Science

Employers are significantly more likely to offer job interviews and higher salaries to graduates with experience of artificial intelligence, according to new research.

Employers are significantly more likely to offer job interviews and higher salaries to graduates with experience of artificial intelligence, according to new research.

Sufficiently advanced aliens would be able to capture vast quantities of energy from their star using a massive structure called a Dyson sphere. Such a device would give off an infrared heat signature - and astronomers have just spotted 60 stars that seem to match

I discuss the war in the Middle East with Malgorzata a lot and, like  Roseanne Roseannadanna, I ask a lot of questions. Andrzej had written a precis of his view of what’s going on there for Listy, and Malgorzata translated his Polish into English just for my sake. I thought I’d post Andrzej’s take on this site, but if you read Polish, you can see the original on Listy here.  (Yahya Sinwar is of course the leader of Hamas.)

As you can see, Andrzej is incensed at Biden’s decision to withhold arms from Israel and sees this as a sign that Biden is concerned more with his own reelection and with achieving comity with Iran than with defeating the terrorism of Hamas. Remember, these are Andrzej’s views, not mine, but I have to say there’s substantial (though not complete) overlap

Biden-Sinwar-Khamenei Pact

Andrzej Koraszewski

The former U.S. ambassador to Israel said there was no doubt that Biden had sided with Hamas. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, the American President announced that he intends to stop supplying weapons to Israel (with the exception of missiles for the Iron Dome). In other words, the American President announced that he would try to avoid too many Jewish casualties, but eliminating the threat to Israeli civilians interferes with his plans to cooperate with Iran.

According to The New York Times, this is a “turning point”. We are actually seeing a qualitative change. Biden said out loud what he had quietly said for days. Restrictions on American arms and ammunition supplies had actually begun earlier, although there were official attempts to deny this. Now, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the American president, citing concern for the Palestinian civilian population, decided that he must save Hamas from final defeat and create the conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state under Hamas.

We hear that it is still just a threat, that supplies will be halted “if,” but the Pentagon confirms that they have already been halted.

Is the American president naïve, or is he just pretending that he does not know what he is demanding? In all the months since Hamas started the war, American condemnations of Hamas have been nothing but empty words. There has been no firm pressure on Qatar or Iran, no demand for the expulsion of Hamas leaders from Qatar, no demand for the immediate release of Israeli hostages, no threats to move the U.S. military base out of Qatar, and no ultimatum to Tehran. On the contrary, all the American grievances were directed at Israel, Hamas’s information about Israel’s alleged crimes was taken seriously, human rights were turned into a laughing stock, a tool for constantly accusing Jews, no one blamed “President” Abbas for supporting Hamas’s barbarism, and the American administration gave permission for public hatred of the Jewish state.

The U.S. President has previously asserted that “Hamas does not represent the Palestinians.” He did not reveal the secret of how he knew this, and he also pretended that he had no knowledge of Palestinian opinion polls, or who supposedly represented these Palestinians and how they did it.

Meanwhile, Tehran said on the same day that it may be “forced to change its nuclear doctrine and build nuclear bombs if its existence is threatened.” The fact that Iran either already has nuclear weapons or is a few weeks away from building them has been known for some time. Now they have apparently decided that they have gotten green light from Washington and it is time to stop pretending that they are not aiming at acquiring nuclear weapons at all. Thus, there is no longer a need for a fatwa (which President Obama happily talked about, but which no one has ever seen), which supposedly stated that Islam forbids the production of nuclear weapons.

The new UN statements on readiness to recognize the “State of Palestine” were probably not related to President Biden’s statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day, but it is easy to guess that the atmosphere was already considered favorable for taking this step, because there is a possibility that the US in the Security Council will not block the proposal, and the General Assembly resolution itself will certainly obtain the required majority, so journalists will consider it a binding decision of the UN anyway, and that’s what it’s all about.

