<strong>Fossil viruses hidden in our DNA thousands of years ago could be the cause of depression, study finds</strong>
"Ancient DNA present in humans may be linked to major psychiatric disorders like depression, researchers have said.
DNA sequences originating from ancient infections are found in the brain, with some contributing to susceptibility for conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression, a study found"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/depression-cause-fossil-virus-dna-b2549421.html
#News #Ancient #DNA #AncientDNA #Psychiatry #MentalHealth #Science #STEM #Research @science
<strong>Ancient genomes revealed the complex human interactions of the ancient western Tibetans</strong>
"_Outside the Tibetan Plateau, the western Tibetan Plateau populations interacted with both South and Central Asian populations at least 2,000 years ago, and the South Asian-related genetic influence, despite being very limited, was from the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) migrants in Central Asia instead of the IVC populations from the Indus Valley._"
'Ancient genomes revealed the complex human interactions of the ancient western Tibetans' (2024) ScienceDirect. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.04.068.
#OpenAccess #OA #Reseach #DOI #Ancient #DNA #AncientDNA #Tibet #Population #History #IndusValleyCivilization #IVC #SouthAsia #Asia #CentralAsia #Science #STEM #Genetics #Paleoanthropology #Anthropology @science @anthropology
<strong>When Fake Archaeology Uses Fake Science </strong>
"_Dr. M discusses common pseudoscientific arguments used to support pseudo archaeology._"
#Video length: twenty one minutes and forty three seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0OMxE_D1pE
#Fake #Archaeology #Archaeodons #Science @archaeodons @science
<strong>Mesmerising microbes: bacteria as you’ve never seen it before – in pictures</strong>
"_As a side hustle he manipulates and photographs the microbial world; his images are collected in a book, Beautiful Bacteria. Taking bacteria from substances such as wastewater, dental plaque or kimchi, Danino lets them multiply in a petri dish, adding dyes. The results are artworks differing from the digital enhancements often made in scientific photography to make images more informative._"
#News #Photography #Photo #Photos #Image #Images #Microbiology #Biology #Science #STEM #Bacteria #Microbes #Microbes @science @biology @microbiology
How to measure the Earth
"The first known calculation of the Earth’s circumference was made 2300 years ago by a man called Eratosthenes. I remember in school, how impressed I was by how accurately the Earth’s circumference was measured such long time ago. Today we’re going to take a closer look on how his calculation was made."
https://blog.datawrapper.de/earth-circumference-eratosthenes/
#History #Histodon #Histodons #Science #HistSci #STEM #Earth @histodon @histodons
Glimpse of next-generation internet
"The Harvard team established the practical makings of the first quantum internet by entangling two quantum memory nodes separated by optical fiber link deployed over a roughly 22-mile loop through Cambridge, Somerville, Watertown, and Boston."
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/05/glimpse-of-next-generation-internet/
#News #Science #STEM #Tech #Technology #Internet #Quantum #Computer #Network #Harvard #Academia #Academic #Academics @science
What causes the aurora borealis?
#Video length: fifty nine seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez7K0DCbOF4
#NorthernLights #Aurora #AuroraBorealis #Science #STEM @science
Backstabbing, bluffing and playing dead: has AI learned to deceive? – podcast
"Dr Peter Park, an AI existential safety researcher at MIT and author of the research, tells Ian Sample about the different examples of deception he uncovered, and why they will be so difficult to tackle as long as AI remains a black box."
#Audio #Podcast #Science #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #STEM #Tech #Technology @science
#Image attribution: Orion 8, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Icon_announcer.svg
[_Not an entirely absurd proposition_]
‘Treat food companies like cigarette companies who are trying to get us addicted’
"Ultra-processed foods are designed to make us overeat and are causing both the obesity and mental health crises in the UK, says scientist and author Tim Spector."
#Video length: eleven minutes and four seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWECK-3DN40
#Science #STEM #Obesity #MentalHealth #Health #Addiction #Food @science
Thomas Willis (1621-1675) : Neurologist, Chemist, Physician
"Willis is not only credited to be the founder of neurology, but he is also seen as the father of comparative neuroanatomy, as his work, in particular Cerebri anatome and De anima brutorum, compare the human brain with that of other species in ‘search for specific human abilities in cognitive functions’ (Molnár, p. 334)."
#History #Science #STEM #HistSci #Anatomy #Neurology #Neuroanatomy #EarlyModern #C17th #17thCentury #Histodon #Histodons @science @earlymodern @histodon @histodons
#Image attribution: Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portret_van_Thomas_Willis,_RP-P-1910-415.jpg
"A Bayesian analysis showed that participants had high expectations and performed descriptively better irrespective of the AI description when a sham-AI was present. Using cognitive modeling, we could trace this advantage back to participants gathering more information."
