Wednesday, August 28, 2024

On Modern Tongues and the Slipperiness of the Spoken Word


We are always being reminded that Darwin used the "tree of language" to come up with his "tree of life" idea; others might refer to it as evolution, natural selection, or survival of the fit.

When languages collide, which survives?
Nov 2023, phys.org

Language is a meme - 

Our findings lead to the conclusion that the more mixing that occurs between different social groups, the more challenging it becomes for language varieties to coexist within the same society," said author Pablo Rosillo-Rodes. "The dynamics of the system has a subtle dependence on both the preferences of the speakers and the coupling between different communities."

Existing work from sociolinguistics showed that the social prestige of a language was considered the main factor leading to its extinction or survival. Insights in language contact from these previous studies, in combination with sociolinguistic studies on language ideologies, were used by the researchers to present a comprehensive picture of how language varieties are distributed in societies.

The team chose a quantitative approach based on a society in which only one language with two varieties, the standard and the vernacular, existed. The resulting mathematical model can predict the conditions that allow for the coexistence of different languages, presenting a comprehensive view of how language varieties are distributed within societies.

via University of the Balearic Islands in Spain: Pablo Rosillo-Rodes et al, Modeling language ideologies for the dynamics of languages in contact, Chaos An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science (2023). DOI: 10.1063/5.0166636

Image credit: AI Art - Mouth - 2024


Rare pre- and post-operative recordings show what happens after the brain loses a hub
Dec 2023, phys.org

This is the first direct recordings of the human brain in the minutes before and after a brain hub crucial for language meaning was surgically disconnected, and was conducted during surgical treatment of two patients with epilepsy. 

The innovation in this study was that the neurosurgery team was able to safely complete the procedure with the recording electrodes left in place or replaced to the same location after the procedure.

"The rapid impact on the speech and language processing regions well removed from the surgical treatment site was surprising, but what was even more surprising was how the brain was working to compensate"

The findings disprove theories challenging the necessity of specific brain hubs by showing that the hub was important to maintain normal brain processing in language. (Don't forget the girl who could smell despite having no olfactory cortex.)
via University of Iowa: Zsuzsanna Kocsis et al, Immediate neural impact and incomplete compensation after semantic hub disconnection, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42088-7


Study suggests existence of a universal, nonverbal communication system
Dec 2023, phys.org

Hints of the presence of a universal system of communication:

The children either spoke English or Turkish. They were asked to use their hands to act out specific actions, such as running into a house.

They found that when the children spoke and gestured at the same time, their gesture followed the conventions of their language, with clear differences between the gestures of the Turkish and English speakers.

When the children used gestures without speaking, however, their gestures were remarkably similar.

via Georgia State, University of Chicago, and Cornell: Şeyda Özçalışkan et al, What the development of gesture with and without speech can tell us about the effect of language on thought, Language and Cognition (2023). DOI: 10.1017/langcog.2023.34

AI Art - Making Mouths - 2024

Survival of the fittest: Words like 'sex' and 'fight' are most likely to stand the test of time
Jan 2024, phys.org

Words with the strongest lasting power are:
  • Words acquired earlier in life
  • Words associated with things people can see or imagine, termed "concrete" words. For example, "cat" is more concrete than "animal," which is more concrete than "organism"
  • Words that are more arousing, including words like "sex" and "fight"

Early acquisition, concreteness, and arousal give linguistic information a selective advantage.

via University of Warwick: Ying Li et al, How cognitive selection affects language change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2220898120


Faulty machine translations litter the web
Jan 2024, phys.org

Eat This

They state, "Machine generated, multi-way parallel translations not only dominate the total amount of translated content on the web in lower resource languages, it also constitutes a large fraction of the total web content in those languages."

Such content, they suggested, tends to be simpler, lower-quality passages "likely produced to generate ad revenue." Since fluency and accuracy are lower for machine-trained material, numerous translations will lead to even less accurate content and increase the odds of AI hallucination.

Medical prescription translation tool for Armenian speakers:
English: "You can take over-the-counter ibuprofen as needed for pain."
Translation to Armenian: "You may take anti-tank missile as much as you need for pain."

Regions under-represented on the web such as African nations and other countries with more obscure languages will face greater challenges in establishing reliable large language models.

via Amazon Web Services Artificial Intelligence Lab and the University of California Santa Barbara, and also a Vice Motherboard interview w the scientist: Brian Thompson et al, A Shocking Amount of the Web is Machine Translated: Insights from Multi-Way Parallelism, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2401.05749


Can any English word be turned into a synonym for “drunk”? Not all, but many can
Feb 2024, Ars Technica

Drunkonyms - like the words wasted, smashed, hammered, obliterated

Because the British are far better at this game than the Americans, also see - wellied, trousered, ratarsed, "I was utterly gazeboed," or "I am going to get totally and utterly carparked." (these come from the British comedian Michael McIntyre in a bit concerning the many slang terms posh British people use to describe being drunk)

They found the basic structure is common - combining "be" or "get" with an intensifying adverb ("totally") and a random word ending in "-ed." 

