Pandemic Surprise

Serendipitous backyard experiment shines light on producing polymers

Sep 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-serendipitous-backyard-polymers.html

With the COVID shutdown, the scientists at QUT's Soft Matter Materials Group, like the rest of the world, switched to working from home which meant limited time in the university research labs.

Where safe and practicable, the scientists looked for ways to take their work home with them.

This situation inspired the researchers to continue their experiment using sunlight and Dr. Delafresnaye installed the experiment on her outdoor barbecue table and left it in what the research paper calls "Australian sunshine" for four hours.

It's an unprecedented methodology for the production of microspheres, which are used in a wide range of applications including drug delivery, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and paints. Normally they use a laser or LED to start and stop a reaction; this uses sunshine.

via Queensland University of Technology: Laura Delafresnaye et al, Microspheres from light—a sustainable materials platform, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32429-3

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32429-3

Image credit: Skyrmions - Felser - 2013 - Angewandte Chemie International Edition - Wiley Online Library

And since so many of us became armchair epidemiologists during the pandemic, automatically rejecting any study that was not peer-reviewed...

Most preprint studies of COVID-19 hold up through peer-review: study

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10-preprint-covid-peer-review.html

Comparing preprint manuscripts to the eventual published versions of the individual studies, about 90 percent of those 1,606 data points were still in the text after peer review. 

(fyi the National Institutes of Health has promoted preprint manuscripts as a way to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery.)

via University of Wisconsin-Madison:  Lindsay Nelson et al, Robustness of evidence reported in preprints during peer review, The Lancet Global Health (2022). DOI: 10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00368-0

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00368-0

Fractals in the News

It's fractals all the way down -- if you've been waiting for fractals to have their moment, that time is coming. It took the advent of computers for us to discover fractals in the first place, but then it was used for video game graphics and psychedelic art, and that's it for about 40 years. Now we're using the Large Hadron Collider, the most advanced piece of scientific equipment created, to discover that fractals are not only found in all living things, but in the furthest depths of physics - the Bose Einstein Condensate (BECs are an integral part of quantum computing, metamaterials and intelligent matter, and will be a key technology in the future). 

Study proposes mathematical tool to help understand fractal structure of quark-gluon plasma

Jun 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-mathematical-tool-fractal-quark-gluon-plasma.html

When hadrons are accelerated to relativistic velocities and made to collide with each other their confinement is interrupted and the quarks and gluons scatter, forming a plasma that lasts only a tiny fraction of a second, but observation of it has produced important discoveries about the nature of material reality.

Quark-gluon plasma has a fractal structure. When it disintegrates into a stream of particles propagating in various directions, the behavior of the particles in the jets is similar to that of the quarks and gluons in the plasma. Moreover, it decays in a cascade of reactions with a pattern of self-similarity over many scales that is typical of fractals.

"Fractal theory explains BEC formation"

Deppman questions whether fractal structures could also be present in electromagnetism. This would explain why so many natural phenomena, from lightning to snowflakes, have fractal structures, as they are all governed by electromagnetic forces. It might also explain why Tsallis statistics are present in so many phenomena. "Tsallis statistics have been used to describe scale transformation invariance, a key ingredient of fractals," he said.

via Large Hadron Collider by the European Organization for Nuclear Research-research: E. Megías et al, Nonlinear Klein–Gordon equation and the Bose–Einstein condensation, The European Physical Journal Plus (2022). DOI: 10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-02511-2

https://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-02511-2

Post Script:

Creating an ultrafast optoelectronic switch using a Bose-Einstein condensate of polaritons

Sep 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-ultrafast-optoelectronic-bose-einstein-condensate-polaritons.html

Terahertz polariton switch.

via Universities in Shanghai, Xiamen, Shandong, Nanjing, Shanxi and NYU: Fei Chen et al, Optically Controlled Femtosecond Polariton Switch at Room Temperature, Physical Review Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.057402

https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.057402

Image credit: AI Art - Fractal in a Jar - 2022

Memetics in a Name

What's in a name? Glimmers of evolution in naming babies, choosing a dog, study finds

Jun 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-05-glimmers-evolution-babies-dog.html

Newberry, an assistant professor of complex systems, says examining trends in the popularity of baby names and dog breeds can be a proxy for understanding ecological and evolutionary change. The names and dog breed preferences themselves are like genes or organisms competing for scarce resources. In this case, the scarce resources are the minds of parents and dog owners. His results are published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Results:

• The more popular a name becomes, the less likely future parents are to follow suit. Same goes for popular dog breeds.
• When a name is most rare — 1 in 10,000 births — it tends to grow, on average, at a rate of 1.4% a year. But when a name is most common — more than 1 in 100 births — its popularity declines, on average, at 1.6%.

