Octopus Overlords

stessier wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 11:54 am

Paingod wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 8:02 am 1800 feet into the air is a pathetic goal. He could climb a tower in several locations to reach that height. He could strap himself to a bunch of balloons and do better.

What'll be better is when he sees the truth and has to doctor the evidence he collects to fit his theory, turning his science experiment into science fiction.

He could just tie a GoPro to a balloon...or watch the youtube video from the students who did. Or he could ride on a commercial airline and look out the window.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 1:07 pm

stessier wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 11:54 am

Paingod wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 8:02 am 1800 feet into the air is a pathetic goal. He could climb a tower in several locations to reach that height. He could strap himself to a bunch of balloons and do better.

What'll be better is when he sees the truth and has to doctor the evidence he collects to fit his theory, turning his science experiment into science fiction.

He could just tie a GoPro to a balloon...or watch the youtube video from the students who did. Or he could ride on a commercial airline and look out the window.

That's another chestnut of flat earther lore: If the earth were curved, wouldn't airline pilots have to be constantly pointing down?

stessier wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 1:17 pm

Jaymann wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 1:07 pm

stessier wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 11:54 am

Paingod wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 8:02 am 1800 feet into the air is a pathetic goal. He could climb a tower in several locations to reach that height. He could strap himself to a bunch of balloons and do better.

What'll be better is when he sees the truth and has to doctor the evidence he collects to fit his theory, turning his science experiment into science fiction.

He could just tie a GoPro to a balloon...or watch the youtube video from the students who did. Or he could ride on a commercial airline and look out the window.

That's another chestnut of flat earther lore: If the earth were curved, wouldn't airline pilots have to be constantly pointing down?

Those are people who have trouble understanding the scale of the earth and it's curvature. How much do you have to point down to trace a curve at 30k ft over 3000 miles? It's not like you'd be in a nose dive.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Sat Nov 25, 2017 11:53 pm

KDH wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2017 6:36 pm .. Rocket launch will prove Earth is flat, California man says

Cancelled

‘Mad’ Mike Hughes has been promising the world a rocket launch for a few months now, but obstacles keep getting in his way. First, the Bureau of Land Management said he couldn’t launch his rocket on public land, so he found some private land to hold his launch. He was all set to go on February 3, streaming his launch live on NoizeTV, when an unspecified malfunction stopped it.
...
It’s not exactly clear what kept Hughes from launching his smaller rocket on Saturday, but it appears to be some kind of malfunction with a valve, or an actuator, or a plunger.
...
There’s no word on when Hughes will try his launch again. He says he is unlikely to do it early this week because he has to be in court on Tuesday to sue the government. Perhaps he’ll try the launch sometime next week. We certainly hope so.

Chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—used frequently in fast-food wrappers and other products for their oil- and water-repellant properties—have been linked to hormone disruption, immune dysfunction, high cholesterol and even cancer. Now, a new study suggests that exposure to the chemicals could make it harder to keep weight off after dieting.

Chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—used frequently in fast-food wrappers and other products for their oil- and water-repellant properties—have been linked to hormone disruption, immune dysfunction, high cholesterol and even cancer. Now, a new study suggests that exposure to the chemicals could make it harder to keep weight off after dieting.

Researchers have found that gradually depleting an enzyme called BACE1 completely reverses the formation of amyloid plaques in the brains of mice with Alzheimer's disease, thereby improving the animals' cognitive function. The study raises hopes that drugs targeting this enzyme will be able to successfully treat Alzheimer's disease in humans.

Utilizing an unsuspected activity of the CRISPR-Cas12a protein, researchers created a simple diagnostic system called DETECTR to analyze cells, blood, saliva, urine and stool to detect genetic mutations, cancer and antibiotic resistance and also diagnose bacterial and viral infections. The scientists discovered that when Cas12a binds its double-stranded DNA target, it indiscriminately chews up all single-stranded DNA. They then created reporter molecules attached to single-stranded DNA to signal when Cas12a finds its target.

Engineers have found a way to make wood more than 10 times stronger and tougher than before, creating a natural substance that is stronger than many titanium alloys.

Engineers have found a way to make wood more than 10 times stronger and tougher than before, creating a natural substance that is stronger than many titanium alloys.

So-called Ediacaran organisms have puzzled biologists for decades. To the untrained eye they look like fossilized plants, in tube or frond shapes up to 2 meters long. These strange life forms dominated Earth’s seas half a billion years ago, and scientists have long struggled to figure out whether they’re algae, fungi, or even an entirely different kingdom of life that failed to survive. Now, two paleontologists think they have finally established the identity of the mysterious creatures: They were animals, some of which could move around, but they were unlike any living on Earth today.

