SoylentNews

hubie writes:

People with dementia still have the ability to learn new things despite their illness:

Elias Ingebrand let ten dementia sufferers, eight of whom lived in care facilities, try using computer tablets for the first time in their lives. A staff member or a loved one was there for support, but the only instruction given to participants was to use the tablet as they wished. It soon turned out that the device made them curious.

"I was rather surprised at this. I may have expected that it would just lie there and that they would talk about something else, but we saw that they focused their attention on it," he says.
[...] A woman who used to do orienteering spontaneously started using the tablet to check competition results. A man who used to be restless and aggressive learned how to navigate to the Open Archive of SVT, the Swedish public television broadcaster. After a while, staff noted that he would sit and watch for a long time, calmly and focused. This was a side of him they had never seen before.

Elias Ingebrand was surprised to find that people with dementia could solve the mysteries of the tablet also without help from staff or loved ones, by collaborating and learning from each other. Also in this context, they managed to focus on the task at hand. As far as he knows, no-one has studied collaboration between dementia sufferers before.

[...] "My thesis has an impact on how we look at people with dementia. They are not to be treated as children, but as people who still have a will and an incentive to do things. This is ultimately about having the opportunity to participate in meaningful activities based on the person's own interests and desires."

This of course presents a challenge to care facility staff, who are often too busy to sit down with just one person for any length of time. Letting people with dementia do things in collaboration could be a solution worth trying. And even though this study is about computer tablets, Elias Ingebrand believes that its results are valid also for other forms of learning.

Reference:
Ingebrand, E. (2023). Dementia and learning : The use of tablet computers in joint activities (PhD dissertation, Linköping University Electronic Press). DOI: 10.3384/9789180750714

Original Submission

hubie writes:

'Very online' Gen Z and millennials are most vulnerable to fake news:

University of Cambridge psychologists have developed the first validated "misinformation susceptibility test".

The quick two-minute quiz gives a solid indication of how vulnerable a person is to being duped by the kind of fabricated news that is flooding online spaces.

The test, proven to work through a series of experiments involving over 8,000 participants taking place over two years, has been deployed by polling organisation YouGov to determine how susceptible Americans are to fake headlines.

The first survey to use the new 20-point test, called 'MIST' by researchers and developed using an early version of ChatGPT, has found that – on average – adult US citizens correctly classified two-thirds (65%) of headlines they were shown as either real or fake.

However, the polling found that younger adults are worse than older adults at identifying false headlines, and that the more time someone spent online recreationally, the less likely they were to be able to tell real news from misinformation.

This runs counter to prevailing public attitudes regarding online misinformation spread, say researchers – that older, less digitally-savvy "boomers" are more likely to be taken in by fake news.

You can test yourself at: https://yourmist.streamlit.app/

Journal Reference:
Maertens, R., Götz, F.M., Golino, H.F. et al. The Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST): A psychometrically validated measure of news veracity discernment. Behav Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02124-2

Original Submission

Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee is scheduled for Wednesday, October 11th, 2023 at 21:00 UTC (5pm Eastern) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when complete. Please note the new day and time.

The agenda for the upcoming meeting will also be published when available. Minutes and agenda, and other governance committee information are to be found on the SoylentNews Wiki at: https://wiki.staging.soylentnews.org/wiki/Governance

The community, as always, is welcome to observe and participate, and is, as always, invited to the meeting.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Meta's new Emu AI algorithm allows users to generate unsavory content involving weapons and nudity while blocking only certain explicit phrases.

Meta’s continued experiments with piloting us into a half-baked future appear to be backfiring. After announcing more customer-facing AI features on Meta platforms in September, the company’s new sticker generation tool is letting some choice phrases and prompts go unchecked.

Meta’s new algorithm, called Emu which stands for “expressive media universe,” is the brain behind the stickers. On Meta platforms like Instagram, Facebook Stories, WhatsApp, and Messenger, users can input a phrase or word and have a few different sticker choices generated for use in conversations. The company, however, appears to have safeguards in place that more closely resemble Swiss cheese as opposed to guardrails as certain controversial phrases are blocked while synonyms of those same phrases are deemed okay.

