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Today I Learned #2: Gone for a Wiki Walk
- Thread starter aimeeandbeatles
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Her children are also noted scientists.
Oh my, that must be terrible for them
."Oh, you're a known scientist? Your parents must be so proud!"
- "uummhh..."
- "And also your grand parents!"
- "well..."
I think if you're going into the same business as your famous parents, you're in some way set up to fail.
amadeus
Bishop of Bio-Dome
r16
not deity
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as a boost to that ı have read that some scientist for real or a wacko one wanted to shoot down the moon so that it would arrive on earth in pieces to be added around Antarctica , you know , new lands to settle or something . The original poster swearing that he was in a conference hearing the proposal in person .
Learning Without a Brain
IT MIGHT SEEM obvious that you need a brain to be intelligent, but a new area of research called “basal cognition” explores whether there are kinds of intelligence that don’t require neurons and synapses. Some of the research was reported in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society last year. These studies may help to answer deep questions about the nature and evolution of intelligence, but the experiments are also just plain fascinating, with truly weird creatures and even weirder results.
Slime molds, for example, are very large single-celled organisms that can agglomerate into masses, creeping across the forest floor and feeding on decaying plants. (One type is called dog vomit slime mold, which gives you an idea of what they look like.) They can also retreat into a sort of freeze-dried capsule form, losing much of their protein and DNA in the process, and stay that way for months. But just add water and the reconstituted slime mold is good as new.
They are also fussy eaters. If you put them down on top of their favorite meal of agar and Quaker oats and add salt or quinine to one part of it, they’ll avoid that part, at least at first. The biologists Aurele Bousard and Audrey Dussutour at the University of Toulouse and colleagues used this fact to show that slime molds can learn in a simple way called habituation. If the only way to get the oats is to eat the salt too, the
molds eventually get used to it and stop objecting. Remarkably, this information somehow persists for up to a month, even through their period of desiccated hibernation.
Flatworms are equally weird. Cut one into a hundred pieces and each piece will regenerate into a perfect new worm. (A slime mold-flatworm alliance against the humans would make a great horror movie.) But how do the cells in the severed flatworm fragment know how to grow into a head and a tail?
Santosh Manicka and Michael Levin of Tufts University argue in the special issue that regeneration involves a kind of cognition. The process is remarkably robust: You can move the cells that usually make a head to the tail location, and they will somehow figure out how to make a tail instead. The researchers argue that this ability to take multiple paths to achieve the same goal requires a kind of intelligence.
Regeneration involves the standard mechanisms that allow the DNA in a cell to manufacture proteins. But Dr. Levin and his colleagues have shown that flatworm cells also communicate information through electricity, signaling to other nearby cells in much the way that neurons do. In experiments that would make Dr. Frankenstein proud, the researchers altered those electrical signals to produce a worm
that consistently regenerates with two heads, or even one that grows the head of another related species of flatworm.
This research has some practical implications: It would be great if human accident victims could grow back their limbs as easily as flatworms do. But the studies also speak to a profound biological and philosophical conundrum. Where do cognition and intelligence come from? How could natural selection turn single-celled amoebas into homo sapiens? Dr. Levin thinks that the electrical communications that help flatworms regenerate might have evolved into the subtler mechanisms of brain communication. Those creepy slime molds and flatworms might help to explain how humans got smart.
Research shows that slime molds are capable of a simple kind of learning.
IT MIGHT SEEM obvious that you need a brain to be intelligent, but a new area of research called “basal cognition” explores whether there are kinds of intelligence that don’t require neurons and synapses. Some of the research was reported in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society last year. These studies may help to answer deep questions about the nature and evolution of intelligence, but the experiments are also just plain fascinating, with truly weird creatures and even weirder results.
Slime molds, for example, are very large single-celled organisms that can agglomerate into masses, creeping across the forest floor and feeding on decaying plants. (One type is called dog vomit slime mold, which gives you an idea of what they look like.) They can also retreat into a sort of freeze-dried capsule form, losing much of their protein and DNA in the process, and stay that way for months. But just add water and the reconstituted slime mold is good as new.
