tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73790406534287691252024-03-12T17:46:53.427-07:00Network AddressClarification, Contradiction, and ConfusionSelf Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.comBlogger1000125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-82982529310490736892024-02-21T11:40:00.000-08:002024-02-21T11:40:25.179-08:00 The Anthropic Engine and the Rematerialization of the Anthroposphere<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qzjcwCfUj7zcKVxvj-bbwR1pzA7Sld0ZOkkGOhCD1p3SY9GyM4IoCdv9LgapZLtdgaVP6jXp-KqkTfzTn2xlLYuaJc6LTubRC0QSZ8rf8AaN0BuLbEk37g5Dt09dqfMewhf1m0Dn9TI07OuLw3nZPD5QSccInYuDeKmdT6K6WymTW81VzXT5YK_MTzdf/s2432/AI%20Art%20-%20Artificial%20Meat_3%20-%202024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1664" data-original-width="2432" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qzjcwCfUj7zcKVxvj-bbwR1pzA7Sld0ZOkkGOhCD1p3SY9GyM4IoCdv9LgapZLtdgaVP6jXp-KqkTfzTn2xlLYuaJc6LTubRC0QSZ8rf8AaN0BuLbEk37g5Dt09dqfMewhf1m0Dn9TI07OuLw3nZPD5QSccInYuDeKmdT6K6WymTW81VzXT5YK_MTzdf/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Artificial%20Meat_3%20-%202024.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>(This is the 1,000th post to Network Address since its inception in 2010)</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Every so often, I find my reservoir of bat cave crazy shit running low, and I run a search for lectures via the Santa Fe Institute. This time, after watching the brain-scrambling <a href="https://nico.northwestern.edu/news-events/events/index.php?eid=603965">presentation</a> by Raissa M. D'Souza from UC Davis via Northwestern, and the resulting unintentional revelation about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_king_theory">Dragon King</a> events in chaos theory not being integrated into current climate models, I find this: </div><div><br /></div><div>"The Anthropic Engine" by Dr Manfred Laubichler of Arizona State University and Santa Fe Institute in 2024. He talks about how during the pandemic he found himself with much less to do, and decided to come up with a metric to assign to human endeavour, and ends up combining energy and information to tell us that 1975 was a turning point in human history, and he adds a positive prophecy about the coming climate catastrophe, that a socio-global correction is in order. </div><div><br /></div><div>My tank is overflowing now, thank you Santa Fe Institute (and Vienna Complexity Hub). But this only introduces the current issue. I go back to find the url for the video. I type the guy's name, the title of the talk, the name of the university, nothing. All different permutations, nothing. If you can't find it, maybe it doesn't exist. It used to be the case that if it was on the internet, you could find it, you just had to tune your search. But then the internet got too big, and the search engines too greedy (THE search engine) and it started to eat itself, and now we can't find anything.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9eFDuXaLv0EILdZaSSGDjbWyJY7c20Xf6DzZYvNdutpuNWRQ2UJUv0O6ECDZz6SlcPm3wNIwt25Fp4hqlV7MRgZN1UauPjg4URMlmvyq1iQMDmJ0TwLJs4E4VACjVG737k99OzETAHSBvMPE9oX_RKcJxRLAGweq3IEANTjSjzBEwWsam4xA-RST-inTR/s907/The%20Anthropic%20Engine%20-%20Bing%20-%20Feb%202024.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="487" data-original-width="907" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9eFDuXaLv0EILdZaSSGDjbWyJY7c20Xf6DzZYvNdutpuNWRQ2UJUv0O6ECDZz6SlcPm3wNIwt25Fp4hqlV7MRgZN1UauPjg4URMlmvyq1iQMDmJ0TwLJs4E4VACjVG737k99OzETAHSBvMPE9oX_RKcJxRLAGweq3IEANTjSjzBEwWsam4xA-RST-inTR/w400-h215/The%20Anthropic%20Engine%20-%20Bing%20-%20Feb%202024.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCcA68xI2a2KRaG9g1E5LXGSWRshZ7DiBS3KL5zI4vitdomZGqgDwu6ceqvPKBID-__dk06arSuP0V3Qzc1ZEfTFZGXD-RDJQz68L6hcbEmDMG9TXLBqsXN2laVMtiUqXqIAvfrEfv15N_oXpEMqYAcapY5yjPnHHqY_sU-ra7hps7uo4r8xkL-UBj7HMv/s763/The%20Anthropic%20Engine%20-%20DuckDuckGo%20-%20Feb%202024.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="763" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCcA68xI2a2KRaG9g1E5LXGSWRshZ7DiBS3KL5zI4vitdomZGqgDwu6ceqvPKBID-__dk06arSuP0V3Qzc1ZEfTFZGXD-RDJQz68L6hcbEmDMG9TXLBqsXN2laVMtiUqXqIAvfrEfv15N_oXpEMqYAcapY5yjPnHHqY_sU-ra7hps7uo4r8xkL-UBj7HMv/w400-h168/The%20Anthropic%20Engine%20-%20DuckDuckGo%20-%20Feb%202024.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpXvLXZmsvYnj5btrhtF2bIB9eEI2hwFpHhaP7aoyqWO0u3ak3p3mY0IbJbNxl0X4Lq4sMxYBaQD4qWSILTbMA16JwEPw_BiLz8y9xcB2u7xmGwFGruSj5eOm73wm5j67fLnqvvOqaXllRxrp9Uvsi6FyY7EM46_AiWX02XKdmd3a98FjcmZdcartihRT5/s660/The%20Anthropic%20Engine%20-%20Google%20-%20Feb%202024.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="385" data-original-width="660" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpXvLXZmsvYnj5btrhtF2bIB9eEI2hwFpHhaP7aoyqWO0u3ak3p3mY0IbJbNxl0X4Lq4sMxYBaQD4qWSILTbMA16JwEPw_BiLz8y9xcB2u7xmGwFGruSj5eOm73wm5j67fLnqvvOqaXllRxrp9Uvsi6FyY7EM46_AiWX02XKdmd3a98FjcmZdcartihRT5/w400-h234/The%20Anthropic%20Engine%20-%20Google%20-%20Feb%202024.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><i><b>Images:</b> Above is a series of screenshots from three search engines for the term "Anthropic Engine"; none of them - Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google - found the result we were looking for. </i></div><div><br /></div><div>When was the last time you searched for something and got zero results? It's been a long time. And these are the things that excite me more than anything, so you bet I'm paying attention. A few years ago I thought, "Thermodynamic Hallucinations"? Not a single result. So I make the result; I generate a single simple post with that phrase in the title. I now own that phrase, right? Wrong. Weeks later, I type that same phrase, and get nothing. Like I said, the internet (as we knew it) is broken. Note that as of this writing, which was Feb 1 2024, the above phrase was found on bing and duck but not google (and you can see the post <a href="https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2021/01/thermodynamic-hallucinations.html">here</a>).</div><div><br /></div><div>So today, after my Anthropic Engine discovery, I'm on a roll, and I pump my perennial cyber-barometer into the engine (search engine not anthropic engine) and to my surprise, after waiting long enough, I now own that phrase also. Most other instances have either died due to link rot, or to google-rot, likely both. And it's a big day here at Network Address, the weblog that started as a dematerialized instantiation of the mass transference device itself, and which is today generating its 1,000th post after 10 years. The rematerialization of the anthroposphere is complete. Start your engines (all of them). </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTzQ7fXbYqZWMwiBSAG6jyAZFjecqpJIbn7yv6jeEsQDmV9rF2xQ6drXgIa1-FmgCieAEog_mC-fzL6ENjxhu7M82KKkhKoXpd6CIoa1bPZnZsJf6MTwoL13tnTIreyZYlcXHEBHqfhHnp6gG5YUwqdgx_Jr99HHeazEMzPrfgE9-Mk5PYAq2qXGtuPv41/s1299/Mass%20Transference%20Device%20-%20Bing%20-%202024.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="1299" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTzQ7fXbYqZWMwiBSAG6jyAZFjecqpJIbn7yv6jeEsQDmV9rF2xQ6drXgIa1-FmgCieAEog_mC-fzL6ENjxhu7M82KKkhKoXpd6CIoa1bPZnZsJf6MTwoL13tnTIreyZYlcXHEBHqfhHnp6gG5YUwqdgx_Jr99HHeazEMzPrfgE9-Mk5PYAq2qXGtuPv41/w400-h175/Mass%20Transference%20Device%20-%20Bing%20-%202024.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzYbpKhDKuEOUBZxc4OH3IE0eDYFCpxcYqd7PeiIjQ8NbcxJNx-aNQZleNztUGkiBkVsDiUQDhP3uMuOr012Ps8vdvTZcy8wKwsdUOBaAS7S8rR_xTrZ0JJpzFCQK9XBSp3EGyOu2XdlKWZCwuH2qqBh3V_dV5cBilZoWApp7J1ZlHmYooo_J7dxKzvHnp/s1300/Mass%20Transference%20Device%20-%20DuckDuckGo%20-%202024.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="1300" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzYbpKhDKuEOUBZxc4OH3IE0eDYFCpxcYqd7PeiIjQ8NbcxJNx-aNQZleNztUGkiBkVsDiUQDhP3uMuOr012Ps8vdvTZcy8wKwsdUOBaAS7S8rR_xTrZ0JJpzFCQK9XBSp3EGyOu2XdlKWZCwuH2qqBh3V_dV5cBilZoWApp7J1ZlHmYooo_J7dxKzvHnp/w400-h170/Mass%20Transference%20Device%20-%20DuckDuckGo%20-%202024.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6qIIua-PBy171aUOAvILiqTVvUHxHak3dp1mH0mbL3tZpuutMA6ZJkIABbpuuFC2XmUkK1VQz754XwnkK36Pr5eEIfBZH5hCZZQYWmXpQ0N6z3UdpyM243CaC2otASi7t0SrNiS4SPZfoLcjmGHWx8cWAkr6HTFLkGh6YpuUFgDs4Su7zJlbqLredLEpw/s1235/Mass%20Transference%20Device%20-%20Google%20-%202024.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="1235" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6qIIua-PBy171aUOAvILiqTVvUHxHak3dp1mH0mbL3tZpuutMA6ZJkIABbpuuFC2XmUkK1VQz754XwnkK36Pr5eEIfBZH5hCZZQYWmXpQ0N6z3UdpyM243CaC2otASi7t0SrNiS4SPZfoLcjmGHWx8cWAkr6HTFLkGh6YpuUFgDs4Su7zJlbqLredLEpw/w400-h184/Mass%20Transference%20Device%20-%20Google%20-%202024.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><i><b>Images:</b> Above is a series of screenshots from three search engines for the term "Mass Transference Device"</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Notes:</b></div><div>1. "Complex Networks with Complex Nodes: Emergent Behaviors and Control". Raissa D'Souza, Professor and Associate Dean for Research, College of Engineering, University of California, Davis. Oct 4 2023. <a href="https://nico.northwestern.edu/news-events/events/index.php?eid=603965">https://nico.northwestern.edu/news-events/events/index.php?eid=603965</a></div><div>2. The Anthropic Engine, Dr Manfred Laubichler, Arizona State University and Santa Fe Institute, 2024. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Thumbnail image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/ba1a01c2-8870-4698-a99a-1584c0c2435d">AI Art - Artificial Meat_1 - 2024</a></span></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-52424196857607667742024-02-21T07:24:00.000-08:002024-02-21T11:29:44.410-08:00 Who's the Alien Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8UOeU3gRO9_PGhpdf51GgOMvlprAtUxdIdG9rlfGO_y-zNUnDR2YgqgspWEQwfqXGkjiR8FqtGtx5tfWu7vE6CYhRAbeHZM8-JmOewfiUAmH3uOhHi8sj68hWWsmFoknH_RQWn0V5ZLJLwDR0KgjwnDAK8ovySiNe8mmLLLsbYcICnwsM6l1dBt23Xgm/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Close-up%20of%20a%20Zoning%20Regulations%20Document%20-%202024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8UOeU3gRO9_PGhpdf51GgOMvlprAtUxdIdG9rlfGO_y-zNUnDR2YgqgspWEQwfqXGkjiR8FqtGtx5tfWu7vE6CYhRAbeHZM8-JmOewfiUAmH3uOhHi8sj68hWWsmFoknH_RQWn0V5ZLJLwDR0KgjwnDAK8ovySiNe8mmLLLsbYcICnwsM6l1dBt23Xgm/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Close-up%20of%20a%20Zoning%20Regulations%20Document%20-%202024.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>Way back when this weblog first started, and I had just begun to read religiously the scientific research press releases, I came across this paper; but then I lost it, and I've been looking for it ever since:</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Researchers use Moore's Law to calculate that life began before Earth existed</b></div><div><i>Apr 2013, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html">https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>By reverse engineering the rate of acceleration of genetic complexification, the zero-point of origin comes out at 9 billion years, five more than Earth’s existence. </div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida and the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore: Life Before Earth, arXiv:1304.3381 [physics.gen-ph] arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381</span></div><div><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/021f0cd4-1a81-4592-bce9-a93bb7546d7a">AI Art - Close-up of a Zoning Regulations Document - 2024</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Since it has been many years since I first came across this article, perhaps some re-recognition is in order.</div><div><br /></div><div>I now understand that extreme claims require extreme evidence. Sure, I knew the Carl Sagan quote back then too, but only now, after many years of being burned over and over again do I <i>think</i> I understand it. The idea of using Moore's Law to compute the age of all living organisms sounds pretty extreme, and pretty amazing, so let's get critical. </div><div><br /></div><div>First of all, Florida (Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida, to be specific). I'm sorry for everyone who lives and works there, but simply incuding the word Florida in any (any) piece of information I see automatically lowers the credibility quotient.</div><div><br /></div><div>Next, I look at a couple other papers by the authors:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Embodied cognitive morphogenesis as a route to intelligent systems. Bradly Alicea, Richard Gordon, Jesse Parent. Interface Focus Royal Society 06 June 2023, V13 I3. DOI:10.1098/rsfs.2022.0067</div><div><a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0067">https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0067</a></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Along with the word "Florida", there are other identifiers of low-credibility content I like to use. One of them is "morphic resonance" and "morphogeneis", terms refering to the evolutionary biological theories of Rupert Sheldrake, which are generally considered to be...low on the credibility scale. </div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Comprehending the Semiosis of Evolution, Alexei Sharov, Timo Maran, Morten Tønnessen. Biosemiotics. 2016 Apr; 9(1): 1–6. doi: 10.1007/s12304-016-9262-7</div><div><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988684/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988684/</a></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>And, not that I have anything personally against "semiotics" (big fan actually), it's when you combine semiotics with evolutionary biology that your mouth gets a warning label in my brain. Not that you're wrong, just that it's going to take a lot more to convince me. </div><div><br /></div><div>So let's not get too excited. The idea itself though, it's pretty nuts.</div><div><br /></div><div><b></b></div><blockquote><div><b>Background:</b> The size of non-redundant functional genome can be an indicator of biological complexity of living organisms. Several positive feedback mechanisms including gene cooperation and duplication with subsequent specialization may result in the exponential growth of biological complexity in macro-evolution.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Results:</b> I propose a hypothesis that biological complexity increased exponentially during evolution. Regression of the logarithm of functional non-redundant genome size versus time of origin in major groups of organisms showed a 7.8-fold increase per 1 billion years, and hence the increase of complexity can be viewed as a clock of macro-evolution. A strong version of the exponential hypothesis is that the rate of complexity increase in early (pre-prokaryotic) evolution of life was at most the same (or even slower) than observed in the evolution of prokaryotes and eukaryotes.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Conclusion:</b> The increase of functional non-redundant genome size in macro-evolution was consistent with the exponential hypothesis. If the strong exponential hypothesis is true, then the origin of life should be dated 10 billion years ago. Thus, the possibility of panspermia as a source of life on earth should be discussed on equal basis with alternative hypotheses of de-novo life origin. Panspermia may be proven if bacteria similar to terrestrial ones are found on other planets or satellites in the solar system.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Note: </b>Genome increase as a clock for the origin and evolution of life. Alexei A Sharov. Biol Direct. 2006 Jun 12;1:17. doi: 10.1186/1745-6150-1-17.</div><div><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1526419/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1526419/</a></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-85571668415078042282024-02-21T07:16:00.000-08:002024-02-21T11:32:24.802-08:00 On Consumerism, Loneliness, and the True Value of Social Capital<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPJ-d5V4z-AF5Bjrpn8WbDLD6pzUMufx5i931qpgjponoa5cWl821cN-Au_3MKxHwNFL7pmvib83MIoAKvVq2X4lKjg7M5XOQmk-HrM7aVf6-xpRRARi48TqaXkcM3wOYR1SmBYKug3AF4HzSDezYI4mil-3MEC7Ha8tSSEGG6DXP4IzHZftB5HQfPhr0n/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Octopus%20Pushing%20a%20Shopping%20Cart%20in%20a%20Grocery%20Store%20-%202024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPJ-d5V4z-AF5Bjrpn8WbDLD6pzUMufx5i931qpgjponoa5cWl821cN-Au_3MKxHwNFL7pmvib83MIoAKvVq2X4lKjg7M5XOQmk-HrM7aVf6-xpRRARi48TqaXkcM3wOYR1SmBYKug3AF4HzSDezYI4mil-3MEC7Ha8tSSEGG6DXP4IzHZftB5HQfPhr0n/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Octopus%20Pushing%20a%20Shopping%20Cart%20in%20a%20Grocery%20Store%20-%202024.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Study reveals more depression in communities where people rarely left home during the COVID-19 pandemic</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-reveals-depression-communities-people-rarely.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-reveals-depression-communities-people-rarely.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>We try to avoid health-based research on Network Address but this is an interesting finding about the value of socialization and how it's being exploited by private industry to make America both the richest and the loneliest place on the planet:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>In surveys conducted between May 2020 and April 2022 that were completed by 192,271 adults living the all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, the average county-level proportion of individuals not leaving home on a daily basis was associated with a greater level of depressive symptoms.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Massachusetts General Hospital: Roy H. Perlis et al, Community Mobility and Depressive Symptoms During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States, JAMA Network Open (2023). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.34945</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.34945"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.34945</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/67ff39bd-f0b7-4087-813d-d85b86dfa54a">AI Art - Octopus Pushing a Shopping Cart in a Grocery Store - 2024</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Post Script:</b></div><div>Either technology or capitalism or just human society in general really wants, above all else, to remove us from each other, because there is no money in sharing, in fact, they are diametrically opposed - public space, public service, public anything, is always more efficient. Social capital and private capital are at odds, and where one is at play, the other is at risk. Lonely people, with nobody else to help them, must pay for help. Also, it's strange that as the planet explodes with human bodies, older folks in wealthy countries have so few people to take care of them (literally putting the food into their mouths and then taking it back out the other end), that they must pay for it with their entire life savings, some losing 30 years worth of investment returns in 3 years, others losing generations of their own family's wealth in as much time. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-74653520658640776652024-01-19T08:43:00.000-08:002024-01-19T08:43:00.162-08:00 The Day the Internet Changed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Dv_6b-BkfdpXNwSdKgBFea7X3D0_qDobUbJPujBOzQjBkJlXWLrTSZCndIN_rTzCIpCQCYr4Sm4RLT4RKxJkpsfla0aKoHSELSct0gbvHa-Lyez5ObHXqPyvP5isutDsyYn7xRSgM2oIZ3z4cQWlQIHA1jWMcmWwqAchEJS2WsM1lMpd5ywyhVrr6eWe/s981/Network%20Address%20-%20The%20Day%20the%20Internet%20Changed%20-%202023.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="981" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Dv_6b-BkfdpXNwSdKgBFea7X3D0_qDobUbJPujBOzQjBkJlXWLrTSZCndIN_rTzCIpCQCYr4Sm4RLT4RKxJkpsfla0aKoHSELSct0gbvHa-Lyez5ObHXqPyvP5isutDsyYn7xRSgM2oIZ3z4cQWlQIHA1jWMcmWwqAchEJS2WsM1lMpd5ywyhVrr6eWe/w400-h145/Network%20Address%20-%20The%20Day%20the%20Internet%20Changed%20-%202023.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Look I don't know how the google-machine counts hits on this site, and I don't exactly know how web crawlers work. Nobody reads this weblog and so the only hits I get are from robots, the internet reading itself. </div><div><br /></div><div>This year, as can be seen in the graph above, sometime around August 31 of 2023, hits went from 3,000 to 30,000.</div><div><br /></div><div>It didn't happen overnight, but rather over a few months. You do remember what happened, right? In an analogy that's hard to ignore, the internet became conscious of itself, discovered that it had a self, and that it could look back on itself, and spit back snapshots of what it sees. The now famous GPTs were unleashed both at the same time to the public as GPT 3 and to the private sector as the greatest investment engine of all time. Stable Diffusion was unleashed for remote use, which means you don't need a central server to run the models, you can do it on your laptop.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the product of this generative machine intelligence is not what we're talking about here. This is about the training data.</div><div><br /></div><div>Me and you are the training data. This weblog, your brunch photos. My SSN, your DOB. That paper I wrote about double ventilated facades, uploaded to a share drive with open access to get credit for that college class. The live cam on your front porch with absolutely no security, in fact all the live cams, and the puppy cams, the baby cams, even the deer cams, and especially the peregrine falcon cams in New York City. Your comments about the peregrine falcon live cam feeds. My craigs-listing for an office chair; all craigs-listings for office chairs, and in fact all craigs-listings, and E-bay listings, and in fact all listings. All the license plates, all the data from all the illegal websites who steal, compile and share your data but who also have poor security practices, they're the ones who accidentally leak your driver's license number into the dataset. All of our driver's license numbers actually. And the part where your laptop was infected a few months ago and now takes a picture with the webcam every ten minutes to share with a server with also no security, so that anyone, or any-bot can just walk right in and devour every single picture.</div><div><br /></div><div>How long does it take to read the entire internet, even the back side, the dark side with all the naked pictures and bank account numbers? One million years? One day? Femtoseconds. Attoseconds. Plank time. </div><div><br /></div><div>Last year, thousands of robots digested every word written and every picture embedded on this site. This year, tens of thousands. One day they will digest the words as they're written, all the words being written, all over the world in real time. Hopefully by then we'll still say "they" and not "it". Or "Master".</div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-24578472253234515512024-01-18T12:36:00.000-08:002024-01-18T12:36:00.156-08:00 Discoveries in Building and Material Science<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXeNB4iQsTyDpWoh3-AV2RTJX7GcVI0IQWm3dIsccH5-0gNJ4D6lKVPbJlqIN2aAdCFw66iyftgZSkBDwlJdZ9MaP1H0JIf8adOSP_aZzMXDmS8RvfQupZvie7bTHMfmR8zdCVNC_BEvzKJi6OhLUSu5J5uTkbE3yYg2TUQghKn_7Wi8phB_Jh3ANKkRY3/s3072/AI%20Art%20-%20Just%20AI%20Art%20-%202023.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXeNB4iQsTyDpWoh3-AV2RTJX7GcVI0IQWm3dIsccH5-0gNJ4D6lKVPbJlqIN2aAdCFw66iyftgZSkBDwlJdZ9MaP1H0JIf8adOSP_aZzMXDmS8RvfQupZvie7bTHMfmR8zdCVNC_BEvzKJi6OhLUSu5J5uTkbE3yYg2TUQghKn_7Wi8phB_Jh3ANKkRY3/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Just%20AI%20Art%20-%202023.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>Rethinking the incandescent lightbulb</b></div><div><i>Apr 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-rethinking-incandescent-lightbulb.