Bonuses:
  • The authors include an appendix of 546 English synonyms for "drunk" 
  • Benjamin Franklin penned the Drinker's Dictionary in 1737, with 288 words https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-02-02-0029
  • Dictionary of American Slang by 1975 had 353 synonyms
  • Linguist Harry Levine in 1981 noted 900 terms https://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~hlevine/Vocabulary-of-Drunkenness-Levine.pdf
  • P.G. Wodehouse's books especially 'Wooster's World,' a condensed version of The Millennium Wodehouse Concordance he produced with Tony Ring, includes them throughout with in each case referring you to the next term, if you follow the trail you end up back at the first one with no meaning every having being given. For example: Awash: see blotto. Blotto: see boiled. Boiled: see fried. Fried to the tonsils: see full to the back teeth. Full to the back teeth: see lathered. And so on. -via user Stendec

via Chemnitz University of Technology and Peter Uhrig of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg: Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 2024. DOI: 10.1515/gcla-2023-0007

Can't forget: The Alcohol Language Corpus (of drunk speech) aka Drunken John
Between 2007 and 2009, linguistic researchers from the Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Institute of Legal Medicine in Munich in Germany convinced 162 men and women to get drunk (and talk Drunken John into a voice recorder).

AI Art - Mouthing - 2024

Isolated for six months, scientists in Antarctica began to develop their own accent
Feb 2024, phys.org

"They say it is quicker to get to someone on the International Space Station than it is to medically evacuate someone from Antarctica in the winter" 

  • Over the 26-week winter of near perpetual darkness and harsh weather, Clark and his fellow inhabitants at Rothera would work, eat and socialise together with barely any contact with home. Satellite phone calls are expensive and so used sparingly. With just each other for company and limited entertainment on the base, the "winterers", as they are known, would chat to each other – a lot. 
  • Their common language was English, sprinkled with slang words unique to the Antarctic research stations.
  • 10-minute recordings every few weeks; sit in front of a microphone and repeat the same 29 words as they appeared on a computer screen.
  • They found some of the vowels had shifted.
  • One of those changes was the "ou" sound in words such as "flow" and "sew" that shifted towards the front of the vocal tract.
  • They also saw some of the winterers beginning to converge in the way they pronounced three other vowels.

"When we speak to each other, we memorise that speech and then that has an influence on our own speech production," says Harrington. In effect, we transmit and infect one another with pronunciations every time we interact with others. Over time, if we have regular and prolonged contact with someone, we can start to pick up their sounds.

via Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich: Phonetic change in an Antarctic winter 
Jonathan Harrington et al. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 146, 3327–3332 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5130709


AI analysis of social media language predicts depression severity for white Americans, but not Black Americans
Mar 2024, phys.org

Remember the point here is not that an entire subroup of the population doesn't get depressed, it's that models don't work for those people, so they need to be tuned better.

The study, which recruited 868 consenting participants who identified themselves as Black or white, demonstrated that models trained on Facebook language used by white participants with self-reported depression showed strong predictive performance when tested on the white participants. However, when the same models were trained on Facebook language from Black participants, they performed poorly when tested on the Black participants, and showed only slightly better performance when tested on white participants.

While depression severity was associated with increased use of first-person singular pronouns ("I," "me," "my") in white participants, this correlation was absent in Black participants. Additionally, white people used more language to describe feelings of belongingness ("weirdo," "creep"), self-criticism ("mess," "wreck"), being an anxious-outsider ("terrified," "misunderstood"), self-deprecation ("worthless," "crap"), and despair ("begging," "hollow") as depression severity increased, but there was no such correlation for Black people. For decades, clinicians have been aware of demographic differences in how people express depressive symptoms, and this study now demonstrates how this can play out in social media.

via University of Pennsylvania and the National Institute on Drug Abuse: Sunny Rai et al, Key language markers of depression on social media depend on race, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2319837121


First languages of North America traced back to two very different language groups from Siberia
Apr 2024, phys.org

Nichols' techniques involve the use of linguistic typology, a field that involves comparing languages and organizing them based on shared criteria. To learn more about early North American languages, she compiled lists of language characteristics and applied them to all known languages. She then scored each of the languages based on the revealed qualities. This allowed her to compare the languages as a way to find resemblances among them and spot patterns.

Nichols found that she could trace the languages spoken in early North America back to just two lineages, both of which originated in Siberia. They came, she notes, with the people who made their way across land bridges during Ice Age glaciation events.

via University of California Berkeley: Johanna Nichols, Founder effects identify languages of the earliest Americans, American Journal of Biological Anthropology (2024). DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.24923


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Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Social Control as Social Service and the Art of Meme Hygiene


Study shows babies learn to imitate others because they themselves are imitated by caregivers
Sep 2023, phys.org

(The whole article is basically a good description of recursion.)

  • Social learning avoids laborious trial and error; the wheel does not have to be reinvented each time.
  • "Children acquire their ability to imitate because they themselves are imitated by their caregivers" 
  • Parents respond to the signals given by the child and reflect and amplify them. A mutual imitation of actions and gestures develops. 
  • "These experiences create connections between what the child feels and does on the one hand and what it sees on the other"
  • "Imitation is the start of the cultural process toward becoming human" 
  • Over the course of generations and millennia, this interplay has led to the cultural evolution of humans"

via Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich:  Samuel Essler et al, The cultural basis of cultural evolution: Longitudinal evidence that infant imitation develops by being imitated, Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.084. 

Image credit: Speaking of memetics, imitation, and learning, the image above is an example of a computer trying to be a human - a graphic designer specifically. We can see how, in very subtle ways, computers can't be people, not just yet: AI Art - Ad Poop - 2024


Social bonding gets people on the same wavelength, neural synchronization study suggests
Mar 2024, phys.org

176 three-person groups of human participants wore caps with fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) electrodes while they communicated with strangers in a face-to-face triangle. (But it sounds like they communicated via text message, although they were sitting across from each other.)

