Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• A Nobel-Prize Winner and Astrophysicist on the Origins of Life

  Mario and Jack share five key insights from their new book, Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest for Cosmic Life

  The fact that there may be as many as a billion such planets in the Milky Way alone has led many people to assume that extrasolar planets must exist that harbor life. This conclusion, however, is at best premature. We have not discovered any life outside of the Earth, so we have no idea what the probability for life is to emerge on a planet, even if conditions are ideal. In fact, the latest findings from origin-of-life research suggest that separate geochemical scenarios need to be linked together precisely in the right sequence to produce the building blocks of life in the same place at the same time.

• Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn't have a coherent understanding of the world

  Researchers show that even the best-performing large language models don't form a true model of the world and its rules, and can thus fail unexpectedly on similar tasks.

• Holocaust scholar says Israel has committed genocide in Gaza

  Holocaust and genocide scholar Omer Bartov has changed his mind about the war in Gaza.
  He now believes Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians.
  

• Muslims Who Voted for Trump Upset by His Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks

  How could they be so naive?

  U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Republican Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration's support for Israel's war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon have been deeply disappointed by his cabinet picks, they tell Reuters.

  Also see Some Arab Americans who voted for Trump are concerned about his picks for key positions.

• Democrats Should Have Listened to Bernie Sanders, Historians Say

  Sanders, who is registered as an independent but caucuses with the Democrats, identifies as a democratic socialist and has been an outspoken critic of centrist Democratic policies, pushing for a more radical shift to the left.
  ...
  The economy, and inflation in particular, was crucial for voters this election, and in the run-up many polls showed that Trump was considered a better economic candidate than Harris. Exit polls showed that the majority of working-class voters backed Trump, who also overperformed among Hispanic voters.

• Insights from Ray Dalio's Big Cycle Framework

  Navigating Asymmetric Risks in Unstable Times

  Dalio's perspective is historical and cyclical: he believes that societal patterns repeat across centuries, and he identifies several warning signs based on historical precedents. These include increasing political weaponization of legal systems, the rise of private militias, escalating protests, and the intensification of class or group demonization, which often signals impending internal conflict. He references examples from past societies, such as the Nazi rise to power, the Roman Republic's fall, and the Weimar Republic's collapse, to underscore how seemingly stable systems can break down under certain pressures.

  Also see We Will Soon Find Out :

  • When the causes that people are fighting for become more important to them than the system, the system is in jeopardy.
  • Late in Stage 5 it is common for the legal and police systems to be used as political weapons by those who can control them.
  • Late in Stage 5 there are increasing numbers of protests that become increasingly violent.
  • People dying in the fighting is the marker that almost certainly signifies the progression to the next and more violent civil war stage, which will continue until the winners and losers are clearly determined.
  • During times of increased hardship and conflict there is an increased inclination to look at people in stereotypical ways as members of one or more classes and to look at these classes as either being enemies or allies.
  • Crossing the line from Stage 5 (when there are very bad financial conditions and intense internal and external conflict exist) to Stage 6 (when there is civil war) occurs when the system for resolving disagreements goes from working to not working.

• Put your usernames and passwords in your will

  Digital end of life planning saves your loved ones from a little extra anguish.

  • Ensuring family members can unlock your smartphone or computer in case of emergency;
  • Maintain a list of your subscriptions, user IDs and passwords;
  • Consider putting those details in a document intended to be made available when your life ends;
  • Use a service that allows you to designate someone to have access to your smartphone and other accounts once your time on Earth ends.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• This AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat

  Yann LeCun, NYU professor and Meta Platforms AI guru.

  At the same time, he is convinced that today's AIs aren't, in any meaningful sense, intelligent-and that many others in the field, especially at AI startups, are ready to extrapolate its recent development in ways that he finds ridiculous.
  ...
  LeCun thinks that the problem with today's AI systems is how they are designed, not their scale. No matter how many GPUs tech giants cram into data centers around the world, he says, today's AIs aren't going to get us artificial general intelligence.
  His bet is that research on AIs that work in a fundamentally different way will set us on a path to human-level intelligence. These hypothetical future AIs could take many forms, but work being done at FAIR to digest video from the real world is among the projects that currently excite LeCun. The idea is to create models that learn in a way that's analogous to how a baby animal does, by building a world model from the visual information it takes in.