And this is why Darwin got his idea for natural selection from language-trees:

"Natural selection is incredibly hard to measure. You're asking, for an entire population, who lived, who died and why. And that's just a crazy thing to try to ask. By contrast, in names, we literally know every single name for the entire country for a hundred years."

via University of Michigan: Mitchell Newberry, Measuring frequency-dependent selection in culture, Nature Human Behaviour (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01342-6

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01342-6

Image credit: AI Art - Humanoids in Occult Ritual - 2022

Laughing With Robots

Sharing a laugh: Scientists teach a robot when to have a sense of humor

Sep 2022, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-scientists-robot-humor.html

In the shared-laughter model, a human initially laughs and the AI system responds with laughter as an empathetic response. This approach required designing three subsystems — one to detect laughter, a second to decide whether to laugh, and a third to choose the type of appropriate laughter.

The scientists gathered training data by annotating more than 80 dialogues from speed dating, a social scenario where large groups of people mingle or interact with each other one-on-one for a brief period of time. In this case, the matchmaking marathon involved students from Kyoto University and Erica, teleoperated by several amateur actresses.

"Our biggest challenge in this work was identifying the actual cases of shared laughter, which isn't easy, because as you know, most laughter is actually not shared at all," Inoue said. "We had to carefully categorize exactly which laughs we could use for our analysis and not just assume that any laugh can be responded to."

via the Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University: Can a robot laugh with you?: Shared laughter generation for empathetic spoken dialogue, Frontiers in Robotics and AI (2022). DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2022.933261

https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.933261

Image credit: AI Art - LIFE Magazine Cover - 2022

Engineers Gave a Car a Pair of Eyes to Make Future Roads Safer For Pedestrians

Oct 2022, Science Alert

https://www.sciencealert.com/engineers-gave-a-car-a-pair-of-eyes-to-make-future-roads-safer-for-pedestrians

 

In one of the more unusual experiments we've seen recently, researchers attached a large pair of cartoonish googly eyes to the front of a small, self-driving vehicle – and it turns out that this kind of anthropomorphic tweak could actually improve pedestrian safety.

Not unusual at all, I've been waiting for this exact thing to happen.

There was a gender split in the results of their virtual reality experiments. For men, the eyes only really helped in dangerous situations, warning them to pause when they might otherwise proceed. For women, the eyes boosted confidence by signaling it was safe to cross.

via University of Tokyo: Can Eyes on a Car Reduce Traffic Accidents? Chia-Ming Chang et al. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications. September 2022 Pages 349–359. https://doi.org/10.1145/3543174.3546841

https://doi.org/10.1145/3543174.3546841

We Are The Climate Change

Investigation examines fossil fuel industry influence at elite American universities

Sep 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-fossil-fuel-industry-elite-american.html

Memetics Supreme -

Investigative journalist Paul Thacker examines how oil and gas companies have funded research to try to weaken messages on climate change, capture academia, and protect their interests, much like tobacco companies did half a century ago.

As one example, Thacker reports how a paper published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) helped alter American energy policy and kicked off a fracking boom.

Thacker describes how, at the turn of the century, a fresh crop of research centers to confront global warming began popping up at prestigious American universities including Princeton, Stanford and MIT.

Ironically, he reports that the seeds for these academic centers were planted by fossil fuel companies, echoing a scheme by tobacco companies in the 1950s to counter research showing smoking was harmful, by funding university-based scientists.

Princeton extended its partnership with ExxonMobil two years ago.

Ben Franta, a Stanford student who is finalizing his Ph.D. on the history of climate disinformation, claims that professors began criticizing him for raising problems and possibly threatening their funding. 

Stanford did not answer questions.

via an investigation by the British Medical Journal: Investigation: Stealing from the tobacco playbook, fossil fuel companies pour money into elite American universities, The BMJ (2022). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.o2095

https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o2095

Totally unrelated image credit: AI Art - Cosmic Horrors in My Cereal - 2022

Oil giant Shell appoints renewables head as boss

Sep 2022, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62912033

It's Me Not You - "Shell filed its appeal against the ruling in March this year, with Mr van Beurden previously saying that Shell should not be responsible for reducing its customers' emissions."

