Non-Genetic Memory on Plants
Right… perhaps you don’t make sense out of memory and plants. Fact is, there’s more evidence that plants do find their way to communicate information.
As always this depends on how you define communication, or information. This new study by Yang, X., Sanchez, R., Kundariya, H. et al. shows that gene activation as response to initial environmental conditions can be transmitted to further generations of plants with no new stimuli nor genetic change. In some cases individual response to stress are transmitted down to next generations.
This is not hard to see as beneficial in evolutionary terms. What is hard in this case is to make peace with our egocentric view that plants, as the inferior life form we labeled them, would not be able to achieve such divine prerogative.
As consciousness researchers in general often realize, and studies such as we find in Peter Wohlleben amazing book ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ we should more often rethink our ideas on plant complex existence.
Death of the office – by Catherine Nixey @ The Economist
As the corporate staff shifts the better part of its days from the office back home, many will ask ourselves about the time we normally spend in offices. As we move towards a new normal, what will be offices role?
“Created to ensure efficiency, offices immediately institutionalised idleness. A genteel arms race arose as managers tried to make their minions work, and the minions tried their damnedest to avoid it.”
Indeed, most of corporate labor has never experienced work outside office or even beyond office hours for a consistent period. Nor has the habit of spending weekdays daylight alongside children or family. Now we all have.
“The most transformatory aspect of offices was less the buildings themselves than the sheer amount of time we spent in them.”
At least for now, we have a critical perspective on how commuting, studying and working can be rethought. This essay offers some well written suggestive paths.
“The office has further-reaching patriarchal ploys up its sleeve. Chief among these is its response to children. Or rather lack of it. For most of history, workplaces ignored children entirely... ”
AI-powered SaaS: Science as a Service by Charles Yang
Charles Yang’s ML4Sci is a cool newsletter on AI and Machine Learning applications.
On #8 issue, his description of how AI powered Science as a Service brief us on how AI can be used to distribute science.
“AI-powered models are beating domain experts in protein folding predictions, speeding up scientific simulations, discovering novel antibiotics, and outperforming numerical weather models.”
All fine, but I want to bring attention to an underlying assumption in the SaaS: being a Service. Services measured by the results it provides such as more or less accurate its predictions. Perhaps more keen to machine learning terminology, one should read how accurate its classifications are.
Predictions are core to scientific development for a long time. Especially so in experimental science, the possibility of checking observations against predictions is an important part of what makes the theory falsifiable.
The novelty we see is that SaaS are not theories. Especially when we talk of Bayesian probability, big data, and deep learning. Often enough, small changes in the data bring very different results. Not to mention overfitting and other problematic predictive illusions.
So what? – asks the reader. So that instead of exchange of theories among scientists, science would evolve by sharing data silos. And instead of knowledge, we see scientific progress distancing human understanding of the nature of the universe.
If the apparent difference is irrelevant when we are trying to predict rainfall, how about economics or biology? Understanding the mechanics behind predictions in these fields may be as important as prediction accuracy.
In a broader picture, this may also lead to questions such as: if science becomes a service, wouldn’t we drive fast to a monopolistic scenario on science as we see in most data intensive AI business?
I will keep following both argument line in posts to come. For now let’s pay attention on those interesting developments.
And by all means, give ML4Sci a try.
How Futures Trading Changed Bitcoin Prices – published by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Researchers Galina Hale, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Marianna Kudlyak, and Patrick Shultz posted on Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco an economic letter relating Bitcoin price peak and collapse at the time of CME futures debut.
As any attempt to explain price movements, this implies in a very selective analysis of historical data and forces in play. And nailing a single influence from having more available short selling instrument is likely oversimplistic. However, article does point to a general effect from trading behaviour – as could be ‘buy the rumors sells the news’ – that may give an insight for next similar events.
“…The peak price coincided with the introduction of bitcoin futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The rapid run-up and subsequent fall in the price after the introduction of futures does not appear to be a coincidence. Rather, it is consistent with trading behavior that typically accompanies the introduction of futures markets for an asset…”Continue reading
Polymath (POLY) – Securities Token Platform
Polymath platform is designed to ease financing, creating, issuing and listing securities tokens.
