Science & TechnologyS


Brain

Scientists develop control system designed to teach robotic wheelchairs to understand user intent


Sputnik
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 16:45 UTC
Person in wheelchair
© CC0
Scientists at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (NRNU MEPhI) have developed a decomposition method for multi-channel control systems based on an extended BCI designed to help robotic wheelchair users.

The results of the study were published in the book Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures Meeting.

The use of a robotic wheelchair with a multi-channel control system is crucial for people with highly reduced mobility. Often, patients are only able to perform small hand gestures, give voice commands or project "mental images".

Different control channels have their drawbacks. For example, a traditional joystick controller may not be suitable for people with minimal motor activity. Therefore, a voice control channel, a gesture control channel, and a channel based on BCI (brain-computer interface) are also in demand. The combination of all these channels is called enhanced BCI.
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Info

New study expands understanding of the 'gut-brain axis'

Paul Biegler
Cosmos Magazine
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 18:46 UTC
Gut Bacteria
© MARTIN-DM / GETTY IMAGESTargeting bacteria in the intestine may be a strategy for addressing depression and anxiety.
Scientists have discovered that resident bacteria of the intestine, collectively known as the gut microbiome, can influence the ability to overcome fear.

The finding, published in the journal Nature, could one day help people with post-traumatic stress disorder. It also dramatically expands understanding of the "gut-brain" axis, which is known to have a hand in depression, anxiety and autism.

The researchers, led by immunologist David Artis at Cornell University in New York, US, started by putting the frighteners on a bunch of mice - some healthy and others treated with antibiotics to wipe out their gut bacteria.

They followed standard procedure for getting mice scared. They put the critters in a special chamber where a tone sounded for 30 seconds. When the tone stopped the mice got an electric shock to their feet through the floor.

As you might expect, it wasn't long before they started freezing with fear as soon as they heard the tone - your paradigm case of Pavlovian conditioning.

Fortunately for mice, however, fear can be unlearned.
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Gear

Google AI touts a 'quantum supremacy' experiment using a programmable superconducting processor

John Martinis and Sergio Boixo
Google AI Blog
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
Sycamore processor mounted in the cryostat
© Erik Lucero, Research Scientist and Lead Production Quantum HardwareLeft: Artist's rendition of the Sycamore processor mounted in the cryostat. (Forest Stearns, Google AI Quantum Artist in Residence) Right: Photograph of the Sycamore processor.
Physicists have been talking about the power of quantum computing for over 30 years, but the questions have always been: will it ever do something useful and is it worth investing in? For such large-scale endeavors it is good engineering practice to formulate decisive short-term goals that demonstrate whether the designs are going in the right direction. So, we devised an experiment as an important milestone to help answer these questions. This experiment, referred to as a quantum supremacy experiment, provided direction for our team to overcome the many technical challenges inherent in quantum systems engineering to make a computer that is both programmable and powerful. To test the total system performance we selected a sensitive computational benchmark that fails if just a single component of the computer is not good enough.

Today we published the results of this quantum supremacy experiment in the Nature article, "Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor". We developed a new 54-qubit processor, named "Sycamore", that is comprised of fast, high-fidelity quantum logic gates, in order to perform the benchmark testing. Our machine performed the target computation in 200 seconds, and from measurements in our experiment we determined that it would take the world's fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to produce a similar output.


Comment: Watch their commercial:



Comment: These Google AI scientists seem to leave out the biggest reason their project is even being funded - and how it is likely to be implemented: for the technocratic subjugation of the domestic populace, and the powering of war against "adversaries" abroad; "and if a few cool quantum batteries can be produced for regular industrial consumption, well, that's fine too."

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Wolf

Museums are sexist! Study suggests collectors prefer male specimens over female

Elizabeth Donovan
Phys Org
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 17:44 UTC
museum collection
Researchers found a clear bias towards male specimens in museum collections of animals and birds dating back decades.
Museum collections of birds and mammals may be disproportionately skewed to favour males, even if female members of the species outnumber males in the wild, according to research published Wednesday.

Natalie Cooper, a researcher in the department of life sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, and her colleagues analysed the sex of almost 2.5 million specimens from five international collections, some dating back over a century.

Although as many as half of the bird specimens were not labelled by sex, of the ones that were, only 40 percent were female. Female mammals represented 48 percent of the collections identified by sex.


Comment: 48 percent? Someone better get over to their local museum and protest straight away. This is unacceptable!


"We suspected that some bias towards males would be found because science is done by people, and people have inherent biases towards males," Cooper told AFP.

What surprised the researcher, though, was that there was no change in the ratios from collections dating back 130 years to more recent collections.

Comment: Gender is not a social construct -- at least when it comes to museum specimens.

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Cow

Study finds painting 'zebra stripes' on cows wards off biting flies

Ross Pomeroy
RealClearScience
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 15:57 UTC
cow stripes biting flies
© Kojima et al./PLoS OnePainting 'zebra stripes' on cattle resulted in fewer biting fly attacks
Ranchers might want to consider painting "zebra stripes" on their livestock. According to a new study published in PLoS ONE, the measure reduces the number of biting flies on cows by more than half.

Biting flies are one of the great banes of cows worldwide. The irritating insects cause cows to graze less, eat less, sleep less, and also to bunch together into tightly clumped groups, which stresses the animals and leads to more injuries. The damage done by biting flies equates to roughly $2.2 billion in yearly economic losses for the U.S. cattle industry.

