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A new article notes that journal articles reporting how well machine learning models solve certain kinds of equations are often overly optimistic. The researchers suggest two rules for reporting results and systemic changes to encourage clarity and accuracy in reporting.

New AI model identifies possible therapies from existing medicines for thousands of diseases, including rare ones with no current treatments. The AI tool generates new insights on its own, applies them to conditions it was not trained for, and offers explanations for its predictions. AI can expedite the development of more precise treatments with fewer side effects at far lower cost than traditional drug discovery.

Researchers examined Neptunian exoplanets -- these planets share similar characteristics to our own Neptune, but orbit outside of our solar system. Scientists discovered a new area called the 'Neptunian Ridge' -- in between the 'Neptunian desert' and the 'Neptunian Savannah'. A new 'map' of distant planets shows a ridge of planets in deep space, separating a desert of planets from a more populated savannah.

Researchers have discovered a new way to help liquid flow in only one direction, but without using the flaps that engines and our circulatory system rely upon to prevent fluid backup. The team created a flexible pipe with an interior helical structure inspired by the anatomy of shark intestines -- creating a prototype inspired by biology but with applications in engineering and medicine.

The discovery of a 'weird' and unprecedented galaxy in the early Universe could 'help us understand how the cosmic story began', astronomers say. GS-NDG-9422 (9422) was found approximately one billion years after the Big Bang and stood out because it has an odd, never-before-seen light signature -- indicating that its gas is outshining its stars. The 'totally new phenomena' is significant, researchers say, because it could be the missing-link phase of galactic evolution between the Universe's first stars and familiar, well-established galaxies.

The discovery of a stable single-electron covalent bond between two carbon atoms validates a century-old theory.

Researchers have discovered that mutations affect protein stability following remarkably simple rules. The discovery has profound implications for accelerating the development of new treatments for diseases or the design of new proteins with industrial applications.

Researchers have introduced an algorithm based on deep learning that can predict the effects of rare genetic variants. The method allows persons with high risk of disease to be distinguished more precisely and facilitates the identification of genes that are involved in the development of diseases.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a versatile technique in the biomedical field, but its application to the study of plant metabolism in vivo remains challenging. A research team reports the establishment of chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) for plant MRI. This method enables noninvasive access to the metabolism of sugars and amino acids in complex sink organs (seeds, fruits, taproots, and tubers) of major crops (maize, barley, pea, potato, sugar beet, and sugarcane).

Tree ring data reveals the impact a fluctuating jet stream has had on Europe for 700 years – and sheds light on future risks amid our warming planet

Though it was first predicted in the 1930s, chemists have just now managed to create a covalent bond that only uses one electron

Using more training data and computational power is meant to make AIs more reliable, but tests suggest large language models actually get less reliable as they grow

DNA and protein analysis has identified a white substance smeared on mummies in China as a kind of kefir cheese, made from cow and goat milk

Neuroscientists have been surprised to discover that the human brain is teeming with microbes, and we are beginning to suspect they could play a role in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's

The most likely way we will discover life on a distant exoplanet is by discovering a biosignature. This can be done by looking at the atmospheric spectra of a world to discover the spectral pattern of a molecule that can only be created through biological processes. While it sounds straightforward it isn’t. The presence of simple molecules such as water and oxygen don’t prove life exists on a planet. It’s true that Earth’s atmosphere is oxygen rich thanks to life, but geological activity can also produce large quantities of oxygen. And as a new study shows, some molecules we’ve long thought to be biological in origin may not be.

Ideally astronomers would love to find evidence of a really complex molecule such as chlorophyll. But there isn’t likely to be tons of chlorophyll in an atmosphere, so the spectral pattern would be faint, and even if it were clear the pattern is complex and hard to distinguish. So astronomers generally focus on simpler but unique molecules. One of these molecules is dimethyl sulfide, (CH3)2S or DMS for short. It is only produced by phytoplankton on Earth, so it would be a strong indicator of life. Or so we thought.

In this new work the team was able to synthesize DMS and other sulfur-based molecules in the lab abiotically. While that doesn’t prove the same process can happen in the wild, the team went on to show how DMS could be formed on a world with a thick organic haze. We know such planets exist because Saturn’s moon Titan is just such a world. If, for example, Titan happened to be closer to the Sun, the ultraviolet radiation would be significant enough to trigger the chemical reactions necessary to create DMS. If Titan were in Earth’s orbit, a distant alien race would detect DMS in the atmosphere of a planet in the Sun’s habitable zone. It would look like a slam dunk, but Titan would still be toxic to life as we know it.