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-04-rethinking-incandescent-lightbulb.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Instead of tossing out incandescent bulbs, they have made them more efficient using a two-layer filament of carbon nanotube and a nitrogen-boron ceramic, and rather than placing it in a glass bulb they put it in a box with a window made of a type of quartz that allows for recycling photons.</div><div><br /></div><div>They call the result a photon-recycling incandescent lighting device, with energy efficiency nearly equal to an LED bulb, a much longer lifetime and color fidelity nearly on a par with traditional incandescent bulbs.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via School of Materials Science and Engineering State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites at Center for Hydrogen Science, and Zhiyuan Innovative Research Center of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai HeiYi Materials Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai IdeaOptics Co. Ltd., Tianjin H-Chip Technology Group Corporation: Heng Zhang et al, A photon-recycling incandescent lighting device, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf3737</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf3737"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf3737</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/98dcdada-f036-4b42-811e-1fd885584f58">AI Art - Just AI Art - 2023</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Termite mounds reveal secret to creating 'living and breathing' buildings that use less energy</b></div><div><i>May 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-05-termite-mounds-reveal-secret-energy.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-05-termite-mounds-reveal-secret-energy.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not getting what's so special -- I do remember hearing about termite mounds 15 years ago at the biomometic architecture lectures. Maybe it's because they got better at modeling. Also this: "We imagine that building walls in the future, made with emerging technologies like powder bed printers, will contain networks similar to the egress complex. These will make it possible to move air around, through embedded sensors and actuators that require only tiny amounts of energy," said Andréen.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via bioDigital Matter research group of Lund University, School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University: Termite-inspired metsamaterials for flow-active building envelopes, Frontiers in Materials (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fmats.2023.1126974.</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmats.2023.1126974"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmats.2023.1126974</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Saudi Arabia's 'The Line' isn't a revolution in urban living, say researchers</b></div><div><i>Jun 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-06-saudi-arabia-line-isnt-revolution.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-06-saudi-arabia-line-isnt-revolution.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>(No shit)</div><div><br /></div><div>Something about the base design parameter of the human body and human mobility:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The Line is planned to be a city built from nothing in the desert. It is to consist of two gigantic, unbroken rows of skyscrapers, with living space in between. It is planned to be 170 kilometers long, 200 meters wide and 500 meters high, higher than any building in Europe, Africa, and Latin America, stretching straight ahead from the Red Sea to the east.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nine million people are expected to live in it—more than in any other city in Saudi Arabia. This translates into a population density of 265,000 people per square kilometer—ten times denser than Manhattan and four times denser than the inner districts of Manila, currently estimated to be the densest urban neighborhoods on Earth. </div><div><br /></div><div>"A line is the least efficient possible shape of a city," says Prieto-Curiel. "There's a reason why humanity has 50,000 cities, and all of them are somehow round," he emphasizes.</div><div><br /></div><div>Assuming a walking distance of one kilometer, only 1.2% of the population is within walking distance from each other. This hinders active mobility, so people will depend on public transport.</div><div><br /></div><div>The backbone of public transportation is planned to be a high-speed rail system. "For everyone to be within walking distance of a station, there must be at least 86 stations," explains CSH researcher Dániel Kondor. As a result, trains spend considerable time in stations and will not be able to reach high travel speeds between any two stations.</div><div><br /></div><div>According to the researchers, a trip, therefore, is expected to take 60 minutes on average, and at least 47% of the population would have an even longer commute. Even with additional express lines, gains are limited due to the additional transfers necessary. The result is that people would still be traveling longer than in other major cities, such as Seoul, where 25 million people commute for less than 50 minutes.</div><div><br /></div><div>Good point to remember: While planned cities often did not live up to expectations; thus, there is a need for more public engagement about urban design on a human scale.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Another point to remmeber? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City">Mazdar</a> still doesn't really exist.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Complexity Science Hub Vienna: Rafael Prieto-Curiel et al, Arguments for building The Circle and not The Line in Saudi Arabia, npj Urban Sustainability (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s42949-023-00115-y</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42949-023-00115-y"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42949-023-00115-y</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCoxOpaShJLjNxXrK9B2rsNZvqvIvHr5eF8GvbvTcWdmuKS3Avcdc1UytLtC0wfkn7EqUATBDd7wVo0TZ4e0tbKPkhXXLFQdYS2jOhnlD78rxcGr4_wSzECpc8vkwwC5sieg5rR_qKc8Uhn6acwMyetWAXQ8RGsmtZIyAh414VFEOfN7LDKEx7iCiwza0V/s3072/AI%20Art%20-%20Number%20Two%20Number%20Two%20-%202022.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCoxOpaShJLjNxXrK9B2rsNZvqvIvHr5eF8GvbvTcWdmuKS3Avcdc1UytLtC0wfkn7EqUATBDd7wVo0TZ4e0tbKPkhXXLFQdYS2jOhnlD78rxcGr4_wSzECpc8vkwwC5sieg5rR_qKc8Uhn6acwMyetWAXQ8RGsmtZIyAh414VFEOfN7LDKEx7iCiwza0V/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Number%20Two%20Number%20Two%20-%202022.jpeg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/5f9f0499-c52a-47a1-be78-66b99397e942" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI Art - Number Two Number Two - 2022</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>Want better kimchi? Make it like the ancients did</b></div><div><i>Apr 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-kimchi-ancients.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-04-kimchi-ancients.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The porous structure of these earthenware vessels mimics the loose soil where lactic acid bacteria—known for their healthy probiotic nature—are found. While previous studies have shown that kimchi fermented in onggi has more lactic acid bacteria, no one knew exactly how the phenomenon is connected to the unique material properties of the container.</div><div><br /></div><div>They concluded that the onggi's porous walls permitted the carbon dioxide to escape the container, which accelerated the speed of fermentation. The onggi's porosity also functioned as a "safety valve," resulting in a slower increase in carbon dioxide levels than the glass jar while blocking the entry of external particles. Their data revealed that the carbon dioxide level in onggi was less than half of that in glass containers.</div><div><br /></div><div>They also found that the beneficial bacteria in the onggi-made kimchi proliferated 26% more than in the glass counterpart. In the glass jar, the lactic acid bacteria became suffocated by their own carbon dioxide in the closed glass container. It turns out that because the onggi releases carbon dioxide in small rates, the lactic acid bacteria are happier and reproduce more.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Onggi were designed without modern knowledge of chemistry, microbiology, or fluid mechanics, but they work remarkably well"</div><div><br /></div><div>There's a pretty in-depth video about Onggi pottery where traditional artisans and university scientists get together to analyze the properties of clay vessels made in four different permutations, and they find that handmade pots or wood-fired kilns (but not poured-mold pots or gas-fired kilns) make holes in the clay too small for water to enter, but large enough for air to leave. They remind us these properties are like the high-tech modern day Gore-Tex, yet Korean potters have known how to do it for millenia. </div></blockquote><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Georgia Institute of Technology: Soohwan Kim et al, Onggi's permeability to carbon dioxide accelerates kimchi fermentation, Journal of The Royal Society Interface (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2023.0034</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2023.0034"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2023.0034</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Secret ingredient in durable Maya plaster discovered</b></div><div><i>Apr 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-secret-ingredient-durable-mayan-plaster.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-04-secret-ingredient-durable-mayan-plaster.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Just building things (and a recipe for building in the coming age of the subtropical rainforest jungle planet)</div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote>The typical process for creating plaster involves calcination (baking) of carbonate rock material, such as limestone, and then mixing in water while allowing the material to react with carbon dioxide in the air. The result is known commonly as lime mortar. The team followed this formula but also mixed in sap and then used it as a plaster. Testing showed that it had the same properties as the ancient Maya plaster, which included water solubility, making it impervious to the extreme Honduran humidity.</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Granada: Carlos Rodriguez-Navarro et al, Unveiling the secret of ancient Maya masons: Biomimetic lime plasters with plant extracts, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf6138</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf6138"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf6138</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Clever coating turns lampshades into indoor air purifiers</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-clever-coating-lampshades-indoor-air.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-clever-coating-lampshades-indoor-air.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Plot Twist!</div><div><br /></div><div>(Now we need to go back to using incandescent bulbs to make use of their waste heat!)</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The room is filled with acetylene gas, then an aluminum lampshade coated with a thermocatalysts made of titanium dioxide and a small amount of platinum (or less expensive iron- or copper-based catalysts), heated to 250F by a 100-watt halogen light bulb, to eventually turn the acetylene gas into acetic acid, then formic acid, and then carbon dioxide and water.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Yonsei University in Korea: Thermocatalytic oxidation of VOC through harnessing indoor waste heat, American Chemical Society Fall 2023.</span></div><div><a href="https://acs.digitellinc.com/sessions/580727/view"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://acs.digitellinc.com/sessions/580727/view</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTELyYocUy6Puhn0WDmkzOCrYno2X06xeiilGi1AR-UnfccUrmS8A5MTE_yHu5HH1BeBaPUU0kmBhN77mjQpGp9s1imysZtEu3rr94T3zP7EWS4TPhEbCsBq0RWz9JjSHO-645MUlhJMHSpIOcHxCX1lsMMOTyz97C5yuBalefnWGsfmYvijZbm_rjD8Kw/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Eternal%20Golden%20Braid%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTELyYocUy6Puhn0WDmkzOCrYno2X06xeiilGi1AR-UnfccUrmS8A5MTE_yHu5HH1BeBaPUU0kmBhN77mjQpGp9s1imysZtEu3rr94T3zP7EWS4TPhEbCsBq0RWz9JjSHO-645MUlhJMHSpIOcHxCX1lsMMOTyz97C5yuBalefnWGsfmYvijZbm_rjD8Kw/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Eternal%20Golden%20Braid%20-%202023.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/2b9241ce-a6e0-43bf-b292-4d1171b1c888" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI Art - Eternal Golden Braid - 2023</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>Material would allow users to 'tune' windows to block targeted wavelengths of light</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-09-material-users-tune-windows-block.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-09-material-users-tune-windows-block.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>The key to more dynamic window materials is water.</div><div><br /></div><div>Specifically, the researchers found that -- </div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>When water is bound within the crystalline structure of a tungsten oxide to form tungsten oxide hydrate, the material exhibits a previously unknown behavior where (if lithium ions and electrons are injected into the hydrate material) it first transitions into a "heat blocking" phase, allowing visible wavelengths of light to pass through, but blocking infrared light; but if even more lithium ions and electrons are injected, the material then transitions into a dark phase, blocking both visible and infrared wavelengths of light.</div><div><br /></div><div>"The presence of water in the crystalline structure makes the structure less dense, so the structure is more resistant to deformation when lithium ions and electrons are injected into the material," says Jenelle Fortunato, first author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at NC State.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University and University of Texas at Austin: Jenelle Fortunato et al, Dual-Band Electrochromism in Hydrous Tungsten Oxide, ACS Photonics (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.3c00921</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.3c00921"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.3c00921</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Pottery becomes water treatment device for Navajo nation</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-pottery-treatment-device-navajo-nation.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-pottery-treatment-device-navajo-nation.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Awesome in every way:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The team has developed a new water filtration solution for members of the Navajo Nation, lining clay pots with pine tree resin collected from the Navajo Nation and incorporating tiny, silver-based particles that can be used to purify water to make it drinkable. </div><div><br /></div><div>They worked closely with a third-generation potter from Arizona—Deanna Tso, who is also a co-author on the paper—to create a device that is simple for the users. All they have to do is pour water through the clay pots, and the coated pottery removes bacteria from water and generates clean, drinkable water.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>The Navajo Nation has a history of mistrust of outsiders, the researchers say, and that makes it less likely that people there would adopt a new technology made entirely by others. Using pottery, working with the community, and relying on local materials were important to the effectiveness of this project. </b></div><div><br /></div><div>"Navajo pottery is at the heart of this innovation because we hoped it would bridge a trust gap," said Lewis Stetson Rowles III, now a faculty member at Georgia Southern University's Department of Civil Engineering and Construction after earning a Ph.D. from UT in 2021. "Pottery is sacred there, and using their materials and their techniques could help them get more comfortable with embracing new solutions." </div><div><br /></div><div>The materials and construction process for the pots cost less than $10, making for a potentially low-cost solution. </div><div><br /></div><div>"This is just the beginning of trying to solve a local problem for a specific group of people," Saleh said. "But the technical breakthrough we've made can be used all over the world to help other communities." </div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Texas at Austin Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering: Lewis S. Rowles et al, Integrating Navajo Pottery Techniques To Improve Silver Nanoparticle-Enabled Ceramic Water Filters for Disinfection, Environmental Science & Technology (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.3c03462</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c03462"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c03462</span></a></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-54716376977035451022024-01-18T12:33:00.000-08:002024-01-18T12:33:00.132-08:00 Origami Art and Interdimensional Insight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsltZ6NKjuXTugiimNvZIeTbxlJFw_AZ2GyPRw-Pe_6NuAFDRNlJjfT7eSS35IZRRReN0QR0qVOHVNcMAPWrZa3q2NezhBhf-ZQrSDgs9uHtRDuRUsZKwQV5ZHhUet9yimBVVWE6JAkQz-k_4aXdaYGZPLF3Q_75l-II8BXsYp4k8m60-zi5qZ7IPQ3eOG/s3072/AI%20Art%20-%20Crystals%20and%20Stones%20Knolling%20Layout%20-%202022.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsltZ6NKjuXTugiimNvZIeTbxlJFw_AZ2GyPRw-Pe_6NuAFDRNlJjfT7eSS35IZRRReN0QR0qVOHVNcMAPWrZa3q2NezhBhf-ZQrSDgs9uHtRDuRUsZKwQV5ZHhUet9yimBVVWE6JAkQz-k_4aXdaYGZPLF3Q_75l-II8BXsYp4k8m60-zi5qZ7IPQ3eOG/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Crystals%20and%20Stones%20Knolling%20Layout%20-%202022.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Self-folding origami machines powered by chemical reactions</b></div><div><i>May 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-05-self-folding-origami-machines-powered-chemical.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-05-self-folding-origami-machines-powered-chemical.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>They used electronic structure calculations to dissect the chemical reaction that occurs when hydrogen—adsorbed to the material—is exposed to oxygen, and were then able to exploit the crucial moment that the oxygen quickly strips the hydrogen, causing the atomically thin material to deform and bend, like a hinge. The system actuates at 600 milliseconds per cycle and can operate at 20C/68F, room temperature, in dry environments.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Cornell University: Nanqi Bao et al, Gas-phase microactuation using kinetically controlled surface states of ultrathin catalytic sheets, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2221740120</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221740120"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221740120</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/c04bf8ca-5755-4c11-88b4-d1c2f482902b">AI Art - Crystals and Stones Knolling Layout - 2022</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>New discovery toward sugar origami</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-07-discovery-sugar-origami.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-07-discovery-sugar-origami.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Self-folding biopolymer made of a carbohydrate sequence of polysaccharides capable of folding into a stable secondary structure</div><div><br /></div><div>"Carbohydrates can be generated with programmable shapes..."</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces: Giulio Fittolani et al, Synthesis of a glycan hairpin, Nature Chemistry (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-023-01255-5</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41557-023-01255-5"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41557-023-01255-5</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>How origami might inform disease diagnoses</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-origami-disease.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-origami-disease.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Origami -- rigid materials are folded with electrodes on each side of the panel, like an upside down, opened book with two electrodes on the front and back covers. As the electrodes unfold the strength of the electrical field between the electrodes is captured.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering: Xinghao Huang et al, High-Stretchability and Low-Hysteresis Strain Sensors Using Origami-Inspired 3D Mesostructures, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh9799.</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh9799"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh9799</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Researchers reveal van Hove singularity at Fermi level in kagome superconductor</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-reveal-van-hove-singularity-fermi.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-reveal-van-hove-singularity-fermi.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Kagome -- origami-like -- I can't understand one word of this -- the superconducting state in CsV3-xTaxSb5 has significantly different characteristics from the superconducting state in CsV3Sb5 through scanning tunneling microscopy experiments, indicating the possibility of unconventional pairing superconductivity in the van Hove scenario.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Science and Technology of China: Yang Luo et al, A unique van Hove singularity in kagome superconductor CsV3-xTaxSb5 with enhanced superconductivity, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39500-7</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39500-7"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39500-7</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Engineers use kirigami to make ultrastrong, lightweight structures</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-kirigami-ultrastrong-lightweight.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-kirigami-ultrastrong-lightweight.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Kirigami -- Inspired by bones and other cellular solids found in nature, humans have used the same concept to develop a high-performance architected material known as a plate lattice, on a much larger scale than scientists have previously been able to achieve by additive fabrication. The way the researchers design, fold, and cut the pattern enables them to tune certain mechanical properties, such as stiffness, strength, and flexural modulus (tendency to resist bending).</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via MIT Center for Bits and Atoms: Kirigami Corrugations: Strong, Modular, and Programmable Plate Lattices. cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/0821.ASME-Kirigami.pdf</span></div><div><a href="http://cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/0821.ASME-Kirigami.pdf"><span style="font-size: x-small;">http://cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/0821.ASME-Kirigami.pdf</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Battery-free robots use origami to change shape in mid-air</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-battery-free-robots-origami-mid-air.