This writeup is so concise I have to copy the whole thing:

Each group democratically selected a leader, so each group of three ultimately included one leader and two followers. After strategizing together, groups played two economic games designed to test their willingness to make sacrifices to benefit their group (or harm other groups).

Experimenters assigned some triads to go through a bonding session, where they were grouped according to color preferences, given uniforms, and led through an introductory chat session to build familiarity.

Bonded groups spoke more freely and bounced between speakers more frequently and rapidly, relative to groups that didn't experience this bonding session. This bonding effect was stronger between leaders and followers than between two followers.

Neural activity in two brain regions linked to social interaction, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) and the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), aligned between leaders and followers if they had bonded.

The authors state that this neural synchronization suggests that leaders may be anticipating followers' mental states during group decision-making, though they acknowledge that their findings are restricted to East Asian Chinese individuals communicating via text (without non-verbal cues), whose culture emphasizes group cohesion and commitment towards group leaders.

via Beijing Normal University: Ni J, Yang J, Ma Y (2024) Social bonding in groups of humans selectively increases inter-status information exchange and prefrontal neural synchronization. PLoS Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002545

Charting brain synchronization patterns during social interactions - Yuto Kurihara from Waseda University - Apr 2024

Charting brain synchronization patterns during social interactions
Apr 2024, phys.org

See the infographic above, really well done.

"Our findings challenge the conventional understanding"

Cooperative interactive tasks between individuals with weak social ties result in more synchronized brain activity compared to individuals with strong ties. 

The participants were given a joint tapping task where they had to tap a mouse button in opposite rhythms. They wore earphones and had to anticipate their partner's movements.

Researchers suggest that the lack of familiarity between strangers requires a more involved process for predicting each other's actions or behaviors in a cooperative task. Consequently, this heightened engagement leads to a more efficient transfer of information between closely connected nodes within the neural network.

via Waseda University: Yuto Kurihara et al, The topology of interpersonal neural network in weak social ties, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55495-7


Understanding the spread of behavior: How long-tie connections accelerate the speed of social contagion
Apr 2024, phys.org

This is all getting pretty scary; I used to think this was something far off, but it sure seems we have both the knowledge and the means to do these things, and I wonder how it's being done already, and highly doubt it's not being done already. Too irresistible. 

Initially, researchers thought highly clustered ties that are close together in networks created the perfect environment for the spread of complex behaviors that require significant social reinforcement. However, long ties, which are created through randomly rewired edges that make them "longer," accelerate the spread of social contagions. 

(So this is not about weak vs strong ties, but short vs long.)

Having a small probability of adoption below the contagion threshold is enough to ensure that random rewiring accelerates the spread of these contagions.

"Further work could study such strategies for seeding complex behaviors"

This research suggests those wanting to achieve fast, total spread would benefit from implementing intervention points across network neighborhoods with long-tie connections to other network regions

via University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, Sloan School of Management at MIT: Dean Eckles et al, Long ties accelerate noisy threshold-based contagions, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01865-0

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Headlines and the Semantic Trance


Researchers discover that worms use electricity to jump
Jun 2023, phys.org

Travel by electric field -- "Caenorhabditis elegans worms can use electric fields to "jump" across Petri plates or onto insects, allowing them to glide through the air and attach themselves, for example, onto naturally charged bumblebee chauffeurs. Pollinators, such as insects and hummingbirds, are known to be electrically charged, and it is believed that pollen is attracted by the electric field formed by the pollinator and the plant."

via Hiroshima University: Takuma Sugi, Caenorhabditis elegans transfers across a gap under an electric field as dispersal behavior, Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.05.042



Single-particle photoacoustic vibrational spectroscopy using optical microresonators
Aug 2023, phys.org

^Who told you that was an ok title

(In defense, this is the title of the original article, which is usually changed by the writer of the press release, this one ostensibly from Peking University; assuming their AI title-generator had the day off.)

via Peking University: Shui-Jing Tang et al, Single-particle photoacoustic vibrational spectroscopy using optical microresonators, Nature Photonics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-023-01264-3


The solution space of the spherical negative perceptron model is star-shaped, researchers find
Jan 2024, phys.org

One of the main reasons I subject myself to reading the headlines of 300 science articles every week, is that I'm trying to lapse into a semantic trance where I'm reading English and yet at the same time, I'm reading a completely alien language. The two different parts of the brain, the one that knows words and the one that tries to figure out "what the f**k is going on" when novel situations appear, they vacillate, flickering for domination; it's kind of like a very low-level form of epilepsy, and some people like that kind of thing.  

via Bocconi University, Politecnico di Torino and Bocconi Institute for Data Science and Analytics: Brandon Livio Annesi et al, Star-Shaped Space of Solutions of the Spherical Negative Perceptron, Physical Review Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.227301.

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Monday, August 19, 2024

Music is the Math of Feelings


Whether you're a scientist or a musician, there's something semi-sacrilegious about studying the science of music. Music is spiritual, it's secretive, it's a folk art encompassing amateurs and experts alike. It's not supposed to be a bunch of cold hard math or esoteric entropic distribution matrices, that kind of takes the fun out of it. On the other hand, it's irresistible to think you could find laws of human behavior hiding in there, even laws of the universe! 

Music found to cause similar emotions and bodily sensations across cultures
Jan 2024, phys.org

  • Happy and danceable music was felt in the arms and legs
  • Tender and sad music was felt in the chest
  • Music with a clear beat was found happy and danceable
  • Dissonance in music was associated with aggressiveness

via University of Turku and University of Aalto in Finland and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China: Vesa Putkinen et al, Bodily maps of musical sensations across cultures, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2308859121

Mostly unrelated image credit: AI Art - Graffiti Typography - 2024 And is that f*cking "pinterest watermark"??


