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While the number of smokers in the world as a proportion of the population is dropping, lung cancer continues to cause almost 2 million deaths per year – and new research reports on a concerning rise in cases among people who’ve never lit up a cigarette.

The international team behind the research found that rates of lung cancer in this group of people could be tied to increasing levels of pollution and the subsequent damage to health, with east Asia, particularly China, the worst affected.

“As lung cancer is the leading cancer worldwide, a comprehensive understanding of the changing epidemiological patterns and their potential causes is essential,” write the researchers in their published paper.

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Around 15 percent of the world’s population suffers from tinnitus, a condition which causes someone to hear a sound (such as ringing or buzzing) without any external source. It’s often associated with hearing loss.

Not only can the condition be annoying for sufferers, it can also have a serious effect on mental health, often causing stress or depression. This is especially the case for patients suffering from tinnitus over months or years.

There’s currently no cure for tinnitus. So finding a way to better manage or treat it could help many millions of people worldwide.

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Our ability to cooperate with others may be influenced by how our attention is captured and directed, as much as by how altruistic we are feeling.

According to a new study by researchers at the University of Birmingham jointly with the University of Zurich, choices made for individual reward or cooperatively for a joint reward can be influenced by presenting information to participants in configurations that naturally draw their . The results are published in Communications Psychology.

Cooperation—defined as the ability of individuals to incur a personal cost for the benefit of a group—is a fundamental aspect of human behavior. Understanding how we can foster cooperation is essential for tackling many global challenges, from to the spread of infectious diseases—and understanding what motivates people to cooperate is key to this process.

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End-of-life home health use and duration were lower in Medicare Advantage vs traditional Medicare for nearly all populations.

Medicare-funded home health provides critical support through nursing, social work, rehabilitation, and aide visits for homebound adults needing skilled care. This support is particularly relevant for Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black older adults who access hospice services at lower rates than White adults.1,2

Enrollees in Medicare Advantage (MA), who are disproportionately from racially or ethnically minoritized communities, are less likely to receive home health and use fewer days of services compared with those in traditional Medicare ™.3,4 This study assessed whether MA enrollment was associated with greater racial and ethnic disparities in home health use during the last year of life compared with TM enrollment.

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Summary: New research reveals that our brains simplify complex social interactions by using basic mental “building blocks” or shortcuts. Researchers scanned the brains of people playing a simple team game and observed how participants kept track of interactions with both teammates and opponents.

Rather than monitoring each individual separately, the brain creates simplified patterns that capture the essential dynamics of group behavior, particularly in the prefrontal cortex—an area important for decision-making and social skills. These findings help explain how we efficiently manage and interpret the constant flood of social information encountered daily.

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Simply looking at nature – or even just digital pictures of it – can relieve pain, according to new research which scanned the brains of people receiving electrical shocks.

Nature’s many health benefits have been documented by decades of research.

More than 40 years ago, a pioneering study showed that hospitalized patients needed fewer painkillers and recovered quicker when they looked out of a window onto green space rather than a brick wall.

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In this insightful conversation with OpenAI’s CPO Kevin Weil, we discuss the rapid acceleration of AI and its implications. Kevin makes the shocking prediction that coding will be fully automated THIS YEAR, not by 2027, as others suggest. He explains how OpenAI’s models are already ranking among the world’s top programmers and shares his thoughts on Deep Research, GPT-4.5’s human-like qualities, the future of jobs, and the timeline for GPT-5. Don’t miss Kevin’s billion-dollar startup idea and his vision for how AI will transform education and democratize software creation.

00:00 — Summary.
01:21 — Introduction.
03:20 — Discussion on OpenAI being both a research and product company.
11:05 — Timeline for GPT-5
11:38 — AI model commoditization and maintaining competitive advantage.
15:09 — Deep Research capabilities.
24:22 — Coding automation prediction: THIS YEAR
30:05 — AI in creative work and design.
36:43 — Future of programming and engineers.
38:32 — Will AI create new job categories?
40:58 — Billion-dollar AI startup ideas.
46:27 — Voice interfaces and robotics.
49:28 — Closing thoughts.

Read more | >

There is only a small fraction of reality we are physiologically capable of perceiving and it also depends on our ability to correctly interpretation within a cognitive framework a model of reality depending on assumptions that are consistent with our other sensory data or corroborating means of perception smell hearing so on in a unified experience.

Rain Ambient from Mount Shrine, mixed by Atrium Carceri for Cryo Chamber.
👉 Bandcamp: https://cryochamber.bandcamp.com/
👉 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/cryochamber.

Tracklist: Audio from Mount Shrine albums Lost Loop Collection, Ghosts on Broken Pavement and more https://cryochamber.bandcamp.com/album/lost-loops-collection.

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Continue reading “Songs for a Quiet World // Mount Shrine Rain Ambient Archives” | >

James Fodor discusses what he is researching, mind uploading etc.

As of 2020, James Fodor, is a student at the Australian National University, in Canberra, Australia. James’ studies at university have been rather diverse, and have at different times included history, politics, economics, philosophy, mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, and biology. Eventually he hopes to complete a PhD in the field of computational neuroscience.

James also have a deep interest in philosophy, history, and religion, which he periodically writes about on his blog, which is called The Godless Theist. In addition, James also has interests in and varying levels of involved in skeptical/atheist activism, effective altruism, and transhumanism/emerging technologies. James is a fan of most things sci-fi, including Star Trek, Dr Who, and authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

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Continue reading “James Fodor — Exploring the Frontiers of Computational Neuroscience” | >