jenn Webb / March 14, 2023 at 08:16PM
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Businesses must make their energy-guzzling data centers more sustainable; one intelligent way is advanced AI.
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E.ON, WHU, and Meta discuss the potential of the metaverse for utilities
MIT Technology Review by Jenn Webb / March 14, 2023 at 08:16PM
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Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.”
Nik Kraft from Meta drives the conversation with Marika Arvelid from
E.ON
, Professor Dr. Dries Faems from WHU, Germany, and Rajeshwari Ganesan from Infosys, on how a cloud environment supports an open and interoperable ecosystem, making the metaverse a reality and enriching real-life experiences.
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Sequencing the genome of a newly discovered soybean pest
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 08:13PM
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University of Minnesota students conducted crucial genome sequencing for the newly discovered soybean gall midge—a pest that is threatening the soybean crop, one of the most widely cultivated and consumed throughout the world. This small fly has been found in major soybean-producing states in the Midwest, including Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Missouri.
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 08:11PM
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The existing 3D-printed scaffolds commonly possess a thick feature size of hundreds of micrometers, which is too large for most cells (10–20 μm) to attach and proliferate for promoting tissue regeneration. Researchers from Xi'an Jiaotong University have developed a novel hybrid manufacturing technique for the fabrication of composite scaffolds with 3D-printed macroscale frameworks and aligned nanofibrous architectures to improve cellular organizations.
Tracking lithiation with transmission electron microscopy
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 08:11PM
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Li ion imaging by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is the "holy grail" in the study of Li ion battery (LIB) materials. Tracking lithiation process in TEM could provide a more profound understanding of the electrode degradation mechanism during battery cycling, which accelerates material modification for better performance.
How heat pumps of the 1800s are becoming the technology of the future
Skeptical Science / March 14, 2023 at 08:05PM
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- Vattenfall and its Dutch subsidiary Feenstra have teamed up to develop a high-temperature heat pump, expected to debut in 2023.
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Chris Baraniuk
It was an engineering problem that had bugged Zhibin Yu for years — but now he had the perfect chance to fix it. Stuck at home during the first UK lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, the thermal engineer suddenly had all the time he needed to refine the efficiency of heat pumps: electrical devices that, as their name implies, move heat from the outdoors into people’s homes.
The pumps are much more efficient than gas heaters, but standard models that absorb heat from the air are prone to icing up, which greatly reduces their effectiveness.
Yu, who works at the University of Glasgow, UK, pondered the problem for weeks. He read paper after paper. And then he had an idea. Most heat pumps waste some of the heat that they generate — and if he could capture that waste heat and divert it, he realized, that could solve the defrosting issue and boost the pumps’ overall performance. “I suddenly found a solution to recover the heat,” he recalls. “That was really an amazing moment.”
Yu’s idea is one of several recent innovations that aim to make 200-year-old heat pump technology even more efficient than it already is, potentially opening the door for much greater adoption of heat pumps worldwide. To date, only about 10% of space heating requirements around the world are met by heat pumps, according to the International Energy Agency, or IEA. But due to the current energy crisis and growing pressure to reduce fossil fuel consumption in order to combat climate change, these devices are arguably more crucial than ever.
Since his 2020 lockdown brainstorming, Yu and his colleagues have built a working prototype of a heat pump that stores leftover heat in a small water tank. In a paper published in the summer of 2022, they describe how their design helps the heat pump to use less energy. Plus, by separately rerouting some of this residual warmth to part of the heat pump exposed to cold air, the device can defrost itself when required, without having to pause heat supply to the house.
The idea relies on the very principle by which heat pumps operate: If you can seize heat, you can use it. What makes heat pumps special is the fact that instead of just generating heat, they also capture heat from the environment and move it into your house — eventually transferring that heat to radiators or forced-air heating systems, for instance. This is possible thanks to the refrigerant that flows around inside a heat pump. When the refrigerant encounters heat — even a tiny amount in the air on a cold day — it absorbs that modicum of warmth.
A compressor then forces the refrigerant to a higher pressure, which raises its temperature to the point where it can heat your house. It works because an increase of pressure pushes the refrigerant molecules closer together, increasing their motion. The refrigerant later expands again, cooling as it does so, and the cycle repeats. The entire cycle can run in reverse, too, allowing heat pumps to provide cooling when it’s hot in summer.
The magic of a heat pump is that it can move multiple kilowatt-hours of heat for each kWh of electricity it uses. Heat pump efficiencies are generally measured in terms of their coefficient of performance, or COP. A COP of 3, for example, means 1 kWh of juice yields 3 kWh of warmth — that’s effectively 300% efficiency. The COP you get from your device can vary depending on the weather and other factors.
It’s a powerful concept, but also an old one. The British mathematician, physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin proposed using heat pump systems for space heating way back in 1852. The first heat pump was designed and built a few years later and used industrially to heat brine in order to extract salt from the fluid. In the 1950s, members of the British Parliament discussed heat pumps when coal stocks were running low. And in the years following the 1973-74 oil crisis, heat pumps were touted as an alternative to fossil fuels for heating. “Hope rests with the future heat pump,” one commentator wrote in the 1977 Annual Review of Energy.
Now the world faces yet another reckoning over energy supplies. When Russia, one of the world’s biggest sources of natural gas, invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the price of gas soared — which in turn shoved heat pumps into the spotlight because with few exceptions they run on electricity, not gas. The same month, environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote a widely shared blog post titled “Heat pumps for peace and freedom” in which, referring to the Russian president, he argued that the U.S. could “peacefully punch Putin in the kidneys” by rolling out heat pumps on a massive scale while lowering Americans’ dependence on fossil fuels. Heat pumps can draw power from domestic solar panels, for instance, or a power grid supplied predominantly by renewables.
Running the devices on green electricity can help to fight climate change, too, notes Karen Palmer, an economist and senior fellow at Resources for the Future, an independent research organization in Washington, D.C., who coauthored an analysis of policies to enhance energy efficiency in the 2018 Annual Review of Resource Economics. “Moving towards greater use of electricity for energy needs in buildings is going to have to happen, absent a technology breakthrough in something else,” she says.
This video illustrates the principle behind heat pumps. CREDIT: THIS OLD HOUSE
The IEA estimates that, globally, heat pumps have the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 500 million metric tons in 2030, equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions produced by all the cars in Europe today.
Despite their long history and potential virtues, heat pumps have struggled to become commonplace in some countries. One reason is cost: The devices are substantially more expensive than gas heating units and, because natural gas has remained relatively cheap for decades, homeowners have had little incentive to switch.
There has also long been a perception that heat pumps won’t work as well in cold climates, especially in poorly insulated houses that require a lot of heat. In the U.K., for example, where houses tend to be rather drafty, some homeowners have long considered gas boilers a safer bet because they can supply hotter water (around 140 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit), to radiators, which makes it easier to heat up a room. By contrast, heat pumps tend to be most efficient when heating water to around 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
The cold-climate problem is arguably less of an issue than some think, however, given that there are multiple modern air source devices on the market that work well even when outside temperatures drop as low as minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Norway, for example, is considered one of the world leaders in heat pump deployment. Palmer has a heat pump in her U.S. home, along with a furnace as backup. “If it gets really cold, we can rely on the furnace,” she says.
Innovations in heat pump design are leading to units that are even more efficient, better suited to houses with low levels of insulation and — potentially — cheaper, too. For example, Yu says his and his colleagues’ novel air source heat pump design could improve the COP by between 3 and 10%, while costing less than existing heat pump designs with comparable functionality. They are now looking to commercialize the technology.
Yu’s work is innovative, says Rick Greenough, an energy systems engineer now retired from De Montfort University in the U.K.. “I must admit this is a method I hadn’t actually thought of,” he says.
And there are plenty more ideas afoot. Greenough, for instance, has experimented with storing heat in the ground during warmer months, where it can be exploited by a heat pump when the weather turns cool. His design uses a circulating fluid to transfer excess heat from solar hot-water panels into shallow boreholes in the soil. That raises the temperature of the soil by around 22 degrees Fahrenheit, to a maximum of roughly 66 degrees Fahrenheit, he says. Then, in the winter, a heat pump can draw out some of this stored heat to run more efficiently when the air gets colder. This technology is already on the market, offered by some installers in the U.K., notes Greenough.
But most current heat pumps still only generate relatively low output temperatures, so owners of drafty homes may need to take on the added cost of insulation when installing a heat pump. Fortunately, a solution may be emerging: high-temperature heat pumps.
“We said, ‘Hey, why not make a heat pump that can actually one-on-one replace a gas boiler without having to really, really thoroughly insulate your house?’” says Wouter Wolfswinkel, program manager for business development at Swedish energy firm Vattenfall, which manufactures heat pumps. Vattenfall and its Dutch subsidiary Feenstra have teamed up to develop a high-temperature heat pump, expected to debut in 2023.
In their design, they use CO2 as a refrigerant. But because the heat-pump system’s hot, high-pressure operating conditions prevent the gas from condensing or otherwise cooling down very easily, they had to find a way of reducing the refrigerant’s temperature in order for it to be able to absorb enough heat from the air once again when it returns to the start of the heat pump loop. To this end, they added a “buffer” to the system: a water tank where a layer of cooler water rests beneath hotter water above. The heat pump uses the lower layer of cooler water from the tank to adjust the temperature of the refrigerant as required. But it can also send the hotter water at the top of the tank out to radiators, at temperatures up to 185 degrees Fahrenheit.
The device is slightly less efficient than a conventional, lower temperature heat pump, Wolfswinkel acknowledges, offering a COP of around 265% versus 300%, depending on conditions. But that’s still better than a gas boiler (no more than 95% efficient), and as long as electricity prices aren’t significantly higher than gas prices, the high temperature heat pump could still be cheaper to run. Moreover, the higher temperature means that homeowners needn’t upgrade their insulation or upsize radiators right away, Wolfswinkel notes. This could help people make the transition to electrified heating more quickly.
A key test was whether Dutch homeowners would go for it. As part of a pilot trial, Vattenfall and Feenstra installed the heat pump in 20 households of different sizes in the town of Heemskerk, not far from Amsterdam. After a few years of testing, in June 2022 they gave homeowners the option of taking back their old gas boiler, which they had kept in their homes, or of using the high temperature heat pump on a permanent basis. “All of them switched to the heat pump,” says Wolfswinkel.
In some situations, home-by-home installations of heat pumps might be less efficient than building one large system to serve a whole neighborhood. For about a decade, Star Renewable Energy, based in Glasgow, has been building district systems that draw warmth from a nearby river or sea inlet, including a district heating system connected to a Norwegian fjord. A Scandinavian fjord might not be the first thing that comes to mind if you say the word “heat” — but the water deep in the fjord actually holds a fairly steady temperature of 46 degrees Fahrenheit, which heat pumps can exploit.
Via a very long pipe, the district heating system draws in this water and uses it to heat the refrigerant, in this case ammonia. A subsequent, serious increase of pressure for the refrigerant — to 50 atmospheres — raises its temperature to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. The hot refrigerant then passes its heat to water in the district heating loop, raising the temperature of that water to 195 degrees Fahrenheit. The sprawling system provides 85% of the hot water needed to heat buildings in the city of Drammen.
“That type of thing is very exciting,” says Greenough.
Not every home will be suitable for a heat pump. And not every budget can accommodate one, either. Yu himself says that the cost of replacing the gas boiler in his own home remains prohibitive. But it’s something he dreams of doing in the future. With ever-improving efficiencies, and rising sales in multiple countries, heat pumps are only getting harder for their detractors to dismiss. “Eventually,” says Yu, “I think everyone will switch to heat pumps.”
Chris Baraniuk is a freelance science journalist and nature lover who lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His work has been published by the BBC, the Guardian, New Scientist, Scientific American and Hakai Magazine, among other publications.
This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.
Understanding the reproductive strategy in the endangered Chinese sturgeon
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 08:02PM
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The Chinese sturgeon (Acipenser sinensis) is the largest anadromous fish in the Yangtze River and is considered a critically endangered species with only one spawning ground. Additionally, it has failed to spawn in recent years (2013, 2015, and 2017-2022), pushing the species to the brink of extinction.
Study explains how a fungus helps plants to acquire more iron in a sustainable way
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 08:02PM
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After verifying its potential as a pest biocontrol agent, a team at the University of Cordoba unraveled the mechanisms used by the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum to increase iron acquisition in melon and cucumber
Pinpoint simulations provide perspective on universe structure
400+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:54PM
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The universe is peppered with galaxies, which, on large scales, exhibit a filamentary pattern, referred to as the cosmic web. This heterogeneous distribution of cosmic material is in some ways like blueberries in a muffin where material clusters in certain areas but may be lacking in others.
Understanding the reproductive strategy in the endangered Chinese sturgeon
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:54PM
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The Chinese sturgeon (Acipenser sinensis) is the largest anadromous fish in the Yangtze River and is considered a critically endangered species with only one spawning ground. Additionally, it has failed to spawn in recent years (2013, 2015, and 2017-2022), pushing the species to the brink of extinction.
Can Florida survive climate change? Here's what the Aspen Ideas: Climate conference had to say
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:54PM
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Some of the most pivotal climate-change questions—and potential solutions—focus on Florida.
Gut Bacteria Help T Cells Heal Muscle: Study
CAR Two 1 Cancer Cells
24The Scientist RSS / March 14, 2023 at 07:53PM
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Regulatory T cells in the colon travel to muscles to promote wound healing in mice, raising questions about how antibiotics may impact injury recovery.
Science | The Guardian by Georgina Ferry / March 14, 2023 at 07:46PM
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Nobel prizewinning biochemist who was a pioneer in the field of genetic engineering
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 was built on the principle of stitching together DNA from two viruses, one to enable the vaccine to enter cells and the other to provoke an immune response.
In 1972 Paul Berg, who has died aged 96, became the first person to combine the DNA of two organisms in this way. Recombinant DNA has become a fundamental tool of biomedical research and drug discovery, making it possible to grow drugs such as human insulin in bacteria as well as to develop tailor-made vaccines.
Study explains how a fungus helps plants to acquire more iron in a sustainable way
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:42PM
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After verifying its potential as a pest biocontrol agent, a team at the University of Cordoba unraveled the mechanisms used by the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum to increase iron acquisition in melon and cucumber
The extent of corruption in Sweden may be underestimated
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:42PM
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There is a risk that individuals may benefit from having relatives in important posts in the public sector. This is shown in a doctoral thesis at Linköping University that investigates corruption in a mature democracy. The conclusion is that nepotism may be an underestimated problem that deserves more attention in Sweden.
'Very, very rare' gold and silver medieval treasure unearthed in the Netherlands
3KLivescience by sascha.pare@futurenet.com (Sascha Pare) / March 14, 2023 at 07:36PM
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Museum curators in the Netherlands think that a dazzling, 1,200-year-old array of gold jewelry and silver coins unearthed by a metal detectorist was buried in a medieval swamp to save it during wartime.
Bizarre sand dunes on Mars are 'almost perfectly circular,' and scientists don't know why
2KLivescience by sascha.pare@futurenet.com (Sascha Pare) / March 14, 2023 at 07:36PM
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A high-resolution camera mounted on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has snapped pictures of unusual, almost perfectly circular sand dunes on the Red Planet's surface.
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:31PM
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The following is an interview with ESG expert professor Kim Schumacher of Kyushu University.
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:31PM
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University students who attend interactive seminars in person get better exam results than those who do not attend, potentially equivalent to almost a full grade, new research from the University of Bath School of Management shows.
Well-being at school and sense of competence are linked, says study
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:31PM
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New research emphasizes how important children's well-being is for their sense of achievement.
Study analyzes Twitter conspiracy theories during the pandemic involving Bill Gates
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:31PM
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The COVID-19 pandemic was fertile ground for conspiracy theories and misinformation on
, and Bill Gates was a frequent target. A new study, which analyzes well-known conspiracy theories about the role of Bill Gates during the pandemic is published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.
Coming soon to Florida beaches: Massive, messy and maybe record mounds of seaweed
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:31PM
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A giant blob of seaweed, spanning 5,000 miles and weighing an estimated 6.1 million tons, threatens to blanket Florida beaches and Caribbean islands with smelly piles of decaying brown goop.
ChatGPT Changed Everything. Now Its Follow-Up Is Here.
GPT-4 ChatGPT 4 AI
100+The Atlantic by Matteo Wong / March 14, 2023 at 07:27PM
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Updated at 2:15 p.m. ET on March 14, 2023
Less than four months after releasing
ChatGPT
, the text-generating AI that seems to have pushed us into a science-fictional age of technology, OpenAI has unveiled a new product called GPT-4. Rumors and hype about this program have circulated for more than a year: Pundits have said that it would be unfathomably powerful, writing 60,000-word books from single prompts and producing videos out of whole cloth. Today’s announcement suggests that GPT-4’s abilities, while impressive, are more modest: It performs better than the previous model on standardized tests and other benchmarks, works across dozens of languages, and can take images as input—meaning that it’s able, for instance, to describe the contents of a photo or a chart.
Unlike ChatGPT, this new model is not currently available for public testing (although you can apply or pay for access), so the obtainable information comes from OpenAI’s blog post, and from a New York Times story based on a demonstration. From what we know, relative to other programs, GPT-4 appears to have added 150 points to its SAT score, now a 1410 out of 1600, and jumped from the bottom to the top 10 percent of performers on a simulated bar exam. Despite pronounced fears of AI’s writing, the program’s AP English scores remain in the bottom quintile. And while ChatGPT can handle only text, in one example, GPT-4 accurately answered questions about photographs of computer cables. Image inputs are not publicly available yet, even to those eventually granted access off the waitlist, so it’s not possible to verify OpenAI’s claims.
The new GPT-4 model is the latest in a long genealogy—GPT-1, GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-3.5, InstructGPT, ChatGPT—of what are now known as “large language models,” or LLMs, which are AI programs that learn to predict what words are most likely to follow each other. These models work under a premise that traces its origins to some of the earliest AI research in the 1950s: that a computer that understands and produces language will necessarily be intelligent. That belief underpinned Alan Turing’s famous imitation game, now known as the Turing Test, which judged computer intelligence by how “human” its textual output read.
Those early language AI programs involved computer scientists deriving complex, hand-written rules, rather than the deep statistical inferences used today. Precursors to contemporary LLMs date to the early 2000s, when computer scientists began using a type of program inspired by the human brain called a “neural network,” which consists of many interconnected layers of artificial nodes that process huge amounts of training data, to analyze and generate text. The technology has advanced rapidly in recent years thanks to some key breakthroughs, notably programs’ increased attention spans—GPT-4 can make predictions based on not just the previous phrase but many words prior, and weigh the importance of each word differently. Today’s LLMs read books, Wikipedia entries, social-media posts, and countless other sources to find these deep statistical patterns; OpenAI has also started using human researchers to fine-tune its models’ outputs. As a result, GPT-4 and similar programs have a remarkable facility with language, writing short stories and essays and advertising copy and more. Some linguists and cognitive scientists believe that these AI models show a decent grasp of syntax and, at least according to OpenAI, perhaps even a glimmer of understanding or reasoning—although the latter point is very controversial, and formal grammatical fluency remains far off from being able to think.
GPT-4 is both the latest milestone in this research on language and also part of a broader explosion of “generative AI,” or programs that are capable of producing images, text, code, music, and videos in response to prompts. If such software lives up to its grand promises, it could redefine human cognition and creativity, much as the internet, writing, or even fire did before. OpenAI frames each new iteration of its LLMs as a step toward the company’s stated mission to create “artificial general intelligence,” or computers that can learn and excel at everything, in a way that “benefits all of humanity.” OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, told the The New York Times that while GPT-4 has not “solved reasoning or intelligence… this is a big step forward from what is already out there.”
With the goal of AGI in mind, the organization began as a nonprofit that provided public documentation for much of its code. But it quickly adopted a “capped profit” structure, allowing investors to earn back up to 100 times the money they put in, with all profits exceeding that returning to the nonprofit—ostensibly allowing OpenAI to raise the capital needed to support its research. (Analysts estimate that training a high-end language model costs in “the high-single-digit millions.”) Along with the financial shift, OpenAI also made its code more secret—an approach that critics say makes it difficult to hold the technology accountable for incorrect and harmful output, though the company has said that the opacity guards against “malicious” uses.
