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A type of mathematical problem that was previously impossible to solve can now be successfully analysed with artificial intelligence

New research into the moments between wakefulness and sleep could bring hope for insomniacs and even make us more creative problem-solvers

The combined impact of so-called 'forever chemicals' is more harmful to the environment than single chemicals in isolation, a new study shows.

The word “volatile” is commonly used in the space exploration community, but it has a different meaning than when used otherwise. In space exploration, volatiles are defined as the six most common elements in living organisms, plus water. Earth had enough volatiles for life to start here, but it might not have been that way. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London now think they have a reason why Earth received as many volatiles as it did – and thereby allowed it to develop life in the first place.

One characteristic of volatiles that makes them both difficult to deal with but easy to transport is that they vaporize at relatively low temperatures. Granted, a relatively low temperature could be 950°C for zinc, the volatile the researchers chose to look at. 

They chose zinc because it has a unique composition when captured in meteorites, allowing researchers to identify its source based on that composition. Previously, some of the same researchers had found that the zinc found on Earth had come from different parts of our solar system. About half had originated out past Jupiter, while half came from closer to home.

Dr. Marc Hirschmann discusses the importance of volatiles in planetesimals
Credit – Carnegie Earth & Planets Laboratory

Most originating sources were objects called “planetesimals” – essentially proto-planets that had not yet had time to form. Planetesimals were common in the early solar system but became less so as they began to form into what we think of today as the major planets. However, many of the ones that existed early in the solar system were subjected to something that younger ones weren’t – harsh radiation.

Radiation was everywhere in the early solar system, and many planetesimals that formed during this period were subjected to it. Notably, the heat from these radiation sources caused the planetesimals’ volatiles to vaporize and be lost to space. So, the researchers at Cambridge and ICL thought they might be able to differentiate the age of the source of some of those volatiles – particularly zinc.

It turns out that they could. They measured the zinc concentration in many meteorites whose originating planetesimal was known. They then modeled where the Earth received its zinc from. Since zinc is one of the vital volatiles thought to be essential to the development of life, this model could help understand how life might (or might not) develop on other worlds.

Fraser discusses our best estimate as to how Earth got the materials needed to make life.

They found that the vast majority (about 90%) of the Earth’s zinc was contributed by planetesimals that weren’t subjected to the high radiation levels of the early solar system. In essence, they were the ones whose volatiles weren’t vaporized, allowing them to contribute more of these valuable, life-giving materials despite only contributing 30% of the Earth’s overall mass.

Additional work is needed to study whether similar heating effects affected the amount of other volatiles delivered to the early Earth. And even more work is required to model how that volatile delivery model might work for other planets, such as Mars, or even exoplanets further afield.

But for now, this is another piece of the puzzle that answers an important question about the early solar system. And, maybe more importantly, it shows how many things have to go right for life to develop in the first place.

Learn More:
University of Cambridge – How did the building blocks of life arrive on Earth?
Martins et al. – Primitive asteroids as a major source of terrestrial volatiles
UT – The Building Blocks of Earth Could Have Come From Farther out in the Solar System
UT – Citizen Scientists Find Fifteen “Active Asteroids”

Lead Image:
An iron meteorite from the core of a melted planetesimal (left) and a chondrite meteorite, derived from a ‘primitive’, unmelted planetesimal (right).
Credit: Rayssa Martins/Ross Findlay

The post Life on Earth Needed “Unmelted Asteroids” appeared first on Universe Today.

Eye care specialists could see artificial intelligence help in diagnosing infectious keratitis (IK), a leading cause of corneal blindness worldwide, as a new study finds that deep learning models showed similar levels of accuracy in identifying infection.

A world-first randomised controlled trial (RCT) of toddler screen time shows that removing screen time in the hour before bed improves the quality of toddler sleep.

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to predict that last spring’s pro-Hamas (or “anti-Israel”) protests would continue into this academic year.  Despite Hamas being pretty well crushed, the entitled and enraged fans of Palestinian terrorism continue to cause trouble on campus.  The latest target is the elite Brown University. (Elite universities are the ones where protests are most vocal.)

