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Researchers have developed a robotic sensor that incorporates artificial intelligence techniques to read braille at speeds roughly double that of most human readers.

   

Meteorites are fragments of asteroids which find their way to Earth as shooting stars and provide information on the origins of our solar system. A team of researchers has examined the so-called Winchcombe meteorite and demonstrated the existence in it of nitrogen compounds such as amino acids and heterocyclic hydrocarbons -- without applying any chemical treatment and by using a new type of detector design.

For decades scientists have been trying to solve Feynman's Sprinkler Problem: How does a sprinkler running in reverse work? Through a series of experiments, a team of mathematicians has figured out how flowing fluids exert forces and move structures, thereby revealing the answer to this long-standing mystery.

For decades scientists have been trying to solve Feynman's Sprinkler Problem: How does a sprinkler running in reverse work? Through a series of experiments, a team of mathematicians has figured out how flowing fluids exert forces and move structures, thereby revealing the answer to this long-standing mystery.

Artificial intelligence using neural networks performs calculations digitally with the help of microelectronic chips. Physicists have now created a type of neural network that works not with electricity but with so-called active colloidal particles.The researchers describe how these microparticles can be used as a physical system for artificial intelligence and the prediction of time series.

Artificial intelligence using neural networks performs calculations digitally with the help of microelectronic chips. Physicists have now created a type of neural network that works not with electricity but with so-called active colloidal particles.The researchers describe how these microparticles can be used as a physical system for artificial intelligence and the prediction of time series.

There have been two episodes of campus action by pro-Palestinian groups in the last week, both of which which include UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).  One of the episodes doesn’t worry me because it’s a form of free expression, but the other one does, as it seems to be yet another instance of violation of campus policies that go unpunished by the University.

Below is what I see as free expression: it’s an “art installation”—really a political statement—set up on the quad. It consists of 23,000 small colored flags, many bearing the names of dead Palestinian civilians as provided by Hamas, that together form a large Palestinian flag. Here it is:

It’s accompanied by two signs, the first one explaining the installation’s purpose. Click to enlarge.

Of course I object to the political spin on the sign, though of course I agree with the view that life is precious and not to be taken easily. But the civilian deaths in Gaza I blame entirely on Hamas.  Beyond that, I dislike the “genocide” accusation and the claim that our campus is complicit in genocide, especially in investments (I have no idea if this is true; investments are kept confidential from the academic side of the university). And of course, UCUP and SJP know perfectly well what they mean by calling for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea”. It means a one-state solution that is a Palestinian state, with the Jews somehow “disappearing” along with their state of Israel.

The installation was vetted and approved by the University, as seen above and in the sign below. The authorities would have determined whether this violated any University rules and apparently it didn’t, so I’m fine with it. It’ll be up for another few days. Another sign:

 

However, according to an article in the Chicago Maroon, our student newspaper, after there was a demonstration at the flag installation on Friday, the demonstrators  immediately marched over to our food hall and proceeded to have a “die-in” in Pret A Manger, a snack and coffee shop where many students go to chat over coffee.  The “die-in” is described in the Maroon article below. Note the in photographs of the demonstrations, the Maroon has blurred the faces of protestors. I don’t think this is normal policy for a newspaper since it is, I believe, legal to show photographs people protesting in public. The only reason I can see to blur student faces, I think, is to hide their identities so they won’t be identified, doxxed, or punished. But that’s not a valid journalistic reason to alter photographs.  I have long suspected that the Maroon is either friendly to or afraid of the pro-Palestinian organizations, and this only buttresses my suspecition.

Anyway, click below to read:

A quote from the Maroon (my bolding)

The march ended at Hutchinson Courtyard, where activists announced their next action: a “die-in” at Pret a Manger, which announced last month that it would be opening at least 40 locations in Israel. The organizers invited anyone interested in demonstrating to follow them inside the café. Those who stepped forward were warned of possible administrative punishment and the likelihood of doxing.

More than two dozen students and faculty entered Pret a Manger and lay on the floor with white roses on their chests. Many students working or socializing in Pret left the building after the die-in began and were directed out the back entrance by the protest’s patron liaison.

Throughout the protest, several patrons entered the coffee shop, stepping over the bodies to get to the counter and reach seats in the back.