Seeking a potential solution to this situation, a team of Japanese researchers cleverly applied lessons from research on zebras. Animal scientists have long pondered the function of zebras' distinct stripes, and a growing consensus now suggests that they deter insects, possibly by confusing bugs' motion detection systems that control approach and landing.
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Saturn

Astronomers have spotted a new type of storm on Saturn

Maria Temming
Science News
Mon, 21 Oct 2019 11:00 UTC
Saturn storms
© JPL-CALTECH/NASA, SSIUntil now, astronomers have only seen Saturn ravaged by small storms that last days or enormous Great White Spots that last months (a Great White Spot that raged in 2010 and 2011 pictured). Now, astronomers have identified a third, midsize kind of storm activity on the gas giant.
Saturn saw some weird weather last year.

Telescope images have revealed a newfound type of storm activity that raged near Saturn's North Pole in 2018, researchers report online October 21 in Nature Astronomy.

Until now, astronomers had seen only two kinds of Saturnian storms: relatively small storms about 2,000 kilometers across that appear as bright clouds for a few days and Great White Spots that are 10 times as large and last for months (SN: 4/14/15). The newly spotted weather disturbance was a series of four midsize storms. Each was several thousand kilometers across and lasted between about 1.5 weeks and about seven months.

Saturnian storms are thought to originate in water clouds hundreds of kilometers below the planet's visible upper cloud cover. Studying such storms can offer a window into deep atmospheric goings-on that aren't directly observable, says Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, who studies planetary atmospheres at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain.

Comment: Some other recent discoveries about Saturn include:

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Evil Rays

China estimated to gain 600 million 5G subscribers by 2025


Xinhua
Tue, 22 Oct 2019 20:18 UTC
huawei 5g
© Xinhua
China will have over 600 million 5G subscribers by 2025, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the global total, Sihan Bo Chen, head of GSMA Greater China, told Xinhua on Monday.

The global 5G subscriber forecast has increased to 1.6 billion by 2025 from 1.4 billion, and much of this growth will come from China based on operators' rolled-out plans, she said, citing a forecast by GSMA, an international association in the mobile industry.

Up to 85 percent of the Chinese population will subscribe to mobile services by 2025, while 88 percent of those subscribers will have smartphones and 36 percent will use 5G services, said John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA Ltd.
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Bullseye

NASA pinpoints the cause of recent record carbon dioxide spike

Dwayne Brown, Alan Buis
nasa.gov
Sat, 12 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
carbon dioxide spike on globe map
© NASA/JPL-CaltechThe last El Nino in 2015-16 impacted the amount of carbon dioxide that Earth’s tropical regions released into the atmosphere, leading to Earth’s recent record spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The effects of the El Nino were different in each region.
A new NASA study provides space-based evidence that Earth's tropical regions were the cause of the largest annual increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration seen in at least 2,000 years.

Scientists suspected the 2015-16 El Nino -- one of the largest on record -- was responsible, but exactly how has been a subject of ongoing research. Analyzing the first 28 months of data from NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite, researchers conclude impacts of El Nino-related heat and drought occurring in tropical regions of South America, Africa and Indonesia were responsible for the record spike in global carbon dioxide. The findings are published in the journal Science Friday as part of a collection of five research papers based on OCO-2 data.

"These three tropical regions released 2.5 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere than they did in 2011," said Junjie Liu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, who is lead author of the study.
"Our analysis shows this extra carbon dioxide explains the difference in atmospheric carbon dioxide growth rates between 2011 and the peak years of 2015-16. OCO-2 data allowed us to quantify how the net exchange of carbon between land and atmosphere in individual regions is affected during El Nino years."
A gigaton is a billion tons.

Comment: Carbon dioxide has no major role in Earth's temperature fluctuations, be they increases or decreases. Watch:

See also:

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Play

PragerU features Stephen Meyer in new video: Evolution - bacteria to Beethoven

Andrew McRiarmid
Evolution News
Mon, 21 Oct 2019 16:53 UTC
bacteria beethoven evolution
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has, with some modifications, been embraced as unassailable by the science community over the last century. So much so that evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has famously stated that "If you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane." But is that right?

In a new PragerU video, Stephen Meyer answers that question by presenting two big reasons to doubt the evolutionary account of life's origins - the Cambrian explosion and the DNA enigma. The animated video is a nice summary of Meyer's book-length treatments of those two problems. And at under 6 minutes, the video makes a great conversation starter!

Watch it below, and be sure to share it with your friends and family. Also note that a study guide is available, as well as a transcript of Meyer's commentary. You can even take a five-question quiz after watching it to make sure you were paying attention. Enjoy!


Comment: For more on why evolution is bunk, see SOTT's ongoing series by Mandatory Intellectomy:

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Gem

World's largest geode formed when Mediterranean sea disappeared

Brandon Specktor
Live Science
Mon, 21 Oct 2019 20:07 UTC
Pulpí Geode
© Hector GarridoMost geodes can fit in the palm of your hand. The Pulpí Geode can fit your entire family inside it. A researcher stands inside the crystal-filled cave known as the Pulpí Geode — the single largest geode on Earth.
In an abandoned mine in southern Spain, there is a room of pure crystal.

To get there, you'll have to descend deep into tunnels, climb a ladder into an inconspicuous hole in the rocks and squeeze through a jagged tube of gypsum crystals barely wide enough for one person. If you make it that far, you'll be standing inside the world's largest geode: the Pulpí Geode, a 390-cubic-foot (11 cubic meters) cavity about the size of a cement mixer drum, studded with crystals as clear as ice and sharp as spears on every surface.

While you may have never stood inside a geode, you've probably held, or at least seen, one before.

"Many people have little geodes in their home," Juan Manuel García-Ruiz, a geologist at the Spanish National Research Council and co-author of a new paper on the history of the Pulpí Geode, told Live Science. "It's normally defined as an egg-shaped cavity inside a rock, lined with crystals."

Comment: See also:

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