To the point

• A look into the heart of an active galaxy: Astronomers have captured an image of the origin of a cosmic jet. The image and its artificial coloring remind of the eye of Sauron.

• The question of the origin of neutrinos: PKS 1424240 is the brightest neutrino-emitting object of its kind. However, the concentrated mass flow is too slow to explain the emission of neutrinos.

• Spiral magnetic fields accelerate particles: 15 years of precise observations with the Very Long Baseline Array have enabled a detailed analysis of the jet's origin. The radio image could solve this problem, as it shows ring-shaped magnetic fields, an environment that acts like a spring and can accelerate particles to high energies. This in turn explains neutrinos and high-energy gamma radiation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/557841

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The Trump administration has reduced funding for climate research, dismissed federal scientists who worked on the National Climate Assessment, and removed past editions of the report from government websites.

Now, critics say, it is taking the next step: rewriting the science itself, according to a lawsuit filed this week by environmental groups.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34532775

This idea combines a neuro-symbolic AI system (take a LLM and use it to generate logical code; then make inferences from it, see Neural | Symbolic Type) with Attempto Controlled English, which is a controlled natural language that looks like English but is formally defined and as powerful as first order logic.

The main benefit is that the result of the transformation from document/natural language to the logical language would be readable by not IT experts, as well as editable. They could check the result, add their own rules and facts, as well as queries.

I created a small prototype to show in which direction it would be going (heavily work in progress though). What do you think of this? Would love to here your opinions :)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/40535172

“What's really interesting about humans and their ancestors is we're a technologically dependent species,” Finestone said. “We rely on tools. We're obligate tool users. We don't do it opportunistically or occasionally the way that a lot of other animals use tools. It's really become ingrained in our way of life, in our survival, and our foraging strategies across all people and all cultures.”

The study of early hominins (our cousins) and the many branches in the path of our evolution is easily my favorite area of science. This topic is evergreen, with new discoveries every year that frequently upend our understanding of the landscape. Dinos and the like are fave number two.

To author its new report, the Department of Energy tapped climate contrarians, including several who have been on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry and whose discredited and debunked arguments have been promoted by right-wing media to manufacture doubt about the science that compels climate action. In fact, four of the five authors of the report — Judith Curry, John Cristy, Steven Koonin, and Roy Spencer — have appeared on Fox News during key moments to dismiss climate science and deny the link between our warming planet and extreme weather.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34416839

The fundamental idea of this paper is for ChatGPT-like apps to lose natural language for less energy consumption and more determinism in their answers based on controlled natural languages like ACE; for the user to be able to modify this trade-off-ratio at will based on LLMs (which is not possible when starting from a ChatGPT-like app); and to capture this new paradigm in a new type of browser that has natural language as its primary interface, here called a semantic web-first browser.

Satellites sort out Aerosols in the atmosphere by color. (Article has an interactive 3D model.)

Some more details here: https://www.science.org/content/article/scienceadviser-sex-reversal-may-not-be-rare-bird

French researchers have established the first direct causal link between mitochondrial dysfunction and memory loss in neurodegenerative diseases, demonstrating that restoring brain energy production can reverse cognitive symptoms within hours.

The study, published August 11 in Nature Neuroscience by scientists from Inserm and the University of Bordeaux, developed a precision tool called mitoDREADD-Gs that successfully restored memory function in multiple dementia mouse models by directly stimulating mitochondrial energy production.

"This work is the first to establish a cause-and-effect link between mitochondrial dysfunction and symptoms related to neurodegenerative diseases, suggesting that impaired mitochondrial activity could be at the origin of the onset of neuronal degeneration," said Marsicano.

Toes have a better survival rate than fingers when attached to a hand.

Astronomers have discovered what may be the most massive black hole ever found, a cosmic behemoth weighing 36 billion times the mass of our Sun and located 5 billion light-years away in a galaxy dubbed the Cosmic Horseshoe. The discovery, published August 7 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, pushes the boundaries of what scientists believe is possible in the universe.

The ultramassive black hole is roughly 10,000 times heavier than Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It sits close to the theoretical upper limit for black hole size, which cosmological models suggest is around 40 to 50 billion solar masses.