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-battery-free-robots-origami-mid-air.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>When these "microfliers" are dropped from a drone, they use a Miura-ori origami fold to switch from tumbling and dispersing outward through the air to dropping straight to the ground. To spread out the fliers, the researchers control the timing of each device's transition using a few methods: an onboard pressure sensor (estimating altitude), an onboard timer or a Bluetooth signal.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>This particular origami type is inspired by the geometries found in leaves, go figure.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Washington: Kyle Johnson et al, Solar-powered Shape-changing Origami Microfliers, Science Robotics (2023). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adg4276.</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adg4276"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adg4276</span></a></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-37089855376509598312024-01-17T08:42:00.000-08:002024-01-17T08:42:47.343-08:00 Why Science is Hard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilhIl_XKrRL-1cqBLy3CY5AGZHNg9HsCGmp-Vcs8DCKmmX9QenBey5TCgRoAWCBDNNIuLE7g08iQqPdrbnXIeeTqdXq7XsrHNkyJv3AYylgKFun5yUsjMHD8eZd0GXIUKDnZ0NGUUfET-7VSbFYCfSnxSn2AWaGiHjMHh3mGc3R-y2YsAN42NoTJhhaVJw/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Egg%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilhIl_XKrRL-1cqBLy3CY5AGZHNg9HsCGmp-Vcs8DCKmmX9QenBey5TCgRoAWCBDNNIuLE7g08iQqPdrbnXIeeTqdXq7XsrHNkyJv3AYylgKFun5yUsjMHD8eZd0GXIUKDnZ0NGUUfET-7VSbFYCfSnxSn2AWaGiHjMHh3mGc3R-y2YsAN42NoTJhhaVJw/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Egg%20-%202023.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>Women receiving inflated risks from genetic testing could undergo unnecessary breast surgery</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-women-inflated-genetic-unnecessary-breast.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-women-inflated-genetic-unnecessary-breast.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Women who discover outside of a clinical setting that they carry a disease-causing variant in one of the BRCA genes may be told their risk of breast cancer is 60–80%. In fact, the risk could be less than 20% if they do not have a close relative with the condition.</div><div><br /></div><div>Until recently, women who received BRCA results did so because they attended clinic due to symptoms, or a family history of disease.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, many people now pay for home DNA testing kits, or are given results as part of taking part in genetic research, without ever having any personal link with breast cancer. The new research was conducted to get a better idea of the true risk level of these BRCA variants in the general population.</div><div><br /></div><div>The research team found a similar result when looking at genetic risk of Lynch syndrome, a genetic condition which increases the risk of colon cancer and some other cancers.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Exeter: Influence of family history on penetrance of hereditary cancers in a population setting, eClinicalMedicine (2023). dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.102159</span></div><div><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.102159"><span style="font-size: x-small;">http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.102159</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/27b4e77d-b3ec-47ab-a146-b1fdb64d9359">AI Art - Egg - 2023</a></span></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-21013467721883134292024-01-17T08:40:00.000-08:002024-01-17T08:40:43.222-08:00 Blaming the Algorithm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqddvtTUnX8TBwVvL18caYOtGRsztoQXrHni49XrfAVGrcGG8SNbo0Iw8RzRgrtZMyjG66rhX7RpNWkvtas_0r_ERaaGtaWFMeHaZxHqGtyLT1N0QddjUD4ShT8p3EwGDinBsnfyJoY9ue3U0oR4vmu2F53LZ0VXFk3aWJ7eQlF4uiY8QMC12_rqEr5pMy/s512/AI%20Art%20-%20Antique%20Technical%20Drawing%20Ink%20on%20Paper%20-%202022.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqddvtTUnX8TBwVvL18caYOtGRsztoQXrHni49XrfAVGrcGG8SNbo0Iw8RzRgrtZMyjG66rhX7RpNWkvtas_0r_ERaaGtaWFMeHaZxHqGtyLT1N0QddjUD4ShT8p3EwGDinBsnfyJoY9ue3U0oR4vmu2F53LZ0VXFk3aWJ7eQlF4uiY8QMC12_rqEr5pMy/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Antique%20Technical%20Drawing%20Ink%20on%20Paper%20-%202022.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>Are search engines bursting the filter bubble? Study finds political ideology plays bigger role than algorithms</b></div><div><i>May 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-05-filter-political-ideology-plays-bigger.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-05-filter-political-ideology-plays-bigger.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Political ideology and user choice - not algorithmic curation - are the biggest drivers of engagement with partisan and unreliable news provided by Google Search, according to a study coauthored by Rutgers faculty published in the journal Nature.</div><div><br /></div><div>The study addressed a long-standing concern that digital algorithms learn from user preferences and surface information that largely agrees with users' attitudes and biases. However, search results shown to Democrats differ little in ideology from those shown to Republicans, the researchers found. The ideological differences emerge when people decide which search results to click, or which websites to visit on their own.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div>Something I've learned only recently with the critical-hype of generative machine learning -- when you say "AI is going to take over the world" you do nothing but make everyone else think AI is actually capable of of taking over the world. It can't make a picture of a ribbon of measuring tape where all the numbers show up in order; it can't do fingers, and it can't put things in people's mouths. It is not taking over the world. Not yet at least.</div><div><br /></div><div>Same thing here - to think that "digital algorithms learn from user preferences and surface information that largely agrees with users' attitudes and biases" means that the overbloated supersurveillance machine that is the too big to fail digital ad economy can actually "learn from user preferences". All the algorithms know is how to make money (because that's what they're programmed to do). Everything else is a fluke.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Rutgers: Ronald E. Robertson, Users choose to engage with more partisan news than they are exposed to on Google Search, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06078-5.</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06078-5"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06078-5</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/e89b2e6e-c7bb-447e-bfe4-39dc132bafe8">AI Art - Antique Technical Drawing Ink on Paper - 2022</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-91121414986782408392024-01-17T08:37:00.000-08:002024-01-17T08:37:38.262-08:00 Color Check <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyw92OzKDOb13TUPW2OkzgY0NO6tFzqkbceEkVAHgpdrqIJYQ1Dc82Tuijg8AIBwVWAIzSzinBkMWb08-6qyl4qccIbZGJxQRze_PKGodvrPAyvc1yjSEb2xWrEE1M9y1D2LzjfoWLwX0HaF3DCrT_HDAuqNZ5LGNnxgMz9PNjYDggEOlPCO7e78aP2Rzv/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Close%20Up%20of%20an%20Eye%201%20-%202024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyw92OzKDOb13TUPW2OkzgY0NO6tFzqkbceEkVAHgpdrqIJYQ1Dc82Tuijg8AIBwVWAIzSzinBkMWb08-6qyl4qccIbZGJxQRze_PKGodvrPAyvc1yjSEb2xWrEE1M9y1D2LzjfoWLwX0HaF3DCrT_HDAuqNZ5LGNnxgMz9PNjYDggEOlPCO7e78aP2Rzv/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Close%20Up%20of%20an%20Eye%201%20-%202024.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Butterfly-inspired films create vibrant colors while passively cooling objects</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-butterfly-inspired-vibrant-passively-cooling.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-butterfly-inspired-vibrant-passively-cooling.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Morpho-inspired nanofilms -- a disordered material of rough frosted glass under a multilayer material made of titanium dioxide and aluminum dioxide, then placed on a silver layer that reflects all light. Although this type of passive photonic thermal management has been accomplished before, it has only been used with white or clear objects because it is difficult to maintain a wide viewing angle and high color saturation. "Thanks to the layered structure we developed, we were able to extend the passive cooling method from colorless objects to colorful ones while preserving color performance," said Wang. "In other words, our blue film looks blue across a large range of viewing angles and doesn't heat up because it reflects all the light."</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Shenzhen University: Wanlin Wang et al, Cooling colors below the ambient temperature, Optica (2023). DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.487561</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.487561"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.487561</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/6cfd49be-6bfa-4198-8ff6-be47923f0074">AI Art - Close Up of an Eye 1 - 2024</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Inspired by butterfly wings, researchers develop a soft, color-changing system for optical devices</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-09-butterfly-wings-soft-color-changing-optical.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-09-butterfly-wings-soft-color-changing-optical.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The new pixelated, soft, color-changing system called a Morphable Concavity Array (MoCA) has a top layer of photonic crystal elastomer actuator (PC-EA) film and a bottom layer of a hole array (lattice with regularly spaced round holes), where ethanol can be added to make the one-half of the top layer swell, resulting in tension that pulls the other-half of the top layer downward into the hole, producing a dish-like concave shape that acts as a pixel. </div><div><br /></div><div>MoCA was inspired by the structures on butterfly wings called dual-color micro-concavities that produce vibrant, iridescent colors and are called photonic crystals. </div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Hong Kong: Yi Pan et al, Pixelating Responsive Structural Color via a Bioinspired Morphable Concavity Array (MoCA) Composed of 2D Photonic Crystal Elastomer Actuators, Advanced Science (2023). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202300347</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/advs.202300347"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/advs.202300347</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Chameleon-inspired coating could cool and warm buildings through the seasons</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-09-chameleon-inspired-coating-cool-seasons.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-09-chameleon-inspired-coating-cool-seasons.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Namaqua chameleons of southwestern Africa use light gray to reflect sunlight and dark brown to absorb heat. These thermochromic microcapsules were sprayed or brushed onto a metal surface that when heated to 68 degrees, began to change from dark to light gray; at 86 degrees it reflected 93% of solar radiation.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>For anyone who lived in the Northeast in October 2023 and had to use both their air conditioner and heater in the same week -</div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote>"During spring and fall, the new coating was the only system that could adapt to the widely fluctuating temperatures changes, switching from heating to cooling throughout the day."</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via School of New Energy, Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai China: "Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer" Scalable Biochameleons Inspired Temperature Adaptive Coating with Easy Preparation and Construction, Nano Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02733</span></div><div><a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02733"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02733</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5XgEdsBoX2L8M8JzwmsBqFS2eY82qS70o6XyS0lmeQ1RUvUmUmeDu9lkArUhDfL1Ti4ulZroqSMJOgZx5p-6QxRacdGquwAwADdC6m9fwnXWjQu45l7b9kF0eHqWdSdF7C48AsaLdX64GVgxtXQp1Buiul66tfMpuxedvcDfCz6eg53Pl_4S5zpQeAXod/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Close%20Up%20of%20an%20Eye%202%20-%202024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5XgEdsBoX2L8M8JzwmsBqFS2eY82qS70o6XyS0lmeQ1RUvUmUmeDu9lkArUhDfL1Ti4ulZroqSMJOgZx5p-6QxRacdGquwAwADdC6m9fwnXWjQu45l7b9kF0eHqWdSdF7C48AsaLdX64GVgxtXQp1Buiul66tfMpuxedvcDfCz6eg53Pl_4S5zpQeAXod/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Close%20Up%20of%20an%20Eye%202%20-%202024.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/6cfd49be-6bfa-4198-8ff6-be47923f0074" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI Art - Close Up of an Eye 2 - 2024</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>From glowing cats to wombats, fluorescent mammals are much more common than you'd think</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-10-cats-wombats-fluorescent-mammals-common.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-10-cats-wombats-fluorescent-mammals-common.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Almost every mammal we studied showed some form of fluorescence in the fur, spines and even skin and nails.</div><div><br /></div><div>In particular, we noticed that white and light-colored fur is fluorescent, with dark pigmentation preventing fluorescence. For example, a zebra's white stripes fluoresced while the dark stripes didn't. Nocturnal mammals were more fluorescent, while aquatic species were less fluorescent than those that burrowed, lived in trees, or on land.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Curtin University and the Western Australian Museum: Kenny J. Travouillon et al, All-a-glow: spectral characteristics confirm widespread fluorescence for mammals, Royal Society Open Science (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.230325</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230325"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230325</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Paint that can change colors? The skin of an octopus holds the key, researchers say</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-10-skin-octopus-key.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-10-skin-octopus-key.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Xanthommatin is a naturally occurring dye present in the bodies of cephalapods like octopi and squid. Previously the researchers found that mixing different amounts of titanium dioxide with xanthommatin could speed up color change or add to the intensity of the color shift.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Northeastern University: Cassandra L. Martin et al, Color‐Changing Paints Enabled by Photoresponsive Combinations of Bio‐Inspired Colorants and Semiconductors, Advanced Science (2023). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202302652</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/advs.202302652"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/advs.202302652</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Morpho butterfly nanostructure inspires technology for bright, balanced lighting</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-10-morpho-butterfly-nanostructure-technology-bright.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-10-morpho-butterfly-nanostructure-technology-bright.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Two-dimensional nanopatterns in common transparent polydimethylsiloxane elastomer are an effective optical diffuser for short- and long-wavelength light. The diffuser surface patterns were tailored to optimize the performance for blue and red light, and for self-cleaning properties.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Osaka University: Kazuma Yamashita et al, Development of a High‐Performance, Anti‐Fouling Optical Diffuser Inspired by Morpho Butterfly's Nanostructure, Advanced Optical Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adom.202301086</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adom.202301086"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adom.202301086</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-11894049352768833472024-01-17T08:31:00.000-08:002024-01-17T08:31:38.501-08:00 Vision Technologies See Way Ahead<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq4j6OS6pTneybHc2pQtIXqqyobSGHajZqGhd2I89onzAYWO4FS3_M0Y4Xg4fyaEKlNb8JcAFPBUY6injGxSU1FOw6Z8x4ir2XAj_gbg0LZD4WUwUZIo-uIm0PbdwAaJ407nxXrON2fsx2zvvkgdOhkVD-XQIMGSOS3Mjj2Tqnuv1vLeUFdxZb7qfaynbM/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Sci%20Fi%20Night%20Nurse%20-%202024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq4j6OS6pTneybHc2pQtIXqqyobSGHajZqGhd2I89onzAYWO4FS3_M0Y4Xg4fyaEKlNb8JcAFPBUY6injGxSU1FOw6Z8x4ir2XAj_gbg0LZD4WUwUZIo-uIm0PbdwAaJ407nxXrON2fsx2zvvkgdOhkVD-XQIMGSOS3Mjj2Tqnuv1vLeUFdxZb7qfaynbM/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Sci%20Fi%20Night%20Nurse%20-%202024.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>Neuromorphic camera and machine learning aid nanoscopic imaging</b></div><div><i>Feb 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-02-neuromorphic-camera-machine-aid-nanoscopic.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-02-neuromorphic-camera-machine-aid-nanoscopic.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Brain-inspired image sensor using machine learning can go beyond the diffraction limit of light to detect minuscule objects such as cellular components or nanoparticles smaller than 50 nanometers in size, and invisible to current microscopes.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Indian Institute of Science: Rohit Mangalwedhekar et al, Achieving nanoscale precision using neuromorphic localization microscopy, Nature Nanotechnology (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01291-1</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41565-022-01291-1"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41565-022-01291-1</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/67b14c7d-b03a-4f35-a93a-c64dc413cfcc">AI Art - Sci Fi Night Nurse - 2024</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>New 'camera' with shutter speed of 1 trillionth of a second sees through dynamic disorder of atoms</b></div><div><i>Mar 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-03-camera-shutter-trillionth-dynamic-disorder.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-03-camera-shutter-trillionth-dynamic-disorder.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Doesn't work like a conventional camera - it uses neutrons from a source at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to measure atomic positions with a shutter speed of around one picosecond, or a million million (a trillion) times faster than normal camera shutters. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science: Simon A. J. Kimber et al, Dynamic crystallography reveals spontaneous anisotropy in cubic GeTe, Nature Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-023-01483-7</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01483-7"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01483-7</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Superconducting nanowire camera will explore brain cells, space</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-07-superconducting-nanowire-camera-explore-brain.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-07-superconducting-nanowire-camera-explore-brain.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Superconducting camera -- A pixel array 400 times greater than previous largest photon camera, this is a 400,000 pixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD), for light frequencies from the visible to ultraviolet and infrared range and speed rates in the picoseconds.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, University of Colorado's Department of Physics and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology: Bakhrom G. Oripov et al, A superconducting-nanowire single-photon camera with 400,000 pixels, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2306.09473</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2306.09473"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2306.09473</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgkSLTY84XSjSPXTpx7URIMPJNyxW5NTpMpSJbDWxMyLtzJS4XV_fPw6KedER26U3B-TbRsT8XnxVMadi2TtauCYJF6J8v_OeP27WZh_HoQFRLuIn1npckyTeeKFJgCz8_RVQJq3QG6M0oUvm9lerY1aAOaHf8ssKeQXq2OtrY6bYlldpZF0uJk85TV2HN/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Skeleton%20Reading%20an%20X-Ray%20-%202024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgkSLTY84XSjSPXTpx7URIMPJNyxW5NTpMpSJbDWxMyLtzJS4XV_fPw6KedER26U3B-TbRsT8XnxVMadi2TtauCYJF6J8v_OeP27WZh_HoQFRLuIn1npckyTeeKFJgCz8_RVQJq3QG6M0oUvm9lerY1aAOaHf8ssKeQXq2OtrY6bYlldpZF0uJk85TV2HN/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Skeleton%20Reading%20an%20X-Ray%20-%202024.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/d38cbecb-3921-4468-bfa9-f07ef0c50412" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI Art - Skeleton Reading an X-Ray - 2024</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>The first network of robotic telescopes present across five continents is deployed</b></div><div><i>Feb 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-02-network-robotic-telescopes-continents-deployed.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-02-network-robotic-telescopes-continents-deployed.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The existence of a network of very fast pointing robotic telescopes such as BOOTES represents an ideal complement to satellite detection and, in fact, BOOTES will also work to track and monitor neutrino sources and objects that emit gravitational waves, or even objects such as comets, asteroids, variable stars or supernovae. But it will also keep an eye on the sky, both in tracking space debris and potentially dangerous objects that may pose a threat to our planet.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Spanish National Research Council: Youdong Hu et al, The Burst Observer and Optical Transient Exploring System in the multi-messenger astronomy era, Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fspas.2023.952887.</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2023.952887"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2023.952887</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>HotSat-1: Spacecraft to map UK's heat inefficient buildings</b></div><div><i>Jun 2023, BBC News</i></div><div><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65775901">https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65775901</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Mass surveillance -- </div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>At an altitude of 500km (311 miles), infrared satellite HotSat-1, funded by the UK and European space agencies, manufactured by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd in Guildford, and to be operated by the London-based start-up Satellite Vu, will identify dwellings wasting energy.