education – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Mon, 18 Nov 2024 23:23:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 Gov. Abbott unveils nuclear energy initiative aimed at strengthening Texas grid https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/gov-abbott-unveils-nuclear-energy-initiative-aimed-at-strengthening-texas-grid https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/gov-abbott-unveils-nuclear-energy-initiative-aimed-at-strengthening-texas-grid#respond Mon, 18 Nov 2024 23:23:38 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/gov-abbott-unveils-nuclear-energy-initiative-aimed-at-strengthening-texas-grid

The plan includes seven major recommendations.

The first is creating a new state authority to oversee nuclear development. They’ll also establish a single point of contact to help companies navigate the complex permitting process.

Education is also a big focus of the plan. It calls for partnerships with community colleges and universities to train workers for these high-tech jobs.

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Neuroscientists taught rats to drive tiny cars. They took them out on ‘joy rides.’ https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/neuroscientists-taught-rats-to-drive-tiny-cars-they-took-them-out-on-joy-rides https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/neuroscientists-taught-rats-to-drive-tiny-cars-they-took-them-out-on-joy-rides#respond Sun, 17 Nov 2024 19:24:05 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/neuroscientists-taught-rats-to-drive-tiny-cars-they-took-them-out-on-joy-rides

Natural forms of opiates and dopamine — key players in brain pathways that diminish pain and enhance reward — seem to be telltale ingredients of the elevated tails in our anticipation training program. Observing tail posture in rats adds a new layer to our understanding of rat emotional expression, reminding us that emotions are expressed throughout the entire body.

While we can’t directly ask rats whether they like to drive, we devised a behavioral test to assess their motivation to drive. This time, instead of only giving rats the option of driving to the Froot Loop Tree, they could also make a shorter journey on foot — or paw, in this case.

Surprisingly, two of the three rats chose to take the less efficient path of turning away from the reward and running to the car to drive to their Froot Loop destination. This response suggests that the rats enjoy both the journey and the rewarding destination.

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VMware makes Workstation and Fusion free for everyone https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/vmware-makes-workstation-and-fusion-free-for-everyone https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/vmware-makes-workstation-and-fusion-free-for-everyone#respond Sun, 17 Nov 2024 13:24:53 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/vmware-makes-workstation-and-fusion-free-for-everyone

VMware has announced that its VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation desktop hypervisors are now free to everyone for commercial, educational, and personal use.

In May, the company also made VMware Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro free for personal use, allowing students and home users to set up virtualized test labs and experiment with other OSs by running virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters on Windows, Linux, and macOS devices.

Starting this week, the Pro versions and the two products will no longer be available under a paid subscription model.

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Study links relative brain volume to temperament in diverse dog breeds https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/study-links-relative-brain-volume-to-temperament-in-diverse-dog-breeds https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/study-links-relative-brain-volume-to-temperament-in-diverse-dog-breeds#respond Sun, 17 Nov 2024 03:28:33 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/study-links-relative-brain-volume-to-temperament-in-diverse-dog-breeds

Researchers from the University of Montpellier, the University of Zurich, Naturhistorisches Museum Bern, and other institutions have found that breed function and behavior correlate with relative endocranial volume (REV) in domestic dogs.

Domestic dogs exhibit variations of morphologies and , a diversity rooted in centuries of domestication and selective breeding for functional attributes. Historically, mammals have shown a trend toward larger brains to support advanced cognition, a pattern that appears disrupted in .

Despite having, on average, 20% smaller brains relative to their wild ancestral counterpart, the , domestic dogs often demonstrate a range of equivalent cognitive skills, challenging some conventional assumptions about brain size and intelligence.

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How technology companies are tackling the digital divide https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/how-technology-companies-are-tackling-the-digital-divide https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/how-technology-companies-are-tackling-the-digital-divide#respond Fri, 15 Nov 2024 21:22:29 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/how-technology-companies-are-tackling-the-digital-divide

From education to work and leisure, internet access is essential to modern life. Yet, since the first days of the world wide web, this access has been unequal. The US, France and the UK gained a headstart in the 1990s and developing countries have been seeking to catch up ever since.

One region where this process is now complete is the Arabian Peninsula. From relative obscurity in connectivity rankings three decades ago, countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar have leapfrogged their Western peers. Look at measures of internet speeds, in fact, and the UAE now leads the world.1 Having delivered internet access at home, e& (etisalat and), the telecommunications giant and leading global technology group headquartered in the UAE, hopes to expand connectivity worldwide.

