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Remember back in 2018 when there was a discovery of a briny “lake” underground near the Martian south pole? Pepperidge Farm probably does, and anyone that works there that’s interested in space exploration will be disappointed to hear that, whatever might be causing the radar signal that finding was based on, it’s most likely not a lake. At least according to new data collected by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and published recently in Geophysical Research Letters by lead author Gareth Morgan of the Planetary Science Institute and his colleagues.

Some white dwarfs in rapid binary orbits are far hotter and larger than theory predicts. Researchers found that powerful tidal forces between them generate enough heat to inflate their sizes and change their orbital behavior. This leads the stars to interact much sooner than expected, potentially triggering dramatic cosmic events. The new model may offer clues about the origins of type Ia supernovae.

We knew from prior analyses that a distant asteroid sampled in 2020 carried all but one of the molecules needed to kick-start life, and researchers have just found the missing ingredient: sugar

It should have been impossible for the CIA's Glomar Explorer to obtain the ship's bell from the K-129 submarine... but they did. How?

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A UC Irvine team uncovered a never-before-seen quantum phase formed when electrons and holes pair up and spin in unison, creating a glowing, liquid-like state of matter. By blasting a custom-made material with enormous magnetic fields, the researchers triggered this exotic transformation—one that could enable radiation-proof, self-charging computers ideal for deep-space travel.

A UC Irvine team uncovered a never-before-seen quantum phase formed when electrons and holes pair up and spin in unison, creating a glowing, liquid-like state of matter. By blasting a custom-made material with enormous magnetic fields, the researchers triggered this exotic transformation—one that could enable radiation-proof, self-charging computers ideal for deep-space travel.

A UC Irvine team uncovered a never-before-seen quantum phase formed when electrons and holes pair up and spin in unison, creating a glowing, liquid-like state of matter. By blasting a custom-made material with enormous magnetic fields, the researchers triggered this exotic transformation—one that could enable radiation-proof, self-charging computers ideal for deep-space travel.

That plus 12 other thoughts about Dr. Vinay Prasad's recent memo.

The post Dr. Vinay Prasad: “The Incidence of Myocarditis Found for Young Men after SARS-CoV-2 Infection is Larger Than What We Found for Myocarditis Following COVID-19 Vaccination.” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Russia's only launch site capable of sending humans to orbit has suffered serious damage that may take two years to fix. Will NASA keep supporting the ISS without Russian involvement, or is this the end for the space station?

Over the past 250 million years, periods when coral reef growth has peaked have coincided with big rises in sea temperatures

Tumour growth is reduced by exercise due to a shift in the body’s metabolism that means muscle cells outcompete cancer cells in the race to get sugar to grow

The complex molecules required for life on Earth might never have formed if it wasn’t for cosmic dust.

There is a period in the Universe known as the cosmic dark ages. It lies between the recombination of the first atoms and the ignition of the first stars, when the Universe was thought to be cold and dark. Now astronomers have looked at the faint glow of atomic hydrogen to find that while the Universe was dark, it wasn't quite as cold as we thought.

A Kiwi who wishes to remain anonymous (of course) sent me this link to an announcement of a meeting of three Royal (Scientific) Societies: those of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. The screenshot below also links to two other short documents, a communiqué and a statement by the Presidents of all three Societies.

The object is severalfold: to eliminate “structural racism” and inequities in science, to tout “indigenous knowledge systems” as not only different and distinct from normal science, but as having contributed valuable knowledge to science in unique indigenous ways, and to assert that indigenous people have a right to “maintain, protect, and develop indigenous knowledge systems, intellectual property, and data.”

Click below (or above) to access the three statements.