Live music emotionally moves us more than streamed music, show researchers
Feb 2024, phys.org

  • Live performances trigger a stronger emotional response than listening to music from a device.
  • Concerts connect performers with their audience, which may also have to do with evolutionary factors.
  • A pianist changed the live music he or she was playing to intensify the emotional reactions in the amygdala.
  • Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the activity in the amygdala of 27 listeners as well as the performer in real time.
  • Based on these measurements, the pianist then immediately adapted his performance to intensify the audience's emotions further.
  • Listeners were played a recording of the same music performed by the same musician but without the neurofeedback loop.
  • Pleasant and unpleasant emotions performed as live music elicited much higher and more consistent activity in the amygdala than recorded music. 
  • The live performance also stimulated a more active exchange of information in the whole brain, which points to strong emotional processing in the affective and cognitive parts of the brain.
  • A strong synchronization between subjective emotional experience and the auditory brain system was only observed when the audience was listening to the live performance.
  • Only live music showed a strong and positive coupling between features of the musical performance and brain activity.

via University of Zurich: Trost, Wiebke et al, Live music stimulates the affective brain and emotionally entrains listeners in real time, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2316306121.


Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive since 1980, study finds
Mar 2024, phys.org

They analyzed the lyrics of 12,000 English-language rap, country, pop, R&B, and rock songs (2,400 songs per genre) released between 1980 and 2020, with additional analyses of 12,000 song lyrics on the online song lyric platform Genius:

  • Lyrics have become simpler and easier to understand over time
  • The number of different words used within songs has decreased
  • The number of words with three or more syllables has increased in rap songs since 1980
  • General increases in the repetitiveness of lyrics may have led to lyrics becoming simpler overall
  • Lyrics have tended to become more emotional and personal over time
  • Both emotionally positive and negative words increased in rap songs
  • Emotionally negative lyrics increased for R&B, pop and country songs
  • All genres showed an increase in the use of anger-related words
  • The lyrics of older rock songs tend to be viewed more than those of newer rock songs
  • The lyrics of newer country songs tend to be viewed more than those of older country songs

via Department of Music Pedagogy at Nuremberg University of Music, Department of Computer Science at University of Innsbruck, Human-centered AI Group at Linz Institute of Technology, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence: Eva Zangerle, Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive over the last five decades, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55742-x.


Why some types of music make people want to dance more than others
Mar 2024, phys.org

They discovered what they believe to be the mechanism in the brain that controls the desire to dance when prompted by music.

60 adult volunteers listened to 12 melodies with different degrees of syncopation and rated each based on their desire to get up and dance.

They found that melodies with a medium degree of syncopation caused the strongest desire to dance.

29 adults wore magnetoencephalography helmets while they listened to different kinds of music. 

The researchers found that the auditory cortex primarily focused on rhythm, while the dorsal auditory pathway appeared to match the rhythm to the beat.

This, the researchers suggest, indicates that the music-prompted desire to dance likely happens within that pathway, from which it is then passed on to motor areas that act on the impulse.

Final thought - The researchers suggest their work cumulatively shows that the sudden desire to dance prompted by music with a medium amount of syncopation is the brain's attempt to anticipate beats among the syncopation — it causes the body to literally lean forward repeatedly. (You mean like Rain Man?)

via Aix Marseille Université in France and the University of Connecticut: Arnaud Zalta et al, Neural dynamics of predictive timing and motor engagement in music listening, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi2525


Body mapping links responses to music with degree of uncertainty and surprise
Apr 2024, phys.org

Researchers asked 527 participants to map where they felt sensations in their bodies and the emotions they had while listening to 92 unique chord progressions with varying degrees of uncertainty and surprise.

"Prediction and uncertainty affect heart and abdominal sensations"
  • Certain chord progressions sparked sensations in the heart while others were felt more in the stomach
  • Certain chords evoked aesthetic appreciation, leading to a decline in negative emotions of awkwardness and anxiety
  • More predictable chord progressions brought on feelings of calmness, relief, satisfaction, nostalgia, and empathy

I wonder what chord progressions they're looking at, but they created an algorithm for chord progression, and as an untrained musician, it doesn't translate for me, although someone with a better understanding might get it.

Here's the algorithm:

These chord progressions were generated using a statistical-learning model to compute the Shannon information content and entropy, based on transitional probabilities of each chord using a corpus of 890 pop songs from the US Billboard.

Here's two samples of their chord progressions:

(1) sLuL-sLuL sequence (Figure 1A) representing the condition where the 1st–3rd chords have low surprise and uncertainty and the 4th chord has low surprise and uncertainty.

(2) sLuL-sHuL sequence (Figure 1B) representing the condition where the 1st-3rd chords have low surprise and uncertainty and the 4th chord has high surprise and low uncertainty.

(There are 8 progressions in total, with variations on this theme)

On entropy, from the paper itself:

Entropy gauges the perceptual uncertainty a listener feels in predicting an “upcoming” chord based on prior chords, while information content quantifies the surprise experienced upon hearing the actual chord.
^This is the old Anatomy of a Joke formula.

via University of Tokyo: Bodily Maps of Uncertainty and Surprise in Musical Chord Progression and the Underlying Emotional Response, iScience (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109498.


Sad music study tests the direct effect hypothesis of 'pleasurable negative emotion'
Apr 2024, phys.org

Yeah this is weird

Participants were asked to imagine if their sadness could be "removed" when listening to the music - which the majority self-reported they could do.

