Image description: a black cat lying down on a ledge next to a window. Only one of the hind legs is visible on the cat.
zlatiah 10h ago • 100%
This again??
This time once archive.org is back online again... is it possible to get torrents of some of their popular data storage? For example I wouldn't imagine their catalog of books with expired copyright to be very big. Would love a community way to keep the data alive if something even worse happens in the future (and their track record isn't looking good now)
zlatiah 2d ago • 100%
Pretty sure the "intimate detail" is just the editor being horny... I didn't make the title don't blame me
zlatiah 2d ago • 100%
Hehe
Blame the Nature News editor for this, the paper title wasn't horny at all
www.nature.com
> AlphaFold predicted that three sperm proteins work together to form a complex. Two of these proteins were previously known to be important for fertility. Pauli and her colleagues then confirmed that the third is also critical for fertility in both zebrafish and mice, and that the three proteins interact with one another. > The team also found that, in zebrafish, the trio creates a place for an egg protein to bind, providing a mechanism by which the two cells could recognize one another. “It’s a way to say, ‘Sperm, you found an egg’ and ‘Egg, you found a sperm’,” says Andreas Blaha, a biochemist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology and co-author of the paper. > The findings might one day yield a way to screen people struggling with infertility, to find out whether problems with this complex could be the cause, says Wright. > And the results highlight a role for AlphaFold in studying fertilisation, he adds. “We’re limited in terms of experiments,” he says. “It might be that these modelling studies have an important role to play in the future.” In other words, the team used AlphaFold to help with discovering a three-protein complex that allows sperm & egg to bind together. And this complex seems to be conserved between zebrafish and humans (!!). Despite the news title: this study is actually less about AlphaFold and more about using it to help do very important biochemistry Original paper (open access): A conserved fertilization complex bridges sperm and egg in vertebrates. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.09.035
www.nature.com
"Scientists have designed a new form of insulin that can automatically switch itself on and off depending on glucose levels in the blood. In animals, this ‘smart’ insulin reduced high blood-sugar concentrations effectively while preventing levels from dropping too low... A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk says that although this study is a proof of principle of NNC2215’s glucose-sensitive insulin properties, further research to optimize the molecule is ongoing." From the research article: "Here we report the design and properties of NNC2215, an insulin conjugate with bioactivity that is reversibly responsive to a glucose range relevant for diabetes, as demonstrated in vitro and in vivo... In animal studies, the glucose-sensitive bioactivity of NNC2215 was demonstrated to lead to protection against hypoglycaemia while partially covering glucose excursions." Brought to you by a passionate research group from *Novo Nordisk*, home of the $1,349 per month weight-loss drug Wegovy This is still fairly early-stage research so the final commercialization might take quite some time The article itself, open access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08042-3
zlatiah 3d ago • 100%
Had a fairly important work deadline that was supposed to be end of this month. Unfortunately, I didn't read institutional policies carefully enough, and institutional fuckery mandates that they receive all the documents one week prior. So my actual deadline is like next Monday
So yeah, I'll be working this entire weekend... at least the good news is I can probably get two free days off by the end of this month (which I wanted to do anyway)
zlatiah 4d ago • 100%
I am not joking; the only thing I can imagine is for some bizarre reason a bowling ball noise followed by a comical noise of striking pins. I know there is a person but I couldn't imagine that person
zlatiah 4d ago • 100%
This is a good point... I strongly prefer nonfiction over fiction, but it could just be Autism. I really only read fiction if it is really, really good... but I read them in the same way as I would read a nonfiction book as well, I'd be more interested in the themes of the book
zlatiah 4d ago • 100%
Oh my! I didn't know what to expect, and I have to say... I was quite surprised by some of your answers. Also confirmed to me that I am definitely not normal
Not many replies that are indicative of Aphantasia so... here goes nothing. I tried really hard at this okay
::: spoiler spoiler
I don't "see" see anything when I close my eyes. I can create a very vague concept of a ball, a table, and... kind of a person in my head, but I don't actually see the scene, I used to think when people say imagining things they were just making a metaphor. Things get really funk from here... But the overall schema feels more like one of those badly drawn scenes from the hit visual novel Slay the Princess. And yes I imagined it in 2D for some reason
- Color: the ball doesn't have a color
- Gender: it wasn't even a real person; it seems like a silhouette of the hand and back of a person
- Looks: As I said, the person isn't even facing me
- Size: No idea; in retrospect it's fairly large compared to the table (diameter probably 1/2-1/3 of table?), but the table is also an abstract concept so...