The things I agree with are these:

a.) Members of ethnic minorities have surely been discriminated against in the past, and have had difficulty entering into modern (sometimes called “Western”) science

b.) There should be outreach, expanding opportunities for anyone who wants to do science to have a chance to participate

c.) “Indigenous knowledge”, insofar as it tells us something true about the universe, is indeed a part of modern science and should be considered thus

d.)  Any research done using the resources of indigenous people should be done with their permission, collaboration, and full participation

The things I question are these:

a.) Whether structural racism—meaning formalized practices or policies—are still in place preventing minorities in all three countries from doing science. Other words are “bias” or “bigotry”. In the U.S., universities are bending over backwards to recruit minorities, and I can’t think of an example of formalized bias, though of course some non-minority scientists will be bigoted (I’ve also not seen many of them).

b.)  The extent to which indigenous knowledge has contributed to modern science.  It’s telling that, as in nearly all such documents, these three tout this knowledge as invaluable, but don’t provide a single example of the kind of advances that indigenous knowledge have promoted.

And the things I take issue with are these:

a.) Indigenous knowledge is a form of “knowledge” separate and distinct from that produced by modern science. As I’ve argued repeatedly, many forms of indigenous knowledge involve things that are nonscientific in the modern sense.  For example, Mātauranga Māori (“MM”)from New Zeland is described by Wikipedia this way:

Mātauranga (literally Māori knowledge) is a modern term for the traditional knowledge of the Māori people of New Zealand Māori traditional knowledge is multi-disciplinary and holistic, and there is considerable overlap between concepts. It includes environmental stewardship and economic development, with the purpose of preserving Māori culture and improving the quality of life of the Māori people over time.

MM includes not only practical knowledge, like how to catch eels or harvest mussels, but also superstition, word of mouth, tradition, religion, and codes of behavior. Some of it is knowledge in the “justified true belief” sense, but a lot of it is not.  Those who know more about Australian and Canadian indigenous “ways of knowing” can weigh in here.  And none of this comports with modern science in terms of using pervasive doubt, hypothesis testing, experiments, statistics, and the whole armamentarium that is the toolkit of modern science, which stopped being “Western” a long time ago. Modern science is practiced pretty much the same way the world over.

b). While indigenous people can surely design experiments and publish their data, they do not have control over it in the sense of not allowing other people to use it, or refusing to give the primary data behind anything that’s published. While the present document doesn’t say this explicitly, it implies it, and other indigenous people in New Zealand have more explicitly that data are proprietary.

Here are a few quotes from the three documents linked above (direct quotes are indented; my own comments are flush left):

A description of the meeting:

Over 3 days of keynote speeches, wānanga, cultural activities, and panel discussions, top Māori and Pasifika thought-leaders engaged with First Nations experts from Canada and Australia, including Fellows from five of Australia’s learned academies.

Key themes included the need to dismantle academic barriers and inequities for Indigenous students and researchers, share decision-making about research practices and priorities, and shape research agendas to focus on Indigenous knowledges and address challenges that are important to Indigenous Peoples.

Indigenous scholars and knowledge-holders talked about their experiences in academia, and presented research ranging from the study of Indigenous histories, cultures, knowledges, and languages to environmental management and traditional legal systems.

Indigenous scholars and knowledge-holders have championed and led education and research by, with, and for Indigenous communities, and have revitalised interest and awareness in traditional knowledges through language, cultural activities, and creative arts. Their work has explored and built on Indigenous knowledge systems to generate new insights and innovations – such as research methodologies and ethical frameworks based on traditional worldviews and values.

The advances touted for indigenous knowledge (note the absence of examples and yet the assertion that indigenous knowledge systems are separate and distinct “ways of knowing”). Bolding is mine:

 The Taikura Summit has continued and built on those exchanges, and we have now learned of the achievements and experiences of hundreds of Indigenous scholars and knowledge-holders. 

We have heard more about their journeys and achievements, and some of the myriad ways in which they are advancing understanding, particularly in the study of Indigenous histories, cultures, knowledges, and languages. These scholars and knowledge-holders have shown intellectual leadership by practising and advocating for research and education by, with, and for Indigenous communities. They have revitalised interest and awareness in Indigenous knowledge systems by connecting people through cultural activities, creative arts, and languages. 

