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Mar 23, 2024

Oxford researchers uncover remarkable archive of ancient human brains

Posted by in category: neuroscience

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford has challenged previously held views that brain preservation in the archaeological record is extremely rare. The team carried out the largest study to date of the global archaeological literature about preserved human brains to compile an archive that exceeds 20-fold the number of brains previously compiled. The findings have been published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Mar 23, 2024

Researchers pinpoint issue that could be hampering common chemotherapy drug

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Researchers from U of T Medicine pinpoint issue that could be hampering common chemotherapy drug ➡️


Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research have found two enzymes that work against the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine, preventing it from effectively treating pancreatic cancer.

The enzymes – APOBEC3C and APOBEC3D – increase during gemcitabine treatment and promote resistance to DNA replication stress in pancreatic cancer cells.

Continue reading “Researchers pinpoint issue that could be hampering common chemotherapy drug” »

Mar 23, 2024

Debates on the nature of artificial general intelligence

Posted by in categories: business, Elon Musk, government, humor, information science, robotics/AI, transportation

The term “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) has become ubiquitous in current discourse around AI. OpenAI states that its mission is “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” DeepMind’s company vision statement notes that “artificial general intelligence…has the potential to drive one of the greatest transformations in history.” AGI is mentioned prominently in the UK government’s National AI Strategy and in US government AI documents. Microsoft researchers recently claimed evidence of “sparks of AGI” in the large language model GPT-4, and current and former Google executives proclaimed that “AGI is already here.” The question of whether GPT-4 is an “AGI algorithm” is at the center of a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI.

Given the pervasiveness of AGI talk in business, government, and the media, one could not be blamed for assuming that the meaning of the term is established and agreed upon. However, the opposite is true: What AGI means, or whether it means anything coherent at all, is hotly debated in the AI community. And the meaning and likely consequences of AGI have become more than just an academic dispute over an arcane term. The world’s biggest tech companies and entire governments are making important decisions on the basis of what they think AGI will entail. But a deep dive into speculations about AGI reveals that many AI practitioners have starkly different views on the nature of intelligence than do those who study human and animal cognition—differences that matter for understanding the present and predicting the likely future of machine intelligence.

Continue reading “Debates on the nature of artificial general intelligence” »

Mar 23, 2024

Loneliness during young adulthood affects future job prospects and social standing, study finds

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, economics, education, employment

Lonely young adults are more prone to being disengaged from education or employment and perceive themselves as less employable, according to the study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine recently. As a consequence, such individuals tend to get positioned lower on the economic ladder compared to their less lonely counterparts.

Findings revealed that young adults who grappled with loneliness earlier in life encountered challenges in their young adulthood, irrespective of their current loneliness status. This underscores the long-term economic implications of loneliness and the potential economic benefits of addressing loneliness during early adolescence.

Mar 23, 2024

Speck of light glimpsed by Hubble is truly an enormous old galaxy, James Webb Space Telescope reveals

Posted by in category: cosmology

When it comes to the cosmic conundrum of how early galaxies grew to become so massive so quickly Gz9p3 could be a real puzzle. Not only is it more massive than expected, but it is around 10 times more massive than other galaxies the JWST has seen in similar eras of the universe’s history.

Related: James Webb Space Telescope complicates expanding universe paradox by checking Hubble’s work

“Just a couple of years ago, Gz9p3 appeared as a single point of light through the Hubble Space Telescope,” Kit Boyett, team member and a scientist at the University of Melbourne, wrote for the institute’s Pursuit publication. “But by using the JWST we could observe this object as it was 510 million years after the Big Bang, around 13 billion years ago.”

Mar 23, 2024

Planet-eating stars more common than previously thought, astrophysicists find

Posted by in categories: alien life, physics

New research from Australian scientists shows strong evidence even mid-life stable stars like our sun have engulfed entire planets.

Mar 23, 2024

New trial hints at a possible HIV cure approach: Wake up latent virus hiding in the body, then kill it

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A clinical trial of a new method to activate and kill HIV in the body shows small success, but it’s not yet a cure.

Mar 23, 2024

Reddit CEO Defends His Absurdly High Pay While Not Paying Mods

Posted by in category: futurism

Much-hated Reddit founder and CEO Steve Huffman gifted himself a stunning $193 million compensation package — while unpaid moderators on the platform have yet to see a single dollar, as Variety reports.

It’s an especially pertinent topic given that the company went public at a share price of $34 today, for a valuation of $6.4 billion.

During a recent Q&A video posted to the subreddit named after the company’s brand new New York stock exchange ticker RDDT, Huffman argued that he was totally justified in paying himself more than the CEOs of Meta, Pinterest and Snap combined.

Mar 23, 2024

Can the double-slit experiment distinguish between quantum interpretations?

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Despite the astonishing successes of quantum mechanics, due to some fundamental problems such as the measurement problem and quantum arrival time problem, the predictions of the theory are in some cases not quite clear and unique.


The measurement and quantum arrival time problems have originated various predictions for the join spatiotemporal distribution of particle detection events, derived from different formulations and interpretations of the quantum theory. By reworking the famous double-slit experiment, the authors propose a realizable setup to probe such predictions.

Mar 23, 2024

Universities Have a Computer-Science Problem

Posted by in categories: computing, education, science

The case for teaching coders to speak French.

By Ian Bogost

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