Tuesday 14th May 2024

A global plastic treaty will only work if it caps production, modeling shows

An international agreement to end plastic pollution is due to be sealed this year in Busan, South Korea. At the penultimate round of negotiations, held in Ottawa, Canada, Rwanda and Peru proposed a target to cut the weight of primary plastics produced worldwide by 40% by 2040, compared with 2025.

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Are there research studies that attempt to determine the value of a "Growth Mindset?"

Psychologist Carol Dweck's "growth mindset" theory has become a popular solution and intervention technique in (mostly American) schools of all ages. We might say that it's become the new version of the "self-esteem" movement seen in the 80's. While Dweck first developed the theory in the 90's, it's really taken hold of popular consciousness from the 2010's on.

Unfortunately, we should remember that psychology has an ongoing replication crisis in many of its landmark findings. Many of the "easy" ideas for transformative effects have not borne fruit over the years, and been later found to have tainted methods by core researchers. Sure enough, in recent years many or most of the large-scale, high-quality attempts at replicating the claims of growth mindset have failed to so. Here are a few examples:

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Americans Are Lonelier than Europeans in Middle Age - Scientific American (No paywall)

The lack of a safety net in the U.S. is a big factor that explains why Americans feel lonelier than Danes or Swedes

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With Measles on the Rise, Here's How to Check If You Were Vaccinated or Have Immunity - Scientific American (No paywall)

Certain adults may need to get an additional dose of the measles vaccine. Here’s how to know if you have adequate immunity to measles

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Why Engineers Should Study Philosophy - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)

The ability to develop crisp mental models around the problems you want to solve and understanding the why before you start working on the how is an increasingly critical skill, especially in the age of AI. Coding is one of the things AI does best and its capabilities are quickly improving. However, there’s a catch: Code created by an AI can be syntactically and semantically correct but not functionally correct. In other words, it can work well, but not do what you want it to do. Having a crisp mental model around a problem, being able to break it down into steps that are tractable, perfect first-principle thinking, sometimes being prepared (and able to) debate a stubborn AI — these are the skills that will make a great engineer in the future, and likely the same consideration applies to many job categories.

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Surveilling Employees Erodes Trust -- and Puts Managers in a Bind - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)

There’s a growing movement to track employee productivity through increasingly sophisticated technology, such as desktop surveillance, biometric smart badges, location tracking, or desk heat sensors. While this can be intrusive, it also presents opportunities for gaining profound insights into employee behavior, such as which applications employees use most frequently or whether employees are at risk of overworking based on their work patterns and productivity. While the ultimate decision to use these technologies typically comes from upper management, implementation and utilization of such systems typically falls on supervisors. New research suggests that when information obtained through monitoring is used for control purposes (e.g., performance review), employees were more likely to engage in counterproductive behavior, such as time thievery, inattentiveness, cyberloafing, or tardiness. However, when the information obtained through monitoring was used for feedback, employees continued to trust and maintain positive relationships with their supervisors and performed better in their jobs.

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"Bionic eye" discovers Plato's final resting place

Greek philosopher Plato played a huge role in shaping Western thought, particularly around politics, and even though he died more than 2,300 years ago, his “Republic” is still one of the most studied books at top US colleges.

Despite Plato’s wide and lasting influence, though, there’s still a lot we don’t know about him, including his final resting place. Historians had been able to narrow it down to the garden of the school he founded in Athens, but where exactly in the expansive gardens was a mystery — until now.

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Starts With A Bang Podcast #105 - Dark Matter and Galaxies

Every January, I head to the American Astronomical Society’s big annual meeting with an ulterior motive in mind. Beyond merely uncovering new scientific findings, gathering information for potential stories, and connecting with friends and colleagues, I also look to meet emerging junior researchers who are swiftly becoming not only experts, but leaders, in their particular sub-field of astronomy.

One of the most popular research topics in astrophysics today is the connection between the dark Universe, including the only indirectly-observed dark matter and dark energy, and the observable components that astronomers routinely see: stars, galaxies, gas, plasma, and other forms of light-emitting and light-absorbing matter. The dark Universe, to date, is best revealed by looking at the luminous, electromagnetic signals that are imprinted onto the visible components of our cosmos.

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What's next in the Ozempic era?

Few drugs have achieved the stardom that semaglutide, marketed in the United States as Ozempic or Wegovy, has today. A synthetic, injectable version of an intestinal hormone, it is the flagship of a new category of drugs initially developed for diabetes that rose to fame in the medical and public arena as an effective weapon against obesity. Semaglutide has proved so successful that its manufacturer, the Danish company Novo Nordisk, is unable to keep up with demand.

The US Food and Drug Administration approved semaglutide in 2017 to improve the control of blood sugar levels in adults with type 2 diabetes — and then, in June 2021, for chronic weight management in adults who are obese or overweight and have related risk factors, such as high blood pressure or diabetes.

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Why AI playing video games is a big deal

DeepMind, Google’s AI lab, has a history of showing off the capabilities of its AI through games — and walloping human opponents in the process. In 2016, AlphaGo defeated Go world champion Lee Sedol. In 2019, AlphaStar constructed enough additional pylons to beat professional StarCraft II player (yes, that’s a thing) Grzegorz “MaNa” Komincz by 5-0. And in 2020, Atari57 scored better than an average human player across 57 Atari 2600 games.

The lab’s latest AI news is something different, though. Instead of designing a model to master a single game, DeepMind has teamed up with researchers from the University of British Columbia to develop an AI agent capable of playing a whole bunch of totally different games.

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