Shortly after the die-in began, Associate Director for Public Affairs Gerald McSwiggan arrived with three UCPD officers outside of Pret a Manger. At 1:05 p.m., McSwiggan and officers entered the shop from the rear entrance. Outside, student security marshals held up keffiyehs towards the windows of Pret to prevent photographs from being taken of the inside. McSwiggan and the UCPD officers remained at the scene until after the protesters dispersed.

The die-in concluded at 1:15 p.m., when students stood up and exited the café to go outside. Demonstrators sang and yelled, “We believe that we will win!”

The times given suggest that the lie-in lasted roughly half an hour.

Looking at the university policy on demonstrations in buildings, this die-in, which obstructed entrance to the facility (neither employees or students could enter the front door as the demonstrators’ legs were reportedly against that door), it’s clear that this die-in violated our policies, which include this:

Additionally, to maintain a physically safe environment for all members of the University community, the number of people participating in a protest or demonstration must be considered and adhere to the occupancy limits of the protest or demonstration area. Walkways and entrances to and in buildings must always remain open to allow others safe access and egress as well as a clearly designated pathway through the area.

The disruption and violation of this “die-in” is also attested by the presence of McSwiggan and the three cops, as well as the warning given by the protestors themselves that those participating could be subject to “possible administrative punishment.”

In other words, what we have is a prohibited disruption of campus activity by campus protestors, something I’ve described before in a letter to the Maroon. This makes at least three times, and probably more, that this grou (SJP + UCUP) have violated campus rules in their demonstrations. One on occasion, after a sit-in in the admissions office that led to the arrest of 26 students and two professors, the charges were later dropped in court and we don’t have any idea whether there would be any “administrative punishment.”

The Maroon adds this [“Alivisatos’s meeting” refers to our President’s having met with the the Consul General of Israel to the Midwest, which  “aimed to enhance the partnership between [the University of Chicago] and Israeli research institutions and to make sure that every Jewish or Israeli student feels safe on campus,” according to a tweet from Cohen’s X account.”]

When asked for comment on the protest and Alivisatos’s meeting, McSwiggan replied with a statement to The Maroon.

“As part of our commitment to free expression, the University is deeply committed to upholding the rights of protesters and speakers to express a wide range of views. Over more than a century, through a great deal of vigorous debate, the University has developed a consensus against taking social or political stances on issues outside its core mission,” the statement read.

“The University’s longstanding position is that doing this through investments or other means would only diminish the University’s distinctive contribution—providing a home for faculty and students to espouse and challenge the widest range of social practices and beliefs. That idea received definitive treatment in the Kalven Report of 1967. As the report states, ‘The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.’ This principle continues to guide the University’s approach against taking collective positions on political or social issues outside its core mission, including calls for divestment.”

I’m not sure whether McSwiggan was implying that the “die-in” was a “form of free expression”—which would be deeply confusing because a “die-in” is not “free expression” on this campus—or simply making a general statement about university policy.  I have asked for clarification, and when I receive it I’ll add it here.

I remain adamant in my view that the University needs to enforce its regulations against illegal and disruptive conduct by protestors, and I’d object to the non-enforcement above whether it involved pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli students blocking access to a snack shop.  My own view is that the cops should give illegal protestors a warning that if they didn’t leave within 10 or 15 minutes, they would be arrested. That’s plenty of warning. In this case, however, the cops and administrator stood by, doing nothing, until the demonstrators left.

One reason that our President met with the Israeli C0nsul General was “to make sure that every Jewish or Israeli student feels safe on campus.”  That was a nice gesture, but if they really mean it, they need to stop these aggressive and illegal protests designed to intimidate, especially to those people sympathetic to Israel.  The administration is not succeeding in creating an atmosphere of safety: I know several people who don’t feel safe around these demonstrators.  And I don’t, either. If an emeritus faculty member doesn’t feel safe on campus, what about the Jewish and Israeli students? I am not easily intimidated, but SJP and UCUP specialize in intimidation, and, after criticizing the groups publicly, I’m always looking over my shoulder when on campus.

A year ago I could not imagine this happening on campus, and if I were told it would happen, I would have assumed that the University would do something to stop it. So far I’ve seen very little action. The rules need to be enforced.

I have spent the last few years thinking, perhaps assuming that astronauts live off dried food, prepackaged and sent from Earth. There certainly is an element of that but travellers to the International Space Station have over recent years been able to feast on fresh salad grown in special units on board. Unfortunately, recent research suggests that pathogenic bacteria and fungi can contaminate the ‘greens’ even in space.

