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Blog post with show notes, audio player, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/02/11/epis…omplexity/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll.

Reality is a tricky thing. Is love real? What about the number 5? This is clearly a job for a philosopher, and James Ladyman is one of the world’s acknowledged experts. He and his collaborators have been championing a view known as “structural realism,” in which real things are those that reflect true, useful patterns in the underlying reality. We talk about that, but also about a couple of other subjects in the broad area of philosophy of science: the history and current status of materialism/physicalism, and the nature of complex systems. This is a deep one.

James Ladyman obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds, and is currently a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. He has worked broadly within the philosophy of science, including issues of realism, empiricism, physicalism, complexity, and information. His book Everything Must Go (co-authored with Don Ross) has become an influential work on the relationship between metaphysics and science.

Continue reading “Episode 33: James Ladyman on Reality, Metaphysics, and Complexity” | >

Peter Atkins, James Ladyman, and Joanna Kavenna argue over the existence of physical reality.

Watch the full debate at https://iai.tv/video/the-world-that-disappeared?utm_source=Y…escription.

No-one who has ever stepped on a Lego brick could doubt the reality of physical objects. Yet from Heraclitus to George Berkeley, many philosophers claimed to have disproven the existence of things. Now even high-energy particle physicists are inclined to agree and describe material stuff as energy, or even as mathematical constructs. Could the world truly be made up of fields and processes, rather than physical stuff? Or is science trapped in a philosophical fantasy from which it needs to escape?

#PhysicalRealityDebate #MaterialistWorld.

Continue reading “Is physical reality a hoax | Peter Atkins, James Ladyman, Joanna Kavenna” | >

In the morning hours of Sept. 24, a small capsule containing surface samples from asteroid 101,955 Bennu careened into Earth’s atmosphere after a seven-year journey through space. The landing of this sample capsule is the culmination of NASA’s historic Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) asteroid sample return mission, which is now the first American mission to return samples from an asteroid.

The sample return capsule (SRC) landed within a 14 by 58-kilometer ellipse at a Department of Defense property at the Utah Test and Training Range and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Touchdown of the SRC occurred at 8:52 AM MDT (14:52 UTC) — three minutes earlier than planned. Low winds and dry weather was present at Dugway during the landing — optimal conditions for the return and recovery of the SRC.

OSIRIS-REx launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Sept. 8, 2016. Since then, OSIRIS-REx has flown past Earth, rendezvoused with asteroid 101,955 Bennu, orbited the asteroid and extensively imaged/mapped its surface, collected a sample from Bennu, made the journey back to Earth, and now returned its sample. As the SRC was streaking through Earth’s atmosphere, OSIRIS-REx performed a flyby of Earth and began a new mission called OSIRIS-APEX, wherein OSIRIS-REx will fly out and study asteroid 99,942 Apophis. The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the asteroid in 2029 if all goes according to plan.

Read more | >

Norway has installed the world’s northernmost solar farm and battery storage in the Svalbard archipelago, just south of the North Pole.

State-owned energy company Store Norske Energi installed the solar and storage at Isfjord Radio on the island of Spitsbergen, the largest and the only permanently populated island in the archipelago, and the solar farm is expected to come online tomorrow.

Isfjord was built as a radio station in 1933 to provide a communication link between the Svalbard archipelago and Norway’s mainland. It’s still a radio station and a weather station, and now there’s a hotel for tourists and researchers.

Read more | >

Beguš is a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley. He got the chance, last summer, to observe sperm whales in their wild Caribbean habitat off the coast of the island nation of Dominica. With him were marine biologists and roboticists. There were also cryptographers and experts in other fields. All have been working together to listen to sperm whales and figure out what they might be saying.

They call this Project CETI. That’s short for Cetacean Translation Initiative (because sperm whales are a type of cetacean).

AI translates human languages with ease. Researchers are now using this tech to analyze the sounds of whales, rodents and many other animals.

Continue reading “How artificial intelligence could help us talk to animals” | >

Wildfires fueled by climate change have ravaged communities from Maui to the Mediterranean this summer, killing many people, exhausting firefighters and fueling demand for new solutions. Enter artificial intelligence.

Firefighters and startups are using AI-enabled cameras to scan the horizon for signs of smoke. A German company is building a constellation of satellites to detect fires from space. And Microsoft is using AI models to predict where the next blaze could be sparked.

With wildfires becoming larger and more intense as the world warms, firefighters, utilities and governments are scrambling to get ahead of the flames by tapping into the latest AI technology—which has stirred both fear and excitement for its potential to transform life. While increasingly stretched first responders hope AI offers them a leg up, humans are still needed to check that the tech is accurate.

Read more | >

“That’s what makes this research unique from a scientific standpoint. The study participant can walk over to the lab, have the blood drawn and within hours their specimen can be transferred to the on-site facility where the process of biomanufacturing the vaccine begins,” says Dr. Block. “That would not be possible with an outside manufacturer.”

A deadly form of reproductive system cancer

Ovarian cancer is the deadliest form of gynecologic cancer. It often is not diagnosed until advanced stages, when it is less treatable. Even with standard surgery and chemotherapy, tumors return in up to 70% of women. The outcome is often poor. 19,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year and more than 13,000 die from it, according to the American Cancer Society.

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Continue reading “Albumin, CRP, and Creatinine: Better Markers Of Longevity Than Lipoproteins And Glycemic Status” | >

In the phase 3 GLOW study, ibrutinib plus venetoclax significantly improved progression-free survival and other outcomes in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, across most genomic subgroups.

Patients treated with fixed-duration ibrutinib (Imbruvica) plus venetoclax (Venclexta) achieved higher undetectable minimal residual disease (uMRD), progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS) rates compared with chlorambucil plus obinutuzumab (Gazyva) across most genomic subgroups of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).1.

Findings come from the phase 3 GLOW study (NCT03462719) in which data were presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO 2023). Patients treated with ibrutinib and venetoclax achieved a higher uMRD rate at 3 months (54.7%) after the end of treatment compared with patients treated with obinutuzumab and chlorambucil (39.0%), except patients with trisomy-12, IGLL5 mutation, and mutated immunoglobulin heavy-chain variable (mIGHV).

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