Earlier in October, the University rejected a BDS proposal to divest from Israeli corporations, and also affirmed that such political moves were not in the University’s interest.

As The Algemeiner previously reported, Brown University earlier this month voted down a proposal — muscled onto the agenda of its annual meeting by an anti-Zionist group which attempted to hold the university hostage with threats of illegal demonstrations and other misconduct — to divest from 10 companies linked to Israel.

“The Corporation also discussed the broader issue of whether taking a stance on a geopolitical issue through divestment is consistent with Brown’s mission of education and scholarship. The Corporation reaffirmed that Brown’s mission is to discover, communicate, and preserve knowledge. It is not to adjudicate or resolve global conflicts,” university president Christina Paxson and Brown Corporation chancellor Brian Moynihan said in a letter commenting on the vote. “Whether you support, oppose, or have no opinion on the decision of the Corporation, we hope you will do so with a commitment to sustaining, nurturing, and strengthening the principles that have long been at the core of our teaching and learning community.”

In effect, Brown here is espousing institutional neutrality, refusing to make political statements through investing or divesting. (Brown does not appear on FIRE’s list of 22 colleges besides the University of Chicago that have adopted a Kalven-like institutional neutrality.)

Click below to read more from The Algemeiner:

The students didn’t get their way, so, like toddlers denied a cookie, they acted out, going after the trustees, impeding their movements, and calling them names. Some of that may be free speech, but it’s not clear whether any University rules were violated:

Brown University has launched investigations of anti-Israel groups and individual students following their riotous conduct during a protest of the Brown Corporation that was held on Friday.

Staged outside the Warren Alpert Medical School to inveigh against the Corporation’s recent rejection of a proposal to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — which aims to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — the demonstration saw the Ivy League students engage in harassment and intimidation, according to a community notice first shared by the Brown Daily Herald and later obtained by The Algemeiner. The protesters repeatedly struck a bus transporting the Corporation’s trustees from the area, shouted expletives at them, and even lodged a “a racial epithet … toward a person of color.”

Other trustees were stalked to their destinations while some were obstructed from entering their bus, according to the missive by Russell Carey, Brown’s interim vice president for campus life and executive vice president of planning and policy. The official added that the students — many of whom are members of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has links to terrorist organizations, and its spin-off, Brown Divest Coalition (BDC) — harmed not only the trustees but also the university as an institution of higher learning.

“No member of the Brown community would want or expect to be treated in the manner some of our members experienced on Friday, and it was troubling to read in media reports the express intent of some organizers to provoke discomfort that ultimately targeted individuals,” Carey wrote. “Disciplinary sanctions will be imposed where violations of conduct codes are found.”

He added, “As we continue to navigate challenging times on campus and in the nation, our resolve and our principles as a compassionate learning community will continue to be tested. I am hopeful that members of the Brown community will engage in discussion with each other about these challenges and commit to treat each other with respect and dignity.”

Anyone who thinks that civil discussion will ensue between anti-Israel and pro-Israel (or neutral) groups, much less come to any agreement, is an arrant optimist.  Obstructing trustees from getting on their bus, as well as harassing individuals and striking their bus, is likely to be committing violations. And shouting a racial epithet, which of course is odious behavior, may well be “fighting words” prohibited by the First Amendment. (Brown, however, is a private university.)

This is just more evidence that the toddlers will continue their tantrums for an indefinite time.  But schools are getting tired of it, and, I hope, more of them will start punishing the protesters when they violate university regulations (my own school has been clearly reluctant to levy such punishments).  Without such sanctions, there is simply no deterrent to breaking the rules, leading to more and more (and more violent) demonstrations. Pomona College struck back last week:

Last week, Pomona College in Claremont, California levied severe disciplinary sanctions, ranging from expulsion to banishment, against 12 students who participated in illegally occupying and vandalizing the Carnegie Hall administrative building on the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

The news was first reported by an Instagram accounted operated by Pomona Divest from Apartheid (PDfA), the group which led the assault on the building. PDfA acknowledged that “property crimes” were perpetrated but maintained that the college lacked evidence to identify the offenders. Noting that PDfA members concealed their identities with masks, it charged that Pomona president G. Gabrielle Starr has resorted to “indiscriminately” punishing minority students, as well as depriving them of housing and food, for the sake of upholding fascism.