It’s been at least three years that astronauts have been able to eat fresh lettuce and other leafy items along with tortillas and powdered coffee.. Specially designed chambers on board allow them to grown plants under carefully controlled temperature, water and lights to ensure a successful harvest.  There is however an issue that the ISS is a relatively closed environment and so it is easy for bacteria and fungi to spread and astronauts to get ill. 

The International Space Station stretches out in an image captured by astronauts aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a fly-around in November 2021. Credit: NASA

A paper just published in Scientific Reports and NPJ Microgravity and authored by a team led by Noah Totsline explores what happens with lettuce grown under ‘simulated’ weightless environments (the device known as a clinostat rotate them so that plants did not know which way was up or down). This was achieved by being gently rotated. Plants it seems though, are pretty good at sensing gravity using their roots. The team found that plants under these conditions were more prone to infection than those on Earth in particular Salmonella.

One of the main lines of defence for plants is their stomata. These are tiny pores in the leaves, much like the pores in our skin, that close to defend when an environmental stress is detected, such as bacteria.  The team exposed plants in their micro-gravitational environment to find the plants opened the stomata instead of closing them. 

The team went a step further and introduced a natural bacteria known as UD1022 which usually helps to protect plants. In the clinostat however, it failed to help the plant to protect itself from other more harmful bacteria.

The research was not just an interesting scientific problem but does solve real world problems. Space is slowly opening up with more and more non-astronauts becoming astronauts and travelling into space and this is only going to increase. As SpaceX and the like press ahead with the commercialisation of space travel we absolutely must find a way to grow and farm sustainable and healthy food instead of prepackaged snacks if we are to become a truly space fairing civilisation. 

We are some way away from that of course but this is step one in a long journey. Sadly it is not as simple a task as sterilising the seeds since their could easily be microbes in the environment on board the ISS (or other space craft that come in the future) and perhaps it is these that pose the greatest risk. The team are now looking at ways to genetically modify plants to help them cope in the microgravity of space.

Source : PROBLEMS WITH ROCKET SALAD

The post Plants Growing in Space are at Risk from Bacterial Infections appeared first on Universe Today.

As more and more people without diabetes start to monitor their blood glucose levels, we take a look at what the evidence says about limiting your blood sugar spikes after eating

With more and more people monitoring their glucose levels in an attempt to boost their health, we take a look at what the evidence says about limiting your blood sugar spikes after eating

A raft of new measures aimed at reducing underage vaping are set to come into law next year

Please send in your wildlife photos! I have enough for a week or so, but the need is constant!

Today we have photos of Australian reptiles taken by reader Chris Taylor. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

I thought that I would share photos of some of the reptiles that I have encountered.

There are three orders of reptile in Australia: Crocodilia (crocodiles), Testudines (Turtles), and Squamata (Lizards and Snakes).  I don’t encounter Crocodiles here, but the other two orders are well represented.

By far the largest order is the Squamata, and the photos here represent four of the families in the order. First of all, there is the Scincidae – Skinks, which are found throughout Australia, and one common species across much of Australia is the Blue Tongued Lizard, Tiliqua scincoides scincoides. This subspecies is found in the east and south of the continent. They are a fairly hefty animal, weighing up to 1kg (2.2lb). We encouraged them to come into the vegetable gardens by putting out pipes and rocks for them to rest in. In return they look after the garden by eating snails, slugs and insects. This particular individual has managed somehow to climb up into our old laundry room window, and doesn’t look happy the we are suggesting it might prefer to be outside again!

As its name suggests, they do have a bright blue tongue, that they use as a warning display, together with a loud hiss. But by and large they are very docile. There is another related species, the Blotched Blue-tongued Skink, Tiliqua nigrolutea, and this individual is demonstrating its warning display!

Cunningham’s skink, Egernia cunninghami.  A closely related species is the Cunningham’s Skink.  Smaller than the blue tongues, it is variable in colour, ranging from black to a brown that could be mistaken for the blue tongue.  They are relatively common here.  These were photographed in the Namadgi National park.

Eastern Water Skink, Eulamprus quoyii. Another skink that was common in out garden in our old house in the Hawkesbury Valley to the north west of Sydney, is the Eastern Water Skink.  This is much smaller and lighter than the Blue Tongue, but we welcomed it into the garden as well because it helped to control insects.