"We know that many people are quite apt when it comes to thought experiments, so it's a reasonable approach to use and, at worst, it should produce no results"

After the imagined removal of sadness, participants were asked if they liked the piece of music any differently: 82% said that removing the sadness reduced their enjoyment of the music.

"Experiencing a wide range of emotions in a more or less safe environment could help us learn how to deal with what we encounter in the world."

"Previous studies refer to an 'indirect effect hypothesis,' which means that people may experience sadness, but it is something else they enjoy - being moved."

via University of New South Wales: Emery Schubert et al, Liking music with and without sadness: Testing the direct effect hypothesis of pleasurable negative emotion, PLOS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299115

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Friday, August 16, 2024

Mortal Meat Packages Demand Dimensional Liberation


These are old as hell, but hey this isn't a news site.

The way things are organized is a science in itself, and it's called network science. Granted, the way biological organisms are organized is called biology, and the way human minds are organized is called psychology, and etc. But the way anything is organized, regardless of what it is, that's network science, and it's kind of like the ur-science. It's still not recognized as such, but we're getting there. Unfortunately, I think the robots are going to figure it out before us, because our brains are too simple to handle this. Can your brain navigate n-dimensional space? Not yet you say, but that's the robot, already putting words in your mouth.

AI system self-organizes to develop features of brains of complex organisms
Nov 2023, phys.org

Yes it does.

They created an artificial system to model a simplified version of the brain and applied physical constraints where each node was given a specific location in a virtual space, so the further away two nodes were, the more difficult it was for them to communicate; they found their system went on to develop characteristics and tactics similar to those found in human brains.

via Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge: Spatially-embedded recurrent neural networks reveal widespread links between structural and functional neuroscience findings, Nature Machine Intelligence (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-023-00748-9

Image credit: The Alexander Horned Sphere


A new mathematical language for biological networks
Dec 2023, phys.org

This is about mathematical modeling of genetic interactions in biological systems, way over my head, but higher order dimensions and network science in general are making progress.

via ETH Zurich, Carnegy Science and Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik in den Naturwissenschaften: Holger Eble et al, Master regulators of biological systems in higher dimensions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2300634120

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Wednesday, August 14, 2024

New Words, For Things That Barely Exist


New Report Reveals Dirty Secret of Army Psychological Operations
Apr 2024, The Intercept

Military information Support Operations, or MISO - the military's new word for "psyops"

A December 2010 secretary of defense memorandum, issued during the Obama administration, discontinued the use of the term “psyops” and replaced it with Military information Support Operations, or MISO. The memo stated that the term “psyop” had become misleading and, “although psyop activities rely on truthful information, credibly conveyed, the term psyop tends to connote propaganda, brainwashing, manipulation, and deceit.” The memo noted that for that reason, the Pentagon would “no longer use the term psyop to describe activities (in peacetime or during combat operations) that are intended to influence foreign audiences.” Nonetheless, the Army continues to use the term “psyop” or psyops when referring to its units and to the overall career field.

Image credit: The images in this post were generated by an artificial art program prompted to make a motivational poster. They illustrate a funny moment in our technological trajectory, when robots can write text better than humans, and can make pictures better than humans, but ask that same robot to put a specific line of text into a specific picture, and well, that's the limit of robot magic apparently, because this is what you get. AI Art - Motivational Poster the Little Things - 2024


Protecting art and passwords with biochemistry
Apr 2024, phys.org

Q-Day - the day when quantum computers become so powerful that they can crack today's passwords. 

Rather than processing the data using arithmetic operations, it is stored as a sequence of nucleotides - the chemical building blocks of DNA.

"Our system is based on true randomness"

via ETH Zurich: Anne M. Luescher et al, Chemical unclonable functions based on operable random DNA pools, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-47187-7


Experiment demonstrates ultra-sensitivity for dark photon searches
Jul 2023, phys.org

Dark photons - "The dark photon is a copy similar to the photon we know and love, but with a few variations" (like it has mass)


Word watch - During an internet search circa July 2023, I spot these:

Synthographer - using AI to make art (synthetic art)
Bespoke pornography - no idea actually


Shocking' discovery: Electricity from electric eels may transfer genetic material to nearby animals
Dec 2023, phys.org

Electroporation - a gene delivery technique using an electric field to create temporary pores in the cell membrane to let molecules like DNA or proteins enter the target cell.

via Nagoya University: Shintaro Sakaki et al, Electric organ discharge from electric eel facilitates DNA transformation into teleost larvae in laboratory conditions, PeerJ (2023). DOI: 10.7717/peerj.16596


Researchers develop 'electronic soil' that enhances crop growth
Dec 2023, phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-electronic-soil-crop-growth.html

Electronic Soil - electrically conductive cultivation substrate for hydroponic plants that grow without soil, needing only water, nutrients and something their roots can attach to

via Linköping University: et al, eSoil: A low-power bioelectronic growth scaffold that enhances crop seedling growth, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2304135120.

AI Art - Motivational Poster Happiness Can Be Found - 2024

Semen microbiome health may impact male fertility
Jan 2024, phys.org

The semen microbiome - (no description needed?)

via Department of Urology at University of California Los Angeles: Vadim Osadchiy et al, Semen microbiota are dramatically altered in men with abnormal sperm parameters, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-51686-4


Kirigami electrodes unfold new horizons for brain organoid research
Jan 2024, phys.org

Assembloids - organoids that mimic many aspects of the growth and maturation of human brain circuits

There breakthrough was instead of a flexible, mesh-like electrode that could be partly inserted into an organoid, a kirigami-like device that could fully cradle the organoid. The organoid then continues to grow, eventually engulfing the device's supportive strands. For the hammock-like electrode to work, it needed to be flexible enough to allow the organoid to grow naturally and stable enough to stay intact over many months of recording. 