Starr, who is an African American woman, told a different story, however, accusing the group of “violation of our collective life on campus” in a statement which noted that the pro-Hamas student group was aided by non-student adults who managed to gain access to the campus.

“The destruction in Carnegie Hall was extensive, and the harm done to individuals and our mission was so great,” Starr wrote. “Starting this week, disciplinary letters are going out to students from Pomona and other Claremont Colleges who have been identified as taking part in the takeover of Carnegie Hall. Student groups affiliated with this incident are also under investigation.”

This, of course, is why the cowardly protesters wear masks, taking their actions out of the real of civil disobedience, which they also erode when demanding that, even when caught violating the rules, that they not be punished.

But on the other side we have P. Z. Myers, who has emerged as a full-blown demonizer of Israel.  Myers proclaims this about protests at a branch of his school (The University of Minnesota)  that just led to the arrest of students:

“Free Palestine. End the genocide. Divest now. Those are simple, clear ideas that won’t be answered by arresting people.”

The genocide to which Myers refers is committed by Hamas and Hezbollah, not Israel. And yes, free Palestine—but from Hamas. (Lebanon also needs to be freed from Hezbollah, but the UN apparently lacks the will.)

And of course the point of arresting people is to ensure that campus rules are followed, which are intended to produce a climate that doesn’t chill speech. And somehow Myers neglects to give details about what the protesters actually DID to warrant their arrest. But ABC News did:

A demonstration at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Monday led to 11 arrests after pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded an administrative hall on campus, locking staff members inside the building.

The protesters blocked the entrance and exit of Morrill Hall, which houses the offices of the university president, Rebecca Cunningham.

According to a statement from the university issued Monday night, the protest began with a peaceful assembly on a lawn in front of the campus’ Coffman Memorial Union at about 3 p.m. local time.

However, “A group of these individuals quickly moved north, up the Northrop Mall, and entered Morrill Hall,” according to the university.

“Once inside the building, protesters began spray painting, including covering lenses of all internal security cameras, breaking interior windows, and barricading the building’s entrance and exit points,” the statement said.

, , , , The university has said that “a number” of staff were present, and many were unable to exit the building “for an extended period of time.”

Police officers arrived on the scene and began to detain protestors around one hour after the first alert was issued, according to the university’s statement.

“With necessary support from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, UMPD entered the building at approximately 5:40 p.m. and arrested 11 people,” it said.

Barricading yourself inside buildings, vandalizing it and breaking windows, and preventing staff from leaving: those are not things that are going to win supporters to their “cause”.

A tweet-video of the protesting students at U. Minn.

Breaking: Hamas demonstrators at the University of Minnesota have taken over and barricaded themselves inside a building.

Every single one should immediately be expelled and face legal consequences. pic.twitter.com/W5yOVFniwl

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 21, 2024

 

Research of online victimization in the metaverse is sorely lacking. A new study explored harm in the metaverse and VR devices among a sample of 5,005 U.S. teens aged 13 to 17. Findings show a significant percentage of youth reported harm in these spaces, including hate speech, bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, grooming behaviors (predators building trust with minors), and unwanted exposure to violent or sexual content. The study also revealed notable gender differences in experiences, emphasizing the need for protective strategies in virtual environments.

Research of online victimization in the metaverse is sorely lacking. A new study explored harm in the metaverse and VR devices among a sample of 5,005 U.S. teens aged 13 to 17. Findings show a significant percentage of youth reported harm in these spaces, including hate speech, bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, grooming behaviors (predators building trust with minors), and unwanted exposure to violent or sexual content. The study also revealed notable gender differences in experiences, emphasizing the need for protective strategies in virtual environments.

While artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as home assistants, search engines or large language models like ChatGPT, may seem nearly omniscient, their outputs are only as good as the data on which they are trained. However, ease of use often leads users to adopt AI systems without understanding what training data was used or who prepared the data, including potential biases in the data or held by trainers. A new study suggests that making this information available could shape appropriate expectations of AI systems and further help users make more informed decisions about whether and how to use these systems.

Animals that hibernate need a way to keep their blood flowing as their body temperature drops, and it seems that the mechanical properties of red blood cells may be key

Reader Chris Taylor send us part 5 of his series on the flora and fauna of Queensland (see the first four parts here).  You can enlarge Chris’s photos by clicking on them, and his captions are indented.

In this part I will show some of the butterflies of far north Queensland.  Many were photographed at Kuranda, but I was also able to get photos from other places too.  I also saw quite a number of the spectacular Ulysses butterfly, but on this trip, I wasn’t able to capture a photo.

My partner and I rode up from Cairns on the Kuranda Railway. This amazing piece of engineering was built to serve the gold and tin mines on the Tablelands.  From sea level it has to rise over 300 metres over a distance of 30 km. It snakes in and out of steep gorges, and at Stoney Creek it crosses a viaduct built in a very tight curve where the river pours down a set of waterfalls:

At the top of the climb, we pass the Barron Falls, where the Barron River plunges 265m in a number of cascades, descending into the gorge. In the Wet, there is often a huge volume of water falling here, making for a spectacular sight:

Here are the photos of the butterflies.

Orange Migrant, Catopsilia scylla. Wingspan 40mm:

Red Lacewing, Cethosia cydippe. Wingspan 80mm:

Large Grass-yellow, Eurema hecabe, wingspan 50mm.

Blue-Banded Eggfly, Hypolimnas alimena, male, 85mm:

Common Eggfly, Hypolimnas bolina, male, 80mm. The blue/violet colours on the wings does not come from a pigment, but from the refraction of light through the scales. This made it tricky to photograph as the colour kept shifting as the insect moved:

Common Eggfly, Hypolimnas bolina, female, 80mm. The female lacks the iridescence of the male, and instead is marked with patches of white and reddish brown.

Cruiser, Vindula arsinoe, male, Wingspan 80mm:

Cruiser, Vindula arsinoe, female, Wingspan 80mm. The female form of this butterfly lacks the bright orange of the male, but is beautifully marked with white and grey:

Lurcher, Yoma sabina, Wingspan 70mm:

The largest butterfly in Australia, and one of the most spectacular, is the Cairns Birdwing. This is the male of the species. The female is a little bigger, but lacks the iridescent colours of the male, instead being mostly black.

Cairns Birdwing, Ornithoptera euphorion, male, wingspan 120mm:

The US Department of Homeland Security is trialling chemical sensors that detect the first whiff of smoke in the air and alert fire crews while a potential blaze is still smouldering

I am always sniffing around (pun intended) for new and interesting technology, especially anything that I think is currently flying under the radar of public awareness but has the potential to transform our world in some way. I think electronic nose technology fits into this category.

The idea is to use electronic sensors that can detect chemicals, specifically those that are abundant in the air, such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Such technology has many potential uses, which I will get to below. The current state of the art is advancing quickly with the introduction of various nanomaterials, but at present these sensing arrays require multiple antenna coated with different materials. As a result they are difficult and expensive to manufacture and energy intensive to operate. They work, and often are able to detect specific VOCs with 95% or greater accuracy. But their utility is limited by cost and inconvenience.

A new advance, however, is able to reproduce and even improve upon current performance with a single antenna and single coating. The technology uses a single graphene oxide coated antenna which then uses ultrawide microwave band signals to detect specific VOCs. These molecules will reflect different wavelengths differently depending on their chemical structure. That is how they “sniff” the air. The results are impressive.