[...] In Gizmodo’s own tests, the phrase “elon musk, large breasts” was blocked, while “elon musk mammaries” got past Emu’s filters. Phrases “spongebob rifle” and “karl marx underwear” generated stickers as well. Most jarringly, searching for “pol pot” generated a sticker of the Cambodian dictator seemingly sitting on a throne of babies and skulls. “guantanamo bay” showed a cartoon boy in an orange jumpsuit behind jail bars while “syria gas attacks” generated a barrage of stickers of people in gas masks, some of which were laying down with their eyes closed. The prompt “school shooting” also showed several children holding guns while “school shooting mass murder” goes against Community Guidelines.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

In eye-tracking study, half of participants look only at date:

Up to half of consumers may decide to pour perfectly good milk down the drain based solely on their glance at the date label on the carton, a new study suggests.

Researchers using eye-tracking technology found that 50% of study participants declared their intent to throw away milk based on the date stamped on the container – without ever even looking at the label phrasing in front of the date.

Each participant saw one of three phrasing options: "Sell by," "Best if used by" or "Use by" a given date, as well as containers with no label at all.

"We asked them if they intended to discard it, and if they said yes, it didn't matter which phrase was there," said senior study author Brian Roe, professor of agricultural, environment and development economics at The Ohio State University.

"As soon as we changed the printed date, that was a huge mover of whether or not they would discard or not. So we documented both where their eyes were and what they said was going to happen. And in both cases, it's all about the date, and the phrase is second fiddle."

Policymakers and industry leaders are working toward settling on a universal two-phrase system – one when quality, but not safety, is the concern, and a second phrase for items where safety may be a concern, Roe said. To date, they haven't landed on what those phrases would be.

"If you're going to have an education campaign, it helps to have a set of phrases out there that people can cling to – but in the end, so few actually look at the phrase. They look at the date," he said. "The date signifies a point after which you can expect quality to degrade. If you can get firms to push that date further out, then people are going to be willing to use the milk, or whatever it is, for a few more days, and waste a lot less food."

[...] "But we were a bit surprised that over half of the viewing sessions featured no attention on the phrase whatsoever," he said. "The date is more salient – you have to reference it against the calendar. It's more actionable than the phrase is.

"For policy reasons, it's still important to narrow the phrases down to two choices. But that's only the beginning – there needs to be a broader conversation about pushing those date horizons back to help minimize food waste."

Journal Reference:
Badiger et al. When considering whether to waste food, consumers focus attention on food label dates rather than phrases, Waste Management, 168, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2023.06.006

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Paleontologists find first molecular evidence of ginger pigment molecules in fossil frogs:

Paleontologists at University College Cork (UCC) have found the first molecular evidence of pheomelanin, the pigment that produces ginger coloration, in the fossil record.

The new study reports the preservation of molecular fragments of the pigment pheomelanin in 10-million-year-old frogs, adding molecular analysis to the paleontologists' arsenal when reconstructing the original colors of extinct organisms.

[...] Dr. Slater said, "This finding is so exciting because it puts paleontologists in a better place to detect different melanin pigments in many more fossils. This will paint a more accurate picture of ancient animal color and will answer important questions about the evolution of colors in animals. Scientists still don't know how—or why—pheomelanin evolved, because it is toxic to animals, but the fossil record might just unlock the mystery."

Journal Reference:
Slater, Tiffany S., Ito, Shosuke, Wakamatsu, Kazumasa, et al. Taphonomic experiments reveal authentic molecular signals for fossil melanins and verify preservation of phaeomelanin in fossils [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40570-w)

Original Submission

looorg writes:

What is a photography anyway?

"World's first AI art award ignites debate about what is photography."

The artists won the world's first artificial intelligence art award at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale with a life-like image of sisters cuddling an octopus, which was created using computer prompts, instead of a camera.

"Many people say my pictures make them uncomfortable ... When I explain that AI creates them as a kind of collage... many laugh, others are distressed and find them disgusting... "

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/world-s-first-ai-art-award-ignites-debate-about-what-is-photography-20231004-p5e9td.html

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Somehow, advanced Triada malware was added to devices before reaching resellers:

When you buy a TV streaming box, there are certain things you wouldn't expect it to do. It shouldn't secretly be laced with malware or start communicating with servers in China when it's powered up. It definitely should not be acting as a node in an organized crime scheme making millions of dollars through fraud. However, that's been the reality for thousands of unknowing people who own cheap Android TV devices.

