Links for 2022-01-26
Mars rover detects carbon signature that hints at past life source: "carbon trapped in a handful of [Martian] rocks probed by the rover is dramatically enriched in light isotopes of carbon. On Earth, the signal would be seen as strong evidence for ancient microbial life." [...] "have worked hard to concoct alternative, nonbiological explanations involving ultraviolet (UV) light and stardust. But those alternatives are at least as far-fetched" https://www.science.org/content/article/mars-rover-detects-carbon-signature-hints-past-life-source
Humans can learn to avoid unsafe situations by imagining hypothetical situations. Now AI systems can do the same - even in complex 3D environments, and even when the limits of safe behaviour must be learned from human feedback! https://deepmindsafetyresearch.medium.com/avoiding-unsafe-states-in-3d-environments-using-human-feedback-5869ed9fb94c
Estimating training compute of Deep Learning models https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HvqQm6o8KnwxbdmhZ/estimating-training-compute-of-deep-learning-models
A group of tech founders, crypto billionaires, and star scientists is launching a fleet of science labs. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/scientific-funding-is-broken-can-silicon-valley-fix-it/621295/
Curing Alzheimer’s by Investing in Aging Research https://progress.institute/curing-alzheimers-by-investing-in-aging-research/
Fundamental behaviors emerge from simulations of a living minimal cell https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01488-4
Multi-ancestry eQTL meta-analysis of human brain identifies candidate causal variants for brain-related traits https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/heritable/2022-zeng.pdf
A battery with a recharge time that is inversely related to the amount of stored energy. https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-built-a-super-fast-quantum-battery/
The better you are at math, the more money seems to influence your satisfaction https://theconversation.com/the-better-you-are-at-math-the-more-money-seems-to-influence-your-satisfaction-173720
How far back would you have to go to find the mutations that led to a cancer diagnosis? Pretty far, it turns out - decades, and perhaps even back to before birth. And it's generally not just one mutation, either. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/long-slow-process-carcinogenesis
China Leads the World in Computer Vision Surveillance Research https://www.unite.ai/cset-china-leads-the-world-in-computer-vision-surveillance-research/
You can throw as many darts at the board below. Some total scores are impossible to obtain -- for example, all numbers less than 5, as well as 6, 8, and 9.
What is the highest whole number score that is impossible to obtain?
Extra Credit: Can you come up with an algorithm or rule to determine the largest impossible score for any two whole numbers on the dartboard?
by Bill Graham in Games Magazine (August 2003)