Category Archives: Science

Unknown's avatar

ClimateTrace announced at COP29

by

At this year’s annual climate summit, COP29, experts unveiled a list of the world’s top polluting cities, with data revealing the massive impact of urban emissions on global climate challenges. The findings come from Climate TRACE, a coalition co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. The group uses satellite and ground-based observations combined with artificial intelligence to track air pollution across the globe.

The top five are: Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, Houston and Seoul.

“One of the sites in the Permian Basin in Texas is by far the No. 1 worst polluting site in the entire world,” Gore said. “And maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I think of how dirty some of these sites are in Russia and China and so forth. But Permian Basin is putting them all in the shade.” The Permian Basin is located in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

You can see the Climate TRACE website here: climatetrace.org/

“We must be ruled by principles, not people.” – Michael Muthukrisha

“It was so hot, I could hear the sun!”

Unknown's avatar

Roger Penrose thinks consciousness might be created by gravity induced phenomenon !

by

Roger Penrose was recently interviewed by Andréa Morris.

For decades, Penrose has been working with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff on a theory of consciousness called Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR).

Penrose’s theory proposes that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons, rather than the conventional view that it is a product of connections between neurons. The mechanism is held to be a quantum process called objective reduction that is orchestrated by cellular structures called microtubules. It is proposed that the theory may answer the hard problem of consciousness and provide a mechanism for free will.

When it comes to the suddenly salient question of whether or not AI could be conscious, Penrose draws again from Gödel and Goodstein’s theorems. Computer science is built on formalized systems. They’re confined by computation. For Penrose, AI built on classical computers today isn’t capable of true understanding or consciousness. After some consideration, he adds a caveat when it comes to quantum computers: “You put wave function collapse into its process somehow….”

You can see the full 34 minute interview here.

Unknown's avatar

DALL-E and ChatGPT are from the same company

by

Did you know that ChatGPT was created by the same company that created DALL-E ? That is OpenAI. OpenAI is a private company, so far, and is owned by private investors.

https://openai.com/

DALL-E 2 is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. The images in this post were created by DALL-E. .

https://openai.com/dall-e-2/

If you have an account at either AI site, it will work at the other site. Your account is actually an OpenAI account! I wonder what their next system will be?! .

Unknown's avatar

toyota’s new portable invention could change the world

by

https://carbuzz.com/news/toyotas-new-portable-invention-could-change-the-world

Read the above linked article about Toyota and Hydrogen. They believe as do I that hydrogen is the way to power our lives in the future. But I don’t have the stuffins to prove my case.

Just think Woven Planet and remember that you first heard the term here. They have a portable hydrogen cartridge that just might change our future.

For the record, I also believe in nuclear energy.

Unknown's avatar

Futurism

by

The hourglass graphic posted here the other day did not include the link to the original article by Max Roser at Our World In Data . His article is excellent, he discusses our future which may be excellent, or then again, possibly not so good. The future itself is vast, and our responsibility is tremendous. If you thought the hourglass was intriguing, then you should read the full article:

ourworldindata.org/longtermism

In the above article, Max Moser points us to an article written by a group called “80,000 Hours” by Benjamin Todd about existential risk reduction (quoted and pointed to below). The not-for-profit company “80,000 Hours” has a funny goal of trying to help figure out what we can do with our career to make the world a better place. It seems like this group should be reviewed, especially by the younger people.

The full article below is said to be a 25 minute read, but a podcast is included. Perhaps commuters could listen to it.

Here’s a suggestion that’s not so often discussed: our first priority should be to survive. So long as civilization continues to exist, we’ll have the chance to solve all our other problems, and have a far better future. But if we go extinct, that’s it.

80000hours.org/articles/existential-risks/

Statistically speaking, I wonder how many people even give a damn about this stuff. Perhaps these articles might make a difference.

”The future is ours to win. But to get there we can’t just stand still…” – Barack Obama

Unknown's avatar

The difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit is one of Degrees!

by

Think of Global Warming or Climate Crisis. The idea is that the average temperature around the world is slowly rising due to human activity. Scientists and all the world except the USA use Celsius (C) as the temperature scale. USA businesses do not want to spend money to change their printed materials, so they lobby to stick with Fahrenheit.

One degree Celsius is 1.8 times larger than one degree Fahrenheit. Those who talk about Global Warming should keep this little table in mind when you are around luddites.