They are also fussy eaters. If you put them down on top of their favorite meal of agar and Quaker oats and add salt or quinine to one part of it, they’ll avoid that part, at least at first. The biologists Aurele Bousard and Audrey Dussutour at the University of Toulouse and colleagues used this fact to show that slime molds can learn in a simple way called habituation. If the only way to get the oats is to eat the salt too, the
molds eventually get used to it and stop objecting. Remarkably, this information somehow persists for up to a month, even through their period of desiccated hibernation.
Flatworms are equally weird. Cut one into a hundred pieces and each piece will regenerate into a perfect new worm. (A slime mold-flatworm alliance against the humans would make a great horror movie.) But how do the cells in the severed flatworm fragment know how to grow into a head and a tail?
Santosh Manicka and Michael Levin of Tufts University argue in the special issue that regeneration involves a kind of cognition. The process is remarkably robust: You can move the cells that usually make a head to the tail location, and they will somehow figure out how to make a tail instead. The researchers argue that this ability to take multiple paths to achieve the same goal requires a kind of intelligence.
Regeneration involves the standard mechanisms that allow the DNA in a cell to manufacture proteins. But Dr. Levin and his colleagues have shown that flatworm cells also communicate information through electricity, signaling to other nearby cells in much the way that neurons do. In experiments that would make Dr. Frankenstein proud, the researchers altered those electrical signals to produce a worm
that consistently regenerates with two heads, or even one that grows the head of another related species of flatworm.
This research has some practical implications: It would be great if human accident victims could grow back their limbs as easily as flatworms do. But the studies also speak to a profound biological and philosophical conundrum. Where do cognition and intelligence come from? How could natural selection turn single-celled amoebas into homo sapiens? Dr. Levin thinks that the electrical communications that help flatworms regenerate might have evolved into the subtler mechanisms of brain communication. Those creepy slime molds and flatworms might help to explain how humans got smart.
Research shows that slime molds are capable of a simple kind of learning.
Berzerker
Deity
I've watched a few MLB games now. Because of the virus the stands are empty so they have these cardboard cutouts of people in parts of the stadium, mainly behind the plate. And they add crowd noise and stadium music, but I dont know if the players can hear it. I think they did a decent job simulating normal games, but why cant they just fill the stands with CGI people or whatever its called?
r16
not deity
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- 12,147
a CGl person would take months to do , would have to be a hologram , needing so much power and like one computer per person and like interfering with each other , though ı gotta say am 20 years behind in so many fields . lt wasn't invented for the benefit of players , but some way of ticket sales , pay and your photo will be fixed on cardboard , you'll be "supporting"your team .
CGI would give viewers the illusion of an audience, but the players wouldn't get it.
TIL that the leader of UKIP between 10 August 2019 and 30 October 2019 is called Dick Braine.
TIL: The Confederates planned to raise 20 regiments of pikemen to fight in the American Civil War. The plan was to attach two companies of pikemen to each infantry regiment in an attempt to revive the old pike-and-shot formation/tactic from the 1600s. The Confederates even went as far as to begin mass producing pikes, but they were never actually issued to soldiers as the plan was eventually abandoned.
Berzerker
Deity
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-lithium-linked-suicide.html
Published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the study collated research from around the world and found that geographical areas with relatively high levels or concentration of lithium in public drinking water had correspondingly lower suicide rates.
Published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the study collated research from around the world and found that geographical areas with relatively high levels or concentration of lithium in public drinking water had correspondingly lower suicide rates.
Zkribbler
Deity
Learning Without a Brain
IT MIGHT SEEM obvious that you need a brain to be intelligent, but a new area of research called “basal cognition” explores whether there are kinds of intelligence that don’t require neurons and synapses. Some of the research was reported in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society last year. These studies may help to answer deep questions about the nature and evolution of intelligence, but the experiments are also just plain fascinating, with truly weird creatures and even weirder results.
Slime molds, for example, are very large single-celled organisms that can agglomerate into masses, creeping across the forest floor and feeding on decaying plants. (One type is called dog vomit slime mold, which gives you an idea of what they look like.) They can also retreat into a sort of freeze-dried capsule form, losing much of their protein and DNA in the process, and stay that way for months. But just add water and the reconstituted slime mold is good as new.