How a biosignature molecule might form naturally. Credit: Reed, et al

But Titan might have some presence of exotic life, which is another conclusion to this study. While the authors show that the presence of DMS or similar molecules wouldn’t prove life exists on a world, they argue that it would indicate a strong potential for life. Basically, a warm planet with the kind of rich organic haze in its atmosphere would necessarily have the kind of complex organic molecules life needs to evolve. If DMS exists on a world, then the potential for life exists at the very least.

While this study shows we will need to be careful about treating particular molecules as biosignatures, it also supports what exo-biologists have known for some time. The discovery of life on another world isn’t likely going to happen as a single great eureka moment. What is more likely is that a handful of planets will have chemical markers that support the possibility of life. Over time as we find more candidate biomarkers in their atmospheres we will be ever more confident that life exists.

Reference: Reed, Nathan W., et al. “Abiotic Production of Dimethyl Sulfide, Carbonyl Sulfide, and Other Organosulfur Gases via Photochemistry: Implications for Biosignatures and Metabolic Potential.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 973.2 (2024): L38.

The post Biosignatures Can be Made in the Lab. No Life Needed. appeared first on Universe Today.

The article below appeared a few days ago in MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute), written by MEMRI’s founder and director Yigal Carmon. Carmon is an e-friend whom I met in Israel, and who, you might recall, predicted in the summer of 2023 that Israel would go to war with Gaza in September or October (see the prediction here). Now Yigal is not always correct, but his organization, tasked with listening to everything they can get from the Arab world and translating it into English, Hebrew, and other languages , has been essential for many countries’ intelligence.

Although Wikipedia accuses MEMRI of being “a strongly pro-Israel advocacy group,” that’s pretty much irrelevant, because its main job is translating what comes out of the Arab world (and yes, much of that is done in the cause of educating Israelis), but I am not aware of MEMRI ever having mistranslated anything. Isn’t more information better than less information, no matter who that information serves?  You may say that the article below, which advocates the US moving its military base out of Qatar, is “strongly pro-Israel,” but so what? If doing that helps dampen the terrorism strongly supported by Qatar, that’s all to the good.

There are other parts to come, so keep your eyes on the MEMRI site.

Carmon’s thesis, which is documented with extensive references, is that Qatar is a pervasive and wealthy sponsor of terrorism and Islamism (nobody really denies this), yet the US has graced it with the status as an ally, having taken an old Qatari military base and turned it into a U.S, CENTCOM base. Al Udeid Air Base harbors several thousand American troops and about 400 RAF troops (the Aussies used to have a few planes there, too, but wisely moved them to the United Arab Emirates).  That base is essential to Qatar because without it, it’s likely that the terrorism-sponsoring countryu would simply be taken over by the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

Qatar also funds terrorism big time. It has supported Hamas with gazillions of dollars and gives refuge to its members (and storage of its money) along with members of the Taliban. As Carmon writes (I’ve left the reference numbers in):

Qatar is the world’s foremost state sponsor of Islamic terrorist organizations and movements, backing a wide range of them, both Sunni and Shi’ite. They include the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis, the Taliban, Jabhat Al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, see below) and even Islamist militias in northern Mali.[7]

Carmon argues that the U.S. should get its tuches out of Qatar, which will give us both credibility in the eyes of the world (why on Earth are we there when other and friendlier Arab countries have offered us a base?), or, alternatively, the opportunity to use leverage against Qatar by threatening to withdraw its base, which scares the bejeezus out of Qatar since its enemies would take over the tiny but oil-rich country.

But I digress. You can read the article for yourself by clicking above. I’ll give a few quotes, grouped under bold headings that I’ve created.

The situation. 

It is a tragedy that what is common knowledge for any vegetable vendor or taxi driver in the Arab and Muslim world eludes American (as well as Israeli) intelligence leaders – that is, Qatar’s anti-U.S. and terror-supporting role in the Arab and Muslim world as well as in the West.

Trump’s meeting also underlines that Qatar’s story is not a Gulf story, nor an Arab story. It is a story that impacts the whole West and its ability to counter its enemies.