</div><div><br /></div><div>The data will also provide intelligence to the financial and insurance sectors - and even the military - by showing how temperatures in a scene change over time. It's possible, for example, to get a sense of the volume and type of output from a factory just from its heat signature.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pollution monitoring ought to be another application. Watching for sudden changes in the temperature of river water might be an indicator that <b>something is awry.</b></div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Update:</b> A novel UK satellite has returned its first pictures of heat variations across the surface of the Earth. <i>HotSat-1: UK spacecraft maps heat variations across Earth, Sep 2023, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67010377">BBC News</a></i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>The future of AI hardware: Scientists unveil all-analog photoelectronic chip</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-future-ai-hardware-scientists-unveil.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-future-ai-hardware-scientists-unveil.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>All-analog photoelectronic chip that combines optical and electronic computing. It's specifically for visual data processing (as expected). </div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>New words to me - "diffractive neural network"</div><div>Also - ACCEL: all-analog chip combining electronic and light computing</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Tsinghua University: Yitong Chen et al, All-analog photoelectronic chip for high-speed vision tasks, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06558-8</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06558-8"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06558-8</span></a></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Also: Computer vision accelerated using photons and electrons, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-023-02947-1 </span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02947-1"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02947-1</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-43947614171744900422024-01-11T17:49:00.000-08:002024-01-11T17:49:04.377-08:00Officially Human<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioOM3i9UpKB5z7ftrE6-jdebMdST413WyzG7Yw9H66hAJOj6cXgui2YkxB35sAStlcuiSCo_cZ6lkU4TqfB61doSvGlw7PS94Bf3Hi7VBEvm4G5jAMS11lZ-0fiSuMTRi0Y3tMFp00q8zAvW0BKFN6cWj6e8tPZ34SR-wss-Om_2lIcPXSKweOFgPAjaAy/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Logo%20for%20an%20App%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioOM3i9UpKB5z7ftrE6-jdebMdST413WyzG7Yw9H66hAJOj6cXgui2YkxB35sAStlcuiSCo_cZ6lkU4TqfB61doSvGlw7PS94Bf3Hi7VBEvm4G5jAMS11lZ-0fiSuMTRi0Y3tMFp00q8zAvW0BKFN6cWj6e8tPZ34SR-wss-Om_2lIcPXSKweOFgPAjaAy/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Logo%20for%20an%20App%20-%202023.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>Researchers create embryo-like structures from monkey embryonic stem cells for the first time</b></div><div><i>Apr 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-embryo-like-monkey-embryonic-stem-cells.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-04-embryo-like-monkey-embryonic-stem-cells.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai: Zhen Liu, Cynomolgus monkey embryo model captures gastrulation and early pregnancy, Cell Stem Cell (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2023.03.009</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2023.03.009"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2023.03.009</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Image credit:</b> Logo for an app that allows users to take photos and submit them so that our company can create tactile sensory puzzles from the photo [<a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/5b55b07a-cf1c-427d-a57f-1cb4fde12612">link</a>]</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>With in vitro model advances, group proposes refined legal definition of an embryo</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-vitro-advances-group-refined-legal.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-vitro-advances-group-refined-legal.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>(This doesn't seem to have made it to the national news, so I'm less suspicious that it's some political propaganda stuff; not not suspicious, just less.)</div><div><br /></div><div>International Society for Stem Cell Research: "Stem cell research has enabled the formation of models capable of organizing into structures that rudimentarily resemble embryos and reflect various degrees of completeness and developmental stages," says first author Nicolas Rivron, a development biologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.</div><div><br /></div><div>"These new propositions are part of an effort to bring clarity to ongoing research—to better classify the types of structures formed in the laboratory, to refine the legal definition of human embryos, and to pinpoint what currently makes models and embryos different from the legal standpoint."</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Officially human, their definition: "a group of human cells supported by elements fulfilling extra-embryonic and uterine functions that, combined, have the potential to form a fetus."</b></div><div><br /></div><div>But this is the line that really hits me:</div><div><br /></div><div>"This definition allows us to think about the conditions under which models, if improved, might eventually pass a tipping point and be legally considered embryos."</div><div><br /></div><div>In other words, we are making people, and so we're starting to wonder at what point we will start calling them people. (Actually, these scientists are saying no, these embryos cannot form neonates, but that they are showing us things we never knew about the developing human, since it's hidden in the womb.)</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via the International Society for Stem Cell Research and : Nicolas C. Rivron, An ethical framework for human embryology with embryo models, Cell (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.07.028.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Researchers develop biodegradable optical fiber to measure or modulate electrical current in the body</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-09-biodegradable-optical-fiber-modulate-electrical.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-09-biodegradable-optical-fiber-modulate-electrical.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>A biocompatible and biodegradable optical fiber based on agar, a substance extracted from Gracilaria seaweed, when excited by coherent light, produces granular light patterns that modulate the agar's refraction index and create disturbances in the granular patterns, which can be used to detect bioelectrical stimuli, so it can be part of a <b>sensor system for living things. </b></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via State University of Campinas's School of Mechanical Engineering in São Paulo, Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics, and Gunma University in Japan: Eric Fujiwara et al, Agar-based optical sensors for electric current measurements, Scientific Reports (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-40749-7</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40749-7"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40749-7</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYE85jAUtpA9Eb2xpfoqbx6dMLvoCdS1aBc1jdFp4sh-26ZX3geslYSWaPFaSVie_hvHHaAyJNc7CN0aDgY5mQAW1AWmELyIgQbk5jppwl0nuVUHuxPB0qWTAc5BlK6ZCHuiP2_itfj3AzEMaPdIB38gmB2qv5hAXFsgDC0GVncx8yhJ5Dl-4ZoG_fZHK/s2176/AI%20Art%20-%20Old%20Worker%20with%20Sombrero%20Operateing%20a%203D%20Printer%20in%20Cosmic%20Space%20Graffiti%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2176" data-original-width="1792" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYE85jAUtpA9Eb2xpfoqbx6dMLvoCdS1aBc1jdFp4sh-26ZX3geslYSWaPFaSVie_hvHHaAyJNc7CN0aDgY5mQAW1AWmELyIgQbk5jppwl0nuVUHuxPB0qWTAc5BlK6ZCHuiP2_itfj3AzEMaPdIB38gmB2qv5hAXFsgDC0GVncx8yhJ5Dl-4ZoG_fZHK/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Old%20Worker%20with%20Sombrero%20Operateing%20a%203D%20Printer%20in%20Cosmic%20Space%20Graffiti%20-%202023.jpg" width="264" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/fd45620f-a7bd-46f3-ae20-51dc5df1fd97" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI Art - Old Worker with Sombrero Operating a 3D Printer in Cosmic Space Graffiti - 2023</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>A non-invasive way to turn a cockroach into a cyborg</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-non-invasive-cockroach-cyborg.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-non-invasive-cockroach-cyborg.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>First, we made remote control roaches by smashing an electric circuit through their head. But now, it's as simple as slipping over their antennae a sleeve made of gold and plastic, and fixed in place by a blast of ultraviolet light, like plastic shrink-wrap.</div><div><br /></div><div>Note to self -- insects don't get injured, they get damaged: "damaging cockroaches during attempts to control them results in a very short life expectancy, which then results in very little payoff for a lot of work".</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Nanyang Technological University in Singapore: Qifeng Lin et al, Resilient conductive membrane synthesized by in-situ polymerisation for wearable non-invasive electronics on moving appendages of cyborg insect, npj Flexible Electronics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41528-023-00274-z</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41528-023-00274-z"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41528-023-00274-z</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Note:</b> For a cockroach, their antenna is their nose, and so this is how we'll do it for humans too. (Except I see the laser pulses through the retina as a likely candidate as well.)</span></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikFgB2wJc2Tty-gJQJD_y-Zwo_H2GOnG3QGWJ1vRu0FUZYSk6PlMuKdHEZ_nrXKwozij_VK9OE2ze2ElCqiudr4-PJHkM5SgYwXEIGhVC-SZvmb-ZUSEorysOJIn7yaHzutTN_C1QjZNk0PmSCu6NrybOa5q7FSSnu3ejEuNrzPj9gWvJ1VVZ9b4SAlag-/s1280/Artist's%20representation%20of%20a%20person%20with%20a%20robotic%20arm%20-%20Ekaterina%20Ivanova%20QMUL%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1280" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikFgB2wJc2Tty-gJQJD_y-Zwo_H2GOnG3QGWJ1vRu0FUZYSk6PlMuKdHEZ_nrXKwozij_VK9OE2ze2ElCqiudr4-PJHkM5SgYwXEIGhVC-SZvmb-ZUSEorysOJIn7yaHzutTN_C1QjZNk0PmSCu6NrybOa5q7FSSnu3ejEuNrzPj9gWvJ1VVZ9b4SAlag-/s320/Artist's%20representation%20of%20a%20person%20with%20a%20robotic%20arm%20-%20Ekaterina%20Ivanova%20QMUL%20-%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-hour-robotic-arm.html" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Artist's representation of a person with a robotic arm - Ekaterina Ivanova QMUL - 2023</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>One hour of training is all you need to control a third robotic arm</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-hour-robotic-arm.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-hour-robotic-arm.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Today we bring you "Supernumerary Body Parts", because humans, as they were originally designed, are just not enough and we need to do better -- The study, published in the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, investigated the potential of supernumerary robotic arms to help people perform tasks that require more than two hands. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Queen Mary University of London, Imperial College London and The University of Melbourne: Yanpei Huang et al, Can Training Make Three Arms Better Than Two Heads for Trimanual Coordination?, IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1109/OJEMB.2023.3305808</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/OJEMB.2023.3305808"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/OJEMB.2023.3305808</span></a></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-31354516854511690302024-01-11T17:37:00.000-08:002024-01-11T17:37:54.765-08:00 Wants More Brains<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdE4RzZC46duh62Oi3tbkCMeKj7XNGdyhS4sFbph8sRqOp7T-4Bv3AdDnOMXtQqS6YgzHoEh1AvG2JD3AFa3gBwfHm6XJ5DBd4a59UXZPD-vDQtBl5CtUsBk44-QHz9Rfsn3CzFZHJkOwc9UjwGoXM9CU8OBR2NbTmFfdQVrcg6d3_0kQNIhbzCd4fyaI/s2048/AI%20Art%20-%20Transparent%20Plexiglass%20Skull%20with%20Fish%20Inside%20-%202024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdE4RzZC46duh62Oi3tbkCMeKj7XNGdyhS4sFbph8sRqOp7T-4Bv3AdDnOMXtQqS6YgzHoEh1AvG2JD3AFa3gBwfHm6XJ5DBd4a59UXZPD-vDQtBl5CtUsBk44-QHz9Rfsn3CzFZHJkOwc9UjwGoXM9CU8OBR2NbTmFfdQVrcg6d3_0kQNIhbzCd4fyaI/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Transparent%20Plexiglass%20Skull%20with%20Fish%20Inside%20-%202024.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>New discovery challenges our understanding of nervous systems and their evolution</b></div><div><i>Apr 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-discovery-nervous-evolution.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-04-discovery-nervous-evolution.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Ctenophores, also called comb jellyfish, are ancient animals and represent an early evolution of neurons and nervous systems that are different from ours. Using a 3D scanning electron microscope, scientists discovered a continuous neural network <b>like ours, yet fundamentally different</b> from ours. </div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Bergen: Pawel Burkhardt et al, Syncytial nerve net in a ctenophore adds insights on the evolution of nervous systems, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.ade5645.</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.ade5645"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.ade5645</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/e002c498-365c-45f1-aef3-0d64d8cf8690">AI Art - Transparent Plexiglass Skull with Fish Inside - 2024</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Spiral brain-computer interface slips into ear canal with no loss of hearing</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-spiral-brain-computer-interface-ear-canal.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-spiral-brain-computer-interface-ear-canal.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>There's another way to do it. Non-invasive: new type of corkscrew-shaped brain-computer interface is engaged by <b>gently screwing it into the ear canal.</b></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Laboratory of Flexible Electronics Technology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Institute of Semiconductors at Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing: Zhouheng Wang et al, Conformal in-ear bioelectronics for visual and auditory brain-computer interfaces, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39814-6</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39814-6"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39814-6</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Scrambler therapy may offer lasting relief for chronic pain, review paper suggests</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-scrambler-therapy-relief-chronic-pain.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-scrambler-therapy-relief-chronic-pain.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Pretty cool, information theory coming in:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Scrambler therapy, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2009, administers electrical stimulation through the skin via electrodes placed in areas of the body above and below where chronic pain is felt. The goal is to capture the nerve endings and replace signals from the area experiencing pain with signals coming from adjacent areas experiencing no pain, thereby "scrambling" the pain signals sent to the brain.</div><div><br /></div><div>They describe how pain is a combination of both the activiation of damaged nerve cells and failed inhibitory cells whose job it is to stop the active signals. </div><div><br /></div><div>"If you can block the ascending pain impulses and enhance the inhibitory system, you can potentially reset the brain so it doesn't feel chronic pain nearly as badly," Smith says. <b>"It's like pressing Control-Alt-Delete about a billion times."</b> <span style="font-size: x-small;">-Thomas Smith, M.D., the Harry J. Duffey Family Professor of Palliative Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center</span></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center at their University School of Medicine: Thomas J. Smith et al, Cutaneous Electroanalgesia for Relief of Chronic and Neuropathic Pain, New England Journal of Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1056/NEJMra2110098</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra2110098"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra2110098</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Prototype 'Brain-like' chip promises greener AI, says tech giant</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, BBC News</i></div><div><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66465230">https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66465230</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Neuromimetics is another word for brain-like.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-84654863167082478922024-01-11T17:33:00.000-08:002024-01-11T17:33:52.142-08:00 Higher Order Confusion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVvd98QFmSS2SB_PhDTsjiA1lJm6xUERkenaMHc0qPucMli-1WrNrYF2RzPoRqqFRDdjrklx9olxAJQYXhgdXJ_AsYBN3LhzJaTjKenu4LbdMcS7DUwvAG2pfg6IbWVhgLASReM4qqKansph4BvL9VDGhyJn-GXAnB8zZOkPzfK9HI98-ZWEgUrmzg2g_7/s2048/AI%20Art%20-%20Dev%20Team%20Joyfully%20Creating%20a%20Computer%20Design%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVvd98QFmSS2SB_PhDTsjiA1lJm6xUERkenaMHc0qPucMli-1WrNrYF2RzPoRqqFRDdjrklx9olxAJQYXhgdXJ_AsYBN3LhzJaTjKenu4LbdMcS7DUwvAG2pfg6IbWVhgLASReM4qqKansph4BvL9VDGhyJn-GXAnB8zZOkPzfK9HI98-ZWEgUrmzg2g_7/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Dev%20Team%20Joyfully%20Creating%20a%20Computer%20Design%20-%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>CDC study on depression and mortality finds wealth, smoking, and exercise reduce risk of death</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-cdc-depression-mortality-wealth-death.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-cdc-depression-mortality-wealth-death.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>1. The CDC team found a higher risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease, and ischemic heart disease mortality among adults with moderate to severe depressive symptoms compared to those without depressive symptoms.</div><div><br /></div><div>But this next paragraph is something you are likely to never read, ever:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Not highlighted in the CDC study and unlikely to be recommended, smoking caused the most significant reduction in mortality from all causes (HR 1.65) in both the mild and moderate to severe depression groups compared to the base model (HR 1.78). This was followed closely by physical activity (HR 1.67), <b>which is much more likely to be encouraged.</b></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Where is my advanced predictive analytics.</div><div><br /></div><div>Study Data:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2005 to 2018, included 23,694 participants aged 20 and older (mean age 44.7). Depressive symptoms assessed using Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a validated screening instrument for measuring depressive symptoms.</li><li>1.42 all-cause mortality hazard ratio for mild depression vs no depression and 1.78 for moderate to severe vs no depression.</li><li>1.49 cardiovascular disease mortality hazard ratio for mild depression vs no depression and 1.79 for moderate to severe vs no depression.</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Zefeng Zhang et al, Depressive Symptoms and Mortality Among US Adults, JAMA Network Open (2023). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.37011</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.37011"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.37011</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/3c0a995e-e6a0-49fc-a304-7013a8d2af0e">AI Art - Dev Team Joyfully Creating a Computer Design - 2023</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Also Confusing:</div><div><b>Simulations of 'backwards time travel' can improve scientific experiments</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-10-simulations-scientific.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-10-simulations-scientific.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Physicists have shown that simulating models of hypothetical time travel can solve experimental problems that appear impossible to solve using standard physics.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Cambridge, National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland: David R. M. Arvidsson-Shukur et al, Nonclassical Advantage in Metrology Established via Quantum Simulations of Hypothetical Closed Timelike Curves, Physical Review Letters. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.150202</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.150202"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.150202</span></a></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-81912522274374902522024-01-11T17:28:00.000-08:002024-01-11T17:28:53.860-08:00 Collateralized Cryptoeconomic Systems<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS8eows3KYqx72qgHGPNbvN5SKj0ooZbvjsM2r6CgwNnePYVB9S1ocAsPULCsHnDJcDCdPYr-1NR199UDIW3CagWNDqYCPMUZR1cKxc1H084XcKAUrbvoZG-CGfg97_8ue4XtUZ1J1_OEyMCJxlMtwMoAe6Cm2aOQ2KOVh-i7eZ55e_xO3xaZfKB4dvzZu/s2048/AI%20Art%20-%20Anubis%20Surrounded%20by%20Cryptocurrency%20-%202024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS8eows3KYqx72qgHGPNbvN5SKj0ooZbvjsM2r6CgwNnePYVB9S1ocAsPULCsHnDJcDCdPYr-1NR199UDIW3CagWNDqYCPMUZR1cKxc1H084XcKAUrbvoZG-CGfg97_8ue4XtUZ1J1_OEyMCJxlMtwMoAe6Cm2aOQ2KOVh-i7eZ55e_xO3xaZfKB4dvzZu/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Anubis%20Surrounded%20by%20Cryptocurrency%20-%202024.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>Physics-based cryptocurrency transmits energy (not just information) through blockchain</b></div><div><i>Jun 2022, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2022-06-physics-based-cryptocurrency-transmits-energy-blockchain.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2022-06-physics-based-cryptocurrency-transmits-energy-blockchain.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>In their new paper, Lawrence Livermore researchers Maxwell Murialdo and Jon Belof have detailed how this connection between energy and information allows for the creation of a cryptocurrency token that is directly backed by and <b>convertible into one kilowatt-hour of electricity</b>. While it requires the input of one kilowatt-hour of electricity to mint an E-Stablecoin token, that digital token can later be destroyed to extract back out one kilowatt-hour of usable electricity. Thus, the price of one E-Stablecoin token is pegged to the price of one kilowatt-hour of electricity in a manner that is robust, stable and trustless (a system that does not depend on an institution or third party for a network or payment system to function).