- Table: no clue, it is a square table but that's it. If anything it looks like the things served on Pizza Hut pizzas
- Well I spoiled the question for myself so... but I didn't have to choose, heck I couldn't choose even if I know what the questions are
:::
This is more of me trying to understand how people imagine things, as I almost certainly have Aphantasia and didn't realize until recently... If this is against community rules, please do let me know. The original thought experiment was from the Aphantasia subreddit. Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/g1e6bl/ball_on_a_table_visualization_experiment_2/ Thought experiment begins below. --- **Try this: Visualise (picture, imagine, whatever you want to call it) a ball on a table. Now imagine someone walks up to the table, and gives the ball a push. What happens to the ball?** ::: spoiler Once you're done with the above, click to review the test questions: * What color was the ball? * What gender was the person that pushed the ball? * What did they look like? * What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? * What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? And now the important question: Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions? ___ :::
zlatiah 6d ago • 100%
I got curious and wanted to see what method they are using: I believe they are using data from this portal? https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html
Looks like anyone can take this! But I guess that also means... did the dyslexics/dyscalculics self-select themselves?
Edit: took one. There is a demographics questionnaire where you can list whether you have disabilities, dyslexia is in there (but not Autism??)... So it is self-selected. And on unrelated note, I am apparently in the 1% that has a strong automatic preference for physically disabled rather than not-disabled people (facepalm
zlatiah 1w ago • 100%
I feel... weird. Bowlero Corporation reorganized one of their arcades close to where I live and apparently removed the only arcade cabinet that kept me going there in the first place. This also means that there is only one rhythm game arcade cab left in my city, and that arcade is also managed by Bowlero...
I was already half-seriously contemplating opening an arcade myself, and this incident is getting close to pushing myself over the edge, but I just couldn't make the idea work with how ridiculously expensive it is & understanding that the type of cabs I'm interested in basically make no money, so... yeah
On unrelated note, work is highly stressful this week, two doctors appointment, so yeah! (cries inside
zlatiah 1w ago • 100%
This is a good point... I'm more used to biomedical papers where this author list would be considered typical or even short, but yeah the affiliations seem to state that there are four PIs on this paper which is wild... don't know what to make of it. If someone knows archaeology better plz inform
www.nature.com
**Laser-induced imaging of radioactive elements was used to work out the age of an ancient cave painting on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The results reveal that the narrative scene is 51,200 years old, making it the earliest known example of representational art. This study challenges previous dating methods and suggests a deeper origin for human image-making and storytelling.** TL;DR or if you don't have access to the article: the researchers invented a faster, less-destructive and more-accurate rock art dating method & applied it to humanity's oldest known rock art in Sulawesi, Indonesia. The art is at least 51,200 years old (authors' lower estimate)! Edit: contrary to what the news title original stated: this is the oldest *representational art*, not the literal oldest human-created art. The paper itself (open access): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07541-7
zlatiah 1w ago • 100%
I don't believe anyone mentioned this yet so... here goes nothing, there is a suspicion that this is due to A/B testing
This is a bug report from the Invidious project; this is back in June 6 (so four months ago), but the hoster of a fairly large instance noted a very bizarre error message on the Invidious project...
Conclusion is that Youtube is very likely rolling out A/B testing of requiring all clients to login before viewing videos
Refreshing will probably work considering this is most likely result of an A/B test, but unfortunately I don't see a way of this problem going away
zlatiah 2w ago • 100%
I genuinely don't know... there doesn't seem to be any ongoing discussion of who or why are these people targeting IA. There are other people who are trying to rescue data stored on IA
Hope this would be over soon...
