Links for 2021-11-06
“Thinking requires 0.2 Watts. Carrying that information across the brain requires 5 Watts. Each neuron process 7 bits per second, and requires about 0.35 picojoules per bit. Human neurons are not more efficient than rat neurons.” https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.23.057927v1.full
Small 1.5-megawatt microreactors powered by nuclear waste from large reactors https://cnbc.com/2021/06/28/oklo-planning-nuclear-micro-reactors-that-run-off-nuclear-waste.html
Procedural Generalization by Planning with Self-Supervised World Models (generalization capabilities of MuZero, MuZero + self-supervision leads to new SotA on ProcGen, implicit meta-learning on MetaWorld) https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.01587
Scientists’ model suggests alien encounters are on the horizon: “A team of scientists say that ‘grabby aliens’ are needed to explain why we humans have appeared so soon after the big bang, and that our descendants would encounter them in roughly a billion years’ time.” https://www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/latest-news/2021/10/scientists-model-suggests-alien-encounters-are-on-the-horizon/
“The ongoing reductions in space launch cost are just insane. SpaceX's Starship, at high launch cadence, could bring launch costs down by a factor of nearly 1,000 vs the 2000s.” https://medium.com/prime-movers-lab/launch-cost-and-cadence-are-key-enablers-for-the-new-space-economy-510bf49c5dbb
Dogs learn about word boundaries the same way human infants learn about them https://phys.org/news/2021-10-dogs-word-boundaries-human-infants.html
Epigenetic and post-transcriptional changes in the RUNX2 gene might account for the typical globular skull shape found in humans (https://nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00511-3)...and perhaps for aspects of our distinctive cognition…(https://frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00282/full).
How Did China Develop the J-35 Stealth Fighter So Fast? https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-did-china-develop-j-35-stealth-fighter-so-fast-190080
“nearly 200 coal-fired power stations under construction in Asia, including 95 in China, 28 in India and 23 in Indonesia” https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/cop26-aims-banish-coal-asia-is-building-hundreds-power-plants-burn-it-2021-10-29/