In 1964, a San Diego high school student named Randy Gardner participated in a Science Fair Project by staying awake for an astounding 11 days.
By the second day of the experiment, Gardner began to experience memory lapses. By the seventh day, he suffered from intense hallucinations, and by the 11th day, he exhibited inconsistencies, paranoia, and muscular tremors.
Fortunately, the 17-year-old fully recovered without any lasting effects. No one has surpassed this record since then, as noted in the Guinness Record Book. Due to health concerns, sleep deprivation records were discontinued in 1997.
However, cognitive decline can occur without an 11-day deprivation; even a few nights of poor sleep can lead to diminished functioning, memory recall, and emotional regulation.
Now, let’s explore the science behind sleep and its impact on brain performance.
What happens to your brain while you’re sleeping?
Photo credit: Getty
During sleep, our brains engage in essential repairs and various tasks, including removing waste and detoxifying itself.
Short-term memories are organized, long-term memories in the neocortex are solidified, and REM sleep plays a crucial role in problem-solving and emotional regulation.
But it’s not just all activity; there are restorative phases during non-REM sleep stages 1, 2, and 3, which slow the heartbeat, relax the muscles, and reduce brain wave activity—with brief bursts during stage 2.
In REM sleep, brain activity intensifies, resembling the state of wakefulness. The amygdala and hippocampus are highly active, aiding in memory processing and emotion regulation. This dream phase supports creative thinking when you wake up.
Brain impacts of poor sleep
Lack of sleep or poor sleep quality can impact your brain’s performance in several ways.
The prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making and problem-solving, becomes less effective. This leads to reduced attention, cognitive flexibility, and working memory.
An overactive amygdala can hinder the emotional contextualization of information, and difficulties in storing information in the cortex weaken memory integration.
Other short-term effects of inadequate sleep include: • Impaired judgment • Slowed reaction times • Declined risk assessment
When sleep deprivation becomes normal
For individuals with chronic sleep disorders, these short-term consequences are part of their everyday reality.
Moreover, chronic sleep deprivation has serious ramifications. Research conducted by the National Medical Library reveals a link between chronic sleep deprivation and Alzheimer’s disease.
“Studies indicate that sleep performs essential housekeeping, such as clearing potentially harmful beta-amyloid proteins,” states the Sleep Foundation.
“In Alzheimer’s disease, the aggregation of beta-amyloid leads to cognitive decline. Even one night of sleep deprivation can increase the accumulation of beta-amyloid in the brain.”
According to one study, individuals with sleep disorders have a significantly elevated risk of developing Alzheimer’s, with an estimated 15% of cases linked to lack of sleep.
Maintaining brain health and cognitive function heavily relies on regular, quality sleep, making it essential to optimize your sleep environment.
Optimizing sleep quality
Hästens, a bed maker based in Sweden, recognizes the vital importance of quality sleep. Since 1852, Hästens has crafted handmade beds in the Swedish town of Kaepi, taking up to 600 hours and using only natural materials.
“A good night’s sleep will enhance your performance,” notes Hästens. “In today’s fast-paced world, sleep may feel like a luxury, but from a medical standpoint, it’s crucial for a strong immune system and overall health.”
Explore the full range of Hästens beds and accessories, and learn more about the benefits of quality sleep here.
Local Hästens Sleep Spa bed tests can be booked online www.hastens.com or at your nearest certified retailer.
This excerpt is from our human stories newsletter, focused on the archaeological revolution—sign up to receive it monthly.
In human stories, I aim to address common questions about human evolution. In February 2021, I tackled a query that many find perplexing—whether Neanderthals and modern humans are distinct species (short answer: species boundaries are ambiguous).
This month, we confront another frequently asked question: Do Denisovans, the extinct human group once prevalent in Asia, have a designated species name? If so, what should that name be?
The debate regarding the “official” name of the Denisovans has been lively since their discovery in 2010. Notably, in June, the skull of Harbin, dubbed the Dragon Man from northern China, was classified as Denisovan through molecular evidence. This marked the first acquisition of a Denisovan skull, giving us insights into their facial features.
While participating in New Scientist discussions, host Rowan Hooper asked why Denisovans lack a species name. Why can’t we refer to them as Homo Denisovanensis, similar to how Neanderthals are called Homo Neanderthalensis?
I preferred a straightforward explanation: insufficient information has hindered a definitive classification of Denisovans. Their DNA shows significant divergence from Neanderthal DNA; yet, we require detailed insights into their anatomy and skeletal structure.
However, this inquiry is multifaceted. First, we must identify which fossils unequivocally belong to Denisovans. This involves analyzing numerous specimens and decades of research, complicating the resolution. Secondly, we need to determine which of the assigned names should take precedence under our classification norms—a legal question that adds to the complexity.
Who’s Included and Who’s Excluded?
A brief reminder about Denisovans: they are an enigmatic group of humans initially identified in 2010 from fragments of a finger bone discovered in the Denisova Cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains. Genetic analysis revealed they were distinct from both modern humans and Neanderthals. Moreover, many contemporary individuals, especially in Southeast Asia and Melanesia, carry Denisovan DNA.
This suggests that Denisovans were quite widespread in East Asia over the past several hundred thousand years. So, where are the Denisovan fossils?
Fifteen years later, a handful of Denisovan fossils have been actively categorized. For example, mandibles discovered on the Tibetan Plateau were identified through fossil proteins and sediment DNA. Similarly, a jawbone retrieved from the Pengle waterway off the coast of Taiwan was confirmed as Denisovan in April.
Nonetheless, we still lack a complete skeleton. Identifying the Harbin skull as Denisovan brought us closer to understanding their appearance, yet many more discoveries are necessary.
Numerous human fossils in East Asia potentially belong to Denisovans. However, categorizing these remains has proven challenging, as they often do not resemble established species like modern humans, Neanderthals, or even Homo Erectus. If adequate specimens surface, thus confirming their Denisovan identity, our understanding could significantly improve, leading to a formal classification.
But how do we determine which fossils are Denisovan? Ideally, we seek molecular evidence of preserved DNA or protein for comparison with the original Denisovan remnants. However, many fossils remain unanalyzed or inaccessible.
