• Dec, 2023
  • Dec 19, 2023
  • Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution | Nature
    Controversial.
    ‘AT conceptualizes objects not as point particles, but as entities defined by their possible formation histories. This allows objects to show evidence of selection, within well-defined boundaries of individuals or selected units. We introduce a measure called assembly (A), capturing the degree of causation required to produce a given ensemble of objects. This approach enables us to incorporate novelty generation and selection into the physics of complex objects. It explains how these objects can be characterized through a forward dynamical process considering their assembly.’

    Blue Origin is doing a moon lander. 3000kg expendable cargo MK1. They're making a solar-cell making machine that uses lunar regulith to make the solar cells.
  • Jul, 2023
  • Jul 03, 2023
  • "The 20th Century will be better remembered as the century of psuedoscience than of real science." - Watifalthist

    “Science as a mirror for beliefs”

    “It took the Germans and North Europeans to make use of it and finally conquer the world with it. Science went into the doldrums after that, but suddenly has reared its head again." - Malcolm McLaren, years ago
  • May, 2023
  • May 01, 2023
  • AI presented researchers with thousands of possible VX-like chemicals (Verge article)

    "Of course, it does require some expertise. If somebody were to put this together without knowing anything about chemistry, they would ultimately probably generate stuff that was not very useful. And there’s still the next step of having to get those molecules synthesized. Finding a potential drug or potential new toxic molecule is one thing; the next step of synthesis — actually creating a new molecule in the real world — would be another barrier."

    ...

    "The big gap to start with is that you really don’t know if these molecules are actually toxic or not. There’s going to be some amount of false positives. If we’re walking ourselves through what a bad agent would be thinking or doing, they would have to make a decision on which of these new molecules they would want to synthesize ultimately.

    "As far as synthesis routes, this could be a make it or break it. If you find something that looks like a chemical warfare agent and try to get that synthesized, chances are it’s not going to happen. A lot of the chemical building blocks of these chemical warfare agents are well known and are watched. They’re regulated. But there’s so many synthesis companies. As long as it doesn’t look like a chemical warfare agent, they’re most likely going to just synthesize it and send it right back because who knows what the molecule is being used for, right?"

    "We just want more researchers to acknowledge and be aware of potential misuse. When you start working in the chemistry space, you do get informed about misuse of chemistry, and you’re sort of responsible for making sure you avoid that as much as possible. In machine learning, there’s nothing of the sort. There’s no guidance on misuse of the technology. "
  • Jan, 2023
  • Jan 10, 2023

  • 2040 for most of the world, 2070 for the Antarctic.

    1987 CFCs were banned by an international treaty. This could be done so easily because substitutes for CFCs were available (unlike CO2, the other thing people are focused on for the climate).

    Anecdote. In 2018 scientists detected a rise in CFCs, and they were traced to factories in China. Soon after, CFCs resumed their downward trend.
      
  • Dec, 2022
  • Dec 18, 2022

  • Science?

    The data it's based on can't be access by us, it's not public domain data. So it can't be peer reviewed, Campbell says.

     
  • Feb, 2022
  • Feb 02, 2022
  • PRMs - Human humoral fluid-phase pattern recognition molecules

    Recognition and inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 by humoral innate immunity pattern recognition molecules
  • Nov, 2021
  • Nov 06, 2021
  • Men are more upset about being deceived regarding a woman's looks, women more upset about his occupation or volunteerism

    Several hundred WEIRD (white, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) undergrads around age 21 were studied.

    Sex Differences in Response to Deception Across Mate-Value Traits of Attractiveness, Job Status, and Altruism in Online Dating 
  • Sep, 2021
  • Sep 27, 2021
  • Some scientific organizations now will censor themselves on anything that gives offense to others

    Reportedly, the Royal Society of Chemistry issued a letter to its editors to keep from publishing offensive content, which included the words, 'we bear in mind that it is the perception of the recipient that we should consider, regardless of the author's intention' and that they should look for anything that could potentially cause offense.