[Read: The difference between speaking and thinking]
The company frames any shifts away from its founding values as, at least in theory, compromises that will accelerate arrival at an AI-saturated future that Altman describes as almost Edenic: Robots providing crucial medical advice and assisting underresourced teachers, leaps in drug discovery and basic science, the end of menial labor. But more advanced AI, whether generally intelligent or not, might also leave huge portions of the population jobless, or replace rote work with new, AI-related bureaucratic tasks and higher productivity demands. Email didn’t speed up communication so much as turn each day into an email-answering slog; electronic health records should save doctors time but in fact force them to spend many extra, uncompensated hours updating and conferring with these databases.
Regardless of whether this technology is a blessing or a burden for everyday people, those who control it will no doubt reap immense profits. Just as OpenAI has lurched toward commercialization and opacity, already everybody wants in on the AI gold rush. Companies like Snap and Instacart are using OpenAI’s technology to incorporate AI assistants into their services. Earlier this year, Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI and is now incorporating chatbot technology into its Bing search engine. Google followed up by investing a more modest sum in the rival AI start-up Anthropic (recently valued at $4.1 billion) and announcing various AI capacities in Google search, Maps, and other apps. Amazon is incorporating Hugging Face—a popular website that gives easy access to AI tools—into AWS, to compete with Microsoft’s cloud service, Azure. Meta has long had an AI division, and now Mark Zuckerberg is trying to build a specific, generative-AI team from the Metaverse’s pixelated ashes. Start-ups are awash in billions in venture-capital investments. GPT-4 is already powering the new Bing, and could conceivably be integrated into Microsoft Office.
In an event announcing the new Bing last month, Microsoft’s CEO said, “The race starts today, and we’re going to move and move fast.” Indeed, GPT-4 is already upon us. Yet as any good text predictor would tell you, that quote should end with “move fast and break things.” Silicon Valley’s rush, whether toward gold or AGI, shouldn’t distract from all the ways these technologies fail, often spectacularly.
Even as LLMs are great at producing boilerplate copy, many critics say they fundamentally don’t and perhaps cannot understand the world. They are something like autocomplete on PCP, a drug that gives users a false sense of invincibility and heightened capacities for delusion. These models generate answers with the illusion of omniscience, which means they can easily spread convincing lies and reprehensible hate. While GPT-4 seems to wrinkle that critique with its apparent ability to describe images, its basic function remains really good pattern matching, and it can only output text.
Those patterns are sometimes harmful. Language models tend to replicate much of the vile text on the internet, a concern that the lack of transparency in their design and training only heightens. As the University of Washington linguist and prominent AI critic Emily Bender told me via email: “We generally don’t eat food whose ingredients we don’t know or can’t find out.”
[Read: GPT-4 might just be a bloated, pointless mess]
Precedent would indicate that there’s a lot of junk baked in. Microsoft’s original chatbot, named Tay and released in 2016, became misogynistic and racist, and was quickly discontinued. Last year, Meta’s BlenderBot AI rehashed anti-Semitic conspiracies, and soon after that, the company’s Galactica—a model intended to assist in writing scientific papers—was found to be prejudiced and prone to inventing information (Meta took it down within three days). GPT-2 displayed bias against women, queer people, and other demographic groups; GPT-3 said racist and sexist things; and ChatGPT was accused of making similarly toxic comments. OpenAI tried and failed to fix the problem each time. New Bing, which runs a version of GPT-4, has written its own share of disturbing and offensive text—teaching children ethnic slurs, promoting Nazi slogans, inventing scientific theories.
It’s tempting to write the next sentence in this cycle automatically, like a language model—“GPT-4 showed [insert bias here].” Indeed, in its blog post, OpenAI admits that GPT-4 “‘hallucinates’ facts and makes reasoning errors,” hasn’t gotten much better at fact-checking itself, and “can have various biases in its outputs.” Still, as any user of ChatGPT can attest, even the most convincing patterns don’t have perfectly predictable outcomes.
A Meta spokesperson wrote over email that more work is needed to address bias and hallucinations—what researchers call the information that AIs invent—in large language models, and that “public research demos like BlenderBot and Galactica are important for building” better chatbots; a Microsoft spokesperson pointed me to a post in which the company described improving Bing through a “virtuous cycle of [user] feedback.” An OpenAI spokesperson pointed me to a blog post on safety, in which the company outlines its approach to preventing misuse. It notes, for example, that testing products “in the wild” and receiving feedback can improve future iterations. In other words, Big AI’s party line is the utilitarian calculus that, even if programs might be dangerous, the only way to find out and improve them is to release them and risk exposing the public to hazard.
With researchers paying more and more attention to bias, a future iteration of a language model, GPT-4 or otherwise, could someday break this well-established pattern. But no matter what the new model proves itself capable of, there are still much larger questions to contend with: Whom is the technology for? Whose lives will be disrupted? And if we don’t like the answers, can we do anything to contest them?
Winners of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition
500+The Atlantic by Alan Taylor / March 14, 2023 at 07:27PM
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The top entries in the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition have been announced, and the contest organizers were once again kind enough to share some of their winning and shortlisted photos below, from their 10 categories: Architecture, Creative, Landscape, Lifestyle, Motion, Natural World & Wildlife, Object, Portraiture, Street Photography, and Travel. Captions have been provided by the photographers.
Ten Poetry Collections to Read Again and Again
100+The Atlantic by Walt Hunter / March 14, 2023 at 07:27PM
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As editors who review poetry for The Atlantic, we read a lot of poems. Each week, there are new PDFs in our inboxes; our desks are covered with chaotic piles of books we’ve yet to crack open, and our shelves are already packed with old favorites. We’re also frequently asked, “What poetry should I read?” The question couldn’t be more reasonable, but embarrassingly, it tends to make our minds go blank. There are a trillion different collections for every mood: some cerebral; some wrenching; some playful, goofy, even strange. “That depends,” we’re tempted to say. “Do you want to cry? Or chuckle? Or wrestle with history, or imagine faraway futures, or think about the human condition?”
Perhaps the most honest approach is just to share some of the books that stick in our heads: ones that keep pulling us back, whether they comfort, shake, or perplex us. Still, choosing 10 collections was difficult. We wanted poems rich with detail and poems frugal with their words. We wanted poems that refreshed conventions and poems that took the top of our heads off, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson. In the end, the volumes we chose have very little in common except a belief that language, when compressed, rinsed, and turned even slightly from its everyday use, still has the power to move us.
The Mooring of Starting Out, by John Ashbery
Ashbery is the poet I take the most reliable pleasure in rereading, because of the multitudes his lines contain: I am just as happy to visit his late-20th-century meditation on an encounter with a 16th-century painting, in the poem “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” as I am to return to his experimental collages such as “The Tennis Court Oath.” More than anything else, though, I love Ashbery’s wistful lyricism, and the five books in The Mooring of Starting Out show him at his best. The poet has an ear for everyday, conversational English, which he scrambles and rearranges until the most tossed-off phrase seems like a love lyric from an old song you half remember. “A Blessing in Disguise,” to my mind his single greatest poem, concludes its ecstatic post-meet-cute delirium with the only thing left to say: “And then I start getting this feeling of exaltation.” — Walt Hunter
- W. Norton and Company
Sun in Days, by Meghan O’Rourke
Early in her 2017 collection, O’Rourke refers to life’s “inevitable accumulation of griefs”: the losses that build over time in any human existence. This book charts her own accumulating sorrows—losing her mother, struggling to conceive, developing a debilitating chronic illness. It’s filled with particularities: As a child, she talks to her mother through Styrofoam cups connected with string; as an adult, she obsessively watches videos of a gymnast, longing for a body that won’t fail her. But even the specific details unfold into universal, existential questions. (“I just need to find one of those Styrofoam cups / and what about you,” she asks her mother. “Where did you / go what kind of night is it there.”) Sun in Days reminds me that beauty and loss are inextricable—and random, in a way that’s both shattering and strangely relieving. “A life can be a lucky streak, or a dry spell, or a happenstance,” O’Rourke writes. “Yellow raspberries in July sun, bitter plums, curtains in wind.” — Faith Hill
Third World Press Foundation
Blacks, by Gwendolyn Brooks
This book collects many of Brooks’s volumes, including A Street in Bronzeville, from 1945; the poetic 1953 novel Maud Martha; and the extraordinary 1968 epic In the Mecca, half of which is set in a Chicago apartment building where Brooks worked in her youth. Additionally, one of the last sections in Blacks features her late and undersung lyrics of Black diasporic consciousness. Many of her vignettes illuminate the lives of Black women and families for whom the whole idea of making art from life has a “giddy sound,” to borrow from the poem “kitchenette building”—tantalizing, but also made difficult by economic exploitation and racism. Anyone who wants to understand 20th-century American poetry could start by reading straight through Brooks. — W. H.
Penguin Books
The Study of Human Life, by Joshua Bennett
Bennett’s collection is divided into three sections, and the last revolves explicitly around his first child, born a year before the book’s release. The whole thing, though, is a meditation on what it means to create life—or to sustain it—in a world hostile to your existence. In the first third, Bennett writes about growing up in Yonkers, trapped by poverty and racism and low expectations, and about getting out—while knowing that he might not have, and that others didn’t. The second is an assemblage of speculative fiction, imagining the resurrection of Malcolm X and a young Black man killed by police. The last is similarly concerned with omnipresent danger and injustice (Bennett fears for his son), but it’s also about love’s redemption; as a father, he overflows with joy and wonder. Altogether, the book is a tender celebration of vulnerability and the strength that blooms quietly in its presence. An ode to tardigrades, microscopic invertebrates that can endure extreme temperatures, seems incongruous, but actually proves Bennett's later thesis: “God bless the unkillable / interior bless the uprising / bless the rebellion … God / bless everything that survives / the fire.” — F. H.
[Read: What makes a poem worth reading?]
New York Review Books
The Interior Landscape: Classical Tamil Love Poems, translated by A. K. Ramanujan
The publisher New York Review Books’s poetry series has done extraordinary service to verse in translation over the past 10 years, but my favorite of its volumes is this beautiful introduction to Tamil poetry. Written by both men and women during the first three centuries of the Common Era, these short love poems feature intimate, finely etched scenes of yearning that are set in a series of vivid landscapes, including forests and riparian environments. Ramanujan, a celebrated poet and scholar, provides a detailed chart of poetic devices that helps orient the reader to what may be an unfamiliar set of conventions—and to the old idea that convention itself, rather than novelty, might be a virtue. — W. H.
Ecco
The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, by Franny Choi
In one poem in her third collection, Choi imagines a note “from a future great-great-granddaughter.” The letter writer’s world sounds dystopian—but then, so does our current one. She wants to know what it was like to exist in the 21st century, rotten as it was with corruption, violence, and algorithm-driven mindlessness. “Did you pray / ever? Hope, any?” she writes. “You were alive then. What did you do?” That question haunts the book, which charts a number of tragedies, past and present—the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the climate crisis, the pandemic—and asks what is to be done. Choi captures the absurdity of carrying on while everything is falling apart, and the impossibility of choosing anything else. But she also suggests that just envisioning a different world is something, even if it’s not everything. “What you gave me isn’t wisdom, and I have no wisdom in return,” the great-great-granddaughter writes. Still: “We’re making. Something of it. Something / of all those questions you left.” — F. H.
Adagio Ma Non Troppo, by Ryoko Sekiguchi, translated by Lindsay Turner
This short, dreamlike collection by the Japanese poet Ryoko Sekiguchi takes its cue and its source material from letters written by the 20th-century Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa to his love, Ophelia. A fantasy plucked from the days before we texted “On my way,” these letters describe Pessoa’s plans to traverse the city in order to meet up with Ophelia. Translation typically involves some element of loss, as meaning is quite literally “carried across” from one language to another. In their narrative of desire for the encounter between lovers, Sekiguchi and Turner lead us astray with the ultimate missed connection: translation itself. This might be the only trilingual edition I’ve ever read, with Sekiguchi’s Japanese and French, and Turner's English translation of the French, printed on facing pages. — W. H.
[Read: Why (some) people hate poetry]
The Good Thief, by Marie Howe
In The Good Thief, things are just slightly amiss: Scissors appear in strange places; a house seems to move farther and farther from the street; the sound of a laugh echoes in a shattering glass. The scenes contain an uneasy glimmer of the supernatural, and, indeed, the book takes its name from the Gospel of Luke. As Christ is crucified, so are two men on either side of him. One—the “bad thief”—mockingly demands to be saved, but the other is penitent; Christ promises he’ll remember that one and deliver him to paradise. Like the good thief, Howe’s narrators seem stuck between this world and another, brushing up against transcendence but still wretchedly mortal. How very human, that ache—the sneaking suspicion that perhaps there is more, or should be or could be, but it’s always just out of reach. — F. H.
Faber
Jonathan Swift, by Jonathan Swift, edited by Derek Mahon
Most people know Swift from his 1726 narrative, Gulliver’s Travels. But this collection of his short verse, edited by the Irish poet Derek Mahon, shows the tremendous range of the Anglo-Irish satirist. One of the greatest composers of occasional poetry (a genre that addresses specific moments or events) in English, and also one of the snarkiest, Swift could apparently write about almost any topic, including a sudden city shower, Irish politics, and his lifelong friendship with Esther Johnson, nicknamed “Stella.” His handful of birthday poems to Stella, written over decades, remain some of the most moving tributes to a companion in verse. As time passes, Swift ages, and Stella falls ill; the compression of the poet’s couplets tightens the heartstrings until they nearly break. Swift smiles through tears to make one last tribute: “You, to whose care so oft I owe / That I’m alive to tell you so.” — W. H.
[Read: Why teaching poetry is so important]
BOA Editions
Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969–1980, by Lucille Clifton
Clifton’s oeuvre is so singular and so expansive that it feels impossible to pick just one of her books. Over the course of her career, she published 13 collections, and her writing expresses the gamut of joy, grief, fury, and love—frequently with incredible concision. A great one to start with, then, is Good Woman, which includes four of her collections as well as her memoir, Generations. Clifton is known for being a precise chronicler of the Black working-class experience, but to say that her focus was simply on the everyday—on “family life,” as many critics have put it—does a disservice to her ambition and intellectual heft. Her poems are concerned with justice, solidarity, and retribution; human limitations; autonomy and fate; history and mythology; the capacity for good and evil. None of them feels forced or affected—just wise, often funny, and always profound. — F. H.
Author Correction: Untitled public forestlands threaten Amazon conservation
Nature Communications by Paulo Moutinho / March 14, 2023 at 07:23PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37218-0
Author Correction: Untitled public forestlands threaten Amazon conservation
Coming soon to Florida beaches: Massive, messy and maybe record mounds of seaweed
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 07:23PM
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A giant blob of seaweed, spanning 5,000 miles and weighing an estimated 6.1 million tons, threatens to blanket Florida beaches and Caribbean islands with smelly piles of decaying brown goop.
South Pacific plankton go berserk after minor cyclone
Nature / March 14, 2023 at 07:19PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00753-3
The biggest phytoplankton bloom ever recorded in the South Pacific Ocean was triggered by a small but lingering storm.
Fast-spreading virus could help to slash rabies in vampire bats
Nature / March 14, 2023 at 07:19PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00770-2
A virus that readily infects bats without harming them could spread a vaccine throughout a population.
What the Silicon Valley Bank collapse means for science start-ups
Nature by Katharine Sanderson / March 14, 2023 at 07:19PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00778-8
Bailouts mean customers’ deposits are safe, but the bank’s demise has sparked concern about future investment in small tech companies.
British scientists tracking two enormous icebergs larger than London
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:17PM
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British scientists are tracking two enormous icebergs that broke off from Antarctica and could intrude on shipping lanes.
Assessment of methane emissions from onshore LNG facilities
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:17PM
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Scientists at NPL have performed measurements using its DIAL facility to better quantify the oil and gas industry's contribution to global methane emissions. Results from the study have been published in Environmental Science & Technology.
Our relationship with nature is of central importance in times of crisis, says researcher
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:17PM
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The socio-ecological crisis is having an increasingly negative impact on our everyday lives. Nevertheless, so far there is little sign of the urgently needed societal change towards sustainability. How can this be changed? And what role does our relationship with nature play in this context?
Rare isotopes help unlock mysteries in the Argentine Andes
200+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:17PM
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Every second the Earth is bombarded by vast amounts of cosmic rays—invisible sub-atomic particles that originate from things like the sun and supernova explosions. These high-energy, far-traveled cosmic rays collide with atoms as they enter Earth's atmosphere and set off cascades of secondary cosmic rays.
The 'Rapunzel' virus: An evolutionary oddity
31Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:17PM
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Is this article about Animals?
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A recent study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry has revealed the secret behind an evolutionary marvel: a bacteriophage with an extremely long tail. This extraordinary tail is part of a bacteriophage that lives in inhospitable hot springs and preys on some of the toughest bacteria on the planet.
Farms in cities: New study offers planners and growers food for thought
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 07:17PM
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Is this article about Ecosystem Management?
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Urban agriculture as a global phenomenon is widely promoted as a sustainable land use practice. On small plots and in big projects, using sophisticated technology or simple solutions, city dwellers around the world are producing food. Growing food in a city can improve local food security and express local culture.
What Was the Silk Road and What Happened to It?