Temperature Change Equivalences

1.0 C <=> 1.8 F
1.5 C <=> 2.7 F
2.0 C <=> 3.6 F
2.5 C <=> 4.5 F
3.0 C <=> 5.4 F
3.5 C <=> 6.3 F

”Catastrophe is not a matter of fate. It’s a matter of choice.” – George Monblot

Unknown's avatar

“Curiouser and curiouser!”

by

There is a place in the Google playgrounds that will tell you how frequently a word or phrase is used in Google searches. This place is called Trends. See it here:

https://trends.google.com

Playing around tonight, I compared 3 phrases:

climate change
climate crisis
global warming

I was surprised, “climate crisis” is rarely searched for. This does not mean the term is not used. It just means that no one searches for it.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

“Conclusion: There is no substitute for direct climate action“ – Assaad Razzouk

Unknown's avatar

Cop26 is behind us

by

In 1992, the United Nations started a meeting of nations to “avoid dangerous climate change”. The meetings, to be held every year, are called United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The annual meetings are called “Conference of the parties”, (Cop) followed by the meeting number.  This year it was COP26.

Each country is supposed to provide promises aka targets to meet goals to hold temperatures in line with survival of our species. Those national targets are called “nationally determined contributions” (NDC).

In 2015, the Paris agreement committed to limit heating to an increase of 1.5C.

You can read more about “the facts” here:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/11/what-is-cop26-and-why-does-it-matter-the-complete-guide

Meanwhile, it appears that the NDCs from this year’s COP have failed to stay in line with the Paris agreement.  See this chart.

As David Attenborough said, there is “desperate hope” that we might still avoid disaster.

George Monblot said “Catastrophe is not a matter of fate, it’s a matter of choice.” 

Unknown's avatar

Climate 1958 – 2021

by

“The other night I said science didn’t know about the effects of climate change when I was young. I was wrong, I was 15 when this was aired.  I might have even seen it!”

1958: The Bell Telephone Science Hour

“Wow. That’s terrible to know that someone knew that long ago and didn’t get the word out.”

“It wasn’t just one someone, it was a lot of someone’s. They briefed the White House about it and it was big news but everyone thought it would happen really far in the future. Then oil companies stepped in the 70s and started spreading false science. That clip is famous, I’ve seen it before in class a couple of times. I had just forgotten about it.”

Today in 2021.

2050: what happens if we ignore the climate crisis

COP26 is coming. Speak up now, next week will be too late. Contact your representatives.

Unknown's avatar

an Interactive Virtual Earth

by

The EarthByte Group in the School of Geosciences of The University of Sydney is one of the world’s leading research groups for global and regional plate tectonic reconstructions and for studying the interplay between the deep earth and surface processes. They have provided GPlates which enables the interactive manipulation of plate-tectonic reconstructions and the visualization of geodata through geological time, and it facilitates interoperability of plate tectonic data and models with geodynamic computing services for applied and fundamental research purposes.

The 3D visualisations are powered by Cesium, an Open Source library for viewing globes and maps.

What that all means is you can click below and find ways to imagine the world in many different ways, from Pangea forward! If you are interested in geology or plate tectonics, you should take a look at these amazing visualizations.

http://portal.gplates.org/

Many views of earth! Wow! Play with it. It worked on my iPad, but it works better on a computer with a mouse! And some browsers work better than others. Read the side info!

” You will move in the direction of the people you associate with. You really want to associate with the people that are better than yourself.” – Warren Buffet

Unknown's avatar

Parabon Genetic Study

by

The other day in a mail consolidator I am a member of, Ce Ce Moore left a request for volunteers to help the company she works for improve their system that generates estimated phenotype traits for their customers.

Do you want to help Parabon fight crime and advance science? If so, please consider joining the Snapshot DNA Phenotypic Trait and Ancestry Study. All you need is (1) an iPhone and (2) a little bit of uninterrupted time to complete the in-app instructions. If you have an existing genotype file from a consumer testing site (e.g., 23andMe, AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, etc.), you can donate it to the study too and elect to receive a free Snapshot DNA Ancestry Analysis report. To learn more visit: https://parabon-nanolabs.com/volunteer/. If you have any questions or don’t have an iPhone, please check out the FAQs linked on that page. For questions not answered in the FAQ’s please email: snapshot-research@parabon.com

The goal is to improve the algorithms overall using aggregated data from the participants, not to add to a genetic genealogy database to identify specific suspects through genealogy (please upload to GEDMatch and or FTDNA if you want to contribute in that way). A lot of questions about the Parabon Snapshot study are answered here:
https://parabon-nanolabs.com/volunteer/study-faq?fbclid=IwAR11EBfdN2zF2_SgPH1RagVynvZzdP8tKzhqA4H3y6Dz5j8YW1bzVNMnB0c#no-iphone

Ce Ce Moore
http://www.TheDNADetectives.com