A team of researchers at Google’s DeepMind project, reports that its AlphaGeometry2 AI performed at a gold-medal level when tasked with solving problems that were given to high school students participating in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) over the past 25 years. In their paper posted on the arXiv preprint server, the team gives an overview of AlphaGeometry2 and its scores when solving IMO problems.
Prior research has suggested that AI that can solve geometry problems could lead to more sophisticated apps because they require both a high level of reasoning ability and an ability to choose from possible steps in working toward a solution to a problem.
To that end, the team at DeepMind has been working on developing increasingly sophisticated geometry-solving apps. Its first iteration was released last January and was called AlphaGeometry; its second iteration is called AlphaGeometry2.
Evolution is traditionally associated with a process of increasing complexity and gaining new genes. However, the explosion of the genomic era shows that gene loss and simplification is a much more frequent process in the evolution of species than previously thought, and may favor new biological adaptations that facilitate the survival of living organisms.
This evolutionary driver, which seems counter-intuitive—” less is more” in genetic terms—now reveals a surprising dimension that responds to the new evolutionary concept of “less, but more,” i.e., the phenomenon of massive gene losses followed by large expansions through gene duplications.
This is one of the main conclusions of an article published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, led by a team from the Genetics Section of the Faculty of Biology and the Institute for Research on Biodiversity (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, in which teams from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have also participated.
Before joining MPFI, Wang was a research scientist at the Janelia Research Campus of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, working with Dr. Jeffery Magee and previously with Dr. Eva Pastalkova. At Janelia, she studied the hippocampal neuronal activities that represent memory traces. In particular, she employed memory tasks that can reversibly toggle the influence of sensory inputs on and off and isolated neuronal activities associated with internally stored memory.
Wang was trained as an electrical engineer. She completed her graduate study under the mentorship of Drs. Shih-Chii Liu, Tobi Delbruck and Rodney Douglas at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ). During her Ph.D. training, she designed brain-inspired computational systems on silicon chips. These fully reconfigurable systems incorporated electronic circuits of a network of neurons with dendrites and synapses. Using these systems as simulation tools, she also investigated the computational principles native to a neuron with active dendrites.
The ancient Greek statue of Apoxyomenos, also known as the “Croatian Apoxiomenos,” is a remarkable ancient Greek bronze statue depicting an athlete scraping oil and dust from his body with a strigil, a tool used by ancient Greeks for cleaning themselves after exercise.
It dates back to the 2nd or 1st century BC and was discovered in 1996 by a Belgian tourist diving off the Croatian island of Lošinj in the Adriatic Sea.
This statue is significant not only for its artistic quality but also because it is one of the few large-scale ancient bronze statues to have survived largely intact.
Gardenias are known for their rich, earthy fragrance, waxy petals and brilliant white color that contrasts with the deep emerald green of their leaves. The plant has long been prized by herbalists, seekers of food and fabric dyes, and even pharmaceutical companies.
Now, a collaborative team of scientists at several research centers in the United States has found that a compound known as genipin, derived from the gardenia plant called Cape jasmine, can prompt nerve regeneration. Neurons damaged and stunted by disease find new life in the lab when exposed to the plant-derived compound.
The chemical comes from the fruit of this extraordinarily versatile plant. Gardenia shrubs, in general, are native to tropical and subtropical regions of Asia. But the plants are propagated globally by horticulturists and amateur gardeners who are most familiar with the flower’s beauty and the intoxicating scent of their perfume.
Summary: New research reveals that serotonin in the cerebellum plays a crucial role in anxiety regulation. Scientists found that mice with lower cerebellar serotonin levels displayed increased anxiety-like behaviors, while those with higher serotonin levels were less anxious.
By artificially stimulating or inhibiting serotonin-releasing neurons in the cerebellum, researchers were able to bidirectionally control anxiety responses. This challenges previous assumptions that serotonin universally increases anxiety and highlights the cerebellum as a key player in emotional regulation.
The findings provide a potential pathway for developing more precise treatments for anxiety disorders. Future research may explore whether this mechanism operates similarly in humans and how it can be therapeutically targeted.
The Last Evolution, SF Audiobook, Science Fiction by John W. Campbell Jr.
I am the last of my type existing today in all the Solar System. I, too, am the last existing who, in memory, sees the struggle for this System, and in memory I am.
📄A group of American researchers, isolated in their scientific station in Antarctica towards the end of winter, discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice, where it crashed twenty million years before. They try to thaw the inside of the spacecraft with a thermite charge but end up accidentally destroying it when the ship’s magnesium hull is ignited by the charge. They do recover an alien creature from the ancient ice, which the researchers believe was searching for heat when it was frozen. Thawing revives the alien, a being which can assume the appearance, memories, and personality of a living thing it devours, while maintaining its body mass for further reproduction. Unknown to them, the alien immediately kills and then imitates the crew’s physicist, a man named Connant; with some 90 pounds of its matter left over, it tries to become a sled dog. The crew discovers the dog-Thing and kills it midway through the transformation process. Pathologist Blair, who had lobbied for thawing the Thing, goes insane with paranoia and guilt, vowing to kill everyone at the base to save mankind; he is isolated within a locked cabin at their outpost. Connant is also isolated as a precaution, and a “rule-of-four” is initiated in which all personnel must remain under the close scrutiny of three others. The crew realizes that they must isolate their base and therefore disable their airplanes and vehicles, yet they pretend that everything is normal during radio transmissions, to prevent any rescue attempts. The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the alien (simply referred to as the Thing), to destroy the imitations before they can escape and take over the world. The task is found to be almost impossibly difficult when they realize that the Thing is shapeshifting and telepathic, reading minds and projecting thoughts. A sled dog is conditioned by human blood injections (from Copper and Garry) to provide a human-immunity serum test, as in rabbits. The initial test of Connant is inconclusive, as they realize that the test animal received both human and alien blood, meaning that either Doctor Copper or expedition Commander Garry is an alien. Assistant commander McReady takes over and deduces that all the other animals at the station, save the test dog, have already become imitations; all are killed by electrocution and their corpses burned. Everyone suspects each other by now but must stay together for safety, deciding who will take turns sleeping and standing watch. Tensions mount and some men begin to go mad, thinking that they are already the last human, or wondering if they could know if they were not human any longer. Ultimately, Kinner, the cook, is murdered and accidentally revealed to be a Thing. McReady realizes that even small pieces of the creature will behave as independent organisms. He then uses this fact to test which men have been “converted” by taking blood samples from everyone and dipping a heated wire in the vial of blood. Each man’s blood is tested, one at a time, and the donor is immediately killed if his blood recoils from the wire. Fourteen men, including Connant and Garry, are revealed to be Things. The remaining men go to test the isolated Blair, and on the way, see the first albatross of the Antarctic spring flying overhead; they shoot the bird to prevent a Thing from infecting it and flying to civilization. When they reach Blair’s cabin, they discover that he is a Thing. They realize that it has been left to its own devices for a week, coming and going as it pleased, as it is able to squeeze under doors by transforming itself. With the creatures inside the base destroyed, McReady and two others enter the cabin to kill the Thing that was once Blair. McReady forces it out into the snow and destroys it with a blowtorch. Afterwards, the trio discover that the Thing was dangerously close to finishing the construction of a nuclear-powered anti-gravity device that would have allowed it to escape to the outside world.