One notable effort to address this issue was a preliminary study submitted by a team led by Xijun Ni from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in March 2024. By comparing 57 human fossils for various physical traits, they constructed familial relationships between these findings.
The team found three primary groups among Eurasian hominins: Modern Humans, Neanderthals, and a third group composed of the original Denisovan fossil, the Tibetan cave jawbone, the Pengle jawbone, and the Harbin skull. This third category appears to represent those we refer to as Denisovans.
This is an intriguing proposition, but others disagree.
A collection of contentious fossils from Hualongdong, southern China, offers a wealth of material: an almost complete skull, 14 teeth, an upper jaw, six isolated teeth, and additional fragments dating back around 300,000 years.
While the NI team classified the Hualongdong specimens as part of the Denisovan group, a study led by Xiujie Wu in July suggested that these teeth did not show clear correlations, proposing instead that they may belong to a different hominin group. Another interpretation could be that the Denisovans at Hualongdong were somewhat disparate from those in other regions.
In the meantime, other intriguing fossils from Asia continue to emerge. Among them are specimens from Dariscal and Jinniushan, both around 260,000 years old, which Ni’s team has suggested might also belong to the Denisovan lineage.
As the list of contending Denisovan fossils grows, we must decide how to categorize them.
The Harbin Skull
Hebei Geo University
Homo — What Does It Mean?
Interestingly, I was part of the team that described the Harbin skull in 2021, and we named it Homo Longhi. So, could that be the name we assign to Denisovans?
However, last year a competing proposition was put forth by Woo and Christopher Beh from the University of Hawaii, who suggested that we should center around fossils from Xujiayao in northern China, proposing to call this new species Homo Jurensis—fossils that would include the original Denisovan findings.
This idea’s strength lies in the resemblance of Xujiayao fossils to Denisovan remains, a point also observed by the NI team. However, Bae and Wu aimed to designate the Xujiayao fossils as “type specimens.”
This raises two issues: the classification of fossils and the naming protocols. Let’s examine each aspect separately.
In classification, the Homo Jurensis proposal faces challenges. Bae and Wu classify the Harbin skull as Homo Jurensis or Denisovan, yet it lacks sufficient resemblance to warrant such designation. A study published in June demonstrated molecular evidence clearly linking the Harbin skull to Denisovans. Hence, identifying those fossils as Denisovan would contravene objective realities, making Homo Jurensis seem unfounded.
What about taxonomy? This area is intricate. A crucial factor is the concept of priority, where the first proposed name tends to gain precedence. Hence, Homo Longhi might likely take precedence over Homo Jurensis as it was suggested three years earlier.
Are there alternative names for Denisovans?
The excavators of Denisova Cave never formally classified Denisovans as a distinct species. Anatoly Derebianco, part of that team, suggested the name Homo Sapiens Altaiensis, implying they would serve as a modern human subspecies—yet this proposal lacked formal status, rendering it typically insignificant.
This year, Derebianco has published a series of papers discussing what Denisovans could be. His references include locations in Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Iran, referring to them collectively as Homo sapiens denisovan. I remain unsure if formal explanations were provided, as only abstracts were published, and if completed, it occurred post the naming of Homo Longhi.
Lastly, it’s possible that one of the names was assigned to an Asian human fossil within an obscure publication decades ago. If the fossil is ultimately identified as Denisovan, the name takes precedence (assuming it was adequately introduced). Nevertheless, Wu, Bae, Ni, and others assessed this notion in 2023 and concluded that many crucial fossils were not appropriately named. For instance, there was a suggestion to label Dali’s skull as Homo Dariensis, yet such ideas amounted to informal statements rather than formally recognized classifications.
Your head might be swirling from this cascade of names and species classifications, so let’s recap: the critical takeaway is our evolving understanding of Denisovans, which brings us closer to officially designating their name.
Given our comprehension of taxonomic norms and their significance, Homo Longhi could emerge as the official designation. Although I can’t influence the decision, they will always remain Denisovans in my mind.
Recent research suggests that individuals following a vegan diet may be missing out on key nutrients essential for muscle building, even if their overall protein intake appears to be adequate.
A study conducted in New Zealand found that some long-term vegans were deficient in essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, which can impact overall nutrition.
Proteins consist of amino acids, with nine of them being considered “essential” as they cannot be produced by the body. Lysine and leucine are two essential amino acids crucial for healthy growth, energy production, and muscle repair.
The study, published in the journal PLOS 1, analyzed food diaries from 193 long-term vegans. It was discovered that while around 75% of participants met daily protein recommendations, only about half of them obtained sufficient lysine and leucine after accounting for protein digestibility.
The researchers emphasized the importance of a balanced and diverse plant-based diet to ensure proper amino acid intake on a vegan diet. Both lysine and leucine play critical roles in bodily functions including growth, muscle recovery, and energy production.
Although the study highlights the potential limitations of protein intake in a vegan diet, it is important to note that it is a snapshot in time and relies on self-reported data. Amino acid digestibility was estimated using animal models, and further research comparing vegan diets with omnivorous or vegetarian diets is needed.
In conclusion, when it comes to protein intake on a vegan diet, quality and diversity of plant proteins are key. Prioritizing high-quality plant protein sources such as legumes, tofu, tempeh, beans, and soy foods can help ensure adequate amino acid intake for overall health.
About our experts
Shireen Kassam is a plant-based nutrition expert and consultant hematologist with a specialized interest in the treatment of lymphoma. She is also a visiting professor at the University of Winchester, Hampshire, leading the development of the UK’s first university-based course in plant-based nutrition.
It's the most celebratory time of the year, as some of the brightest minds in science win Nobel Prizes. Recent winners have a few things in common. They definitely have a great body of work. And they're all men, they live in high-income countries, and none of them are black.
Gary Lubukun and Victor Ambrose received the Physiology or Medicine Prize for their discovery of microRNAs and their role in gene regulation to help treat cancer. A series of papers led to this discovery, many of which listed Ambrose's wife, Rosalind Lee, as the author. The Nobel Committee for Physiology and Medicine We would like to recognize Ms. Lee on social media.but did not go as far as awarding a medal. They may think that one device per family is enough.
