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taylorvich writes:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-03-perceptions-songbird-parallels-human-speech.html

Expectations can influence perception in seemingly contradictory ways, either by directing attention to expected stimuli and enhancing perceptual acuity or by stabilizing perception and diminishing acuity within expected stimulus categories. The neural mechanisms supporting these dual roles of expectation are not well understood. Here, we trained European starlings to classify ambiguous song syllables in both expected and unexpected acoustic contexts. We show that birds employ probabilistic, Bayesian integration to classify syllables, leveraging their expectations to stabilize their perceptual behavior. However, auditory sensory neural populations do not reflect this integration. Instead, expectation enhances the acuity of auditory sensory neurons in high-probability regions of the stimulus space. This modulation diverges from patterns typically observed in motor areas, where Bayesian integration of sensory inputs and expectations predominates. Our results suggest that peripheral sensory systems use expectation to improve sensory representations and maintain high-fidelity representations of the world, allowing downstream circuits to flexibly integrate this information with expectations to drive behavior.

Past neuroscience and psychology studies have shown that people's expectations of the world can influence their perceptions, either by directing their attention to expected stimuli or by reducing their sensitivity (i.e., perceptual acuity) to variations within the categories of stimuli we expect to be exposed to.

While the effects of expectations on perceptions are now well-documented, their neural underpinnings remain poorly understood.

Researchers at University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) carried out a study involving songbirds aimed at better understanding how expectation-fueled biases in perception shape brain activity and behavior.

Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that the perceptions of songbirds, like those of humans, are influenced by expectations, with peripheral sensory systems utilizing expectations to enhance sensory perception and retain high-fidelity representations of the world.

hubie writes:

The latest order would also subsidize mining companies while reducing public input to reopen past projects:

The Trump Administration issued yet another executive order on Thursday [March 20, 2025]. This one directs the federal government to mine federal public lands "to the maximum possible extent," and to prioritize mining over all other uses on federal lands that contain critical mineral deposits.

This should be alarming to conservationists and wilderness advocates. Because in addition to putting critical areas like the Boundary Waters and Bristol Bay back in the crosshairs, the administration's extraction-first approach could dramatically shift what our public lands look like and how we use them.

"There are really three main thrusts to this executive order," Dan Hartinger, senior director of agency policy for the Wilderness Society, tells Outdoor Life. "Job one is to open new places to mining. Job two is to subsidize mining in those places. And job three is to ram through individual projects regardless of public input or what the science says."

The executive order, Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production, invokes wartime powers granted by the Defense Production Act. It allows Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to expand the country's list of critical minerals. It also directs Burgum to make a priority list of all federal lands with mineral deposits, and to take whatever actions necessary to expedite and issue mining permits there. This includes rolling back environmental regulations and finding ways to fund and subsidize private mining companies with taxpayer dollars.

[...] By invoking its wartime powers with the executive order, the Trump administration claims that taking a mining-first approach is vital to shore up national security and compete with foreign hostile nations. But its actions via executive order stand to benefit the international mining conglomerates that are already operating on U.S. federal lands and which, Hartinger says, are not required to pay royalties or other fees for the value of minerals they extract.

"This would use taxpayer funding to issue loans and capital assistance, and essentially subsidize these operations. So not only are these companies getting the land for free, and the minerals for free, and the ability to dump their waste basically wherever they want. We're going to pay them with taxpayer money to do that."

[...] "I think it's helpful to think about this as part of a pattern. And, you know, it's very concerning to us to hear Secretary Burgum saying our federal lands are assets on the nation's balance sheet," Hartinger says. "But I think it's very instructive, too. Because this administration sees our public lands not as things that provide inherent and intrinsic benefits to us, in the form of clean water and air, recreation, wildlife habitat, or any of these myriad uses. It is purely a matter of: How can we extract the maximum short-term dollars from these places?"

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2025/03/pentium-microcde-rom-circuitry.html

Most people think of machine instructions as the fundamental steps that a computer performs. However, many processors have another layer of software underneath: microcode. With microcode, instead of building the processor's control circuitry from complex logic gates, the control logic is implemented with code known as microcode, stored in the microcode ROM. To execute a machine instruction, the computer internally executes several simpler micro-instructions, specified by the microcode. In this post, I examine the microcode ROM in the original Pentium, looking at the low-level circuitry.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-03-cravings-food-neurons-amygdala-play.html

To ensure we get the calories and hydration we need, the brain relies on a complex network of cells, signals, and pathways to guide us when to eat, drink, or stop. Yet, much about how the brain deciphers the body's needs and translates them into action remains unknown.

