There are far fewer forest fires now than there was 15 years ago. The Earth is getting greener. There are more forests: We show that—contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally—tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km2 (+7.1% relative to the 1982 level).Global bare ground cover has decreased by 1.16 … Continue reading Science and Technology links (August 10th, 2018)
About 80% of the ocean remains unmapped and unexplored. Even a mild concussion (a fall on your head) can double your risk of dementia (e.g., Alzheimer’s). Apple is selling approximatively two smart watches for each laptop. And they are selling about three iPads for each laptops. (I do not own an Apple watch: I don’t … Continue reading Science and Technology links (August 4th, 2018)
It is frequently argued that intelligence requires great complexity. But complex compared to what? To put things in perspective, my friend Leonid points out that tiny worms have simple brains and yet they can compute the solution to several problems: C elegans [a common worm] has less than 500 neural cells, but it has basic … Continue reading Science and Technology links (July 27th, 2018)
It seems that something called “Cartesian Genetic Programming” could be a match for Deep Learning. If you look at the best paid individuals in most fields, most of them are men. Why is that? There are many possible explanations. One of them is that men take more risks. If you hope to ever get larger … Continue reading Science and Technology links (July 21st, 2018)
The majority of people dying are 80 years old or older. A heart-disease drug can partially reverse type 1 diabetes. We can at least partially reverse age-related immune-system decline using drugs. Senescent cells are old cells that refuse to die; they are behind several age-related diseases. We know how to clear them, at least in … Continue reading Science and Technology links (July 15th, 2018)
In the United Kingdom, only a tiny minority of high school female students take computer science (0.4% in 2017). Physics is ten times more popular. Russians once drilled a 12-km deep hole. Apparently, it gets very hot as you dig deeper. Deep neural networks can detect myocardial infarction in electrocardiography (ECG) better than the state-of-the-art. … Continue reading Science and Technology links (July 6th, 2018)
Hogarth imagines that artificial intelligence (AI) could progress much faster than we might anticipate due to what he calls “AI nationalism”: I believe that the current government spending on AI is tiny compared to the investment we will see as they come to realise what is at stake. What if rather than spending ~£500 million … Continue reading Science and Technology links (June 29th, 2018)
Video gamers may soon be paid more than top pro athletes. Meanwhile, if you want to stand out in a crowd of university professors, point out that you are a fan of videogames. You can get your whole genome sequenced for $500. Machines can learn to solve the Rubik’s Cube “without human knowledge”. In most … Continue reading Science and Technology links (June 24th, 2018)
The market for artificial-intelligence chips could reach $30bn by 2022. My guess is that NVIDIA (a graphics card maker) is the big winner, their tag line is now “Artificial Intelligence Computing Leadership”. Multiple sclerosis could be caused by polymicrobial infections. There are fungal infections in the central nervous systems of Alzheimer’s patients, but not in … Continue reading Science and Technology links (June 15th, 2018)
A woman with late-stage breast cancer has been successfully cured using immunotherapy. She was preparing to die. She is now going to live hopefully many more years in good health. Deep learning generalizes poorly, in at least some cases: (…) when images are scaled to half their original size and randomly translated, the accuracy of … Continue reading Science and Technology links (June 9th, 2018)