What’s News For February 9th?As always we search the globe for the events and stories often overlooked by the mainstream.
1. Tel Aviv University researchers engineer human spinal cord implants for treating paralysis. https://scitechdaily.com/human-spinal-cord-implants…/ [Paper: Regenerating the Injured Spinal Cord at the Chronic Phase by Engineered iPSCs‐Derived 3D Neuronal Networks https://www.researchgate.net/…/358423853_Regenerating…]
2. A paralysed man with a severed spinal cord has been able to walk again, thanks to an implant developed by a team of Swiss researchers. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60258620 [Paper: Activity-dependent spinal cord neuromodulation rapidly restores trunk and leg motor functions after complete paralysis https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01663-5]
3. New Reprogrammable Chip Lets AI Learn Continuously—Just Like the Brain https://singularityhub.com/…/new-reprogrammable-chip…/
4. AlphaCode: what it does and what it doesn’t https://www.reddit.com/…/alphacode_what_it_does_and…/
5. Babies Emit HEX From Their Heads. Smelling it triggers aggression in women but blocks it in men: both should increase babies’ survival. One theory is that female aggression toward others protects infants while less male aggression protects them from him! https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abg1530
6. Post by Jacob Steinhardt on the surprising power of empirical generalization in Machine Learning. https://www.lesswrong.com/…/empirical-findings…
7. The Karikó problem: Lessons for funding basic research — “To be sure, the success rate of this approach might be low. But, if we funded 10,000 people who looked like a younger Karikó, and only one of them did something that would have the impact of her mRNA research, that would be well worth it.” https://www.statnews.com/…/kariko-problem-lessons…/
8. Ice-Penetrating Radar Reveals Age of Greenland Ice Sheet Layers https://eos.org/…/ice-penetrating-radar-reveals-age-of…
9. How you will go bust on a favorable bet. (Kelly/Shannon/Thorp) https://youtu.be/91IOwS0gf3g
10. Moreover, the weight of evidence against the birth of new neurons in the adult human brain is becoming increasingly compelling. https://sciencedirect.com/…/article/pii/S0896627322000046
11. Terraform Industries Whitepaper: Cheaper hydrocarbons from CO2 direct air capture and sunlight. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/…/terraform…/
12. “A future with a lot of nuclear energy is also one that can accommodate a lot of wind and solar. A future that forecloses the option of zero-carbon nuclear energy is one that, one way or another, is likely to require a lot of gas and even coal.” https://foreignpolicy.com/…/energy-crisis-nuclear…/
13. Lastly, Carl Shulman post on what a world immune to biological threats would look like http://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/…/what…
