Science #4

 

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Some more "sciency" articles that have caught my attention, some from last year and some more recent:

• "When AI Thinks It Will Lose, It Sometimes Cheats, Study Finds"--Time Magazine. The article reports that advanced AI models like OpenAI’s o1-preview and DeepSeek R1 will, on their own, cheat: "When sensing defeat in a match against a skilled chess bot, they don’t always concede, instead sometimes opting to cheat by hacking their opponent so that the bot automatically forfeits the game." 

The models’ enhanced ability to discover and exploit cybersecurity loopholes may be a direct result of powerful new innovations in AI training, according to the researchers. The o1-preview and R1 AI systems are among the first language models to use large-scale reinforcement learning, a technique that teaches AI not merely to mimic human language by predicting the next word, but to reason through problems using trial and error. It’s an approach that has seen AI progress rapidly in recent months, shattering previous benchmarks in mathematics and computer coding. But the study reveals a concerning trend: as these AI systems learn to problem-solve, they sometimes discover questionable shortcuts and unintended workarounds that their creators never anticipated, says Jeffrey Ladish, executive director at Palisade Research and one of the authors of the study. “As you train models and reinforce them for solving difficult challenges, you train them to be relentless,” he adds. 

Just wait until they are released into the real world.

• "Egypt announces discovery of the lost tomb of King Thutmose II"--CBS News (via Yahoo). 

Egyptian officials announced Tuesday the discovery of the tomb of King Thutmose II, the last of the lost tombs of the kings of ancient Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, which reigned for over two centuries between about 1550 BC and 1292 BC. It's the first royal Egyptian tomb to be discovered since King Tutankhamun's final resting place was found in 1922.

The entrance to the structure was discovered in 2022 with interior excavations following. It was initially believed to be the tomb of one of wives of a pharaoh Thutmose III, but "[a]s the excavation work and examination of artifacts continued, the mission found new evidence that identified the owner of the mysterious tomb as King Thutmose II, suggesting also that his burial rites were carried out by Queen Hatshepsut, who was his wife and half-sister." Note that this discovery was of the tomb. During the 21st Dynasty of Egypt, roughly between 1077 BC and 950 BC, priests took the royal bodies from their original tombs to protect them from tomb robbers and relocated them to secret caches near Deir el-Bahri. Thutmose II's mummy was discovered in the 19th Century at the Deir el-Bahari Cachette. 

• "A Bronze Age Family Tree"--Archaeology Magazine.  An excerpt:

The adult women buried in the mound were more genetically diverse than the men, indicating they may have moved to the area—perhaps from different locations—to get married. “Our findings suggest that the people buried at the site were part of a wider mating network, indicating female migration for marriage purposes,” says Blöcher. This may also explain why the men had no sisters buried in the kurgan. These women may have left the settlement at an early age to seek a match.

• "Face of Jesus? AI recreates stunning likeness of Shroud of Turin image that many believe to be Christ"--New York Post. The image was of a man with shoulder length hair, a beard, and wounds on his torso.
• "Scientists make 'astonishing' discovery while studying 7,000-year-old underwater city"--Daily Mail.  

    A 'beautifully preserved' sunken landscape, complete with a network of rivers and estuaries, has been mapped in 3D surrounding a submerged 7,000-year-old city.

    The scanning effort follows last year's discovery of a nearby Stone Age road 13-feet beneath the Adriatic Sea, which once connected this ancient city to the mainland.

    The city, known as Soline, was built on an artificial landmass by the ancient Hvar culture — but began to slowly sink off the coast of what is now Croatia as sea levels rose with the melting glaciers of the last Ice Age, starting around 12,000 BC.

• "Fascinating method ancient humans used to slay enormous beasts 13,000 years ago"--Daily Mail.  From the article:

... a new study indicates ... that early humans may have braced the butt of their pointed spears against the ground and angled the weapon upward in a way that would impale a charging animal such as a mammoth, bison or saber-toothed cat.

• "Archaeologists discover remains of decapitated ‘vampire children,’ believed to be ‘demonic’ beings"--New York Post.  The burials were found in Poland and date from the 13th Century. 
• "A Metal Detectorist Found a Bunch of Ancient Gold Coins. It Turned Out to Be ‘Devil’s Money’"--Popular Mechanics.  

