Science & Technology

Horses know when something's amiss

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Sun, 24 Jun 2018 18:54 UTC

© Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images
Vladimir Putin talking to his favourite horse. The animals are able to detect a disconnect between word and deed, research suggests.

Horses, it seems, may have a sense of the incongruous.

Research led by cognitive scientist Kosuke Nakamura from the University of Tokyo in Japan examines the reaction of horses to visual and audio cues when the emotion expressed in one does not match that of the other.

The results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, is believed to be the first time this type of cognition has been tested in horses - a remarkable thing, given that the species was domesticated around 5000 years ago and has lived in close proximity to humans ever since.

To conduct their research, Nakamura and colleagues recruited 19 horses from their own institution and the nearby Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology.

A plan to exterminate mosquitoes just received major funding from the Gates Foundation

Hilary Brueck, Business Insider
Science Alert
Sun, 24 Jun 2018 18:25 UTC

So crazy it just might work.

Beyond being itch-provoking summer pests, mosquitoes kill an estimated 830,000 people around the world each year. That makes them more deadly than any animal on Earth, humans included.

A majority of those mosquito-caused deaths (more than 440,000) are cases of malaria, which are transmitted person to person in a one-celled parasite that female mosquitoes pass around when they suck our blood.

Comment: Fooling with the complexities of nature without fully understanding these relationships will have 'unintended' consequences. The biotech industry is hell-bent on developing these GMO mosquitoes and won't let anyone get in their way:

Anti-GMO mosquito activist delivering petition to EPA found floating dead in DC hotel pool

See also:

Brain cells once thought to disappear during development were just found in adults

Science Alert
Sun, 24 Jun 2018 18:15 UTC

They've been there the whole time.

Scientists have thought for decades that one area of the brain simply disappears during human development. Now, genetic similarities between cells in the subplate and neurons linked to autism suggest a different scenario.

In a new paper, researchers demonstrate that subplate neurons survive, and in fact become part of the adult cerebral cortex, a brain area involved in complex cognitive functions.

Consciously quantum: Do we create our own reality?

Philip Ball
New Scientist
Wed, 08 Nov 2017 00:01 UTC

The idea that we create reality seems absurd. But an audacious new take on quantum theory suggests the fundamental laws of nature emerge from our own experiences

Does reality exist without us? Albert Einstein appeared to be in no doubt: surely the moon doesn't vanish when we aren't looking, he once asked incredulously. He had been provoked by the proposition, from quantum theory, that things only become real when we observe them. But it is not such a daft idea, and even Einstein kept an open mind. "It is basic for physics that one assumes a real world existing independently from any act of perception," he wrote in a 1955 letter. "But this we do not know."

In the decades since, physicists have found it maddeningly difficult to write the observer out of quantum theory. Now some are contemplating a mind-boggling alternative: that a coherent description of reality, with all its quantum quirks, can arise from nothing more than random subjective experiences. It looks like the "perspective of a madman", says the author of this bold new theory, because it compels us to abandon any notion of fundamental physical laws. But if it stands up, it would not only resolve some deep puzzles about quantum mechanics, it would turn our deepest preconceptions about reality itself inside out.

Comment: See also:

Energy-hungry aliens are snatching stars and storing them in mega-structures, says new study

RT
Thu, 21 Jun 2018 14:38 UTC

Alien civilizations may be forced to capture stars and harness their energy using ginormous structures - all to keep themselves alive in the cold, ever-expanding vastness of universe, a Fermilab cosmologist believes.

Expansion of the universe, thought to be further accelerated by dark energy, is flinging matter apart, while galaxies are being pushed away from each other. This is a challenge alien technologies will have to deal with in order for them to survive, Dan Hooper, a senior Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory scientist, writes in a new study.

The paper looks at the use of megastructures, popularly known as Dyson spheres, which may theoretically be built around stars to harvest their energy. But it goes further than that, arguing that the huge balls of gas will also have to be shifted in their course so as not to escape the energy-hungry aliens.

"In order to maximise its access to useable energy, a sufficiently advanced civilisation would chose to expand rapidly outward, build Dyson Spheres or similar structures around encountered stars, and use the energy that is harnessed to accelerate those stars away from the approaching horizon and toward the centre of the civilization," Hooper, who is also a professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago, writes.

New IBM computer makes its debut in public debate

Alyssa Newcomb
NBC News
Mon, 18 Jun 2018 16:36 UTC

© Ted Chin / IBM
Renowned Israeli debater Dan Zafrir takes on IBM Research's experimental AI system, Project Debater, in San Francisco on Monday.

The human brain may be the ultimate super computer, but artificial intelligence is catching up so fast that it can now hold a substantive debate with a human.

IBM's Project Debater made its public debut in San Francisco Monday afternoon, where it squared off against Noa Ovadia, the 2016 Israeli debate champion, and in a second debate against Dan Zafrir, a nationally renowned debater in Israel. The new AI system is the latest grand challenge from IBM, which previously created Deep Blue, the program that beat chess champion Garry Kasparov, and Watson, which bested humans on the game show Jeopardy.

