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Your early morning run could soon help harvest enough electricity to power your wearable devices, thanks to new nanotechnology.

Your early morning run could soon help harvest enough electricity to power your wearable devices, thanks to new nanotechnology.

A pioneering new DNA forensics technique is looking for a reliable method to measure a suspect's individual level of natural shedding of skin and other cells to add to, and compare with, evidence collected at crime scenes. Using a novel technique of cell staining, forensic science experts have tested 100 people to confirm how people shed varying levels of touch DNA, from very low to very high.

Researchers have demonstrated a technology capable of a suite of data storage and computing functions -- repeatedly storing, retrieving, computing, erasing or rewriting data -- that uses DNA rather than conventional electronics. Previous DNA data storage and computing technologies could complete some but not all of these tasks.

Researchers have demonstrated a technology capable of a suite of data storage and computing functions -- repeatedly storing, retrieving, computing, erasing or rewriting data -- that uses DNA rather than conventional electronics. Previous DNA data storage and computing technologies could complete some but not all of these tasks.

One hundred years after the human brain's electrical activity was first recorded, experts are celebrating the legacy of its discovery and sharing their predictions and priorities for its future. A survey saw respondents -- with 6,685 years of collective experience -- presented with possible future developments for EEG, ranging from those deemed 'critical to progress' to the 'highly improbable,' and asked to estimate how long it might be before they were achieved.

Hitherto a mystery, the thermal energy loss of qubits can be explained with a surprisingly simple experimental setup, according to new research.

An artificial intelligence algorithm can allow researchers to more efficiently use 3D printing to manufacture intricate structures. The development could allow for more seamless use of 3D printing for complex designs in everything from artificial organs to flexible electronics and wearable biosensors. As part of the study, the algorithm learned to identify, and then print, the best versions of kidney and prostate organ models, printing out 60 continually improving versions.

An artificial intelligence algorithm can allow researchers to more efficiently use 3D printing to manufacture intricate structures. The development could allow for more seamless use of 3D printing for complex designs in everything from artificial organs to flexible electronics and wearable biosensors. As part of the study, the algorithm learned to identify, and then print, the best versions of kidney and prostate organ models, printing out 60 continually improving versions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help identify molecules that could serve as new drugs for mental health disorders. AI can be used to predict the three-dimensional structures of important receptors and thereby speed up the development of potential drugs.

Scientists have engineered a highly selective catalyst that can convert methane, a major component of natural gas, into methanol, an easily transportable liquid fuel, in a single, one-step reaction. This direct process for methane-to-methanol conversion runs at a temperature lower than required to make tea and exclusively produces methanol without additional byproducts.

Non-living hydrogels can play the video game Pong and improve their gameplay with more experience, researchers report. The researchers hooked hydrogels up to a virtual game environment and then applied a feedback loop between the hydrogel's paddle -- encoded by the distribution of charged particles within the hydrogel -- and the ball's position -- encoded by electrical stimulation. With practice, the hydrogel's accuracy improved by up to 10%, resulting in longer rallies. The researchers say that this demonstrates the ability of non-living materials to use 'memory' to update their understanding of the environment, though more research is needed before it could be said that hydrogels can 'learn.'

Non-living hydrogels can play the video game Pong and improve their gameplay with more experience, researchers report. The researchers hooked hydrogels up to a virtual game environment and then applied a feedback loop between the hydrogel's paddle -- encoded by the distribution of charged particles within the hydrogel -- and the ball's position -- encoded by electrical stimulation. With practice, the hydrogel's accuracy improved by up to 10%, resulting in longer rallies. The researchers say that this demonstrates the ability of non-living materials to use 'memory' to update their understanding of the environment, though more research is needed before it could be said that hydrogels can 'learn.'

Humanity’s been fortunate to have a star situated over Earth’s north pole. The star, known as Polaris, or the North Star, has guided many sailors safely to port. But Polaris is a fascinating star in its own right, not just because of its serendipitous position.

Polaris is also called the Pole Star, and it’s actually a triple star system. The primary star is a yellow supergiant named Polaris Aa, about 448 light-years away, and it orbits with a smaller companion named Polaris Ab. The outer star is named Polaris B and may also have a dim companion. In this article, Polaris refers to the primary star, Polaris Aa.