This document will detail Qatar’s role and the consequences of an American embrace of it, and the devastating effects this has on America’s true allies, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). By embracing Qatar, the U.S. is alienating and abandoning its true allies, KSA and UAE, in favor of Qatar, which is their enemy and the enemy of the United States as well. Under these circumstances, KSA and UAE have no choice but to distance themselves from America and drift towards China and Russia.

Many who would agree that Qatar is an enemy of the U.S., not an ally, may still say that America must embrace Qatar because of the CENTCOM base located there. The truth is the opposite. First of all, America can move the base at any time to the UAE, Bahrain, or KSA. In fact, these countries had requested it, but America turned them down.

Second, Qatar holds CENTCOM in its territory not as a favor to the U.S. but as security and protection for itself. Without the American base, the Aal Thani family’s rule of Qatar would likely be ended by its neighbors. It is Qatar that is beholden to the U.S. for maintaining the base on its soil. Given that the Aal Thani family owes its very survival to the base’s location in Qatar, any U.S. administration could have pressured Qatar into a pro-U.S. policy instead of its pro-terrorist and pro-Iran one. Unfortunately, none have done it.[1]

Successive U.S. administrations have acted as if they somehow owe Qatar for hosting the base. This is as much a tragedy as it is an inexplicable strategic blunder that begs explanation – because this American approach cannot be explained by any strategic considerations. But there may be other considerations in play, such as Qatar’s immense wealth, that are impacting the policies of many countries, including the U.S.

Qatar’s double role as a U.S. “ally” as well as a sponsor of terrorism (see quote above as well):

Qatar is responsible for 9/11 – the worst of all anti-U.S. Islamist terror operations. It was also involved in many others (see comprehensive MEMRI report Qatar Is Responsible For Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s 2,977 Murders On 9/11 – At The World Trade Center And The Pentagon, And On Two Other Hijacked Flights – That Are Only Some Of 31 Attacks And Plots That He Outlined In His Own Confession, September 13, 2024).

Qatar hosts the financiers of terrorism, according to the United Nations and to former U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen.[8]

The September 2012 murder of U.S. Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was perpetrated by the Qatar-supported Al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar Al-Sharia.[9]

In 2021, Qatar succeeded in replacing the democratically elected and secular Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani with the Taliban, whom it sustained for years with headquarters in Doha. It is also to blame for the 13 American soldiers killed during the Taliban’s violent takeover in August 2021.

Qatar provided Hamas with billions of dollars, which ended up financing the murder of over 30 Americans and the taking of 11 Americans as hostages to Gaza in its October 7 attack on Israel.[10]

Additionally, in 2007 in Gaza, it was thanks to their general support to Hamas as an organization that Hamas was able to take over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority.

Qatar also finances Hizbullah and Iran’s IRGC.[11]

Carmon documents Qatar’s support for Islamist movements, and notes this:

Qatar’s activity in the US, some of which is illegal:

Recently, it was revealed that Qatar even dared to bribe a leading Democratic senator, Robert Menendez, who was subsequently convicted of political corruption. Another striking example of this is Qatar’s contracting of a former CIA official to spy on Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Ed Royce (former R-CA and House Foreign Affairs Committee chair), who are all opposed to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.[19]

Qatar brazenly ignored the order by the U.S. Department of Justice to register Al-Jazeera as a foreign agent.[20]

Qatar  has funded American universities to the tune of $4.7 billion, which is evident now in the wave of pro-Hamas protests sweeping American universities.[21]

Other and friendlier Arab countires have offered the U.S. military bases.  (Bolding below is mine)

In 1995, when the major Arab countries objected to the coup of the previous Emir (Hamad bin Khalifa) against his father (Khalifa bin Hamad Aal Thani), the new emir sought out the Americans to provide him with additional protection. Shrewdly, he offered them Al-Udeid airbase to serve the U.S. military. With that move, this base came to guarantee the safety of the dictatorial Aal-Thani family.

Threatened by Qatar’s Islamist activities, and striving for Westernization and socioeconomic progress, the regimes of the UAE and KSA offered the U.S. their territory for the CENTCOM base, but the U.S. turned them down. Under the Obama administration, America made it clear that it prefers its enemies, Iran and Qatar, to its natural allies – KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan – who were also subject to constant attacks by the Qatar-supported Muslim Brotherhood.[22]

In 2017, KSA, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt declared a total boycott on Qatar, in order to bring down the ruling Aal-Thani family. They set out the conditions for lifting the boycott: Qatar must stop supporting Iran and terrorism.[23]

It was again the U.S., alongside Iran and other anti-U.S. countries, that came to Qatar’s rescue to survive the boycott and the political pressure.