In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, in collaboration with the University of Regensburg and Stanford University, have identified specific populations of neurons in the amygdala—an emotional and motivational center of the brain—that play a key role in this process.

These specialized "thirst" and "hunger" neurons operate through distinct circuits, influencing the drive to eat or drink. The study, which was carried out in mice, sheds new light on the amygdala's role in regulating our nutritional needs and may offer insights into eating disorders and addiction.

The amygdala, a brain region often linked to emotions and decision-making, also plays a key role in shaping our desire to eat and drink. Earlier research led by Rüdiger Klein's group at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence revealed that neurons in the central nucleus of the amygdala connect food to feelings—pairing tasty meals with positive emotions, associating bad food with aversion, and suppressing appetite when nausea sets in.

The team also demonstrated that changing the activity of these neurons can alter behavior, prompting mice to eat even when they are full or feeling unwell.

Building on these findings, the new research has detailed distinct groups of neurons in the same central region of the amygdala that respond specifically to thirst and others that respond to hunger, guided by a complex web of molecular cues.

"One of these groups of neurons is solely dedicated to regulating the desire to drink, the first 'thirst neuron' that has been identified in the amygdala," explains Federica Fermani, who led the study. "When we activated these neurons, the mice drank more, and when we suppressed their activity, the mice drank less.

"We also identified another group of neurons in the same region of the amygdala that drives thirst but also plays a role in regulating hunger. These findings highlight how some neurons show remarkable specialization for specific behaviors, while others have more general roles in guiding food and drink choices."

upstart writes:

Automated AI bots seeking training data threaten Wikipedia project stability, foundation says:

On Tuesday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that relentless AI scraping is putting strain on Wikipedia's servers. Automated bots seeking AI model training data for LLMs have been vacuuming up terabytes of data, growing the foundation's bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content by 50 percent since January 2024. It's a scenario familiar across the free and open source software (FOSS) community, as we've previously detailed.

The Foundation hosts not only Wikipedia but also platforms like Wikimedia Commons, which offers 144 million media files under open licenses. For decades, this content has powered everything from search results to school projects. But since early 2024, AI companies have dramatically increased automated scraping through direct crawling, APIs, and bulk downloads to feed their hungry AI models. This exponential growth in non-human traffic has imposed steep technical and financial costs—often without the attribution that helps sustain Wikimedia's volunteer ecosystem.

The impact isn't theoretical. The foundation says that when former US President Jimmy Carter died in December 2024, his Wikipedia page predictably drew millions of views. But the real stress came when users simultaneously streamed a 1.5-hour video of a 1980 debate from Wikimedia Commons. The surge doubled Wikimedia's normal network traffic, temporarily maxing out several of its Internet connections. Wikimedia engineers quickly rerouted traffic to reduce congestion, but the event revealed a deeper problem: The baseline bandwidth had already been consumed largely by bots scraping media at scale.

This behavior is increasingly familiar across the FOSS world. Fedora's Pagure repository blocked all traffic from Brazil after similar scraping incidents covered by Ars Technica. GNOME's GitLab instance implemented proof-of-work challenges to filter excessive bot access. Read the Docs dramatically cut its bandwidth costs after blocking AI crawlers.

Wikimedia's internal data explains why this kind of traffic is so costly for open projects. Unlike humans, who tend to view popular and frequently cached articles, bots crawl obscure and less-accessed pages, forcing Wikimedia's core datacenters to serve them directly. Caching systems designed for predictable, human browsing behavior don't work when bots are reading the entire archive indiscriminately.

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-minds-common-assumptions.html

A new study reveals that while high-quality, nonjudgmental listening improves how people feel about a conversation—reducing defensiveness and enhancing perceptions of the listener—it does not make persuasive messages more effective at changing attitudes.

Using a large-scale field experiment on immigration, the researchers found that sharing a compelling personal narrative significantly and durably shifted participants' views, regardless of whether the speaker practiced active listening. This challenges the widespread belief that listening is essential for persuasion, suggesting instead that what is said may matter more than how empathetically it is delivered.

Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenges long-held beliefs about the power of listening to facilitate persuasion. The research was led by Dr. Roni Porat from the Department of International Relations and Political Science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in collaboration with Dr. Erik Santoro (Columbia University), Dr. David E. Broockman (University of California), and Dr. Joshua L. Kalla (Yale University).

For decades, scholars and practitioners have promoted the idea that high-quality, nonjudgmental listening can reduce defensiveness and increase openness during difficult conversations, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of persuasion. But does listening actually change minds?

