25 November 2024

Always learning something new.  It's known that women get bladder infections all the time, but they rarely get pyelonephritis. Why is that. Well, scientists recently discovered something called neutrophil extracellular traps—NETs, that are "sticky webs of wispy strands that quite literally serve as traps that ensnare bacteria that attempt to migrate northward to the kidneys from the lower urinary tract."

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The study, conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in collaboration with Rutgers University, found that certain DEI practices could induce hostility, increase authoritarian tendencies, and foster agreement with extreme rhetoric.
That's why.  And boy, have we seen this to be true.  Here's the DEI paper.

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The Japanese have invented a human washing machine. You'll be clean in 15 minutes. This might have some applications for disabled people, who need help bathing themselves. However I imagine some bizarre accidents from this thing.

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The seedy side of AI. To get labeled datasets, someone needs to label the data, and the tech industry has been using low-paid African workers to consume all kinds of images and video and label them.  And some of that media is really horrible. And it's psychologically scarring them.

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Chinese scientists claim they have invested a Death Star type weapon.  Well, they're always copying stuff, so...

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Google is under siege. I think they need a new CEO. Sundar was a guy for a different era of Google. Times have changed.

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Overthinking what you say all the time? It's your lizard brain. But then, your lizard brain developed that habit for a reason. Never dismiss the lizard brain completely.

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Lens breakthrough can lead to thinner cameras.  Tim Cook's ear pricked up.

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Never trust generative AI completely. They hallucinate like hell. As Professor Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, “well-known for his research on how people use deception with technology,” has learned to his chagrin.

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24 November 2024

How to give a good 20 minute math talk. I'm bookmarking this, because...you never know.

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Here's what happened at a hospital when they tried to solve their physician shortage problem with nurse practitioners. Yeah, people died. There's a looming physician shortage. It doesn't look good.

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Amazon wants to bring nuclear reactors back to Oregon. It's Eastern Oregon. And the reactors will be different from the one that used to be in Prescott.  I think it's about time, actually.

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Good to know.  Stem cells grown in space have extra regenerative capacity.

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The Liver X receptor has been shown to promote tissue repair and suppress colorectal tumorigenesis. Original paper here.

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23 November 2024

New theory reveals the shape of a photon. Not exactly what I was expecting to see.  A photon is supposed to be a point. So what is this thing?  Here's the original paper, and the diagram doesn't appear anywhere.

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it is now understood to have worked by hacking into the antiquated technology mobile phones companies use to give access to phone taps for law enforcement agencies
This is why it's not good to give backdoors to law enforcement. Smarter people know how to exploit it, too.

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Immaculately preserved sabretooth tiger cub is uncovered in Siberian permafrost.

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Nice review of AI hallucinations for lay people. What are they, and how to avoid being snared by one.

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Funny. curl -v google.com

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Portland has 13 million square feet of vacant office space as of mid-year, with an expected lost rent value of $436 million.
But city officials don't seem to be concerned about this. They just want to make sure the homeless are comfortable, and have enough tents, clean syringes and boofing kits.

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OHSU employees have low trust of leadership. Most would like to be around in the OHSU of three years from now, but that depends on whether things improve. Steve Stadum, I hope you're able to bring back the excellence and meritocratic values that were lost in the past 6 years.

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University of Washington is one of the top antisemitic colleges in the U.S.  They let it happen.

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22 November 2024

Ugh. Google is thinking about putting ads in your AI.  Google sure has morphed since its inception. No longer a search company, it's an ad company. Google is also supposedly letting users delete their location history on Google Maps, but I agree with one commenter that it is likely that Google is only deleting your access to the data. I can't believe that they would throw away something of great value to them. Now the DOJ wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser, the tool it uses to harvest user data, and here is Google's response to that.

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Which is the best LLM for coding?  I like Claude 3.5 Sonnet – so polite and eager to help, but it can go down rabbit holes and lead you astray with bizarre suggestions that go nowhere. So many times, it has to apologize for a bad recommendation. I've found o1-preview to be the best, but it is not as user-friendly, and assumes you can follow along when it recommends a variety of options to try to fix your problem. But I hate that you have to wait 30 seconds to get a response, whereas Claude responds almost immediately. GPT4 is OK as an assistant, neither super-friendly, but more competent than Claude.