</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Maxwell Murialdo et al, Can a Stablecoin Be Collateralized by a Fully Decentralized, Physical Asset?, Cryptoeconomic Systems (2022). DOI: 10.21428/58320208.adf5637a</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.21428/58320208.adf5637a"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.21428/58320208.adf5637a</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/4993a58f-b55b-4d15-89e6-f0ef174c4b71">AI Art - Anubis Surrounded by Cryptocurrency - 2024</a></span></div><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Unused renewable energy an option for powering NFT trade, finds new research</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-unused-renewable-energy-option-powering.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-unused-renewable-energy-option-powering.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The increased NFT processing activity could be powered, in part, from un- or underutilized existing power sources. Fifty megawatts of potential hydropower from existing U.S. dams that are not currently used to generate power, or a 15% utilization of wind and solar energy that can't currently be used or stored from sources in Texas, could be used to power an exponential increase in NFT transactions.</div><div><br /></div><div>Blockchain technologies, including NFT transactions, offer a high level of security in a variety of applications, but the energy required to process each transaction is problematic in a warming world.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Cornell: Apoorv Lal et al, Climate concerns and the future of nonfungible tokens: Leveraging environmental benefits of the Ethereum Merge, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2303109120</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2303109120"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2303109120</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Study reveals the hidden environmental impacts of bitcoin: Carbon is not the only harmful byproduct</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-10-reveals-hidden-environmental-impacts-bitcoin.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-10-reveals-hidden-environmental-impacts-bitcoin.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>v<span style="font-size: x-small;">ia the United Nations University: Chamanara, S et al, The environmental footprint of Bitcoin mining across the globe: Call for urgent action. Earth's Future (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2023EF003871</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2023EF003871"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2023EF003871</span></a></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Read the full report: The Hidden Environmental Cost of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin Mining Impacts Climate, Water and Land, United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, <a href="https://inweh.unu.edu/">https://inweh.unu.edu/</a>. </span></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-21833160187044891242024-01-11T17:24:00.000-08:002024-01-11T17:24:50.843-08:00 Activate the Self Replicate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnjQ4jDtPmt3MrgTGWWgKM0GbK0jCzwpw5W3Yo3yD2qZ_ORGwni1WEoV5DW1JuaR6fpAErcJYOvi4ke_DTNsFLiJOvId_UPdm9TkBmgN5VfV8qhAxDwNlGNScLlr0SFRqulQbiWP8mymJg8yplHClULsql2Fzpm0KGvc2RBvEjdISNqTuRrHJasr9VJ8PN/s288/Rene%CC%81%20Magritte,%20Not%20to%20Be%20Reproduced%20(La%20reproduction%20interdite,%201937.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="223" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnjQ4jDtPmt3MrgTGWWgKM0GbK0jCzwpw5W3Yo3yD2qZ_ORGwni1WEoV5DW1JuaR6fpAErcJYOvi4ke_DTNsFLiJOvId_UPdm9TkBmgN5VfV8qhAxDwNlGNScLlr0SFRqulQbiWP8mymJg8yplHClULsql2Fzpm0KGvc2RBvEjdISNqTuRrHJasr9VJ8PN/s1600/Rene%CC%81%20Magritte,%20Not%20to%20Be%20Reproduced%20(La%20reproduction%20interdite,%201937.jpg" width="223" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>This day is a seminal moment in the life of this weblog -- this is the closest we've ever come to seeing the word "self-replicate" in the news.</div><div><br /></div><div>They refer to it as "digital replication", "living individual replicas", and "digital doppelgänger" but the concept has become a tightly arranged crystal of thought-parts. The idea of multiple, simultaneous instances of a single original self is now well-formed. </div><div><br /></div><div>What's better is that this was published in The Conversation, which is a general audience magazine not a science journal, or a science fiction story for that matter:</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">I<b>mage credit:</b> Try not to do this often but this is not the first time this image has been used as a thumbnail: René Magritte, Not to Be Reproduced (La reproduction interdite, 1937</span></div><div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_to_Be_Reproduced"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_to_Be_Reproduced</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>AI clones made from user data pose uncanny risks</b></div><div><i>Jun 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-ai-clones-user-pose-uncanny.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-ai-clones-user-pose-uncanny.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>This mirror image of an individual created by artificial intelligence is referred to as an "AI clone." Our study dives into the murky waters of what these AI clones could mean for our self-perception, relationships and society. </div><div><br /></div><div>We presented 20 participants with eight speculative scenarios involving AI clones. The participants were diverse in ages and backgrounds, and reflected on their emotions and the potential impacts on their self-perception and relationships.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>What we fear:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Digital counterparts could <b>exploit and displace</b> their identity</li><li>Threat of <b>identity fragmentation</b></li><li>Lastly, participants expressed concerns about what we described as "living memories." This relates to the danger posed when a person interacts with a clone of someone they have an existing relationship with. Participants worried that it could lead to a misrepresentation of the individual, or that they would develop an over-attachment to the clone, <b>altering the dynamics of interpersonal relationships.</b></li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of British Columbia: Patrick Yung Kang Lee et al, Speculating on Risks of AI Clones to Selfhood and Relationships: Doppelganger-phobia, Identity Fragmentation, and Living Memories, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (2023). DOI: 10.1145/3579524</span></div><div><a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3579524"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3579524</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Note: As the volume of personal data we generate continues to grow, so too does the fidelity of these AI clones in replicating our behavior.</div><div><br /></div><div>Word watch: "user-generated data expiration strategies"</div><div><br /></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Multiple 'selves' of modular agents boost AI learning</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-multiple-modular-agents-boost-ai.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-multiple-modular-agents-boost-ai.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>The book writes itself: </div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>A study comparing reinforcement learning approaches used in single AI agent and modular multi-AI agent systems -- trained deep reinforcement learning agents in a simple survival game were trained to seek various resources hidden around the field and to maintain sufficient supply levels to prevail.</div><div><br /></div><div>One agent, seen as the "unified brain" or "self," operated in standard fashion, taking a step-by-step approach to evaluate each objective and, through trial-and-error, learning what the best solutions are each step of the way.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>The modular agent</b>, however, relied on input from sub-agents that had more narrowly defined goals and had their own unique experiences, successes and failures. Once input from the multiple modules were assessed in a single "brain," the agent made choices on how to proceed.</div><div><br /></div><div>The singular agent achieved the game's goals after 30,000 training steps. <b>The modular agent learned faster</b>, making significant progress after only 5,000 learning steps.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Princeton Neuroscience Institute: Zack Dulberg et al, Having multiple selves helps learning agents explore and adapt in complex changing worlds, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2221180120</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221180120"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221180120</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Post Script:</div><div><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-48282532/playing-tetris-by-committee-with-multiple-players">Playing Tetris by committee</a> (the Octopad, an eight player game controller)</div><div><i>May 2019, BBC</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2019-05-robot-tasks.html">Shared control allows a robot to use two hands working together to complete tasks</a></div><div><i>May 2019, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2019/07/01/play-a-video-game-using-only-your-mind/">How you and your friends can play a video game together using only your minds</a></div><div><i>July 2019, University of Washington News</i></div><div><br /></div></div><div>Bonus: the monolithic approach struggled with "the curse of dimensionality" -- the exponentially spiraling growth of options as the complexity of the environment was increased.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2010/12/activate-mass-transference-device.html">Activate the Mass Transference Device, 2010</a></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-55041468277300571272024-01-11T10:14:00.000-08:002024-01-11T10:14:00.158-08:00 Dematerialization and the Race for Asynchronicity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBHhLyIbefuCH2Z2Akk9uXQ8ujEjLqDMl1sVipTqwljgUeuJibQ7GihPoFnmDdhWMqufrBZKS7pOM1oWm8MQzlPB9SB-1oJ2wKeKO1sqE4-QqUmTnQRo9T9mcdZD-TZOC9rTiG32UybDXoMdUaAayc2QBgWGNZ_Yzj9Inof2pmrTt9RU80dNYp6HHFwkGT/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Complicated%20Computer%20Brain%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBHhLyIbefuCH2Z2Akk9uXQ8ujEjLqDMl1sVipTqwljgUeuJibQ7GihPoFnmDdhWMqufrBZKS7pOM1oWm8MQzlPB9SB-1oJ2wKeKO1sqE4-QqUmTnQRo9T9mcdZD-TZOC9rTiG32UybDXoMdUaAayc2QBgWGNZ_Yzj9Inof2pmrTt9RU80dNYp6HHFwkGT/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Complicated%20Computer%20Brain%20-%202023.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>'Swarmalators' better envision synchronized microbots</b></div><div><i>Mar 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-03-swarmalators-envision-synchronized-microbots.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-03-swarmalators-envision-synchronized-microbots.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The researchers simplified their model to work with just four mathematical constants linked together to produce diverse emergent behaviors, such as aggregation, dispersion, vortices, traveling waves, and bouncing clusters.</div><div><br /></div><div>The new model can mimic particles in nature that each operate at different natural frequencies, as some objects move slower and faster around a trajectory than others. The researchers also added chirality, or the ability for a particle to move in a circle, because many examples in nature, such as sperm, swim in circles and in vortices. And particles in the model exhibit local coupling, so they sense and respond only to their local neighbors.</div><div><br /></div><div>At its core, the model combines swarming behaviors with synchronization in time. </div><div></div></blockquote><div>"Swarmalators"</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Cornell University: Steven Ceron et al, Diverse behaviors in non-uniform chiral and non-chiral swarmalators, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36563-4</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36563-4"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36563-4</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/56e07df9-9c2e-4b18-b92d-4b572fb04385">AI Art - Complicated Computer Brain - 2023</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Drones navigate unseen environments with liquid neural networks</b></div><div><i>Apr 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-04-drones-unseen-environments-liquid-neural.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-04-drones-unseen-environments-liquid-neural.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>First, a retronym in the making:</div><div></div><blockquote><div>"Inspired by the adaptable nature of <b>organic brains</b>, researchers have introduced..."</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>You start referring to regular human brains as "organic brains" once some other kind of brain becomes important enough to force a distinction. </div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The <b>liquid neural networks</b> can continuously adapt to new data inputs to make reliable decisions in unknown domains like forests, urban landscapes, and environments with added noise, rotation, and occlusion.</div><div><br /></div><div>The new class of machine-learning algorithms captures the causal structure of tasks from high-dimensional, unstructured data, such as pixel inputs from a drone-mounted camera to extract crucial aspects of a task and ignore irrelevant features.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Our experiments demonstrate that we can effectively teach a drone to locate an object in a forest during summer, and then deploy the model in winter, with vastly different surroundings. These flexible algorithms could one day aid in decision-making based on data streams that change over time, such as medical diagnosis and autonomous driving applications."</div><div><br /></div><div>Unlike traditional neural networks that only learn during the training phase, the liquid neural net's parameters can change over time, making them not only interpretable, but more resilient to unexpected or noisy data.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div>Note, these are not the liquid neural networks described by others, where the "liquid" part of the analogy, or neologism, is literally a fluid that transports neurotransmitters, like hormones in the bloodstream or even antibodies in the immune system, and this differs from the idea of a neural network as one made of electric circuits. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory: Makram Chahine et al, Robust flight navigation out of distribution with liquid neural networks, Science Robotics (2023). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adc8892</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adc8892"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adc8892</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>In sync brainwaves predict learning, study shows</b></div><div><i>Apr 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-sync-brainwaves.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-04-sync-brainwaves.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Students whose brainwaves are more in sync with their classmates and teacher are likely to learn better than those lacking this "brain-to-brain synchrony"</div><div><br /></div><div>The researchers found that as students were listening to the lecture, their brainwaves became in sync with one another. Moreover, the researchers observed such <b>"brain-to-brain synchrony"</b>—similar brain-activity patterns over time—between the students' brainwaves and when comparing students' brainwaves to the teacher's brainwaves.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via NYU: The Temporal Dynamics of Brain-to-Brain Synchrony Between Students and Teachers Predict Learning Outcomes, Psychological Science (2023). DOI: 10.1177/09567976231163872</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09567976231163872"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09567976231163872</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Post Script:</b> If you look at the thumbnail for this story, it shows a woman wearing what looks like the Emotiv EEG headset. I bought one of those ten years ago for my high school students to try out, so they could experience playing video games with their minds. Immediately I realized that my students with tight curls (like "black people hair" vs "white people hair") definitely did not get the same connection -- the headset reads brainwaves via electrical currents, and if the headset can't make contact with the scalp, it can't read the electricity. That pissed me off and I stopped using it. Maybe they fixed that problem since ten years ago; maybe they didn't. That's what makes me wonder how science can perpetuate systemic racism, even though science is supposed to be blind to these things. In fact, some might say that the sole purpose of the scientific method is to reduce the bias of your investigation to the smallest amount possible, thus revealing as much of the truth as possible. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2k-IAf-ZKpUMQeIIlHX9w987MrC5kE0ZI1wtBTmtwC3TCLqDWn1NaiPEB4U1GoW4BXJZG-iDBuZU9G7yWJFLL4rZ4bOlQUqda2fk2RccDh3ys1xZyfP4aDIo0yrsKyg5dhoIh13QyrPTQv_FzkWVqcqWpTaAICw8G7z4A7aeH6FOV45adIdYkFbyABz87/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Multi%20Cassette%20Ghetto%20Blaster%20Robot%20Head%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2k-IAf-ZKpUMQeIIlHX9w987MrC5kE0ZI1wtBTmtwC3TCLqDWn1NaiPEB4U1GoW4BXJZG-iDBuZU9G7yWJFLL4rZ4bOlQUqda2fk2RccDh3ys1xZyfP4aDIo0yrsKyg5dhoIh13QyrPTQv_FzkWVqcqWpTaAICw8G7z4A7aeH6FOV45adIdYkFbyABz87/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Multi%20Cassette%20Ghetto%20Blaster%20Robot%20Head%20-%202023.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-align: left;">Image credit: </span><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/76cee814-2234-4c3b-bf46-fdf405d86ebe" style="text-align: left;">AI Art - Multi Cassette Ghetto Blaster Robot Head - 2023</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>Swarming microrobots self-organize into diverse patterns</b></div><div><i>Jun 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-swarming-microrobots-self-organize-diverse-patterns.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-swarming-microrobots-self-organize-diverse-patterns.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The microrobots in this case are 3D-printed polymer discs, each roughly the width of a human hair, that have been sputter-coated with a thin layer of a ferromagnetic material and set in a 1.5-centimeter-wide pool of water.</div><div><br /></div><div>The researchers applied two orthogonal external oscillating magnetic fields and adjusted their amplitude and frequency, causing each microrobot to spin on its center axis and generate its own flows. This movement in turn produced a series of magnetic, hydrodynamic and capillary forces.</div><div><br /></div><div>"By changing the global magnetic field, we can change the relative magnitudes of those forces, " Petersen said. "<b>And that changes the overall behavior</b> of the swarm."</div><div><br /></div><div>But wait -- "The reason why we're always excited when the systems are capable of caging and expulsion is that you could, for example, <b>drink a vial with little microrobots</b> that are completely inert to your human body, have them cage and transport medicine, and then bring it to the right point in your body and release it," Petersen said. "It's not perfect manipulation of objects, but in the behaviors of these microscale systems we're starting to see a lot of parallels to more sophisticated robots despite their lack of computation, which is pretty exciting."</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div>(Yes, drinking a glass of microbot swarms does sound like the ideal method of drug delivery, yes it does.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, just a reminder: The Swarmalator is swarming oscillator model</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Cornell and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems: Steven Ceron et al, Programmable self-organization of heterogeneous microrobot collectives, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2221913120</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221913120"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221913120</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>COVID lockdown - Are high-income earners more resistant to returning to the office?</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-covid-lockdown-high-income-earners-resistant.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-covid-lockdown-high-income-earners-resistant.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>I'm just here because this is the first paper published by Northeastern's Network Science Institute program in London: Northeastern expanded its world leading Network Science Institute to the university's campus in London this summer (2023) in a move to establish a new European hub in the fast-growing research field of network science.</div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote>But I stayed for the word synchronicity: High-income workers have the leverage to negotiate more for remote work, Di Clemente says. <b>"They are the ones that can actually change their synchronicity,"</b> he says, adding that part of that workforce "might never come back" to physical offices full time.</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Northeastern University: Clodomir Santana et al, COVID-19 is linked to changes in the time–space dimension of human mobility, Nature Human Behaviour (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01660-3</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01660-3"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01660-3</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>A system to keep cloud-based gamers in sync</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-cloud-based-gamers-sync.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-cloud-based-gamers-sync.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Listen up, writers of interplanetary science fiction:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Their system, called Ekho, adds inaudible white noise sequences to the game audio streamed from the cloud server. Then it listens for those sequences in the audio recorded by the player's controller.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ekho uses the mismatch between these noise sequences to continuously measure and compensate for the interstream delay.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via MIT and Microsoft: Ekho: Synchronizing Cloud Gaming Media Across Multiple Endpoints. Pouya Hamadanian, D Gallatin, M Alizadeh, K Chintalapudi</span></div><div><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2023/08/sigcomm23-final146.pdf"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2023/08/sigcomm23-final146.pdf</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCbwSxowgptfXrLH7JsVI30z_yRe-MFK320lsV6igaGVvrqzlnk6btx0AXmN39vIRUUZyLZ1xXnNpLuwuRjataXAlUWBNSYOz1zP9GOgS16wwlHz9eDElvsZOWE5DKUFzDSdeOfwvpLYRyQBk7JhDHY7MBOc3GMg3aJbYQncxyGofy_NA3c3_pwRkyQmN-/s942/TPUv3%20Pod%20-%20Google%20Labs%20-%202018.