Climate Things for Thought

Scientists warn that many dangerous feedback loops make climate action more urgent

Feb 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-02-scientists-dangerous-feedback-loops-climate.html

20 physical loops like albedo and 21 biological loops like wetlands or peatlands:

Because these feedbacks may not yet be fully incorporated into climate models, current emissions drawdown plans could fail to adequately limit future warming. 

via Conservation Biology Institute and Oregon State University: Many risky feedback loops amplify the need for massive climate action, One Earth (2023). DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.01.004

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.01.004

US housing market overvalued by $200 billion due to unpriced climate risks, says study

Feb 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-02-housing-overvalued-billion-due-unpriced.html

"Increasing flood risk under climate change is creating a bubble that threatens the stability of the US housing market. As we've seen in California in the last few weeks*, these aren't hypotheticals and the risk is more extensive than expected—and that risk carries an enormous cost," said Jesse Gourevitch, a postdoctoral fellow at Environmental Defense Fund and lead author of the study.

"These risks are largely unaccounted for in property transactions, encouraging development in flood-prone areas. Accurately pricing the costs of flooding in home values can support adaptation to flood risk, but may leave many worse off."

Currently, more than 14.6 million properties in the United States face at least a 1 percent annual probability of flooding, with expected annual damages to residential properties exceeding $32 billion. Increasing frequency and severity of flooding under climate change is predicted to increase the number of properties exposed to flooding by 11 percent and average annual losses by at least 26 percent by 2050.

*Circa Feb 2023 - 12 "atmospheric rivers" deluge California in three months, bringing the historic "Triple Dip La Nina" to it's climax on the US West Coast.

via Resources for the Future, Environmental Defense Fund, First Street Foundation, the Federal Reserve: Jesse Gourevitch, Unpriced climate risk and the potential consequences of overvaluation in US housing markets, Nature Climate Change (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01594-8.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01594-8

NASA space mission takes stock of carbon dioxide emissions by countries

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-nasa-space-mission-stock-carbon.html

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission helped researchers track carbon dioxide emissions for more than 100 countries around the world. The pilot project offers a powerful new look at the carbon dioxide being emitted in these countries and how much of it is removed from the atmosphere by forests and other carbon-absorbing "sinks" within their borders. 

Traditional activity-based (or "bottom-up") approaches to carbon measurement rely on tallying and estimating how much carbon dioxide is being emitted. But that's hard. Top-down measurement can help. 

via NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Brendan Byrne et al, National CO2 budgets (2015–2020) inferred from atmospheric CO2 observations in support of the global stocktake, Earth System Science Data (2023). DOI: 10.5194/essd-15-963-2023

https://dx.doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-963-2023

Image credit: AI Art - Hyperdimensional Planet - 2023

Same Same

Headlines with a negative twist boost the consumption of online news, demonstrates study

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-headlines-negative-boost-consumption-online.html

This isn't about misinformation or memetic propagation; it's about multiple discovery, which I would rather call simultaneous discovery -- Calculus and the telephone come to mind. 

Incidentally, the publication of the research is a story all by itself. Only when Feuerriegel and his team submitted an initial version of the paper to Nature Human Behaviour did they become aware that a research group led by Jay Van Bavel from New York University had also submitted a paper -- in the same week, on the same topic, based on the same dataset from Upworthy.com, and with almost identical results.

via Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich: Claire E. Robertson et al, Negativity drives online news consumption, Nature Human Behaviour (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4

Image credit: AI Art - The Concept of Dimensionality Reduction in Machine Learning - 2023

Post Script:

This whole description is poorly sourced but well written: The concept of multiple discovery (also known as simultaneous invention) is the hypothesis that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors. The concept of multiple discovery opposes a traditional view—the "heroic theory" of invention and discovery. Multiple discovery is analogous to convergent evolution in biological evolution.

Robert K. Merton defined such "multiples" as instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each other.

-Merton, Robert K. (December 1963). "Resistance to the Systematic Study of Multiple Discoveries in Science". European Journal of Sociology. 4 (2): 237–282. doi:10.1017/S0003975600000801. JSTOR 23998345. S2CID 145650007. Reprinted in: Robert K. Merton (15 September 1996). On Social Structure and Science. University of Chicago Press. pp. 305–. ISBN 978-0-226-52070-4.