  Also see Rage against the machine.

  For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think.
  To think is to resist – something no machine does.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates's Courage

  Peter Beinart interviews Ta-Nehisi Coates about his book The Message.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates's refusal to lie about what he saw in the West Bank, first to go there right? Because so many people, so many celebrated people in American public life, choose not to go there. Because they know, at some level, that if they went there, then they would be forced to carry around the secret that they don't want to have to face the consequences of exposing. He purposely went to see it, and then decided to write about what he had seen.
  ...
  And so, perhaps the message of Camus is that actually the deepest form of community that you have is when you're actually willing to say the things that you believe are true, even if that puts you in community with people who you don't know, who you can't see, who certainly don't have the power and the cultural status, to celebrate you in the way that people in power do.

• What populists don't understand about tariffs (but economists do)

  Costs of tariffs. Tariffs are a tax on imports, and they will raise prices for households and, crucially, for businesses that rely on imported inputs to make their products. Not only will prices rise for the imported products, so will the prices of goods produced at home that compete with imports. Simply put, protectionism reduces the gains from trade; we choose to pay more than necessary for some goods (imports and their domestic substitutes) instead of focusing on those goods that we produce more efficiently than foreigners.
  ...
  Economists have long known that tariffs on imports not only reduce the demand for imports, they also discourage exports. This effect arises because as more domestic resources are used to produce goods that were previously imported, those resources are drawn away from export industries.

• Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping?

  Male flight describes a similar phenomenon when large numbers of females enter a profession, group, hobby or industry-the men leave. That industry is then devalued.

• OpenBB: AI-powered research and analytics workspace

  Integrate, visualize, and analyze data. All in one place.
  Free for individuals. Optimized for teams.

  Read more about it at, Fintech OpenBB aims to be more than an 'open source Bloomberg Terminal'.

• Fly brain breakthrough 'huge leap' to unlock human mind

  Now for the first time scientists researching the brain of a fly have identified the position, shape and connections of every single one of its 130,000 cells and 50 million connections.
  ...
  We have a million times as many brain cells, or neurons, than the fruit fly which was studied.
  ...
  Developing a computer the size of a poppy seed capable of all these tasks is way beyond the ability of modern science.

• Long COVID and chronic fatigue

  "A growing body of research suggests that both long COVID and chronic fatigue are post-viral syndromes that result in chronic, low-grade inflammation that can damage healthy tissue and, in some cases, the production of auto-antibodies that can attack it."

• A Physicist Reveals Why You Should Run in The Rain

  More specifically, does the amount of water that hits you depend on your speed? And is there an ideal speed that minimises the total water you encounter on your way from point A to point B?
  ...
  To sum it all up: it's a good idea to lean forward and move quickly when you're caught in the rain. But careful: leaning forward increases Sh (horizontal surface area of the individual). To really stay drier, you'll need to increase your speed enough to compensate for this.

• Terrorism Works, for its Supporters

  We theorize that terrorism can work, but for its supporters rather than for the terrorists themselves. Because supporters are willing to contribute resources to a terrorist organization, thereby increasing the organization's ability to launch attacks, this can coerce the targeted government to revise its policies in accordance with the supporters' preferences. Targeted governments may respond with concessions in order to erode support and thereby render the terrorists easier to defeat. Support can be rational even when supporters' ideal policies are closer to those of the government than to those of the terrorists.

• Chappell Roan Is a Pop Supernova

  Nothing About It Has Been Easy
  Her joyful pop anthems have connected with a massive audience, but getting here involved long odds and a lot of heartache. And fame is freaking her out a bit.

Some items related to human brain functioning.

• BDNF Basics: 7 Ways to Train Your Brain

  You may lose muscle mass as you age, but you don't have to lose cognitive function.