What lesson were KSA, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt to learn from this? That the U.S. is completely blind to the role of Qatar as an anti-U.S. state sponsor of global Islamist terrorism and ally of Iran, and that it prefers its enemies to its allies. It is no wonder that over the years, in the face of this abandonment by the American administration, KSA and UAE have gradually drifted away from America and towards America’s adversaries and enemies – BRICS, Russia, and China.

Conclusion: the US should relocate its forces out of Qatar. (Or perhaps use the threat of that removal to get Qatar to stop sponsoring terrorism. A threat that works could end the war between Hamas and Gaza.  But of course Carmon realizes that this relocation is “unlikely”.)

One relatively simple move  could change America’s weak standing in the world into a strong one, and even prevent a looming world war, possibly resulting from the tensions created by Qatar worldwide – and that is moving the CENTCOM base from Qatar to the UAE or KSA. This would be a new approach by America – preferring its allies over its enemies in the Arab and Muslim world, fighting Islamism rather than embracing it, cutting off the flow of cash dollars for anti-Americanism, creating a real bloc against Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, denying the Iranian ayatollahs’ regime a major ally worldwide, and ushering in a sane strategy of strengthening Western civilization over those who seek to destroy it.

Without the American airbase in Qatar, Qatar’s ruling family could be toppled by its neighbors as they tried to do in 2017, with no one in the Arab and Muslim world missing it except the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and other terrorist organizations.

Tragically, it is unlikely that any American administration will do this, not even a Republican one. The Arab and Muslim world, and particularly the countries that are considered the collective West that have been deserted by America, will all have to learn to live in a world without American and Western hegemony.

It is a complete mystery to me why the U.S. maintains a military presence in a country that is such a strong sponsor of terrorism. It can’t be for strategic reasons because both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have offered us locations for U.S. based—and we turned them down. We’re also in the position to stop Qatar from sponsoring terrorism, but aren’t doing it.

Now there’s one fly in the ointment that Carmon neglects, which is that now Turkey has a base in Qatar as well, which may have as many as 5,000 troops.  Moreover, Turkey is a member of NATO, which means that if the UAE or another country attacks Qatar, other NATO members are obliged to come in on the side of Turkey. I’ve written Yigal about this, as in my view it could scupper his whole argument.  I’ll report on his reply or perhaps he’ll leave a comment.

Myopia, or near-sightedness, has been steadily on the rise over the last half-century. A recent systematic review updates the literature on the extent and nature of this epidemic. Let’s get straight to the findings and then discuss what this means. The reviews includes: “276 studies, involving a total of 5,410,945 participants from 50 countries across all six continents.” The researchers find a […]

The post Myopia Epidemic first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Smart TVs from Samsung and LG take screenshots of what you are watching even when you are using them to display images from a connected laptop or video game console

When a massive star explodes as a supernova, it does more than release an extraordinary amount of energy. Supernovae explosions are responsible for creating some of the heavy elements, including iron, which is blasted out into space by the explosion. On Earth, there are two accumulations of the iron isotope Fe60 in sea-floor sediments that scientists trace back about two or three million years ago and about five to six million years ago.

The explosions that created the iron also dosed Earth with cosmic radiation.

In new research submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters, scientists examine how much energy reached Earth from these explosions and how that radiation may have affected life on Earth. The paper is titled “Life in the Bubble: How a nearby supernova left ephemeral footprints on the cosmic-ray spectrum and indelible imprints on life.” The lead author is Caitlyn Nojiri from UC Santa Cruz.

“Life on Earth is constantly evolving under continuous exposure to ionizing radiation from both terrestrial and cosmic origin,” the authors write. Terrestrial radiation slowly decreases over billions of years. But not cosmic radiation. The amount of cosmic radiation that Earth is exposed to varies as our Solar System moves through the galaxy. “Nearby supernova (SN) activity has the potential to raise the radiation levels at the surface of the Earth by several orders of magnitude, which is expected to have a profound impact on the evolution of life,” they write.

The authors explain that the two million-year-old accumulation is directly from a supernova explosion, and the older accumulation is from when Earth passed through a bubble.