The second family here is the Agamidae or Dragons.  Whereas the skinks generally have smooth skin, the dragons are rather more spiky, culminating in the Thorny Devil (Moloch horridus). There are two species that I see often. First is the Jacky Dragon, Amphibolurus muricatus.

This photo is of an adult climbing up on a tree trunk used as a fence post.

The second photo is of a juvenile Jacky, that I saw outside my bedroom window while I was confined to bed for a while – though I was still able to take in what was going on around!  This individual is very small – the pieces of gravel are only 20mm long, so that gives some scale. I suspect it was quite a recent hatching.

Australian Water Dragon, Intellagama lesueurii howitti. These are quite large animals, growing 60 – 100 cm in length, although the tail accounts for more than half of that. The photos were taken at the Australian National Botanical Gardens in Canberra.  The first one has been fitted with a collar for tracking.

The second photo shows how long the tail is.

The third family is the Varanidae – Monitors. This includes the Lace Monitor, Varanus varius, which is often called Goanna, though this name is used for a number of different members of the Varanus genus.  They do exist in my locality, though not on my property, preferring the rocky and tree covered areas to the open paddocks.  But on a property that I used to own near Mudgee in Central West NSW, we would see them often. They are the second largest reptile in Australia, only the Perentie being bigger. They can be up to 2m long, and weigh as much as 14kg (30lb).

They have powerful claws that make them very adept climbers, like this one up the trunk of a eucalypt.

Finally, there are the Ophidia – Snakes. Canberra is often called “The Bush Capital” and as such snakes are found fairly regularly, even in the CBD.  This includes the Eastern Brown Snake, Pseudonaja textilis. A very common snake around here.  I have had a small number of them on my paddocks, and in the vicinity.  It is a beautiful slender snake, and can grow to be 2m long. It is considered to be extremely dangerous, as the toxicity of its venom is surpassed only by that of the Taipans. They are also supposed to be very aggressive, although my few encounters with them have not proved this to be the case. Many years ago, I found that Tansy and Cinnamon, two of our goats, were lying dead side by side near their shelter. I didn’t investigate enough to truly determine the cause of death, but suspect that a brown snake was responsible for this. I encountered this one on a bike ride on a path only a few kilometres from the centre of Canberra. It is probably at least 1.5m long – the path is about 3m wide. I decided to wait until it crossed over before continuing on with my trip!

Red-bellied Black Snake, Pseudechis porphyriacus. The snake that I see most commonly on my place is the red-bellied black snake.  It’s venomous, but no deaths have been reported from this snake. One of its food sources is other snakes, including the Eastern Brown, and anything that keeps them away is OK by me. Indeed, it is said although probably apocryphally, that if you have Red-bellied Blacks on your property then you will not see any Browns.  They are docile, and I’ve even got up closer than I ever intended to one that was keeping hidden in a patch or pumpkin plants in the vegetable bed.  I think I was the more surprised of the two of us. This first one had a home in an old hollow fence post that lay in the front paddock. We knew that it was there, and so were careful when we needed to work in the area, and gave it plenty of space. Here it is on a cold morning just outside its den, trying to get some sun to warm itself up.  This is quite a dark morph of the snake.

The second photo is of a lighter morph, with almost orange belly scales.

Common Death Adder, Acanthophis antarcticus. Very rarely seen, in fact I’ve only ever come across one, is the Death Adder.  The name probably derives from a corruption of “Deaf Adder”, which is how the first settlers in Australia referred to it. It is rarely seen because of its cryptic behaviour.  It will bury itself in leaf litter and coil around so that the had and tail are close together. It will wait there for hours or days, and wait for its prey to come close and so ambush it. To help with this the last part of the tail is very much thinner than the rest of the snake, and it can use this as a lure.  When a bird or mammal comes to investigate, the snake has to move very little to strike its prey.  While it is in this position it will no move away even if one were to get very close, and so because of this was thought to be deaf.  It is very venomous, but because it is so cryptic, few bites are recorded. This photo comes courtesy of my nephew Rich, who has made it a quest to find and photograph snakes!

Finally, there are the Testudinae – Turtles, including the sea turtles as well as land dwellers. This individual is of the Eastern Long Necked Turtle, Chelodina longicollis. This one is determinedly plodding down the drive to the front of my property. We had to wait for it to move before we could proceed down to the front gate, for fear of running it over, a fate that happens to too many of its kin, as they try to cross the roads around here.