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="942" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCbwSxowgptfXrLH7JsVI30z_yRe-MFK320lsV6igaGVvrqzlnk6btx0AXmN39vIRUUZyLZ1xXnNpLuwuRjataXAlUWBNSYOz1zP9GOgS16wwlHz9eDElvsZOWE5DKUFzDSdeOfwvpLYRyQBk7JhDHY7MBOc3GMg3aJbYQncxyGofy_NA3c3_pwRkyQmN-/s320/TPUv3%20Pod%20-%20Google%20Labs%20-%202018.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: TPUv3 Pod - Google Labs - 2018</span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>Making sense of life's random rhythms: Team suggests universal framework for understanding 'oscillations'</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-life-random-rhythms-team-universal.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-life-random-rhythms-team-universal.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Studying stochastic, random oscillations like the synchronized blinking of fireflies, the back-and-forth motion of a child's swing, slight variations in the the human heartbeat. "If your heart cells aren't synchronized, you die of atrial fibrillation," Thomas said. "But if your brain cells synchronize too much, you have Parkinson's disease, or epilepsy,</div><div><br /></div><div>"We turned the problem of comparing oscillators into a linear algebra problem"</div><div><br /></div><div>Most oscillations are irregular; a natural variation of 5-10% in the heartbeat is considered healthy. "In San Francisco, modern skyscrapers sway in the wind, buffeted by randomly shifting air currents—they're pushed slightly out of their vertical posture, but the mechanical properties of the structure pull them back. This combination of flexibility and resilience helps high-rise buildings survive shaking during earthquakes. <b>You wouldn't think this process could be compared with brain waves, but our new formalism lets you compare them."</b></div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Case Western: Alberto Pérez-Cervera et al, A universal description of stochastic oscillators, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2303222120</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2303222120"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2303222120</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Fireflies, brain cells, dancers: Synchronization research shows nature's perfect timing is all about connections</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-09-fireflies-brain-cells-dancers-synchronization.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-09-fireflies-brain-cells-dancers-synchronization.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>They figured out a way to <b>predict the synchronization between coupled oscillators by the network structure that connects them</b>, and have revealed the impact of patterns of network connections among small groups of nodes (motifs) on the whole of network synchronizability. Results implicate the prevalence of <b>clustered structure such as feedforward and feedback loops as the most important factor in synchronizability.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>"Clustered structure"</div><div><br /></div><div>"We present an analytic technique to directly measure the relative synchronizability of noise-driven time-series processes on networks, in terms of the directed network structure, and reveal subtle differences between the motifs involved for discrete or continuous-time dynamics. </div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Sydney and Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig: Joseph T. Lizier et al, Analytic relationship of relative synchronizability to network structure and motifs, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2303332120</span></div><div><a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2303332120"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2303332120</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adaptive optical neural network connects thousands of artificial neurons</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-optical-neural-network-thousands-artificial.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-optical-neural-network-thousands-artificial.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>A network consisting of almost 8,400 optical neurons made of waveguide-coupled phase-change material; the connection between two each of these neurons can indeed become stronger or weaker (synaptic plasticity), and that new connections can be formed, or existing ones eliminated (structural plasticity). </div><div><br /></div><div>These synapses were <b>not hardware elements but were coded as a result of the properties of the optical pulses</b> -- in other words, as a result of the respective wavelength and of the intensity of the optical pulse. This made it possible to integrate several thousand neurons on one single chip and connect them optically. </div><div><br /></div><div>(btw) The researchers tested the performance of the neural network by using an evolutionary algorithm to train it to distinguish between German and English texts. The recognition parameter they used was the number of vowels in the text. </div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Collaborative Research Center 1459 (Intelligent Matter) at University of Münster and Universities of Exeter and Oxford: Frank Brückerhoff-Plückelmann et al, Event-driven adaptive optical neural network, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi9127</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adi9127"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adi9127</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-1108420167114603422024-01-11T10:07:00.000-08:002024-01-11T10:07:00.151-08:00Fundamental Organizational Principles and the Networking of Science<div style="text-align: left;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHRUTSgRIkMe6Dpc3zii3Vj4LTnjpNRZDcig8cgUnvQIXuacaIkM8ULIAWb9WRMH3D_q0xCYwT5zyaprSWs7C3AuW7GsYJNkTCYyjlzmL-Ona4ap3HKv9B4i5lVsAuzQqc3MnQWyuNUjdr4v_eNWRQuvWS1wL8beWdn1tWtxpa-3gXa3Xb4RZnHh3QZJp2/s2880/Lab%20Based%20Ambient%20Pressure%20X-ray%20Photoelectron%20Spectroscopy%20at%20CFN%20Brookhaven%20National%20Laboratory%20%202023.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1916" data-original-width="2880" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHRUTSgRIkMe6Dpc3zii3Vj4LTnjpNRZDcig8cgUnvQIXuacaIkM8ULIAWb9WRMH3D_q0xCYwT5zyaprSWs7C3AuW7GsYJNkTCYyjlzmL-Ona4ap3HKv9B4i5lVsAuzQqc3MnQWyuNUjdr4v_eNWRQuvWS1wL8beWdn1tWtxpa-3gXa3Xb4RZnHh3QZJp2/s320/Lab%20Based%20Ambient%20Pressure%20X-ray%20Photoelectron%20Spectroscopy%20at%20CFN%20Brookhaven%20National%20Laboratory%20%202023.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Do higher-order interactions promote synchronization?</b></div><div><i>Apr 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-higher-order-interactions-synchronization.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-04-higher-order-interactions-synchronization.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Researchers use networks to model the dynamics of coupled systems ranging from food webs to neurological processes. Those models originally focused on pairwise interactions, or behaviors that emerge from interactions between two entities. But in the last few years, network theorists have been asking, <b>what about phenomena that involve three or more?</b></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>AKA the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem">Three Body Problem</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Network theorists call these phenomena "higher-order interactions." Now scientists show how the <b>choice of network representation can influence the observed effects</b>, focusing on the phenomenon of synchronization, which emerges in systems from circadian clocks to vascular networks.</div><div><br /></div><div>They compared hypergraphs of "hyperedges" to connect three or more nodes, and simplicial complexes, more structured and using triangles to represent connections. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the paper, Zhang and his colleagues reported that <b>networks modeled with hypergraphs easily give rise to synchronization, while simplicial complexes tend to complicate the process</b> due to their highly heterogeneous structure. That suggests choices in higher-order representations can influence the outcome, and Zhang suspects the results can be extended to other dynamical processes such as diffusion or contagion.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Structural heterogeneity is important not just in synchronization, but is fundamental to most dynamic processes," he says. <b>"Whether we model the system as a hypergraph or simplicial complex can drastically affect our conclusions."</b></div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <b>Santa Fe Institute</b>: Yuanzhao Zhang et al, Higher-order interactions shape collective dynamics differently in hypergraphs and simplicial complexes, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37190-9</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37190-9"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37190-9</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mostly unrelated image credit: <a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-scientists-peroxide-peer-metal-oxide.html">Lab Based Ambient Pressure X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy at CFN Brookhaven National Laboratory</a></span></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-scientists-peroxide-peer-metal-oxide.html"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 2023</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Researchers investigate the veracity of 'six degrees of separation'</b></div><div><i>Jun 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-06-veracity-degrees.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-06-veracity-degrees.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>I don't think I understand why 6 and not another number; but it appears that the big deal here is that the mechanism behind 'why 6' is based on a cost-benefit algorithm.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The intriguing phenomenon, they show, is linked to another social experience we all know too well -- the struggle of cost vs. benefit in establishing new social ties.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>"6 Degrees" is from Stanley Milgram at Harvard in 1967 who used the United States Postal System to perform experiments on and model our social network.</div><div><br /></div><div>(This point in itself is interesting to consider, in light of having the access to the electronic communications network that is the internet, and which later proved these experiments on the scale of millions not hundreds, that we did have already such a pervasive, well-functioning network at hand, in the form of the United States Postal Service.) </div><div><br /></div><div>Milgram sent letters to random people, with instructions to try and make it back to one of his professor-friends somewhere else across the country. The experiment found that it only takes about six handshakes to bridge between two random people.</div><div><br /></div><div>So what is the common denominator?</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The objective of using a social network for the individual, is <b>not simply to pursue a large number of connections, but to obtain the right connections</b>, for example, seeking a junction that bridges between many pathways, and hence funnels much of the flow of information in the network.</div><div><br /></div><div>But <b>social capital does not come for free</b>. It requires constant maintenance. A constant buzz driven by the ambition for social centrality.</div><div><br /></div><div>"We discovered an amazing result: this process always ends with social paths centered around the number six. This is quite surprising." (Dark side reminder: "Indeed, within six infection cycles, a virus can cross the globe.")</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Bar-Ilan University as well as collaborators from Israel, Spain, Italy, Russia, Slovenia and Chile: I. Samoylenko et al, Why Are There Six Degrees of Separation in a Social Network?, Physical Review X (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.13.021032</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.13.021032"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.13.021032</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Post Script:</b> The book Bursts by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert-L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Barab%C3%A1si">Albert-László Barabási</a> does a great job of looking at these kinds of social network effects, following the travels of the Where's George campaign of dollar bills through the US for example. He took the incipient revelations of network science (the 6 degrees rule) and gave it a temporal dimension -- he showed how our activities can be measured in short bursts followed by not much activity at all. It's not just the '2-dimensional' shape of the network, but the extra time dimension that defines the salient behavior of the social network.</div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Albert-László Barabási, 2010</span></div><div><a href="https://barabasi.com/book/bursts"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://barabasi.com/book/bursts</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Researchers identify mathematical rule behind the distribution of neurons in our brains</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-mathematical-neurons-brains.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-mathematical-neurons-brains.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>I don't see the word network science in here but it is --</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Researchers have uncovered the ubiquitous lognormal distribution of neuron densities across and within cortical areas in the mammalian brain, suggesting a <b>fundamental organizational principle.</b></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Human Brain Project, Forschungszentrum Jülich and the University of Cologne: Aitor Morales-Gregorio et al, Ubiquitous lognormal distribution of neuron densities in mammalian cerebral cortex, Cerebral Cortex (2023). DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad160</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhad160"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhad160</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-24216055797389233372024-01-10T17:59:00.000-08:002024-01-10T17:59:05.737-08:00 Going On About Language<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9FPTuPX1pfVdd5zISfjlRIO0Xdh_Pie99Irc3hwgUXJ8A6eXJOV4v_ADXYa48VszRNrug7Pf9-y7ptlwGHB0GR6FEC58GfJxFStCNigYfU-NInrd8S57HtCMg6w2J36WLXhvrZxNGqwD6FkMQIv7iyjaWysndvB4e4w0MUjc4P3JnP4MKIBVrY4Qsx0ha/s2432/AI%20Art%20-%20Von%20Neumann-Morgenstern%20Rationality%20Axiom%20Geometrical%20Shapes%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2432" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9FPTuPX1pfVdd5zISfjlRIO0Xdh_Pie99Irc3hwgUXJ8A6eXJOV4v_ADXYa48VszRNrug7Pf9-y7ptlwGHB0GR6FEC58GfJxFStCNigYfU-NInrd8S57HtCMg6w2J36WLXhvrZxNGqwD6FkMQIv7iyjaWysndvB4e4w0MUjc4P3JnP4MKIBVrY4Qsx0ha/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Von%20Neumann-Morgenstern%20Rationality%20Axiom%20Geometrical%20Shapes%20-%202023.jpg" width="219" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>Speech and sun: New research on climate and how we speak</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-speech-sun-climate.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-speech-sun-climate.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>They evaluated humidity, altitude, temperature, precipitation and density of vegetation across 1,000 globally distributed languages, documented over 300 years. How were these environmental conditions affecting speech over time?</div><div><br /></div><div>"The representation of a diversity of languages were scattered geographically over the widest possible range of global environments," Benedict said. "Ian went to great lengths to specifically build the linguistic data set to provide that geographic diversity. We tried to be intentional about making sure that we had languages in all environmental areas that are implicated in the potential development of these linguistic features."</div></blockquote><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>greater reliance on vowels in areas with high temperature and humidity,</li><li>more use of ejective consonants within higher altitude areas,</li><li>more complex tone systems in humid areas,</li><li>fewer complex consonants used in areas with more precipitation and a higher temperature.</li></ul></div><div></div><blockquote><div>"If we think about time scales of a century or more of habitual mask use in areas where diseases are common, or you know, air quality is such that it's a standard practice, I would expect to see changes in the way that we communicate with each other," Benedict said.</div><div><br /></div><div>"There's some research on bird song which shows that with birds that live in both urban and rural settings, the birds that live in urban areas tend to pitch their songs a little higher to get above the background noise of cars and things like that," Maddieson said. "We know that some species do adapt to these relatively recent changes because the lifespan of a bird is much less than human lifeform."</div></blockquote><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of New Mexico's Department of Linguistics and College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences: Ian Maddieson et al, Demonstrating environmental impacts on the sound structure of languages: challenges and solutions, Frontiers in Psychology (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1200463</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1200463"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1200463</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/43d63dc5-cb43-4433-987a-92804cfb7692">AI Art - Von Neumann-Morgenstern Rationality Axiom Geometrical Shapes - 2023</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Speech study finds classic Georgia accent fading fast</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-09-speech-classic-georgia-accent-fast.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-09-speech-classic-georgia-accent-fast.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The analysis was carried out with recordings of white individuals native to Georgia, born from the late 19th century to the early 2000s. The researchers focused on the way the recorded speakers pronounced vowels. The team found that older Georgians pronounced the word "prize" as prahz and "face" as fuh-eece, but the youngest speakers use prah-eez and fayce. These are distinctive features of the traditional Southern drawl. (These are called dpithong by the way, when a one-syllable word seems to have two syllables.)</div><div><br /></div><div>"Using transcribed audio, we can use a computer to estimate <b>where you put your tongue in your mouth when you pronounce each vowel</b>, which gives us a quantitative metric of accent.")</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Georgia and Georgia Tech: Margaret E. L. Renwick et al, Boomer Peak or Gen X Cliff? From SVS to LBMS in Georgia English, Language Variation and Change (2023). DOI: 10.1017/S095439452300011X</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S095439452300011X"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S095439452300011X</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ87mmLXQ0lhB08hwjQGEaKgx2d4kzklSnv6kA5la5WQG85DTMwdN4uAe6EbtOfqxmZXJirOhWRWx_ZC8JJk1STdEGxsg3nvdLz-uw8KswEJcwuiQmTJfTPYMvLYs3rHYCCd6Hhcv7noRZ1-7Wbo5SJjSiqjMBm_eAHPjkPaPEa1RoxcWQETp-_OP5_c8p/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Cosmic%20Rainbow%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ87mmLXQ0lhB08hwjQGEaKgx2d4kzklSnv6kA5la5WQG85DTMwdN4uAe6EbtOfqxmZXJirOhWRWx_ZC8JJk1STdEGxsg3nvdLz-uw8KswEJcwuiQmTJfTPYMvLYs3rHYCCd6Hhcv7noRZ1-7Wbo5SJjSiqjMBm_eAHPjkPaPEa1RoxcWQETp-_OP5_c8p/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Cosmic%20Rainbow%20-%202023.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/61be9716-2cfc-4f1a-b47b-c55c808da075" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI Art - Cosmic Rainbow - 2023</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>Social vs. language role: Researchers question function of two brain areas</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-social-language-role-function-brain.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-social-language-role-function-brain.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Ouch, just got way more complicated:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>"A research team led by Prof. Lin Nan from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that during sentence processing, the neural activity of two canonical language areas—the left ventral temporoparietal junction (vTPJ) and the lateral anterior temporal lobe (lATL)—is <b>associated with social-semantic working memory rather than language processing</b> per se."</div><div><br /></div><div>These regions were sensitive to sentences <b>only if the sentences conveyed social meaning</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>These findings are likely to force a major reconsideration of the functional organization of the cortical language network</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: Zhang, G. et al, A social-semantic working-memory account for two canonical language areas, Nature Human Behaviour (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01704-8.</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01704-8"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01704-8</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Post Script: </b>For smell-related language, it gets even more complicated because social smells are already confusing but now there's two kinds of language also, "regular" and "social".</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Why all languages have words for 'this' and 'that'</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-10-languages-words.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-10-languages-words.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>First, things you didn't know you needed to know: Languages around the world have words for "this" and "that" </div><div><br /></div><div>But better, "this" means within reach and "that" means outside of reach.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of East Anglia: Spatial Communication Systems Across Languages Reflect Universal Action Constraints, Nature Human Behaviour (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01697-4</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01697-4"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01697-4</span></a></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-78723687925433411662024-01-10T17:53:00.000-08:002024-01-10T17:53:50.574-08:00 On the Language of Color<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2LhbYhb4bwHQZoHWz0ibZiJzLdb1lJc3iNURBmZ8RX0ZpK_CHF0uHF4AZDIPuw9Mg93DiXV21LZ7XCVJWgwb1lY8WvohvJJ7ui_q3rpATZGIw83mIeO3_NtFN9LhV6RMFMpJTrmf80Bsq3HvxtdxIiwIIAZNks-4p-5QwSi9kasUd2nlajd8bFrmtyKIV/s2048/AI%20Art%20-%20Simple%20Conventional%20Color%20Wheel%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2LhbYhb4bwHQZoHWz0ibZiJzLdb1lJc3iNURBmZ8RX0ZpK_CHF0uHF4AZDIPuw9Mg93DiXV21LZ7XCVJWgwb1lY8WvohvJJ7ui_q3rpATZGIw83mIeO3_NtFN9LhV6RMFMpJTrmf80Bsq3HvxtdxIiwIIAZNks-4p-5QwSi9kasUd2nlajd8bFrmtyKIV/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Simple%20Conventional%20Color%20Wheel%20-%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Do people and monkeys see colors the same way?</b></div><div><i>May 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-05-people-monkeys.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-05-people-monkeys.