So what does this “turning point” for America mean? Israeli historian Gadi Taub, in an article published on the same day, wrote:

In the eyes of the Biden administration Hamas is the smaller problem. The bigger problem is Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. is willing to live with Iran’s proxies everywhere, as part of its “regional integration” policy—i.e., appeasing Iran. But they are unwilling to live with Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. The stubborn Netanyahu clearly does not want to learn from his would-be tutors like U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken how to “share the neighborhood” with genocidaires in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, and Tehran, whom his electorate understands to be bent on murdering them.

Tony Bardan, an American scientist from the Center for Research on Terrorism of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, recently wrote that Israel is facing a choice whether to remain an independent state or to be a client-oriented country in the service of a great power. Bardan reminds us that the latter has already happened once. Herod the Great was practically the governor of Rome, and it ended with the destruction of the temple, and in the following decades the genocide of the Jews and the exile of most of the survivors.

Gadi Taub, describing today’s American frolics in the Middle East—insidious attempts to overthrow the elected leader of the Israeli government and then collusion with a possible “U.S. own” Israeli prime minister—shows that for the Democratic Party, the enemy is Netanyahu rather than Islamic terrorism (not seen as a threat to America and the entire democratic world) and rather than another nuclear-armed enemy of democracy nor a genocidal Hamas.

The American president repeated his usual mantras about Israel’s right to defend itself and about his steadfast support for its ally, while doing everything in his power to save Israel’s genocidal enemy and strengthen its main sponsor.

In a world that has returned to the old rut of murderous Jew-hatred, Israel is dependent on American aid and care. But, Taub writes, the United States keeps Israel on a leash, rationing ammunition, forcing it to uncontrollably deliver humanitarian aid that falls into the hands of Hamas, maintaining its power over the people of Gaza, and in the diplomatic field supporting unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. And while the U.S. helped repel a massive rocket attack by Iran, it forced only a symbolic response from Israel. America’s primary goal today is to ensure the survival of Hamas as ruler of the Gazan fortress.

The United States treats Israel as Jews have always been treated – with superiority and contempt. They invited the prime minister’s political rival (Gantz) to the talks, tried to summon the commander-in-chief of the Israeli army for separate talks, and did not protest when a caricature of an international court threatens to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli leaders. Moreover, there is a great deal of evidence pointing to U.S. government financial and organizational support for Israel’s internal divisions and political destabilization of the country at a time of struggle for existential survival.

Let’s not kid ourselves, the “turning point” is just the climax. Even if not everything is going according to plan and Benny Gantz has not yet decided to cooperate fully, and Prime Minister Netanyahu apparently refuses to give in to pressure, the American alliance with Hamas is delaying the final defeat of this terrorist organization. And the campaign of relentlessly dishonest accusations against Israel is intensifying with each passing day the hostility towards the Jewish state, hostility towards Jews, and sympathy for enemies not only of Israel, but also of America and the rest of the democratic world.

The intentions of the allies are clear: the poster of the BDS movement says it bluntly:

NOTE: A commenter below points out that this is not from the BDS movement, but from an anarchist site. So ignore the figure below.

For Islamists, Hamas’s war with Israel is intended only to open the gate to further fighting. For President Biden, only his election campaign and the expectations of his electorate are important. The option to support the Islamic Republic of Iran was chosen by President Obama, and Biden probably really believes that Israel should learn to live with a Palestinian state armed by Iran and with Lebanon in the hands of Hezbollah. If Israel is not ready for this, so be it—America will continue to pretend to defend human rights. The question of why this human must be a genocidal terrorist might be considered tactless.

Our photo tank is running low, so while I’m gone for the next week you might consider putting together a batch of photos for posting here.  Thanks!

Here is part 2 of Ephraim Heller’s survey of the birds of Bhutan (part 1, with an introduction, is here).  His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here is installment #2 of photos from my April 2024 birding tour of Bhutan. We begin with a photo of the Paro valley, including the Paro dzong. Paro is the site of Bhutan’s only international airport, as it is the only valley near the capital of Thimpu wide and flat enough for commercial passenger jets. Consequently, most international visitors enter Bhutan here.