Lee's omission may seem familiar. In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received the award for their discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. This was the opposite Of the three papers published in the same issue nature. One was co-authored by Wilkins, another was co-authored by Watson and Crick, and the third was an image captured by Rosalind Franklin of DNA with two strands. Prior to publishing the image, It ended up in the hands of Watson and Crick.I then told them that their DNA model was a double helix. Franklin was removed from the Nobel Prize trophy.
Perhaps the committee dislikes the name Rosalind. but 972 people won the Nobel Prize Since our founding in 1901, 64 were women. This year's physics prize, awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for discoveries related to machine learning, had a particularly poor hit rate, with only five women winning the award so far.
At least women in science are getting some recognition. No black person has ever won a science Nobel Prize, and only 17 black people have won the peace, literature, and economics prizes combined. Many people argue that Charles Drew says: African American man discovers a way to store plasma long-termmedicine was supposed to win, but Percy Julian figured it out. How to synthesize medicines from plantsneglected because of chemistry.
Geography also appears to play an important role in determining the winner. More than half of the prizes I went to the people of North America.and the few winners from low-income countries, most of whom had immigrated to North America or Europe by the time they won the award.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which administers the prizes in physics and chemistry, at least recognizes that this lack of diversity is a problem. Starting in 2019, recommenders are required to: When choosing candidates, pay attention to gender, ethnicity, and geographypeople who can't put themselves forward. Sounds good in theory, but since then, only six women and none of them have won in science, and none have been black.
You may be wondering why this is important. Awards are great honors, but they shouldn’t drive scientists. However, being a Nobel Prize winner opens doors for researchers and brings their work into the public consciousness. For many people, the annual Nobel Prize may be the only time they see a scientist's name in the news headlines, but this award plays a huge role in shaping our perception of science.
Part of the problem is that the prize structure, dictated by Alfred Nobel's will, tends to enforce a “great man of history” approach to science that does not reflect the realities of modern research. The rules state that no more than three people can share the award, but this does not explain why Lee was left out of the winning duo of Lubukun and Ambros. Additionally, donations cannot be received after death. Otherwise, Ms. Franklin, who died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of 37, might have received the donations by now.
Of course, such issues are not new, and it seems unlikely that the Nobel Prize committee will deviate from the wishes of its sponsors, but that is no reason to ignore diversity. The committee needs to cast a wider net, not just for the sake of fairness, but if it wants to ensure that the awards continue to be taken seriously.
Alexandra Thompson is assistant news editor at New Scientist.
Are you truly in control of choosing to read this article, or is the decision merely a result of neurons firing in your brain due to biochemical reactions dictated by the laws of physics?
The question of whether humans have true decision-making agency may seem trivial: our experiences demonstrate our ability to choose to act or refrain from acting in any situation presented to us. If we were merely mindless automatons, even engaging in reading this article would seem bizarre.
However, Robert Sapolsky argues otherwise: he posits that the sense of being a free agent is an illusion created by biology and its interaction with our environment. Sapolsky, a distinguished professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University and recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, explores this idea in his upcoming book, “Determination: The Science of Life Without Free Will,” expected to be a bestseller upon its release in late 2023.
In an interview with BBC Science Focus, Sapolsky delves into the complexities of free will, challenging the traditional understanding of human decision-making and emphasizing the role of biology and environment in shaping our choices.
So, what does this mean for our perception of free will?
Sapolsky highlights that the belief in free will often stems from individual decisions at a specific moment, overlooking the influences that have shaped our preferences and tendencies. He argues that our actions are a product of our biological makeup interacting with external stimuli, rather than a result of conscious choice.
Similarly, he differentiates between conscious decisions and involuntary actions, such as the reflex to remove your hand from a hot surface. While both processes involve neural activity, the former is a more intricate interplay between biological mechanisms and environmental factors.
Sapolsky debunks the notion that quantum physics introduces random elements that could enable free will, highlighting the deterministic nature of our biology and environment. He asserts that while external variables may introduce unpredictability, our responses are predetermined by our intrinsic makeup.
When considering how we derive meaning in a world without free will, Sapolsky emphasizes the beauty of human experience and appreciation for life. Despite our biological underpinnings, we have the capacity to find value, love, and gratitude in our existence. The complexity of our internal mechanisms does not diminish the significance of our emotions, relationships, and experiences.
About our expert, Robert Sapolsky
Robert Sapolsky is a prominent scholar, neuroscientist, and primatologist, holding the John A. and Cynthia Frye Gunn Professorship at Stanford University. His research and writings delve into the intricate connections between biology, behavior, and environment, challenging conventional notions of free will and agency.
People demonstrate outside the UK COVID-19 Inquiry site in London in October 2023.
Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images
“The UK prepared for the wrong pandemic” This is the key conclusion from the first part of a government inquiry looking at the UK's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular its preparedness and resilience.
“In 2019, it was widely believed, both in the UK and abroad, that the UK was not only well prepared to deal with a pandemic, but one of the best-prepared countries in the world. This belief proved dangerously wrong.” Heather HallettThe former judge leading the UK's coronavirus inquiry Video Statement Released at the same time Reports“The reality is that the UK was ill-prepared.”
“I have no hesitation in saying that the processes, plans and policies of the UK-wide civil emergency response arrangements have let down the people of all four countries,” Mr Hallett said. “There were serious errors on the part of the government and serious failings in the civil emergency system. This cannot be allowed to happen again.”
The main reason the UK was unprepared was because it planned on the assumption that the pandemic would be caused by a dangerous influenza strain or something similar, the report concluded, “which resulted in risk assessments being narrowly limited, excluding other types of pandemics.”
The next biggest mistake was assuming that because influenza spreads easily from person to person, there would be no way to stop the spread of a pandemic pathogen. “Plans were focused on dealing with the effects of the disease rather than preventing the spread of the disease,” the report said.
As a result, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were no plans to implement measures such as border controls, lockdowns, testing people or contact tracing to identify people who may have the coronavirus and stop them from infecting others.
“There was no preparation whatsoever for the fact that hygiene measures at the border might be necessary to protect the population,” the former health minister said. Matt Hancock Part of the problem, the inquiry said, is that because responsibility for health measures has been devolved between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is not clear who can implement such measures.