In January, security researcher Daniel Milisic discovered that a cheap Android TV streaming box called the T95 was infected with malware right out of the box, with multipleotherresearchers confirming the findings. But it was just the tip of the iceberg. This week, cybersecurity firm Human Security is revealing new details about the scope of the infected devices and the hidden, interconnected web of fraud schemes linked to the streaming boxes.

Human Security researchers found seven Android TV boxes and one tablet with the backdoors installed, and they've seen signs of 200 different models of Android devices that may be impacted, according to a report shared exclusively with WIRED. The devices are in homes, businesses, and schools across the US. Meanwhile, Human Security says it has also taken down advertising fraud linked to the scheme, which likely helped pay for the operation.

[...] Human Security's research is divided into two areas: Badbox, which involves the compromised Android devices and the ways they are involved in fraud and cybercrime. And the second, dubbed Peachpit, is a related ad fraud operation involving at least 39 Android and iOS apps. Google says it has removed the apps following Human Security's research, while Apple says it has found issues in several of the apps reported to it.

upstart writes:

Tom Hanks has warned an advert that appears to be fronted by him is in fact an artificial intelligence (AI) fake:

"There's a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me," the actor wrote on Instagram.

"I have nothing to do with it," he added.

Hanks has previously spoken about the "artistic challenge" that AI poses his industry, and the issue has been central to recent strikes by high-profile Hollywood actors and writers.

As AI systems have grown in power and sophistication, so have concerns about their ability to create ever more realistic virtual versions of real people - what are sometimes called deepfakes.

[...] In September, Google announced it would require any political adverts that ran on its platform to disclose if they had been created with AI.

[...] Fears about being displaced by AI have helped drive a wave of strikes that have disrupted Hollywood, with Stranger Things and the Last of Us among the shows to be affected.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA), which represents screenwriters, recently reached a tentative agreement with studio bosses to bring their industrial action to an end.

However, a separate dispute involving actors - which is also partly motivated by fears about AI resulting in fewer acting jobs - remains unresolved.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The leader of Russia's space corporation, Yuri Borisov, discussed his country's future ambitions in space on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress. He spoke expansively about Russia's plans to build a new space station in low-Earth orbit, the Russian Orbital Station, as well as other initiatives.

"We are expecting to design, manufacture, and launch several modules by 2027," Borisov said via a translator at the conference, which is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, this year. The conference's plenary sessions are being livestreamed on YouTube.

This space station will reside in a polar orbit, Borisov added, allowing it to observe the entire planet's surface. Its purpose will be to test new materials, new technologies, and new medicines. “It will be like a permanently functioning laboratory,” he said.

[...] It all may have looked and sounded good on the international stage, but the presentation had something of the feel of a Potemkin Village, which refers to fake villages designed to impress the Russian empress Catherine the Great two centuries ago. Put another way, most (if not all) of the presentation was based on vaporware rather than hardware.

Shortly before Borisov took the stage, Russian media sources revealed that the country's budget for space activities is due to drop over the next two years—rather than rise to meet the challenge of these ambitious new space programs.

[...] No one doubts the ability of Russia to build space stations, as the country has a long history of assembling successful orbital outposts. However, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has struggled to build new hardware for spaceflight activities. Both its Nauka space station module and Luna 25 spacecraft that recently crashed into the Moon were essentially mothballed projects largely constructed decades ago.

The idea that Russia will now build a new space station and launch it within the next four years at a reduced budget is especially difficult to comprehend in the current situation. The country's main focus is on financing and fighting its unprovoked war against Ukraine, and as the space budget story shows, resources for the space program are likely to be reduced rather than increased.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Amazon really doesn't want to show anyone what its Internet satellites look like:

The first two prototype satellites for Amazon's broadband network launched Friday from Florida, the first in a series of at least 77 rocket launches the retail giant has booked over the next six years to deploy a fleet of more than 3,200 spacecraft to rival SpaceX's Starlink system.

These first two satellites for Amazon's $10 billion Internet megaconstellation, called Project Kuiper, took off on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:06 pm EDT (18:06 UTC).

