Links for 2022-03-15
Another terrifying reminder that humanity's chance of surviving this century is not very good: “Flip the sign of the goal function and you can turn a drug discovery program into a toxin discovery program.” – Anders Sandberg | Researchers built an AI for discovering less toxic drug compounds. Then they retrained it to do the opposite. Within six hours it generated 40,000 toxic molecules, including VX nerve agent and "many other known chemical warfare agents." https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-022-00465-9
“Which brain cell types are connected, and what do those connections look like? Recording from multiple live neurons simultaneously — our researchers mapped thousands of cortical connections to find out.” https://alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/news-press/articles/how-do-our-neurons-connect-new-study-probes-details-human-and-mouse-synapses
Out of the 90 billion neurons in your 🧠 brain, how many are ⚡ active right now? An interview with the neuroscientist Mark Humphries about why most of our neurons are "dark neurons" and what that says about how our brains work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20gLokdz-BA
Salted bomb: “Physicist W. H. Clark looked at the potential of such devices and estimated that a 20 megaton bomb salted with sodium would generate sufficient radiation to contaminate 200,000 square miles (520,000 km2) (an area that is slightly larger than Spain or Thailand, though smaller than France). Given the intensity of the gamma radiation, not even those in basement shelters could survive within the fallout zone.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salted_bomb
Fatal Police Shootings and Race: A Review of the Evidence and Suggestions for Future Research https://www.manhattan-institute.org/verbruggen-fatal-police-shootings
Videos of cells doing what cells do https://routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/9780815344506/videos.php
Mammalian offspring derived from a single unfertilized egg https://phys.org/news/2022-03-mammalian-offspring-derived-unfertilized-egg.html
"Across nonindustrial societies larger and higher status men tend to have greater reproductive success, although importantly this relationship seems to be substantially smaller (r = 0.19) than that found across nonhuman primates (r = 0.80)." https://traditionsofconflict.com/blog/2020/5/2/does-male-competition-help-explain-human-sex-differences-in-body-size
Russia's long-term economic prospects https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/russias-long-term-prospects