The UK government also did not consider the possibility of a lockdown being necessary: ”There was no plan to introduce a lockdown.” Mark Woolhouse “Lockdowns were an ad-hoc public health intervention devised in real time in the face of a rapidly evolving public health emergency,” researchers from the University of Edinburgh in the UK said in a study.
Testing and tracing was envisioned as part of any response to new pathogens, but the capacity to do so was limited because it was assumed that any new infectious diseases would only have a small number of cases.
“One of the first lines of defence against a pandemic is containment, and this requires a test, trace and isolate system that can be rapidly expanded to meet the demands of a large outbreak,” Mr Hallett said. “This did not exist in the UK when the COVID-19 pandemic began.”
“The UK government's only pandemic plan, developed in 2011, was outdated and inadequate,” she said. “The UK government never applied or adapted it, and the principles on which it was based were ultimately abandoned, along with the 2011 strategy itself.”
The report does not explore the consequences of those failures, but a summary released with the report states that “further preparations could have avoided some of the enormous financial, economic and human costs of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The inquiry will also look into decision-making and political governance in Westminster, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the impact on health systems across the UK, vaccines, medicines, anti-viral treatments, government procurement and PPE. [personal protective equipment]; the care sector, test and trace, the impact on children and young people, and the Government's business and finance response.
The latest report quoted a civil servant as saying: Chris Wormald “There's been a lot of discussion, of course, about countries like South Korea, who handled COVID very well. In fact, they had much higher standards of containment than we did, and that was a key difference.”
One of the aims of the review is to help the UK better prepare for the future. “The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that another, more infectious and deadly pandemic is likely in the near to medium term,” Hallett said. “This means that the UK will face another pandemic – one that, unless we prepare better, will cause untold suffering and huge economic loss, with the most vulnerable in society suffering the most.”
“This is a most urgent report because we are still not fully prepared for the next pandemic.” Duncan Robertson Loughborough University, UK Post to X.
yes
Have you ever heard the story about a drunk man looking for his keys under a streetlight? After pacing back and forth for a while and rummaging through the floor, his friend asks him where he thinks he dropped his keys. He points to a dark spot across the street. “Then why don’t you look there?” his friend asks. He shrugs. “Because that’s where the light is.” It’s a good joke. Everyone laughs.
Let’s talk about online political advertising.
“Microtargeting” doesn’t exist anymore, explains The Guardian’s Jim Waterson.
Don’t expect to see Cambridge Analytica-style micro-targeting of political ads using personal information in this general election. The tactic is now seen by many as ineffective “bait” and is increasingly being blocked by social media platforms. Digital strategist Tom Edmonds said Facebook has banned political campaigns from using many of the tactics used in past elections. “If you run a campaign to 500 people, you’re not getting a ton of revenue, you’re just getting a ton of harassment,” he said.
Microtargeting was feared because of its potential negative effects on democracy — if you can target 1,000 different messages to 1,000 different demographics, the very notion of a single national conversation begins to break down — but in reality, microtargeting never really worked.
After all, the biggest competitor for a company like Cambridge Analytica was Facebook itself: the social network’s advertising tools make it less worthwhile to spend billions creating profiles and microtargeting individual voters when you can leave all the targeting decisions to Facebook itself. The social network allows advertisers to set “performance objectives.” [like sales, clicks, or signups]You set a spending limit and then you just sit back and wait for the company to do whatever it takes to maximize your profits. The company will also choose the best combination of words and images to increase your chances of success.
But Facebook can only help you so much. For example, if you’re creating ads for a particular candidate, who should you focus your time and money on? Those who are likely to win, or those who are sure to lose? If you answered the latter, you’d be better off working for the Conservative Party. From our article:
The strategy, known within the party as the “80/20” approach, involves concentrating all of its spending on the 80 seats it is most likely to lose in 2019 and the 20 seats it is most likely to gain.
Facebook’s ad spending reports show the party is pouring money into exactly these constituencies: Since January, more than half of the party’s spending on the social network has been directed to the 80 closest constituencies or those not held by the party at all.
A conference staff member speaks in front of Facebook’s demo booth at F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference in San Jose, California. Photo: Noah Berger/AP
We began monitoring meta ad spending to see if the reported “80/20 strategy” held up. It’s one thing to propose it two years before an election, but quite another to follow through with it just a month away.
But we also started monitoring Meta’s ad spending because we could. The company keeps a library of all political ads, publishes total spending, and requires residency verification before launching a new ad. This library has received a lot of criticism over the years, but at least it exists. Not only that, but the library has a powerful toolset that allows you to write your own software to query and answer questions more serious than “are there any interesting ads that someone paid for recently?”
But like a drunk person searching for his keys, it’s unlikely that this topic is actually on Facebook. Across large swaths of the country, conversations that once took place on public social networks have migrated to private channels, led by Meta’s WhatsApp. What’s left of Facebook itself is smothered in AI-generated rubbish and disconnected from reality by algorithmic tweaks that highlight “friends and family” content. That trend is doubly pronounced on Meta’s Twitter clone, Threads, which actively and openly downgrades any kind of political content.
Although conversations are growing on TikTok, the platform is difficult to cover: Observer research into digital campaigns has had to focus on the official TikTok feeds of political parties.
TikTok is free; paid advertising by politicians or political parties isn’t allowed. But it won’t be easy. Social media teams will have to work harder to convince the app’s notoriously opaque algorithms to let their content flow organically to users’ phones. The more people who like, share, comment and repost a video, the better the chances. For smaller, more agile parties with smaller budgets, TikTok can feel like it has everything to win: views, engagement and people finally finding out they exist. Creators who know how to do it think Labour is off to a good start.
Election conversations are happening on TikTok — and there’s a lot of it, as the platform’s tightly curated algorithmic feed allows people of all ages to have their own discussions — but it’s nearly impossible to observe from the outside without using brute force techniques like tallying up views of videos tagged “snack.”
Of course, WhatsApp conversations are even worse: with end-to-end encryption and sparse public “channels,” doing data journalism tracking election chats is a dead end.
And then there’s AI. Suspicions remain that the rise of AI systems will have some impact on this election, but here, too, we have to look at where the light is. It’s very clear (and we’ve never really seen it before) that deepfake videos are circulating on Twitter, the platform now known as X. What’s invisible to us is that wavering voters are conversing with ChatGPT to try to decide where to type X, if that’s even happening in the first place.