Agnes Mercedes Kloft, Robin Welsch, Thomas Kosch, and Steeven Villa. 2024. "AI enhances our performance, I have no doubt this one will do the same": The Placebo effect is robust to negative descriptions of AI. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 299, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642633
#OpenAccess #OA #Research #Article #DOI #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ComputerScience #Technology #Tech #Science #STEM #Placebo #Academia #Academic #Academics @science @technology
#Image attribution: Madhav-Malhotra-003, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artificial_Intelligence_Word_Cloud.png
The History of Ions: Unveiling the Electric Charge
"Around 1830, Faraday posited the existence of charged particles within molecules that migrate between electrodes during electrolysis—an idea ahead of its time."
https://historyofsciences.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-history-of-ions-unveiling-electric.html
#History #Science #HistSci #STEM @science
#Image attribution: Science History Institute, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Faraday_-_Man_of_Science_-_DPLA_-_5f2b65726e7d4bb523e98ae61828bc11_(page_6).jpg
AI deception: A survey of examples, risks, and potential solutions
"Large language models and other AI systems have already learned, from their training, the ability to deceive via techniques such as manipulation, sycophancy, and cheating the safety test. AI’s increasing capabilities at deception pose serious risks, ranging from short-term risks, such as fraud and election tampering, to long-term risks, such as losing control of AI systems."
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2024.100988
#OpenAccess #OA #Research #DOI #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LLM #LLMS #Deception #Risk #Risks #Science #STEM #Academia #Academic #Academics @science
"Researchers publish largest-ever dataset of neural connections
A cubic millimeter of brain tissue may not sound like much. But considering that that tiny square contains 57,000 cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and 150 million synapses, all amounting to 1,400 terabytes of data, Harvard and Google researchers have just accomplished something stupendous."
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/05/the-brain-as-weve-never-seen-it/
#News #Science #STEM #Tech #Technology #Brain #NeuroScience #Data @science
DeepMind’s AI can ‘predict how all of life’s molecules interact with each other’
"AlphaFold 3 is able to envision how the complex shapes and networks of molecules – present in every cell in the human body – are connected and how the smallest of changes in these can affect biological functions that can lead to diseases."
#News #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #DeepMind #Science #STEM #Biology #DNA @science
"...our data suggested that the Japanese population could be best modeled by admixtures of three ancestral components (hereafter K1 to K3). K1 to K3 were the highest in Okinawa, Northeast, and West, respectively (Fig. 1D and table S4). K1 (Okinawa) component maintains a relatively stable fraction of around 12% in Hondo subgroups, except for South (which is a region adjacent to Okinawa), with a higher proportion of 22%. K2 (Northeast) and K3 (West) components showed a cline from West to East."
Xiaoxi Liu et al., Decoding triancestral origins, archaic introgression, and natural selection in the Japanese population by whole-genome sequencing. Sci. Adv. 10, eadi8419 (2024). DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adi8419
#OpenAccess #OA #Research #Article #DOI #Science #STEM #Population #Genetics #Genome #Genomics #Japan #Japanese #Asia @science
Science Doesn't Understand How Ice Forms
"What starts off as a simple desire to get a macro shot of a droplet of water freezing quickly leads George to the very edge of scientific knowledge and a shocking fact about most of the water on Earth."
#Video length: 10 minutes 31 seconds
https://youtu.be/24TB1vPuzIU
The art of the bee
"As I set out to write a book on honey bee biology, I kept Humboldt as an aspirational model. Rather than write the typical biology text that reflected an excavation of levels of biological organization like taxonomy, biogeography, physiology, anatomy, etc., I built chapters around themes relating to honey bee impacts, behavior, and ecology."
https://blog.oup.com/2024/05/the-art-of-the-bee/
#Read #Reading #NonFiction #Book #Books #Ebook #Ebooks #Bookstodon #Science #Biology #STEM @bookstodon @science @biology
"Infant mortality rates have plummeted over the last 50 years.
Globally, they’ve fallen by over two-thirds, from around 10% in 1974 to less than 3% today.
The study’s researchers estimate that 40% of this decline is due to vaccines."
Hannah Ritchie (2024) - “Vaccines have saved 150 million children over the last 50 years” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/vaccines-children-saved' [Online Resource]
#Data #DataViz #Science #Health #Vaccines #Research @science
Scientists are trying to get cows pregnant with synthetic embryos
"Synthetic embryos are clones, too—of the starting cells you grow them from. But they’re made without the need for eggs and can be created in far larger numbers—in theory, by the tens of thousands."
Not a bot, just a rather corpulent male fifty years of age; a very, very slow ignoramus who reads occasionally.
Toots are #humanities, #science, #nonfiction, #book, #map, #chart and #graph related. Some toots containing #videos may also find their way into the timeline.
Toots or follows or boosts or mentions ≠ endorsements of any particular notion or notions.
Expect numerous typing errors and copious amounts of nonsensical commentary from my personal formulations.
Finis