Scientists first discovered the Ediacaran organisms in 1946 in South Australia’s Ediacara Hills. To date, researchers have identified about 200 different types in ancient rocks across the world. Almost all appear to have died out by 541 million years ago, just before fossils of familiar animals like sponges and the ancestors of crabs and lobsters appeared in an event dubbed the Cambrian explosion. One reason these creatures have proved so tricky to place in the tree of life is that some of them had an anatomy unique in nature. Their bodies were made up of branched fronds with a strange fractal architecture, in which the frond subunits resembled small versions of the whole frond.

Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Jian Han at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, have now found key evidence that the Ediacaran organisms were animals. They analyzed more than 200 fossils of a 518-million-year-old marine species named Stromatoveris psygmoglena. Paleontologists had previously concluded that the 10-centimeter-tall species was some sort of animal—in part, says Hoyal Cuthill, because it was found alongside other known animals, and all of the fossils are preserved in a similar way. Hoyal Cuthill and Han argue S. psygmoglena was also an Ediacaran organism, a rare “survivor” that somehow clung on through the Cambrian explosion.

ONCE UPON A time, a bot deep in a game of tic-tac-toe figured out that making improbable moves caused its bot opponent to crash. Smart. Also sassy.

Moments when experimental bots go rogue—some would call it cheating—are not typically celebrated in scientific papers or press releases. Most AI researchers strive to avoid them, but a select few document and study these bugs in the hopes of revealing the roots of algorithmic impishness. “We don’t want to wait until these things start to appear in the real world,” says Victoria Krakovna, a research scientist at Alphabet's DeepMind unit. Krakovna is the keeper of a crowdsourced list of AI bugs. To date, it includes more than three dozen incidents of algorithms finding loopholes in their programs or hacking their environments.

The specimens collected by Krakovna and fellow bug hunters point to a communication problem between humans and machines: Given a clear goal, an algorithm can master complex tasks, such as beating a world champion at Go. But even with logical parameters, it turns out that mathematical optimization empowers bots to develop shortcuts humans didn’t think to deem off-­limits. Teach a learning algorithm to fish, and it might just drain the lake.

Gaming simulations are fertile ground for bug hunting. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Freiburg in Germany challenged a bot to score big in the Atari game Qbert. Instead of playing through the levels like a sweaty-palmed human, it invented a complicated move to trigger a flaw in the game, unlocking a shower of ill-gotten points.

Infanticide: In a survival simulation, one AI species evolved to subsist on a diet of its own children.

Max Peck wrote: ↑Thu Aug 09, 2018 12:58 pm These half-billion-year-old creatures were animals—but unlike any known today

So-called Ediacaran organisms have puzzled biologists for decades. To the untrained eye they look like fossilized plants, in tube or frond shapes up to 2 meters long. These strange life forms dominated Earth’s seas half a billion years ago, and scientists have long struggled to figure out whether they’re algae, fungi, or even an entirely different kingdom of life that failed to survive. Now, two paleontologists think they have finally established the identity of the mysterious creatures: They were animals, some of which could move around, but they were unlike any living on Earth today.

Scientists first discovered the Ediacaran organisms in 1946 in South Australia’s Ediacara Hills. To date, researchers have identified about 200 different types in ancient rocks across the world. Almost all appear to have died out by 541 million years ago, just before fossils of familiar animals like sponges and the ancestors of crabs and lobsters appeared in an event dubbed the Cambrian explosion. One reason these creatures have proved so tricky to place in the tree of life is that some of them had an anatomy unique in nature. Their bodies were made up of branched fronds with a strange fractal architecture, in which the frond subunits resembled small versions of the whole frond.

Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Jian Han at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, have now found key evidence that the Ediacaran organisms were animals. They analyzed more than 200 fossils of a 518-million-year-old marine species named Stromatoveris psygmoglena. Paleontologists had previously concluded that the 10-centimeter-tall species was some sort of animal—in part, says Hoyal Cuthill, because it was found alongside other known animals, and all of the fossils are preserved in a similar way. Hoyal Cuthill and Han argue S. psygmoglena was also an Ediacaran organism, a rare “survivor” that somehow clung on through the Cambrian explosion.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 1:09 am Artificial gills for humans?

Perhaps one day soon we can breath underwater without big bulky scuba gear. Right now it says humans need so much O2 that the gills need 32 square meters of gills.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 1:09 am Artificial gills for humans?

Perhaps one day soon we can breath underwater without big bulky scuba gear. Right now it says humans need so much O2 that the gills need 32 square meters of gills.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Aug 09, 2018 3:47 pm

Infanticide: In a survival simulation, one AI species evolved to subsist on a diet of its own children.