Sometimes they just need a little hand to get them out of the road… Unlike some other turtles and tortoises, they don’t draw their neck back into the shell, but instead fold it sideways into the space.

Drone footage filmed off the coast of California shows a 1.5-metre-long, entirely white great white shark pup, probably just hours old – something that has never been seen before

The water that life knows and needs, the water that makes a world habitable, the water that acts as the universal solvent for all the myriad and fantastically complicated chemical reactions that make us different than the dirt and rocks, can only come in one form: liquid.

The vast, vast majority of the water in our universe is unsuitable for life. Some of it is frozen, locked in solid ice on the surface of a world too distant from its parent star or bound up in a lonely, wayward comet. The rest is vaporized, existing as a state of matter where molecules lose their electron companions, boundless and adrift through the great nebular seas that dot the galaxies, or ejected completely into the great voids between them. Either way, that water exists only one molecule at a time, at a temperature of over a million degrees yet its density so low that you could pass through it and mistake it for the cold, hard vacuum of space itself.

No, for water to be liquid it must exist in special place around a star, not too cold for it turn to ice, not too hot for it to turn to gas. It must lay within what astronomers call the habitable zone, or, if they’re feeling playful, the Goldilocks zone.

The habitable zone is different for every star throughout the galaxy, because no two stars are alike. The smallest red dwarfs are barely a tenth the mass of the Sun, with luminosities a thousand times weaker. The largest are great beasts, a hundred solar masses or more, so bright they can be seen from thousands of light-years away by the unaided eye. Around each star a simple iron law holds, the fact that the intensity of light, and all the warmth and comfort that light brings with it, diminishes with the square of the distance from the source. An object twice as far away will experience a quarter of the brightness; at a distance of four times that drops to a sixteenth, and so on. That is why Pluto, despite only sitting about 30 times further away from the Sun than the Earth, is forced to experience never-ending dim twilight, even at the height of its day.

Too far from a star and the radiant temperatures are too cold, and any water freezes. Too close, and the water slips its bonds, free to roam as a gas. In between, in a special band determined by the star’s mass, age, and brightness, sits the habitable zone, where a planet is capable – yes, merely capable – of hosting water in its liquid state on its surface.

For our own Sun, the habitable zone stretches from just within the orbit of Venus to just beyond the orbit of Mars. Three planets perfectly situated within the warm embrace of our Sun, and yet only one has life. What happened? What made our planet so special, or so lucky? It’s impossible to say for sure, because the potential of habitability is not a promise.

There is, however, one other place where we know liquid water can exist. Ironically, it’s in the frozen moons of the outer solar system. There, under surfaces of frozen ice a hundred kilometers thick sit globe-spanning liquid water oceans, with more liquid water than exists on the surface of the Earth. There the habitability isn’t given by the rays of the Sun, but from their molten cores emanating heat, driven by the gravitational warping of the giant planets they orbit. Life could certainly find a purchase there, in places of darkness that the Sun never can touch, even though there worlds are not, according to the traditional definition, habitable.

The post Is the Habitable Zone Really Habitable? appeared first on Universe Today.

There is an ongoing battle in our society to control the narrative, to influence the flow of information, and thereby move the needle on what people think and how they behave. This is nothing new, but the mechanisms for controlling the narrative are evolving as our communication technology evolves. The latest addition to this technology is the large language model AIs.

“The media”, of course, has been a large focus of this competition. On the right there is constant complaints of the “liberal bias” in the media, and on the left there are complaints of the rise of right-wing media which they feel is biased and radicalizing. The culture wars focus mainly on schools, because those schools teach not only facts and knowledge but convey the values of our society. The left views DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiates as promoting social justice while the right views it as brainwashing the next generation with liberal propaganda. This is an oversimplification, but it is the basic dynamic. Even industry has been targeted by the culture wars – which narratives are specific companies supporting? Is Disney pro-gay? Which companies fly BLM or LGBTQ flags?

But increasingly “the narrative” (the overall cultural conversation) is not being controlled by the media, educational system, or marketing campaigns. It’s being controlled by social media. This is why, when the power of social media started to become apparent, many people panicked. Suddenly it seemed we had seeded control of the narrative to a few tech companies, who had apparently decided that destroying democracy was a price they were prepared to pay for maximizing their clicks. We now live in a world where YouTube algorithms can destroy lives and relationships.