    They explicitly say what is offensive content: 'Any content that could reasonably offend someone on the basis of their age, gender, race, sexual orientation, religeous or political beliefs, marital or parental status, physical features, national origin, social status, or disability.'

  • Jul, 2021
  • Jul 02, 2021

  • People know, or at least reveal info about, their friends and family more accurately than about themselves, researchers say.

     
  • Jul, 2021
  • Jul 01, 2021
  • New material lattice

    ... which looks similar to a 3d honeycomb, and whose cells have 14 sides each, 3d printed from flexible polymer, then heated until only pure carbon remained.

    They shot sand-like particles at the lattice (similar to what space debris does). At low speeds it bounced off. At high speeds it gouged out craters, crushing the lattice, and remained lodged in the material (didn't pierce the material).



     
  • 'Time neurons' that help brain know when something happened (episodic memory)

    "The activity of the population of hippocampal cells allowed for decoding one temporal epoch from another."


    Human hippocampal neurons track moments in a sequence of events - Leila Reddy et al. at the French national research agency CNRS in Toulouse      
  • 3d printing tiny lattices water climbs up

    The lattice cells are only 1mm wide.

    New printers are allowing for tiny cells to be printed which, similar to the way trees use capillary action and surface tension to draw water upwards from roots to leaves (which was the model copied here), overcome a problem we have when we try to use liquids (and gasses), which is that we have only been able to use a small part of their mass as their exposed surfaces (like the surface of a container of water). If we can arrange the liquid to have more surface, we can increase its ability to perform things like cooling and exchanging gasses.

    The lattices not only increase the amount of water we can have facing outward. They also bypass the downward pull of gravity (and in the future we'll be able to control the path the liquid takes along a lattice design).


     
  • May, 2021
  • May 01, 2021
  • Convicts in private prisons serve 90 days longer than public prisons

    This is about 5% longer.

    In private prisons, the company's contract has it that they are payed a per diem for each occupied bed.

    "The delayed release erodes half of the cost savings offered by private contracting and is linked to the greater likelihood of conduct violations in private prisons. The additional days served do not lead to apparent changes in inmate recidivism," according to the author.*

    Mukherjee, Anita. "Impacts of Private Prison Contracting on Inmate Time Served and Recidivism."

     
  • How much is a dollar difference?

    A lot more than a dollar, according to research that concluded that Americans pay an average $33 more on auto loans, after analyzing a data set of 35m such loans.

    People perceive the difference between prices that end in 9 and one number higher that ends in 0 as being more different that just one dollar. This is especially true with numbers ending in 99 and 00.

    *An Empirical Bargaining Model with Left-Digit Bias: A Study on Auto Loan Monthly Payments. Zhenling Jiang

  • Conversations don't end when we want them to

    In fact, on average they last twice as long as desired, according to some new research at Harvard, which concluded that the reason for this is a 'coordination problem': conversants have no idea when their partner wants to end and think their partner wants to keep going.

    The reason for this 'unsolvable' problem is that conversants require information they usually keep from each other to know when to end a discussion.

    We usually end conversations through highly routine practices, they noted, such as re-stating the reason they started the conversation ("Well, I just wanted to see you you were doing") or making arrangements ("So let's sort out what time on Monday").

    *Do conversations end when people want them to? Adam M. Mastroianni et al.

  • Wasp benefits

    UC London and U East Anglia researchers studying wasps ave found that while people generally hate them, that hate is in large part due to ignorance about the benefits they bring.

    Their recent study points out that wasps are effective pest controllers. There are 33,000 wasp species. Some are specialized in which aphids, caterpillars or other insects they hunt as food, and can be used as pest control for crops that have to deal with those specific insects. Other wasps hunt insects more generally and can be used for multi-crop farms.

    They're also important pollinators, and some plant species are completely dependent on wasps for reproduction.

    There is also some evidence, although not much as yet, about various values of wasps for making medicine and as a food source.

    *Ryan E. Brock, Alessandro Cini, Seirian Sumner. Ecosystem services provided by aculeate wasps.

     

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