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NASA Welcomes Denmark as Newest Artemis Accords Signatory https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/nasa-welcomes-denmark-as-newest-artemis-accords-signatory https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/nasa-welcomes-denmark-as-newest-artemis-accords-signatory#respond Thu, 14 Nov 2024 16:23:19 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/nasa-welcomes-denmark-as-newest-artemis-accords-signatory

Following a signing ceremony Wednesday in Denmark’s capital city, Copenhagen, NASA embraced Denmark as the 48th nation to commit to the safe and responsible exploration of space that benefits humanity.

“We welcome Denmark’s signing of the Artemis Accords today,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Denmark, as a founding member of the European Space Agency (ESA), has contributed to space exploration for decades, including collaborating with NASA on Mars exploration. Denmark’s signing of the Artemis Accords will further international cooperation and the peaceful exploration of space.”

Christina Egelund, minister of higher education and science, signed the Artemis Accords on behalf of Denmark. Alan Leventhal, U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark also participated in the ceremony, and Nelson contributed recorded remarks.

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YouTube’s role in shaping autism perceptions explored in new study https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/youtubes-role-in-shaping-autism-perceptions-explored-in-new-study https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/youtubes-role-in-shaping-autism-perceptions-explored-in-new-study#respond Wed, 13 Nov 2024 08:29:53 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/youtubes-role-in-shaping-autism-perceptions-explored-in-new-study

YouTube videos on autism primarily provide educational content with balanced perspectives, reducing stigmatization, though viewer comments often remain negative. This highlights YouTube’s dual role in improving understanding while revealing persistent public misconceptions.

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People with psychopathic traits fail to learn from painful outcomes https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/people-with-psychopathic-traits-fail-to-learn-from-painful-outcomes https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/people-with-psychopathic-traits-fail-to-learn-from-painful-outcomes#respond Wed, 13 Nov 2024 08:29:33 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/people-with-psychopathic-traits-fail-to-learn-from-painful-outcomes

A recent study published in Communications Psychology reveals that individuals with higher psychopathic traits show reduced sensitivity to pain, which affects their ability to learn from painful consequences. The researchers found that people with elevated psychopathic traits tend to revert quickly to initial beliefs after experiencing pain. This new insight could help us understand why individuals with these traits often struggle to adapt their behavior despite negative consequences.

People with psychopathic traits frequently ignore the negative consequences of their actions, likely due to differences in how they process punishment. Past studies have indicated that psychopathy is associated with both an insensitivity to punishment and an excessive drive toward reward, but this study aimed to explore the computational learning processes specifically related to pain. Pain can serve as a powerful teaching signal, so understanding how reduced pain sensitivity influences learning in people with psychopathic traits could shed light on the mechanisms behind their often harmful decision-making.

“One of the hallmarks of psychopathy is aggressive, exploitative behavior with little regard for the wellbeing of others,” said study author Dimana Atanassova, a postdoctoral researcher at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University.

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Anthropic New Research Shows that AI Models Can Sabotage Human Evaluations https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/anthropic-new-research-shows-that-ai-models-can-sabotage-human-evaluations https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/anthropic-new-research-shows-that-ai-models-can-sabotage-human-evaluations#respond Wed, 13 Nov 2024 02:23:14 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/anthropic-new-research-shows-that-ai-models-can-sabotage-human-evaluations

Author(s): Jesus Rodriguez Originally published on Towards AI. Created Using IdeogramI recently started an AI-focused educational newsletter, that already has over 170,000 subscribers. TheSequence is a no-BS (meaning no hype, no news, etc) ML-oriented newsletter that takes 5 minutes to read. The goal is to keep you up to date with machine learning projects, research papers, and concepts. Please give it a try by subscribing below:

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There’s a Critical Thing We Can Do to Keep Alzheimer’s Symptoms at Bay https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/theres-a-critical-thing-we-can-do-to-keep-alzheimers-symptoms-at-bay https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/theres-a-critical-thing-we-can-do-to-keep-alzheimers-symptoms-at-bay#respond Sat, 09 Nov 2024 22:25:42 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/11/theres-a-critical-thing-we-can-do-to-keep-alzheimers-symptoms-at-bay

Deep sleep could be key to forestalling slow declines in brain health that may one day lead to Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

In their 2023 study of 62 older, cognitively healthy adults, researchers from the University of California (UC) Berkeley, Stanford University, and UC Irvine in the US found individuals with brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s performed better on memory function tests as they got more deep sleep.

This was irrespective of education and physical activity, two factors along with social connection known to contribute to cognitive resilience in older age.

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