Today I post my photos of Phasianidae (pheasants, grouse, and allies) and Columbidae (pigeons and doves). Descriptions of the species below are taken from Wikipedia.

Blood Pheasant (Ithaginis cruentus) male and female. Blood pheasants live in the mountains of Bhutan, Nepal, Sikkim, northern Myanmar, Tibet and central and south-central China, where they prefer coniferous or mixed forests and scrub areas near the snowline. They move their range depending on the season, and are found at higher elevations during the summer. With snow increasing in fall and winter, they move to lower elevations.

Male:

Female:

An Himalayan Monal (Lophophorus impejanus) female. These are native to Himalayan forests and shrublands at elevations of 2,100–4,500 m (6,900–14,800 ft). It is the state bird of Nepal. The male has spectacular colors, but I was able only to photograph the female, which is darn pretty.

A Barred Cuckoo-Dove (Macropygia unchall):

Mountain Imperial-Pigeon (Ducula badia), Bhutan:

An Oriental Turtle-Dove (Streptopelia orientalis):

A Spotted Dove (Spilopelia chinensis). While native to Asia, the species has become established in many areas outside its native range including Hawaii, southern California, Mauritius, Australia, and New Zealand:

A Wedge-tailed Green Pigeon (Treron sphenurus):

Equipment: All animal photos were shot using a Nikon Z9 camera and Nikkor Z 400mm f/2.8 TC VR S lens. Landscape and architectural photos were shot either with a Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S lens or with an iPhone 11.

You can see more of my photos here.

Heavy, prolonged or painful menstrual periods are associated with more days off school and scoring worse on compulsory exams in a UK study

[UPDATE May 10, 4:00 pm Boston Time, 10:00 pm EU time: AURORAS MAY BE ACTIVE NOW!]

I don’t use exclamation marks in blog post titles lightly. For those of us hoping to see the northern and southern lights (auroras) outside their usual habitat near the Earth’s poles, this is one of those rare weekends where the odds are in our favor. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a rare G4 forecast (out of a range from G1 to G5) for a major geomagnetic “storm”.

Though the large and active sunspot from earlier this week has moved on, it has been followed by an even larger group of sunspots, so enormous that you can easily see them with eclipse glasses if you’ve kept your pair from last month.

A monster sunspot group on the Sun right now (May 9, 2024).

Powerful solar flares (explosions at the Sun’s visible surface) and the accompanying large coronal mass ejections (“CMEs”, huge clouds of subatomic particles that stream across space from the Sun toward the planets) keep coming, one after another; the second-largest of the week happened just a few hours ago. In the next 24-72 hours, the combined effects of these CMEs may drive the Earth’s magnetic field haywire, leading to northern and southern lights that are much stronger and much more equatorial than usual.

How far south might the northern lights reach? That’s hard to predict, unfortunately. But it wouldn’t be surprising if they reached midway across the United States, and across much of Europe.

If you decide to go looking, keep in mind that dark skies are so important; the auroras can seem quite bright in a dark sky, but they are easily lost to light pollution from city lights or even nearby street lights. Make sure to turn off your car headlights and let your eyes adjust to the dark for a few minutes. The auroras are typically to the north (in the northern hemisphere), but I’ve seen them directly overhead in a strong storm. They’re most often green, but other colors may appear, if you’re lucky. If you’re not sure whether you’re seeing them, take a photo; the camera can pick up dim light and its color more effectively than your eyes can.

As for when to go looking — auroras might happen at any time, from a few hours from now through the weekend, and would potentially be visible whenever the sky is dark. For more detailed information, there are two sources of data that I find useful to monitor:

• First, at this site, you can find near-real-time data on the solar wind— the flow of particles from the Sun — from the ACE satellite, which orbits the Sun almost a million miles from Earth. If you see a sudden wildness in the data, that’s a good sign that a CME has probably passed this satellite, and will arrive at Earth in less than an hour.
• Second, data on the strength of the geomagnetic storm can be found here — but be warned! It is provided only as an average over the past three hours, and only updated every three hours — and so it can be as much as three hours out of date. But if you see the “Kp index” in the red, up around 7 or above, something significant is happening. In a G4 storm, this index can reach 9.