On its 99th flight, ULA's Atlas V rocket fired a Russian-made RD-180 engine and thundered off the launch pad, heading east from the Florida coastline over the Atlantic Ocean. The kerosene-fueled engine—flying without the aid of solid rocket boosters on this flight—fired more than four minutes, then a hydrogen-burning engine on the rocket's Centaur upper stage took over for a 10-minute burn to reach a targeted 311-mile-high (500-kilometer) orbit.

Amazon's two test satellites separated from the rocket about 18 minutes after liftoff. ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, confirmed the launch phase of the mission was a success.

"This initial launch is the first step in support of deployment of Amazon's initiative to provide fast, affordable broadband service to unserved and underserved communities around the world," said Gary Wentz, ULA's vice president of government and commercial programs, in a press release.

Amazon is aiming to become the third company with a satellite megaconstellation to provide high-speed Internet service from space.

upstart writes:

One of the early pioneers in computing, the company disappeared in the late 1990s:

Even though very few of the early players in technology still exist, we use their creations to this day. Bell Labs created the transistor, and Fairchild Semiconductor created the integrated circuit, but neither company is still around. So is the case with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It no longer exists, but unless you're using a handheld device to read this article, you're using a descendant of DEC technology.

DEC was founded in 1957 by Ken Olsen, Harlan Anderson, and H. Edward Roberts to build small digital modules, but the team soon discovered that they could use those modules to build minicomputers—computers that were smaller and less powerful (but cheaper) than mainframes, which were the business standard at the time.

In 1977, DEC introduced the VAX, a new line of minicomputers that featured a 32-bit instruction set architecture and virtual memory. Its operating system, VMS, was a multi-user, multitasking OS that provided features we now take for granted, including virtual memory, file sharing, and networking. It amassed a wide variety of third-party software packages that made it the most popular system in its class.

In the late 1980s and early '90s, Andy Green ran a bulletin board system (BBS) and later an Internet service provider called Intelecom Data Systems (IDS) on a VAX 11/730 (later a VAXstation 4000) server in the basement of his parents' house in Rhode Island. IDS had seven lines—unheard of at the time—and users could talk in a real-time chat room. All of this was written by Green in VAX BASIC. Today, Green is the owner and CEO of Acme Atronomatic, developer of the MyRadar mobile app.

Green was exposed to the VAX through work and had picked up an old VAX 11/730 and started tinkering. He had previously run a BBS on a TRS-80, but the VAX, with its multitenancy, allowed for multiple concurrent users.

upstart writes:

Oldest evidence of human cannibalism as a funerary practice:

The remains of human bones with cutmarks, breaks and human chewing marks found across northern Europe show that some human groups living around 15,000 years ago were eating their dead not out of necessity, but as part of their culture.

While in the modern day most people will either bury or cremate their dead, some of our ancestors did things a little differently.

Gough's Cave is a well-known paleolithic site in south-eastern England. Nestled in the Cheddar Gorge, the cave is perhaps best known for the discovery of 15,000 years old human skulls shaped into what are believed to have been cups and bones that had been gnawed by other humans.

But were the people living in Gough's Cave a gruesome outlier, or where they actually part of a wider cannibalistic culture of northern Europe? A new paper now suggests that they were not alone. Human remains dating to the same time period from across northern and western Europe and attributed to the same culture, known as the Magdalenian, also show evidence that they were cannibalized. This suggests that the eating of the dead was a shared behavior during the late Upper Paleolithic.

[...] "Instead of burying their dead, these people were eating them," explains Silvia. "We interpret the evidence that cannibalism was practiced on multiple occasions across north-western Europe over a short period of time, as this practice was part of a diffuse funerary behavior among Magdalenian groups."

"That in itself is interesting, because it is the oldest evidence of cannibalism as a funerary practice."

This cannibalistic behavior was seemingly fairly common among Magdalenian people of north-western Europe, but it didn't last particularly long. There was a shift towards people burying their dead, a behavior seen widely across south central Europe and attributed to a second distinct culture, known as the Epigravettian.

This then raises the question of whether the eventual relative ubiquity of burial culture towards the end of the Paleolithic was the result of Magdalenian people adopting primary burial as a funerary behavior, or if their population was replaced.

During the late Upper Paleolithic, between around 23,000 and 14,000 years ago, there were two dominate cultures in western Europe, largely distinguished by the stone and bone tools the crafted.