To rigorously test this assumption, the research team conducted a large-scale, preregistered field experiment involving nearly 1,500 U.S. participants. Participants engaged in 10-minute video conversations with trained canvassers acting as confederates. The topic was in-state tuition for unauthorized immigrants—a highly contentious and socially relevant issue.

In a randomized design—a technique that previous work has established is effective at persuasion—the study included some conversations that included a persuasive personal narrative about an undocumented immigrant, while others did not. Independently, some canvassers practiced high-quality nonjudgmental listening, while others did not. Researchers measured participants' attitudes both immediately after the conversation and five weeks later.

The results were striking. Persuasive narratives alone led to meaningful, lasting changes in attitudes toward undocumented immigrants and related policy positions. High-quality listening, while it improved perceptions of the persuader and reduced emotional defensiveness, did not enhance the persuasive effect of the narrative. These findings suggest that while listening can foster better interpersonal connection, it may not directly amplify persuasion as commonly assumed.

Journal Reference: Erik Santoro et al, Listen for a change? A longitudinal field experiment on listening's potential to enhance persuasion, PNAS (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2421982122

Original Submission

owl writes:

http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-april-fools-joke-that-might-have.html

Everyone should pull one great practical joke in their lifetimes. This one was mine, and I think it's past the statute of limitations. The story is true. Only the names are redacted to protect the guilty.

My first job out of college was a database programmer, even though my undergraduate degree had nothing to do with computers and my current profession still mostly doesn't. The reason was that the University I worked for couldn't afford competitive wages, but they did offer various fringe benefits, and they were willing to train someone who at least had decent working knowledge. I, as a newly minted graduate of the august University of California system, had decent working knowledge at least of BSD/386 and SunOS, but more importantly also had the glowing recommendation of my predecessor who was being promoted into a new position. I was hired, which was their first mistake.

Original Submission

aliks writes:

According to journalism.co.uk an Ethics Box added to a news article aims to explain the editorial thinking behind key decisions on the news story. The aim being to counter increasing mistrust amongst youth who are skeptical of journalism in general.
https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/schibsted-delivers-on-what-young-audiences-want-transparency-on-editorial-decisions/s2/a1228276/

Does anyone still believe journalism is not just bought and sold to the highest bidder? (Present company excepted!!)

The Guardian newspaper thinks so:
"Outlets seek fresh strategies as UK poll shows 'news avoidance' on the rise": Negative content and distrust among reasons given by audiences as industry works on how to keep them engaged. Less than half (47%) of those asked about their news consumption said they viewed television news programmes regularly or had done so in the last week, according to a new Opinium poll. The figure fell to 29% for radio news and 26% for news websites.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/apr/01/outlets-seek-fresh-strategies-as-uk-poll-shows-news-avoidance-on-the-rise

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Uncrewed Spectrum test rocket's failure seconds after blast-off said to have produced extensive data nonetheless:

A test rocket intended to kickstart satellite launches from Europe fell to the ground and exploded less than a minute after takeoff from Norway on Sunday, in what the German startup Isar Aerospace had described as an initial test.

The Spectrum started smoking from its sides and crashed back to Earth in a powerful explosion just after its launch from from the Andøya spaceport in the Arctic. Images were broadcast live on YouTube.

The uncrewed rocket was billed as the first attempt at an orbital flight to originate from Europe, where several countries, including Sweden and Britain, have said they want a share of the growing market for commercial space missions.

Isar Aerospace, which had warned the initial launch could end prematurely, said the test produced extensive data that its team could learn from.

[...] The Spectrum is designed for small- and medium-sized satellites weighing up to one metric tonne, although it did not carry a payload on its maiden voyage from the spaceport in Norway.

The mission was intended to collect data on Isar Aerospace's launch vehicle in a first integrated test of all its systems, the Bavarian company said last week.

The company, headquartered in Munich, had previously said it would consider a 30-second flight a success. While not intended to reach orbit on its first mission, the test marked the first commercial orbital flight from a launchpad on the European continent, excluding Russia.

European countries have long relied on paying for launches from Russian space stations but the relationship has broken down since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

[...] Last year, a report by Mario Draghi, a former European Central Bank president and former prime minister of Italy, recommended Europe could boost its economic growth by recognising space as a key sector. Independent access to space is also increasingly seen as a geopolitical and security issue.