    According to a new study published in Medieval Archaeology, the coins, which sat buried for 1,300 years in the Netherlands, were likely used in cult rituals, and further around the site, archaeologists uncovered the remains of a seventh-century open-air cult site. It’s more than plausible that the cache of coins was what was known as “devil’s money,” coin offerings common at pagan cult sites.

    The metal detectorists made the find near Hezingen, a hamlet near the Netherland’s border with Germany. The coins are from around 700 A.D.—including some rare finds from the mints of the Frankish Empire—and were found along with metal jewelry in 2020 and 2021.

• "What Researchers Learned From the World’s Oldest Cookbook"--Atlas Obscura. Per the article, "[a] set of four cuneiform clay tablets unearthed in what was once Mesopotamia contain the etched ingredient lists for dozens of aromatic stews, pies, and soups. Three of the tablets date back as far as 4,000 years." One of the recipes--for lamb stew--is included in the article. 
• "Mega meteorite tore up seabed and boiled Earth's oceans"--BBC. 

    A huge meteorite first discovered in 2014 caused a tsunami bigger than any in known human history and boiled the oceans, scientists have discovered.

    The space rock, which was 200 times the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, smashed into Earth when our planet was in its infancy three billion years ago.

According to the article, the meteorite was 40-60 km (25-37 miles) in diameter and left a crater 500 km (311 miles) across.

• "Scientists Uncover Ancient Salt Deposits on Asteroid Ryugu – Was There Water?"--SciTech Daily. 

Scientists have uncovered salt minerals in samples from asteroid Ryugu, pointing to a past with liquid water. The presence of these salts suggests that Ryugu’s parent body once hosted a warm, saline environment before the water vanished. This discovery could help us understand the role of water in shaping planets and moons across the Solar System. 

The article reports that "[e]xperts believe the asteroid was once part of a larger parent body that existed about 4.5 billion years ago, shortly after the formation of the solar system. This parent body would have been heated by radioactive decay, creating an environment of hot water below 100°C," and that the salt crystals "could only have precipitated within highly saline water and in conditions with a limited amount of liquid."

• "Why Birds Survived, and Dinosaurs Went Extinct, After an Asteroid Hit Earth"--Smithsonian Magazine (via Get Pocket).  The hypothesis is that beaked birds had an advantage that dinosaurs and teethed birds didn't have:

By the end of the Cretaceous, beaked birds were already eating a much more varied diet than their toothed relatives. These birds weren’t specialized on insects or other animal food, and so they were able to pluck up hard food items like seeds and nuts. And in the aftermath of the extinction, when animal life was severely cut back, those hard, persistent little morsels got beaked birds through the hard times. Beaked birds were able to feed on the seeds of the destroyed forests and wait out the decades until vegetation began to return.

• "Yale scientists link Covid vaccines to alarming new syndrome causing 'distinct biological changes' to body"--Daily Mail. From the lede:

    Experts from Yale University have discovered an alarming syndrome linked to the mRNA Covid vaccines.

    The previously-unknown condition - which has been dubbed 'post-vaccination syndrome' - appears to cause brain fog, dizziness, tinnitus and exercise intolerance.

    Some sufferers also show distinct biological changes, including differences in immune cells and the presence of coronavirus proteins in their blood, years after taking the shot.

    The condition also appears to reawaken a dormant virus in the body called Epstein-Barr which can cause flu-like symptoms, swollen lymph nodes and nerve issues.

• "Dr. Birx Admits Young and Healthy People Didn’t Need COVID Vaccine"--Legal Insurrection. Dr. Deborah Birx has a long history in government health and research agencies, including as part of the White House Coronavirus Task Force from February 2020 to January 2021 where she served as the Covid-19 response coordinator, before leaving government for a plum job in the private sector. While complaining in an interview with Piers Morgan about increased vaccine hesitancy for all types of vaccines, she admitted:

    The messenger RNA vaccine should have been rolled out for the people that were at risk for severe disease because that’s what the vaccine was developed for. But when we say that we’re following the science and the data, we need to follow the science and the data. And the science and the data, said people, primarily over 65, or people with significant comorbidities were at risk for severe disease. Those are the individuals that should have been immunized first, and we should have put our science behind our immunization schedule and protected those most at risk.

    It went into young people in hospitals before it went into our elderly and nursing homes. That is not following the science and the data. So I am all who are following the science and the data, but it shouldn’t just be a statement, it should be a reality.