I Want To Believe

Why narcissists are more likely than others to believe in conspiracy theories

Aug 2022, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08-narcissists-conspiracy-theories.html

The researchers suggest that paranoia can lead to openness regarding conspiracy theories and that the need to remain in control during times of uncertainty, such as a pandemic, can lead narcissists to seize on outlandish claims to make themselves feel like they are still in control of their lives. And antagonism comes to the fore when others challenge their views regarding conspiracy theories, which only serves to bolster their support of them.

via University of Kent, the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Cambridge: Aleksandra Cichocka et al, Why do narcissists find conspiracy theories so appealing?, Current Opinion in Psychology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101386

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101386

Image credit: AI Art - Hidden Camera of Aliens Having a Party in a UFO - 2022

Conspiracy theories flourish on YouTube, study reports

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-conspiracy-theories-flourish-youtube.html

The study examined 38,564 YouTube comments on 3 COVID-19 news videos on Fox News, Vox, and China Global Television Network, and featuring American business magnate and philanthropist Bill Gates, and found conspiracy theories dominated.

"A major implication of our study is that YouTube needs to redesign the space to provide social moderation infrastructure," said Dr. Gray. "Otherwise, the discursive strategies of conspiracy theorists will continue to evade detection systems, pose insurmountable challenges for content creators, and play into the hands of content producers who benefit from and/or encourage such activity."

Remember that 2.8% of Reddit's 2019 revenue can be traced back to unpaid moderators and other user user contributions that generate profit such as training algorithms, targeting advertising, and recruiting new users. It's called a "data labor subsidy".

Also note this report ignores the engagement engine that extracts value from its users, powered by cheap news and social outrage. These algorithms amplify information and condition behaviors that make money. We're engineering outrage on purpose, and conspiracy theories are just a secondary symptom of an infected network.

via University of Sydney:  Lan Ha et al, Where conspiracy theories flourish: A study of YouTube comments and Bill Gates conspiracy theories, Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review (2022). DOI: 10.37016/mr-2020-107

https://dx.doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-107

New research shows US Republican politicians increasingly spread news on social media from untrustworthy sources

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-republican-politicians-increasingly-news-social.html

Under attack: 

A study analyzing millions of tweets has revealed that Republican members of the U.S. Congress are increasingly circulating news from dubious sources, compared to their European counterparts. (They used NewsGuard, which assesses the credibility and transparency of news websites against nine journalistic criteria and identifies relevant details about the website's ownership, funding, credibility and transparency practices.)

Compared to the period 2016 to 2018, the number of links to untrustworthy websites has doubled over the past two years 2020 to 2022 (from 2.4% to 5.5%;  0.4%  for Democrats and around 0.215% for conservative British Tory members).

via Graz University of Technology in Austria and University of Bristol: Social media sharing of low quality news sources by political elites, PNAS Nexus (2022). DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2207.06313

https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2207.06313

Panoptic Supremacy

EU to unveil landmark law to force Big Tech to police illegal content

Apr 2022, Financial Times via Ars Technica

https://www.ft.com/content/f39a8b61-c7b4-4674-9606-b923f63ad770

Dark patterns - techniques that dupe people into unwillingly clicking:

"The controversial practice of targeting users online based on their religion, gender or sexual preferences will be banned under the Digital Services Act, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions."

Image credit: AI Art - Head Made of Recursive Speakers 1 - 2022

Satellites will act as thermometers in the sky

Jul 2022, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62227866

Satellite Vu is attracting a lot of interest with its plans to fly a network of spacecraft to map heat signatures across the planet.

Such observations have long been made, but not at the resolution (3-4m) and frequency (several times a day) that the London firm is promising.

This will allow Satellite Vu to map the temperature profiles of individual buildings, offices and factories.

"With infrared, what you see in daytime, you can see at night. And whereas most other Earth observation data-sets are looking at the outside of buildings, we can even get an inference of what's going on inside - whether there's activity in that building, whether a house is occupied, whether there's productive machinery in a factory," said Anthony Baker, CEO and co-founder of Satellite Vu.

The data will also provide intelligence to the financial and insurance sectors - and even the military - by showing how temperatures in a scene have changed. It's possible, for example, to see that planes recently left an airfield from the cool "ghost images" they leave behind having earlier shadowed the ground from the Sun.

Inside Fog Data Science, the Secretive Company Selling Mass Surveillance to Local Police

Sep 2022, Electronic Frontier Foundation

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/inside-fog-data-science-secretive-company-selling-mass-surveillance-local-police

Summarizing for context:

Finally, evidence suggests that Fog’s service relies on using advertising identifiers to link data together, so simply disabling your ad ID may stymie Fog’s attempts to track you. One email suggests that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency initiative — which made ad ID access opt-in and resulted in a drastic decrease in the number of devices sharing that information — made services like Fog less useful to law enforcement. And former police analyst Davin Hall told EFF that the company wanted to keep its existence secret so that more people would leave their ad IDs enabled.