Lifeboat Foundation

Our memories may not be as reliable as we think. Once we experience an event, most of us likely assume that those memories stays intact forever. But there is the potential for memories to be altered or for completely false memories to be planted, according to Elizabeth Loftus, PhD. Loftus, a distinguished professor at the University of California, Irvine, is an expert on human memory and she discusses how our recollections of events and experiences may be subject to manipulation.

The American Psychological Association is the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States, with more than 118,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members.

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Elizabeth Loftus, psychologist and distinguished professor, University of California, Irvine, takes the audience at the Nobel Prize Summit 2023 inside the effect misinformation has on our brains, including the limits of human memory.

About Nobel Prize Summit 2023:

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Loftus and Palmer (1974) investigated the extent to which eyewitness testimony can be influenced by variables other than a person’s original memory of an event.

Listen to this series of comprehensive podcasts which cover the core studies from the OCR A-Level Psychology (H567) syllabus, covering themes, debates, ethics, methodology and more.

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Robotic Transformer 2 (RT-2) is a novel vision-language-action (VLA) model that learns from both web and robotics data, and translates this knowledge into generalised instructions for robotic control.

High-capacity vision-language models (VLMs) are trained on web-scale datasets, making these systems remarkably good at recognising visual or language patterns and operating across different languages. But for robots to achieve a similar level of competency, they would need to collect robot data, first-hand, across every object, environment, task, and situation.

In our paper, we introduce Robotic Transformer 2 (RT-2), a novel vision-language-action (VLA) model that learns from both web and robotics data, and translates this knowledge into generalised instructions for robotic control, while retaining web-scale capabilities.

It won’t cause long-term job losses, McKinsey says—instead it will lead to a wholesale redistribution of the workforce.

Pseudo or Real?

In this study, the FRS condition typically suppressed the increase in glucose levels in the OGTT compared with that in the HCS condition. This tendency was also observed after comparing glucose levels 1 h after glucose loading (Supplementary Fig. S2 online). The suppressive effect of the FRS condition on glucose elevation was more pronounced in the older age group and the group with high HbA1c. However, it was not evident in the younger age group or the group with low HbA1c. Similarly, this tendency was observed when we divided the participants into two groups: high glucose level and low glucose level by OGTT (Supplementary Fig. S3 online). These converging findings imply that sounds with inaudible HFC are more effective in improving glucose tolerance in individuals at a higher risk of glucose intolerance.

It is well experienced in daily practice that stress has a significant impact on glycemic control in patients with diabetes. Many reports have highlighted stress-induced increases in blood glucose levels in patients with type 2 diabetes^{22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31}. In addition, a large population-based cohort study of Japanese participants reported a 1.22-fold (women) and 1.36-fold (men) increased risk of developing diabetes in individuals with high subjective stress levels compared with those with low levels³². This indicates that stress management influences the pathological transition of patients with diabetes and the prevention of its onset in healthy individuals or potential prediabetics. However, the effects of stress on individuals, both in type and degree, vary so widely^33,34,35 that it is practically difficult to study them under experimentally controlled conditions, unlike with pharmacotherapy.

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Fungi isolated from rotting hardwood trees can break down sheets of low-density polyethylene, one of the most abundant plastics on Earth.

By Chen Ly

Far-ranging neurons, targets for psychedelic drugs, and complex influence on brain activity — new studies yield insight into this tiny, sheet-like structure.

GitHub Copilot is getting an upgrade with an improved AI model and enhanced contextual filtering, resulting in faster and more tailored code suggestions for developers.

The new AI model delivers a 13% improvement in latency, while enhanced contextual filtering delivers a 6% relative improvement in code acceptance. These improvements are coming to GitHub Copilot for Individuals and GitHub Copilot for Business.

According to Github, the new model was developed together with OpenAI and Azure AI, and the 13% improvement in latency means that GitHub Copilot generates code suggestions for developers faster than ever before, promising a significant increase in overall productivity.