These Hubble images show the locations of the Polaris stars. Polaris Aa is labelled Polaris A in this image, and Polaris AB is labelled Polaris B. Image Credit: By NASA/HST – (Image: STScI-2006-02), Public Domain.

Polaris hasn’t always been the North Star, and it won’t always be. Thuban was the North Star from the 4th to 2nd millennium BC until Earth’s axial precession gave that position to Polaris. The Pole Star changes during a 26,000-year cycle, so Thuban will take over from Polaris in the year 20346.

But whether Polaris is the Pole Star at a particular time or not, it’s an interesting object whose properties can help us understand the expansion of the Universe.

Polaris is a variable star that pulses and changes brightness over time. Specifically, it’s a Cepheid variable. Cepheid variables expand and contract rhythmically, and their brightness changes in a predictable pattern. Because there’s a direct relationship between their pulsation period and their luminosity, they’re useful in measuring distances. They’re called “standard candles” and are part of the cosmic distance ladder.

Astronomers use standard candles to help measure the Hubble constant, or how rapidly the Universe is expanding. But there’s some tension between our measurements of the Hubble constant. When we use local objects like Cepheid variables to measure the Hubble constant, we get a different number than when we use larger-scale things like the Cosmic Microwave Background to measure it.

Since Polaris is such a nearby standard candle, a team of astronomers used a telescope array to watch the star for 30 years. By more accurately observing Polaris and its smaller companion Polaris Ab, they hoped to constrain Polaris’ mass and other characteristics more accurately. This, in turn, could help us understand the tension in the Hubble constant. Along the way, the researchers uncovered some surprises surrounding this long-observed star.

Their results are in a paper titled “The Orbit and Dynamical Mass of Polaris: Observations with the CHARA Array.” It’s published in The Astrophysical Journal, and the lead author is Nancy Evans. Evans is an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

In order to understand Polaris better, it’s critical to get a good look at its dim companion. But that’s not easy to do.

“The small separation and large contrast in brightness between the two stars makes it extremely challenging to resolve the binary system during their closest approach,” Evans said.

The CHARA (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy) Array was built to bring clarity to objects like Polaris and its dim companion. It’s an interferometer, an array of six separate telescopes, each with a one-meter-diameter primary mirror. By combining the images from each separate scope, CHARA attains the higher resolution of a telescope with a primary mirror that’s 330 meters in diameter, the area covered by the individual ‘scopes. CHARA has a special camera designed to work with it called MIRC-X (Michigan InfraRed Combiner-eXeter).

With these tools, the astronomers tracked Polaris and its dim companion over a 30-year period. They measured how the Cepheid variable changed size as it pulsated. They learned that it’s five times as massive as the Sun and has a diameter 46 times larger than the Sun. However, the mass measurement is affected by the star’s large orbital eccentricity, 0.63, so there’s still some uncertainty about Polaris’ mass.

The measured mass and luminosity also show that Polaris is more luminous than it should be for a star on its evolutionary track. “Polaris is at least 0.4 mag brighter than the predicted tracks,” the authors write in their paper. This is important because of the “Cepheid mass problem.” It’s a discrepancy between masses inferred from stellar evolutionary tracks and masses from pulsation calculations.

A Cepheid variable’s mass can be determined when it’s in a binary relationship. “Mass determination starts with a radial velocity (RV) orbit and pulsation curve for a binary containing a Cepheid,” the authors explain. Very few Cepheid variables are in binary relationships like Polaris, so it’s an important target for constraining and understanding their masses. These measurements are all important because they relate back to the cosmic distance ladder, standard candles, and the Hubble constant.

“The accuracy of inputs from any of these measurements depends on many characteristics of the star: brightness, orbital period, inclination, and the separation, distance, and mass ratio of the components. This means that each Cepheid system is unique and has to be analyzed independently,” the authors explain.

The observations also showed variable spots on the star’s surface.

“The CHARA images revealed large bright and dark spots on the surface of Polaris that changed over time,” said Gail Schaefer, director of the CHARA Array.