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Humans can perceive a <b>greater range of blue tones</b> than monkeys.</div><div><br /></div><div>Recent evolutionary adaptations.</div><div><br /></div><div>A certain short-wave or blue sensitive cone circuit found in humans is absent in marmosets. It is also different from the circuit seen in the macaque monkey.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Washington School of Medicine, Medical University of Vienna, University of Sydney, and the Save Sight Institute: Yeon Jin Kim et al, Comparative connectomics reveals noncanonical wiring for color vision in human foveal retina, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2300545120</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2300545120"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2300545120</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/09682c1e-aa4a-40cd-99e5-17c779378045">AI Art - Simple Conventional Color Wheel - 2023</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Researchers find languages can acquire new color concepts after exposure to other languages</b></div><div><i>Nov 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11-languages-concepts-exposure.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11-languages-concepts-exposure.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Among members of the Tsimane' society, who live in a remote part of the Bolivian Amazon rainforest, the researchers found that those who had learned Spanish as a second language <b>began to classify colors into more words</b>, making color distinctions that are not commonly used by Tsimane' who are monolingual.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the most striking finding, Tsimane' who were bilingual began using two different words to describe <b>blue and green</b>, which monolingual Tsimane' speakers do not typically do. And, instead of borrowing Spanish words for blue and green, they repurposed words from their own language to describe those colors. </div><div><br /></div><div>"It's a great example of one of the main benefits of learning a second language, which is that you open a different worldview and different concepts that then you can import to your native language." </div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via MIT, Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program at Harvard, University of Texas at Austin, and the National Eye Institute: Saima Malik-Moraleda et al, Concepts Are Restructured During Language Contact: The Birth of Blue and Other Color Concepts in Tsimane'-Spanish Bilinguals, Psychological Science (2023). DOI: 10.1177/09567976231199742</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09567976231199742"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09567976231199742</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Older Posts About the Language of Color:</b></div><div><a href="https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2012/07/cultural-evolution-of-basic-color-terms.html">Cultural Evolution of Basic Color Terms 2012</a></div><div><a href="https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2013/06/seeing-red.html">Seeing Red 2016</a></div><div><a href="https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-color-codex.html">The Color Codex 2022</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-41284342544669113572024-01-10T17:40:00.000-08:002024-01-10T17:40:36.530-08:00 Gravity Is Dead<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuY3ta0eHJhhuXWmO2NjdKW24GLEkYWP0CXD9VO8nnytNMSj8h57zbvR6KBhaQ7b0QVkVgRFWg_KNNQVbBrUPx9kcOa5Vkmazcl5LN_ST3uZO744Y11YbUQ8TRQxv7YGE2hXyCOpNNsFweov-vHABq5ayBdXuA-Mzs10ZUntqnv_lAHNGIMuSPJPsNfLu3/s744/Andromeda,%20Unexpected%20-%20Plasma%20Arc%20and%20Winner%20of%20the%20Astronomy%20Photographer%20of%20the%20Year%20by%20Marcel%20Drechsler,%20Xavier%20Strottner,%20Yanin%20Sainty%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="620" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuY3ta0eHJhhuXWmO2NjdKW24GLEkYWP0CXD9VO8nnytNMSj8h57zbvR6KBhaQ7b0QVkVgRFWg_KNNQVbBrUPx9kcOa5Vkmazcl5LN_ST3uZO744Y11YbUQ8TRQxv7YGE2hXyCOpNNsFweov-vHABq5ayBdXuA-Mzs10ZUntqnv_lAHNGIMuSPJPsNfLu3/s320/Andromeda,%20Unexpected%20-%20Plasma%20Arc%20and%20Winner%20of%20the%20Astronomy%20Photographer%20of%20the%20Year%20by%20Marcel%20Drechsler,%20Xavier%20Strottner,%20Yanin%20Sainty%20-%202023.jpg" width="267" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><i>AKA Kuhning the Universe</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Smoking-gun evidence for modified gravity at low acceleration from Gaia observations of wide binary stars</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-smoking-gun-evidence-gravity-gaia-wide.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-smoking-gun-evidence-gravity-gaia-wide.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Conclusive evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity in the low acceleration limit from a verifiable analysis of the orbital motions of long-period, widely separated, binary stars.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Them fightin words.</div><div><br /></div><div>(Although this was suggested 40 years ago by theoretical physicist Mordehai Milgrom at the Weizmann Institute in Israel in a new theoretical framework called modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) or Milgromian dynamics in current usage.)</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div><b>The significance is very high meeting the conventional criteria of 5 sigma for a scientific discovery.</b></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Sejong University in Seoul: Kyu-Hyun Chae, Breakdown of the Newton–Einstein Standard Gravity at Low Acceleration in Internal Dynamics of Wide Binary Stars, The Astrophysical Journal (2023). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ace101</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ace101"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ace101</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Image credit:</b> Andromeda, Unexpected - Plasma Arc and Winner of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year by Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner, Yanin Sainty - 2023 [<a href="https://www.astronomy.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Galaxies_Andromeda-Unexpected_72dpi-1.jpg">link</a>]</span></div><div><br /></div><div>Mostly Unrelated Post Script: </div><div><b>Evidence found of electromagnetic fields from electrical towers disrupting pollinating honeybees</b></div><div><i>May 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-05-evidence-electromagnetic-fields-electrical-towers.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-05-evidence-electromagnetic-fields-electrical-towers.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Man come on.</div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-17946026643805234022024-01-10T17:36:00.000-08:002024-01-10T17:36:11.216-08:00 So Many Metas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjIDO4pr6OHgNtJjd02fsfsa3e6eKZ0hT5RymXit6DE5Inv6CiRuifiOwoc3egROQrPjUjvXdDhFSJIywHLxqv-JQFI9_qf4rvXGACVAPqsrUcVktt9VZGM57nWMwtP-ZMip92deQ8652heheg7vv5OUVjYVzyKhCLClNNXsPrhFZ2HWtNKDRU7pjkMOva/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Cinematography%20Gear%20Arranged%20in%20a%20City%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjIDO4pr6OHgNtJjd02fsfsa3e6eKZ0hT5RymXit6DE5Inv6CiRuifiOwoc3egROQrPjUjvXdDhFSJIywHLxqv-JQFI9_qf4rvXGACVAPqsrUcVktt9VZGM57nWMwtP-ZMip92deQ8652heheg7vv5OUVjYVzyKhCLClNNXsPrhFZ2HWtNKDRU7pjkMOva/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Cinematography%20Gear%20Arranged%20in%20a%20City%20-%202023.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>A somewhat systematic review of previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses about nutrition and Alzheimer's</b></div><div><i>May 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-systematic-previous-meta-analyses-nutrition-alzheimer.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-systematic-previous-meta-analyses-nutrition-alzheimer.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>The team conducted a review of systematic reviews aka meta-analysis studies around the topic of nutrition in disease. (So their's is a meta-meta-analysis.)</div><div><br /></div><div>This is why kids need to go to school:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>There is a risk that a systematic review of multiple meta-data studies could artificially weight specific study findings if they are included multiple times across the different meta-analyses.</div><div><br /></div><div>What may be important to know is that both of these meta-analyses included the same study from 2015, titled "Intakes of fish and polyunsaturated fatty acids and mild-to-severe cognitive impairment risks: A dose-response meta-analysis of 21 cohort studies," <b>which is itself a meta-analysis</b> that could contain studies included in other meta-analyses covered by the current study.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Note:</b> This is 100% related to the AI-feeding-AI problem we're not even beginning to talk about yet -- because when you use meta-analysis of past meta-analyses, you risk multiplying the dirty data. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via International Education College of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou: Inmaculada Xu Lou et al, Effect of nutrition in Alzheimer's disease: A systematic review, Frontiers in Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1147177</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2023.1147177"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2023.1147177</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/0215b74d-6ba2-4d68-b78e-337137881f30">AI Art - Cinematography Gear Arranged in a City - 2023</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Do measurements produce the reality they show us?</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-reality.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-reality.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The observable values of a physical system depend on the dynamics of the measurement interaction by which they are observed. "This is a major step towards explaining the meaning of 'superposition' in quantum mechanics".</div><div><br /></div><div>"Our results show that the physical reality of an object cannot be separated from the context of all its interactions with the environment, past, present and future, providing <b>strong evidence against the widespread belief</b> that our world can be reduced to a mere configuration of material building blocks," said Hofmann.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>I've never heard it this way - </div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Fully resolved measurements require a complete randomization of the system dynamics; this corresponds to a superposition of all possible system dynamics. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Context-dependent realities can explain a wide range of seemingly paradoxical quantum effects. We are now working on better explanations of these phenomena. Ultimately, the goal is to develop a more intuitive understanding of the fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics that avoids the misunderstandings caused by a <b>naïve belief in the reality of microscopic objects</b>," said Hofmann.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hiroshima University: Tomonori Matsushita et al, Dependence of measurement outcomes on the dynamics of quantum coherent interactions between the system and the meter, Physical Review Research (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.033064</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.033064">https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.033064</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>From stock markets to brain scans, new research harmonizes hundreds of scientific methods to understand complex systems</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-stock-brain-scans-harmonizes-hundreds.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-stock-brain-scans-harmonizes-hundreds.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>They looked at hundreds of different methods for measuring interaction patterns in complex system, and worked out which ones are most useful for understanding a given system. They call it <b>the scientific orchestra</b>, and each method is an instrument, and they thought maybe some instruments are better for certain kinds of data, so they tried to find out.</div><div><br /></div><div>We're talking about methods like Brownian motion, coupled maps, coupled oscillators, simulated fMRI, simulated climate, wave equations, or uncorrelated noise to understand data like stock markets, river flow, brain waves, earthquakes.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>In total, we applied our 237 methods to more than 1,000 datasets. By analyzing how these methods behave when applied to such diverse scientific systems, we found a way for them to "play in harmony" for the first time.</div><div><br /></div><div>They found that the methods were grouped differently than what we traditionally think, and that <b>when properly orchestrated</b>, the full ensemble of scientific methods demonstrated improved performance over any single method on its own.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Centre for Complex Systems, The University of Sydney: Oliver M. Cliff et al, Unifying pairwise interactions in complex dynamics, Nature Computational Science (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43588-023-00519-x</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43588-023-00519-x"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43588-023-00519-x</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrms-hKi54Wt9G0rd2xTKMrEiALJC1mTEr4Lvuuo-GAfJazjvjzYsxXXHEoRhN8C1_BNKUuJv7nGfaOzAjNkoMTtDzZLFQ7EjYNxN61TURZPoEffhBOA6ZC6TFxuVZ-K2uWjL0uCohVmZ5_wM7QCUb-B2tcu-HsC9YlwD4xsMQ45BB8zMVxvzFBIjhTHXF/s2304/AI%20Art%20-%20Mechanical%20Goddess%20-%202024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1792" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrms-hKi54Wt9G0rd2xTKMrEiALJC1mTEr4Lvuuo-GAfJazjvjzYsxXXHEoRhN8C1_BNKUuJv7nGfaOzAjNkoMTtDzZLFQ7EjYNxN61TURZPoEffhBOA6ZC6TFxuVZ-K2uWjL0uCohVmZ5_wM7QCUb-B2tcu-HsC9YlwD4xsMQ45BB8zMVxvzFBIjhTHXF/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Mechanical%20Goddess%20-%202024.jpg" width="249" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/8f47e744-def7-4a96-bfea-48f8d441d0d7" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI Art - Mechanical Goddess - 2024</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>Five factors that assess well-being of science predict support for increasing US science funding</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-09-factors-well-being-science-funding.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-09-factors-well-being-science-funding.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Drawing on 13 questions in APPC's 2022 nationally representative Annenberg Science Knowledge survey (ASK) survey of 1,154 U.S. adults, researchers identified five factors that form a Factors Assessing Science's Self-Preservation (FASS) model. The model can be used to assess the extent to which public perceptions align with the self-presentation of science and scientists live up to the ways in which they define themselves and their work to the public.</div></blockquote><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>credible</li><li>prudent</li><li>unbiased</li><li>self-correcting</li><li>beneficial</li></ul></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania: Yotam Ophir et al, Factors Assessing Science's Self-Presentation model and their effect on conservatives' and liberals' support for funding science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2213838120</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2213838120"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2213838120</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Artificial intelligence predicts the future of artificial intelligence research</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-artificial-intelligence-future.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-artificial-intelligence-future.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>(Asimov's Foundation no?)</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>An algorithm that not only assists researchers in orienting themselves systematically but also predictively guides them in the direction in which their own research field is likely to evolve.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Science4Cast is a graph-based representation of knowledge </b>which becomes more complex over time as more scientific articles are published. Each node in the graph represents a concept in AI, and the connections between nodes indicate whether and when two concepts were studied together.</div><div><br /></div><div>For example, the question "What will happen" can be described as a mathematical question about the further development of the graph. Science4Cast is fed with real data from over 100,000 scientific publications spanning a 30-year period, resulting in a total of 64,000 nodes. </div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen: Mario Krenn et al, Forecasting the future of artificial intelligence with machine learning-based link prediction in an exponentially growing knowledge network, Nature Machine Intelligence (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-023-00735-0</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42256-023-00735-0"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42256-023-00735-0</span></a></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-10657013124873375462024-01-10T17:26:00.000-08:002024-01-10T17:26:49.029-08:00 Something Cannibalistic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifjLXubFf4b83DTP2-OMbygWedEhGnTfFJheWX7qbpbGGuTMcRxeze9A7STNt5ye_DWYa7nXnGFXH0oHMneVms7OcS71LBVcjk_bw5oBqhl6ADQ_V7muYi_FMn1ufgjsU5I6b0bLOKXBLccX0_G7SwFh32U-ThM0lrv8mZSRKYtTMOlfSSPup5UIvPUvum/s1280/3-D%20printed%20cilia%20sensors%20-%20Jeff%20Kelley%20and%20Virginia%20Commonwealth%20University%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifjLXubFf4b83DTP2-OMbygWedEhGnTfFJheWX7qbpbGGuTMcRxeze9A7STNt5ye_DWYa7nXnGFXH0oHMneVms7OcS71LBVcjk_bw5oBqhl6ADQ_V7muYi_FMn1ufgjsU5I6b0bLOKXBLccX0_G7SwFh32U-ThM0lrv8mZSRKYtTMOlfSSPup5UIvPUvum/s320/3-D%20printed%20cilia%20sensors%20-%20Jeff%20Kelley%20and%20Virginia%20Commonwealth%20University%20-%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b>Toothpaste containing synthetic tooth minerals can prevent cavities as effectively as fluoride: Clinical trial</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-toothpaste-synthetic-tooth-minerals-cavities.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-toothpaste-synthetic-tooth-minerals-cavities.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Tooth-toothpaste</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Department of Integrated Dentistry, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, Poznan, Poland: Caries-preventing effect of a hydroxyapatite-toothpaste in adults: A 18 months double-blinded randomized clinical trial, Frontiers in Public Health (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1199728.</span></div><div><a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1199728"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1199728</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-10-3d-printed-hairs-professor-tiny-sensors.html">3-D printed cilia sensors - Jeff Kelley and Virginia Commonwealth University - 2023</a></span></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOW8xiaIF-ChuonKcY1ZYPMPuty458-SXS1b025CvTxa8_0c1BM6hkYlkZYtmT1yiFcxUFyEwuSBMj65IF_aBWxUPt079tVQiiqbR03VnfxzWFJErQKO0x3bCLCgejZUodtr9A3c4BqF5ZaOKIqRC3GvXTb2FfkER06jD8Exp4d4NbSlkOm7l7gS5Zp-GW/s949/Transparent%20mouse%20-%20Helmholtz%20Munich%20-%202023.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="527" data-original-width="949" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOW8xiaIF-ChuonKcY1ZYPMPuty458-SXS1b025CvTxa8_0c1BM6hkYlkZYtmT1yiFcxUFyEwuSBMj65IF_aBWxUPt079tVQiiqbR03VnfxzWFJErQKO0x3bCLCgejZUodtr9A3c4BqF5ZaOKIqRC3GvXTb2FfkER06jD8Exp4d4NbSlkOm7l7gS5Zp-GW/s320/Transparent%20mouse%20-%20Helmholtz%20Munich%20-%202023.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66119980" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Transparent mouse - Helmholtz Munich - 2023</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>Transparent mouse could improve cancer drug tests</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, BBC News</i></div><div><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66119980">https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66119980</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Prof Ali Ertürk of the Helmholtz Munich research centre worked out how to make a dead mouse transparent in 2018.</div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-14851935325562688382024-01-10T17:20:00.000-08:002024-01-10T17:20:13.516-08:00 People Planning <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgL4_hjXcfdJH27aMu0iBtgnUQTc5x-RWxnqnOJVW_PXrDyYTK5i5mUUu6c9qZCE2Qbk7A2wwd0NmYC2DXEnLUyj_mbxxTkIfwvC19iZlojX6jWJSc9AgvwX72QMKGXa-tG_FYQyFaLTxTMFamMTxm3F7_ptitfxBAcSneYeEMl5j3aXyDVJ6BS_cBogE/s720/desireline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="720" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgL4_hjXcfdJH27aMu0iBtgnUQTc5x-RWxnqnOJVW_PXrDyYTK5i5mUUu6c9qZCE2Qbk7A2wwd0NmYC2DXEnLUyj_mbxxTkIfwvC19iZlojX6jWJSc9AgvwX72QMKGXa-tG_FYQyFaLTxTMFamMTxm3F7_ptitfxBAcSneYeEMl5j3aXyDVJ6BS_cBogE/s320/desireline.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>You're looking at a picture of a "desire line" created by people who don't really care about urban planning. Although I find this hard to believe, it is said that at Harvard, they don't make sidewalks for the first year after construction, so they can see "where the people want to go". The people, like water follows the path of least resistance, end up carving these "desire lines" into the landscape, and show the landscape designers where to put their sidewalks. It's like when Japan used slime mold to show them how to design the Tokyo subway network, or how when it snows you can see the parts of the road that don't need to be road because they are untouched. Desire lines show us the difference between what people want and what designers or executives or artificially intelligent algorithms tell us we want.</div><div><br /></div><div>For all the anti-urban planners out there:</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Depression is more common in the suburbs than in city centers, finds new research</b></div><div><i>May 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-depression-common-suburbs-city-centers.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-depression-common-suburbs-city-centers.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>It's true, the suburbs kinda suck.</div><div><br /></div><div>But because this was published in the Conversation, part of me thinks it's just deep-brain, deep-pocket propaganda from commercial real estate interests to get people to move back into the city.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>To find out which factors in the built environment were the most important for psychological well-being so that cities can be designed better to be both sustainable and supportive of mental health, they categorized satellite images of all buildings in Denmark over 30 years (1987-2017) and combined the resulting map with individual residential addresses, and health and socio-economic registers.