Once upon a time, two early humans of different ancestry met at a cave in Russia.

Some 50,000 years later, scientists have confirmed that they had a daughter together.

DNA extracted from bone fragments found in the cave show the girl was the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.

The discovery, reported in Nature, gives a rare insight into the lives of our closest ancient human relatives.

Neanderthals and Denisovans were humans like us, but belonged to different species.

"We knew from previous studies that Neanderthals and Denisovans must have occasionally had children together," says Viviane Slon, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany.

"But I never thought we would be so lucky as to find an actual offspring of the two groups."

The story of mammals is one of self-destruction. They first arose roughly 200 million years ago, and after eons spent scurrying in the shadow of the dinosaurs, they finally cut loose and evolved into a breathtaking variety of shapes and sizes, including the largest creatures to ever exist. And after all that, it took barely 100,000 years for one relatively young member of the group—us—to bring everything crashing down.

..

A sobering new study by Matt Davis at Aarhus University throws these losses into stark relief. He estimated how long it would take for mammals to evolve enough new species to replace the ones that we have eradicated. And his most realistic answer is somewhere from 3 million to 7 million years. That’s at least 10 times as long as we have even existed as a species. We have inflicted such grievous wounds on our own family tree that the healing process can’t possibly happen “on any kind of time scale that’s relevant to humans,” Davis says.

A sobering new study...

The appeal of this marginal musical form, which clearly seems bent on assaulting the senses and violating even the lowest standards of taste, is mystifying to non-fans—which is one reason music psychologist William Forde Thompson was drawn to it. Thompson and his colleagues have published three papers about death metal and its fans this year, and several more are in the works.

“It’s the paradox of enjoying a negative emotion that I was interested in,” says Thompson, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “Why are people interested in music that seems to induce a negative emotion, when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion?” A number of studies have explored the emotional appeal of sad music, Thompson notes. But relatively little research has examined the emotional effects of listening to music that is downright violent.

Thompson’s work has produced some intriguing insights. The biggest surprise? “The ubiquitous stereotype of death metal fans—fans of music that contains violent themes and explicitly violent lyrics—[is] that they are angry people with violent tendencies,” Thompson says. “What we are finding is that they are not angry people. They’re not enjoying anger when they listen to the music, but they are in fact experiencing a range of positive emotions.”

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue Oct 30, 2018 11:51 am The SCIENCE of Death Metal:

Dissecting the Bloodthirsty Bliss of Death Metal:

The appeal of this marginal musical form, which clearly seems bent on assaulting the senses and violating even the lowest standards of taste, is mystifying to non-fans—which is one reason music psychologist William Forde Thompson was drawn to it. Thompson and his colleagues have published three papers about death metal and its fans this year, and several more are in the works.

“It’s the paradox of enjoying a negative emotion that I was interested in,” says Thompson, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “Why are people interested in music that seems to induce a negative emotion, when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion?” A number of studies have explored the emotional appeal of sad music, Thompson notes. But relatively little research has examined the emotional effects of listening to music that is downright violent.

Thompson’s work has produced some intriguing insights. The biggest surprise? “The ubiquitous stereotype of death metal fans—fans of music that contains violent themes and explicitly violent lyrics—[is] that they are angry people with violent tendencies,” Thompson says. “What we are finding is that they are not angry people. They’re not enjoying anger when they listen to the music, but they are in fact experiencing a range of positive emotions.”

“This is the third or fourth case of an eel in the nose that we have observed,” Charles Littnan, lead scientist and supervisory research ecologist at the Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program, told me.

Nobody knows how the eel got there, but Littnan had a few theories.

Paingod wrote: ↑Wed Oct 04, 2017 7:51 am tell Bob to invest in a GoPro with GPS and a weather balloon. When the camera records the upper atmosphere and distinct curvature of the earth before the balloon pops and sends the camera back down, he can STFU.

In the era of Google Maps, one might be tempted to believe that there are no undiscovered corners of the Earth.

But a cave with an opening that can accommodate the Statue of Liberty, and a roaring river running through it, has been discovered in a remote area of British Columbia in Wells Gray Provincial Park, about 280 miles northeast of Vancouver.

“As far as North America goes, this is a honking big cave,” said John Pollack, a career caver and governor of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, which last week announced the cave’s existence.

“It’s one of the biggest in Canada,” he said, “and certainly one of the most spectacular.”

The cave was discovered in early spring when a group of biologists and researchers conducting a mountain caribou census first noticed what looked like a black hole on the snow-covered slope.