Per their error message, "See 31 million of you on HIBP!" If anyone can provide a *slightly* more up-to-date souce (their X post, for example) I'd appreciate it Hacker News post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41792500
zlatiah 2w ago • 100%
So it was the physics Nobel... I see why the Nature News coverage called it "scooped" by machine learning pioneers
Since the news tried to be sensational about it... I tried to see what Hinton meant by fearing the consequences. Believe he is genuinely trying to prevent AI development without proper regulations. This is a policy paper he was involved in (https://managing-ai-risks.com/). This one did mention some genuine concerns. Quoting them:
"AI systems threaten to amplify social injustice, erode social stability, and weaken our shared understanding of reality that is foundational to society. They could also enable large-scale criminal or terrorist activities. Especially in the hands of a few powerful actors, AI could cement or exacerbate global inequities, or facilitate automated warfare, customized mass manipulation, and pervasive surveillance"
like bruh people already lost jobs because of ChatGPT, which can't even do math properly on its own...
Also quite some irony that the preprint has the following quote: "Climate change has taken decades to be acknowledged and confronted; for AI, decades could be too long.", considering that a serious risk of AI development is climate impacts
zlatiah 2w ago • 100%
Oh my... I had a slightly similar incident. New phone number, had a bunch of random strangers texting me (some even calling!) asking for Ethan. My name is not Ethan, I didn't know who Ethan is
No idea what was on my mind back then, but I somehow got the contact info of this mysterious Ethan, called him (hilarity ensued since he got a call from someone on his contact list named "Me"), confirmed his up-to-date number, and promptly referred everyone looking for Ethan to the real person for over a year...
Life is strange sometimes
zlatiah 2w ago • 91%
A bit off topic... But from my understanding, the US currently doesn't have a single federal agency that is responsible for AI regulation... However, there is an agency for child abuse protection: the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect within Department of HHS
If AI girlfriends generating CSAM is how we get AI regulation in the US, I'd be equally surprised and appalled
zlatiah 2w ago • 100%
- A privacy-respecting mail service: I use mailbox.org since it follows email standards, but I think many ppl like Proton mail/Tutanota. Recommend because they are privacy-respecting, and self-hosting email is way too difficult
- More of a yearly subscription per-se, but a personal domain from any domain registrar. Recommend because why not? There are so many cool things one can do with a domain: custom email, your own blog, professional website for job, ...
- A VPS from Linode (or any reliable provider). Recommend because some things are better done on a VPS... and I want a public-facing IP that is not directly from my bedroom
- I used to have subscriptions to the local arcade. Recommend because I basically get cardio workout on the DDR machine (and it costs less than a gym. And easier to cancel)
The Telomere-to-telomere consortium's primate project. We now have **complete, diploid genomes** of six ape species (chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan, and siamang). Maybe this will show up on Nature or somewhere next year :D Manuscript is literally just out on biorxiv.org past Saturday... So title/details subject to change, and unfortunately there are no fancy news articles making it any easier to read Links: * [Relevant T2T blog post on UCSC](https://cglgenomics.ucsc.edu/february-2024-t2t-apes/) * [The GitHub repo](https://github.com/marbl/Primates) * [Data uploaded to NCBI](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/?accession=GCF_028858775.2,GCF_0292815810865.2,GCF_028885625.2,GCF_028878055.2,GCF_028885655.2,GCF_029289425.2)
www.nature.com
**Despite much anecdotal evidence, few studies show pervasive racial bias in promotion and tenure decisions. By analysing 1,571 real promotion and tenure cases across five US universities, Masters-Waage et al. find double standards negatively applied to scholars of colour, and especially women of colour, even after accounting for scholarly productivity.** Shortcoming of this paper is that it is * 1500+ individuals from five typical *research-intensive US-based* institutions, so other countries/types of institutions might see differences. Two HBCUs were also excluded, wouldn't be surprised if they see less racism. * I believe it was mentioned somewhere that the team only looked at Black and Hispanic faculty members, because other minorities are too few in numbers to look at... If you are wondering, Asians/Asian Americans are not considered minorities in academia. Original paper, open access & quite easy to read if you are interested * https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01977-7 Dataset: * https://osf.io/9xu65/?view_only=8af03fe8158c43a185ce807a17e43431 The associated Science News articles, both original URL and archive.org ver: * https://www.science.org/content/article/racial-bias-can-taint-academic-tenure-process-one-particular-point * https://web.archive.org/web/20241005023358/https://www.science.org/content/article/racial-bias-can-taint-academic-tenure-process-one-particular-point
www.nature.com