Indigenous scholars and knowledge-holders have pioneered research practices, methodologies, and ethical frameworks, grounded in traditional worldviews and values, that uplift different ways of looking at challenges and have reshaped research practices across disciplines. Their work has shown that Indigenous knowledge systems are not simply historical artefacts, but living bodies of understanding that continue to evolve and to generate new insights. 

From the Communiqué (bolding mine):

 The Summit recognises that Indigenous Peoples are the rightful leaders, authorities, and stewards of research concerning their communities, territories, and knowledges. Indigenous research is grounded in distinct systems of knowledge, practice, and ethics that have sustained societies and ecosystems for millennia. These knowledge systems, sciences and artistic forms constitute rigorous and essential ways of knowing and understanding the world. They are not supplementary to other science methodologies. They have their own integrity and value. 

Note the clear statement that indigenous knowledge systems are “rigorous and essential ways of knowing and understanding the world” and “are not supplementary to other science methodologies.” This says that indigenous ways of knowing cannot simply fuse with science into a general understanding of the universe.  But indigenous ways of knowing, insofar as they incorporate anecdotal or observational evidence, are already fuse-able with modern science. It’s all part of understanding our universe.

Finally, also from the Commuiqué:

We acknowledge the enduring impacts of research practices that have marginalised, misrepresented, or appropriated Indigenous knowledge. Correcting these legacies requires fundamental transformation within institutes of higher learning and learned academies. This includes:

• addressing structural racism and inequities, including for Indigenous people with diverse sexual orientations or gender identities,

• affirming the sovereign right of Indigenous Peoples to determine their own research priorities, methodologies, and outcomes, and

• enabling Indigenous Peoples to maintain, protect, and develop Indigenous knowledge systems, intellectual property, and data.

This part involves questionable assertions, such as that about structural racism, as well as an implication—and I may be wrong here—that the products of indigenous science belong to the indigenous people.  But one thing is for sure, nobody can control the outcome of their “research methodologies”, for you don’t do research if you already have determined its outcome.

So Canada and Australia have bought into the “other ways of knowing” mentality that’s long pervaded New Zealand.

I’ll give a few quotes from my anonymous Kiwi correspondent:

I think these statements have thrown science under the bus in all three countries. If our RSTA [Royal Society of New Zealand] still retained any credibility it’s lost it now. How can you make a blanket statement about indigenous knowledge being as rigorous as other “ways of understanding” when it spans everything from empirically verifiable knowledge to superstition? This legitimises any form of quackery or snake oil provided it’s sold under a banner of cultural authority – there are no standards of universal evidence. I’m hoping that this will lead to change in RSTA, but Canada and Australia now have the same problem! All three scientific associations have abandoned their statutory claim to leadership and  responsibility for global and universalist science. . . . It is appalling. Probably the worst thing for me is that it says to indigenous people that they have to choose between their culture and science. That we’ve got here is because relativist ideology has been used as a Trojan Horse to smuggle non-science into science. I see no difference between this and the separation between religion and science. Religion is also culture, and biblical creationism can equally be portrayed as a “way of understanding”. What’s lost is the epistemological distinctiveness of science. The point is not that indigenous knowledge is all myth and superstition. It’s not. But if the products of different “ways of understanding” are only legitimately viewed through their own “cultural” lens then everything devolves into a political battle – a Foucauldian universe. I think at its heart this is activist politics, and so-called science leaders have fallen for it. Well, read above and judge for yourself. What science and scientists should ensure is that indigenous knowledge, if it’s to be considered a real “way of knowing,” has to comport with the knowledge produced by modern science. We cannot water down science by mixing it with legend, myth, unsupported assertions, or religion. When it comes to science, we cannot indulge in “the authority of the sacred victim.“

We have long struggled to determine how the first living organisms on Earth came together. Now, surprising evidence hints that poorly understood prions may have been the vital missing ingredient

A handful of people with HIV have been cured after receiving HIV-resistant stem cells – but a man who received non-resistant stem cells is also now HIV-free

Engineers have unlocked a new class of supercapacitor material that could rival traditional batteries in energy while charging dramatically faster. By redesigning carbon structures into highly curved, accessible graphene networks, the team achieved record energy and power densities—enough to reshape electric transport, stabilize power grids, and supercharge consumer electronics.