  One of those mechanisms that's been repeatedly identified as an important component of a healthy brain is brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is a protein that promotes brain function and encourages the growth of new neurons. It's basically like gas in the engine of the brain. And when you're running on empty, the right kind of exercise can trigger the production of more fuel, or in this case, BDNF.

  1. Voluntary exercise has been shown to elicit a bigger increase in BDNF and other growth factors.
  2. The stationary bike is fine, but it's also safe. You'll use more of your brain and generate more BDNF with an activity that requires some level of risk, like rock climbing or stand-up paddleboarding.
  3. Researchers have found that daily exercise is more effective than less frequent bouts of activity, especially in the beginning of a fitness program.
  4. Studies have proven you can get more bang for your buck when it comes to BDNF and brain health by incorporating intervals into your training.
  5. In a study done by William Greenough at the University of Illinois, rats that practiced complex motor skills produced more BDNF than rats that only performed aerobic exercise on a wheel.
  6. Social interaction can stimulate the brain and is often considered one of the best motivators in maintaining an active lifestyle.
  7. While more studies are needed to confirm a link between the outdoors and BDNF levels, we do know the natural environment has an impact on physical activity and the brain. Sunshine and vitamin D may contribute to higher levels of BDNF

• Continuous improvement: Intertwining mind and body in athletic expertise

  This book sheds light on a phenomenon of continuous improvement by presenting a theory which demonstrates how mindfully attending to the body allows the skilled performer to address the various 'crises' (e.g. injury, attrition of habits induced by ageing) that confront the embodied subject and to respond flexibly in dynamically unfolding competitive environments. It explains how athletes like Roger Federer, Tom Brady, and Serena Williams are capable both of moments of exquisite brilliance and of sustaining such excellence over a prolonged period.

• Why do we crumble under pressure?

  Study links this phenomenon to the brain region that controls movement.

  Experiments in monkeys reveal that 'choking' under pressure is linked to a drop in activity in the neurons that prepare for movement.

• Part of brain network much bigger in people with depression, scientists find

  Now researchers say that in people with depression, a larger part of the brain is involved in the network that controls attention to rewards and threats than in those without depression.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Have economists gone out of fashion in Washington?

  The rise of the Yale Law School of Economics seems to say more about the political winds of our times and the declining popularity of economists and their ideas than anything. Free-market policies -- sometimes called "neoliberalism" -- are unpopular on both sides of the political aisle right now. Many blame it for widening inequality, the loss of manufacturing jobs and a host of related social ills. "I don't think a lot of economists would call themselves neoliberal, but a lot of ideas in economics do seem consistent with it," Schrager says.

• To Sleep, Perchance Not Very Well, by Taking Melatonin

  While taking it can be timed to help overcome jet lag, melatonin is no good for chronic sleeplessness.

  "There's not enough strong evidence on the effectiveness or safety of melatonin supplementation for chronic insomnia to recommend its use," according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. In addition, neither the American Academy of Sleep Medicine nor the American College of Physicians endorses the use of melatonin to treat insomnia.

• USA Facts

  Steve Ballmer, founder

  No one at USAFacts is trying to convince you of anything. The only opinion we have is that government data should be easier to access. Our entire mission is to provide you with facts about the United States that are rooted in data. We believe once you have the solid, unbiased numbers behind the issues you can make up your own mind.

• Fight Health Insurance

  Generate a Health Insurance Appeal with AI

  At Totally Legit Co, we specialize in helping you fight health insurance denial effectively and efficiently. The first step involves scanning your denial letter. This can be done through optical character recognition (OCR) either on your device/phone (recommended for increased privacy) or on our servers (more accurate). OCR makes the text understandable to machines, allowing our generative AI model to produce potential appeals for you to choose from.

• Smart Goose Deterrent System

  To outsmart geese, we built a system that uses motion detection, Image Recognition, and AI to detect geese and people. If it finds geese, it activates sprinklers. If it finds people or nothing of interest, it disables sprinklers.

• 'Femininomenon' Chappell Roan inspires devotion on UK tour

  The latest pop music phenomenon.

• Cursor is ChatGPT for coding

  -- now anyone can make an app in minutes

Some items related to LLM limits, uses and AI robots.