Discover Magazine by Sam Walters / March 14, 2023 at 07:15PM
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The Han Chinese court welcomed Western trade for one of the first times in its history around 2,000 years ago. What its courtiers couldn't have imagined was that they were laying the foundations for one of the oldest, largest and longest-lasting systems of trade in the world. That said, the ancient Silk Road system endured the formation and the fall of countless cultures and civilizations throughout its 1,600-year existence, emerging from almost every experience bigger and better than before. So, what were the events that defined the history of the Silk Road, and why did this system eventually end? When Did the Silk Road Start? A muddled collection of constantly changing routes and roads moved commodities across Asia and Europe for a significant stretch of antiquity, from approximately 130 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Commonly called the Silk Road, this terrestrial and aquatic system spanned as many as 6,000 miles and connected countless territories, from China and India to Iran and Italy. Crossing through the toughest terrains, including mountains, deserts, steppes and seas, the system cut from China’s ancient capital city of Xi’an to Central and West Asia, all the way to the Mediterranean. What Was the Silk Road? The Silk Road transported all sorts of items, including salt, spices, precious stones, precious metals, paper and porcelain. But the system was originally built on the transmission of finished silk fabric, which was only fashioned in China at the time of the system’s foundation. Read More: What Was Traded On the Silk Road? Initial Trades At that time, China’s courtiers understood silk was worth a substantial sum within their own society, and they treated its methods of manufacture as state secrets. But they weren’t fully acquainted with the fabric's worth in the West, since their only foreign trade of the textile was a part of their diplomacy. When the tribes of the Xiongnu people pillaged China’s frontiers around 200 B.C., for instance, the Han court provided the tribes with silk as a part of its plea for peace. And when the tribes of the Xiongnu people were still pillaging China’s frontiers around 130 B.C., the Han court provided the tribes’ rivals with silk in return for a special type of swifter, stronger horse, which was instrumental in the defeat of the Xiongnu several decades later. Intensifying Trade These interactions, in addition to a series of missions sent out in search of foreign allies, revealed the intensity of the Western want for silk for the first time. And once revealed, China’s court armed a fleet of traders with the fabric and thrust them westward, all in an attempt to foster future trade relationships and formalize future trade routes. Read More: Silk-Making Is an Ancient Practice That Presents an Ethical Dilemma Traveling the Silk Road These traders initiated the Silk Road, though they weren’t the only travelers that took to the system. Instead, merchants from all across Central and Western Asia rushed to the routes, where they shuttled their wares along a small section of the system before passing them to the next seller in a sequence of middlemen. Their travel was tough, with traders facing the threats of the terrain and the bands of bandits that prowled the Silk Road. But because their merchandise was in demand, the trade continued for centuries, surviving some of the biggest political disasters and disruptions in antiquity. The Phases of the Silk Road Trade Route Specialists studying the Silk Road trade route tend to discuss three phases of particularly intense trade, all distinguished by their own distinct mix of merchants, merchandise and political challenges. The First Phase The first phase of this trade took place from around 200 B.C. to A.D. 220 and concentrated on the movement of silks from China to Rome, where people were ambivalent toward the textile. Some Romans thought that wearing silk was an appropriate sign of their worth, wealth and authority, while others saw silk as an indecent indulgence and attempted to ban its importation. Despite the debate that surrounded the textile, Roman imports of silk soared throughout this phase, enabled by the peace and prosperity that Rome’s early emperors provided. And as Chinese silk went west, the Romans sent their glass, gold and silver east. The Second Phase In A.D. 220, China fell into a period of political turmoil, resulting in a temporary retreat from the Silk Road trade. In the midst of this turmoil, the secrets of silk making were smuggled out of the state, terminating the Chinese monopoly over the material. Once China’s Tang court restored the state’s previous prosperity around A.D. 600, silk manufacturers were already appearing in Byzantium, which was situated in Anatolia and served as the successor to the rapidly declining state of Rome. But because the quality of Chinese silk still remained superior, a new phase of silk trade arose from around A.D. 620 to 910, this time from China to Byzantium and beyond. The Third Phase Starting in Central Asia and advancing out into China, India, Iran and Anatolia, the conquests of the Mongols under Genghis and Kublai Khan eventually stabilized the entire continent, easing communication and commerce across Eurasia. As the various trading centers of Asia and Europe came under the unified control of the Mongols, a third and final flourish of silk trade set in, lasting from around A.D. 1210 to 1360. While silk was still one of the principal products that traveled the Silk Road, the textile was sent west with pearls and precious stones, spices, ceramics, carpets and more. In addition to this material merchandise, the Mongols’ openness toward foreigners and foreign ideas also facilitated the movement of people, philosophies and pathogens across vast stretches of the Silk Road routes. Read More: The Life of Genghis Khan, the Ruthless Warlord Who Created the World’s Largest Empire When Did the Silk Road End? Despite surviving, and sometimes thriving, during times of trouble, the Silk Road trade started to deteriorate by about A.D. 1360. Already drained by the bursts of the bubonic plague during the Black Death around 20 years earlier, the trade was weakened even further by the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire. The truly decisive blow to the trade arrived around A.D. 1450, when the taxes and tolls of the burgeoning Ottoman Empire deterred almost all of the remaining trade along the traditional Silk Road routes. Read More: Genghis Khan Had a Soft Side Forging New Roads Specialists say that the fall of the Silk Road forced European traders to search for alternative routes to the commercial centers of Asia. And tempted by the idea that there was a better way to travel, these traders took to the seas, which weren’t as affected by the tolls and the bandits that were always involved in the traditional, terrestrial trade. Initiating a new age of cross-cultural commerce and contact in which travelers would bounce between the “Old World” and the “New World” with both dramatic and devastating consequences, this search for sea routes merely intensified the ancient shift toward worldwide interaction that started with the Silk Road, all the way back in 130 B.C. Read More: The Silk Road Was More Than a Vast Trade Route
20 Brilliant Quotes From Albert Einstein, the Theoretical Physicist Who Became World Famous
9KDiscover Magazine by Donna Sarkar / March 14, 2023 at 07:15PM
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This article was originally published on May 19, 2021. Decades after his death, Albert Einstein's legacy carries on. He is often regarded as the father of modern physics in light of his revolutionary ideas that have shaped our understanding of the universe. The prolific scientist's rise to celebrity status, however, didn't happen overnight. Unlike many other famous scientists of his time, Einstein lacked a flawless education record and wasn’t well connected in the scientific community. He perfectly embodied the stereotype of a lone genius and typically worked by himself. In 1905, the year he turned 26, Einstein published four groundbreaking papers that laid the foundations for his theory of relativity, E=mc2 and quantum mechanics. But his work largely flew under the radar at the time. A solar eclipse in 1919 was the watershed moment for his career, when one of his general relativity predictions was confirmed by astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington. Einstein went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect — not for relativity, ironically. Needless to say, Einstein didn't require much of an introduction to the American public by the time he immigrated to the U.S. in 1933 as he sought asylum during Hitler's rise to power. Einstein, who accepted a position at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, often used the limelight to share his views on politics, religion and everything in between. Both German-born and Jewish, Einstein was in a unique position to speak out against Nazi Germany and the persecution of Jewish people. The scientist also criticized the racism, discrimination and injustice that he observed in America. Near the end of his life, Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel — a position he turned down, citing a lack of experience and people skills. He passed away a few years later in 1955 of heart failure. He left behind a lifetime worth of remarkable scientific contributions and social commentary that lives on today. Einstein is perhaps the most quoted scientist of all time, with remarks about life, morality and social justice being among the most famous Einstein quotes — something he didn't exactly intend for. In 1953 he quipped: "In the past it never occurred to me that every casual remark of mine would be snatched up and recorded. Otherwise I would have crept further into my shell." Nevertheless, the words he left behind may be the best way to go inside the mind of the legend. Here is a collection of Einstein quotes — from inspiring to thought-provoking — that offer a glimpse into how he saw the world and his work. Top 20 Albert Einstein Quotes 1. "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." 2. "Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, observing, there we enter the realm of art and science." 3. "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "universe," a part limited in time and space." 4. "If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music … I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin." 5. “The greatest scientists are artists as well.” 6. “It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.” 7. "I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am." 8. "The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them." 9. "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving." 10. "I believe in one thing — that only a life lived for others is a life worth living." 11. "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." 12. "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed." 13. "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day." 14. "My interest in science was always essentially limited to the study of principles … That I have published so little is due to this same circumstance, as the great need to grasp principles has caused me to spend most of my time on fruitless pursuits." 15. "My passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as has my aversion to any obligation and dependence I did not regard as absolutely necessary." 16. "Even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies." 17. "Science is international but its success is based on institutions, which are owned by nations. If therefore, we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means." 18. "Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it." 19. "One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have." 20. "All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom."
Author Correction: Interfacial stabilization for epitaxial CuCrO2 delafossites
Scientific Reports by Jong Mok Ok / March 14, 2023 at 07:13PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31162-1
Author Correction: Interfacial stabilization for epitaxial CuCrO2 delafossites
Scientific Reports by Hao Xing / March 14, 2023 at 07:13PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31191-w
Author Correction: Dysregulation of TSP2-Rac1-
WAVE2
axis in diabetic cells leads to cytoskeletal disorganization, increased cell stiffness, and dysfunction
Creepy App Used Stolen Pictures of Dead People to Train Its Facial Recognition Algorithm
67Futurism by Maggie Harrison / March 14, 2023 at 07:11PM
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Consider a new digital privacy fear unlocked.
As Wired reports, a facial recognition search site called PimEyes, which claims to create biometric human "faceprints," has been using stolen photos of dead people to train its algorithms.
According to the report, Cher Scarlett, a software engineer and writer, made the discovery while searching the site for images of herself.
She found something quite shocking: photos of her mother, her long-dead great-great-great-grandmother, and perhaps most startlingly, her sister, who had died in 2018 at the young age of 30.
All of these photos, Scarlett says, seem to have been taken from images that she and her family have personally uploaded to Ancestry.com, a site that overtly prohibits "scraping data, including photos, from Ancestry's sites and services as well as reselling, reproducing, or publishing any content or information found on Ancestry" in its terms and conditions.
But this isn't just a violation of Ancestry's policy. Scarlett's deceased family members simply couldn't have given PimEyes their permission to train their algorithm with these photos.
"My sister is dead," Scarlett told Wired. "She can't consent or revoke consent for being enrolled in this."
This kind of violation seems eerily akin to the story of Henrietta Lacks, whose cells have been used in medical research and drug development for decades — but were gathered, multiplied, and distributed for research postmortem and without her consent. While it may be a different field, the point that your privacy should be respected after your death still stands.
PimEyes didn't have much to offer in terms of an explanation.
"PimEyes only crawls websites that officially allow us to do so," company director Giorgi Gobronidze told Wired. "It was … very unpleasant news that our crawlers have somehow broken the rule."
And though the site technically has an opt-out feature that can allow users to restrict a specific image of themselves from being used in the engine, Gobronidze admitted that the opt-out feature "will not work with 100 percent efficiency always."
It's worth noting that this isn't the first time that PimEyes has been caught up in controversy.
As Wired points out, child privacy has been widely noted as a concern. But while Gobronidze told Wired that PimEyes launched a "multistep security protocol" to protect children starting January 9, some company partners, including a few NGOs, are "whitelisted" and can perform unrestricted searches on the platform.
In other words, the rules don't always apply.
Elsewhere, both human rights groups and experts have alleged that the site enables stalking and other abuses.
And to that end, experts have further warned that data stolen from sites like Ancestry doesn't just harm the deceased. It might also be used to stalk, dox, and otherwise harm the living, who are often just a click or so away.
"While I think [Gobronidze's] correct to say that PimEyes won't directly through their website give you that person’s identity, you're a click away from a website that does have their name on it," Daniel Leufer, a senior policy analyst at digital rights group Access Now, told Wired. "It's going to give you a load of URLs which in many cases will allow you to identify that person."
PimEyes' misdeeds are symptomatic of a future where our online identities and even our faces are anything but protected from prying eyes. And despite the promise of guardrails, both PimEyes and Ancestry have failed in their attempts to protect our privacy.
"I used [Ancestry] for what it’s intended for — to find out where I come from. It was really exciting until it wasn't," Scarlett told Wired. "Nobody is uploading photos into Ancestry thinking that they're going to be enrolled into a biometric identifier for facial recognition software without their knowledge or consent."
"It just feels incredibly violating," she added.
READ MORE: A Face Recognition Site Crawled the Web for Dead People's Photos [Wired]
The post Creepy App Used Stolen Pictures of Dead People to Train Its Facial Recognition Algorithm appeared first on Futurism.
The 'Rapunzel' virus: An evolutionary oddity
22Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 07:11PM
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A recent study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry has revealed the secret behind an evolutionary marvel: a bacteriophage with an extremely long tail. This extraordinary tail is part of a bacteriophage that lives in inhospitable hot springs and preys on some of the toughest bacteria on the planet.
High winds may boost pathogen among outdoor chickens
Futurity.org by Sara Zaske-Washington State / March 14, 2023 at 07:10PM
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On farms where chickens are kept outside, high winds may increase the prevalence of Campylobacter, a bacterial pathogen that’s the largest single cause of foodborne illness in the US.
Researchers found that about 26% of individual chickens had the pathogen at the “open environment” farms in the study, which included organic and free-range chicken farms. High winds the week prior to sampling and the farms’ location in more intensive agricultural settings were linked to a greater prevalence of Campylobacter.
“Farmers need to be aware of the risk,” says co-lead author Olivia Smith, a recent PhD graduate in the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University.
“These environmental factors are influencing if the poultry are going to have foodborne pathogens, so farmers need to be aware of what’s around them. If there’s a lot of wind and if they’re in really agricultural areas, that’s a problem.”
To help reduce Campylobacter exposure, the researchers suggest farmers consider installing windbreaks and watch weather patterns, so they can bring chickens inside during periods of high winds that could be blowing the bacteria onto their farms from nearby fields and livestock areas.
For the study, published in the journal Animals, the researchers tested chicken feces taken from 27 farms in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. They took samples at most of the farms once a year for three years. They found that the majority of the flocks at these farms, 69.4%, had some instance of Campylobacter.
Researchers also interviewed the farmers about their management practices as well as types, breeds, and ages of their chickens. Only 11 of the farms in the study were officially certified organic producers, but all of the farmers avoided using chemicals in their flocks, including antibiotics, vaccines, or medications that kill parasites.
This is almost the exact opposite of commercial poultry producers who typically raise birds indoors in enclosed barns and treat them with medicines. These producers also select chicken breeds for efficiency, such as “broiler” chickens that can grow fast and big providing a lot of meat, or “layer” breeds that can produce the most eggs, with the least amount of feed.
The growing market in local, organically minded food production has a different set of values, says Jeb Owen, an entomologist and senior author of the paper. These farmers reduce or fully eliminate chemicals, keep a wide range of chicken breeds, and allow their flocks to roam outside because they believe it is better for the animal and the environment. It is also what many consumers want, Owen says. But it doesn’t come without risks.
“We’ve spent a century raising birds indoors and forgotten about all of these parasites and pathogens that chickens used to be afflicted with, but they didn’t go away,” he says. “Now you have this rapidly exploding market of producers who want to raise their birds outside, but they have no background knowledge of the disease risk.”
Being outside means chickens are exposed to disease from wild birds and simply from contact with the ground, where they can pick up pathogens spread by feces of other infected birds.
Owen’s lab has taken on a range of research to better understand the disease risk that faces open environment chicken farms, including a study on enteric parasites like worms that live in the birds’ digestive systems and another on ectoparasites, those that are found on the skin and feathers. His team is also undertaking a study to better understand the disease resilience of the many different breeds raised on these types of farms. The overall goal is to help farmers mitigate the risk.
“If they aren’t doing it already, farmers should set up a professional relationship with a veterinarian to get their flocks checked and monitored on a regular basis,” he says. “Whether for productivity or for animal welfare, you don’t want your animals to be sick.”
Source: Washington State
The post High winds may boost pathogen among outdoor chickens appeared first on Futurity.
3D imaging tech captures labor contractions in real time
EMMI Imaging Maps Uterine
Futurity.org by Diane Duke Williams-WUSTL / March 14, 2023 at 07:10PM
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New imaging technology can produce 3D maps showing the magnitude and distribution of uterine contractions in real time and across the entire surface of the uterus during labor.
Building on imaging methods long used on the heart, the technology can image uterine contractions noninvasively and in much greater detail than currently available tools, which only indicate the presence or absence of a contraction.
The clinical study, which included 10 participants in labor through childbirth, appears in Nature Communications.
“There are all kinds of obstetrics and gynecological conditions that are associated with uterine contractions, but we don’t have very accurate ways of measuring them,” says senior author Yong Wang, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, of electrical and systems engineering, of radiology, and of biomedical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
“With this new imaging technology, we are basically upgrading the standard way of measuring labor contractions—called tocodynamometry—from one-dimensional tracing to four-dimensional mapping. This kind of information could help improve care for patients with high-risk pregnancies and identify ways to prevent preterm birth, which occurs in about 10% of pregnancies globally.”
During labor and birth, the uterus contracts to provide the force that expels the fetus. The new approach to measuring these contractions, called electromyometrial imaging (EMMI), could for example, help identify the types of early contractions that lead to preterm birth and help researchers identify ways to slow down or stop these preterm contractions.
Abnormalities in contractions also can lead to labor arrest, which can require a cesarean (C-section) delivery. Preterm birth and C-sections can increase the risk of birth injuries or death for both parent and infant. Such injuries can include long-term neurodevelopmental disability for the child.
The researchers found that uterine contractions are less predictable and consistent than the heart contractions that are typically measured with similar technology. Even with the same patient, consecutive labor contractions may differ in the initiating region and the direction of progression.
Further, the researchers found that there are no consistent areas of the uterus in which contractions begin, indicating that the initiation sites, or pacemaker, of the uterine contractions are not anatomically fixed, as in the heart. These considerations add more value to the team’s imaging technology, as it can track changes through progressive contractions.
The study included patients who were giving birth for the first time and some who had given birth before. The researchers found that patients who had not given birth before had longer contractions with more variation compared with patients who previously had given birth.
This is indicative of a possible memory effect of the uterus. In those who previously have given birth, the uterus appears to remember its past labor experience and has more efficient and productive contractions.
Potential clinical uses of EMMI that Wang proposes include:
- Distinguishing productive versus nonproductive contractions to predict preterm birth in patients with preterm contractions.
- Monitoring labor contractions in real time to optimize pharmaceutical treatment and prevent labor complications such as labor arrest.
- Monitoring uterine contractions to prevent postpartum hemorrhage.
- Developing possible nonpharmaceutical treatment such as mild electrical interventions to normalize contraction patterns.
- Investigating uterine-related conditions outside of pregnancy, such as painful menstruation and endometriosis.
The next step of Wang’s research is to measure normal uterine contractions that would help decipher whether a contraction is productive and leading toward birth. Last year, his team received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create an atlas of sorts that characterizes what contractions during normal labor look like.
“The goal of this grant is to image healthy term labor in 300 patients so that we know what the normal range looks like—for first-time births and second- or third-time births,” Wang says. “This is a new measurement, so we don’t have a previous accumulation of knowledge. We have to produce a normal baseline atlas first.”
In resource-poor areas, this type of detailed imaging could help make labor and childbirth safer. To make the technology more accessible, Wang is aiming to use less expensive and more portable ultrasound imaging instead of costly MRI scans, which are not widely accessible in many parts of the world.
In addition, Wang’s team is in the process of producing disposable electrodes and wireless transmitters in close collaboration with Washington University colleagues Chuan Wang, an assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering; and Shantanu Chakrabartty, professor of electrical and systems engineering, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We would like to develop a low-cost EMMI system that can be applicable in low- and moderate-resource settings,” Yong Wang says. “We are trying to make the electrodes much cheaper using printed, disposable electrodes and a wireless transmitter.”
The March of Dimes, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Preterm Birth Initiative, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supported the work.
Source: Jacquelyn Kauffman for Washington University in St. Louis
The post 3D imaging tech captures labor contractions in real time appeared first on Futurity.
Rambøll i grøn vækst: Gevinst i at hjælpe virksomheder navigere i EU's miljøregler
Ingeniøren by Janni Iben Faurskov Hansen / March 14, 2023 at 07:04PM
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PLUS. Den rådgivende ingeniørvirksomhed vandt i 2022 mange store projekter, der skubber verden i en mere bæredygtig retning.
Her Doctor Said Her Illness Was All in Her Head. This Scientist Was Determined to Find the Truth.
5KNYT > Science by Alice Callahan / March 14, 2023 at 07:02PM
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After enduring severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, the geneticist Marlena Fejzo made finding the cause of her condition, hyperemesis gravidarum, her life’s work.
Farms in cities: New study offers planners and growers food for thought
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 07:00PM
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Urban agriculture as a global phenomenon is widely promoted as a sustainable land use practice. On small plots and in big projects, using sophisticated technology or simple solutions, city dwellers around the world are producing food. Growing food in a city can improve local food security and express local culture.
New research sheds light on how malaria parasites adapt to their human hosts
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 07:00PM
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A study has characterized the factors that cause the
malaria
parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, to invest resources into reproduction—to maximize transmission to other hosts—or replication—to ensure survival within its current human host.
Dell XPS 13 Plus review: Stylish & slim, but lacking stamina
Livescience / March 14, 2023 at 06:48PM
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Great power, aesthetics, and screen options, but the
Dell XPS
13 Plus is a risky ultraportable that falls short of expectations in several key departments.
New research sheds light on how malaria parasites adapt to their human hosts
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 06:40PM
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A study has characterized the factors that cause the
malaria
parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, to invest resources into reproduction—to maximize transmission to other hosts—or replication—to ensure survival within its current human host.
Astronomers observe lone distant galaxy that appears to have consumed all of its former companions
48Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 06:40PM
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Over 13 billion years ago, the first galaxies in the universe formed. They were elliptical, with intermediate black holes (IMBHs) at their centers surrounded by a halo of stars, gas, and dust. Over time, these galaxies evolved by flattening out into disks with a large bulge in the middle. They were then drawn together by mutual gravitational attraction to form galaxy clusters, massive collections that comprise the large-scale cosmic structure. This force of attraction also led to mergers, where galaxies and their central black holes came together to create larger spiral galaxies with central supermassive black holes (SMBHs).
Investigating mold fungi, nature's substances, to replace pesticides
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 06:40PM
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- In the project, DTU collaborates with the international company FMC, which produces plant protection such as pesticides for agriculture.