In the UK, these questions feel largely academic; apart from personality-driven local elections, the final outcome feels more foregone than at any time in my life. But in the US, where voters go to the polls in five months’ time, the same questions will be asked. And the answers may hold the key to which side the coin falls.
So let’s go find them right away.
A wider texscape
Footage from the fake documentary “Olympics Has Fallen” produced by Russian influencer actor Storm-1679. Photo: Storm-1679/Microsoft Threat Analysis Center
by the way Deepfake According to Microsoft, the fake Tom Cruise video (pictured above) was used to spread disinformation about the Olympics.
Is the Internet Bad?. That is certainly Marbonot everything has been smooth sailing during the first nine months online.
Internal Google Database Tracking Privacy and Security Breaches Leaked to 404 MediaOne of the biggest threats is that YouTube employees could secretly check upcoming big video uploads to get information ahead of time.
Voters support raising the minimum age Social media The number of people using the app in the UK has risen to 16, according to a poll by The Guardian.
Microsoft’s “RecallA “clone of the Mac app Rewind” has been built into the OS. It has been described as a security “catastrophe”.The AI service stores everything a user has ever seen on a computer in a database to help answer questions for law students, which critics say makes it an attractive target for hackers.
circleWhen Charity Ekezie first joined TikTok in 2020 and started posting videos from her home in Abuja, Nigeria, she had recently left her job at a radio station. She saw TikTok as a way to stay active and maintain her journalism skills.
Within a few months, she realized from the comments on her posts that some people had no knowledge about Africa. Commenters from the UK, US, and European nations asked her questions like if Africa had mobile phones or access to water.
“Wait a minute, are you serious?” Ekezie thought at the time. “This is not the Africa I live in. We have telephones and bottled water. I decided to start responding.”
Armed with humor and sarcasm, Ekezie’s witty replies to questions such as “Do they have planes in Africa?” or “Do they have shoes in Africa?” have garnered her over 4.5 million followers globally. Find her on Tick tock, Instagram, Youtube and Facebook. Some of her posts have amassed tens of millions of views.
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Answering a question about why Africans can buy mobile phones but not water, she holds a bottle of water in her hands, with more bottles stacked behind her, and explains that every month people gather for a spitting festival. “All the men do a spiritual chant led by the community magician, and all the women and girls take a turn spitting into the drum. After two days, we go for a purification ritual, so we can take the saliva and drink it,” she jokes.
People laughed at the video, which prompted Ekezie to make more videos and get more questions. Some of them were just trolling, but many were serious.
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The video has been viewed more than 22 million times so far, but it has also attracted thousands of racist comments. Ekezie said, “The water was brown during that time. I started getting comments like, ‘Oh my god, the water you’re drinking is dirty,’ and people were saying the water is washing me away, that’s why it’s brown and why I’m so black.”
People left monkey emojis. Ekezie said she didn’t always notice the racism. “I didn’t understand it,” she said. “I was aware of the concept of racism, but I’d never been treated in a racist way. It really hurt.”
But she also received a lot of positive feedback from many Africans, some of whom joined in on the joke in the comments section. People from all over Africa responded to the post, which made light of the fact that many people don’t understand that Africa is a continent, not just one country, with flag emojis. “No matter where you’re from, they were united and they got the joke,” Ekezie says. “Some people said, ‘You will singlehandedly unite Africa.’ That was so cool.”
From this experience, Ekezie, who spent part of her childhood in Cameroon, learned that “Africa is not promoted at all in the West and people don’t know anything about us. I thought people read books but apparently that’s not the case. It’s heartbreaking because we are exposed to Western media, music, and culture every day.”
She’s grateful to be able to share her perspective on social media, and her YouTube following has grown so much over the past year that she’s been able to make a living from her posts. “I make videos because people want to see Africa through my lens, so they can see that it’s not this dreary jungle,” she says.
“I’m not saying African countries are perfect,” she adds. “And what country is perfect? But we need to do our best. People need to know that we have our own problems, but we’re also great countries. We have great cultures, great food, great people.”
Mouse brain hippocampus (red) containing some rat cells
M. Kadish Imtiaz/Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CC BY-NC-ND)
Rat cells grown in the brains of mice without a sense of smell have enabled them to acquire the sense of smell. This is the first time that one species has experienced the world through the sensory neurons of another species.
When cells of one species multiply within the body of another species, the resulting organism is known as an interspecies chimera. These have previously been used to study specific tissues, such as mice containing cells of the human immune system, to study disease responses. However, creating chimeras of other tissues, such as neural tissue, is more complex.
Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center previously bred mice with parts of rat brains transplanted into them. Now, another team of researchers has shown that this cross-species chimerism may confer the ability to smell in mice genetically modified to lack scent-sensing neurons.
christine baldwin The researchers at Columbia University in New York injected these engineered mouse embryos with rat stem cells. Once the embryos became adult mice, the researchers monitored neuronal activity. The researchers discovered that these animals have functional neural pathways for sensing odors, made up of both rat and mouse cells that can communicate directly with each other.
When researchers tested these mice's sense of smell by searching for hidden mini Oreo cookies, they found that the mice that received stem cell injections found the food more easily, as opposed to the same genetically modified mice. It turned out that it was possible. It wasn't a chimera.
“This is a huge opportunity for human health, allowing us to better understand how to create cell replacement therapies for humans,” Baldwin said. “We can also create models in mice and rats for diseases that affect long-lived organisms.”
The fact that rat cells were able to facilitate food exploration in mice, which normally don't have a sense of smell, is very impressive, he says. walter lowe at the University of Minnesota. “Now, it is not yet clear whether something similar to this can occur in even different species, but at least [this study] Shows what's happening in two relatively close species [in evolutionary terms]” he says.
Considering the importance of sleep to our mental and physical health, Balter and John AxelsonAt Karolinska Institutet, we also decided to investigate whether it affects our subjective age.
They surveyed 429 people between the ages of 18 and 70 about how old they felt and how much sleep they had gotten in the past 30 days.
The researchers found that reporting sleep deprivation was associated with participants feeling older than their actual age, with consecutive days of sleep deprivation making participants feel older by an average of 0.23 years. was found to increase. In contrast, those who reported getting enough sleep over a 30-day period were, on average, 5.81 years younger than their chronological age.