• AI Lacks Independent Learning, Poses No Existential Threat

  Summary: New research reveals that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT cannot learn independently or acquire new skills without explicit instructions, making them predictable and controllable. The study dispels fears of these models developing complex reasoning abilities, emphasizing that while LLMs can generate sophisticated language, they are unlikely to pose existential threats. However, the potential misuse of AI, such as generating fake news, still requires attention.

• Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art

  To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence.

  Real paintings bear the mark of an enormous number of decisions. By comparison, a person using a text-to-image program like dall-e enters a prompt such as "A knight in a suit of armor fights a fire-breathing dragon," and lets the program do the rest. (The newest version of dall-e accepts prompts of up to four thousand characters-hundreds of words, but not enough to describe every detail of a scene.) Most of the choices in the resulting image have to be borrowed from similar paintings found online; the image might be exquisitely rendered, but the person entering the prompt can't claim credit for that.
  ...
  What I'm saying is that art requires making choices at every scale; the countless small-scale choices made during implementation are just as important to the final product as the few large-scale choices made during the conception. It is a mistake to equate "large-scale" with "important" when it comes to the choices made when creating art; the interrelationship between the large scale and the small scale is where the artistry lies.

  For a negative take on the above see X/Twitter Séb Krier Post.

• Ways to think about AGI

  How do we think about a fundamentally unknown and unknowable risk, when the experts agree only that they have no idea? Benedict Evans

  Serious AI scientists who previously thought AGI was probably decades away now suggest that it might be much closer. At the extreme, the so-called 'doomers' argue there is a real risk of AGI emerging spontaneously from current research and that this could be a threat to humanity, and calling for urgent government action. Some of this comes from self-interested companies seeking barriers to competition ('this is very dangerous and we are building it as fast as possible, but don't let anyone else do it'), but plenty of it is sincere.
  ...
  They don't know, either way, because we don't have a coherent theoretical model of what general intelligence really is, nor why people seem to be better at it than dogs, nor how exactly people or dogs are different to crows or indeed octopuses. Equally, we don't know why LLMs seem to work so well, and we don't know how much they can improve. We know, at a basic and mechanical level, about neurons and tokens, but we don't know why they work. We have many theories for parts of these, but we don't know the system. Absent an appeal to religion, we don't know of any reason why AGI cannot be created (it doesn't appear to violate any law of physics), but we don't know how to create it or what it is, except as a concept.

• Google DeepMind develops a 'solidly amateur' table tennis robot

  Check out the videos.

  During testing, the table tennis bot was able to beat all of the beginner-level players it faced. With intermediate players, the robot won 55% of matches. It's not ready to take on pros, however. The robot lost every time it faced an advanced player. All told, the system won 45% of the 29 games it played.

• Fully-automatic robot dentist performs world's first human procedure

  The system, built by Boston company Perceptive, uses a hand-held 3D volumetric scanner, which builds a detailed 3D model of the mouth, including the teeth, gums and even nerves under the tooth surface, using optical coherence tomography, or OCT.

  This cuts harmful X-Ray radiation out of the process, as OCT uses nothing more than light beams to build its volumetric models, which come out at high resolution, with cavities automatically detected at an accuracy rate around 90%.

  At this point, the (human) dentist and patient can discuss what needs doing - but once those decisions are made, the robotic dental surgeon takes over. It plans out the operation, then jolly well goes ahead and does it.

  Check out the videos at the above url.

• Profound: AI Search Optimization

  We help brands monitor, understand, and optimize visibility across all major LLM Platforms

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Will the recent return of inequality outweigh its long-term decline?

  Why is social inequality increasing in the 21st Century?

  In the long run, is inequality rising?

  Daniel Waldenström. When we look back over the whole of the last century, the answer is no. With the introduction of democracy, redistribution, the shocks of wars and other economic crises, the 20th Century has been an era of strong equalisation in western societies. However, if we consider the last four decades there is more of a debate with larger differences across countries. The 80s were a global low in inequality reduction. But since then there has only been a mild increase in most European countries with a larger increase in the United States.