In its first public outing, Project Debater turned out to be a formidable opponent, scanning the hundreds of millions of newspaper and journal articles in its memory to quickly synthesize an argument on a topic and position it was assigned on the spot. The skinny, black, rectangular screen stands about five and a half feet tall, putting it around the same height as a human opponent.

"Project Debater could be the ultimate fact-based sounding board without the bias that often comes from humans," said Arvind Krishna, director of IBM Research.

'Once in a blue dune': NASA shares striking image of Mars' Loyt crater

RT
Sat, 23 Jun 2018 13:48 UTC

NASA has shared a stunning image of a field of finely-marked turquoise sand dunes smeared across the floor of a Martian crater.

The eye-catching snap, captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows an accumulation of 'barchan' (or crescent-shaped) sand dunes on the Lyot Crater -a large crater in the Vastitas Borealis region of the Red Planet.

Just to the south of the group of barchan dunes lies a large dune with a stranger and more complex structure, depicted in a striking blue shade in the enhanced color image. According to NASA, this formation is made of finer material and may have "a different composition than the surrounding" dunes.

Comment: See also: Epic dust storm on Mars now engulfs entire planet

New algorithm can predict who will win a debate

April McCarthy
Prevent Disease
Mon, 18 Jun 2018 16:09 UTC

Northeastern professor Lu Wang believes that the right mix of linguistic analysis, artificial intelligence, and data visualization can produce more meaningful debates. Understanding what makes a persuasive argument is at the heart of an interdisciplinary project she is leading.

Ideally, debates are like fuel for the engine of democracy. But in their current form on social media, are they really getting us anywhere?

The ultimate goal is to help social media platforms evolve from echo chambers full of hate speech to places where constructive conversations flourish.

"Debates should be mechanisms for discovering something new about the world," said Nick Beauchamp, assistant professor of political science at Northeastern and a collaborator on the project. "The hope is that you would come away from a debate not with just a set of new facts you learned, but also with a better way of thinking about the problem."

With this goal in mind, Wang and Beauchamp designed an algorithm that identifies features of a strong argument. Using a dataset of 118 Oxford-style debates--in which the winner is whomever can sway more of the audience to their side--the algorithm was able to predict debate winners 74 percent of the time.

Epic dust storm on Mars now engulfs entire planet

Tariq Malik
Space.com
Thu, 21 Jun 2018 09:16 UTC

© NASA and JPL-Caltech
A self-portrait taken by NASA's Curiosity mission on June 15, 2018 shows the rover surrounded by a darkened landscape beneath a dust-shrouded sky.

On Mars, the sky is dust.

A massive dust storm on Mars that covered one-fourth of the planet just a week ago has grown into a global weather event, NASA officials said Wednesday (June 20).

The dust storm has knocked NASA's Opportunity rover offline for want of sunlight. The agency's nuclear-powered Curiosity, meanwhile, is snapping photos of the ever-darkening Martian sky. The two rovers are on opposite sides of Mars.

"The Martian dust storm has grown in size and is now officially a 'planet-encircling' (or 'global') dust event," NASA officials said in a statement. [The Mars Dust Storm of 2018 Explained]

The last dust storm on Mars to go global occurred in 2007, five years before the Curiosity rover landed at its Gale Crater site, according to officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The Opportunity rover has been exploring the plains of Meridiani Planum on the opposite side of Mars since 2004. During that 2007 Martian dust storm, NASA also lost contact with Opportunity for days due to low power levels from the lack of sunlight.

Interfacial water can be very dead, electrically speaking

University of Manchester
Phys.org
Thu, 21 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC

Research shows that water is electrically dead at interfaces

In a study published in Science this week, the researchers describe the dielectric properties of water that is only a few molecules thick. Such water was previously predicted to exhibit a reduced electric response but it remained unknown by how much. The new study shows that atomically thin layers of water near solid surfaces do not respond to an electric field, a finding that has very important implications for understanding of many phenomena where water is involved, including life of course.

Water molecules are small and seemingly simple but nonetheless exhibit rather complex properties, many of which remain poorly understood. Among them is the ability of water to dissolve substances much better than any other solvent. Water is therefore known as the "universal" solvent.

Behind this solvation ability is the fact that water molecules behave like tiny dipoles with two opposite charges placed at the ends of the molecule. This makes it easy for water to dissolve salts and sugars whereas substances like oils are repelled. The dipolar properties of water - or, as scientists call it, the polarizability - also play an important role in the structuring of the molecules of life, proteins and nucleic acids. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that for many decades scientists tried to figure out how water behaves on a microscopic scale, in the immediate vicinity of other substances, solid surfaces and macromolecules.

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Science & Technology

Horses know when something's amiss

A plan to exterminate mosquitoes just received major funding from the Gates Foundation

Brain cells once thought to disappear during development were just found in adults

Consciously quantum: Do we create our own reality?

Energy-hungry aliens are snatching stars and storing them in mega-structures, says new study

New IBM computer makes its debut in public debate

'Once in a blue dune': NASA shares striking image of Mars' Loyt crater

New algorithm can predict who will win a debate

Epic dust storm on Mars now engulfs entire planet

Interfacial water can be very dead, electrically speaking

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