DTU is helping a large international company find nature's own substances to combat fungal diseases in crops. The University's large collection of mold fungi and a minor collection of bacteria are part of the project—and one of them might hold the solution. Thirty-eight thousand, four-hundred mold fungi isolates take the lead role in the large research project "Smarter AgroBiological Screening" (SABS). In the project, DTU collaborates with the international company FMC, which produces plant protection such as pesticides for agriculture.
Nature Communications by Anastasiya Kishkevich / March 14, 2023 at 06:32PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37201-9
Author Correction: Rad52’s DNA annealing activity drives template switching associated with restarted DNA replication
Author Correction: A predictable prospect of the South Asian summer monsoon
Nature Communications by Tuantuan Zhang / March 14, 2023 at 06:32PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36831-3
Author Correction: A predictable prospect of the South Asian summer monsoon
Nature Communications by Maria Zhivagui / March 14, 2023 at 06:32PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37245-x
Author Correction: DNA damage and somatic mutations in mammalian cells after irradiation with a nail polish dryer
Polarization-directed growth of spiral nanostructures by laser direct writing with vector beams
Nature Communications by Xiaolin Lu / March 14, 2023 at 06:32PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37048-0
Chiral nanostructures are in demand for various applications, but facile and scalable fabrication is a technical challenge. Here, the authors report polarization-directed chiral growth of complex spiral patterns by laser direct writing with vector beams.
Investigating mold fungi, nature's substances, to replace pesticides
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 06:28PM
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- In the project, DTU collaborates with the international company FMC, which produces plant protection such as pesticides for agriculture.
DTU is helping a large international company find nature's own substances to combat fungal diseases in crops. The University's large collection of mold fungi and a minor collection of bacteria are part of the project—and one of them might hold the solution. Thirty-eight thousand, four-hundred mold fungi isolates take the lead role in the large research project "Smarter AgroBiological Screening" (SABS). In the project, DTU collaborates with the international company FMC, which produces plant protection such as pesticides for agriculture.
Racial gaps in gun violence against kids increased during COVID
Futurity.org by Jillian McKoy-Boston U. / March 14, 2023 at 06:28PM
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Black, Hispanic, and Asian children experienced substantial spikes in firearm assault injuries during the first 21 months of the pandemic, a new study shows.
White children did not experience an increase in firearm assault injuries at all.
Gun violence—and racial disparities in gun violence—have increased substantially during the pandemic, particularly among children. The new study shows just how stark these differences in risk of firearm injury are between white and non-white children.
Published as a research letter in JAMA Network Open, the study examined gun injuries among children in four major US cities—New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.
“This was a striking finding.”
Pre-
COVID
, non-white children already experienced a disproportionate burden of gun violence compared to white children. Then during the pandemic, this disparity in risk of being shot nearly quadrupled between Black and white children.
Compared to white children, Black children were 100 times more likely to experience firearm assaults, as of December 2021—up from 27 times more likely before the pandemic. Similarly, the risk of firearm injury tripled between Hispanic children and white children, and nearly tripled between Asian children and white children.
While previous research has documented racial disparities in gun violence among children and across all age groups, the researchers say that the extent of the disparities revealed in these new findings, with no change in firearm injury rates among white children, was quite stark and unexpected.
“This was a striking finding,” says corresponding author Jonathan Jay, assistant professor of community health sciences at Boston University School of Public Health and director of the Research on Innovations for Safety and Equity (RISE) Lab.
“We knew there were large overall increases in firearm injury rates and we hypothesized that the increase was disproportionately concentrated in children of color, but we would have expected some increase among white children and we saw none. I think that speaks to the extent to which white children, on average, are insulated from gun violence exposure by social advantage and neighborhood context.”
Jay, senior author Jessica Simes, and colleagues examined firearm assault data from 2015 to 2021 among the three most populous US cities, as well as the city with the highest firearm assault rate among a population of one million or more (Philadelphia).
“We’ll never eliminate racial disparities in gun victimization until we alleviate these deeply rooted inequities.”
During this time period, there were 2,672 reported shootings of children in these cities, representing a twofold increase in child firearm assaults associated with the pandemic. Black children experienced the highest rates in firearm injuries overall, while white children experienced the lowest rates. Among the four cities, New York City reported the highest number of child firearm injuries.
As gun violence remains the leading cause of death among children and teens in the US, the researchers say these findings emphasize the need for cities to invest in policies and programs that promote gun violence prevention and reduce structural inequities by using trusted figures within communities to facilitate social and safety services.
“Racism and poverty are at the heart of both violence and its punitive policy response in the US,” says Simes, assistant professor of sociology at Boston University College of Arts & Sciences. “The profound disparities in gun victimization among children that we report in this paper demand comprehensive, anti-poverty policy reforms that center racial justice and the communities most harmed by gun violence.”
“Community violence interventions can stop violence from escalating and break cycles of violence,” Jay says. “In the long term, we also need to address more root causes, such as segregation and economic disparities and the ways these issues play out in neighborhood environments.”
For example, a previous study he led indicated that increasing tree canopy in underinvested neighborhoods may help reduce gun violence rates and disparities in gun violence.
“We’ll never eliminate racial disparities in gun victimization until we alleviate these deeply rooted inequities,” Jay says.
Source: Boston University
The post Racial gaps in gun violence against kids increased during COVID appeared first on Futurity.
The U.S. Program That Brought H.I.V. Treatment to 20 Million People
75NYT > Science by Apoorva Mandavilli / March 14, 2023 at 06:27PM
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Over two decades, Pepfar may have saved an estimated 25 million lives, helping to slow the AIDS pandemic.
Scientific Reports by Anna Hernández‑Rubio / March 14, 2023 at 06:21PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31311-6
Author Correction: Association of
hyperuricemia
and gamma glutamyl transferase as a marker of metabolic risk in alcohol use disorder
New Drug Counteracts Intoxication, Rapidly Sobers Up Drunk Mice
100+ScienceAlert by David Nield / March 14, 2023 at 06:19PM
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Drunk mice are a real problem.
Being adaptive at work may be the golden ticket to combat gender equalities
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 06:14PM
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A study from The University of Western Australia's Business School has revealed that women who adapt to changes in their work teams are recognized more than their male counterparts.
Dust lifted into the air by cyclones provides anchor points for cloud-forming ice
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 06:14PM
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Cirrus clouds are high-altitude (8–17 kilometers) clouds composed of pure ice particles. These clouds have a significant impact on the planet's climate by scattering incoming sunlight and absorbing Earth's emitted infrared radiation. In a new study, Zeng et al. discovered new details about how these wispy, hair-like clouds form in large storm systems.
Grist Imagine 2200: Write the Future
Future(s) Studies by /u/Itomyperils / March 14, 2023 at 06:06PM
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NASA and DOE to land a radio telescope on the Moon's far side to explore Dark Ages of the Universe
NASA Moon Universe
Future(s) Studies by /u/Express_Turn_5489 / March 14, 2023 at 06:06PM
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EPA proposes new rule targeting 'forever chemicals' in drinking water
Future(s) Studies by /u/ethereal3xp / March 14, 2023 at 06:06PM
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Feedly AI found 1 Regulatory Changes mention in this article
- EPA proposes new rule targeting 'forever chemicals' in drinking water
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What would you like to see for the future of cell phones?
Future(s) Studies by /u/ItsOk2PeeSittingDown / March 14, 2023 at 06:06PM
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I was thinking about this today and miss the days when cell phones weren't just iterations of last year's model (first world problem, I know).
Personally, what I'd love to see is the concept of the cell phone as it is currently gone altogether, replaced wholly by wearables such as a watch and AR glasses.
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NASA wants new 'deorbit tug' to bring space station down in 2030
Future(s) Studies by /u/Gari_305 / March 14, 2023 at 06:06PM
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Future(s) Studies by /u/intengineering / March 14, 2023 at 06:06PM
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'Time Reflections' Finally Observed by Physicists After Decades of Searching : ScienceAlert
Future(s) Studies by /u/Voyage_of_Roadkill / March 14, 2023 at 06:06PM
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Future(s) Studies by /u/rherbom2k / March 14, 2023 at 06:06PM
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Future(s) Studies by /u/yoaviram / March 14, 2023 at 06:06PM
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A slimy self-healing gel helps a robotic snail to slither
Nature / March 14, 2023 at 06:00PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00750-6
The chemical bonds in a stretchy gel quickly reform if the material is severed.
Powerful AI models, and more — this week’s best science graphics
Nature / March 14, 2023 at 06:00PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00777-9
Three charts from the world of research, selected by Nature editors.
Planet or failed star? A mysterious object blurs the line
Nature / March 14, 2023 at 06:00PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00749-z
A body classified as an exoplanet has been shown to nurture thermonuclear fusion of heavy hydrogen — a trait of objects called brown dwarfs.
Researchers discover Middle Devonian reefs in North Qiangtang Block
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:59PM
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North Qiangtang Block is located at the northwestern part of China's Tibet Autonomous Region, between the Longmuco-Shuanghu and Xijinwulan-Jinshajiang suture zones. Among these regions, the Paleozoic strata in Ngari Prefecture of North Tibet are widespread and relatively complete.
Researchers study feeding habits of small-bodied fishes
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:59PM
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Small-bodied fishes play an important role in structuring aquatic ecosystems by transporting energy and nutrients from lower to higher trophic levels. However, the proliferation of small-bodied fishes in aquatic ecosystems can be accompanied by deterioration of water quality and ecosystem function.
Realization of photonic p-orbital higher-order topological insulators
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:59PM
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In condensed matter systems, an essential characteristic of electrons besides charge and spin is the orbital degree of freedom (ODoF). It plays a crucial role in understanding unconventional properties in solid-state materials and in "orbital physics" toward unveiling the science and technology of correlated electrons. However, due to the complexity and various degrees of freedom simultaneously involved in real materials, it has always been a challenge to fully unravel the physics of strongly correlated electronic matter mediated by the ODoF via controlled experiments.
The rise of the irate customer: Post-pandemic rudeness, and the importance of rediscovering patience
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:59PM
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If you find yourself being more impatient than ever before when interacting with people in customer service roles—or if you've noticed other people having a shorter fuse and snapping more quickly—you're not alone.
How 'grade obsession' is detrimental to students and their education
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:59PM
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Grading has been central to most education systems for over a century.
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:59PM
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At the 95th Academy Awards, Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan's "Everything Everywhere All at Once" took home wins in acting, editing and directing categories, and also won the coveted best picture award.
Were there gladiators in Roman Britain? An expert reviews the evidence
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:59PM
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In 1853, a Roman vase was found being used as a container for ashes in a grave outside Roman Colchester. Dating to the later second century AD, it depicted four gladiators with their names scratched into the surface of the vase.
Researchers discover Middle Devonian reefs in North Qiangtang Block
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 05:52PM
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North Qiangtang Block is located at the northwestern part of China's Tibet Autonomous Region, between the Longmuco-Shuanghu and Xijinwulan-Jinshajiang suture zones. Among these regions, the Paleozoic strata in Ngari Prefecture of North Tibet are widespread and relatively complete.
Researchers study feeding habits of small-bodied fishes
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 05:52PM
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Small-bodied fishes play an important role in structuring aquatic ecosystems by transporting energy and nutrients from lower to higher trophic levels. However, the proliferation of small-bodied fishes in aquatic ecosystems can be accompanied by deterioration of water quality and ecosystem function.
Ozone exposure disrupts insect sexual communication
Nature Communications by Nan-Ji Jiang / March 14, 2023 at 05:44PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36534-9
Insect pheromones can be degraded by the air pollutant ozone. Jiang et al. show that ozone-exposed male flies lose their pheromones and become less attractive to females. Additionally, ozone-exposed males exhibited increased male-male courtship behaviour as a result of reduced sex recognition.
Växelboende kan stärka barnens relation till föräldrarna
forskning.se / March 14, 2023 at 05:42PM
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Barn som bor varannan vecka hos en förälder mår inte sämre än barn som bor med båda föräldrarna. Växelboende kan också innebära en bättre relation med föräldrarna, visar en avhandling.
Inlägget Växelboende kan stärka barnens relation till föräldrarna dök först upp på forskning.se.
Is Ron DeSantis Flaming Out Already?
DeSantis Ukraine Moscow
1KThe Atlantic by David Frum / March 14, 2023 at 05:37PM
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- Florida Republicans will soon pass—and DeSantis pledged he would sign—a law banning abortion after six weeks.
Feedly AI found 1 Funding Events mention in this article
- His allies talk of raising $200 million more by this time next year, and there is no reason to doubt they will reach their target.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has long sought to avoid taking a position on Russia’s war in Ukraine. On the eve of the Russian invasion, 165 Florida National Guard members were stationed on a training mission in Ukraine. They were evacuated in February 2022 to continue their mission in neighboring countries. When they returned to Florida in August, DeSantis did not greet them. He has not praised, or even acknowledged, their work in any public statement.
DeSantis did find time, however, to admonish Ukrainian officials in October for not showing enough gratitude to new Twitter owner Elon Musk. (Musk returned the favor by endorsing DeSantis for president.) On tour this month to promote his new book, DeSantis has clumsily evaded questions about the Russian invasion. When a reporter for The Times of London pressed the governor, DeSantis scolded him: “Perhaps you should cover some other ground? I think I’ve said enough.”
Even his allies found this medley of past hawkishness and present evasiveness worrying—especially because he was on record, in 2014 and 2015, urging the Obama administration to send both “defensive and offensive” weapons to Ukraine after the Russian annexation of Crimea. So last night, DeSantis delivered a more definitive answer on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.
DeSantis’s statement on Ukraine was everything that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his admirers could have wished for from a presumptive candidate for president. The governor began by listing America’s “vital interests” in a way that explicitly excluded NATO and the defense of Europe. He accepted the present Russian line that Putin’s occupation of Ukraine is a mere “territorial dispute.” He endorsed “peace” as the objective without regard to the terms of that peace, another pro-Russian talking point. He conceded the Russian argument that American aid to Ukraine amounts to direct involvement in the conflict. He endorsed and propagated the fantasy—routinely advanced by pro-Putin guests on Fox talk shows—that the Biden administration is somehow plotting “regime change” in Moscow. He denounced as futile the economic embargo against Russia—and baselessly insinuated that Ukraine is squandering U.S. financial assistance. He ended by flirting with the idea of U.S. military operations against Mexico, an idea that originated on the extreme right but has migrated toward the Republican mainstream.
[Elliot Ackerman: The arsenal of democracy is reopening for business]
A careful reader of DeSantis’s statement will find that it was composed to provide him with some lawyerly escape hatches from his anti-Ukraine positions. For example, it ruled out F-16s specifically rather than warplanes in general. But those loopholes matter less than the statement’s context. After months of running and hiding, DeSantis at last produced a detailed position on Ukraine—at the summons of a Fox talking head.
There’s a scene in the TV drama Succession in which the media mogul Logan Roy tests would-be candidates for the Republican presidential nomination by ordering them to bring him a Coke. The man who eventually gets the nod is the one who didn’t even wait to be asked—he arrived at the sit-down with Logan’s Coke already in hand. That’s the candidate DeSantis is showing himself to be.
DeSantis is a machine engineered to win the Republican presidential nomination. The hardware is a lightly updated version of donor-pleasing mechanics from the Paul Ryan era. The software is newer. DeSantis operates on the latest culture-war code: against vaccinations, against the diversity industry, against gay-themed books in school libraries. The packaging is even more up-to-the-minute. Older models—Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush—made some effort to appeal to moderates and independents. None of that from DeSantis. He refuses to even speak to media platforms not owned by Rupert Murdoch. His message to the rest of America is more of the finger-pointing disdain he showed last year for high-school students who wore masks when he visited a college.
The problem that Republicans confront with this newly engineered machine is this: Have they built themselves a one-stage rocket—one that achieves liftoff but never reaches escape velocity? The DeSantis trajectory to the next Republican National Convention is fast and smooth. He raised nearly $10 million in February—a single month. That’s on top of the more than $90 million remaining from the $200 million he raised for his reelection campaign as governor. His allies talk of raising $200 million more by this time next year, and there is no reason to doubt they will reach their target. DeSantis has been going up in the polls, too. According to Quinnipiac, Donald Trump’s lead over DeSantis in a four-way race between them, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley has shriveled to just two points.
After that midpoint, however, the DeSantis flight path begins to look underpowered.
Florida Republicans will soon pass—and DeSantis pledged he would sign—a law banning abortion after six weeks. That bill is opposed by 57 percent of those surveyed even inside Florida. Another poll found that 75 percent of Floridians oppose the ban. It also showed that 77 percent oppose permitless concealed carry, which DeSantis supports, and that 61 percent disapprove of his call to ban the teaching of critical race theory as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion policies on college campuses. As the political strategist Simon Rosenberg noted: “Imagine how these play outside FL.”
But even this understates the DeSantis design flaw.
More dangerous than the unpopular positions DeSantis holds are the popular positions he does not hold. What is DeSantis’s view on health care? He doesn’t seem to have one. President Joe Biden has delivered cheap insulin to U.S. users. Good idea or not? Silence from DeSantis. There’s no DeSantis jobs policy; he hardly speaks about inflation. Homelessness? The environment? Nothing. Even on crime, DeSantis must avoid specifics, because specifics might remind his audience that Florida’s homicide numbers are worse than New York’s or California’s.
DeSantis just doesn’t seem to care much about what most voters care about. And voters in turn do not care much about what DeSantis cares most about.
[Yascha Mounk: How to save academic freedom from Ron DeSantis]
Last fall, DeSantis tried a stunt to influence the midterm elections: At considerable taxpayer expense, he flew asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard. The ploy enraged liberals on Twitter. It delighted the Fox audience. Nobody else, however, seemed especially interested. As one strategist said to Politico: “It’s mostly college-educated white women that are going to decide this thing. Republicans win on pocketbook issues with them, not busing migrants across the country.”
A new CNN poll finds that 59 percent of Republicans care most that their candidate agrees with them on the issues; only 41 percent care most about beating Biden. DeSantis has absorbed that wish and is answering it. Last night, in his statement on Ukraine, DeSantis delivered another demonstration of this nomination-or-bust strategy.
DeSantis will be a candidate of the Republican base, for the Republican base. Like Trump, he delights in displaying his lack of regard for everyone else. Trump, however, is driven by his psychopathologies and cannot emotionally cope with disagreement. DeSantis is a rational actor and is following what somebody has convinced him is a sound strategy. It looks like this:
- Woo the Fox audience and win the Republican nomination.
- ??
- Become president.
Written out like that, you can see the missing piece. DeSantis is surely intelligent and disciplined enough to see it too. But the programming installed in him prevents him from acting on what he sees. His approach to winning the nomination will put the general election beyond his grasp. He must hope that some external catastrophe will defeat his Democratic opponent for him—a recession, maybe—because DeSantis is choosing a path that cannot get him to his goal.
The End of Silicon Valley Bank—And a Silicon Valley Myth
SVB Silicon Valley Bank
100+The Atlantic by Derek Thompson / March 14, 2023 at 05:37PM
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Is this article about Politics?
YESNO
Updated at 4:32 p.m. ET on March 14, 2023
This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here to get it every week.
Who killed SVB—and triggered the mini–banking crisis sweeping the United States?
You could blame the bank’s executives, who bet $80 billion on long-term bonds that bled value when interest rates went up, thus torching their portfolio with fantastic efficiency.
You could blame the Federal Reserve for falling behind inflation and then quickly raising interest rates, bludgeoning investors who watched in horror as their bold portfolios melted down.
You could blame regulators or the auditors at KPMG, who gave SVB a clean bill of health when they looked into its portfolio just weeks before its historic collapse.
You could blame the phalanx of interests—President Donald Trump, Senate Republicans, tech titans, bankers, and even a handful of Democrats—who called to roll back midsize-bank regulations in 2018, potentially setting the stage for this catastrophic mismanagement.
You could, abandoning all common sense, blame “woke” banking culture, under the bizarre assumption that only an all-white, all-male banking team can properly steward a financial institution. (Never mind, say, the entire crisis-strewn history of mostly white, mostly male banking.)