• Netanyahu's ceasefire doublespeak: Dovish with U.S., hawkish with negotiators

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Monday that he's committed to getting a Gaza hostage and ceasefire agreement, but Israeli officials say he has refused to give his own negotiators enough space to make a deal.

• Israeli settlers are seizing Palestinian land under cover of war - they hope permanently

  Last week, Israel's domestic intelligence chief Ronen Bar wrote to ministers warning that Jewish extremists in the West Bank were carrying out acts of "terror" against Palestinians and causing "indescribable damage" to the country.
  ...
  Extremists in Israel's government boast that these changes will prevent an independent Palestinian state from ever being created.

• Exclusive: the papers that most heavily cite retracted studies

  Data from giant project show how withdrawn research propagates through the literature.

• A Test for Life Versus Non-Life

  In a new book, physicist Sara Walker argues that assembly theory can explain what life is, and even help scientists create new forms of it.

  Assembly theory, as they call it, looks at everything in the universe in terms of how it was assembled from smaller parts. Life, the scientists argue, emerges when the universe hits on a way to make exceptionally intricate things.
  ...
  The scientists suggested that the cutoff of 15 they discovered in their experiments might be evidence of a threshold for life. Ordinary chemistry could assemble molecules only through a limited number of steps, whereas life could carry it much further.
  ...
  But some biologists criticized the paper's sweeping claims and obscure language. "How did this nonsense get past peer review?" Rosemary Redfield, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, asked on X.

  Technical details published in Nature: Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution.

• Blood test has a 90 percent accuracy rate in determining whether memory loss is due to Alzheimer's

  The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that a p-tau217 blood test can determine whether memory loss is caused by Alzheimer's about 91 percent of the time, compared to 73 percent accuracy for specialists and 61 percent for primary care doctors.

• I, for one, will mourn Twitter

  Jonn Elledge, New Statesman

  But since Elon Musk acquired it, possibly by accident, back in 2022, the voices of racist, misogynistic or homophobic trolls have become louder and more prominent. Moderation policies have been weakened; banned accounts belonging to the likes of Andrew Tate or Alex Jones reinstated. Misinformation abounds, and the loss of reputable advertisers has made noticeably less reputable ones more visible.

  Similarly Sam Harris has left X/Twitter.
  I wonder when other Musk/Twitter fans like Tyler Cowen. will see the light.
  

• Insider Trading by Other Means

  The basic idea is that insiders conceal their suspicious trades by publicly reporting them (as they are required to do) in ways that confuse or discourage investigators. We develop a taxonomy of concealment strategies, complete with suggestive examples. We then empirically test our taxonomy using a database of essentially all stock trades since 1992. We find that insiders who trade using the subterfuges we describe outperform the market by up to 20% on average.

• Delay of gratification and adult outcomes: The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning.

  Yet another psychology study bites the dust.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• The Importance of Critical Analyses in Examining Social Science Evidence

  Peter Gray: Comments on Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation

  When you read a book that references research studies supporting the author's thesis, don't assume the studies truly show what the author says or implies. This brings me to The Anxious Generation.
  ...
  When I read, at Jon's request, a pre-publication draft of the book, I told him I could not support it, and I explained why. I had at that time already looked quite broadly and deeply at the research pertaining to questions about effects of screens, Internet, smartphones, and social media on teens' mental health and found that, despite countless studies designed to reveal such harmful effects, there was very little evidence for such effects. If you survey the research literature selectively, with an eye toward finding studies that seem to show the effects you are looking for, and if you don't analyze them critically, you can make what will seem to readers to be a compelling case. But people who really know the research and have examined it fully and critically will see through it.

• Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed (Parts 1 & 2)

  Ray Dalio, Founder, CIO Mentor, and member of the Bridgewater Board

  Over these many years I have also seen capitalism evolve in a way that it is not working well for the majority of Americans because it's producing self-reinforcing spirals up for the haves and down for the have-nots. This is creating widening income/wealth/opportunity gaps that pose existential threats to the United States because these gaps are bringing about damaging domestic and international conflicts and weakening America's condition.

