Sharpless 249 And The Jellyfish Nebula

What we all need to understand about AI in a nutshell:

There’s an algorithm that can reliably predict, from aggregate facebook posts, the onset of a manic episode in a person suffering from bipolar disorder – more reliably even, than a trained psychotherapist, who only has access to the information a patient provides them in therapy sessions. 

“Won’t technology like that help people with bipolar disorder?”

Theoretically, it could. But this algorithm wasn’t designed to help people with bipolar disorder.

This algorithm was designed to sell plane tickets to Las Vegas.

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How 250 Siberians Became the First Native Americans

The Americas are a big place, but the Native American group that first settled it was small — just about 250 people, according to a new genetic study.

These people, known as a founding group because they “founded” the first population, migrated from Siberia to the Americas by about 15,000 years ago, said study co-lead researcher Nelson Fagundes, a professor in the Department of Genetics at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil.

Figuring out the size of founding groups is key, because it determines the amount of genetic diversity that gets passed on to the group’s descendants, Fagundes said.

That, in turn, could alter how effectively natural selection weeds out bad genes, Fagundes said.

“Large populations have very efficient selection, while in small populations, mildly deleterious alleles [versions of genes] can spread, which may increase genetic susceptibility to some diseases,” Read more.

Can we talk? Starting a career in science communication

“Here is how science is relevant and has an impact on your life, and more importantly, here is how it can empower you.” ~ Mónica Feliú-Mójer

In this week’s featured podcast, “Sci on the Fly,” our own AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow Allyson Kennedy interviews neurobiologist Mónica Feliú-Mójer, communications and science outreach director at Ciencia Puerto Rico. 

We’ll let them take it from here: bit.ly/2ITDur3   

Above:  Mónica I. Feliú-Mójer delivering the keynote talk at the University of North Carolina STEM Diversity conference,  Credit: Katherine Gale Stember Feliú-Mójer is also associate director for diversity and communication training at NSF-funded iBiology, where she produced a series of videos that is rethinking the narrative of “diversity in science”: https://goo.gl/3xmTET Below:  Allyson Kennedy, Ph.D., a developmental biologist and 2017-18 Science & Technology Policy fellow at NSF, in The Dickinson Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she did her graduate and postdoctoral work,  Credit: Allyson Kennedy, Ph.D.   

https://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/activities/aaasfellows/bios/kennedy.jsp

Above: Kennedy at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she led one arm of a multidisciplinary project investigating the effects of e-cigarettes on embryonic development,  Credit: Leah Small, VCU Public Affairs https://www.aaaspolicyfellowships.org/ Below: Feliú-Mójer filming a segment for Univision that featured Latinxs in higher education. She is showing the camera the model organism she used for her PhD research, the nematode C. elegans, Credit: Mónica I. Feliú-Mójer, Ph.D 

Ilton Temple, Masham, Yorkshire, 14.8.17.

Robotic companions will never take the place of our furry best friends – but they can help us get them (and us) out of a jam! Test your robotic readiness by figuring out these futuristic scenarios.

1945-1952 - Space Station by Wernher von Braun - Von Braun was a leading aerospace engineer first in Germany until 1945, and after being captued by U.S. forces in the same year, he continued working for NASA in U.S. He made United States able to develop the Saturn/Apollo program, making humans landing on the moon. The pictures here by NASA show one of Wernher von Braun’s fantastic plans, designing a space station for humans. NASA said that “(Wernher von Braun is) without any doubt the greatest rocket scientist in history”. For further details on the space station, please study the following link, adding a lot of details to this concept: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonation.htm. The following quote is as well from that website: “In the first 1946 summary of his work during World War II, Wernher von Braun prophesied the construction of space stations in orbit. The design, a toroidal station spun to provide artificial gravity, would be made very familiar to the American public over the next six years. The design was elaborated at the First Symposium on Space Flight on 12 October 1951 at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. The design was popularized in the series in Colliers magazine, illustrated with gorgeous Chesley Bonestell painting, in 1952. The 1946 version used 20 cylindrical sections, each about 3 m in diameter and 8 m long, to make up the toroid. The whole station was about 50 m in diameter and guy wires connecting and positioning the toroid to the 8 m-diameter central power module. This was equipped with a sun-following solar collector dish to heat fluid in a ball-shaped device. The heated fluid would run an electrical generator. Presumably visiting spacecraft would dock or transfer crew at the base of the power module.”

When your hair is wavy/curly sometimes there is a fine line between “messy romantic waves” and “evil witch who lives in the woods.”

this is so rare!!! and it’s not albino, because its eyes are the usual color instead of pinkish- it’s the same gene that gives some moose white spots!

Nature spirit.

the thing about organic chemistry is that you finally get to use all the aesthetically pleasing mad scientist looking chemistry apperatuses that you’ve been waiting to use for years but when u finally get to use them they all turn out to do surprisingly boring things

There’s a megalodon tooth in the nature trade right now and my god do I want it