Or you could blame venture capitalists. One week ago, SVB was technically insolvent but far from doomed. Without a massive run on its deposits, the bank likely would have puttered along as its long-term bonds matured. Surely, SVB had put itself in an awful position by tossing fresh cash into the Dumpster fire of the 2022 bond market. But actual bank death required one further step: Clients, led by the venture-capital community, had to turn on a trusted financial partner.
That’s exactly what happened. As SVB’s leadership scrambled to raise funds, Founders Fund and other large venture investors told their companies late last week to pull out all of their cash. When other start-ups banking with SVB caught wind of this exodus on group chats and Twitter, they, too, raced for the exits. On Thursday alone, SVB customers withdrew $42 billion—or $1 million a second, for 10 straight hours—in the largest bank run in history. If SVB executives, regulators, and conservative politicians built a barn out of highly flammable wood and filled it with hay and oil drums, venture capitalists were the ones who tipped over the barrels and dropped a lit match.
After some VCs helped trigger the bank run that crashed SVB, others went online to beseech the federal government to fly to the rescue. “YOU SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED RIGHT NOW,” the investor Jason Calacanis bleated on Twitter. David Sacks, another investor and a regular panelist on the popular tech podcast All In, chimed in by blaming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chair Jerome Powell for jacking up rates “so hard it collapsed a huge bank.” (Never mind that the CEO of SVB was on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.) On Sunday night, the tech community got its wish when the federal government announced it would backstop every dollar of every depositor in SVB.
The death of
Silicon Valley Bank
offers a strange lesson for VCs. In a typical bank-run prisoner’s dilemma, individuals have to choose to cooperate (everybody keeps their money in the bank, and the bank lives) or defect for individual advantage (a few players pull their funds, spurring others to do the same and leading to a bank collapse). But now all depositors at SVB have been made whole, which means that early defection conferred no advantage. The withdrawals benefited no individual depositor, but they collectively killed SVB.
On Monday, the tech writer Ben Thompson wrote that the collapse of SVB pointed to a broader rot in Silicon Valley itself. “I assumed that the venture capitalist set knew about Silicon
Valley Bank
’s situation [and] I assumed that Silicon Valley broadly was in the business of taking care of their own,” he wrote. “Last week showed that both [theories] were totally wrong.” Far from the familiar metaphor of Silicon Valley as a symbiotic ecosystem, where investors, mentors, and collaborators benefit from a culture of trust and faith in progress, the SVB collapse makes the tech world seem more like an actual jungle, where everything looks lovely and peaceful until a jaguar comes along and lays waste to some capybara.
In this light, the SVB saga is just the latest episode of the American tech industry struggling through three overlapping transitions. First is the macro transition from an era of low interest rates that supported cash-burning consumer-tech companies to an era of high interest rates that require discipline and unit economics. Second is the existential transition from tech’s dominance of attention economics and cloud computing to its expensive struggle to figure out the next mountain to climb, whether it’s crypto, the metaverse, artificial intelligence, climate, or something else. Third is the cultural transition from “tech” as a metonym for high-growth start-ups to “Big Tech” as a description of the largest companies in the world. All three transitions are contributing to a scarcity mentality in Silicon Valley, where, as Thompson observed, “tech has been shifting away from greenfield opportunities and expanding the pie to taking share in zero sum contests for end users, from their attention to their pocketbooks.” This is the cultural climate that explains a crippling run on SVB followed by a call for national bailouts.
Something I’ve always liked about the founders, venture capitalists, and tech evangelists that I’ve met over the years is their disposition toward technology as a lever for progress. They tend to see the world as a set of solvable problems, and I’d like to think that I generally share that attitude. But this techno-optimist mindset can tip into a conviction that tradition is a synonym for inefficiency and that every institution’s age is a measure of its incompetence. One cannot ignore the irony that tech has spent years blasting the slow and stodgy government systems of the 20th century only to cry out, in times of need, for the Fed, the Treasury, and the FDIC to save the day—three institutions with a collective age of several hundred years.
I am still “long” on American invention and innovation, which is a way of saying that I’m long on Silicon Valley as a place and as an idea. But we are still learning exactly how much of this industry’s genius was a mere LIRP, or low-interest-rate phenomenon. The answer from the past 100 hours is that it’s more than I feared. As the saying goes, kind of: When the interest-rate tide goes out, you see who’s been LIRPing naked.
This article originally referred to KPMG as a regulator. It is an auditor.
Pholcodine cough medicines withdrawn in UK over allergy fears
100+Science | The Guardian by Ian Sample Science editor / March 14, 2023 at 05:33PM
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Pharmacists told to stop supplying 20 brands after review finds raised risk of rare anaphylaxis in people who later have general anaesthetic
Health officials have withdrawn 20 brands of dry cough medicine amid concerns they can trigger sudden, life-threatening
allergic reactions
in people who go on to have a general anaesthetic before surgery up to a year later.
Pharmacists have been ordered to stop supplying medicines that contain the cough suppressant pholcodine immediately and to quarantine all remaining stock before returning the products to the relevant supplier.
Air pollution hindering mating of fruit flies by reducing output of male scent
61Science | The Guardian by Sofia Quaglia / March 14, 2023 at 05:33PM
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Study shows high ozone levels make males emit fewer pheromones to attract females, which may lead to population decline
Air pollution is making it harder for fruit flies to mate because females cannot easily recognise a male’s scent, a study has found.
Female fruit flies select their mates for reproduction through the scent of their pheromones, but ozone pollution can disrupt the male’s ability to emit their characteristic odour, researchers have found. This means contaminated air can pose a threat to how successfully fruit flies and other insects reproduce, and could lead to population decline.
Are you for or against us? The impact of protest on political programs
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:30PM
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Last weekend, climate activists again blocked the A12 highway near The Hague to draw attention to the climate crisis. The farmers' movement does not shy away from harsh, disruptive actions either. To what extent do these disruptive actions contribute to protest groups' objectives? And what is the social impact as regards political choices and voting behavior? Sociologist Ruud Wouters is conducting research into the impact of protest on political choices and the elections. "Protest can force political parties to take a clear stand."
Breaking down the Nernst–Einstein relation, carbon nanotube style
78Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:30PM
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When it comes to studying particles in motion, experimentalists have followed a 100-year-old theory that claims the microscopic motion of a particle is determined by random collisions with molecules of the surrounding medium, regardless of the macroscopic forces that drive that motion.
'Double whammy' of extreme weather grips both US coasts
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:30PM
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Heavy rain and snow wreaked havoc across the northeastern United States Tuesday, sparking flood warnings and power outages, as extreme weather gripped both American coasts.
'No need to worry': Odds drop newly-found asteroid will hit Earth
51Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:30PM
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The chances have plummeted that a newly-discovered asteroid with the potential to wipe out a city will hit Earth on Valentine's Day 2046, the European Space Agency said on Tuesday.
Scientists say climate change goosed New Zealand storm fury
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:30PM
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Climate change worsened flooding from a tropical cyclone that shut down much of New Zealand last month in one of the country's costliest disasters, scientists said, but they couldn't quite calculate how much it magnified the catastrophe.
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 05:26PM
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It didn't get much attention when US President Joe Biden launched a biomanufacturing initiative last September.
High School Teacher Confesses to Using ChatGPT for Work
90Futurism by Noor Al-Sibai / March 14, 2023 at 05:24PM
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Truth or Dare
In an ironic twist on an growing trend, a high school teacher has admitted to using OpenAI's
ChatGPT
to help her create lesson plans.
Shannon Ahern, a 27-year-old high school math and science teacher in Dublin, Ireland, wrote in an Insider column that although she was initially "frightened" upon hearing about ChatGPT, she soon found that she has "nothing to worry about" after using it to craft lesson plans and resources for her students.
"When I first used ChatGPT, I treated it as a joke, asking it to write poems about the Pythagorean theorem and a song about math in the style of Taylor Swift," she wrote. "My students said they enjoyed them, which gave me the push I needed to keep testing it."
After experimenting with the chatbot further, Ahern said that her "productivity has gone through the roof" as ChatGPT helped her with time-consuming tasks like generating worksheets and quizzes.
Not Unemployed Yet
It's a surprising conclusion, especially considering that teachers have been chastising their students for using ChatGPT to do their homework. After all, the chatbot is far from perfect and has a strong tendency to lie or mislead.
It can't even reliably solve basic math problems.
That's, fortunately, something that hasn't flown over Ahern's head, who "noticed that ChatGPT calculates things wrong" on occasion.
"It doesn't happen often," Ahern mused, "but when it does, I would point out the error through an additional prompt, and the bot would correct it."
When it comes to the thorny issue of students using ChatGPT, the teacher was sanguine, noting that "students have always been cheating — whether that's copying a classmate's homework or getting a sibling to write an essay — and I don't think ChatGPT will change that."
Thus far, Ahern's school hasn't yet banned the use of ChatGPT, and she's hoping it stays that way.
"ChatGPT is a fantastic learning tool that students can use as a private tutor," she wrote. "We are in the generation of AI, and students need to learn how to use it responsibly."
As for the future of in-classroom teaching, Ahern believes concerns over AIs taking over our jobs are overblown.
"I don't think ChatGPT will ever replace teachers or make our jobs harder," the teacher wrote. "There will always be a need for us and the human connection that comes with in-person instruction."
More on AI pragmatism: Noam Chomsky: AI Isn't Coming For Us All, You Idiots
The post High School Teacher Confesses to Using ChatGPT for Work appeared first on Futurism.
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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It didn't get much attention when US President Joe Biden launched a biomanufacturing initiative last September.
Experts see pros and cons to allowing cellphones in class
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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Students around the world are being separated from their phones.
Regenerating bone with deer antler stem cells
Chinese Scientists Stem
500+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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Scientists from a collection of Chinese research institutions collaborated on a study of organ regeneration in mammals, finding deer antler blastema progenitor cells are a possible source of conserved regeneration cells in higher vertebrates. Published in the journal Science, the researchers suggest the findings have applications in clinical bone repair. With the activation of key characteristic genes, it could potentially be used in regenerative medicine for skeletal, long bone or limb regeneration.
Researcher applies evolutionary math to March Madness
March Madness NCAA
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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March Madness is upon us and with it, the tradition of making tournament brackets. Where most of us see a grid of future travails and triumphs that will determine the NCAA Division I champions, Stanford mathematical geneticist Noah Rosenberg sees something more: evolutionary history.
New study finds early warning signs prior to 2002 Antarctic ice shelf collapse
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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In 2002, an area of ice about the size of Rhode Island dramatically broke away from Antarctica as the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed. A new study of the conditions that led to the collapse may reveal warning signs to watch for future Antarctic ice shelf retreat, according to a Penn State-led team of scientists.
Air pollution impairs successful mating of flies, shows study
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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Insect sexual communication relies to a significant extent on pheromones, chemical attractants that specifically allow males and females of a species to mate. Sex pheromones are distinctive to males and females of a species. Even the smallest differences, such as those observed in the formation of new species, ensure that mating no longer takes place, because males and females only find each other through the unmistakable odor of their conspecifics.
100+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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An international team of planetary scientists has characterized some of the features of an exoplanet named HD-207496-b, located approximately 138 light years from Earth. In their paper accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, and currently posted on the arXiv preprint server, the group describes their study of the exoplanet and the two theories regarding its likely makeup.
Finding your feet on civvy street: Navigating a second career after military service
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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A nation's armed forces rely on personnel to defend that nation through their strength, determination, and ability to adapt to modern warfare whether their role is on land, sea, or in the air. In most countries, young recruits join the military willingly as a career choice. There are, of course, some countries that have national service, or conscription. This might also change in times of conflict. Those who sign up are generally well aware that their careers will have a duration that is far shorter than that of someone working in civilian life in general, unless of course, they rise through the ranks to the upper echelons of service, when retirement might come later.
Casting light on counterfeit products through nano-optical technology
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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Each year, an estimated two trillion dollars is lost globally due to counterfeit products ranging from jewelry to medicine. As current security labels and product authentication methods are rapidly becoming obsolete or easy to hack, there is a rising urgency for more secure anti-counterfeiting labels.
The psychological benefits of commuting that remote work doesn't provide
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 05:14PM
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For most American workers who commute, the trip to and from the office takes nearly one full hour a day—26 minutes each way on average, with 7.7% of workers spending two hours or more on the road.
Regenerating bone with deer antler stem cells
Chinese Scientists Mice
400+Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 05:13PM
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Scientists from a collection of Chinese research institutions collaborated on a study of organ regeneration in mammals, finding deer antler blastema progenitor cells are a possible source of conserved regeneration cells in higher vertebrates. Published in the journal Science, the researchers suggest the findings have applications in clinical bone repair. With the activation of key characteristic genes, it could potentially be used in regenerative medicine for skeletal, long bone or limb regeneration.
Air pollution impairs successful mating of flies, shows study
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 05:13PM
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Insect sexual communication relies to a significant extent on pheromones, chemical attractants that specifically allow males and females of a species to mate. Sex pheromones are distinctive to males and females of a species. Even the smallest differences, such as those observed in the formation of new species, ensure that mating no longer takes place, because males and females only find each other through the unmistakable odor of their conspecifics.
Breaking the bias: how to deliver gender equity in conservation
Nature by Robyn James / March 14, 2023 at 05:12PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00779-7
Sexist stereotyping abounds in conservation science, says Robyn James. Here’s how to change it.
Asteroid collision shows how much amateur astronomers have to offer
Nature / March 14, 2023 at 05:12PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00671-4
Astronomy, like other scientific fields, continues to benefit from working scientists collaborating with amateur colleagues.
Scientific Reports by Hisayuki Nakatani / March 14, 2023 at 05:09PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31488-w
Rapid oxidative fragmentation of polypropylene with pH control in seawater for preparation of realistic reference microplastics
36Discover Magazine by Cody Cottier / March 14, 2023 at 05:06PM
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Our growing knowledge of physical laws has allowed us to rewind the tape on the universe, tracing its evolution back to within a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Here, however, when the sum total of matter and energy coalesces in a ball of infinite density and temperature, the equations of general relativity break down. As a theory, “the Big Bang leaves out the bang,” physicist Brian Green writes in The Fabric of the Cosmos. Whatever happened in that instant, let alone before that moment, is anyone’s (well-reasoned) guess — and there is no shortage of guesses of how the universe began. What Happened Before the Big Bang? First, a caveat: Many experts argue that the word “before” misses the mark. It assumes there was some pre-existing time separate from the universe, when really, time and space may have emerged out of the universe. In this view, the question — “what came before the big bang?” — is literally meaningless. Stephen Law, an Oxford philosopher, has suggested in interviews that what we need is not an answer to these kinds of questions, but “a kind of therapy, an explanation that will make us realize why it’s time to stop asking the question.” The idea pushes human language and intuition to their breaking point, but we can try to make sense of it with a favorite analogy of the late physicist Stephen Hawking: Wondering what happened before the big bang is like wondering what’s south of the South Pole. It’s not even accurate to say there is nothing farther south; the point is that the question itself is nonsensical. We’re trying to pin down something that simply doesn’t exist. How Did the Universe Begin? That response may seem intellectually unsatisfying. Surely the universe came from something. How could all this bewildering beauty and complexity have its origin in … nothing? One solution, dating back to Aristotle, is that there was no origin for motion in the universe — it has always existed. Newton, Einstein and others of their caliber believed the cosmos to be eternal and static, until the astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered in the 1920s that all galaxies are expanding away from each other. That implied a starting point, the famed “singularity.” So, whence the singularity? Scoffing at Aristotle’s need for a “first cause,” some physicists today respond that our notions of causality are irrelevant in the extreme conditions of the Big Bang. We must take a closer look at the scientific theories of how the universe began. Read More: Could the Big Bang Be Wrong? A Quantum Mechanics Solution Quantum mechanics has shown that even seemingly empty space is filled with fluctuating virtual particles which, through a process known as tunneling, may be able to generate matter. We only see such behavior at ultra-small scale, but back then the universe was the right size. One prominent advocate of this perspective is Alexander Vilenkin, a cosmologist at Tufts University. In a 1982 paper, written for an audience of professional physicists, he conceded that “the concept of the universe being created from nothing is a crazy one.” Nevertheless, he argued that the laws of physics alone could have given rise to all we see around us. (Physicists have even considered whether it’s possible to create a universe in a lab.) As MIT physicist Alan Lightman has described it, “the entire universe could have ‘suddenly’ appeared from wherever things originate in the impossible-to-fathom haze of quantum probabilities.” Still, you might suspect that this “nothing,” if it was compatible with the creation of reality as we know it, was “something” after all. A Universe From Nothing David Albert, a philosopher at Columbia University, has argued exactly that: “If what we formerly took for nothing turns out, on closer examination, to have the makings of protons and neutrons and tables and chairs and planets and solar systems and galaxies and universes in it, then it wasn’t nothing, and it couldn’t have been nothing, in the first place.” When it comes to understanding the concept of a universe from nothing, there’s an important difference between philosophical nothing and physical nothing. Namely, the latter still includes the laws of nature required for cosmic genesis. Even granting Albert’s point, though, we’re merely kicking the can down the road. Whatever our universe came from, that too must have come from something else (at least according to the commonsense expectations of feeble human brains). In other words, it’s “turtles all the way down,” as some academics put it. So, tabling that issue, let’s delve into some theories slightly less mired in philosophy. The Multiverse and Eternal Inflation When we try to imagine the Big Bang, the best we can do is to envision an event of extraordinary force and grandeur, the fireworks show to end them all — or, start them all. But what if, from the perspective of an even vaster cosmological landscape, it was just another Tuesday? For example, we could be the offspring of a larger proto-universe, which is continuously spawning new ones. This concept, known as eternal inflation, was developed in the 1980s, primarily by the physicists Alan Guth, Andrei Lind and Paul Steinhardt. Under the right conditions, they believe, quantum fluctuations can spark the outrageously fast expansion of “pocket universes.” That process could continue indefinitely, leading to a potentially infinite multiverse. Despite the theory’s name, however, inflation can only be eternal in the future, not in the past — how it began remains a mystery. Cyclic Universe Theory It’s also possible the Big Bang was not the start of our universe, but rather a transition from some earlier state. It could be that the cosmos cycles infinitely, each phase ending where the next begins, making the interval between the two more of a bounce than a bang. The cyclic universe theory supports the eternal universe idea, with all its comforting logic (that is, they don’t try to get something from nothing), while still accounting for cosmic evolution. According to one version of this story, the ekpyrotic model, our universe began in a collision between two “branes” — unconfirmed theoretical objects that exist in as many as 10 or 11 dimensions, depending on which version of string theory you subscribe to. The thinking goes that we live within a three-dimensional brane, which routinely slams into a second parallel brane, the two separated by higher-dimensional space. The energy produced by their encounter causes them to expand, then contract, and eventually come together again in the next clash. Read More: Did the Big Bang Happen More Than Once? Conformal Cyclic Cosmology Another alternative is conformal cyclic cosmology, the controversial brainchild of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose, who was inspired by a striking similarity between the birth and predicted death of the universe. Over the unimaginable course of a googol years (1 followed by 100 zeros), black holes will swallow every last bit of matter, then boil away in a process known as Hawking radiation, leaving behind a sea of massless photons. Surprisingly, that cold, quiet end is mathematically equivalent to the hot, energetic Big Bang — they are essentially the same, suggesting that one could blend into the other. In 2020, Penrose even claimed to have detected the imprint of a previous “cosmic eon” on our own, though many physicists are unconvinced. Until scientists find the much-sought-after unified theory, which would combine Einstein’s gravitational insights with the mind-bending mechanisms of the quantum world, our picture of the big bang will likely remain fuzzy. Strange as these scenarios are, the truth may be stranger still. In the meantime, lucky for us, physicists love to speculate how the universe began. Read More: Scientists Attempt to Map the Multiverse
How free-range eggs became the norm in supermarkets, and sold customers a lie
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 04:54PM
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The U.K. is in the grip of its largest ever outbreak of bird flu. As its name suggests, avian influenza primarily affects birds, but it can also infect humans and other mammals. The virus first emerged in China in 1996 and the highly pathogenic H5N1 is the predominant variant causing havoc at the moment.