Human vs Human

Man beats machine at Go in human victory over AI

Feb 2023, Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/man-beats-machine-at-go-in-human-victory-over-ai/

John Henry rests in his eternal place:

A human player has comprehensively defeated a top-ranked AI system at the board game Go, in a surprise reversal of the 2016 computer victory that was seen as a milestone in the rise of artificial intelligence.

Kellin Pelrine, an American player who is one level below the top amateur ranking, beat the machine by taking advantage of a previously unknown flaw that had been identified by another computer. 

Can we call this new "champ" the Zero-day King? (user Wastrel)

They say the actual John Henry was born in 1848 in New Jersey and died of silicosis and not due to exhaustion of work.

Super-AI gameplay spurs humans to novel, winning strategies

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-03-super-ai-gameplay-spurs-humans-strategies.html

Examining Decision Quality Index scores over several decades, Shin and his team found that while human players made minimal strides during the first several decades of Go play, substantial improvement was found immediately following 2016, the year of AlphaGo's first remarkable achievements.

"We find that human decision-making significantly improved following the advent of superhuman AI," Shin said. "This improvement was associated with greater novelty in human decisions."

via City University of Hong Kong: Minkyu Shin et al, Superhuman artificial intelligence can improve human decision-making by increasing novelty, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2214840120

https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2214840120

Image credit: AI Art - Hands Shaking Hands - 2023

Word on the Street

Diminishing health benefits of living in cities for children and teens

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-03-diminishing-health-benefits-cities-children.html

The new Geoffrey West:

The research, by a global consortium of more than 1,500 researchers and physicians, analyzed height and weight data from 71 million children and adolescents (aged five to 19 years) across urban and rural areas of 200 countries from 1990 to 2020.

The new study found that in the 21st century, this urban height advantage shrank in most countries as a result of accelerating improvements in height for children and adolescents in rural areas.

Also, on average children living in cities had a slightly higher BMI than children in rural areas in 1990. 

But the reality is too complex to be summarized in a sentence: "The issue is not so much whether children live in cities or urban areas, but where the poor live, and whether governments are tackling growing inequalities with initiatives like supplementary incomes and free school meal programs."

via Imperial College London: Rachel Heap & Conrad Duncan, Diminishing benefits of urban living for the health of children and adolescents, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05772-8.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05772-8

Collective forms of governance, infrastructural investments, collaboration all help societies last longer, study finds

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-infrastructural-investments-collaboration-societies-longer.html

Researchers examined 24 ancient cities in what's now Mexico and found that the cities that lasted the longest showed indications of collective forms of governance, infrastructural investments, and cooperation between households.

Early efforts to construct dense, interconnected residential spaces and the construction of large, central, open plazas were two of the factors that the authors found contributed to greater sustainability and importance of the early cities.

via Anthropology Field Museum in Chicago: Gary M. Feinman et al, Sustainability and duration of early central places in prehispanic Mesoamerica, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2023.1076740

https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2023.1076740

Image credit: AI Art Hybrid Prabhu B 5 - 2022

Post Script:

Bordeaux town hall set on fire in France pension protests

Mar 2023, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65057249

More than a million people took to the streets across France, sparked by legislation raising the retirement age by two years to 64. ... 

I was intrigued by the way they (English-speaking BBC reporters translating French protesters) use this term -- The Street -- as if it were a bunch of people, like a badass crew: "The street has a legitimacy in France," said a protester in Nantes. "If Mr Macron can't remember this historic reality, I don't know what he is doing here".

Artificially Generated Traffic Jams

Researchers propose a fourth light on traffic signals for self-driving cars

Feb 2023, Matt Shipman, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-02-fourth-traffic-self-driving-cars.html

Red lights will still mean stop. Green lights will still mean go. And white lights will tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them."

The white phase concept rests on the fact that it is possible for AVs to communicate wirelessly with both each other and the computer controlling the traffic signal. When enough AVs are approaching the intersection, this would activate the white light. 