*Let's not say the quiet part out loud.* This is a data visualization of three papers on this topic by the Nature team. The three papers are listed below (all are **open access**!). You are not misreading them (including the second paper), the titles mean what they say. * Mitsis P. The Nobel Prize time gap. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01418-8 * Tol RSJ. The Nobel family. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04936-1 * Ioannidis JPA, Cristea I-A, Boyack KW. Work honored by Nobel prizes clusters heavily in a few scientific fields. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234612
zlatiah 3w ago • 100%
Based on my understanding of how these things work: Yes, probably no, and probably no... I think the map is just a "catalogue" of what things are, not at the point where we can do fancy models on it
This is their GitHub account, anyone knowledgeable enough about research software engineering is welcomed to give it a try
There are a few neuroscientists who are trying to decipher biological neural connections using principles from deep learning (a.k.a. AI/ML), don't think this is a popular subfield though. Andreas Tolias is the first one that comes to my mind, he and a bunch of folks from Columbia/Baylor were in a consortium when I started my PhD... not sure if that consortium is still going. His lab website (SSL cert expired bruh). They might solve the second two statements you raised... no idea when though.
zlatiah 3w ago • 100%
Thanks! I think this is it... because I guess the more important part to this trope is that "hehe this is actually the world that you - dear viewer - lives in"... the high-fantasy part is secondary and depends on the genre I guess.
zlatiah 3w ago • 100%
I... agree. Did get a lot of great recommendations tho!
I'm embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, *this* particular type of story on multiple occasions... So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?
www.nature.com
"... Researchers are hoping to do that now that they have a new map — the most complete for any organism so far — of the brain of a single fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). The wiring diagram, or ‘connectome’, includes nearly 140,000 neurons and captures more than 54.5 million synapses, which are the connections between nerve cells. ... The map is described in a package of nine papers about the data published in Nature today. Its creators are part of a consortium known as FlyWire, co-led by neuroscientists Mala Murthy and Sebastian Seung at Princeton University in New Jersey." See the associated Nature collection: [The FlyWire connectome: neuronal wiring diagram of a complete fly brain](https://www.nature.com/immersive/d42859-024-00053-4/index.html), which also has links to the nine papers All nine papers are open access!
web.archive.org
A Science News report about Dr. Eliezer Masliah (who held a highly important role at the National Institute of Aging), a 300-page dossier composed of misconducts at his lab, as well as followups... Featuring everyone's favorite research integrity sleuths (Elizabeth Bik, Mu Yang, "Cheshire", ...) and more. Post URL points to archive.org due to soft paywall on Science News. Here's the [original link](https://www.science.org/content/article/research-misconduct-finding-neuroscientist-eliezer-masliah-papers-under-suspicion)
www.nature.com
"Octopuses normally hunt alone, but footage captured by divers has revealed that they can collaborate with fish to find their next meal. The videos, described today in Nature Ecology & Evolution (citation 1), show that the different species even adopt specific roles to maximize the success of joint hunting expeditions." **Associated research article (open access)**: Sampaio E et al. Multidimensional social influence drives leadership and composition-dependent success in octopus–fish hunting groups. Nature Ecology & Evolution (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02525-2 Same news that was independently reported by Science News (might need membership): https://www.science.org/content/article/some-octopuses-treat-fish-hunting-buddies
Forgot what made me think about this topic but I've been considering this for a week or two... Curious what you all think. When I mean "hardest" "video game", I mean whatever game that you find objectively more difficult than all other ones on the market, as long as it's a video game. I guess exposure to different genres/types of games can influence the answer to this question a lot so... Hence I was curious about your rationale. I have a pretty solid answer & rationale but I guess I shouldn't share that in the main post to bias results...