Conservation of Nara Park deer results in unique genetic lineage
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 04:54PM
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The existing wildlife of a region is heavily shaped over generations by environmental factors and human activity. Activities like urbanization and hunting are known to reduce wildlife populations. However, some cultural or religious practices have, on occasion, preserved local animal populations.
EPA moves to limit toxic 'forever chemicals' in drinking water
300+NPR by The Associated Press / March 14, 2023 at 04:53PM
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The
EPA
proposed limiting the amount of harmful "forever chemicals" in drinking water to the lowest detectable levels, a move it said will save thousands of lives and prevent serious illnesses.
(Image credit: Travis Long/AP)
Who owns the internet of the future? | Ordinary Things
61TED Talks Daily (SD video) by contact@ted.com (TED) / March 14, 2023 at 04:46PM
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The emergence of data-driven mass surveillance "is threatening to turn privacy into a relic of the 20th century," says the anonymous YouTube creator known as Ordinary Things. Meanwhile, state-funded troll farms are spreading disinformation and curating chaos on platforms meant to connect us and revolutionize the way we live. Ordinary Things gives an enlightening account of the internet's strengths and weaknesses, warning that the fight for a free internet is a fight for our collective future.
Applying evolutionary game theory to investigate the relationship between inequality and intolerance
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:45PM
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In a world experiencing growing inequality and intolerance, tools borrowed from science and mathematics could be the key to understanding and preventing prejudice.
How free-range eggs became the norm in supermarkets, and sold customers a lie
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:45PM
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The U.K. is in the grip of its largest ever outbreak of bird flu. As its name suggests, avian influenza primarily affects birds, but it can also infect humans and other mammals. The virus first emerged in China in 1996 and the highly pathogenic H5N1 is the predominant variant causing havoc at the moment.
Lasers and chemistry reveal how ancient pottery was made, and how an empire functioned
100+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:45PM
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Peru's first great empire, the Wari, stretched for more than a thousand miles over the Andes Mountains and along the coast from 600 to 1000 CE. The pottery they left behind gives archaeologists clues as to how the empire functioned. In a new study forthcoming in the Journal of Archaeological Science and available as a pre-print on the SSRN server, researchers showed that rather than using "official" Wari pottery imported from the capital, potters across the empire were creating their own ceramics, decorated to emulate the traditional Wari style. To figure it out, the scientists analyzed the pottery's chemical make-up, with help from laser beams.
Cleaning up the atmosphere with quantum computing
54Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:45PM
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Is this article about Climate?
YESNO
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases daily with no sign of stopping or slowing. Too much of civilization depends on the burning of fossil fuels, and even if we can develop a replacement energy source, much of the damage has already been done. Without removal, the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere will continue to wreak havoc for centuries.
Reactive oxygen shown to impact carbon cycling in tidal sands
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:45PM
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Is this article about Sustainability?
YESNO
Reactive oxygen species—very reactive molecules containing oxygen—have a great impact on mineralization processes in tidal sandflats, finds a study now published in Nature Communications. Their investigation is thus important for understanding marine carbon cycling.
Droughts bring disease: Here are four ways they do it
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:45PM
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Countries in the Horn of Africa have been hit by a multiyear drought. Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda are expected to continue getting below-normal rainfall in 2023. Excluding Uganda, 36.4 million people are affected and 21.7 million are in need of food assistance.
From waste to clean water: Tiny carbon particles can do the job
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:45PM
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Many futuristic novels and films have explored what the world might look like without water. But water scarcity isn't a problem for the far-off future: it's already here.
Conservation of Nara Park deer results in unique genetic lineage
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:45PM
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The existing wildlife of a region is heavily shaped over generations by environmental factors and human activity. Activities like urbanization and hunting are known to reduce wildlife populations. However, some cultural or religious practices have, on occasion, preserved local animal populations.
How to Avoid the Dreaded Norovirus
61Scientific American News by Lauren J. Young / March 14, 2023 at 04:41PM
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The so-called winter vomiting disease has been closing schools and hitting long-term care facilities this year. Here’s what you should know
How to Avoid the Dreaded Norovirus
57Scientific American Content by Lauren J. Young / March 14, 2023 at 04:40PM
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The so-called winter vomiting disease has been closing schools and hitting long-term care facilities this year. Here’s what you should know
23Viden | DR / March 14, 2023 at 04:38PM
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Privattelefoner udgør også en sikkerhedsrisici, siger to eksperter.
Doc Makes a Killer Pass! Doc vs Ryan | Street Outlaws | Discovery
200+Discovery (uploads) on YouTube by Discovery / March 14, 2023 at 04:30PM
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Loneliness is down among older adults but still too high
Futurity.org by Kara Gavin-U. Michigan / March 14, 2023 at 04:29PM
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After three years of pandemic living, loneliness, isolation, and lack of social contact have finally started to decline among older adults. But they still remain high, researchers report.
Their new study finds that 1 in 3 people between ages 50 and 80 say they still sometimes or often experience these feelings, or sometimes go a week or longer without social contact with someone from outside their home. That’s down from about half of older adults in June 2020.
The percentages who currently feel lonely, isolated, or lacking contact were much higher among older adults who say their physical or mental health is fair or poor, as well as those with a health problem or disability that limits their daily activities and those who are not working or are unemployed.
“Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, we see reason for hope, but also a real cause for concern.”
Around half or more of the older adults in each of these groups currently experience these feelings. That’s a rate about twice as high as their peers who are in better health or don’t have a disability or activity-limiting health issue.
The new findings from the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging, gathered in late January, add to previous data from polls taken in 2018 and during all three pandemic years using the same questions. That allows the poll team to see that for older adults overall, these measures are nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, which were already high.
“Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, we see reason for hope, but also a real cause for concern,” says Preeti Malani, the poll’s senior adviser and former director, and a University of Michigan Medical School infectious disease professor who is also trained in geriatrics.
“If anything, the pandemic has shown us just how important social interaction is for overall mental and physical health, and how much more attention we need to pay to this from a clinical, policy, and personal perspective.”
Loneliness and isolation were high before the pandemic “and it will take a concerted effort to bring these rates down further,” says poll director Jeffrey Kullgren, associate professor of internal medicine at Michigan Medicine and physician and researcher at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.
“While we must always balance risk of infection with risk of isolation in older adults, we now know that a combination of vaccination, medication, testing, ventilation, and masking can protect even the most vulnerable and allow them to engage socially.”
The poll team notes that researchers have shown that chronic loneliness is associated with adverse impacts on mental, cognitive, and physical health, as well as general well-being and even longevity.
More about the findings:
- 37% of older adults say they felt a lack of companionship in the past year, compared with 41% in June 2020 and 34% in 2018.
- 34% of older adults reported feeling isolated from others, down from 56% in June 2020 but still higher than the 27% who said the same in 2018.
- 33% of older adults say they infrequently (once a week or less) have social contact with family they don’t live with, or friends or neighbors, down from 46% in 2020 but higher than the 28% seen in 2018.
- In general, rates of all three measures plateaued in 2021 and 2022, down from June 2020 highs, before dropping in the January 2023 poll.
- Mental health: Rates of feeling a lack of companionship were more than twice as high among those who say their mental health is fair or poor (73%) than among those who report better mental health (excellent, very good, or good). Similarly, 77% of those in the fair/poor mental health group reported feeling isolated compared with 29% in the better mental health group, and 56% of those in the fair/poor mental health group reported infrequent social contact compared with 30% in the better mental health group.
- Physical health: The differences were less stark but still large among those who reported fair or poor physical health compared with those in better physical health. 55% of the fair/poor group and 33% of the better group experienced lack of companionship, 55% vs. 29% experienced isolation, and 56% vs. 29% experienced lack of social contact.
- Disability or health condition: 51% of those who have a disability or health condition that they say limits their activity also say they experience a lack of companionship, compared with 30% of those without such conditions. The percentages were similar for feelings of isolation.
- Living alone: 47% of those who live alone report a lack of companionship, compared with 33% of those who live with others. There was a smaller but still measurable difference between the two groups in feelings of isolation.
“Despite the modest improvement these results show, social isolation and loneliness are still an urgent concern for older adults,” says Claire Casey, president of AARP Foundation. “Research shows that social isolation affects health and well-being, and can lead to unemployment. Greater economic security for older adults demands that we address loneliness.”
Source: University of Michigan
The post Loneliness is down among older adults but still too high appeared first on Futurity.
How disgust-related avoidance behaviors help animals survive
46Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 04:23PM
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Animals risk getting sick every day, just like humans, but how do they deal with that risk? An international team led by Dr. Cecile Sarabian from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) examines the use of disgust-related avoidance behaviors amongst animals and their role in survival strategy.
DNA origami boosts electrochemical biosensor performance
64Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:23PM
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Is this article about Tech & Scientific Innovation?
YESNO
New results provide a platform for more efficient, selective, and sensitive DNA biosensors that can be used in detecting various pathogens and diseases.
How disgust-related avoidance behaviors help animals survive
67Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:23PM
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Animals risk getting sick every day, just like humans, but how do they deal with that risk? An international team led by Dr. Cecile Sarabian from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) examines the use of disgust-related avoidance behaviors amongst animals and their role in survival strategy.
ExoMars: Back on track for the red planet
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:23PM
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A year has passed since the launch of the ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover mission was put on hold, but the work has not stopped for the ExoMars teams in Europe.
Nanoripples in graphene can make it a strong catalyst
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 04:23PM
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A team of researchers led by Prof. Andre Geim from the National Graphene Institute (NGI) have discovered that nanoripples in graphene can make it a strong catalyst, contrary to general expectations that the carbon sheet is as chemically inert as the bulk graphite from which it is obtained.
Cannabisbaseret smertebehandling kan stadigvæk ikke anbefales
Dagens Medicin by Steffen Boesen / March 14, 2023 at 04:19PM
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General Motors Wants to Put ChatGPT in Its Cars
General Motors ChatGPT
61Futurism by Frank Landymore / March 14, 2023 at 04:14PM
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Feedly AI found 1 Partnerships mention in this article
- General Motors is making use of its existing collaboration with Microsoft by exploring ways to incorporate a ChatGPT-powered assistant into its cars, Reuters reports, confirming an earlier Semafor report.
Onboard Assistant
General Motors
is making use of its existing collaboration with Microsoft by exploring ways to incorporate a
ChatGPT
-powered assistant into its cars, Reuters reports, confirming an earlier Semafor report.
"ChatGPT is going to be in everything," GM Vice President Scott Miller told Reuters in an interview.
In other words, the carmaker is looking to cash in on the AI trend by shoehorning an AI chatbot, which has a strong tendency to lie and mislead, into its cars. What could possibly go wrong?
Clearly, very little thought has been put into the idea so far, with Miller spitballing some possible use cases.
Beyond executing simple commands like changing the volume, Miller says a future AI could provide users with information on using a car's features, be used to program a garage door, or even integrate your virtual calendar of choice.
Miller elaborated to Semafor that this could look like asking the car how to change a tire if one of them became flat, which could then prompt the car to play an instructional video.
Or, perhaps, it could even inform a driver on whether they should keep driving or pull over immediately.
In short, it won't exactly be KITT from the 80s TV show "Knight Rider," but it would be more than what cars currently can do.
"This shift is not just about one single capability like the evolution of voice commands, but instead means that customers can expect their future vehicles to be far more capable and fresh overall when it comes to emerging technologies," a GM spokesperson told Reuters.
Car Tech
Car companies have long had a terminal case of Silicon Valley envy, especially since all-powerful smartphones started making up for lackluster infotainment systems in almost every recently built car on the road today.
For better or worse, incorporating an AI chatbot that could potentially replace a smartphone assistant like Apple's Siri seems like a natural inevitability for the industry, especially given the general boom of investment in AI technology.
How that will work out with an AI like ChatGPT, which can be unreliable when it comes to dispensing factual information or working within a specific context, remains to be seen.
More on ChatGPT: ChatGPT Is Coming to Slack Because We Live and Work in Hell
The post General Motors Wants to Put ChatGPT in Its Cars appeared first on Futurism.
Their Parents Were Family Influencers, Now Their Kids Hate Them
300+Futurism by Maggie Harrison / March 14, 2023 at 04:14PM
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Momfluencers of the world, listen up.
Bottling your kid's childhood into social media content for the sake of monetization, as a number of affected kids recently explained to Teen Vogue, will make them absolutely miserable. And when those kids grow up, they'll probably hate you.
As they likely should. The pervasive trend — "sharenting," "famfluencing," call it what you want — is like Child Acting 2.0, but with even fewer legal protections. Worst of all, it's accessible to pretty much every parent with a camera and the will to publish every inch of their children's lives on social media.
And no matter how "authentic" this content might appear, once the money starts rolling in, the reality of running this kind of business is that parents become employers, while their kids become legally unprotected, unconsenting employees, made to act out their childhoods instead of actually living them.
Now, affected kids are starting to speak out about the horrors of having to live this kind of life.
"That's not fair that I have to support everyone," one of these kids, who reportedly first went viral when she was a toddler and has lived a life on-camera ever since, told Teen Vogue, speaking under condition of anonymity. "I try not to be resentful but I kind of [am]."
"Nothing they do now is going to take back the years of work I had to put in," she said, adding that she's considering going no-contact with them when she turns 18.
And who can blame her? Being forced to financially support your family as a minor amounts to "a lot of pressure," the teen told the publication.
And it's not the only dark side to this kind of content creation. Scholars are consistently finding that social media isn't good for kids in the first place, and child vloggers told Teen Vogue that the content that their parents have published has resulted in harassment by predators, bullying by peers and even teachers, anxiety over their safety, and more.
That's not to mention the fact that these kids never even signed up for this and have practically no legal protections.
"I plead [with] you to be the voice of this generation of children because I know firsthand what it’s like to not have a choice in which a digital footprint you didn’t create follows you around for the rest of your life," Cam, a 24-year-old ex-content kid who doesn't go by her legal name out of concern for her safety, told legislators during a hearing last month.
The hearing was about a bill that would give kids the option to have their parent-published digital footprints removed from the internet entirely once they turn 18.
Living like this sounds very scary, and our heart goes out to these kids. No one should have to perform their own childhood, and intimate moments should remain as just that.
And if you don't believe us, believe them.
"To any parents that are considering starting a family vlog or monetizing your children's lives on the public internet, here is my advice: you shouldn't do it," another affected child, who also chose not to reveal her identity, recently wrote in a letter to a TikTok satirist named Caroline, who read the letter aloud to her 2.3 million followers on the platform.
"Any money you get will be greatly overshadowed by years of suffering," the letter continued, "your child will never be normal… I never consented to being online."
READ MORE: Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content [Teen Vogue]
More on kids and social media: US Surgeon General Warns Against 13-year-old Using Social Media
The post Their Parents Were Family Influencers, Now Their Kids Hate Them appeared first on Futurism.
From the archive: Saturn, and Charles Darwin shares animal stories
Nature / March 14, 2023 at 04:11PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00707-9
Snippets from Nature’s past.
Guidelines Warn Against Racial Categories in Genetic Research
98NYT > Science by Carl Zimmer / March 14, 2023 at 04:10PM
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A new report from the National Academies of Science noted that race was a poor proxy for genetic diversity.
Global Microbiome Study Gives New View of Shared Health Risks
100+Quanta Magazine by Yasemin Saplakoglu / March 14, 2023 at 03:59PM
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Our bodies consist of about 30 trillion human cells, but they also host about 39 trillion microbial cells. These teeming communities of bacteria, viruses, protozoa and fungi in our guts, in our mouths, on our skin and elsewhere — collectively called the human microbiome — don’t only consist of freeloaders and lurking pathogens. Instead, as scientists increasingly appreciate…
Litium och elbehandling kan minska självmord bland unga
forskning.se / March 14, 2023 at 03:50PM
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Läkemedel som litium och klozapin, men också elbehandling kan minska risken att tonårspojkar med psykisk sjukdom begår självmord. Det visar en studie som jämfört behandlingar i svenska regioner.
Inlägget Litium och elbehandling kan minska självmord bland unga dök först upp på forskning.se.
PET, Ørsted og lufthavn ser på israelsk isenkram til at neutralisere droner
Ingeniøren by Mette Munk / March 14, 2023 at 03:49PM
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Politiets Efterretningstjeneste og flere danske myndigheder har mødt flere af sværvægterne fra den israelske forsvarsindustri.
Health care providers rarely ask about gun access
Futurity.org by Patrice Harley-Rutgers / March 14, 2023 at 03:45PM
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Health care providers rarely ask patients if they have access to firearms in their home, according to a new study.
Doing so could diminish the risk of serious injury or death and encourage conversations about secure firearm storage, the researchers say.
For the study in Preventive Medicine researchers surveyed 3,510 English-speaking adults in five states: Colorado, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Texas, asking if a health care provider had ever asked them whether they have access to firearms.
They found that 17.1% of participants had been asked by a health care provider about firearm access. This number was largely consistent across groups, with 20.1% of those with children 17 years old or younger, 25.5% of those with a history of mental health treatment, and 21.4% of firearm owners ever having been screened for firearm access.
“Although we know that firearm access increases the risk for fatal injury for everyone in the home, health care providers are rarely asking about firearm access,” says lead author Allison Bond, a doctoral student at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University.
“In order to prevent these injuries and deaths, health care providers need consider adding screening for firearm access into standard practice so that they are better positioned to then provide resources on secure firearm storage to the families that would most benefit from that information.”
The researchers also examined which factors were associated with greater odds of having been screened by a health care provider for firearm access.
They found that people with a lifetime history of suicidal thoughts, men, those who identified as white, parents with children 17 years old or younger living in the home, those with a history of mental health treatment, and firearm owners were more likely to have been screened.
Among firearm owners, those with children in the home ages 17 or younger and those with a history of mental health treatment were more likely to have been screened. Even among groups with greater odds of having been screened, the majority of individuals had never been asked about firearm access.
“Given these results, it appears that screening is more likely among certain health care providers, like pediatricians and mental health care providers,” says Michael Anestis, executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, an associate professor in the Rutgers School of Public Health and senior author of the study.
“It may also be that health care providers are often relying upon their sense of who is most likely to own a firearm when making a decision whether or not to ask.”
“The problem with that, however, is that the demographics of firearm ownership have changed in the past few years and many of those at greatest risk for firearm injury or death never present in specialized mental health care settings,” says Anestis. “We need health care providers to broaden their vision of the role of firearm access to ensure they can help the greatest number of people.”
Source: Rutgers University
The post Health care providers rarely ask about gun access appeared first on Futurity.
How young people of color can handle racial stressors
Futurity.org by Carrie Spector-Stanford / March 14, 2023 at 03:45PM
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How can young people of color manage racial stressors and heal from trauma?
For many Black youth, contemporary life in the United States involves a regular barrage of racial stressors—from hearing racist comments and slurs to witnessing horrific video footage of police violence against Black men and women, often compounded by seeing those responsible subsequently held unaccountable.
What toll do these experiences take on young people’s mental health? And how can the adults in their lives, especially parents and teachers, address both the impact and the persistence of this type of trauma?
Farzana Saleem is an assistant professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education whose research lies at the intersection of race, culture, and mental health. A clinical-community psychologist by training, she explores the influence of racial stressors on psychological health and well-being, as well as family and community factors that can disrupt the consequences of racial stress and trauma. She teaches courses on African American child and adolescent mental health and has published extensively on ethnic-racial socialization, the process by which children come to understand race and manage experiences of discrimination.
This month Saleem launched an 11-week intervention in four Bay Area schools, designed to help middle and high school students address and heal from racial stress and trauma. She is also the coauthor of Healing Racial Stress Workbook for Black Teens: Skills to Help You Manage Emotions, Resist Racism, and Feel Empowered, scheduled for publication this summer, which includes activities to support youth in processing stressors and making sense of the emotions that arise.
Here, Saleem discusses the impact of racial stress on Black youth, different types of messages that can influence how young people understand and respond to racism, and other strategies for families and communities to help address racial trauma:
The post How young people of color can handle racial stressors appeared first on Futurity.