In the second half of the study, the pair recruited an additional 186 people. These participants were asked to aim for 9 hours of sleep over two consecutive nights over a two-week period, which was recorded via a sleep log and sleep tracking wrist device. They were then told to limit their sleep to four hours for two consecutive nights.
After this period of sleep restriction, subjects reported feeling on average 4.44 years older than their age, whereas under the 9-hour sleep condition they reported feeling 0.24 years younger. Compared to those who felt the least fatigued, those who felt the most fatigue reported feeling about 10 years older.
The findings show that sleep is an important indicator of how old some people feel, and that it is linked to our health, Balter says. “If you protect your sleep, you'll feel younger,” she says.
The CEO of Google expressed concern over some responses from the company’s Gemini artificial intelligence model, calling them “unlikely” and pointing out issues such as depicting German World War II soldiers as people of color. He described this bias as “totally unacceptable.”
In a memo to employees, Sundar Pichai acknowledged that images and text generated by modern AI tools were causing discomfort.
Social media users highlighted instances where Gemini image generators depicted historical figures of different ethnicities and genders, including the Pope, the Founding Fathers, and Vikings. Google suspended Gemini’s ability to create people images in response.
One example involved Gemini’s chatbot responding to a question about negative social impacts, leading to a discussion about Elon Musk and Hitler. Pichai addressed this issue, calling the responses upsetting and indicative of bigotry.
Viking AI image Photo: Google Gemini
Pichai stated that Google’s teams were working to improve these issues and have already made significant progress. AI systems often generate biased responses due to training data issues, reflecting larger societal problems.
Gemini’s competitors are also working on addressing bias in AI models. New versions of AI generators like Dall-E prioritize diverse representation and aim to mitigate technical issues.
Google is committed to making structural changes and enhancing product guidelines to address biases. Pichai emphasized the importance of providing accurate and unbiased information to users.
Elon Musk criticized Google’s AI programs, pointing out the bias in generated images. Technology commentator Ben Thompson called for a shift in decision-making at Google to prioritize good product development.
The emergence of generative AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT presents a competitive landscape in AI development. Google’s Gemini AI chatbot, formerly known as Bard, offers paid subscriptions for enhanced AI capabilities.
Google DeepMind continues to innovate in AI, with breakthroughs like the AlphaFold program for predicting protein structures. The CEO of DeepMind acknowledged the need to improve diversity in AI-generated images.
Have you ever tapped someone on the far shoulder only to see them spin the wrong way, and then do it again immediately? Why is this funny? You might think that it’s an inherent human trait to find things like this funny, and that complex communication and context are needed for a gag to work, but you’d be wrong.
New research published in today’s journal Proceedings of the Royal Society Bfound evidence of monkey business (sorry) in four species of great apes, shedding light on the evolutionary origins of humor.
The findings suggest that the playful teasing exhibited by 8-month-old human children may have deeper roots in our primate relatives than previously thought.
Such behavior involves intentionally subverting the expectations of others. Examples include repeatedly offering and withdrawing goods, or intentionally disrupting another person’s activities by creating an element of surprise.
To understand these behaviors, the researchers observed spontaneous social interactions among populations of orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas. They in turn analyzed everything from the teasing person’s body movements and facial expressions to how the target of the teasing (the teasing person?) reacts.
In addition to this, the researchers investigated whether the teasing behavior was targeted at specific individuals, whether it continued or escalated over time, and whether the teasing behavior was waiting for a response from the target. We tried to investigate the intentions behind the teasing.
“Our findings support the idea that teasing great apes is a provocative, purposeful, and often playful behavior.” Isabel Romersaid the postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. BBC Science Focus. “It is usually asymmetric and can take a variety of forms with varying proportions of playful and aggressive characteristics.”
In total, the researchers identified 18 distinct teasing behaviors. These include repeatedly shaking or brandishing objects in the center of the target’s visual field, hitting or poking them, staring into their faces, and pulling their hair. How fascinating!
Unlike play exhibited by all animals in the animal kingdom, playful teasing has several unique characteristics. “Apes’ playful teasing is one-sided and mostly comes from teasing,” he explained. Erica Cartmill Senior author of the study.
“Animals also rarely use play cues, such as the primate ‘play face,’ which resembles what we call a smile, or the ‘grasping’ gesture that signals intent to play,” she continued. Ta.
Cartmill recalled seeing such behavior in apes for the first time in 2006. Then he observed a young orangutan begging his mother by repeatedly waving a stick in front of her. “It didn’t look like a joke that would fit in a stand-up special on Netflix, but it seemed like a simple joke that could be used with young human children,” she said.
Almost 20 years after this interaction, this research has provided important insights not only into great ape behavior but also into our own behavior. “Depending on the species, great apes share 97 to 99 percent of our DNA, so we have a lot in common,” Romer said.
“The existence of playful teasing in all four great apes, and its similarity to playful teasing behavior in human infants, suggests that playful teasing and its cognitive prerequisites may have been associated with the last human species at least 13 million years ago. This suggests that it may have existed in a common ancestor.
Going forward, Romer and her team will investigate whether other primates and large-brained animals tease each other in hopes of better understanding the evolution of this important (and highly entertaining) behavior. intend to do something.
About our experts
Isabel Romer I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Radolfzell/Konstanz. She is a primatologist and cognitive biologist with 10 years of experience studying great apes and Goffin parrots. Her main research areas are within physical cognition, tool use and manufacturing, tool innovation, template matching from memory, flexible multidimensional decision making based on reward quality and tool functionality. is focused on. Her work also delves into social cognition, exploring prosociality, aversion to inequality, delay of gratification, theory of mind, and playful teasing with these animal subjects. .
Erica Cartmill He is a professor of anthropology, cognitive science, and ethology at Indiana University. Her research bridges the fields of biology and linguistics, using both comparative and developmental methods to examine communication. Her research with great apes and humans includes observing spontaneous interactions between communication partners and employing communication games that allow for more controlled experiments. Her research focuses specifically on whether gestures played a role in the origin of human language.
BRetain wants to lead the world in AI regulation. However, AI regulation is a rapidly evolving and contested policy area, with little agreement on what a good outcome looks like, let alone the best way to get there. And the fact that he is the third most important AI research center in the world does not give him so much power if the first two are the United States and China.