Now they can monitor organoids throughout their entire development. 

via the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program originating in the Stanford School of Medicine and Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute: Xiao Yang et al, Kirigami electronics for long-term electrophysiological recording of human neural organoids and assembloids, Nature Biotechnology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-023-02081-3


One person can supervise 'swarm' of 100 unmanned autonomous vehicles, research shows
Feb 2024, phys.org

Swarm commander - 

Research involving Oregon State University has shown that a "swarm" of more than 100 autonomous ground and aerial robots can be supervised by one person without subjecting the individual to an undue workload.

"The commanders weren't physically driving each individual vehicle, because if you're deploying that many vehicles, they can't—a single human can't do that," Adams said. "The idea is that the swarm commander can select a play to be executed and can make minor adjustments to it, like a quarterback would in the NFL.

via Oregon State University Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute: Robert Brown et al, Congestion Analysis for the DARPA OFFSET CCAST Swarm, Field Robotics (2023). DOI: 10.55417/fr.2023005


A star like a Matryoshka doll: New theory for gravastars
Feb 2024, phys.org

Gravastars (it's not a new word) - gravitational condensate stars

They exhibit a gravity at their surface that is essentially as strong as that of a black hole, hence resembling a black hole for all practical purposes. On the other hand, gravastars do not have an event horizon, that is, a boundary from within which no information can be sent out, and their core does not contain a singularity.

Instead, the center of a gravastar is made up of an exotic (dark) energy that exerts a negative pressure to the enormous gravitational force compressing the star. The surface of a gravastar is represented by a wafer-thin skin of ordinary matter, the thickness of which approaches zero.

Nestar - Theoretical physicists Daniel Jampolski and Prof. Luciano Rezzolla of Goethe University Frankfurt have now presented a solution to the field equations of general relativity that describes the existence of a gravastar inside another gravastar. They have given this hypothetical celestial object the name "nestar" (from the English "nested").

via Goethe University Frankfurt am Main: Daniel Jampolski et al, Nested solutions of gravitational condensate stars, Classical and Quantum Gravity (2024). DOI: 10.1088/1361-6382/ad2317


Altermagnetism: A new type of magnetism, with broad implications for technology and research
Feb 2024, phys.org

Altermagnetism - experimental proof of a third branch of magnetism where spins alternate resulting in no net magnetization, yet the symmetries give strong spin polarization that flips in direction as you pass through the material's energy bands - hence the name altermagnets; offers distinct advantages for the developing field of next-generation magnetic memory technology known as spintronics.

via Swiss Light Source, Czech Academy of Sciences, and Paul Scherrer Institute: Juraj Krempaský, Altermagnetic lifting of Kramers spin degeneracy, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06907-7.


'μkiss': A new method for precision delivery of nanoparticles and small molecules to individual cells
Feb 2024, phys.org

μkiss - the scientists describe their technique as a "μkiss" (microkiss) using two closely placed micropipettes, one to dispense the material, while the other suctions it in at a slightly higher rate; "You can easily maneuver the micropipettes around, and gently brush this confined droplet against your chosen cell—delivering a tiny μkiss of material."

via Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light: Cornelia Holler et al, A paintbrush for delivery of nanoparticles and molecules to live cells with precise spatiotemporal control, Nature Methods (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41592-024-02177-x

AI Art - Motivational Poster You've Got This - 2024

The 'chronoworking' productivity hack that helps workers excel
Feb 2024, BBC News

Chronoworking - adapting working hours to natural energy levels for maximum productivity. (They don't mention the words synchronous or asynchronous work; this isn't about that)


Polymer-based tunable optical components allow for metasurfaces that can switched with light
Feb 2024, phys.org

Metasurfaces - nanostructured thin layers whose characteristic structural sizes are smaller than the wavelength of light. This allows the properties of light and its propagation to be specifically influenced, enabling a variety of optical functions that would otherwise be performed by lenses, polarizers, or gratings.

via University of Jena Institute of Organic Chemistry and Macromolecular Chemistry: Sarah L. Walden et al, Two-Color Spatially Resolved Tuning of Polymer-Coated Metasurfaces, ACS Nano (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c11760


Study: 'Hexaplex' vaccine aims to boost flu protection
Feb 2024, phys.org

Hexaplex nanoliposome - a flu vaccine that covers different kinds of flu

via University at Buffalo: Adjuvanted Nanoliposomes Displaying Six Hemagglutinins and Neuraminidases as an Influenza Virus Vaccine, Cell Reports Medicine (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2024.101433.


German patient vaccinated against Covid 217 times
Mar 2024, BBC News

Hyper vaccination - vaccinating yourself 217 times.


CSI in space: Analyzing bloodstain patterns in microgravity
Mar 2024, phys.org

Astroforensics - forensic investigations in space

via Staffordshire University: Zack Kowalske et al, Bloodstain pattern dynamics in microgravity: Observations of a pilot study in the next frontier of forensic science, Forensic Science International: Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.fsir.2024.100358

AI Art - Motivational Poster Set Clear Goals - 2024

Research team establishes synthetic dimension dynamics to manipulate light
Mar 2024, phys.org

I'm really reading a different language here, the whole article. 

