Links for 2023-03-21
“CoLT5: Faster Long-Range Transformers with Conditional Computation — CoLT5 can effectively and tractably make use of extremely long inputs, showing strong gains up to 64k input length.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.09752
Rabies virus-based barcoded neuroanatomy resolved by single-cell RNA and in situ sequencing: “High-throughput and low-cost neuroanatomical techniques based on RNA barcode sequencing have the potential to achieve circuit mapping at cellular resolution and a brain-wide scale…We were able to identify which labeled neuron projected to which injection site, by sequencing the rabies-virus-expressed barcodes, and also to sequence endogenous cellular mRNAs and thereby to identify the labeled neurons' cell types.” https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.16.532873v1
Up to 1,000,000 Times Faster: A Switch Made From a Single Molecule https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00282.html
Building a Computer with a Single Atom: "I would probably argue that what we are trying to emphasize with this work is that the minimal system capable of computing really does exist on the level of a single atom and that computation can be performed purely with optical processes." https://scitechdaily.com/building-a-computer-with-a-single-atom/
You can now create amazing videos from text with the largest diffusion model ever open-sourced. https://twitter.com/dr_cintas/status/1637508806757216256
What would it mean to decode a non-trivial memory from a map of the brain? https://neurobiology.substack.com/p/what-would-it-mean-to-decode-a-non
Newly discovered enzyme that turns air into electricity, providing a new clean source of energy https://phys.org/news/2023-03-newly-enzyme-air-electricity-source.html
Anders Sandberg: I dream of a Cambrian explosion of diversity. Lots of posthuman offshoots becoming their own thing and interacting. I want a future like a coral reef: Colorful fishes, some enormous inert systems that are just sitting there, some things big as whales and others small as nematode worms, weird symbiosis, and competition. http://thenewmodality.com/the-mega-diverse-coral-reef-future-of-humanity-interview-with-anders-sandberg/
"Hagwons (cram schools) ... stuffed with students memorizing English vocabulary, Korean grammar rules and math formulas. Students typically stay after regular school hours until 10 p.m. or later." [The New York Times] https://archive.is/Ungl2
"Nearly 2/3 of Korean firms say the skills they seek actually have little to do with whether an applicant is a college graduate ... Korea is the only OECD member where the correlation between course taken in tertiary education and employment is essentially zero." https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/south-korea-s-education-success-is-faltering-in-evolving-economy-report
See also: https://humanvarieties.org/2014/06/19/hvgiq-vietnam/
■ The average IQ of Vietnam from six normal samples is 91.4. But there is some evidence that IQ in Vietnam increases to about 100 during adolescence.
■ Recent PISA results indicate that Vietnam has an Achievement Quotient of 102. Although some skepticism over this result seems warranted.
■ There is a .33 correlation between latitude and test scores in Vietnam: the Northern part of the country has slightly higher scores than the Southern part.
■ The average IQ for Vietnamese Americans from six normal samples is 100.7.
■ The average AQ for Vietnamese Americans from four normal samples is 100.6.
■ The achievement test performance of Vietnamese Americans has increased over time since the 1980s, and this trend is ongoing.