The bubble in the study’s title comes from a particular type of star called OB stars. OB stars are massive, hot, and short-lived stars that usually form in groups. These stars emit powerful outflowing winds that create “bubbles” of hot gas in the interstellar medium. Our Solar System is inside one of these bubbles, called the Local Bubble, which is almost 1,000 light-years wide and was created several million years ago.

An artist’s conception of the hot local bubble. Image Credit: NASA

The Earth entered the Local Bubble about five or six million years ago, which explains the older Fe60 accumulation. According to the authors, the younger Fe60 accumulation from two or three million years ago is directly from a supernova.

“It is likely that the 60Fe peak at about 2-3 Myr originated from a supernova occurring in the Upper Centaurus Lupus association in Scorpius Centaurus (~140 pc) or the Tucana Horologium association (~70 pc). Whereas the ~ 5-6 Myr peak is likely attributed to the Solar System’s entrance into the bubble,” the authors write.

The left panel shows the Local Bubble and nearby stellar associations, while the right panel shows their galactic coordinates. The right panel also shows a new Galactic bubble discovered in 2018. It’s likely the remnant of an SN that exploded in Upper Centaurus Lupus. Image Credit: Nojiri et al. 2024.

The Local Bubble is not a quiet place. It took multiple supernovae to create it. The authors write that it took 15 SN explosions over the last 15 million years to create the LB. “We know from the reconstruction of the LB history that at least 9 SN exploded during the past 6 Myrs,” they write.

The researchers took all the data and calculated the amount of radiation from multiple SNe in the LB. “It is not clear what would the biological effects of such radiation doses be,” they write, but they do discuss some possibilities.

This figure shows the average dose rate experienced at ground level as a function of the distance to the nearby SN. The average dose is calculated over the first 10 kyr (solid line) and over the first 100 kyr (dashed line) after the SN explosion. It’s not enough to trigger an extinction, but it could’ve driven species diversification. Image Credit: Nojiri et al. 2024.

The radiation dosage may have been strong enough to create double-strand breaks in DNA. This is severe damage and can lead to chromosomal changes and even cell death. But there are other effects in terms of the development of life on Earth.

“Double-strand breaks in DNA can potentially lead to mutations and jump in the diversification of species,” the researchers write. A 2024 paper showed that “the rate of virus diversification in the African Tanganyika lake accelerated 2-3 Myr ago.” Could this be connected to SN radiation?

“It would be appealing to better understand whether this can be attributed to the increase in cosmic-radiation dose we predict to have taking place during that period,” the authors tease.

The SN radiation wasn’t powerful enough to trigger an extinction. But it could’ve been powerful enough to trigger more mutations, which could lead to more species diversification.

Radiation is always part of the environment. It rises and falls as events unfold and as Earth moves through the galaxy. Somehow, it must be part of the equation that created the diversity of life on our planet.

“It is, therefore, certain that cosmic radiation is a key environmental factor when assessing the viability and evolution of life on Earth, and the key question pertains to the threshold for radiation to be a favourable or harmful trigger when considering the evolution of species,” the authors write in their conclusion.

Unfortunately, we don’t clearly understand exactly how radiation affects biology, what thresholds might be in place, and how they might change over time. “The exact threshold can only be established with a clear understanding of the biological effects of cosmic radiation (especially muons that dominate at ground level), which remains highly unexplored,” Nojiri and her co-authors write.

The study shows that, whether we can see it in everyday life or not, or even if we’re aware of it or not, our space environment exerts a powerful force on Earth’s life. SN radiation could’ve influenced the mutation rate at critical times during Earth’s history, helping shape evolution.

Without supernova explosions, life on Earth could look very different. Many things had to go just right for us to be here. Maybe in the distant past, supernova explosions played a role in the evolutionary chain that leads to us.

The post How a Nearby Supernova Left its Mark on Earth Life appeared first on Universe Today.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the buzz phrase of 2024. Though far from that cultural spotlight, scientists from agricultural, biological and technological backgrounds are also turning to AI as they collaborate to find ways for these algorithms and models to analyze datasets to better understand and predict a world impacted by climate change. Scientists have now demonstrated the capability of a recurrent neural network -- a model that teaches computers to process data using long short-term memory -- to predict maize yield from several remote sensing technologies and environmental and genetic data.