  I think that most capitalists don't know how to divide the economic pie well and most socialists don't know how to grow it well, yet we are now at a juncture in which either a) people of different ideological inclinations will work together to skillfully re-engineer the system so that the pie is both divided and grown well or b) we will have great conflict and some form of revolution that will hurt most everyone and will shrink the pie.

  Also see by Ray Dalio, The Coming Great Conflict

  As you know, based on my study of history, I believe there are now and have always been five big, interrelated forces that drive how domestic and world orders change. They are the 1) the big debt/credit/money cycle, 2) the big internal order/disorder cycle 3) the big external order/disorder cycle, 4) acts of nature (i.e., droughts, floods, and pandemics), and 5) human innovation that leads to advances in technology. Today, I am focusing on why I believe we are approaching the point in the internal order-disorder cycle when you will have to choose between picking a side and fighting for it, keeping your head down, or fleeing.

• AIP Interview of Jim Simons December 3, 18, and 22, 2020

  David Zierler, American Institute of Physics

  This transcript may not be quoted, reproduced or redistributed in whole or in part by any means except with the written permission of the American Institute of Physics.

I've been going to presentations at the Simons Foundation in NYC since 2017. After the death of James Simons on May 10 2024, I searched for information about him, especially his history of smoking. Even though he died of lung cancer, details were hard to find. This interview discusses that and also includes lots of information about his life. Fascinating.

Surprising to me, Simons' estimate of the risk of getting lung cancer was not irrational. At The Mystery of Why So Many Lifelong Smokers Never Get Lung Cancer May Be Solved it says:

The findings could help explain why 80 to 90 percent of lifelong smokers never develop lung cancer. It could also help explain why some people who never smoke at all do develop the tumors.

• What Makes Memory Retrieval Work-and Not Work?

  One mystery is how we summon long-term memories into consciousness.

  Delayed retrieval occurs because searching unsuccessfully along ineffective retrieval pathways primes unused pathways nearby. If some of these nearby pathways connect to the memory we want, priming makes them more likely to be activated later, leading to successful recall. Delayed recall often occurs unexpectedly because retrieval processes continue operating without our direct awareness.

• What Would It Take to Recreate Bell Labs?

  Institute for Progress, Brian Potter

  Bell Labs was made possible by a large-scale, vertically integrated telephone monopoly that allowed for an unusually long and wide research and development horizon for an industrial lab. Outside of those conditions (not likely to be repeated), funding a Bell Labs-style operation does not appear to be something most companies are willing to do.
  ...
  Jon Gertner likewise posits in The Idea Factory that even in the absence of a justice department lawsuit, the technology that Bell Labs spawned would have ultimately unwound the AT&T monopoly and thus the very thing that allowed Bell Labs to exist.

• Skip the Small Talk - NYC

  We'll pair you up and give you some psychology-backed question prompts (but you'll always have the option to pick the question prompt of your choosing or make up your own), and then have you switch partners so you'll get to talk to a bunch of people throughout the event. We always start and end with the same question prompts (that you can still always opt out of), but our middle question prompts are always different.
  ...
  While our events are currently centered on guests in their 20's and 30's and the majority of people who show up tend to be in that age range, guests of all ages attend and have reported having a nice time.

• Grouper

  Grouper is leading a social fitness movement that encourages healthy living through meaningful social connections and shared experiences.

  As you join and participate in qualifying in-person activities with groups, we work with your health plan to support the costs of participation in those groups and make other benefits available to you.

Some (older but still relevant) items related to motor skills in older adults.

• Why does motor performance decline with aging?

  NeuRA 2017

  Populations in many countries are aging as the proportion of people over 65 years is projected to increase over the next 30-40 years. Aging however, is accompanied by a reduced ability to perform daily tasks such as walking, rising from a chair and climbing stairs, ultimately impacting independence of living. These age-related reductions in daily functional activities are associated with changes in the neuromuscular system that include reduced muscle strength, power and endurance of limb muscles with notable declines beginning at around 60 years. Although people are living longer, the causes for the large declines in neuromuscular function with very advanced age (greater than 80 years) are not well described or understood. Other contributing factors such as physical activity, genetics, nutritional status, hormonal status and inflammation can interact with biological aging and modify these functional declines both within an individual and between people as they age. This review (Hunter et al., 2016) highlighted some of the known functional deficits and causes for age-related changes in muscle function with a focus on the basic functional unit of the neuromuscular system called the 'motor unit', which is a motor nerve and the muscle fibres it innervates.