Red lights will still mean stop. Green lights will still mean go. And white lights will tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them."

The white phase concept rests on the fact that it is possible for AVs to communicate wirelessly with both each other and the computer controlling the traffic signal. When enough AVs are approaching the intersection, this would activate the white light. 

via North Carolina State University: Ramin Niroumand et al, White Phase Intersection Control Through Distributed Coordination: A Mobile Controller Paradigm in a Mixed Traffic Stream, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2023). DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2022.3226557

https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2022.3226557

Unrelated image credit: Super heated filament - Aurich Lawson f*** Getty Images - 2022

How the Sausage is Made

Predicting human group sizes with physics

Jan 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-01-human-group-sizes-physics.html

People behaving like particles with spin: Only by knowing the average number of friends each person has, scientists were able to predict the group sizes of people in a computer game, modeled on the self-organization of particles with spin, and with social stress as comparable to energy in physics.

This model was able to predict the distribution of group size in the multiplayer online game Pardus. "Normally you would need to know the structure of the network and how it is designed," Korbel explains the results. "Here we only need to know how many friends a player has on average." With this relatively small amount of information, the researchers were able to predict how many groups of a certain size would appear.

via Complexity Science Hub Vienna: Jan Korbel et al, Homophily-Based Social Group Formation in a Spin Glass Self-Assembly Framework, Physical Review Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.057401

https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.057401

Exploring the neural mechanisms behind how social networks shape our decisions

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-03-exploring-neural-mechanisms-social-networks.html

"Essentially, our brain tends to assign higher weight to the observations by better connected neighbors and down-weight or even ignore the observations by less connected neighbors, even when these neighbors have valuable information," Zhu explained. "We found that activity in a part of our brain called dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which typically implicated in adjusting our behavior to adapt to the external environment, tracks how well connected a neighbor is at the time when the brain is processing a decision observed from the neighbor."

Which is interesting because we know that novel information comes from the outside fringe people who are less connected to any one group, yet hold more connections to more otherwise un-connected groups...

via Peking University: Yaomin Jiang et al, Neurocomputational mechanism of real-time distributed learning on social networks, Nature Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01258-y.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01258-y

How miscommunication can be constructive during problem-solving in diverse groups

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-miscommunication-problem-solving-diverse-groups.html

"Higher-ability groups tend to think about a problem in the same way when making predictions or finding solutions," explains Muldoon. "They end up exploring the same spots. Diverse groups collectively are able to explore more options, increasing the chance of bigger successes."

"Some miscommunication can make errors worse, while other examples of miscommunication can diminish the harm that might come from those errors," 

"What we found is that how we organize groups matters a great deal when we're evaluating the benefits of diversity—especially when we can miscommunicate," 

via University of Buffalo: Keith Hankins et al, Does (mis)communication mitigate the upshot of diversity?, PLOS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283248

https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283248

Unrelated image credit: Stanford Torus by Alexander Preuss

Cross Sensory Instantiation

Creating 3D objects with sound

Feb 2023, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-02-3d.html

Their concept uses multiple acoustic holograms to generate pressure fields with which solid particles, gel beads and even biological cells can be printed.

They capture particles and cells freely floating in water and assemble them into three-dimensional shapes. 

The advantage of ultrasound is that it is gentle enough for using biological cells and that it can travel deep into tissue. This way it can be used to remotely manipulate and push cells without harm.

via the Max Planck Society at Heidelberg University's Micro, Nano and Molecular Systems Lab: Kai Melde et al, Compact holographic sound fields enable rapid one-step assembly of matter in 3D, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf6182

https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf6182

Preserving endangered languages as 3D shapes

Jan 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-01-endangered-languages-3d.html

The first of its kind in the world, the project and its outputs not only enable the visual demonstration of the architecture of language, but also enables its preservation in a permanent, solid form.

via University College London: Alex Pillen et al, Natural language modelled and printed in 3D: a multi-disciplinary approach, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1057/s41599-022-01089-5

https://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01089-5

Unrelated image credit: AI Art - Surface Antigen of Glioblastoma Multiformae - 2022