The sound of a vocal tract from a 3,000-year-old mummy has been recreated using CT scans, a 3D-printer, and a voice synthesizer. Details of this achievement—such as it is—were published in Scientific Reports. (1)
When we predict future climate, it is important to understand the climate of the past. We do. Mostly. Some details are still debatable.
An example of that are the periodicities of ice ages – that is, how ice ages come and go. This is described in a theory developed by amongst others the astronomer Milankovitch in the 1920ies. The theory is good, but it doesn’t explain everything. The periodicity of ice ages has not been as precise as the theory would indicate. Why is that? Is it because of noise in the system.
Now climate scientist document that the climate system is more chaotic than the model indicates. A myriad of coincidences seem to displace the ice ages from the predictions of the theory. (1)
Upol Ehsan once took a test ride in an Uber self-driving car. Instead of fretting about the empty driver’s seat, anxious passengers were encouraged to watch a “pacifier” screen that showed a car’s-eye view of the road: hazards picked out in orange and red, safe zones in cool blue.
For Ehsan, who studies the way humans interact with AI at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, the intended message was clear: To explain what the AI was doing. But something about these whole scene highlighted the strangeness of the experience rather than reassured. It got Ehsan thinking: what if the self-driving car could really explain itself? (1)
When we cut our skin, groups of cells rush en masse to the site to heal the wound.
But the complicated mechanics of this collective cell movement — which are facilitated by rearrangements between each cell and its neighbors — have made it challenging for researchers to decipher what’s actually driving it.
Notbohm and doctoral student Aashrith Saraswathibhatla recently made a surprising discovery that sheds new light on how this collective cell migration happens. Through experiments, they found that the force each cell applies to the surface beneath it — in other words, traction — is the dominant physical factor that controls cell shape and motion as cells travel as a group. (1)
Moving through traction.
Staying still through motion.
Living through death.
Dying through living.
Seek knowledge in the irrational. It is only there were knowledge is independent of any assumptions. And inside its chaos, you will find the peace you seek. For only in the irrational ideas are stripped of all their clothes. A the king can be really a king. Especially because he is naked.
Think. Via not-thinking.
How can you move, if not by your inability to do so?
How can you stand still, without others moving around you?