• A role for nutritional intervention in addressing the aging neuromuscular junction

  ScienceDirect 2018

  The purpose of this review is to discuss the structural and physiological changes that underlie age-related neuromuscular dysfunction and to summarize current evidence on the potential role of nutritional interventions on neuromuscular dysfunction-associated pathways. Age-related neuromuscular deficits are known to coincide with distinct changes in the central and peripheral nervous system, in the neuromuscular system, and systemically. Although many features contribute to the age-related decline in neuromuscular function, a comprehensive understanding of their integration and temporal relationship is needed. Nonetheless, many nutrients and ingredients show promise in modulating neuromuscular output by counteracting the age-related changes that coincide with neuromuscular dysfunction. In particular, dietary supplements, such as vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, β-hydroxy-β-methylbutyrate, creatine, and dietary phospholipids, demonstrate potential in ameliorating age-related neuromuscular dysfunction. However, current evidence seldom directly assesses neuromuscular outcomes and is not always in the context of aging. Additional clinical research studies are needed to confirm the benefits of dietary supplements on neuromuscular function, as well as to define the appropriate population, dosage, and duration for intervention.

• Motor-skill learning in older adults-a review of studies on age-related differences

  Bio Med Central (BMC) 2008

  This paper reviews research on motor-skill learning across the life span with particular emphasis on older age. For this purpose, studies that focus on age-related differences in fine and gross motor skills and studies that analyze the further refinement of known skills as well as learning of unknown motor skills are summarized. The reviewed studies suggest that although motor performance tends to decline in old age, learning capabilities remain intact, and older adults are able to achieve considerable performance gains. The extent to which the learning capability varies with age, however, has to be considered very carefully. While most studies revealed that performance gains in fine motor tasks are diminished in older adults, results for gross-motor-skill learning are more contradictory. Additionally, there is considerable agreement on the finding that age-related learning differences are statistically more robust in complex tasks, whereas in low-complexity tasks, the learning of younger and older adults is very similar. This applies to fine and gross motor skills. Relative age differences seem to become enlarged when effortful resources are required for motor performance. Thus, the decline in motor learning that accompanies aging is task specific and not absolute.

• How Juggling Can Increase Neuroplasticity

  Brain&Life 2024

  When people - young or old - learn to juggle, their brains change, research shows. One such study, published in 2004 in Nature, reported that gray matter in a part of the hippocampus that's associated with complex visual processing became denser. Another study, published in Nature Neuroscience in 2009, reported changes in the brain's white matter in areas associated with reaching and grasping in the periphery of vision-regardless of skill level.

  These structural changes in the brain after juggling also may improve cognitive function, according to researchers in a 2022 review of 11 studies on juggling and the brain, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Researchers reflect on the death of billionaire science donor Jim Simons and his charitable impact

  A brilliant mathematician who made billions on Wall Street, Simons gave heavily to basic science and higher education

  Simons was also happy to take risks, both in his everyday life and in his business affairs, Phillips says. He had a penchant for adventure, often bringing his friends and family along on cruises on his superyacht, the Archimedes. And he was a continuous smoker since the age of 14. "I think if I stopped smoking, I'd get stupider than I am," he told a historian in a 2020 interview with the American Institute of Physics.

  Also on the Simons Foundation web site, Remembering the Life and Careers of Jim Simons.

• Cutting pollution from the shipping industry accidentally increased global warming, study suggests

  A reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions may have caused "80% of the measured increase in planetary heat uptake since 2020."

  Schmidt pointed to an analysis made by Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute, which argues that the study's warming calculation relies on an overly simplified model that misunderstands heat uptake from the ocean, meaning the study overstates the sulfur reduction's warming impact.