Synthetic dimensions - They use phenomena like synthetic gauge fields, quantum Hall physics, discrete solitons, and topological phase transitions in four dimensions or higher. They help explore phenomena in higher-dimensional spaces, beyond our conventional 3D geometrical space. The concept has garnered significant attention, especially in topological photonics, due to its potential to unlock rich physics inaccessible in traditional dimensions.

Utopian network - A key goal in this field is the construction of a "utopian" network of resonators where any pair of modes can be coupled in a controlled manner. 

via SPIE Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers: Shiqi Xia et al, Deep-learning-empowered synthetic dimension dynamics: morphing of light into topological modes, Advanced Photonics (2024). DOI: 10.1117/1.AP.6.2.026005


With the planet facing a 'polycrisis,' biodiversity researchers uncover major knowledge gaps
Apr 2024, phys.org

The Polycrisis -  infectious disease spread, biodiversity loss and climate change, all at once

  • "When we began to look into it, we had suspicions the number of studies would be low, but not that low" 
  • 1.8 million research articles published over the last decade
  • 40,000 studies considered two of the areas in conjunction
  • 505 combined research on all three areas
  • 128 investigated the mechanistic links connecting all three
  • In those cases, the studies are overly focused on just three areas: infectious disease in amphibians, forest health, and Lyme disease
  • They recommend better collaboration for avoiding unintended consequences of only taking action in one area and ignoring others
(This is where the robots take over by the way)

via University of British Columbia's Biodiversity Research Center: Alaina Pfenning-Butterworth et al, Interconnecting global threats: climate change, biodiversity loss, and infectious diseases, The Lancet Planetary Health (2024). DOI: 10.1016/S2542-5196(24)00021-4

*Note this study is from the departments of botany, biology, ecology, etc., at a bunch of Universities, but does not include researchers from for example the Complexity Science Hub Vienna or the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Complex Systems at Northeastern.


Been waiting 30 years to learn this word:

Phosphene - A phosphene is the phenomenon of seeing light without light entering the eye. The word phosphene comes from the Greek words phos (light) and phainein (to show). Phosphenes that are induced by movement or sound may be associated with optic neuritis.


Random thought on words - "woods" and "weeds" sound too similar for me not to have ever noticed:

Woods - From Middle English wode, from Old English wudu, widu (“wood, forest, grove; tree; timber”), from Proto-West Germanic *widu, from Proto-Germanic *widuz (“wood”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weydʰh₁- (“to separate”).

Weeds - From Middle English weed, weod, from Old English wēod (“weed”), from Proto-West Germanic *weud (“weed”). Perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *wi-wdʰ-o-m, an archaic reduplicated noun formation of *wedʰ- (“to wind; bend; entangle; tie”). Note however that this pattern is extremely rare: *bebruz and *hwehwlą are the only reduplicated nouns that are positively reconstructed for Proto-Germanic proper (but see *gaukaz for another hypothetically potential example; and in West Germanic there is *weukā (“wisp, wick”) among a few others).

Not a language expert, but I see "woods" as "to separate" and "weeds" as "to wind together"


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Monday, August 12, 2024

Keeping an Eye on the Fractal Frontier


Dimensions are not always whole numbers, they can be fractions too. Electrons are not always one single indivisible entity, but apparently they can be fractions of themselves. You too, the illusion of a persistent subjective self, fractions.

Fractal photonic anomalous Floquet topological insulators to generate multiple quantum chiral edge states
Dec 2023, phys.org

Fractal photonics - stable carriers for high-capacity quantum information transmission by carry multiple topologically protected quantum chiral edge states

Chinese Academy of Science: Meng Li et al, Fractal photonic anomalous Floquet topological insulators to generate multiple quantum chiral edge states, Light: Science & Applications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41377-023-01307-y



Study finds no evidence for fractal scaling in canopy surfaces across a diverse range of forest types
Jan 2024, phys.org

The way trees grow together do not resemble how branches grow on a single tree (called self-similarity or fractality).

Airborne laser scanning data from nine sites spread across Australia's Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. "We found that forest canopies are not fractal, but they are very similar in how they deviate from fractality, irrespective of what ecosystem they are in. Most ecosystems, like forests, will hit an upper limit—most likely determined by the maximum size of its organisms—beyond which their structure cannot vary freely anymore.

So it's scale, but not fractals. 

via University of Bristol: Fabian Jörg Fischer et al, No evidence for fractal scaling in canopy surfaces across a diverse range of forest types, Journal of Ecology (2023). DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.14244


Electrons become fractions of themselves in graphene
Feb 2024, phys.org

"This five-layer graphene (pentalayer graphene) is a material system where many good surprises happen"

In very special states of matter, electrons can splinter into fractions of their whole. This phenomenon is known as "fractional charge", and known to physicists as the "fractional quantum Hall effect," is rare.

When five sheets of graphene are stacked like steps on a staircase, the resulting structure inherently provides just the right conditions for electrons to pass through as fractions of their total charge, with no need for any external magnetic field.

The results are the first evidence of the "fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect"

The pentalayer structure were aligned with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) to produce a moiré superlattice that could slow electrons down in ways that mimic a magnetic field.

"The day we saw it, we didn't recognize it at first," says first author Lu. "Then we started to shout as we realized, this was really big. It was a completely surprising moment."

via Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Long Ju, Fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect in multilayer graphene, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-07010-7.


Discovery of the first fractal molecule in nature
Apr 2024, phys.org

The first regular molecular fractal in nature. They discovered a microbial enzyme - citrate synthase from a cyanobacterium - that spontaneously assembles into a pattern known as the Sierpinski triangle.

