Lifeboat Foundation

#science Where do our dreams come from, why do we have them, and what do they mean? Can we harness them to foster creativity, solve problems, and prepare for the future? What’s happening in the brains of so-called lucid dreamers, and can new developments in this cutting-edge field of research help us unlock the mystery of consciousness itself? Researchers Deirdre Barrett, Ken Paller, and Antonio Zadra join Brian Greene for a discussion about the mystery and power of dreams and where our minds go after midnight. This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation. Footage of the Ken Paller dream study from NOVA Online: Dream Hacking, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/d… ©2021 WGBH Educational Foundation. Participants: Deirdre Barrett, Psychologist Ken Paller, Neuroscientist Antonio Zadra, Psychologist Brian Greene – moderator Official Site: https://www.worldsciencefestival.com/ Twitter: / worldscifest Facebook: / worldsciencefestival Instagram: / worldscifest #Science #WorldScienceFestival

A new study has revealed that the size of human brains is getting larger, which means increased brain reserve and decreased chances of developing dementia. The researchers at UC Davis Health reached the conclusion by comparing the size of the brains of people born in the 1930s with those of people born in the 1970s. They noticed that the latter had 6.6 per cent larger brains. The study was published in JAMA Neurology.

“The decade someone is born appears to impact brain size and potentially long-term brain health,” said Charles DeCarli, first author of the study.

He further adds that genetics may also play a major role in determining the size of the brain. “Genetics plays a major role in determining brain size, but our findings indicate external influences — such as health, social, cultural and educational factors — may also play a role,” he said.

Scientists at CANDLE have discovered that adolescents who grapple with the bigger meaning of social situations experience greater brain growth, which predicts stronger identity development and life satisfaction years later.

Scientists at the USC Rossier School of Education’s Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE), have shown for the first time that a type of thinking, that has been described for over a century as a developmental milestone of adolescence, may grow teenagers’ brains over time.

This kind of thinking, which the study’s authors call “transcendent,” moves beyond reacting to the concrete specifics of social situations to also consider the broader ethical, systems-level, and personal implications at play. Engaging in this type of thinking involves analyzing situations for their deeper meaning, historical contexts, civic significance, and/or underlying ideas.

A small team of AI researchers at Microsoft reports that the company’s Orca-Math small language model outperforms other, larger models on standardized math tests. The group has published a paper on the arXiv preprint server describing their testing of Orca-Math on the Grade School Math 8K (GSM8K) benchmark and how it fared compared to well-known LLMs.

Many popular LLMs such as ChatGPT are known for their impressive conversational skills—less well known is that most of them can also solve math word problems. AI researchers have tested their abilities at such tasks by pitting them against the GSM8K, a dataset of 8,500 grade-school math word problems that require multistep reasoning to solve, along with their correct answers.

In this new study, the research team at Microsoft tested Orca-Math, an AI application developed by another team at Microsoft specifically designed to tackle math word problems, and compared the results with larger AI models.

Lonely young adults are more prone to being disengaged from education or employment and perceive themselves as less employable, according to the study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine recently. As a consequence, such individuals tend to get positioned lower on the economic ladder compared to their less lonely counterparts.

Findings revealed that young adults who grappled with loneliness earlier in life encountered challenges in their young adulthood, irrespective of their current loneliness status. This underscores the long-term economic implications of loneliness and the potential economic benefits of addressing loneliness during early adolescence.

The case for teaching coders to speak French.

By Ian Bogost

“There is still significant interest and potential in industrial uses of hemp,” said Dr. Jeffrey Steiner.

How can hemp production help boost local Native American economies? This is what a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture hopes to achieve as they recently awarded this grant to the Global Hemp Innovation Center at Oregon State University (OSU) to foster collaboration with 13 Native American Tribes across the western United States, including California, Montana, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon with the goal of creating economic stimuli for those communities while improving hemp production.

The grant comes with four primary objectives in achieving collaboration with the 13 Tribal nations, including educational opportunities, technology development, building trade networks, and ensuring product quality. This grant comes as the 2018 Farm Bill helped legalize hemp, leading to hemp production reaching $824 million across the United States in 2021.

Continue reading “Harnessing Hemp: Empowering Native American Economies” »

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is rolling out an AI-powered educational tool that it says will provide students with personalized learning plans and resources.

The tool, dubbed Ed, can translate personalized learning plans into over 100 languages, a much-needed resource. LAUSD is nation’s second-largest district, with 565,479 students, of which 86,081 (15%) are still “learning to speak English proficiently,” according to a district fact sheet.

It also assists students with complex administrative tasks such as submitting applications. Parents are expected to use the chatbot to ask questions, as well as get updates on their child’s progress and reminders about upcoming assignments and programs.

NASA ’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) is sending four CubeSats to the International Space Station to advance space-based technologies in solar power, gamma-ray burst detection, and water monitoring. Developed in collaboration with universities and NASA, these satellites aim to enhance our understanding of cosmic phenomena and Earth’s environmental dynamics.

NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative is sending a group of four small satellites, called CubeSats, to the International Space Station (ISS) as ELaNa 51 (Educational Launch of Nanosatellites). These small payloads have been developed by NASA and universities and will be deployed from low Earth orbit.

Once circling Earth, the satellites will help demonstrate and mature technologies meant to improve solar power generation, detect gamma-ray bursts, determine crop water usage, and measure root-zone soil and snowpack moisture levels.