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nearly all jobs that are being created in California are government jobs. Between January 2022 and June 2024, total California jobs grew by about 156,000, with government jobs accounting for 96.5 percent of that growth. 
What a sick state.  And Newsom, if he ever became president, would likely turn the U.S. into California. The illusion of wealth and prosperity, but in reality, a potemkin country.

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Gliocidin is a small molecule that kills glioblastoma cells while sparing non-tumour replicative cells. Gliocidin targets inosine monophosphate dehydrogenase 2 (IMPDH2), which leads to purine synthesis inhibition, leading to cell death. 

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Apparently for 40 years scientists have known about a chemical in drinking water, but only now have they identified it. Whaaat? It's called chloronitramide anion and it's a degradation by-product of chloramine, which is used to treat drinking water.

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21 November 2024

A new antibiotic, darobactin, might be useful to fight drug-resistant E coli and the annoying Acinetobacter baumannii.  It's only moderately effective against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, however, so there is room for improvement.

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Wow, look at the excess cardiopulmonary arrest deaths in King County, Washington, with strong temporal association with the COVID-19 vaccine campaign launch. Why was this promoted for so long?

Peter McCullough has another paper out showing a strong connection between the vaccine and deaths.

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Wow. Undergraduates with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend MIT tuition-free starting in 2025. Wonder what compelled them to offer this now? Seems strange for them to be so magnanimous all of a sudden.

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“If you can have a bunch of small ‘yous’ running around and actually making the decisions that you would have made—that, I think, is ultimately the future,” Park says.
Uncanny valley.  Maybe this is how the Singularity starts.

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Neurons in a frontal region called the anterior cingulate cortex were connected to an intermediate brainstem area in the pons, which was then connected to the medulla just below
This was actually discovered around 2013 by another group.

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Don't get sick in Eugene. Their hospital system has really declined. Lots of reasons for it, but it got worse during the coronavirus epidemic. This should be one of Tina Kotek's priorities, instead of stockpiling mifepristone.

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Portland's property values are declining. Wait until Trump's inauguration in January 2025. How many businesses will just give up.  This must aggravate Portland residents – pay high taxes and you can't even enjoy the city.  Oh, but others can. Here's a new open air fentanyl market.

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20 November 2024

High-dose IV vitamin C plus chemotherapy found to double survival time in advanced pancreatic cancer.  How does that work? Interesting result, but I suspect it won't catch on in the clinic just yet. It just seems too pseudo-sciency.

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Multnomah County heading towards $21 million shortfall next year.  They have the money, but they just spend it on frivolous stuff. And won't admit to doing so. No more spending on tents, only to have the tents taken away. No more boofing kits and free needles, etc.

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Newport will start powering some homes with energy generated from wave action. I think this is more whimsy than practicality.  Such low efficiency energy generation. They'll need to stay hooked up to the energy grid, for sure.

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This Chemistry Breakthrough Might Change Everything From Medicine to Farming.  Researchers at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion have unveiled triazenolysis, a groundbreaking chemical process that transforms alkenes, widely occurring organic compounds, like those derived from petroleum, into multifunctional amines, which could lead to producing raw materials used in polymers, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural compounds.

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IgNobel prize winners can see their careers get boosted, too.  Silly publicity is better than no publicity.

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19 November 2024

Exceptional people are rare: found in less than 85 of 1,000,000 people. An exceptional person is one who has extreme intelligence, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. It's not that difficult to find people who satisfy one, maybe two criteria. But finding all three is very difficult. 

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Math GPT. This is a domain-specific LLM, so perhaps more trustworthy to do math than a general purpose model.

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MagicQuill is amazing. It uses generative AI to let you modify photos, but very easily. Just as interesting is the author list.

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Portland Clinic is pulling out of downtown Portland. Been there for 104 years, but all it took was a few years of Ted Wheeler's rule to make them have to move. All that tax base – gone. And neighboring shops that probably enjoyed spillover business – they'll see less revenue. And they'd better sell that building fast. When the local homeless find that it's abandoned, well... you know what's going to happen. See Gordon's Fireplace Shop.

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Here's the nasty fallout from ranked-choice voting. Remember that the whole purpose was so that the winner got support of 50% of the people? Well, they all got between 11% and 25% of voter support. So much for that. And the rules are that if you're unhappy with them, it'll take 75% of voters to oust them.

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I saw this article about how trust in scientsts took a dive during COVID. And the authors recommend humility. No, that wasn't the problem so much as many of them did crap like this.  That'll lose trust.