We are not yet over panicking about the influence of social media and the tech giants who control them when another player has crashed the party – artificial intelligence, chatbots, and the large language models that run them. This is an extension of the social media infrastructure, but it is enough of a technological advance to be disruptive. Here is the concern – by shaping the flow of information to the masses, social media platforms and AI can have a significant effect on the narrative, enough to create populist movements, to alter the outcome of elections, or to make or destroy brands.

It seems likely that increasingly we will be giving control of the flow of information to AI. Now, instead of searching on Google for information you can have a conversation with Chat GPT. Behind the scenes it’s still searching the web for information, but the interface is radically different. I have documented and discussed here many times how easy human brains are to fool. We have evolved circuits in our brain that construct our perception of reality and make certain judgements about how to do so. One subset of these circuits is dedicated to determining if something out there in the world has agency (are they a person or just a thing) and once the agency-algorithm determines that something is an agent, that then connects to the emotional centers of our brain. We then feel toward that apparent agent and treat them as if they were a person. This extends to cartoons, digital entities, and even abstract shapes. Physical form, or the lack thereof, does not seem to matter because it is not part of the agency algorithm.

It is increasingly well established that people respond to an even half-way decent chatbot as if that chatbot were a person. So now when we interface with “the internet”, looking for information, we may not just be searching for websites but talking with an entity – an entity that can sound friendly, understanding, and authoritative. Even though we may know completely that this is just an AI, we emotionally fall for it. It’s just how our brains are wired.

A recent study demonstrates the subtle power that such chatbots can have. They asked subjects to talk with ChatGPT-3 about black lives matter (BLM) and climate change, but gave them no other instructions. They also surveyed the subjects attitudes toward these topics before and after the conversation. Those who scored negatively toward BLM or climate change ranked their experience half a point lower on a five point scale (which is significant), so they were unhappy when the AI told them things they did not agree with. But, more importantly, after the interaction their attitudes moved 6% in the direction of accepting climate change and the BLM movement. We don’t know from this study if this effect is enduring, or if it is enough to affect behavior, but at least temporarily ChatGPT did move the needle a little. This is a proof of concept.

So the question is – who controls these large language model AI chatbots, who we are rapidly making the gatekeepers to information on the internet?

One approach is to make it so that no one controls them (as much as possible). Through transparency, regulation, and voluntary standards, the large tech companies can try to keep their thumbs off the scale as much as possible, and essentially “let the chips fall where they may.” But this is a problem and early indications are this approach likely won’t work. The problem is that even if they are trying not to influence the behavior of these AI, they can’t help but to have a large influence on them by the choices they make about how to program and train them. There is no neutral approach. Every decision has a large influence, and they have to make choices. What do they prioritize.

If, for example, they prioritize the user experience, well, as we see in this study, one way to improve the user experience is to tell people what they want to hear, rather what the AI determines is the truth. How much does the AI caveat what it says? How authoritative should it sound? How thoroughly should it source whatever information it gives? And how does it weight different sources that it is using? Further, we know that these AI applications can “hallucinate” – just make up fake information. How do we stop that, and to what extent (and how) to we build in fact-checking processes into the AI?

These are all difficult and challenging questions, even for a well-meaning tech company acting in good faith. But of course, there are powerful actors out there who would not act in good faith. There is already deep concern about the rise of Tik Tok, and the ability of China to control the flow of information through that app to favor pro-China news and opinion. How long will it be before ChatGPT is accused of having a liberal bias, and ConservaGPT is created to combat that (just like the Conservapedia, or Truth Social)?

The narrative wars go on, but they seem to be increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer choke points of information. That, I think, is the real risk. And the best solution may be an anti-trust approach – make sure there are lots of options out there, so no one or few options dominate.

The post Controlling the Narrative with AI first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Covering paintings with very thin layers of graphene, or mixing graphene-derived materials into mortars used for repairing historical structures, could protect them from degrading

SLIM was put into hibernation after landing on the moon upside down, but it woke up when sunlight hit its solar panels

Conventional thermodynamics says that heating and cooling are essentially mirror images of each other, but an experiment with a tiny silica sphere suggests otherwise

A couple of weeks ago, I discussed why antivax quacks' claimed biological mechanisms for COVID-19 vaccine "shedding" reminded me of homeopaths. Confabulation about fantastical scientific mechanisms continues, courtesy of "A Midwestern Doctor."

The post Antivax quacks are continuing to make up fantastical biological mechanisms for COVID-19 vaccine “shedding” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.