Group exercise gets older adults moving solo
Futurity.org by Brian Consiglio-Missouri / March 14, 2023 at 03:45PM
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An eight-week group resistance training program helps older adults maintain long-term exercise habits and increase their self-confidence, research finds.
A new study finds that even when gyms were closed and other COVID-19 restrictions limited face-to-face meetings, older adults who completed the Stay Strong, Stay Healthy exercise program continued to maintain long-term exercise habits independently. That effort resulted in improved lifestyle changes and an increase in both physical energy and self-confidence.
“We sent the surveys three months, six months, nine months, and 12 months after their first Stay Strong, Stay Healthy class,” says Kristin Miller, an assistant extension professor in the University of Missouri School of Health Professions.
“We were hoping that they would continue to exercise regularly after the class, but we did not know to what degree or magnitude, so we were happy to learn most participants independently sustained the exercise habits they developed during the group program.”
Miller collaborated with Bree Baker, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University, to review the 12-month follow-up surveys from adults over age 50 who had taken the eight-week Stay Strong, Stay Healthy resistance training course.
Baker adds that the participants not only reported long-term physical health benefits, including better sleep and higher energy levels, but they also reported more self-confidence in their ability to complete basic daily tasks, which sometimes become more difficult for older adults as they age. Previous studies have shown that the Stay Strong, Stay Healthy program, which includes instructor-led strength training exercises like squats, bicep curls, and lunges, improves muscle strength, balance, flexibility, and sleep, as well as decreases the risk of falls for older adults.
“I think sometimes people may be unsure of themselves so they may lack the confidence that they can do certain things,” Baker says. “It was great to see that they discovered if they can lift weights or complete various exercises, they can clearly go do other things that they are interested in. So I think Stay Strong, Stay Healthy helped them build their confidence and it opened their eyes to all the other things that they can do in their life.”
Miller has seen the program’s effect on older adults firsthand after her own parents volunteered to participate in the Stay Strong, Stay Healthy eight-week class.
“My parents were in the randomized control trial, and they still continue to do all those healthy habits they learned during the class to this day,” Miller says. “I’ve been their daughter this entire time telling them to do all these things, but it took them taking the class to actually jump start their increased activity levels and make it last.”
After 18 years, the program has reached more than 20,000 older adults and expanded to some of Missouri’s neighboring states, including Oklahoma. The findings of this study can help the program continue to grow and potentially be implemented nationwide.
“If you only have anecdotal example of the health benefits, that is one thing, but now with the scientific proof of the various health benefits, national governing bodies and funding organizations are more likely to provide funding to this program that has evidence that it works,” Baker says.
A study on the findings appears in the Journal of Sports Sciences.
Source: University of Missouri
The post Group exercise gets older adults moving solo appeared first on Futurity.
Predicting overheating in thoroughbred racehorses
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 03:43PM
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Hotter, more humid weather conditions and a history of overheating may be factors in predicting whether a thoroughbred racehorse will suffer an incident of exertional heat illness (EHI), according to new research led by the University of Bristol and published in Scientific Reports. The findings, based on data from British racecourses, could be used to reduce the risk of racehorses experiencing EHI, particularly given the warming climate and more frequent hot race days.
Researchers reveal structure-property relationship of two-dimensional amorphous carbon
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 03:40PM
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Prof. Liu Lei's group from Peking University, users of the Steady-state High Magnetic Field Experimental Facility (SHMFF), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with Prof. Wang Zhaosheng from HFIPS and other collaborators, revealed the structure-property relationship in two-dimensional (2D) amorphous materials for the first time by studying amorphous monolayer carbon (AMC). The study was published in Nature.
Light and milling balls for greener chemical processes
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 03:40PM
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Light-driven chemical reactions have usually been conducted with large amounts of solvents that are often toxic. By combining them with mechanical energy in ball mills, Professor Lars Borchardt's team at the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry I at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has succeeded in carrying them out in the solid-state without resorting heavily to solvents.
What Did Nikola Tesla Do? The Truth Behind the Legend
Discover Magazine by Stephen C. George / March 14, 2023 at 03:34PM
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Nikola Tesla: Genius, visionary, inventor extraordinaire! What did he invent? Why, only the Era of Electricity, developing the very power system that still lights the world today. Oh, and also radio, X-ray imaging, radar, remote control, death rays and wireless communications with other worlds. Well … that’s if you believe the hype once generated by the man himself, amplified by the media of the early 20th century, and perpetuated today by legions of admirers. What Did Nikola Tesla Do? Even 80 years after his death, Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) is still revered — possibly more so than he was in life — as a rock star of the science world, his name elevated almost to the same dizzying heights as Newton, Curie or Einstein. Even Discover staffers are not immune to the Tesla mystique: After all, we put him smack in the middle of our own list of the greatest scientists ever. Read More: The 10 Greatest Scientists of All Time Today, Tesla fans the world over still see him as both hero and martyr, nemesis of the mighty Thomas Edison, tireless engineer of progress, and prophet of modernity whose reach often exceeded his grasp. That Tesla possessed a towering intellect and a dazzling view of the future cannot be disputed. But neither can the fact that he was also a born showman and inveterate self-mythologizer. Taken together, those qualities make it difficult sometimes to separate truth from myth. But here are the facts we do know that debunk — or at least clarify — a few of the most persistent legends about the man. What Did Nikola Tesla Invent? Lots of stories about Tesla credit him for inventing the first alternating current (AC) motor or sometimes even AC power itself. To be sure, the development of AC electricity was world-changing. AC outmatched direct current (or DC, championed by Edison) and its eventual acceptance paved the way for cheap, reliable, widespread electricity in an era illuminated by candles and gaslight. But the assertion that Tesla invented the whole thing is wildly — we might even say shockingly — inaccurate. In 1888, Tesla did develop and patent an AC motor, but he wasn’t the first. Plenty of scientists and engineers had worked on generating AC power — the earliest known generator dates at least to the 1830s. Polyphase AC Motor Less hyperbole-prone Tesla scholars and fans will clarify that Tesla’s great innovation was to create a polyphase AC motor, which could produce more power more efficiently and consistently than earlier single-phase systems (and more so than the DC system that Edison was pushing). But even here, Tesla wasn’t the first. Many historians assert that Italian physicist Galileo Ferraris first developed such a polyphase motor, but graciously allow that Tesla (and others) may have arrived at similar breakthroughs independently. Certainly, Tesla saw the potential for the motor and was quick to patent his. Moreover, his demonstration of the motor to a group of engineers was what first attracted the attention of George Westinghouse — Edison’s real adversary in the War of the Currents that would unfold when the primacy of AC over DC power was still in question. Westinghouse bought Tesla’s motor patent and together they would begin advancing AC power as the dominant form of electricity, notably with the 1895 installation of a hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls. The Famous Tesla Coil Wasn’t Unique While it’s true that Tesla patented his eponymous coil circuit in 1891, others were experimenting with similar devices before then — Elihu Thomson, for example (he and Edison would eventually co-found General Electric). But as with his polyphase AC motor, Tesla is credited with seeing many potential applications for the coil, including generating high-voltage electricity, sending and receiving certain kinds of radio waves, and even leading to the possibility of wireless lighting. Sold Out Lectures It didn’t hurt that the Tesla coil also made one heck of an impression when you switched it on, and Tesla used his device to full effect at various public demonstrations in the 1890s. These presentations made the man famous: His lectures were sold out and for most of the rest of his life he would be something of a media darling. What’s more, the theatrical effects of the larger versions of this lightning-spitting coil would reverberate well into the next century. In the golden age of Hollywood horror and monster movies, it was practically a law that any set dressing of a mad scientist’s lab had to include Tesla coils. You can still find them attracting outsized attention at many museums and science centers. Nikola Tesla vs Thomas Edison Thanks to movies, books and even popular comics, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Tesla and Thomas Edison were archenemies on the level of Superman and Lex Luthor. There was indeed a dramatic and sometimes bizarre struggle to determine whether DC or AC would be the dominant form of electricity to illuminate the world. However, that conflict had as much to do with business rivalries as it did with science, and Edison and Westinghouse were its main adversaries. Read More: Edison’s Cruel Quest to Show the Dangers of Alternating Current Here's the real lowdown on the relationship between the two: Tesla and Edison certainly knew each other — Tesla even worked for Edison briefly, then left to pursue his own interests, including AC power. But far from being combatants on opposing sides of the electricity camp, historical accounts paint a different picture of the two men, one of mutual respect. In no less an institution of record than The New York Times, Tesla lauded his former boss’s “great genius and undying achievements.” Meanwhile, Edison once referred to Tesla as “one of the greatest electrical geniuses the world has ever seen.” Hardly the words of sworn enemies. Now You Know What Nikola Tesla Is Known For In the end, maybe Edison deserves the last word on Tesla. Like so many great minds and agents of change, Tesla’s real claims to science immortality shouldn’t depend on whether or not he invented something wholly new. What matters is that his innovations — and his inexhaustible enthusiasm to promote their uses — advanced human progress, while his life and legend continue to inspire new generations of makers and thinkers. Read More: How the U.S. Could Have an All-Renewable Energy Grid
Hungry Monkeys Could Be Making Stone Tools
97Discover Magazine by Matt Hrodey / March 14, 2023 at 03:34PM
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Did early hominins create their first tools by accident? And if so, how does one define tool creation, the sophisticated use of which has long set our species apart? These are questions at the heart of a new study led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, which could also disrupt much of Stone Age archaeology, if not intentionally. The team studied long-tailed macaque monkeys in a Thai national park. The monkeys are prolific bashers of palm nuts using a rudimentary but effective system: a smaller stone (termed a hammerstone) bashed against a larger one, the “anvil,” with a nut in between. The fact that the monkeys, including Capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees, use this method is unremarkable, however. What has sent reverberations through science is the discovery that when the macaque tools fracture and chip, they create “flakes” that closely resemble stone age tools, which raises new questions. Ancient Tools or Modern Stones? So here’s the new warning: Flakes that come from areas fraught with “percussive” bashing “should not be assumed to be exclusively the result of intentional flake production,” the study says. In other words, a million-year-old hominin tool might not be what it appears. The team collected 1,119 stone pieces from the park, including many stone flakes that would have normally attracted a few assumptions: A person made them who understood how rocks fracture and that the person possessed fine motor skills. While the monkeys possess the latter, the former doesn't apply, scientists believe. To further muddy the waters, both monkeys and early humans have left behind similar flake deposits, although the hominins also drew on useful stone types not common to the local area, an important marker. Analyzing the Stone Flakes As a statistical experiment, the researchers compared the macaque flakes to a group of tools from the Oldowan, a 2.5-million-year-old culture that is the oldest to have used tools. Residents of modern-day Africa, they used roughly hewn “choppers” for just about anything, including animal butchering and plant chopping. The experiment found that given close similarities with the macaque flakes, 30 to 70 percent of the Oldowan-made flakes could be swapped with the monkey-made flakes. “Our study shows that stone tool production is not unique to humans and our ancestors,” says lead author Tomos Proffitt in a press release, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. A 2017 study of the same monkeys found that they also used stones to crack open shellfish, and the researchers there suggested this amounted to a type of cultural transference. But the paper found this culture was pretty limited as the macaques lacked any discerning preference for rock shape or weight. The new study also builds on a 2016 paper that found similar behaviors, and similar tool-producing, among a group of capuchin monkeys in Brazil. Hominin tools may have started out this way, with one rock bashing against another, scientists have argued. And they now estimate the earliest human use of tools at about 3 million years ago, earlier even than the Oldowan.
Detect, bind and cut: Biomolecular action at the nanoscale
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 03:31PM
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Researchers at Kanazawa University report in ACS Nano how high-speed atomic force microscopy can be used to study the biomolecular mechanisms underlying gene editing.
Mix-and-match kit could enable astronauts to build a menagerie of lunar exploration bots
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 03:31PM
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When astronauts begin to build a permanent base on the moon, as NASA plans to do in the coming years, they'll need help. Robots could potentially do the heavy lifting by laying cables, deploying solar panels, erecting communications towers, and building habitats. But if each robot is designed for a specific action or task, a moon base could become overrun by a zoo of machines, each with its own unique parts and protocols.
Roman era gravesites with unusual funerary rites
57Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 03:31PM
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A team of archaeologists from KU Leuven and the Royal Belgium Institute of Natural Sciences, both in Belgium, reports unusual funerary practices by early Roman Empire–era people living in what is now a southwest part of Turkey. In their paper published in the journal Antiquity, the group describes the burial site and the artifacts found there.
Predicting overheating in thoroughbred racehorses
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 03:31PM
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Hotter, more humid weather conditions and a history of overheating may be factors in predicting whether a thoroughbred racehorse will suffer an incident of exertional heat illness (EHI), according to new research led by the University of Bristol and published in Scientific Reports. The findings, based on data from British racecourses, could be used to reduce the risk of racehorses experiencing EHI, particularly given the warming climate and more frequent hot race days.
The secret to preserving stem cell identity over time
Cancer 2023 Stem Cells
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 03:31PM
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Throughout our lives, a small pool of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) ensures the stable production of a wide range of blood and immune cells in our bodies. RIKEN researchers have now discovered how these cells preserve their ability to develop into different cells—even after many years and countless rounds of cell division. Their research is published in Nature Communications.
Exploring how climate change alters a human-raptor relationship
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 03:31PM
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Bald Eagles and dairy farmers exist in a mutually beneficial relationship in parts of northwestern Washington State. According to a new study, this "win-win" relationship has been a more recent development, driven by the impact of climate change on eagles' traditional winter diet of salmon carcasses, as well as by increased eagle abundance following decades of conservation efforts. The research is published in the journal Ecosphere.
EPA to Restrict Toxic PFAS Chemicals in Drinking Water
EPA Chemicals Water
2KNYT > Science by Lisa Friedman / March 14, 2023 at 03:29PM
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The government will strictly limit in drinking water two chemicals that are ubiquitous in modern society but are linked to a range of health effects.
Black widows are being slaughtered by their brown widow cousins, and we don't know why
100+Livescience / March 14, 2023 at 03:24PM
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Brown widow spiders, which are invasive to North America, are wiping out
black widow
populations in the U.S. by aggressively attacking them for no clear reason, a new study shows.
The secret to preserving stem cell identity over time
Cancer 2023 Stem Cells
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 03:18PM
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Throughout our lives, a small pool of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) ensures the stable production of a wide range of blood and immune cells in our bodies. RIKEN researchers have now discovered how these cells preserve their ability to develop into different cells—even after many years and countless rounds of cell division. Their research is published in Nature Communications.
Scientific Reports by Mari Terayama / March 14, 2023 at 03:17PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31267-7
Author Correction: Clinical relevance of leukocyte-associated endotoxins measured by semi-automatic synthetic luminescent substrate method
Author Correction: Magnetic field and nuclear spin influence on the DNA synthesis rate
Scientific Reports by Sergey V. Stovbun / March 14, 2023 at 03:17PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31317-0
Author Correction: Magnetic field and nuclear spin influence on the DNA synthesis rate
Researchers Say They've Come Up With a Blueprint for Creating a Wormhole in a Lab
Quantum Paves Wormhole
1KFuturism by Noor Al-Sibai / March 14, 2023 at 03:16PM
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Humans may have gotten one step closer to figuring out how to make wormholes thanks to fascinating new research.
That's at least according to Hatim Saleh, a research fellow at the University of Bristol and co-founder of the startup DotQuantum, who claims to have invented what he calls "counterportation," which "provides the first-ever practical blueprint for creating in the lab a wormhole that verifiably bridges space," according to a statement.
Published in the journal Quantum Science and Technology, Saleh's research focused on a novel quantum computing technique that should — at least on paper — be able to reconstitute a small object across space "without any particles crossing."
While it's an exciting prospect, realizing his vision will require a lot more time and effort — not to mention next-generation quantum computers that haven't been designed, let alone built yet. That is if it's even possible at all.
Counterportation can be achieved, the study suggests, by the construction of a small "local wormhole" in a lab — and as the press release notes, plans are already underway to actually build the groundbreaking technology described in the paper.
While it sounds a lot like teleportation, Saleh noted that it's not quite the same thing.
"While counterportation achieves the end goal of teleportation, namely disembodied transport, it remarkably does so without any detectable information carriers traveling across," the quantum expert said.
The concept relies on a unique aspect of quantum physics called quantum entanglement, which allows "entirely separate quantum particles" to "be correlated without ever interacting," as University of Bristol optical communication systems professor John Rarity explained in the statement.
"This correlation at a distance can then be used to transport quantum information (qubits) from one location to another without a particle having to traverse the space, creating what could be called a traversable wormhole," he added.
To make counterportation a reality, however, is going to take a whole lot more research — and future breakthroughs in the quantum computing field.
"If counterportation is to be realized, an entirely new type of quantum computer has to be built: an exchange-free one, where communicating parties exchange no particles," said Saleh.
Unfortunately, these machines are still a distant dream as "no one yet knows how to build" them, Saleh admitted.
When and if this exchange-free quantum computer is built, per the researcher, it could prove revolutionary in the field.
"By contrast to large-scale quantum computers that promise remarkable speed-ups, which no one yet knows how to build, the promise of exchange-free quantum computers of even the smallest scale is to make seemingly impossible tasks — such as counterportation — possible, by incorporating space in a fundamental way alongside time," Saleh boasted.
While this definitely sounds like something out of the plot of the 2014 film "Interstellar," reconstituting small objects by leveraging the weirdness of the quantum world is an exciting proposition whether it's a long shot or not.
More on wormholes: Objects We Thought Were Black Holes May Actually Be Wormholes, Scientists Say
The post
Say They've Come Up With a Blueprint for Creating a Wormhole in a Lab appeared first on Futurism.
BRD9-mediated chromatin remodeling suppresses osteoclastogenesis through negative feedback mechanism
Nature Communications by Jiahui Du / March 14, 2023 at 03:15PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37116-5
Osteoclast differentiation is critical for bone homeostasis. The authors show the negative feedback regulation of
BRD9
-mediated chromatin remodeling on osteoclastogenesis via interferon beta signaling and its therapeutic potential for bone diseases.
Nature Communications by Yi Wang / March 14, 2023 at 03:15PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37008-8
Exploring highly active and durable Ru-based electrocatalysts for acidic water oxidation is challenging. Here authors reported an ion-exchange adsorption strategy to regulate oxygen vacancies and Rh dopant, with a corresponding fundamental investigation on the lattice oxygen oxidation and the oxygen vacancy site.
Bo Libergren overtager for Stephanie Lose i Region Syddanmark
Dagens Medicin by Simon Vinther / March 14, 2023 at 03:13PM
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There’s no one ‘best’ diet for promoting health
56Nature / March 14, 2023 at 03:03PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00752-4
Several diets are linked to lower rates of chronic disease — but eating red and processed meats poses a higher risk.
Receptor 'blasting' visualized: Scientists develop new technology to study important receptors
Biochemistry News – Chemistry News / March 14, 2023 at 03:03PM
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Adhesion GPCRs are a group of G protein-coupled receptors associated with many body functions and diseases. However, they have not yet been sufficiently studied to be used for therapies. Two research groups at the Rudolf Schönheimer Institute at the Faculty of Medicine at Leipzig University have now jointly developed a technology to change this.
The First Complete Brain Map of an Insect May Reveal Secrets for Better AI
Complete Map Insect Brain
33Singularity Hub by Shelly Fan / March 14, 2023 at 03:03PM
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Breakthroughs don’t often happen in neuroscience, but we just had one. In a tour-de-force, an international team released the full brain connectivity map of the young fruit fly, described in a paper published last week in Science. Containing 3,016 neurons and 548,000 synapses, the map—called a connectome—is the most complex whole-brain wiring diagram to date.
“It’s a ‘wow,’” said Dr. Shinya Yamamoto at Baylor College of Medicine, who was not involved in the work.
Why care about a fruit fly? Far from uninvited guests at the dinner table, Drosophila melanogaster is a neuroscience darling. Although its brain is smaller than a poppy seed—a far cry from the 100 billion neurons that power human brains—the fly’s neural system shares similar principles to those that underlie our own brains.