• 'The death of Slim Shady': Controversial legacy of Eminem's peroxide-blond alter ego

  Eminem's arrival as Slim Shady on the lead single, My Name Is, was timed perfectly for chaotic impact. While America reportedly enjoyed its "happiest decade" during the 90s, Shady revealed a disillusioned white underbelly.
  ...
  Mathers himself is a dichotomy, with Shady's antics counter-balanced by his thought-provoking raps as Eminem.

• New York City Public Restrooms Map

  NYC Public Restrooms by Location

• If you've tried meditating but can't sit still, here's how - and why - to try again
• A New Home for Meetup

  Italian technology developer Bending Spoons buys Meetup.com

• The Fifth Place - A Room with New Rules

  The Fifth Place is an invitation-only, absurdist social gathering held within different venues in New York. Each time you visit The Fifth Place you are given a new set of rules by our Directors of Behavior which shape your interactions with the other guests. The Fifth Place is devoted to antic joy and higher forms of irrationality. Attendance is free.

• The Greatest Social Media Site Is Craigslist (Yes, Craigslist)

  Craigslist's business model is quite simple: Users in a few categories-apartments in select cities, jobs, vehicles for sale-pay a small but reasonable fee to make posts. Everything else is free. Its Perl-backed tech is straightforward. The team is relatively lean, as the company considers functions like sales and marketing superfluous. This strategy has allowed Craigslist to stay extremely profitable throughout the years without implementing sophisticated recommendation algorithms or inundating the webpage with third-party advertisements. Its runaway success threatens decades-old industry gospels of growth, disruption, and innovation, and might force tech evangelists to admit they don't fully understand what people want.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Failed To Deliver Promised Benefits

  Benefits of the business tax changes in Trump's 2017 tax bill were costly and did not trickle down to workers and families.

  An important body of evidence shows that the corporate tax changes in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act failed to produce promised investment or wage increases for the vast majority of U.S. workers. The law did, however, significantly reduce corporate tax collections, diverting resources from public investment to the pockets of wealthy shareholders, executives, and high-paid workers.

• For most people, politics is about fitting in

  Nate Silver

  I think political beliefs are primarily formulated by two major forces:

  • Politics as self-interest. Some issues have legible, material stakes. Rich people have an interest in lower taxes. Sexually active women (and men!) who don't want to bear children have an interest in easier access to abortion. Members of historically disadvantaged groups have an interest in laws that protect their rights
  • Politics as personal identity - whose team are you on. But other issues have primarily symbolic stakes. These serve as vehicles for individual and group expression - not so much "identity politics" but politics as identity. People are trying to figure out where they fit in - who's on their side and who isn't. And this works in both directions: people can be attracted to a group or negatively polarized by it. People have different reasons for arguing about politics, and can derive value from a sense of social belonging and receiving reinforcement that their choices are honorable and righteous.
• Half grain-sized brain tissue with 1400 TB data mapped by Harvard, Google

  Harvard and Google collaborate to create the most detailed 3D reconstruction of human brain tissue, shedding light on neural complexity in humans.

  Imagine exploring the intricate world within a single cubic millimeter of human brain tissue. It might seem insignificant, but within that tiny space lies a universe of complexity - 57,000 individual cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and a staggering 150 million synapses, the junctions where neurons communicate.

  All this information translates to a mind-boggling 1,400 terabytes of data.

• Exploring the mysterious alphabet of sperm whales

  MIT CSAIL and Project CETI researchers reveal complex communication patterns in sperm whales, deepening our understanding of animal language systems.

• Revolutionary Genetics Research Shows RNA May Rule Our Genome

  Scientists have recently discovered thousands of active RNA molecules that can control the human body

• Humans now share the web equally with bots, report warns amid fears of the 'dead internet'

  Sites such as Twitter/X have been overrun by automated accounts

  In recent months, the so-called "dead internet theory" has gained new popularity. It suggests that much of the content online is in fact automatically generated, and that the number of humans on the web is dwindling in comparison with bot accounts.