This CHARA Array false-colour image of Polaris from April 2021 reveals large bright and dark spots on the surface. Image Credit: Evans et al. 2024.

“The identification of starspots is consistent with several properties of Polaris,” the researchers write. It’s different from other Cepheid variables because it has a very low pulsation amplitude. That could mean that its atmosphere is more like a nonvariable supergiant. Those atmospheres often seem to be active, much like the spots on Polaris. “It is not clear how full amplitude pulsation affects the atmosphere and magnetic field in pulsators, so Polaris is an interesting test case,” they explain.

The spots are variable, which could explain why astronomers have struggled to identify other “additional periodicities” in the star. They could also explain an observed ~120-day radial velocity variation as a rotation period.

The spots on Polaris’ surface have added to the star’s complexity, and they’re begging to be understood.

“We plan to continue imaging Polaris in the future,” said study co-author John Monnier, an astronomy professor at the University of Michigan. “We hope to better understand the mechanism that generates the spots on the surface of Polaris.”

The post Polaris, Earth’s North Star, Has A Surprisingly Spotted Surface appeared first on Universe Today.

Researchers trained a polymer gel to play the computer game Pong by passing electric current through it and measuring the concentration of ions

After a star explodes, the resulting supernova remnant collapses in on itself and could begin the cycle again, creating generations of stars enriched with heavy elements

We have gained so much powerful knowledge in the past few hundred years. But there’s still so much that we don’t know.

There are limits to our current knowledge of the universe. In astronomy, we have recently discovered that 95% of the matter and energy contents of the universe, dubbed dark matter and dark energy, are of a form completely unknown to modern science. That means that everything we have ever studied and learned in our exploration of atoms, chemicals, and forces, every star we see in the night sky and every galaxy we observe in the distant cosmos, makes up less than 5% of the entire universe.

We have pushed our understanding of the history of the universe into the earliest moments of the big bang, with a firm grasp of the physics underlaying the first few minutes of the existence of the cosmos. But beyond that is murky haze, a tangled mess of unsolved mathematics and over-complicated physics. We do not understand the origins of our universe, or even if that question makes sense – if our knowledge of time and space even apply at such extreme scales.

Related to the questions of the beginning of the cosmos are the mysteries that abound in high-energy physics. We do not know how to merge our knowledge of gravity, as expressed through general relativity, with our understanding of quantum physics, which governs the other forces of nature. We do not know how gravity operates at extremely small scales, preventing us from understanding the big bang itself and the true nature of black holes.

Despite cracking the code of DNA and the role that genetics plays in the evolutionary process, we do not understand how life first arose on the Earth, and whether we are truly alone in the cosmos. We do not know how sexual reproduction arose, or where viruses originated from, or the full extent of life on Earth. We do not understand the full variety of molecular interactions that power our own biochemistry, or how the components of our cells came to find themselves working together.

We do not know if superconductors, which allow for the transmission of electricity with no resistance, is possible at room temperature. We do not know the full tectonic history of the Earth, or even if duplicates of the Earth’s climate system exist on other worlds orbiting alien stars.

We do not even understand the origins – or even nature – of our own conscious thoughts, the source of our thirst for knowledge and our capacity to access it.

We do not even know how we are able to ask these questions.

The post The Knowledge We Don’t Yet Have appeared first on Universe Today.

I’m off to the Blyde River Canyon today and most of tomorrow, so posts will be nonexistent or thin for a few days—save for Matthew’s postings of the Hili Dialogues.  I’ve largely avoided reading the news, as I find it depressing and not conducive to a relaxing vacation, but two readers sent me stuff about the Democratic National Convention that is taking place in Chicago.  I’m glad I’m not there.

Here’s one item that epitomizes the wokeness I fear is metastasizing in the body of the Democratic Party: a land acknowledgement to open the convention. I was sent a link to the video below, which YouTube describes as follows:

Two citizens of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation — Zach Pahmahmie, tribal council vice chair and Lorrie Melchior, tribal council secretary — gave the land acknowledgement Monday at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Kamala Harris will step into the spotlight not as a running mate but at the top of the ticket.

