Science and Technology links (September 26th 2021)

  1. Radiation-therapy can rejuvenate heart cells. (source: Nature)
  2. Within members of the same species, cancer risk increases with body size. Large human beings are more at risk than smaller ones. Across species, the reverse is often true: cancer risks decrease with body size. Elephants are much less at risk of cancer than mice.
    We do not know why it works this way: it is called Peto’s paradox. (Credit: John D Cook)
  3. Large minimum wage increases reduced employment rates among low-skilled individuals by just over 2.5 percentage points.
  4. Researchers claim to have found a way to rejuvenate an important part of the immune system using hormonal signals. It is not yet in vivo (nobody was rejuvenated with this technique).
  5. Apple makes it easy to carry your electronic vaccination information with you.
  6. We have a processor for artificial intelligence containing 2.6 trillion transistors. It is many more transistors than we have neurons in the human brain.
  7. Though most native Americans can be traced back to Asians who came to America 15,000 years ago, we have increasing evidence of human life in America far older, going back 23,000 years ago. What happened to these human beings and how they came to America is a mystery.

Published by

Daniel Lemire

A computer science professor at the University of Quebec (TELUQ).

2 thoughts on “Science and Technology links (September 26th 2021)”

  1. The number of synapses in the brain is still some two orders of magnitude greater. And each synapse would take more than one digital transistor to model.

    Reply

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