Good luck!!

A centuries-old maths problem asks what shape a circle traces out as it rolls along a line. The answer, dubbed a “cycloid”, turns out to have applications in a variety of scientific fields

Does the repeated stress on your immune system from getting tattoo after tattoo make you better able to fight off infections? No, no it does not.

The post Tattoos Still Won’t Boost Your Immune System first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

With a bit of training, macaques can make rhythmic movements in time with music, an ability only shown before by a handful of animals

People who can run a mile in less than 4 minutes generally live almost five years longer than would otherwise be expected, challenging the idea that too much strenuous exercise is bad for the heart

A research team has demonstrated that an iron-based amorphous alloy, widely used as a soft magnetic material in transformers and motors, can be transformed into a 'transverse' thermoelectric conversion material that converts electric and thermal currents in orthogonal directions, with just a short period of heat treatment. This is the first example that highlights the importance of microstructure engineering in the development of transverse thermoelectric conversion materials, and provides new design guidelines for materials development to realize environmentally friendly power generation and thermal management technologies using magnetic materials.

What if your earbuds could do everything your smartphone can, but better? A new class of synthetic materials could allow for smaller devices that use less power.

What if your earbuds could do everything your smartphone can, but better? A new class of synthetic materials could allow for smaller devices that use less power.

There’s something poetic about humanity’s attempt to detect other civilizations somewhere in the Milky Way’s expanse. There’s also something futile about it. But we’re not going to stop. There’s little doubt about that.

One group of scientists thinks that we may already have detected technosignatures from a technological civilization’s Dyson Spheres, but the detection is hidden in our vast troves of astronomical data.

A Dyson Sphere is a hypothetical engineering project that only highly advanced civilizations could build. In this sense, ‘advance’ means the kind of almost unimaginable technological prowess that would allow a civilization to build a structure around an entire star. These Dyson Spheres would allow a civilization to harness all of a star’s energy.

A Civilization could only build something so massive and complex if they had reached Level II in the Kardashev Scale. Dyson Spheres could be a technosignature, and a team of researchers from Sweden, India, the UK, and the USA developed a way to search for Dyson Sphere technosignatures they’re calling Project Hephaistos. (Hephaistos was the Greek god of fire and metallurgy.)

They’re publishing their results in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Academy of Sciences. The research is titled “Project Hephaistos – II. Dyson sphere candidates from Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE.” The lead author is Matías Suazo, a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University in Sweden. This is the second paper presenting Project Hephaistos. The first one is here.

“In this study, we present a comprehensive search for partial Dyson spheres by analyzing optical and
infrared observations from Gaia, 2MASS, and WISE,” the authors write. These are large-scale astronomical surveys designed for different purposes. Each one of them generated an enormous amount of data from individual stars. “This second paper examines the Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE photometry of ~5 million sources to build a catalogue of potential Dyson spheres,” they explain.

A Type II civilization is one that can directly harvest the energy of its star using a Dyson Sphere or something similar. Credit: Fraser Cain (with Midjourney)

Combing through all of that data is an arduous task. In this work, the team of researchers developed a special data pipeline to work its way through the combined data of all three surveys. They point out that they’re searching for partially-completed spheres, which would emit excess infrared radiation. “This structure would emit waste heat in the form of mid-infrared radiation that, in addition to the level of completion of the structure, would depend on its effective temperature,” Suazo and his colleagues write.

The problem is, they’re not the only objects to do so. Many natural objects do, too, like circumstellar dust rings and nebulae. Background galaxies can also emit excess infrared radiation and create false positives. It’s the pipeline’s job to filter them out. “A specialized pipeline has been developed to identify potential Dyson sphere candidates focusing on detecting sources that display anomalous infrared excesses that cannot be attributed to any known natural source of such radiation,” the researchers explain.

This flowchart shows what the pipeline looks like.

