Nature Briefings gives us seven technologies to watch this year

article of the week

It’s funny how different people deal with reality. Some seem to think that whatever is right here and now is transcendentally important. They devote every minute they have to finding someone to disagree with, and invest immense amounts of nervous and physical energy pursuing the consequent feuds to the last possible opportunity. Elsewhere, someone else is quietly getting on with new ideas which render everything we do now backward and irrelevant. Who worries now about the quarrels of the Babylonians and the Assyrians, or the ridiculous chariots and spears they used to carry around?

We at LSS, being Whigs or Enlightenments or progressives, or whatever, are very much interested in the “someone elses” mentioned above . And with the help of the inestimable Nature Briefings, we’d like to raise your eyes from the endless disputes around the narcissism of small differences. And let you look at what’s really happening. Changes in the climate, not the weather, if you want to put it that way.

The technologies that Nature will be watching this year include protein design using algorithms similar to those underlying image-generators such as DALL-E, deepfake-detection tools and gene-editing systems that can modify DNA sequences much larger than the single-site edits possible with regular CRISPR–Cas. One advance that didn’t make the cut: ChatGPT. Its applications are “labour-saving gains rather than transformations of the research process”, says the feature.Nature | 15 min read

And imagine a child in 2124 saying to its Dad “what did they do one hundred years ago?” The answer will be in the link above. The endless, futile, indescribably stupid disputes of today will have been forgotten.

#gene editing #AI deep fakes #protein #nature briefings

Mystery of the left-handed chimps

If you’re reading this, we can be confident of one thing. The chances are 90% that you’re right-handed. And of one other thing: they are 10% that you’re left-handed. when you think about it, this fact is so woven into our everyday lives that we take it for granted-in work, in sport, art-well, everything. And it seems to be very old. Our Neanderthal cousins showed exactly the same ratio.

So, if such a pesky thing as handedness exists at all, you’d expect our nearest relatives, chimpanzees, to show exactly the same pattern, right? Wrong. Chimps do indeed show hand preferences. But give and take a few donnish arguments among researchers, they seem to come out somewhere around 50% right and 50% left. They certainly don’t show this strong, settled right-hand bias that the human line has preserved. Counter-intuitive, isn’t it?

So, why? It’s a very big question. Any answer has to be hypothetical, as the trend must have started millions of years ago. Hannah Fry makes a good first stab it here[1] for the BBC. But there is one other possible reason. Humans spend a lot more time standing up than chimps do. And this frees the hands for several things. Carrying. Signalling. And making tools. Now, as Sverker Johannsen [2] points out, the parts of the brain that control language is on the left side of the brain. And by the simple fact of the way we’re wired up, that controls the right hand. Is it possible that this handedness thing is in some way connected to the use of tools, or language, or even both? We await new discoveries with anticipation.

[1]https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160930-the-mystery-of-why-left-handers-are-so-much-rarer

[2]The Dawn of Language; How we came to talk by Sverker Johannsen , translated by Frank Perry Maclehouse Press 2021

#evolution #tools #language #left hand #right hand

Doing something is better than nothing. Here’s one way

“You’re always telling us how bad we are!” It’s a small, but steady complaint from a certain group of readers. “Telling us how we’re wasting antibiotics! Polluting the skies and the oceans! Squandering our money in fruitless luxury , dissipation and depravity!” We take exception to the last, as we have never scolded anyone for Depravity. If done with due regard to Health and Safety, it can be a valuable method of weight loss. But as for the other charges- yes. we can be a bit over-censorious and pessimistic. And if we tell you all is lost, why try at all?

There’s nothing like having a sense of agency, a sense that you can actually make a difference, to restore morale. Even if that difference is small. Which is why we offer a chance to do One Thing. And that thing is to help out with a beach clean. We don’t need to tell you just how bad the situation in the oceans is. The Marine Conservation Society [1] has an excellent site for all matters oceanographic. But if you click further into their webpage you’ll find a section on Beach Cleans. Where groups of volunteers are co ordinated to go out, collect and record the vast mountains of debris which wash up on our beaches

Now this has several advantages over doing it by yourself. Firstly, it’s safer because there will be people around. Beaches and shores of any kinds can be dangerous places. Secondly collection and disposal can be jointly organised, making them much more efficient. Thirdly, the MCS and can make real use of the data you throw up. And last-think of the exercise and weight loss, with none of the drawbacks that Depravity brings. Is this becoming a no-brainer, or what?

[1]https://www.mcsuk.org/become-a-member/?msclkid=e17c2371dce010064ef7461ecd176756&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=TE%20-%20ME

[2]https://www.mcsuk.org/what-you-can-do/join-a-beach-clean/

#pollution #beach clean #plastics #environment