Links for 20210815
'Holy grail discovery' in solid-state physics could usher in new technologies: on the discovery of a so-called topological axion insulator https://techxplore.com/news/2021-08-holy-grail-discovery-solid-state-physics.html
Artificial neural networks modeled on real brains can perform cognitive tasks — “Here we reconstruct human brain connectomes using in vivo diffusion-weighted imaging and use reservoir computing to implement connectomes as artificial neural networks.” https://techxplore.com/news/2021-08-artificial-neural-networks-real-brains.html
"When a counterintuitive new idea comes along, the first people to support it will be contrarians, and so the new idea will become associated with contrarian traits and beliefs, and people will become even more reluctant to believe it because that would affiliate them with low-prestige people/traits/beliefs." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h723jFRLGosaxEzGC/the-contrarian-status-catch-22
"The extent of poverty in our world today requires very large global aggregate growth if we want global poverty to decline substantially. A world economy with substantially less poverty is at a minimum 5-times bigger than today’s global economy" https://ourworldindata.org/poverty-minimum-growth-needed
Microwave-Powered Rocket Propulsion Gets a Boost https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/research-news/20210707140100.html
“In general, pornography use trended downward over the pandemic, for both men and women.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02077-7
John Cena Apologizing to China Signifies Cultural Shift youtube.com/watch?v=CdDmUDxEqwo