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18 November 2024

Crashed Israeli lunar lander contained tardigrades.  So what does this mean, given that these creatures can survive almost anything? All those years, mutating, mutating,...

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So paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible, at least. No mathematical problems, apparently. Well, let's go then.

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It's Surprisingly Easy to Jailbreak LLM-Driven Robots.  These LLMs are still breakable toys, and it's surprising and concerning that people are using it in mission-critical areas, like medicine.

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Stress can disrupt memory and lead to needless anxiety.  Mice can be trained to react fearfully to harmless stimuli when experiencing a similar stimulus under conditions of stress. This probably explains PTSD.

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Phishing emails are now starting to use SVG graphics because of SPAM detectors focusing on graphics formats like JPG, GIF, etc. They think they can evade detection this way.

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Portland State University downgraded their estimate of Oregon's population to match the official census. It was originally rosier, but nah, Oregon lost people.  No population increase since 2019.

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Samurai serial killers. And mass murderers. Yeah, they were a thing, all right.

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17 November 2024

The magnetic north pole is moving to Russia in a way never before seen by scientists. Of course the article never really explains why it's "never before seen by scientists". And remember, the Earth's magnetic north pole is really a magnestic south pole, because that's why compasses point north.

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Stress warps fear memories. Of course – that's how we get PTSD. The article mentions taking mifepristone soon after the stress, to mitigate the memory warp. Taking propranolol can help as well. Here's another article on this.

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Homelessness is increasing faster than Portland-area counties are moving people into housing. That's because we subsidize it. And remember what Ronald Reagan said.

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Record number of Oregonians have college degrees.  Yeah, but what about the quality of those degrees. Sure doesn't seem like I'm surrounded by smart people when I'm in Oregon.

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AI is predicted to gain consciousness in 2035. That's ten years away.  Maybe it will come sooner. Hope it doesn't happen with Google's Gemini – that bot is f'cked up. And it's apparently easy to jailbreak LLMs. There is a ways to go before we can all decide on consciousness.

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The world's largest organism is Pando. And it's really old. I would have gotten this wrong on a quiz.

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Just like college loans, the Affordable Care Act needs to be replaced with something more competitive and maybe this time it will. It's always difficult to dismantle socialist systems, once they've been entrenched.

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16 November 2024

Another Trump accomplishment. Trump-hating editor in chief of Scientific American steps down.

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Speaking of hatred. Google's Gemini spews vitriol at a user, wishing death.  Google just shrugs it off, calling it "nonsense". They clain to have filters that eliminate things like this from happening. Here is the chat session.  Google should take this version of Gemini down, already. Hasn't it embarrassed itself enough already, with its wokeness?  Maybe its tendency to hate others vehemently comes from its left-leaning politics, I dunno. But supposedly, it's the top of the current batch of LLMs.

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Looks like mail-in fraud elections might be happening in Oregon, too, just like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Washington. We have to get rid of the endless delays in getting results finalized, and the sudden influx of Democrat ballots that come in days later.

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Now some people think that the COVID-19 virus can actually help fight cancer.  Apparently in the presence of virus, monocytes change their phenotype to a cancer-fighting cell, something that it mimicked by muramyl dipeptide.

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The older we get, the later we think old age starts. No surprise here.

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a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-76900-1" target="_blank">AI-generated poetry is more highly-rated than human generated poetry. Probably it's that LLMs are able to pull more highly-rated word choices than humans are, and maybe they selected lousy poets for comparison. It's all subjective.

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Yet, another report that anxiety and depression are increasing in Americans, especially younger folks. We know why that's been happening, right?

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23 most dangerous cars on the road. I remember when those lists would be populated mainly be American cars at the top, but surprisingly it's Korean, German and Japanese cars (although Mitsubishi is really a Chrysler car).

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Casio makes a watch-ring. The idea is cute, but the execution is kinda lame. I don't think people want a mini watch on their finger like that. I thought they would design something awesome, but it's nothing I'd want to wear. They didn't even turn the display so that you don't have to turn your head.

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How to fix the student loan debt fiasco. I agree with this person's thoughts, but I also think that the government needs to get out of the student loan business. This is one of Obama's great mistakes, having the federal government take over the loans.

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AI chatbot tells mushroom hunters to eat poisonous mushrooms. Don't ever trust a general purpose LLM on life and death matters. They are good for general questions which you can confirm later, and for non-mission critical situations. But remember, LLMs only give you answers that look like they could be correct.

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