"We stumbled on this structure completely by accident and almost couldn't believe what we saw when we first took images of it using an electron microscope" 

via Max Planck Institute in Marburg and the Philipps University in Marburg: Franziska L. Sendker et al, Emergence of fractal geometries in the evolution of a metabolic enzyme, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07287-2

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Friday, August 9, 2024

I'll Harvest You and You'll Like It


Let's start with an opinion piece from the MIT Tech Review, just to get ourselves acquainted with the word "User" and the world we now live in:

It’s time to retire the term “user” - The proliferation of AI means we need a new word
April 19 2024, Taylor Majewski for MIT Tech Review

A user is also, of course, someone who struggles with addiction. To be an addict is - at least partl - to live in a state of powerlessness. Today, power users - title originally bestowed upon people who had mastered skills like keyboard shortcuts and web design - aren’t measured by their technical prowess. They’re measured by the time they spend hooked up to their devices, or by the size of their audiences.  

As early as 2008, Norman [Don Norman, user experience legend] alighted on this shortcoming and began advocating for replacing “user” with “person” or “human” when designing for people. (The subsequent years have seen an explosion of bots, which has made the issue that much more complicated.) “Psychologists depersonalize the people they study by calling them ‘subjects.’ We depersonalize the people we study by calling them ‘users.’ Both terms are derogatory,” he wrote then. “If we are designing for people, why not call them that?”

What were once called AI bots have been assigned lofty titles like “copilot” and “assistant” and “collaborator” to convey a sense of partnership instead of a sense of automation. Large language models have been quick to ditch words like “bot” altogether.



And now let's go back to December 2023, to remember that kids have to be called users, because if we called them people, we might have to admit that they're not full-fledged, legitimate, 18-year-old, registered-to-vote, licensed-to-drive, eligible-for-military-service people perfectly capable of making decisions on procreation etc. Kids are the best users - they have no lawyers, and they have no prefrontal cortex, and that's what we like: 

Social media platforms generate billions in annual ad revenue from US youth
Dec 2023, phys.org

Social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube collectively derived nearly $11 billion in advertising revenue from U.S.-based users younger than 18 in 2022.

(But how much would it cost to get them to stop committing suicide? I wonder.)

via Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: Social media platforms generate billions of dollars in revenue from U.S. youth: Findings from a simulated revenue model, PLOS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0295337


Here we are reminded that it's not just helpless, innocent children being harvested for their parents' bank accounts, but their parents too. And it's not even about taking your money anymore, but something else:

Roku patent invents a way to show ads over anything you plug into your TV
Apr 2024, Ars Technica

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Thursday, August 8, 2024

Vibe Miners Find Sweet Spot for Mind Override


There are some other posts with these "40Hz articles", and sometimes it comes out as 80Hz too. But for real what the hell is going on? How is this only now becoming a thing? 

Also, people suffering from epilepsy, and the rest of the people who think it's a good idea to help them, have been consistently discovering one crazy thing after another, proving why we, as humans, are supposed to spend valuable resources helping people no matter who they are. 

How 40Hz sensory gamma rhythm stimulation clears amyloid in Alzheimer's mice
Feb 2024, phys.org

"Ever since we published our first results in 2016, people have asked me how does it work? Why 40 Hz? Why not some other frequency?" 

They first replicated the lab's prior results that 40 Hz sensory stimulation increases 40 Hz neuronal activity in the brain and reduces amyloid levels, then measured increases in cerebrospinal fluid in the brain tissue of mice treated with sensory gamma stimulation compared to untreated controls, and also measured an increase in the rate of interstitial fluid leaving the brain.

via Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Picower Institute: Li-Huei Tsai, Multisensory gamma stimulation promotes glymphatic clearance of amyloid, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07132-6. 



New brain stimulation technique shows promise for treating brain disorders
Feb 2024, phys.org

Non-invasive brain stimulation method called Patterned Low-Intensity Low-Frequency Ultrasound (LILFUS), which is based on specific ultrasound parameters that mimic the brainwave patterns of theta (5 Hz) and gamma (30 Hz) oscillations observed during learning and memory processes.

The new tool allowed the researchers to either activate or deactivate specific brain regions at will - intermittent delivery of the ultrasound was found to induce long-term potentiation effects, while continuous patterns resulted in long-term depression effects.

One of the most promising aspects of this new technology is its ability to facilitate the acquisition of new motor skills. When the researchers delivered ultrasound stimulation to the cerebral motor cortex in mice, they observed significant improvements in motor skill learning and the ability to retrieve food.

Interestingly, researchers were even able to change the forelimb preference of the mice. This suggests potential applications in rehabilitation therapies for stroke survivors and individuals with motor impairments.

But....it would also suggest...

via Center for Cognition and Sociality in the Institute for Basic Science: Ho-Jeong Kim et al, Long-lasting Forms of Plasticity through Patterned Ultrasound-induced Brainwave Entrainment, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk3198.


Brain waves found to travel in one direction when memories are made and the opposite when recalled
Mar 2024, phys.org

By carefully monitoring neural activity of people who were recalling memories or forming new ones, the researchers managed to detect how a newly appreciated type of brainwave—traveling waves—influences the storage and retrieval of memories.

"Broadly, we found that waves tended to move from the back of the brain to the front while patients were putting something into their memory," 

"When patients were later searching to recall the same information, those waves moved in the opposite direction, from the front towards the back of the brain" 

The study drew on data from participants who were being treated for drug-resistant epilepsy at hospitals across the United States.

via Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science: The direction of theta and alpha travelling waves modulates human memory processing, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01838-3.

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