And the video:

My response to these things is always the same: they are performative gestures signaling the virtue of the organization, but accomplish nothing. If the Democratic Party really does acknowledge that the lands on which the convention is taking place was stolen from Native Americans, why don’t they try to compensate the Potawatomi Nation for the theft? (Land in Chicago is expensive!)

Granted the speaker notes that the Interior Department placed some of their tribal lands into a trust, making the Potawatomie “the only federally recognized tribal nation in Illinois in 175 years.” But did any individual get land or cash?

And there are the expected pro-Palestinian protests. Here’s one where an American flag gets burned (legal speech), but a guy who tries to put it out gets jumped on and pushed away.

Breaking: The Pro-Palestinian mob has formed a circle and is cheering on burning an American flag.

A man tries to stop the flag from burning and is immediately physically assaulted and pushed out.

These are the true colors of this movement. pic.twitter.com/eMdJfSCP0G

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 21, 2024

This shows the divisiveness that plagues America, and that I fear will appear again on campus this fall.

I can’t find an article someone sent me relating that the Convention has given pro-Palestinian protestors far more space than pro-Israeli demonstrators, who have apparently been pushed far away from the site, but I do remember reading that somewhere. In the meantime, the Washington Post reports this:

. . . pro-Palestinian activists have won small but notable concessions at the Democratic National Convention that, three days into the event, have largely headed off any major eruptions of anger or division. Organizers have provided space for a panel to discuss Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza [was there a vigil for the dead Israelis, including now six more hostages?], and several high-profile speakers have demanded an end to the war from the stage.

Those concessions have helped defuse the issue, but most critical has been the emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Harris, in her public comments, has emphasized Palestinian suffering notably more than President Joe Biden has and held Israel more directly responsible for the high civilian death toll and the slow pace of humanitarian aid. In addition, her campaign has ramped up its efforts to engage with those calling for a change in U.S. policy.

This wokeness and anti-Israeli sentiment does of course worry me about Harris and the election, to the point where I’ve been contemplating not voting for President at all (there’s no question of me voting for Trump, who I think is unstable and dangerous). But make no mistake about it: if Harris wins, Israel is in for a hard time, with some Israelis even regarding Harris as an existential threat to their country. I’m hoping that they’re unjustly worried.

And I’m hoping the centrist Democrats will push back on the party’s new cooling toward Israel.  Above all, Democrats have to realize that a permanent cease-fire now is a victory for Hamas, and that the IDF has been more careful than any army in history in trying to reduce civilian casualities. Blame the deaths of Palestinian civilians not on Israel, as have Harris and Biden, but on Hamas, which actually wants the deaths of its own civilians as part of its strategy to win the world’s favor. And Hamas seems to be succeeding, even among Democrats.]

Finally, I wish that Harris would have some interviews or press conferences before the election; it’s surprising to me that’s she’s had exactly none. We all know why that is, of course, but Democrats resolved to support her will find some reasons why no such events are required.

If Democrats share “the contagious power of hope,” as Michelle Obama said in her speech, then my hope is that the Democratic party stops its movement towards its “progressive” wing.

Anyway, these are some early-morning thoughts before I take off to see the wonders of nature. Please discuss them but, as always, be civil to your fellow commenters and to your host. Debate is fine; insults are not.

It’s been less than two years (November 2022) since ChatGPT launched. In some ways the new large language model (LLM) type of artificial intelligence (AI) applications have been on the steep part of the improvement curve. And yet, they are still LLMs with the same limitations. In the last two years I have frequently used ChatGPT and other AI applications, and often give them tasks just to see how they are doing.

For a quick review, LLMs are AIs that are trained on vast amounts of information from the internet. They essentially predict the next work chunk in order to build natural-sounding responses to queries. Their responses therefore represent a sort-of zeitgeist of the internet, building on what is out there. Responses are therefore necessarily derivative, but can contain unique combinations of information. This has lead to a so-far endless debate about how truly creative LLMs can be, or if they are just stealing and regurgitating content from human creators.

