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Blog – Page 3759

Harry’s Review of The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler

Ray Nayler’s recent contemplative sci-fi thriller The Mountain In The Sea offers a first contact story which holds a mirror to our notions of intelligence and responsibility.

Following ecologist Dr Ha Nguyen, The Mountain In The Sea centres upon the recent discovery of an octopus species in the remote Vietnamese islands of the Con Dao archipelago. Questions abound: just how intelligent are these octopuses? Corporations and activists alike become interested. DIANIMA-a vast organisation interesting in automation and artificial intelligence hire Dr Nguyen to determine how valuable the octopus species are to their research. Accompanying her for this job is DIANIMA’s own previous attempt at creating a being that can pass the Turing test, a silicon lifeform known as Evrim.

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1. The mind, brain, and body are inextricably linked

The idea that the mind and brain are separate is usually attributed to the 17th-century French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, who was what philosophers now call a substance dualist. Descartes believed that the mind and body are made of different substances: the body of a physical substance, and the mind of some mysterious, nonphysical material.

Today, most neuroscientists reject this idea. Modern brain research suggests that the mind is made of matter and emerges from brain activity. Even so, most still study the brain in isolation, without taking the body into consideration.

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“It’s poor for that particular cell, but it protects the whole colony of bacteria so that virus doesn’t spread through it,” said Jackson.

CRISPR vs. cancer: The newly published papers detail the structure and function of Cas12a2, but more research is needed to determine how we might be able to harness this system for our benefit.

The good news, so far, is that looks programmable, meaning we might be able to use it to kill certain cells, such as those with cancerous mutations, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

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Mathematical research from the University of Bath in the United Kingdom has shed new light on the formation and behavior of crowds.

Have you ever pondered how people, without having a discussion or even giving it a second thought, instinctively form lanes when walking through a crowded area?

A new theory, developed by mathematicians at the University of Bath in the UK and led by Professor Tim Rogers, explains this phenomenon. This theory is able to predict when lanes will be straight but also when they will be curved.

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Major changes in the spinal columns of mammals have been shaped by their highly variable numbers of vertebrae, according to new evidence from a team of international scientists, including researchers from the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath.

The team unearthed new findings that identify how this column “complexity” in mammals has been shaped by their varying numbers of vertebrae.

The research group from the University of Lincoln, U.K., the University of Bath and Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, China, conducted a that examined the vertebrae of 1,136 modern species, ranging from blue whales to shrews, to determine how column complexity evolved within major groups over time.

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