This flowchart from the research illustrates the pipeline the team developed to find Dyson Sphere candidates. Each step in the pipeline filters our objects that don’t match the expected emissions from Dyson Spheres. Image Credit: Suazo et al. 2024.

The pipeline is just the first step. The team subjects the list of candidates to further scrutiny based on factors like H-alpha emissions, optical variability, and astrometry.

368 sources survived the last cut. Of those, 328 were rejected as blends, 29 were rejected as irregulars, and 4 were rejected as nebulars. That left only 7 potential Dyson Spheres out of about 5 million initial objects, and the researchers are confident that those 7 are legitimate. “All sources are clear mid-infrared emitters with no clear contaminators or signatures that indicate an obvious mid-infrared origin,” they explain.

This pie chart shows the breakdown of the 368 sources that made it through the filter. Only 7 objects out of millions are labelled Dyson Sphere candidates. Image Credit: Suazo et al. 2024.

These are the seven strongest candidates, but the researchers know they’re still just candidates. There could be other reasons why the seven are emitting excess infrared. “The presence of warm debris disks surrounding our candidates remains a plausible explanation for the infrared excess of our sources,” they explain.

But their candidates seem to be M-type (red dwarf) stars, and debris disks around M-dwarfs are very rare. However, it gets complicated because some research suggests that debris disks around M-dwarfs form differently and present differently. One type of debris disk called Extreme Debris Disks (EDD) can explain some of the luminosity the team sees around their candidates. “But these sources have never been observed in connection with M dwarfs,” Suazo and his co-authors write.

That leaves the team with three questions: “Are our candidates strange young stars whose flux does not vary with time? Are these stars’ M-dwarf debris disks with an extreme fractional luminosity? Or something completely different?”

This figure from the research shows the seven candidates plotted on a colour-magnitude diagram. It indicates that all seven are M-dwarfs. Image Credit: Suazo et al. 2024.

“After analyzing the optical/NIR/MIR photometry of ~5 x 106 sources, we found 7 apparent M dwarfs exhibiting an infrared excess of unclear nature that is compatible with our Dyson sphere models,” the researchers write in their conclusion. There are natural explanations for the excess infrared coming from these 7, “But none of them clearly explains such a phenomenon in the candidates, especially given that all are M dwarfs.”

The researchers say that follow-up optical spectroscopy would help understand these 7 sources better. A better understanding of the H-alpha emissions is especially valuable since they can also come from young disks. “In particular, analyzing the spectral region around H-alpha can help us ultimately discard or verify the presence of young disks,” the researchers write.

“Additional analyses are definitely necessary to unveil the true nature of these sources,” they conclude.

The post Astronomers are on the Hunt for Dyson Spheres appeared first on Universe Today.

Most people with early-stage glaucoma don't know they have it, even though early treatment is key to reducing vision loss. While detecting a subtle increase in eye pressure helps doctors to diagnose glaucoma, it's challenging to monitor continuously, especially with the variety of temperatures eyes experience. Now, researchers report a prototype 'smart' contact lens that measures eye pressure accurately, regardless of temperature.

Systems controlled by next-generation computing algorithms could give rise to better and more efficient machine learning products, a new study suggests.

Systems controlled by next-generation computing algorithms could give rise to better and more efficient machine learning products, a new study suggests.

A method has been discovered to treat water heavily contaminated with unhealthful forever chemicals, known by chemists as PFAS or poly- and per-fluoroalkyl substances. It involves treating heavily contaminated water with ultraviolet (UV) light, sulfite, and a process called electrochemical oxidation. It breaks up strong fluorine-to-carbon bonds in the PFAS compounds and other concentrated organic compounds in heavily polluted water. The reaction also occurs at room temperature without a need for additional heat or high pressure. This method is expected to be useful in cleanups of PFAS pollution from decades of fire suppressant foam use at military facilities.

Astrophysicists discovered that an exoplanet is covered with so many active volcanoes that seen from a distance it would take on a fiery, glowing-red hue.