They are also fussy eaters. If you put them down on top of their favorite meal of agar and Quaker oats and add salt or quinine to one part of it, they’ll avoid that part, at least at first. The biologists Aurele Bousard and Audrey Dussutour at the University of Toulouse and colleagues used this fact to show that slime molds can learn in a simple way called habituation. If the only way to get the oats is to eat the salt too, the
molds eventually get used to it and stop objecting. Remarkably, this information somehow persists for up to a month, even through their period of desiccated hibernation.
Flatworms are equally weird. Cut one into a hundred pieces and each piece will regenerate into a perfect new worm. (A slime mold-flatworm alliance against the humans would make a great horror movie.) But how do the cells in the severed flatworm fragment know how to grow into a head and a tail?
Santosh Manicka and Michael Levin of Tufts University argue in the special issue that regeneration involves a kind of cognition. The process is remarkably robust: You can move the cells that usually make a head to the tail location, and they will somehow figure out how to make a tail instead. The researchers argue that this ability to take multiple paths to achieve the same goal requires a kind of intelligence.
Regeneration involves the standard mechanisms that allow the DNA in a cell to manufacture proteins. But Dr. Levin and his colleagues have shown that flatworm cells also communicate information through electricity, signaling to other nearby cells in much the way that neurons do. In experiments that would make Dr. Frankenstein proud, the researchers altered those electrical signals to produce a worm
that consistently regenerates with two heads, or even one that grows the head of another related species of flatworm.
This research has some practical implications: It would be great if human accident victims could grow back their limbs as easily as flatworms do. But the studies also speak to a profound biological and philosophical conundrum. Where do cognition and intelligence come from? How could natural selection turn single-celled amoebas into homo sapiens? Dr. Levin thinks that the electrical communications that help flatworms regenerate might have evolved into the subtler mechanisms of brain communication. Those creepy slime molds and flatworms might help to explain how humans got smart.
Research shows that slime molds are capable of a simple kind of learning.
Future pharmacies may sell "regrow lost limb" packs.
Then again, worms are very simple organisms. Iirc they already include all basic parts for the formations of needed organs in each segment, which is why if you cut them in x parts you then have x worms. Very unlike the human body.
When I was in elementary school, my theory/belief was that one's looks are formed by specific mental states, in some kind of correspondence. So if one looked like a frog, they shared common mental states/brain makeup with other froggish humans. In essence, that would mean one could change how they looked just by knowing what to change in the mental world.
Apart from a host of other issues this theory inflicted on me, it also meant I had to wait till late highschool to actually bother to go on a diet so as to look slim
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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Berzerker
Deity
Jaws off the Maine coast...killed a woman 
Future pharmacies may sell "regrow lost limb" packs.
Then again, worms are very simple organisms. Iirc they already include all basic parts for the formations of needed organs in each segment, which is why if you cut them in x parts you then have x worms. Very unlike the human body.
When I was in elementary school, my theory/belief was that one's looks are formed by specific mental states, in some kind of correspondence. So if one looked like a frog, they shared common mental states/brain makeup with other froggish humans. In essence, that would mean one could change how they looked just by knowing what to change in the mental world.
Apart from a host of other issues this theory inflicted on me, it also meant I had to wait till late highschool to actually bother to go on a diet so as to look slim
Can I have some?
No.
Berzerker
Deity
KC Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes just bought in on the KC Royals. I dont know how much but his daddy pitched in the big leagues and his godfather RP Latroy Hawkins was a mainstay for 2 decades. Maybe Patrick will play for both teams
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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- Apr 5, 2007
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- 20,112
Today I learned that there's a especially high prevalence of multiple sclerosis in British Columbia. I remember one area in Quebec having a high rate of Parkinson's Disease (rural area, so pesticides were likely a factor) so I wonder if something similar is going on here.
Ferocitus
Deity
The map of Parkinson deaths/population doesn't convince me its pesticide related.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parki...ld_map-Deaths_per_million_persons-WHO2012.svg
https://ourworldindata.org/pesticides
If pesticide use was a major factor I'd expect to see a better higher fit between the two maps. (Not that that would prove causation!)
I suspect they just punch each other in the head more often and more of them watch the execrable Star Trek series religiously because Shatner is Canadian.
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