How do we cut this Gordian knot? Simple: Act quickly and decisively and do nothing.
The UK Government has today taken the next step towards legislation to regulate AI. From our story:
The government will admit on Tuesday that binding measures to oversee
cutting-edge AI development will be needed at some point, but not immediately. Instead, ministers will set out “initial thoughts on future binding requirements” for advanced systems and discuss them with technical, legal and civil society experts.
The Government will also give regulators £10m to help tackle AI risks and require them to develop their approach to the technology by April 30th.
When the first draft of the AI whitepaper was published in March 2023, the reaction was negative. The government’s proposal was withdrawn on the same day as the now-infamous call for a six-month “pause” on AI research to control the risks of an out-of-control system. Against this background, this white paper seemed pathetic.
The proposal would give regulators no new powers and would not give responsibility for guiding AI development to any private group. Instead, the government planned to align existing regulators, such as the Competition and Markets Authority and the Health and Safety Executive, and set out five principles to guide the regulatory framework when considering AI.
This approach has been criticized by the UK’s leading AI research group, the Ada Lovelace Institute, as having “significant gaps”, and even the fact that a multi-year legislative process will leave AI unregulated during the interim period. Ignored.
So what has changed?Well, the government Really awesome £10 million
Asking regulators to “upskill”, has set an April 30 deadline for the largest companies to publish their AI plans. A Department for Science, Innovation and Technology spokesperson said: “The UK Government is in no hurry to legislate and will not risk introducing ‘ready-to-read’ rules that quickly become outdated or ineffective.” Ta.
This is a strange definition of “global AI leadership” and it’s important to immediately say “we’re not doing anything.” The government is also “considering” actual regulations, envisioning “future binding requirements that may be introduced for developers building cutting-edge AI systems.”
The second, slightly larger fund will cost “almost” £90m to launch “nine new centers of excellence across the UK”. The government also announced £2 million in funding to support “new research projects that help define what responsible AI looks like”.
There is an element of tragedy when reading the government press release that triumphantly revealed £2 million in funding from Yoshua Bengio, one of the three “godfathers” of AI, just a week later. Asks Canada to spend $1 billion We are building publicly owned supercomputers to keep up with the big tech companies. It’s like bringing a spoon to a knife fight.
You can say you’re agile in the face of conflicting demands, but after more than 11 months, it just seems impossible to commit. The day before the latest update to the AI White Paper was published, the Financial Times broke the news that another pillar of AI regulation had collapsed. from that story (lb):
The Intellectual Property Office, the UK government’s agency that oversees copyright law, is working with AI companies and rights holders to produce guidance on text and data mining, where AI models are trained on existing materials such as books and music. We are discussing with.
But a group of industry executives convened by the IPO to oversee the work was unable to agree on a voluntary code of conduct, handing responsibility back to officials at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology.
Unlike broader AI regulation, which has a quagmire of conflicting opinions and very vague long-term goals, copyright reform is a very clear trade-off. On the one hand, creative and media companies that own valuable intellectual property. On the other side are technology companies that can use their intellectual property to build valuable AI tools. One group or the other will be frustrated by the outcome. A perfect compromise simply means that both are true.
Last month, the head of Getty Images was one of many to call on the UK to support its creative industries, which make up a tenth of the UK economy, citing the theoretical benefits that AI could bring in the future. And, faced with difficult choices with no right answers, the government chose to do nothing. Then you cannot lead the world in the wrong direction. And isn’t that what leadership is all about?
completely fake
Joe Biden poses with his smartphone while on the campaign trail. The President of the United States was the subject of a fake video posted on Facebook. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP
To be fair to the government, there are obvious problems with moving too quickly. Let’s take a look at social media to see some of them. Facebook’s rules do not prohibit deepfake videos of Joe Biden, the company’s Oversight Board (also known as the “Supreme Court”) has found.But honestly, it’s not clear what they are do Prohibition will become increasingly problematic. From our story:
Meta’s oversight board found that a Facebook video that falsely suggested that U.S. President Joe Biden is a pedophile did not violate the company’s current rules, but said the rules were “disjointed”. Yes, we believe that the focus is too narrow on AI-generated content.
The board, which is funded by Facebook’s parent company Meta but operates independently, took over the Biden video case in October in response to user complaints about a doctored seven-second video of the president.
Facebook rushed out a “manipulated media” policy several years ago, before ChatGPT and large-scale language models became AI trends, and amid growing interest in deepfakes. The rule
s prohibited misleading and altered videos created by AI.
The problem, the oversight committee said, is that the policy is impossible to apply because it has little clear rationale behind it and no clear theory of the harm it seeks to prevent. How can moderators differentiate between videos created by AI (which is prohibited) and videos created by skilled video editors (which are allowed)? Even if they could, Why is only the former problematic enough to be removed from the site?
The Oversight Committee proposed updating the rules to remove the temporary reference to AI altogether and instead require labels to identify manipulated audio and video content, regardless of the manipulation method. Mehta said it would update its policy.
Brianna Gee’s mother is calling for stricter restrictions on smartphones and social media. Photo: Handout to families/Cheshire Police/PA
Brianna Gee’s mother is calling for a revolution in how teens approach social media after her daughter was murdered by two of her classmates. Under-16s, she says, should be limited to devices made for teenagers that allow parents to easily monitor their technological lives, which are age-restricted by governments and tech companies.
I spoke to Archie Brand, editor of the daily newsletter First Edition, about her plea:
This lament will resonate with many parents, but in Brianna’s case it has special power. She was “secretly accessing sites on her smartphone that promoted anorexia and self-harm.” Petition created by Esther Say. And prosecutors
said her killers used Google to search for poisons, “serial killer facts” and ways to combat anxiety, and searched Amazon for rope.
“We don’t need new software to do everything Esther Gee wants us to do,” says Alex Hahn. “But there’s a broader problem here. Just as this sector has historically moved faster than governments can keep up, it’s also moving faster than parents can keep up. This varies from app to app and changes regularly, so it’s a large and difficult job to keep track of.”
You can read Archie's full email here (and sign up here to get the first edition every weekday morning).