What I am finding is that LLMs are getting better at doing what they do, but have not broken out of the limitations of this regurgitation model. Here is a good example from the New York Times – an author (Curtis Sittenfeld) wrote a short story based on the same prompt given to ChatGPT, and published both to see if readers could tell the difference. For me, I knew right away which story was AI. The author’s story was interesting and engaging. ChatGPTs story bored me before the end of the first paragraph. It was soulless and mechanical. It reminded me of a bad story written by a freshman in high school. It got the job done, and used some tired and predictable literary devices, but failed to engage the reader and lacked any sense of taking the reader on an emotional journey.

This reinforced for me what I suspected from my own interactions – LLMs are getting better at being LLMs, but have not broken out of their fundamental limitations.

Several people I know have observed that a good test for them will be if AI can tell a funny joke. This is the subject of this BBC article, which put that very idea to the test, with similar results. Here are some tests of my own, using ChatGPT 4. With the prompt: “Tell me a funny joke about scientists,” I got, “Why do biologists look forward to casual Fridays?  Because they’re allowed to wear genes to work!” We are at cringey dad-joke level. I pushed it for something more funny and creative and got: “Why did the physicist stop dating the biologist? Every time they got close, the biologist kept saying, “I need my space!”” That was even worse, plus it mixed up the punchline.

You get the same results with poetry or storytelling – tired, predictable, formulaic.

For now, I don’t think creative producers have much to worry about, at least not at the high end. Where these creative AIs are useful is at the low to medium end of quality, where predictable and “just get’s the job done” is adequate. AI can help generate ideas, or it can produce low-quality stuff for personal use. You will notice I sometimes use AI art for my blogs. The advantage is they are copyright free, and they can be exactly what I need. I don’t need high quality. For my purposes, getting the job done is perfect.

The “downside” is that the world will be flooded with mediocre art. I think we can survive this, however. It doesn’t really worry me. It may even push some people to get better than the mediocre level of AI, thereby raising the bar. I wonder if, going forward, AIs will push humans to be better in general, or if it will just make us lazy (probably both).

What ChatGPT and other LLMs are really good at is not being creative but doing predictable tedious tasks. For me personally, I use ChatGPT to augment my Google searches (beyond the results that are already built in). There are times when I am just not getting the results I want from Google. The results are overwhelmed with either recent news, commercial content, or pseudoscience. But a carefully worded prompt in ChatGPT can get me quickly to exactly the content I want and direct me to the references I need. There is still room for improvement here, but the results so far are great.

I also know people who use ChatGPT to draw up legal documents. These are supposed to be technical and boring, and copying boilerplate is actually what you want. I wouldn’t rely on this for anything serious, but if you need basic contracts for everyday work, it’s fine. I also know people who use LLMs to write computer code, and report that it can save them hours of work.

What these two examples also reflect is that LLMs can be used as expert helpers. A computer programmer can use LLM generated code that they can understand, test, and tweak. A lawyer can use an LLM to generate a legal document that they can also read and correct.

The bottom line of all this is that I do not think that LLMs are at the point where they replace either experts or creative content producers. However, they do have three very useful applications: They can be used to generate mediocre content for fun and personal use. They can be used to improve and automate tedious tasks. And they can be used as tools in the hands of experts to improve their efficiency and quality. They are also getting better that these three types of tasks.

But they have not gotten any closer, in my opinion, to replacing true human creativity.

The real interesting question is this – will LLMs get to the point where they do produce creative output at a human level, or will something fundamentally different be necessary? I am leaning toward the latter. The deeper question is – what is true creativity? Can an algorithm produce content that does not seem algorithmic? Will having more complex algorithms suffice, meaning that getting beyond a certain critical point of complexity produce the illusion of true creativity? Or are the creative processes happening in the human brain beyond the LLM approach?

So far I have not seen any evidence to convince me that LLMs are capable of true creativity. But they remain technically very useful. Perhaps it’s not fair to judge them by what they are worst at, and rather to simply use them for what they are best at.

The post AI Humor first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is on the look-out:

Hili: I see the enemy.
A: Where?
Hili: Sitting under the bush

Hili: Widzę wroga.
Ja: Gdzie?
Hili: Siedzi pod krzakiem.