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OLLI Science in the News & Your recommendations
For 10/10/2024
⓵ Winners of the 2024 Nobel Prizes (updated Oct 7,8,9,10)
https://time.com/7065011/nobel-prize-2024-winners/
Nobel Prize in medicine awarded for discovery of microRNAs, the molecules that control our genes
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-nobel-prize-medicine-awarded-discovery.html
They received the prestigious award for discovering tiny
molecules in our cells called microRNAs. This discovery has
not only changed our understanding of how our bodies work,
but has opened up a whole new area of science as well. It
even extends into new treatments.
These molecules, microRNAs, can simply be thought of as tiny
controllers inside our cells, the building blocks of our
bodies. They help decide which parts of our DNA, our own
genetic material, should be active and which should be
quiet.
Think of them as volume knobs for our genes, turning them up
or down as needed. All our cells contain the same number of
DNA letters called bases—there's about 3 billion. These tiny
little molecules themselves, in fact, help control which of
those letters are on or off, how loud that volume switch is,
and in doing so, how our own genes behave.
Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded for Breakthroughs in Machine Learning
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nobel-prize-in-physics-awarded-for-breakthroughs-in-machine-learning/
The human brain, with its billions of interconnected neurons
giving rise to consciousness, is generally considered the
most powerful and flexible computer in the known universe.
Yet for decades scientists have been seeking to change that
via machine-learning approaches that emulate the brain’s
adaptive computational prowess. The 2024 Nobel Prize in
Physics was awarded on Tuesday to U.S. scientist John
Hopfield and British-Canadian scientist Geoffrey Hinton,
each of whom used the tools of physics to develop artificial
neural networks that laid the foundations for many of
today’s most advanced artificial intelligence applications.
Reached via telephone while in California, Hinton told the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that he was
“flabbergasted” to learn he’d received the award. After
decades of effort to advance AI, he is now one of the most
prominent advocates for better safeguards. Last year he
stepped down from an influential position at Google to speak
more freely about the technology’s risks. “[AI] will be
comparable with the industrial revolution,” he said during
his telephone interview with the academy. “But instead of
exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed
people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of
what it’s like to have things smarter than us, and it’s
going to be wonderful in many respects.... But we also have
to worry about a number of possible bad consequences,
particularly the threat of these things getting out of
control.”
Artificial neural networks seek to emulate the brain’s
cognitive function by using nodes with different values as
stand-ins for neurons. These nodes form networks of
connections, akin to the brain’s natural neural synapses,
which can be made stronger or weaker through training on any
arbitrary dataset. This adaptive response allows the
artificial neural network to better recognize patterns
within data and make subsequent predictions for the
future—that is, to learn without being explicitly
programmed.
Chemistry Nobel goes to developers of AlphaFold AI that
predicts protein structures
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03214-7
For the first time — and probably not the last — a
scientific breakthrough enabled by artificial intelligence
(AI) has been recognized with a Nobel prize. The 2024
chemistry Nobel was awarded to John Jumper and Demis
Hassabis at Google DeepMind in London, for developing a
game-changing AI tool for predicting protein structures
called AlphaFold, and David Baker, at the University of
Washington in Seattle, for his work on computational protein
design, which has been bolstered by Al in recent years.
“I hope when we look back on AlphaFold, it will be the first
proof point of AI's incredible potential to accelerate
scientific discovery,” Hassabis said at a press briefing at
DeepMind on 9 October. “It’s so unreal at this moment.”
The impact of AlphaFold, which was unveiled just a few years
ago, has been nothing short of transformative. The tool has
made protein structures — often, but not always, highly
accurate ones — available to researchers at the touch of a
button, and enabled experiments that were unimaginable a
decade ago. “It’s a major revolution,” says Christine
Orengo, a computational biologist at University College
London, whose laboratory has used AlphaFold-predicted
structures to uncover new proteins.
⓶ New cooling system works on gravity instead of electricity
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-cooling-gravity-electricity.html
⓷ From Steven Willson
https://www.sciencealert.com/earth-like-planet-discovered-orbiting-an-alien-star-theres-just-one-big-problem
https://www.sciencealert.com/medical-imaging-technique-reveals-what-truly-lies-beneath-a-volcano
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-neutrino-detector-finally-in-operation-and-it-could-break-physics-as-we-know-i
⓸ From Peter Hallock
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn7179
⓹ From Beth Larabee
https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/james-webb-telescope-watches-ancient-supernova-replay-3-times-and-confirms-something-is-seriously-wrong-in-our-understanding-of-the-universe
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a62414538/human-life-pause-button/
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sam.wormley@icloud.com