Researchers unveiled a new technique that validates quantum computer results—especially those from GBS devices—in minutes instead of millennia. Their findings expose unexpected errors in a landmark experiment, offering a crucial step toward truly reliable quantum machines.

Today we have the first part of a series of photos taken at Down House, where Darwin lived most of his life. The photographer is Neil K. Dawe, who lives on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Neil’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Down House, Kent, UK

On our UK trip this past June, we stopped at a special place, Down House, where we spent some time wandering through the home and grounds of Charles Darwin. The house has been carefully preserved and we spent some time on the upper floor, essentially an exhibition of his life. There we saw a number of Darwin artifacts such as some of the equipment and reference books he took with him on the Beagle voyage, some of his notebooks, as well as manuscript pages from On the Origin of Species.

Darwin purchased the house on 22 July 1842 for £2,200 and moved in that September. He described it as “… a good, very ugly house with 18 acres, situated on a chalk flat, 560 feet above sea. There are peeps of far distant country and the scenery is moderately pretty: its chief merit is its extreme rurality. I think I was never in a more perfectly quiet country”:

The downstairs includes a number of rooms that are laid out much as Darwin and Emma, his wife, had left them, including Darwin’s study, where he wrote On the Origin of Species. We walked through the study, which has been restored to the original 1870s arrangement with original furniture and many of Darwin’s possessions. Since photographs are not allowed in the home I have included the following image of his study by Anthonyeatworld, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, Cropped from the original:

Later, we wandered through the estate gardens to visit the vegetable garden (on the right of the photo) and Darwin’s greenhouse and cloches where he conducted many of his experiments. After completing construction of the heated greenhouse, Darwin requested plants from Kew Gardens and upon their arrival he notes in a letter to J.D. Hooker, “I am fairly astounded at their number! why my hot-house is almost full!. . . I have not yet even looked out their names; but I can see several things which I wished for, but which I did not like to ask for.”:

The greenhouse, where Darwin carried out many of his experiments, was fully stocked during our visit:

A Pitcher Plant (likely Nepenthes spp.) in the greenhouse; Nepenthes was included in a list of nursery plants Darwin planned to purchase:

Another greenhouse plant, an orchid, likely from the genus Lycaste:

We then wended our way over to the Sandwalk. Darwin leased 1.5 acres in 1846 from Sir John Lubbock, planted it with hazel, birch, privet, and dogwood, and created the gravel path. Francis Darwin recalled that “The Sand-walk was our play-ground as children, and here we continually saw my father as he walked round.” Huxley also spoke of “… the famous Sandwalk, where Darwin used to take his allotted exercise after each spell of work, freshening his mind and shaping his thought for the task in hand.” Darwin used stones to count laps, kicking one aside each time he passed, to avoid interrupting his thoughts as he walked his “thinking path.”:

Here I’m walking along the Sandwalk in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, birding as I go.  From Darwin’s notes: “Hedge-row in sand-walk planted by self across a field (years ago when I held field which had from time immemorial been ploughed & 3 or 4 years before the Hedge was planted, had been left as pasture — soil plants, chiefly Hard or clayed & very poor.— . . . plants, have now sprung up in hedge — preserves how the seeds having been brought by birds, for all are esculent & the protection afforded by spinose thorns — a sort of common land—” Photo: Renate Sutherland.

Part 2 to follow.

We have all likely had the experience that when we learn a task it becomes easier to learn a distinct but related task. Learning to cook one dish makes it easier to learn other dishes. Learning how to repair a radio helps you learn to repair other electronics. Even more abstractly – when you learn anything it can improve your ability to learn in general. This is partly because primate brains are very flexible – we can repurpose knowledge and skills to other areas. This is related to the fact that we are good at finding patterns and connections among disparate items. Language is also a good example of this – puns or witty linguistic humor is often based on making a connection between words in different contexts (I tried to tell a joke about chemistry, but there was no reaction).

