Links for 2021-10-27
Aspects of “next-word prediction” models resemble those of the brain’s language centers — suggesting prediction may be a key component of human language processing. “It’s amazing that the models fit so well,” says Nancy Kanwisher, of her team’s new study. — Artificial intelligence sheds light on how the brain processes language: Neuroscientists find the internal workings of next-word prediction models resemble those of language-processing centers in the brain. https://news.mit.edu/2021/artificial-intelligence-brain-language-1025
The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 variant A.30 is heavily mutated and evades vaccine-induced antibodies with high efficiency https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-021-00779-5
Air & Space Travel Was Once Called Vain and Wasteful Too: “The cynical narrative around the private Space Race feels unique to this moment of growing discontent about wealthy technologists and inequality, but it perfectly mirrors cynical (often forgotten) reactions to the early pursuit of air and space travel, we did a round up…“ pessimistsarchive.substack.com/p/air-and-space-travel-was-once-called
“At Charm we inject plants-turned-carbon-soup deep underground to fight climate change. We’ve now delivered over 5,000 tons CO₂e removal since January. We believe this is the largest permanent carbon dioxide removal delivery of all time.” https://charmindustrial.com/blog/largest-permanent-carbon-removal-delivery-of-all-time
Payments Company Stripe Is Kick Starting Market for Carbon Removal https://archive.md/QYaxg
A primer on longevity youtube.com/watch?v=cKgAS6GAfa4
"Human herpesvirus 5 (CMV) infects the majority of humanity, and on a global scale, is about as bad as HIV and malaria. Here's what you can do to avoid infecting (and superinfecting) yourself and your children." denovo.substack.com/p/cytomegalovirus-the-worst-herpesvirus
“This might be the most extensive article written in support of natural origins of Covid-19…” https://www.factcheck.org/2021/06/scicheck-the-facts-and-gaps-on-the-origin-of-the-coronavirus/
"Our main result is that scientific knowledge has been in clear decline since the early 1970s for the Flow of Ideas and since the early 1950s for the Research Productivity" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162521007010?dgcid=rss_sd_all
"Their work implies that the Universe may have had no beginning – that it has simply always existed. What we perceive as the Big Bang may have been just a particular moment in the evolution of this always-existing causal set, not a true beginning." https://www.sciencealert.com/the-universe-may-have-never-begun-physicists-say
Maps of a Growing Brain Show That Genes Do Less Than We Thought https://medium.com/the-spike/maps-of-a-growing-brain-show-that-genes-do-less-than-we-thought-1d08684b7cb8
Shared heritability of human face and brain shape https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-021-00827-w