[...] Several destinations around Europe have been marked for spaceport projects, including the British Shetland Islands, the Portuguese Azores, and Esrange in Sweden. Coastal areas near stretches of open water are considered ideal spots for launch sites, as rockets do not have to fly over heavily populated land areas.

Britain has had mixed success as a launch destination. Virgin Orbit, the satellite launch company founded by Richard Branson, filed for bankruptcy in 2023 after its inaugural flight from Cornwall – with a rocket strapped to a Boeing 747 – ended in failure.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Honeybees aren't native to the United States, but they play a big role in food production.

Honeybees, which serve a crucial role in food production, have been dying in staggering numbers in the United States.

U.S. commercial beekeepers saw colony losses averaging 62% over the past winter, according to a survey released last month from honeybee research nonprofit Project Apis m. The survey was based on data that included more than two-thirds of commercially raised honeybees in the U.S.

"Something real bad is going on this year," Scott McArt, associate entomology professor at Cornell University, told The Guardian.

Last week, entomologists at Washington State University forecast that total honeybee losses this year could reach up to 70%. Over the past decade, annual losses have typically been between 40 and 50%, but the numbers have been "increasing steadily" as time goes on, the report said.

Until about two decades ago, beekeepers would typically lose only 10-20% of their bees over the winter months, according to The Guardian.

Climate change, urban sprawl and widespread weed killing were all cited as factors in bee decline by Project Apis m.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is also studying whether bee-killing viruses or parasites could be contributing to the devastating losses, while Cornell researchers are looking into the impact of pesticides. The Guardian noted that Cornell had to step in to assist with that research after President Donald Trump's administration made staffing cuts at the USDA.

Honey bees are not native to the U.S., but they play a big part in commercial agriculture. The flying insects pollinate more than 130 types of fruits, nuts and vegetables, making them responsible for $15 billion worth of U.S. crops each year, according to the USDA.

Commercial Blake Shook told CBS News he fears for the future of agriculture.

"If this is a multi-year thing, it'll change the way we consume food in the United States," he said.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

FuguIta is an OpenBSD live CD featuring portable workplace, low hardware requirements, additional software, and partial support for Japanese. This live CD is intended to be as close as possible to the default OpenBSD when installed on a hard disk. - quote source

On February 20, 2025, they celebrated their 20th Anniversary of the public release:

To be precise, it dates back to the release of its predecessor, CD-OpenBSD.

Initially, it was just an experimental project to create an OpenBSD system that could boot from a CD. I never imagined it would last this long.

Now, FuguIta supports three CPU architectures: i386, amd64, and arm64.
It can also be installed and used on a variety of media, including DVDs, USB memory sticks, SD cards, hard disks, and SSDs.

Its use cases have also expanded. While it was originally intended as a way to "try OpenBSD," it is now used not only as a daily PC environment but also as a dedicated machine for servers, routers, and IoT devices.

As a result, FuguIta is now used for various purposes in different countries around the world.

This is all thanks to the continued support of many people over the years:
        • Users who downloaded and used FuguIta
        • Those who provided valuable feedback, including reviews, questions, and feature requests
        • Community members who offered mirror servers and technical support

When I first released CD-OpenBSD 20 years ago, there were many similar OpenBSD-based live systems. However, most of them have ceased development over time, and now FuguIta is likely the only one remaining.

I will continue to develop and release FuguIta for as long as possible.
Thank you for your continued support!

Original Submission

hubie writes:

CJR study shows AI search services misinform users and ignore publisher exclusion requests:

A new study from Columbia Journalism Review's Tow Center for Digital Journalism finds serious accuracy issues with generative AI models used for news searches. The researchers tested eight AI-driven search tools by providing direct excerpts from real news articles and asking the models to identify each article's original headline, publisher, publication date, and URL. They discovered that the AI models incorrectly cited sources in more than 60 percent of these queries, raising significant concerns about their reliability in correctly attributing news content.

Researchers Klaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar noted in their report that roughly 1 in 4 Americans now use AI models as alternatives to traditional search engines. Given that these models struggle significantly when specifically asked to attribute news sources, this raises broader questions about their general reliability.

Citation error rates varied notably among the tested platforms. Perplexity provided incorrect information in 37 percent of the queries tested, whereas ChatGPT Search incorrectly identified 67 percent (134 out of 200) of articles queried. Grok 3 demonstrated the highest error rate, at 94 percent. In total, researchers ran 1,600 queries across the eight different generative search tools.

The study highlighted a common trend among these AI models: rather than declining to respond when they lacked reliable information, the models frequently provided plausible-sounding but incorrect or speculative answers—known technically as confabulations. The researchers emphasized that this behavior was consistent across all tested models, not limited to just one tool.