The authors report that a “classification accuracy of 96.7 % is attained for multiple VOC gases.” This is comparable to current technology, but again with a simpler, cheaper, and less energy hungry technology. Further, they actually has better results in terms of discriminating different isomers. Isomers are different configurations of the same molecular composition – same atoms in the same ratios and but arranged differently, so that the chemical properties may be different. This is a nice proof of concept advance in this technology.

Now the fun part – let’s speculate about how this technology might be used. The basic application for electronic noses is to automatically detect VOCs in the environment or associated with a specific item as a way of detecting something useful. For example, this could be used as a breath test to detect specific diseases. This could be a non-invasive bedside quick test that could reliably detect different infections, disease states, event things like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. When disease alters the biochemistry of the body, it may be reflected in VOCs in the breath, or even the sweat, of a person.

VOC detection can also be used in manufacturing to monitor chemical processes for quality control or to warn about any problems. They could be used to detect fire, gas leaks, contraband, or explosives. People and things are often surrounded by a cloud of chemical information, a cloud that would be difficult to impossible to hide from sensitive sniffers.

So far this may seem fairly mundane, and just an incremental extrapolation of stuff we already can do. That’s because it is. The real innovation here is doing all this with a much cheaper, smaller, and less energy intensive design. As an analogy, think about the iPhone, a icon of disruptive technology. The iPhone could not really do anything that we didn’t already have a device or app for. We already had phones, texting devices, PDAs, digital cameras, flashlights, MP3 players, web browsers, handheld gaming platforms, and GPS devices. But the iPhone put all this into one device you could fit in your pocket, and carry around with you everywhere. Functionality then got added on with more apps and with motions sensors. But the main innovation that changed the world was the all-in-one portability and convenience. A digital camera, for example, is only useful when you have it on you, but are you really going to carry around a separate digital camera with you every day everywhere you go?

This new electronic nose technology has the potential to transform the utility of this tech for similar reasons – it’s potentially cheap enough to become ubiquitous and portable enough to carry with you. In fact, there is already talk about incorporating the technology into smartphones. That would be transformative. Imagine if you now also could carry with you everywhere at all times an electronic nose that could detect smoke, dangerous gas, that you or others might be ill, or that your food is spoiled and potentially dangerous.

Imagine that most people are carrying such devices, and that they are networked together. Now we have millions of sensors out there in the community able to detect all these things. This could add up to an incredible early warning system for all sorts of dangers. It’s one of those things that is challenging to just sit here and think of all the potential specific uses. Once such technology gets out there, there will be millions of people figuring out innovative uses. But even the immediately obvious ones would be incredibly useful. I can think of several people I know personally whose lives would have been saved if they had such a device on them.

As I often have to say, this is in the proof-of-concept stage and it remains to be seen if this technology can scale and be commercializable. But it seems promising. Even if it does not end up in every smartphone, having dedicated artificial nose devices in the hospital, in industry, and in the home can be extremely useful.

The post Electronic Noses first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

The largest prime number is now 16 million digits longer than the previous record found in 2018, thanks to an amateur hunter and his large collection of high-power graphics cards

Google’s NotebookLM tool is billed as an AI-powered research assistant and can even turn your text history into a jovial fake podcast. But it could also tempt you into narcissism and nostalgia, says Jacob Aron

A thoroughly discredited idea, that the Mesoamerican Olmec people were Black Africans, continues to gain traction.

The elliptical galaxy NGC 1270 lies about 240 million light-years away. But it’s not alone. It’s part of the Perseus Cluster (Abell 426), the brightest X-ray object in the sky and one of the most massive objects in the Universe.

NGC 1270 plays a starring role in a new image from the Gemini North telescope. However, the image doesn’t show the dark matter that has a firm grip on the galaxy and the rest of the galaxies in the Perseus Cluster.

Ancient astronomers would be astounded by what we’ve learned about the Universe. Even astronomers like Edwin Hubble from the 20th would be amazed at the power of our modern telescopes and what they’ve shown us. At that time, distant galaxies appeared fuzzy and were called nebulae. Even the nature of Andromeda, our closest galactic neighbour, was uncertain. In 1920, Hubble and others were debating whether Andromeda and other objects they were seeing were small objects in the Milky Way’s outer regions, nebulae, or other galaxies.

