In their new book Empty Planet, Bricker and Ibbitson argue that within the next 30 years, Earth’s population will start to rapidly decline. They believe that official population predictions overestimate future populations because they fail to fully take into account accelerating cultural changes. It is believed that senescent cells are a major driver of age-related … Continue reading Science and Technology links (February 16th, 2019)
Though deep learning has proven remarkably capable in many tasks like image classification, it is possible that the problems they are solving remarquably well are just simpler than we think: At its core our work shows that [neural networks] use the many weak statistical regularities present in natural images for classification and don’t make the … Continue reading Science and Technology links (February 9th, 2019)
A Canadian startup built around electric taxis failed. One of their core findings is that electric cars must be recharged several times a day, especially during the winter months. Evidently, the need to constantly recharge the cars increases the costs. I think that this need to constantly recharge cars challenges the view that once we … Continue reading Science and Technology links (February 3rd, 2019)
We are training many more doctors (PhDs) than we need, when looking at the number of new faculty positions. In science, this has been true since at least the 1980s. It is not uncommon for even so-so faculty positions to receive dozens of top-notch applicants with PhDs. Yet it is often believed that for a … Continue reading Science and Technology links (January 26th, 2019)
Losing even just a bit of weight can be enough to restore fertility in women. Digital technology does not appear to have a significant negative effect on teenagers, according to an article published by Nature. According to an article published by Nature, woody vegetation cover over sub-Saharan Africa increased by 8% over the past three … Continue reading Science and Technology links (January 19th, 2019)
You can buy a 512GB memory card for $140 from Amazon. We have been told for decades to avoid saturated fats, the kind found in meat, cheese and butter. After an extensive review, Grasgruber et al. conclude: Our results do not support the association between cardiovascular diseases and saturated fat, which is still contained in … Continue reading Science and Technology links (January 12th, 2019)
There are nearly 70,000 centenarians in Japan. China’s population fell by 1.27 million in 2018. Obesity is associated with increased senescent cell burden and neuropsychiatric disorders, including anxiety and depression. Clearing senescent cells could alleviate these symptons. Women who come from families where the mother is the breadwinner are less likely to pursue a science … Continue reading Science and Technology links (January 5th, 2019)
Low-dose radiation from A-bombs elongated lifespan and reduced cancer mortality relative to un-irradiated individuals (Sutou, 2018): The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) presented the linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT) in 1956, which indicates that the lowest doses of ionizing radiation are hazardous in proportion to the dose. This spurious hypothesis was not based on solid … Continue reading Science and Technology links (December 29th, 2018)
For equity reasons, many people advocate for double-blind peer review, meaning that the author does not know who the reviewer is, nor does the reviewer know who the author is. It is believed (despite little hard positive evidence and some contrary evidence) that this is surely benefificial to female authors and minorities. Cox and Montgomerie … Continue reading Science and Technology links (December 22nd 2018)
Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. There is weak correlation between grades and job performance. Grant reviews the evidence in details in his New York Times piece.When recruiting research assistants, I look at grades as the last indicator. I find that imagination, ambition, initiative, curiosity, drive, are far better predictors of … Continue reading Science and Technology links (December 15th 2018)