Surprisingly, premium paid versions of these AI search tools fared even worse in certain respects. Perplexity Pro ($20/month) and Grok 3's premium service ($40/month) confidently delivered incorrect responses more often than their free counterparts. Though these premium models correctly answered a higher number of prompts, their reluctance to decline uncertain responses drove higher overall error rates.

[...] Mark Howard, chief operating officer at Time magazine, expressed concern to CJR about ensuring transparency and control over how Time's content appears via AI-generated searches. Despite these issues, Howard sees room for improvement in future iterations, stating, "Today is the worst that the product will ever be," citing substantial investments and engineering efforts aimed at improving these tools.

However, Howard also did some user shaming, suggesting it's the user's fault if they aren't skeptical of free AI tools' accuracy: "If anybody as a consumer is right now believing that any of these free products are going to be 100 percent accurate, then shame on them."

AI Search Has a Citation Problem

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-reveals-tool-tropical-fish-species.html

Scientists have debunked the belief that using tools is unique to mammals and birds, after documenting tropical fish that smash shellfish against rocks to open and eat the meat, in a fascinating new study published in the journal Coral Reefs on 26 March 2025.

Dr. Juliette Tariel-Adam from the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University led a project tracking tool use in multiple species of wrasses—a colorful reef fish.

The study logs fish deliberately picking up hard-shelled prey like crabs and mollusks, smashing them against hard surfaces like rocks to access the meal inside.

"Tool use is typically associated with humans, but this behavior is proof that fish are far cleverer than they get credit for," says Dr. Tariel-Adam.
Tool use by a yellowhead wrasse in South Caicos Island . Credit: Macquarie University

Researchers from Australia, Brazil and Caicos Islands have provided the first evidence of anvil use in several species of Halichoeres wrasses, suggest the behavior is far more common than previously thought.

Wrasses use hard surfaces, also called 'anvils,' to crack open hard-shelled prey such as crabs and mollusks. Through a citizen science initiative Fish Tool Use, researchers gathered 16 new observations across five species of Halichoeres wrasses.

These findings mark the first evidence of anvil use for three species and the first video evidence for the other two, and extend the known range of anvil use to the western Atlantic.

More information: Juliette Tariel-Adam et al, Tool use by New World Halichoeres wrasses, Coral Reefs (2025). DOI: 10.1007/s00338-025-02633-w

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration of President Donald Trump are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the United States following the disruptions prompted by Trump. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.

Nature asked readers whether these changes were causing them to consider leaving the United States. Responses were solicited earlier this month on the journal's website, on social media and in the Nature Briefing e-mail newsletter. Roughly 1,650 people completed the survey.

Many respondents were looking to move to countries where they already had collaborators, friends, family or familiarity with the language. "Anywhere that supports science," wrote one respondent. Some who had moved to the United States for work planned to return to their country of origin.

Nature.Com

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Microsoft's killing script used to avoid Microsoft Account in Windows 11:

Microsoft has removed the 'BypassNRO.cmd' script from Windows 11 preview builds, which allowed users to bypass the requirement to use a Microsoft Account when installing the operating system.

This change was introduced in the latest Windows 11 Insider Dev preview build, which means it will likely be coming to production builds.

"We're removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and user experience of Windows 11," reads the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5516 release notes.

"This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account."

Since the release of Windows 11, Microsoft has made it hard to use the operating system with a local account, instead forcing users to log in with a Microsoft Account.

Microsoft says this is done to make using the company's ecosystem of cloud-based features and services easier, such as using your account to store BitLocker recovery keys.

[...] However, many users do not want to use a Microsoft Account, thinking it reduces their privacy and allows Microsoft to monitor their activities.

A popular method to bypass a Microsoft Account during setup is to use a script named 'C:\windows\system32\oobe\BypassNRO.cmd.' When run during Windows 11 setup, it creates a Registry value that removes the requirement to connect to the Internet during setup, which allows you to set up the operating system with a local account instead.

[...] While Microsoft is now removing this script, they have not yet removed the BypassNRO Registry value. This means you can manually enter the following commands to achieve the same functionality as the now-removed script.

reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t
REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
shutdown /r /t 0

If you feel comfortable modifying the Windows Registry, you can create the BypassNRO manually using Regedit, which can be launched from the Shift+F10 command prompt.

Unfortunately, it would not be surprising to see Microsoft remove the functionality of this Registry value in the future, making this technique no longer work.

Original Submission