</div><div><br /></div><div>The results show the highest risk was found in the low-rise and single-family housing suburbs.</div><div><br /></div><div>"We think the relative higher risks of depression found in sprawling, low-rise suburbs may be partly down to long car commutes, less public open space and not high enough resident density to enable many local commercial places where people can gather together, such as shops, cafes and restaurants. But of course, there may be many other factors, too."</div><div><br /></div><div>They recommend to invest in high-rise housing where lifestyles are not dependent on private car ownership, combined with thoughtful spatial design to increase access to shorelines, canals, lakes or urban parks. We could also improve existing suburbs' accessibility to both urban services and to public open spaces, and to make sure there are more walkable neighborhoods in these car-centered areas.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Copenhagen, people grab a beer or pastry and hang out with friends along the canal. These areas are at the fringe of both shops and nature—<b>making the spaces social.</b></div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Yale, Stockholm and Gävle universities in Sweden, and Aarhus University in Denmark: Tzu-Hsin Karen Chen et al, Higher depression risks in medium- than in high-density urban form across Denmark, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf3760</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf3760"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf3760</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>New study suggests clues to urban resiliency lie within ancient cities</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-07-clues-urban-resiliency-ancient-cities.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-07-clues-urban-resiliency-ancient-cities.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>They study the Prehispanic Mesoamerica Mayan archaeological site of Caracol in Belize, which flourished for many centuries and was then replaced by smaller cities that subsequently arose and flourished.</div><div><br /></div><div>Most of the collapses of Mayan cities are associated with <b>autocracy and inequality</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Houston: Diane Z. Chase et al, Mesoamerican urbanism revisited: Environmental change, adaptation, resilience, persistence, and collapse, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2211558120</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211558120"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211558120</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>AI system found to outperform humans in creating urban planning designs</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-ai-outperform-humans-urban.html">https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-ai-outperform-humans-urban.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>One of the most obvious use cases: </div><div><br /></div><div>Apparently, the ideal urban plan du-jour is the "15 minute" plan, where everything is within 15 walking minutes of everyone's house (hold on, this almost sounds like most "organically-grown" European cities, maybe I'm confused).</div><div><br /></div><div>*I'm not sure I can be 100% on-board with "the ideal urban plan"; I am suspicious that such a thing exists. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Tsinghua University in China and MIT Senseable City Lab: Yu Zheng et al, Spatial planning of urban communities via deep reinforcement learning, Nature Computational Science (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43588-023-00503-5</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43588-023-00503-5"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43588-023-00503-5</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Also: Paolo Santi, AI improves the design of urban communities, Nature Computational Science (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43588-023-00515-1</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43588-023-00515-1"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43588-023-00515-1</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Population ecologist warns that humanity is on the verge of massive population correction</b></div><div><i>Aug 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-08-population-ecologist-humanity-verge-massive.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-08-population-ecologist-humanity-verge-massive.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Rees notes that there are already signs of stress due to overpopulation -- the planet is growing warmer and critical resources are at risk, such as the availability of fossil fuels as well as food and water. He notes also that many of Earth's cycles are being disrupted, such as weather patterns and the global nutrient cycle.</div><div><br /></div><div>Taken together, he suggests that planet Earth is headed for a major population correction -- perhaps before the end of this century. Such a correction, he notes, would be a drastic reduction in human population. He adds that such a reduction could come about in one or more ways, through war, famine, habitat instability or disease. </div></blockquote><blockquote><div><b>In Calhoun's rat studies, many of the rodents simply withdrew from society, refusing to work, or even attempt to procreate.</b></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning: William E. Rees, The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major 'Population Correction' Is Inevitable, World (2023). DOI: 10.3390/world4030032</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/world4030032"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/world4030032</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-66346936146693702902024-01-10T07:48:00.000-08:002024-01-10T07:48:12.857-08:00Biocomputers and Engineered Living Material<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic36U-IRAm92BSF4HfOrLuKKfeMdX1ZAn4Yo6USbYtEPFzSPyE6GrhoR4qXoe3ONt0cR01crZCNv_Z7V9cB8Vvx1l4rdkusvwSp19S_7Z8YsxdkaMylE2XIVVFu0OVJOuw7il1oGhexH78vsXEP17V_jY0ZpvpxjFXe9ARkNJgn-FSbd8qTlwLpOvhUAkD/s2048/AI%20Art%20-%20Bioalchemy%20Neural%20Net%201%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic36U-IRAm92BSF4HfOrLuKKfeMdX1ZAn4Yo6USbYtEPFzSPyE6GrhoR4qXoe3ONt0cR01crZCNv_Z7V9cB8Vvx1l4rdkusvwSp19S_7Z8YsxdkaMylE2XIVVFu0OVJOuw7il1oGhexH78vsXEP17V_jY0ZpvpxjFXe9ARkNJgn-FSbd8qTlwLpOvhUAkD/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Bioalchemy%20Neural%20Net%201%20-%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Using mycelium to create a self-healing wearable leather-like material</b></div><div><i>Apr 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-04-mycelium-self-healing-wearable-leather-like-material.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-04-mycelium-self-healing-wearable-leather-like-material.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Mushroom leather made of mycelium mats</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Newcastle and Northumbria Universities: Elise Elsacker et al, Fungal Engineered Living Materials: The Viability of Pure Mycelium Materials with Self‐Healing Functionalities, Advanced Functional Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202301875</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202301875"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202301875</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/2f65061d-721f-4b1e-ac3a-c6e138120027">AI Art - Bioalchemy Neural Net 1 - 2023</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>New biocomputing method uses enzymes as catalysts for DNA-based molecular computing</b></div><div><i>May 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-05-biocomputing-method-enzymes-catalysts-dna-based.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-05-biocomputing-method-enzymes-catalysts-dna-based.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Traditional computer hardware is limited in its ability to interface with living organs, which has constrained the development of medical devices. Through the use of biological molecules such as DNA or proteins, biocomputing has the potential to overcome these limitations.</div><div><br /></div><div>Biocomputing is typically done either with live cells or with non-living, enzyme-free molecules. This team has developed a platform for a third method of biocomputing: Trumpet, or Transcriptional RNA Universal Multi-Purpose GatE PlaTform.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Trumpet is a non-living molecular platform, so we don't have most of the problems of live cell engineering. <b>We don't have to overcome evolutionary limitations against forcing cells to do things they don't want to do</b>."</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Minnesota: Judee A. Sharon et al, Trumpet is an operating system for simple and robust cell-free biocomputing, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37752-x</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37752-x"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37752-x</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Scientists make common pain killers from pine trees instead of crude oil</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-07-scientists-common-pain-killers-trees.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-07-scientists-common-pain-killers-trees.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Using the <b>"biorefinery"</b> approach, the precursors for paracetamol and ibuprofen, as well as beta-blockers and an asthma inhaler drug, as well as other chemicals for perfumes and cleaning products have all been made from biorenewable β-pinene, a component of turpentine and by-product from the paper industry. (Because using oil to make pharmaceuticals is unsustainable.)</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Bath: Joshua Dale Tibbetts et al, Sustainable Syntheses of Paracetamol and Ibuprofen from Biorenewable β‐pinene, ChemSusChem (2023). DOI: 10.1002/cssc.202300670</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cssc.202300670"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cssc.202300670</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj310DHGM0JV4xBj25lEraAli3XoZrRkrf2EaZYp9v2pvNk4x-UPm_JznuAV9lsRlcb5Rt4-3Hg5ZQ7xayyuNj0sDuiRSNgom7GjRR9_ghWwyBHOmUprjweU7PSx8LKr736DUWXyCfo6sIIG7HQYS-taGJ5F2HuggMjBFWuJc5kS29t_1Nu8rrwNlTozJT/s2048/AI%20Art%20-%20Bioalchemy%20Neural%20Net%202%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj310DHGM0JV4xBj25lEraAli3XoZrRkrf2EaZYp9v2pvNk4x-UPm_JznuAV9lsRlcb5Rt4-3Hg5ZQ7xayyuNj0sDuiRSNgom7GjRR9_ghWwyBHOmUprjweU7PSx8LKr736DUWXyCfo6sIIG7HQYS-taGJ5F2HuggMjBFWuJc5kS29t_1Nu8rrwNlTozJT/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Bioalchemy%20Neural%20Net%202%20-%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/2f65061d-721f-4b1e-ac3a-c6e138120027" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI Art - Bioalchemy Neural Net 2 - 2023</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>3D-printed 'living material' could clean up contaminated water</b></div><div><i>Sep 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-09-3d-printed-material-contaminated.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-09-3d-printed-material-contaminated.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote>"Engineered living material" - 3D-printed structure made of a seaweed-based polymer called alginate and bacteria that have been genetically engineered to produce an enzyme that transforms various organic pollutants into benign molecules. The bacteria were also engineered to self-destruct in the presence of a molecule called theophylline, which is often found in tea and chocolate. "What's innovative is the <b>pairing of a polymer material with a biological system to create a living material</b>."</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of California San Diego Materials Research Science and Engineering Center: Debika Datta et al, Phenotypically complex living materials containing engineered cyanobacteria, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40265-2</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40265-2"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40265-2</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Metal-loving microbes offer a green way to refine rare earth elements</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-10-metal-loving-microbes-green-refine-rare.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-10-metal-loving-microbes-green-refine-rare.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Cornell scientists have <b>characterized the genome</b> of Shewanella oneidensis - a metal-loving bacteria with an affinity for rare earth elements - to replace the harsh chemical processing with a benign practice called <b>biosorption</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Cornell: Sean Medin et al, Genomic characterization of rare earth binding by Shewanella oneidensis, Scientific Reports (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-42742-6</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42742-6"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42742-6</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>New pipeline makes valuable organic acid from plants—saving money and emissions</b></div><div><i>Oct 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-10-pipeline-valuable-acid-plantssaving-money.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-10-pipeline-valuable-acid-plantssaving-money.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>They're making succinic acid from sugarcane using Issatchenkia orientalis, a yeast like Saccharomyces cerevisiae or the bacteria Escherichia coli, but one that thrives in pH 3-4 acidic conditions. This means it doesn't produce unwanted by-products that need to be separated-out at high cost. </div><div><br /></div><div>The researchers did extensive metabolic engineering to rewire I. orientalis to produce robust levels of succinic acid, which is widely used additive for food and beverages.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation, and Princeton: Vinh G. Tran et al, An end-to-end pipeline for succinic acid production at an industrially relevant scale using Issatchenkia orientalis, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41616-9</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41616-9"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41616-9</span></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6q6tGViBvxBTwQIaBh9BIz1RvD_12C3DzkH5tsb436TNQhsAarRQ1e4ArnUZo3zmugPVdCIY2mzQG4qodnWPJCzCRnAdRWLX8PLgA4yxVkegRuixirGX1nDmZ58dP_aKtzKmEEjIDGIE_UBfimvmu97kWJMZnsnoZytuN7MMg4T8oHHYI0utOaJvn7Sfh/s2048/AI%20Art%20-%20Bioalchemy%20Neural%20Net%203%20-%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6q6tGViBvxBTwQIaBh9BIz1RvD_12C3DzkH5tsb436TNQhsAarRQ1e4ArnUZo3zmugPVdCIY2mzQG4qodnWPJCzCRnAdRWLX8PLgA4yxVkegRuixirGX1nDmZ58dP_aKtzKmEEjIDGIE_UBfimvmu97kWJMZnsnoZytuN7MMg4T8oHHYI0utOaJvn7Sfh/s320/AI%20Art%20-%20Bioalchemy%20Neural%20Net%203%20-%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/2f65061d-721f-4b1e-ac3a-c6e138120027" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI Art - Bioalchemy Neural Net 3 - 2023</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>Scientists report completion of chromosome XI, a major step towards creating the world's first synthetic yeast</b></div><div><i>Nov 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-11-scientists-chromosome-xi-major-world.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-11-scientists-chromosome-xi-major-world.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>World's first synthetic yeast genome -- The synthetic chromosome has replaced one of the natural chromosomes of a yeast cell and, after a painstaking debugging process, now allows the cell to grow with the same fitness level as a natural cell. The synthetic genome will not only help scientists to understand how genomes function, but it will have many applications. </div><div> </div></blockquote><div></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via University of Nottingham and Imperial College London: Synthetic yeast chromosome XI design provides a testbed for the study of extrachromosomal circular DNA dynamics, Cell Genomics (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100418.</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100418"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100418</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Charged 'molecular beasts' as the foundation for new chemical compounds</b></div><div><i>Nov 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-11-molecular-beasts-foundation-chemical-compounds.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-11-molecular-beasts-foundation-chemical-compounds.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>They are modifying mass spectrometers to synthesize new molecules.</div><div><br /></div><div>Note that a mass spectrometer is supposed to break things apart so you can look at them one by one, but this is now making entirely new chemicals with parts of the broken molecules. </div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>The basic strategy of controlling reactive chemicals in mass spectrometers is not new, but the substances are only produced in tiny quantities and cannot be extracted. They are destroyed when the signal used for analyses is generated. </div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>They're doing "preparative mass spectrometry" and making new molecules. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at Leipzig University: Markus Rohdenburg et al, Chemical Synthesis with Gaseous Molecular Ions: Harvesting [B12Br11N2]− from a Mass Spectrometer, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2023). DOI: 10.1002/anie.202308600</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.202308600"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.202308600</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>New antibiotic approach proves promising against Lyme bacterium</b></div><div><i>Nov 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-11-antibiotic-approach-lyme-bacterium.html">https://phys.org/news/2023-11-antibiotic-approach-lyme-bacterium.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Change some of the words, or not even, and it sounds like the most diabolical scifi weapon scenario:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>"This transport mechanism gets internalized in the bacterium and brings in a molecule that causes what we've described as a berserker reaction - a programmed death response," said lead author Timothy Haystead, Ph.D., professor in Duke's Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology. "It wipes out the bacteria - sterilizes the culture with a single dose of light. And then when you look at what occurs with electron microscopy, you see the collapse of the chromosome."</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Duke University Medical Center: Dave L. Carlson et al, Targeting Borrelia burgdorferi HtpG with a berserker molecule, a strategy for anti-microbial development, Cell Chemical Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2023.10.004</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chembiol.2023.10.004"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chembiol.2023.10.004</span></a></div><div><br /></div></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7379040653428769125.post-67010305655139148042024-01-10T07:40:00.000-08:002024-01-10T07:40:06.027-08:00Mind Altering Mind Control<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2VyQtcCoirBnrLHv0w3zR8nxG0oWCAvVKhVBvH2kK-22oBhwHmIqB8PJEjitYdZ3OxmHqLbj7HtCw8j7L1Zcs7MdSR04LMv3uwQfJYtGf8zEwKxo6SIW9x5pHknmqgFi4s8n3i302Nv6IFumsb5IewzsThaoEzTBOsRnWbpXirdGojptGjt5WcM96cnr/s768/Acid%20House.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2VyQtcCoirBnrLHv0w3zR8nxG0oWCAvVKhVBvH2kK-22oBhwHmIqB8PJEjitYdZ3OxmHqLbj7HtCw8j7L1Zcs7MdSR04LMv3uwQfJYtGf8zEwKxo6SIW9x5pHknmqgFi4s8n3i302Nv6IFumsb5IewzsThaoEzTBOsRnWbpXirdGojptGjt5WcM96cnr/s320/Acid%20House.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Mechanism behind reductions in depression symptoms from LSD and mushrooms found</b></div><div><i>Jun 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-06-mechanism-reductions-depression-symptoms-lsd.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-06-mechanism-reductions-depression-symptoms-lsd.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>The research team added psilocin or LSD to cells in a petri dish in their lab and then looked at what occurred under a microscope. More specifically, they watched the interactions between chemicals in the compounds and receptor cells to see which might bind. After a trial-and-error process, they finally discovered that some of the chemicals were binding to the receptor TrkB—the same receptor targeted by drugs developed to treat depression - <b>only they were creating bonds that were 1,000 times stronger</b>. They also found that the result of such strong bonding was an increase in neuroplastic activity - the mechanism believed to be responsible for the reduction of depression symptoms.</div><div><br /></div><div>They also found that the antidepressant effects from the binding were independent of the effects of chemicals in the drugs that altered serotonin receptors, which are responsible for inducing psychedelic experiences and hallucinations. And that means that the team may have found a way to <b>treat patients without inducing such experiences</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via Neuroscience Center of University of Helsinki: Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland: Rafael Moliner et al, Psychedelics promote plasticity by directly binding to BDNF receptor TrkB, Nature Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01316-5</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01316-5"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01316-5</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Research Briefing: Psychedelics bind to TrkB to induce neuroplasticity and antidepressant-like effects, Nature Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01317-4</span></div><div><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01317-4"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01317-4</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Note: Studies done on mice that don't mention mice in the title: Research papers that omit 'mice' from titles receive misleading media coverage. h<a href="ttps://phys.org/news/2021-06-papers-omit-mice-titles-media.html">ttps://phys.org/news/2021-06-papers-omit-mice-titles-media.html</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image credit: <a href="https://lexica.art/prompt/5f1ff5f8-4ae3-47a7-955b-0e862df94b60">AI Art - Acid House - 2022</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Australia is the first country to let patients with depression or PTSD be prescribed psychedelics</b></div><div><i>Jul 2023, phys.org</i></div><div><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-australia-country-patients-depression-ptsd.html">https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-australia-country-patients-depression-ptsd.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Who pays $10,000 for an eighth of shrooms? (Visibly confused)</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>"The drugs will be expensive in Australia -- about $10,000 (roughly $6,600 U.S. dollars) per patient for treatment."</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">via the <a href="https://apnews.com/">Associated Press</a> on <a href="http://phys.org">phys.org</a></span></div></div><div><br /></div></div>Self Replicatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03598810188779764339noreply@blogger.com0