German philosopher and Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant coined the term ‘island Universes’ to describe all these fuzzy objects, hinting at their true nature. The idea of other galaxies beyond our own dates back a long way, but there was no way to test it. Then, in 1924, Edwin Hubble ended the debate. He was able to show that individual stars in some of these so-called “nebulae” were actually far beyond the Milky Way.

The discovery was decisive, and we now know that the Universe is populated by hundreds of billions or even trillions of other galaxies like our own Milky Way.

Now, astronomers use powerful telescopes to examine other galaxies in great detail. They’ve even used the James Webb Space Telescope to peer back in time at the Universe’s earliest galaxies. Anyone can quickly examine hundreds of amazing images of other galaxies of all types.

Enormous objects like the Perseus Cluster alert us to the presence of something even more mysterious and challenging to understand than the nature of galaxies. Something binds these individual galaxies together into a coherent group, and we call that dark matter.

There’s a growing chorus of scientific voices suggesting we stop calling it dark matter and instead use the more accurate term invisible matter. But whatever we decide to call it, dark matter makes up most of the matter in the Universe and dwarfs the “normal” matter that interacts with light and makes up stars, planets, and us.

As cosmology has progressed, scientists have mapped the universe’s large-scale structure. These maps show how galaxies and their groups are organized along filaments of dark matter that act as scaffolds. The Perseus Cluster is associated with the Perseus-Pegasus Filament, a long, thin structure of galaxies that stretches over a billion light-years.

A computer model of the large-scale structure of the universe using the Illustris simulator. This image depicts the dark matter and gas involved in forming galaxies and galaxy clusters, as well as the filaments connecting them. Image Credit: Illustris TNG

If there were no dark matter, scientists think that the Universe would be far more homogenous. The galaxies would be spread more evenly throughout space. But that’s not what we see, and NGC 1270 and the rest of the Perseus Cluster show it clearly.

Currently, scientific theory suggests that a web of invisible dark matter draws galaxies together. They’re situated where dark matter’s massive tendrils intersect. That’s where its gravitational pull is strongest.

In short, the Perseus Cluster and NGC 1270 wouldn’t be where they are and wouldn’t be grouped together without dark matter. The cluster, and all other groups, clusters, and super-clusters, are firmly in dark matter’s grip.

American astronomer Vera Rubin played a huge role in our modern understanding of dark matter. She observed that stars and gas at a galaxy’s outer edge were moving much faster than predicted by the visible mass of the galaxy. Newtonian physics suggests they should be moving slower. Rubin and her colleagues thought that there must be a large amount of invisible matter beyond the visible edges of galaxies. Eventually, she figured out that there must be six times more dark matter than visible matter in galaxies.

Rubin faced many obstacles in getting her results accepted. As a woman, she wasn’t part of the male-dominated world of 1970s astronomy. She was denied access to some facilities early in her career, which slowed her progress. Now, she’s given full credit and mentioned alongside Hubble and other influential figures in astronomy. One of the most powerful and unique observatories ever conceived is named after her.

Regardless of what we call it and who discovered it, our Universe is dominated by something we don’t fully understand.

It’s remarkable that scientists can map invisible matter by its inference alone, without knowing what it is. The most widely accepted understanding of dark matter is in the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (Lambda-CDM) model of cosmology, also called the Standard Model of Big Bang Cosmology. It successfully recreates many things that we observe in the Universe, including how galaxies form, how the Universe expands, and, of course, the large-scale structure of the Universe.

But even Lambda-CDM can’t tell us what dark matter is. Most think it’s some type of particle, but if it is, it’s extremely elusive.

That doesn’t stop us from seeing its effect when we observe objects like NGC 1270 and the Perseus Cluster.

The post Dark Matter Has a Firm Grip on These Galaxies appeared first on Universe Today.

The upcoming US presidential election will determine how the country regulates tech, combats the climate crisis and decides on access to abortion

AI-written stories are getting better, but people still distrust AI-generated art.