Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher the text of 2,000-year-old charred papyrus scripts, unveiling musings on music and capers.
Faced with data restrictions and harassment, researchers are mapping out fresh approaches to studying social media’s political reach.
Immune guardians called complement proteins are manufactured by gut cells and help to protect against pathogens.
Data from an African observatory show that jets from a collapsed star are capable of producing some of the Galaxy’s fastest particles.
The blockbuster medications that reduce body weight also reduce inflammation in organs such as the brain, raising hopes that they can treat Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.
/Minden Pictures
A bacterium in the intestines of stressed mice interferes with cells that protect against pathogens.
A new wave of research is unpicking the relationship between cancer and neurons — and looking for ways to stop the crosstalk.
Wine-fermentation jars used in Georgia today hint at the properties of ancient vintages.
Light pulses with specific quantum properties could be harnessed to send digital ‘contracts’ between buyer and seller.
Mice that work out regularly have higher levels of a molecule that promotes muscle regeneration than sedentary mice do.
Next-generation plants that respond to demand could be key to making a low-carbon energy source more economically appealing.
A dormant immune system before receiving the BCG vaccine is tied to a greater innate immune response afterwards.
Detectors at the Large Hadron Collider spot the famed particle decaying into a photon and a ‘Z boson’.
Scientists are devising ways to edit the genomes of immune cells without having to extract them from the people being treated.
A massive quake that triggered tsunamis, fires and multiple aftershocks was the largest on the country’s west coast in more than a century.
Studies of the microbes living on and in our bodies are conducted mainly in a few rich countries, squandering opportunities to improve the health of people globally.
Researchers at the National Ignition Facility are consistently creating reactions that make more energy than they consume.
In December 2022, after more than a decade of effort and frustration, scientists at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) announced that they had set a world record by producing a fusion reaction that released more energy than it consumed — a phenomenon known as ignition. They have now proved that the feat was no accident by replicating it again and again, and the administration of US President Joe Biden is looking to build on this success by establishing a trio of US research centres to help advance the science.
Large language model improves on efforts to solve combinatorics problems inspired by the card game Set.
The card game Set has long inspired mathematicians to create interesting problems.
Now, a technique based on large language models (LLMs) is showing that artificial intelligence (AI) can help mathematicians to generate new solutions.
On the outskirts of Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany, nestled among car dealerships and hardware shops, sits a two-storey factory stuffed with solar-power secrets. It’s here where UK firm Oxford PV is producing commercial solar cells using perovskites: cheap, abundant photovoltaic (PV) materials that some have hailed as the future of green energy. Surrounded by unkempt grass and a weed-strewn car park, the factory is a modest cradle for such a potentially transformative technology, but the firm’s chief technology officer Chris Case is clearly in love with the place. “This is the culmination of my dreams,” he says.
Looking back a century reveals how much the research landscape has changed
Winds triggered by climate change sweep cold air down from the summit of Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks, leading to a cooling trend.
The poster child for generative AI software is a startling human mimic. It represents a potential new era in research, but brings risks.
Nature Magazine (December 15, 2023):
Juliette Powell & Art Kleiner Berrett-Koehler (2023)
The benefits and harms of social media are intimately tied to the ongoing debate about artificial intelligence (AI). Will AI systems trained partly on social media benefit or harm humanity? In their excellent, sometimes alarming, analysis of engineering, social justice, commerce and government, entrepreneur and technologist Juliette Powell and writer and educator Art Kleiner compare humans developing AI tools to first-time parents. They recommend guiding AI systems “as we would a child towards full adulthood”.
John Parrington Icon (2023)
“The material basis of human consciousness is one of the biggest unsolved issues in science,” admits cellular and molecular pharmacologist John Parrington in his pithy addition to a vast literature dating from the time of ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He considers many theories and proposes his own. Humans, he argues, are distinguished by conceptual thought and language, along with skills in designing tools and technologies. The evolution of these powers transformed our brains, creating meaning and consciousness.
Ed. David W. Orr MIT Press (2023)
Environmentalist David Orr writes in the introduction to this timely collection that the planet faces two interlinked crises: “rapid climate change and potentially lethal threats to democracy”. The US Constitution rigorously protects private property but does not mention ecological systems, he observes. Contributors — almost all US-based — from a wide range of fields examine the need for political reform. The book is in four parts: the nature of democracy; roadblocks to change; policy and law; and education, including academic culture.
Michael J. Benton Thames & Hudson (2023)
When palaeontologist Michael Benton learnt about dinosaurs as a boy, he “loved the fact they were extinct”. They were like real science fiction. Perhaps he also intuited that their extinction permitted his existence. As his deeply informed and readable book reveals, the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago allowed a new cohort of creatures — including mammals — to “inherit the Earth”, as did four earlier extinction events. Living species represent less than 1% of all the species that have existed.
David Z. Albert Harvard Univ. Press (2023)
The physical interpretation of quantum mechanics has been a controversial riddle since the 1920s, when Niels Bohr argued that the atom’s inner workings could not be described in physical terms. Today, many philosophers and physicists disagree, but there’s no consensus on an alternative. Philosopher David Albert’s provocative book argues, in three essays, that Bohr’s quantum-measurement problem starts to make sense if the wave function is understood as the fundamental physical ‘stuff’ of the Universe.
Boomers Daily 