This makes them excellent models to hone in on ideas of how our neural circuits wire to encode memories, make difficult decisions, or navigate social situations like flirting with a potential partner or hanging with a swarm of new friends.
To lead author Dr. Marta Zlatic at the University of Cambridge, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Janelia Research Campus,“All brains are similar—they are all networks of interconnected neurons—and all brains of all species have to perform many complex behaviors: they all need to process sensory information, learn, select actions, navigate their environments, choose food, escape from predators, etc.”
With the new connectome map, “we now have a reference brain,” she said.
A Behemoth Atlas
Connectomes are precious resources. Popularized by Sebastian Seung, the maps draw out neural connections within and across brain regions. Similar to tracing computer wires to reverse-engineer how different chips and processors fit together, the connectome is a valuable resource to crack the brain’s “neural code”—that is, the algorithms underlying its computations.
In other words, the connectome is essential to understanding the brain’s functions. It’s why similar work is underway in mice and humans, though at a much smaller scale or with far less detail.
Until now, scientists have only mapped three full-brain connectomes, all in worms—including the first animal to gain the honor, the nematode C. elegans. With just over 300 neurons, the project took over a decade, with an update released for both sexes in 2019.
Drosophila represents a far larger challenge with roughly ten times the number of neurons as C. elegans. But it’s also an ideal next candidate. For one, scientists have already sequenced its entire genome, making it possible to match genetic information to the fly’s neural wiring. This could especially come in handy for, say, deciphering how genes contributing to Alzheimer’s disease alters neural circuits. For another, fruit fly larvae have transparent bodies, making them far easier to image under a microscope.
Not all brain-wiring maps are created equal. Here, the team went for the highest resolution: mapping the whole brain at the synapse level. Synapses are junctions between neurons where they connect: picture two mushroom-shaped structures hovering near each other with a gap. Although neurons are often touted as the basic component of computing, synapses are where the magic happens—their connectivity helps functionally wire up neural circuits.
Neuron connectivity in the brain. Each dot represents a neuron, and those with more similar connectivity are closer. The lines show how neurons connect. Image Credit: Benjamin Pedigo
Slice and Dice and…Robots?
To map out synapses, the team turned to the big guns of microscopy: the electron microscope. Compared to microscopes in high school biology, this hardware can capture images at the nanoscale—roughly a tenth the width of a human hair.
The whole process sounds a bit like a wild dinner recipe. The team first soaked a single six-hour-old larvae brain inside a solution packed with heavy metals, which marinated into the neurons’ membranes and proteins inside synapses. The brains were then painstakingly sliced into ultra-thin sections with a diamond blade—imagine a deli-meat slicer—and put under a microscope.
The resulting images—all 21 million of them—were stitched together using software. The whole process took over a year and a half, with many hours spent manually checking the reconstructed neurons and synapses.
The final brain map didn’t just contain the location of neurons and their synapses—it also highlighted wiring quirks that could support highly efficient neural computations.
Winding Roads
The beauty of the new map is that it provides bird’s-eye information on brain connectivity, supercharged with the power of zoom-and-enhance.
“The most challenging aspect of this work was understanding and interpreting what we saw,” said Zlatic.
In one analysis, the team found that neurons can be grouped into 93 different types based on their connectivity, even if they share the same physical structure. It’s a drastic departure from the most common way of categorizing neurons. Rather than clustering them based on appearance or function, it may be more useful to focus on their connectivity “social network” instead.
Digging down to synapses, the team ran into another surprise. Let me explain: neurons have two main branches. One is the larger input cable—the axon—and the other is a tree-shaped output—the dendrite. Neurons usually “wire up” when synapses connect those two cables.
More recent studies, however, show that synapses on axons can connect with other synapses on axons; the same goes for dendrites. Analyzing the reconstructed brain, the team found evidence of these non-traditional connections.
“Now we need to reconsider them: we probably need to think about creating a new computational model of the nervous system,” said Dr. Chung-Chuang Lo at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.
On a broader scale, the map showed that neurons are eager to chat with others a half-world away. Almost 93 percent of neurons connected with a partner neuron in the other brain hemisphere, suggesting that long-range connections are incredibly common. Even more surprising was a peculiar population that didn’t reach out: dubbed Kenyon cells, these neurons mostly populate the fly’s learning and memory center. Why this happens is still unclear, but it illustrates the brain map’s ability to generate new insights and hypotheses.
Although the neurons and synapses are wired in a nicely compact “nested” multilayered structure, the connectome showed that some developed connections that jumped through layers—a shortcut that hooks up otherwise separate circuits.
Even more fascinating was how much the brain “talks” to itself. Nearly 41 percent of neurons received recurrent input—that is, feedback from other parts of the brain. Each region had its own feedback program. For example, information generally flows from sensory areas of the brain to motor regions, although the reverse also happens and creates a feedback loop.
But perhaps the most socially adept neurons are those that pump out dopamine. Well known for encoding reward and driving learning, these neurons also had some of the most complex recurrent wirings compared to other types.
From shortcuts to recurrent wirings, these biological hardware structures could increase the brain’s computational capacity and compensate for the limited number of neurons and their biological restraints.
“None of us expected this at all,” said study author Dr. Michael Winding.
From Fly to AI
The study isn’t the first to map the Drosophila brain. Previously, a team led by Dr. Davi Bock at the Janella Research Campus targeted a small nub of the adult fruit fly brain responsible for learning and remembering smells with synapse-level detail. Zlatic’s team has also tracked a sensory circuit in the fruit fly larvae for making decisions by mapping only 138 neurons.
The full-brain connectome is a game-changer. For one, scientists now have a sophisticated reference brain to test out theories for neural computation. For another, the connectome map and its inferred computation resembles state-of-the-art machine learning.
“That’s really quite nice because we know that recurrent neural networks are pretty powerful in artificial intelligence,” said Zlatic. “By comparing this biological system, we can potentially also inspire better artificial networks.”
Image Credit: Michael Winding
Exploring how climate change alters a human-raptor relationship
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 03:02PM
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Bald Eagles and dairy farmers exist in a mutually beneficial relationship in parts of northwestern Washington State. According to a new study, this "win-win" relationship has been a more recent development, driven by the impact of climate change on eagles' traditional winter diet of salmon carcasses, as well as by increased eagle abundance following decades of conservation efforts. The research is published in the journal Ecosphere.
Study reveals how honeybees recognize dead mates
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 03:02PM
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A special group of workers in honey bees (Apis cerana), the undertakers, perform "undertaking behavior" to remove dead bodies. The undertakers rely on a signal associated with death to perform this behavior. However, it remains unclear how undertakers instantly recognize dead honey bees.
Scientists disable protective gene in mosquitoes, making them susceptible to disease
Mosquito Disease
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 03:02PM
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Immune pathways that protect mosquitoes from human pathogens, including West Nile, Zika and dengue viruses were disabled by Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists.
SYNSPUNKT Åben dør-ordning: En mulighed for at passe på arvesølvet
Ingeniøren by Admin Admin / March 14, 2023 at 03:01PM
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PLUS.
A Spotlight on Cancer Cell Metabolism
Cancer CAR Cell 2023
The Scientist RSS / March 14, 2023 at 02:59PM
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Feedly AI found 1 Participation in an Event mention in this article
- Deanna MacNeil from The Scientist's Creative Services Team will be joined by the entire panel in an open question and answer session where presenters will address questions posed by the audience.
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Receptor 'blasting' visualized: Scientists develop new technology to study important receptors
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:58PM
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Adhesion GPCRs are a group of G protein-coupled receptors associated with many body functions and diseases. However, they have not yet been sufficiently studied to be used for therapies. Two research groups at the Rudolf Schönheimer Institute at the Faculty of Medicine at Leipzig University have now jointly developed a technology to change this.
New calibration approach allows more widespread use of proton transfer reaction mass spectrometers
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:58PM
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- NPL and the University of Utrecht, Netherlands have collaborated to develop new SI-traceable gas reference materials and a fast calibration approach to improve the quantification and comparability of proton-transfer reaction mass spectrometry measurements.
NPL and the University of Utrecht, Netherlands have collaborated to develop new SI-traceable gas reference materials and a fast calibration approach to improve the quantification and comparability of proton-transfer reaction mass spectrometry measurements. The team's research has recently been published in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques.
Study reveals how honeybees recognize dead mates
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:58PM
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A special group of workers in honey bees (Apis cerana), the undertakers, perform "undertaking behavior" to remove dead bodies. The undertakers rely on a signal associated with death to perform this behavior. However, it remains unclear how undertakers instantly recognize dead honey bees.
Scientists disable protective gene in mosquitoes, making them susceptible to disease
Mosquito Disease
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:58PM
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Immune pathways that protect mosquitoes from human pathogens, including West Nile, Zika and dengue viruses were disabled by Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists.
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:58PM
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Swift and significant gains against climate change require the creation of novel, environmentally benign, and energy-efficient materials. One of the richest veins researchers hope to tap in creating such useful compounds is a vast chemical space where molecular combinations that offer remarkable optical, conductive, magnetic, and heat transfer properties await discovery.
Study finds ocean currents may affect rotation of Europa's icy crust
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:58PM
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Research reveals a new explanation for how the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa rotates at a different rate than its interior. NASA's Europa Clipper will take a closer look.
A mechanistic and probabilistic method for predicting wildfires
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:58PM
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Spanning long distances across variable terrains, electric power systems can spark wildfires in the event of dry weather and high winds. This may occur when conductor cables oscillate in such a way to become close to the surrounding vegetation.
The hidden danger of climate change on air travel: A more turbulent future
21Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:58PM
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Atmospheric turbulence accounts for 71% of in-flight weather-related injuries, and according to scientists at the University of Reading, U.K., turbulence is only worsening with global warming. While winter is typically the most turbulent season, modeling suggests that by the year 2050, summers will be as turbulent as winters were back in the 1950s.
Study elucidates metabolomic differences between kiwifruit root and fruit
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:58PM
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Kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis) is a kind of nutritious fruit with a good commercial value. In recent years, kiwifruit roots and fruits have been found to have good medicinal properties. Although previous studies have investigated the function of some metabolites in kiwifruit, few have elucidated the differences in the metabolites between the root and fruit of different representative varieties.
The Atlantic releases Holy Week: eight-episode narrative podcast, hosted by Vann R. Newkirk II
The Atlantic / March 14, 2023 at 02:41PM
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“The story we are often given transforms King’s death from a tragedy into a sort of redemption. The final chapter of a victorious movement for justice. But that story is wrong.”
Today The Atlantic has released Holy Week, an expansive eight-episode narrative podcast reported by senior editor Vann R. Newkirk II about the uprisings that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968––one of the most fiery, disruptive, and contentious weeks in American history––and how those seven days diverted the course of a social revolution. April 4, 1968, is remembered by many as the end of the civil-rights movement, and a time of loss. Holy Week tells a new story: a story that completely changes how we understand the entire trajectory of modern America.
All eight episodes of the podcast are available now; listen and subscribe at TheAtlantic.com/HolyWeek. Holy Week marks a return to narrative podcasts for The Atlantic following its Peabody-winning Floodlines, which was also hosted by Newkirk and was widely hailed as one of 2020’s best podcasts.
“Collective grief can have a way of warping the historical lens, trapping us in a moment and overshadowing some of what came before,” Vann narrates. In reporting the podcast over the past year, talking with people about the assassination and the unrest that upended their lives, he says: “What I’ve heard is a story about a break in time. It’s a story about the limits of racial reckonings. And about how trauma lives with people through time. It’s a story about hope, about grief, about dreams, and about dreams deferred.”
With dozens of original interviews and rarely heard archival material, Holy Week is told through the voices of those who witnessed history: activists and leaders of the movement, who worked alongside and at times at odds with King; officials from the Johnson White House, on the mindset, actions, and inactions of the president; and residents of D.C., Baltimore, Atlanta, Memphis, and elsewhere, who watched their cities burn and whose lives were forever changed. Among the individuals we meet:
- John Burl Smith, one of the last people to meet with King at the Lorraine Motel, hours before King was shot. Smith was part of an activist group, The Invaders, that was growing frustrated with King’s practice of nonviolence.
- Vanessa Dixon, a lifelong resident of D.C., who participated in the riots as a 12-year-old, and whose older brother, Vincent Lawson, went missing during the uprising.
- Juandalynn Abernathy, the daughter of the civil-rights activist Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, and the best childhood friend of King’s oldest daughter, Yolanda King. Juandalynn recalls being on the phone with Yolanda when King’s death was announced, and delivering the news to her friend.
- Matthew Nimetz, who worked as a staff assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson beginning in the long hot summer of 1967. Nimetz was the liaison between Johnson and the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission.
- Tony Gittens, who became involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while at Howard University and speaks to the events of that week. Gittens later founded the Washington, D.C., International Film Festival.
- Robert Birt, who as a teenager witnessed the uprising in Baltimore and the occupation of the city. Birt is now a philosophy professor at Bowie State University.
Holy Week begins what will be a significant year for The Atlantic in audio, with several strategic initiatives set to launch in the coming months. Audio is led by Claudine Ebeid as executive producer, alongside managing editor Andrea Valdez. Ebeid joined The Atlantic from The New York Times and, before that, NPR. The Holy Week team includes Jocelyn Frank and Ethan Brooks, with sound design by David Herman. New additions to the audio team in the past year include senior producer Theo Balcomb and engineer Rob Smierciak, who join producer Rebecca Rashid, producer Kevin Townsend, and senior producer A.C. Valdez.
Press Contacts:
Paul Jackson and Anna Bross | The Atlantic
press@theatlantic.com
Ny løsning skal skabe mere tryghed for danskere med KOL
Dagens Medicin by Amalie Louise Thieden / March 14, 2023 at 02:41PM
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Psykiater rykker ind hos lægen i Struer
Dagens Medicin by Amalie Louise Thieden / March 14, 2023 at 02:41PM
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Sustainable methane utilization technology via photocatalytic halogenation with alkali halides
Nature Communications by Jun Ma / March 14, 2023 at 02:38PM
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Nature Communications, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36977-0
A sustainable photocatalytic methane halogenation strategy is developed for methyl halide production using low-cost alkali
halides
over Cu-doped TiO2 nanostructures. Copper sites ultimately stabilize *CH3 to promote reaction with Cl− to form CH3Cl.
Study elucidates metabolomic differences between kiwifruit root and fruit
Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 02:34PM
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Is this article about Food Science?
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Kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis) is a kind of nutritious fruit with a good commercial value. In recent years, kiwifruit roots and fruits have been found to have good medicinal properties. Although previous studies have investigated the function of some metabolites in kiwifruit, few have elucidated the differences in the metabolites between the root and fruit of different representative varieties.
Nature by Carissa Véliz / March 14, 2023 at 02:18PM
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Nature, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00758-y
Artificial intelligence that can manipulate our emotions is a scandal waiting to happen.
Researchers develop Ir/IrOx electron transport layer for stable organic solar cells
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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In recent years, the device efficiency of organic solar cells (OSCs) has been significantly improved, but the unsatisfactory stability restricts future commercialization processing.
Quantum chemistry simulations on a quantum computer
100+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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In a new report now featured on the cover page of and published in Science Advances, Hans Hon Sang Chan and a research team in materials, chemistry and quantum photonics at the University of Oxford generated exactly emulated quantum computers with up to 36 qubits to explore resource-frugal algorithms and model two- and three-dimensional atoms with single and paired particles.
Smart nanotechnology for more accurate delivery of insulin
20Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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More efficient and longer lasting glucose-responsive insulin that eliminates the need for people with type 1 diabetes to measure their glucose levels could be a step closer thanks to a Monash University-led project.
Breakthrough discovery in materials science challenges current understanding of photoemission
500+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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What exactly is light—and what is it made of? It's an age-old question that dates back to antiquity, and one of the most important investigations undertaken by scientists looking to understand the nature of reality.
Mirror-imaging in molecules can modify neuron signaling
100+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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With the aid of some sea slugs, University of Nebraska–Lincoln chemists have discovered that one of the smallest conceivable tweaks to a biomolecule can elicit one of the grandest conceivable consequences: directing the activation of neurons.
Growing mushrooms alongside trees could feed millions and mitigate effects of climate change
100+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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Growing edible mushrooms alongside trees can produce a valuable food source for millions of people while capturing carbon, mitigating the impact of climate change, a new study by University of Stirling scientists has found.
Observations open door to improved luminous efficiency of organic LEDs
54Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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Electroluminescence is the production of light with an electrical current, without relying on heat or chemical reactions. This makes electroluminescent lights reliable and highly efficient: they are used as backlights in digital watches and in the displays of Apollo space shuttle guidance computers. Like OLEDs, light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs)—which emit light through electroluminescence—have undergone many technological advancements. Close examination of the processes that lead to luminescence is essential for improving luminescence efficiency, however, until now there has been no experimental method for examining these processes directly.
Study sheds more light on the diffuse radio emission from the galaxy cluster Abell 1213
100+Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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European astronomers have observed a galaxy cluster known as Abell 1213 using various spacecraft and ground-based facilities. The observations unveiled essential information about the diffuse radio emission from this source. The findings are reported in a paper published March 4 on the arXiv pre-print server.
Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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"One side can start the polarization and keep it going forever, but it takes two sides to stop it. That's why it easily arises, but it's so difficult to end," Boleslaw Szymanski said. Szymanski is the Claire & Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and director of the Network Science and Technology Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
World's first microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants
37Phys.org / March 14, 2023 at 02:17PM
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Researchers from the Disruptive & Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) of Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, and their collaborators from Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have developed the first-ever microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants.
Ældre patienter ofres i effektivitetens navn
Dagens Medicin by Steffen Boesen / March 14, 2023 at 02:16PM
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An AI that makes future predictions
Future(s) Studies by /u/Magic-Fabric / March 14, 2023 at 02:13PM
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'Highly Maneuverable' UFOs Defy All Physics, Says Government Study
Future(s) Studies by /u/Gari_305 / March 14, 2023 at 02:13PM
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Ready for GPT-4 multi-modal AI? You can already try LLM models that understand video, today.
Future(s) Studies by /u/ColdQuicksand / March 14, 2023 at 02:13PM
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När läkare inte hittar något fel
forskning.se / March 14, 2023 at 02:11PM
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Olika kroppsliga symtom utan att läkare hittar något fel. Det kallas funktionella symtom och är lika vanliga som depression. Många blir uppgivna men det finns behandling som hjälper.
Inlägget När läkare inte hittar något fel dök först upp på forskning.se.
Author Correction: Fabrication of THz corrugated wakefield structure and its high power test
Scientific Reports by H. Kong / March 14, 2023 at 02:10PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-31386-1
Author Correction: Fabrication of THz corrugated wakefield structure and its high power test
Author Correction: Demonstration of Shor’s factoring algorithm for N = 21 on IBM quantum processors
Scientific Reports by Unathi Skosana / March 14, 2023 at 02:10PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-30980-7
Author Correction: Demonstration of Shor’s factoring algorithm for N = 21 on
IBM
quantum processors
Scientific Reports by Elnaz Gholizadeh / March 14, 2023 at 02:10PM
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Scientific Reports, Published online: 14 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-30740-7
Author Correction: Graphene-based optofluidic tweezers for refractive-index and size-based nanoparticle sorting, manipulation, and detection
Mirror-imaging in molecules can modify neuron signaling
100+Biochemistry News – Chemistry News / March 14, 2023 at 02:07PM
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With the aid of some sea slugs, University of Nebraska–Lincoln chemists have discovered that one of the smallest conceivable tweaks to a biomolecule can elicit one of the grandest conceivable consequences: directing the activation of neurons.
Growing mushrooms alongside trees could feed millions and mitigate effects of climate change
92Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, G… / March 14, 2023 at 02:07PM
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Growing edible mushrooms alongside trees can produce a valuable food source for millions of people while capturing carbon, mitigating the impact of climate change, a new study by University of Stirling scientists has found.
The Download: AI lobbyists, and delayed electric planes
28MIT Technology Review by Rhiannon Williams / March 14, 2023 at 02:05PM
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This is today’s edition of