POLY is the underlying economic unit of the platform, with a limited issuance of 1 billion minted tokens. Primary buyers of tokens must use POLY that are then transferred to issuers. Issuers use their POLY to compensate participants of the token creation process. Participants that can be compensated in POLY include legal delegates, developers, and KYC providers.
Collaborative AI ?
May 2nd, 2019. Five hundred years ago today, Leonardo da Vinci died. Some say he was the last man to master frontier knowledge in all scientific fields.
The AI arms race appears destined to follow an unavoidable concentration pattern. Almost as the natural consequence of the fact that corporations leading the AI development embed the winner-takes-all economy we live in. It is hard to avoid top companies hoarding AI scientists. Not to mention the prize at the end of the rainbow – singularity – that would potentially be the ultimate step when the first in closes the gates for others. One AI to rule them all, so goes the omen.
For the last few hundred years, scientific progress has been a key drive for productivity and economic value creation. And this very science – built by Newton, Bayes, Godel, Turing, Bohr, to name a few – is the giant shoulder AI stands on. If we look back, despite the glorious contribution those geniuses individually made, the nature of the scientific progress in unquestionable a collaborative one.
Not that all science is to be replaced by AI, of course. For the time being, at least. Some science is, though. Additionally, a big part of scientific production now relies back on AI. It is hard to imagine theoretical physics, chemistry, or genetics nowadays without AI. This feedback loop would place scientific production into an analogous winner takes all path. Competition, not collaboration, would be the way to go.
Now: is it so? Let me dare to propose not:Continue reading
Fake memories in the making
Fake news, fake photos, fake audio, fake videos… all very bad compared to our own real objective reports, real image perception, real conversation reconstruction, real memory of witnessed events, right?
Wrong. All fake. No one really know the whole thing, but science indicates that all stories are subjective, our eyes don’t capture 3D images, we guess and forget and great deal of what we hear, and impression of memories are live reconstructs that can be altered as the whim of your mood. Which, by its turn depends on your gut bacteria health.
I am not saying all the new fake is welcome, nor that all innate fake is bad. But when we get great articles such as We’re underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video
By Brian Resnick @ Vox we must remember that what is at stake is the privileged status of faking reality. Old ways, such as education and culture are in. New such as fake video, is out.Continue reading
Metronome (MTN) – cross-chain cryptocurrency
Metronome proposes multi chain portability to achieve endurance and enhance decentralization.
In a system managed by autonomous smart contracts, decentralization provides MTN community with self governance.
Portability is an key feature of the project. Cross chain property allows tokens to longer endurance in the event new, smarter chains are available and mainstream.
One positive result of cross-chain ability could be broader price discovery. And if trading interest gets critical mass in multiple chains this could grant greater price stability to MTN.
Check their owners manual, and see how this predictable supplied, cross-blockchain, ERC-20 compliant token presents itself.
Less sugar is not less sugar
It is now commonplace to hear that whenever people try to fix overeating with eating other stuff it is not really changing, but adding.
Here’s another study pointing to this. Likely to be ignored as any other warning that eating less is in most cases much simpler and effective than eating better.
In “The Influence of Sugar and Artificial Sweeteners on Vascular Health during the Onset and Progression of Diabetes” authors Brian Hoffmann , George Ronan, Dhanush Haspula alert for the risks of artificial sugar as replacement for regular sugar may be statistically linked to impairment and progression of diabetes and obesity.
Seems like our body is not equally (if at all) fooled, as our gluttony persistently advocates.
Skip A.R. – Embodiment is the real thing
by M. Bassolino ; M. Franza ; J. Bello Ruiz ; M. Pinardi ; T. Schmidlin ; M.A. Stephan ; M. Solcà ; A. Serino ; O. Blanke @ European Journal of Neuroscience
Researchers tested feeling of embodiment by non-invasive brain stimulation. Instead of traditional visual, tactile or spacial illusions, scientists used magnetic (TMS) and visual (BR) stimulus to interact directly with the body’s representation in the brain.Continue reading