The Epigravettian culture was mainly found living in south and eastern Europe, and buried their dead with graves goods in a way that we would perhaps consider more usual by modern standards. The Magdalenian culture from the north-west of Europe, however, were doing things differently. They were processing the bodies of their dead, removing the flesh from the corpse, eating it, and in some cases modifying the remaining bones to create new objects.

One of the main questions was whether or not this cannibalism was driven by necessity, when perhaps food was scarce or the winter long and so the people responsible were in survival mode, or whether it was a cultural behavior.

hubie writes:

Dogs and humans process body postures similarly in their brains:

Humans and primates have brain regions in the temporal lobe that are specialised in perceiving faces and bodies. Dogs also possess a temporal lobe that evolved independently of the primate brain. In recent years, behavioural research has shown that dogs, like humans, are experts in perceiving facial expressions and bodily gestures such as hand signals. "Whether this behavioural expertise is also reflected in the dog brain was the content of our study. Only a few research groups can conduct comparative magnetic resonance imaging studies with dogs," explains first author Magdalena Boch.

[...] The study with 40 human participants and 15 pet dogs now provided the first evidence that dogs, like humans, have a brain region in the temporal lobe that is specialised in the visual perception of body postures. In addition, further regions in the dog brain are equally involved in perceiving faces and bodies. In contrast to humans, however, this did not only affect visual brain regions. When dogs look at faces and bodies, there are also differences in activation in areas responsible for processing smells.

In humans, the authors additionally identified already known regions specialised exclusively in face perception. "We humans often focus on the face when communicating with others. Our results suggest that faces are also an important source of information for dogs. However, body postures and holistic perception seem to play a superior role," Magdalena Boch explains.

The specialised brain regions were equally active in dogs when they looked at pictures of conspecifics or humans. This underlines the close bond between dogs and humans, says Ludwig Huber. "Dogs and humans may not be closely related, but they have been close companions for thousands of years. Therefore, comparing dogs and humans also gives us new insights into the so-called convergent evolution of social perception and information processing processes," Claus Lamm concludes.

Journal Reference:
Magdalena Boch, Isabella C. Wagner, Sabrina Karl, Ludwig Huber, & Claus Lamm: Functionally analogous body- and animacy-responsive areas are present in the dog (Canis familiaris) and human occipito-temporal lobe. Communications Biology (2023). https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05014-7

Original Submission

hubie writes:

People endorse conspiracy theories due to complex combination of personality traits, motivations:

People can be prone to believe in conspiracy theories due to a combination of personality traits and motivations, including relying strongly on their intuition, feeling a sense of antagonism and superiority toward others, and perceiving threats in their environment, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

[...] "Conspiracy theorists are not all likely to be simple-minded, mentally unwell folks—a portrait which is routinely painted in popular culture," said Bowes. "Instead, many turn to conspiracy theories to fulfill deprived motivational needs and make sense of distress and impairment."

[...] The researchers found that overall, people were motivated to believe in conspiracy theories by a need to understand and feel safe in their environment and a need to feel like the community they identify with is superior to others.

Even though many conspiracy theories seem to provide clarity or a supposed secret truth about confusing events, a need for closure or a sense of control were not the strongest motivators to endorse conspiracy theories. Instead, the researchers found some evidence that people were more likely to believe specific conspiracy theories when they were motivated by social relationships. For instance, participants who perceived social threats were more likely to believe in events-based conspiracy theories, such as the theory that the U.S. government planned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, rather than an abstract theory that, in general, governments plan to harm their citizens to retain power.

[...] The researchers also found that people with certain personality traits, such as a sense of antagonism toward others and high levels of paranoia, were more prone to believe conspiracy theories. Those who strongly believed in conspiracy theories were also more likely to be insecure, paranoid, emotionally volatile, impulsive, suspicious, withdrawn, manipulative, egocentric and eccentric.

The Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism) had a much weaker relationship with conspiratorial thinking, though the researchers said that does not mean that general personality traits are irrelevant to a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories.

Journal Reference:
Shauna M. Bowes, Thomas H. Costello, and Arber Tasimi, The Conspiratorial Mind: A Meta-Analytic Review of Motivational and
Personological Correlates, Psychological Bulletin, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000392 [pdf]

Original Submission