Neuroscientists are always trying to understand what we call the “neuroanatomical correlates” of cognitive function – what part of the brain is responsible for specific tasks and abilities? There is no specific one-to-one correlation. I think the best current summary of how the brain is organized is that it is made of networks of modules. Modules are nodes in the brain that do specific processing, but they participate in multiple different networks or circuits, and may even have different functions in different networks. Networks can also be more or less widely distributed, with the higher cognitive functions tending to be more complex than specific simple tasks.

What, then, is happening in the brain when we exhibit this cognitive flexibility, repurposing elements of one learned task to help learn a new task? To address this question Princeton researchers looked at rhesus macaques. Specifically they wanted to know if primates engage in what is called “compositionality” – breaking down a task into specific components that can then be combined to perform the task. Those components can then be combined in new arrangements to compose a new task, like building with legos.

They taught the macaques different tasks, such as discriminating between shapes or colors. The tasks had a range of difficulty, for example they had to distinguish between red and blue, with some of the colors being vibrant and obvious while others were muted or ambiguous. To indicate which shape or color they were perceiving they had to look either to the upper left or the lower right on some tasks, or the upper right and lower left on others. Essentially they had to combine a sensory perception to a motor activity. The question was – when the tasks were shuffled, would they use the same brain components (or what the researchers call “subspaces”) in a new combination to perform the new task? And the answer is – yes, that is exactly what they did.

Obviously, this is a rather simple construct, and it is only one study, but the evidence is consistent with the compositionality hypothesis. More research will be needed to confirm these results for different tasks with more complexity, and of course to replicate these results in humans. I think the idea of compositionality makes sense, but not everything that makes sense in science turns out to be true. Some ideas in neuroscience are discarded when they turn out not to be true, like the notion of the “global workspace” (an area of the brain that was the common networking hub of all consciousness).

There is also already research indicating that compositionality is just one feature of learning that exists on a continuum (probably) with another feature of learning – interference. The way you measure interference is to train someone on task A, then train them on related task B, and then retest them on task A. If learning task B reduces their performance on task A, that is interference. You have probably experienced this as well – you sometimes have to “unlearn” a new task to go back to an older one. My family has two cars, one with regenerative braking and one without, with each requiring a slightly different driving style. With regenerative braking, when you lift off the gas it slows the car through resistance. Switching back and forth causes a bit of interference, and it takes a moment to adapt to the new task.

It turns out, humans and neural networks display similar patterns of compositionality and interference. People exist along a spectrum with “lumpers” transferring skills from one task to another more easily, but also displaying more interference, and “splitters” who do not transfer skills as much, but also do not suffer interference as much. It appears to be a tradeoff, with different people having different tradeoffs between these two features of learning. In other words, if you reuse cognitive legos to build new tasks, that will make it easier to learn new related tasks because you can repurpose existing skills. But then those legos are networked with other tasks, which can cause interference with previously learned tasks using the same legos. Or – you build an entirely new network for a new task, which takes more time but does not repurpose and therefore does not cause interference with previously learned tasks. Which is better? There is likely no simple answer, as it is probably very context dependent.

Further, if people fall along the lumper to splitter spectrum, is that consistent across cognitive domains? Can one person be a lumper for some kinds of tasks and a splitter for others? Can we start as a lumper, but then morph into a splitter if we switch among tasks frequently over time, thereby reducing interference? Will different learning mechanisms favor adopting a lumper vs splitter strategy? Sometimes I want to be flexible and adapt quickly, at other times I may want to invest the time to minimize interference as I switch among tasks. Is there a way to get the best of both worlds?

That’s the thing with interesting research, it usually provokes more questions than it answers. Lots to do.

 

The post Cognitive Legos first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.