Lifeboat Foundation

Research led by the University of Amsterdam has demonstrated that elusive radiation coming from black holes can be studied by mimicking it in the lab.

Black holes are the most extreme objects in the universe, packing so much mass into so little space that nothing—not even light—can escape their gravitational pull once it gets close enough.

Understanding black holes is key to unraveling the most fundamental laws governing the cosmos, because they represent the limits of two of the best-tested theories of physics: the theory of general relativity, which describes gravity as resulting from the (large-scale) warping of spacetime by massive objects, and the theory of quantum mechanics, which describes physics at the smallest length scales. To fully describe black holes, we would need to stitch these two theories together and form a theory of quantum gravity.

Aspiring bakers are frequently called upon to adapt award-winning recipes based on differing kitchen setups. Someone might use an eggbeater instead of a stand mixer to make prize-winning chocolate chip cookies, for instance.

Being able to reproduce a recipe in different situations and with varying setups is critical for both talented chefs and computational scientists, the latter of whom are faced with a similar problem of adapting and reproducing their own “recipes” when trying to validate and work with new AI models. These models have applications in scientific fields ranging from climate analysis to brain research.

“When we talk about data, we have a practical understanding of the digital assets we deal with,” said Eliu Huerta, scientist and lead for Translational AI at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. “With an AI model, it’s a little less clear; are we talking about data structured in a smart way, or is it computing, or software, or a mix?”

Large AI networks like language models make mistakes or contain outdated information. MEND shows how to update LLMs without changing the whole network.

Large AI models have become standard in many AI applications, such as natural language processing, image analysis, and image generation. The models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-3, often have more diverse capabilities than small, specialized models and can be further improved via finetuning.

However, even the largest AI models regularly make mistakes and additionally contain outdated information. GPT-3’s most recent data is from 2019 – when Theresa May was still prime minister.

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Rats love to dance 🕺:3

The team had two alternate hypotheses: The first was that the optimal music tempo for beat synchronicity would be determined by the time constant of the body. This is different between species and much faster for small animals compared to humans (think of how quickly a rat can scuttle). The second was that the optimal tempo would instead be determined by the time constant of the brain, which is surprisingly similar across species.

“After conducting our research with 20 human participants and 10 rats, our results suggest that the optimal tempo for beat synchronization depends on the time constant in the brain,” said Takahashi. “This demonstrates that the animal brain can be useful in elucidating the perceptual mechanisms of music.”

Continue reading “Rats bopping to the beat in video demonstrate innate beat synchronization in animals for the first time” »

Two different groups have tested a seemingly counter-intuitive property of the quantum world: That it’s possible to put a photon, a particle of light, in a superposition of states going forward and backward in time. This is not time travel and won’t lead to communicating with the past – but it is an intriguing demonstration of how time can be thought to work at a quantum level.

Unless you have a TARDIS or a DeLorean, time only flows in one direction (forward) for us. This annoying little fact that protects us from all sorts of paradoxes is called the arrow of time. It is believed to be related to the concept of entropy (which always increases in an isolated system like the universe) but it doesn’t seem to be as fundamental at the quantum level.

Instead, something that appears to be fundamental is the so-called CPT symmetry (charge, parity, and time reversal symmetry). This holds for all physical phenomena, and if a combination of two of them is violated (such as famously the CP violations) there ought to be a violation in time symmetry as well.

The three to four-bedroom homes will be in a master-planned community in Georgetown, Texas. The units will be open for reservations in 2023.

Early on Thursday morning, Hurricane Nicole made landfall near Vero Beach on Florida’s eastern coast. Because Nicole had a very large eye, nearly 60 miles in diameter, its strongest winds were located well to the north of this landfalling position.

As a result of this, Kennedy Space Center took some of the most intense wind gusts from Nicole late on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. While such winds from a Category 1 hurricane are unlikely to damage facilities, they are of concern because the space agency left its Artemis I mission—consisting of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft—exposed on a pad at Launch Complex-39B. The pad is a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean.

How intense were the winds? The National Weather Service hosts data from NASA sensors attached to this launch pad’s three lighting towers on a public website. It can be a little difficult to interpret the readings because there are sensors at altitudes varying from 132 feet to 457 feet. Most of the publicly available data appears to come from an altitude of about 230 feet, however, which would represent the area of the Space Launch System rocket where the core stage is attached to the upper stage. The entire stack reaches a height of about 370 feet above the ground.

Summary: The dopamine system helps the brain anticipate the occurrence and duration of unpleasant events, but without taking errors into account.

Source: Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience.

A new study at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience has examined how the dopamine system processes aversive unpleasant events.