Wider TechScape
Taylor Swift is one of the Universal Music artists whose work has been stripped from TikTok. Photo: Natasha Pisarenko/AP
A coronavirus vaccine is being administered at Epsom Racecourse in Surrey, England.
PA Image/Alamy
Around 7,000 people in the UK would have avoided dying or being hospitalized from coronavirus in the summer of 2022 if they had been fully vaccinated against the virus, a major study has found. This is the first time that the health impact of hesitancy to get a COVID-19 vaccine has been calculated on a national basis.
Since the emergence of the Omicron variant, covid-19 vaccines are less effective at preventing people from getting infected, but they still reduce the risk of dying or needing hospitalization from the virus.
katherine sudlow Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in the UK used national health service data to determine how much vaccination would reduce hospitalizations and deaths in the summer of 2022, when most COVID-19 restrictions had ended. We investigated whether it had an impact on
Sudlow's team included data from June 1 to September 30, 2022, spanning the wave of coronavirus infections that peaked in July. During this period, 40,000 people died or required hospitalization due to the virus, all of which were classified as serious health hazards.
The team then looked at people who have received the recommended number of COVID-19 vaccines and boosters (for example, four doses for people 75 and older by that point) and those who have received fewer than the recommended number of doses. They compared rates of severe outcomes among people who received the vaccine or booster immunization. Not at all.
People who have not been fully vaccinated are more likely to develop severe disease than people who are fully vaccinated, and the exact increased risk depends on age. For example, people over the age of 75 are about three times more likely to develop severe illness from COVID-19 if they have not been fully vaccinated.
The researchers calculated that if everyone in the UK had been fully vaccinated, there would have been around 7,000 fewer deaths and hospital admissions. “Fully immunizing people will reduce adverse outcomes for society as a whole,” Sudlow said.
One caveat is that this study was not a randomized trial, which is the best medical evidence, but simply observed a correlation between vaccination status and outcome, which could bias the results. The fact is that there is, he said. stephen evans At the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Nevertheless, he says the results of studies on the vaccine's effectiveness are broadly consistent with previous randomized trials. “Their approach is a reasonable one.”
Ofcom has initiated an inquiry into TikTok to determine if it provided false information about parental controls.
The UK’s media regulator has requested details from Chinese-owned apps and other online video platforms like Snapchat, to report on measures taken to protect children.
While they were generally commended for their efforts, Ofcom stated that it had “reasons to believe” that TikTok provided “inaccurate” information about the family pairing system.
This feature allows adults to link their account to their child’s account and control settings such as screen time limits.
Ofcom will now investigate whether the company “failed in its obligations” by not taking appropriate action.
TikTok attributed the issue to a technical problem, and Ofcom said it is aware and will provide the necessary data.
A spokesperson mentioned that the platform enforces an age requirement of 13 years and that the report notes the platform’s significant effort and resources in locating and removing underage users.
Ofcom’s report is the first in two years following guidance on video sharing apps about how to protect young users from encountering harmful content.
YouTube and Facebook were not covered in the report as they fall under Irish jurisdiction, a result of EU rules that the UK continues to follow, despite leaving the EU gradually through the online safety bill.
An Ofcom report published on Thursday found that TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitch all met the requirements set out two years ago.
All three platforms categorize and label content to ensure it is age-appropriate.
However, while Snapchat and TikTok offer parental controls, Twitch requires parents to supervise their children in real time as per its terms of service.
Ofcom stated that although steps were being taken to protect young users, “victims can still be victimized while using these platforms”.
A juvenile Patilia miniata starfish with fluorescent staining highlighting the skeleton, muscles, and nervous system.
Laurent Formery
Scientists trying to figure out where the starfish’s head is located have come to the surprising conclusion that the starfish is practically the entire body of the animal. The discovery not only solves this long-standing mystery, but also helps us understand how evolution created the dramatic diversity of animal forms on Earth.
Starfish, also known as sea stars, belong to a group of animals called echinoderms, which includes sea urchins and sea cucumbers. Their strange body design has long puzzled biologists. Most animals, including humans, have distinct cranial and caudal ends, and a line of symmetry runs down the middle of the body, dividing it into two halves of its mirror image. Animals with this bilateral symmetry are called bilateral animals.
Echinoderms, on the other hand, have five lines of symmetry radiating from a central point and no physically obvious heads or tails. However, they are closely related to animals like us, having evolved from bilaterally symmetrical ancestors. Even larvae are bilaterally symmetrical and then radically reorganize their bodies as they metamorphose into adults.
These large differences make it difficult for scientists to find and compare equivalent body parts in bilateral animals to understand how echinoderms evolved. “Morphology tells us very little,” he says. Laurent Formery at Stanford University in California. “That’s too strange.”
Formalie and his colleagues decided to examine a set of genes known to direct head-to-tail control. All bilateralist organizations. In these animals, these genes are turned on and expressed in stripes in the outer layers of the developing embryo. The genes expressed in each stripe define which point it is on the cranio-caudal axis.
The aim was to see if gene expression patterns could reveal the hidden “molecular anatomy” of echinoderms. “This particular gene suite is ideal for investigating the diversity of the most extreme forms of animals,” says the team leader. chris lowe, also at Stanford University. “I think echinoderms are a very extreme experiment in how to use that bidirectional network to produce very, very different body plans.”
To the team’s surprise, the gene that determines the head edge of bilateral animals was expressed in a line running down the center of each star star’s lower arm. The next leading gene is expressed on both sides of this line, and so on.
Even more bizarrely, genes normally expressed in the trunk of bilateral animals were missing from the animals’ outer layers. This suggests that the starfish abandoned its trunk region and released its outer layer to evolve in a new direction, Formery said.
The findings show that “the bodies of echinoderms, at least with respect to their external surfaces, are essentially lip-walking heads.” Thurston Lacari from the University of Victoria, Canada, was not involved in the study. Animals like us may have swam away to escape predation. “Echinoderms didn’t need trunks because they were hunched over and armored,” Lacari says.
The idea that echinoderms are “head-like” animals is “interesting and powerful,” he says. Andreas Heyland at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. This raises some very important and fundamental questions about how ecological factors shape the evolution of anatomy, he says. “Finding the underlying conserved patterns provides important insights into how development evolves.”
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