All posts filed under: Science

Science

How AI ‘sees’ the world – what happened when we trained a deep learning model to identify poverty

Published by skeptic

To most effectively deliver aid to alleviate poverty, you have to know where the people most in need are. In many countries, this is often done with household surveys. But these are usually infrequent and cover limited locations. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have created a step change in how to measure poverty and other human development indicators. Our team has used a type of AI known as a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) to study satellite imagery and identify some types of poverty with a level of accuracy close to that of household surveys. The use of this AI technology could help, for example, in developing countries where there has been a rapid change of land use. The AI could monitor via satellite and potentially spot areas that are in need of aid. This would be much quicker than relying on ground surveys. Plus, the dreamy images our deep learning model has produced give us a unique insight into how AI visualises the world. Two villages with different wealth ratings as seen from …

Stones inside fish ears mark time like tree rings – and now they’re helping us learn about climate change

Published by skeptic

As a marine biologist, I’ve always found it fascinating to learn about how animals adapt to their habitat. But climate change has made it more important than ever – wild animals’ futures may depend on how much we understand about them. Fish have a kind of stone in their ear that scientists can read like tree rings. My team’s new research found a way to decode the chemicals in these stones to measure how much energy they used when alive. What we learned could help bluefin tuna survive the climate crisis. There is still so much we don’t know about how animals respond when their habitat suddenly changes. Temperature is one of the most important puzzle pieces, as it affects the rates of the chemical reactions that define life. For animals, rising temperatures act like inflation. Rising prices mean housing and food take up more of our budget, leaving less money for luxuries. More heat means more of an animal’s bodily resources, like food and oxygen, are needed to fuel basic functions, like breathing and …

Honeybees cluster together when it’s cold – but we’ve been completely wrong about why

Published by skeptic

Honeybees in man-made hives may have been suffering the cold unnecessarily for over a century because commercial hive designs are based on erroneous science, my new research shows. For 119 years, a belief that the way honeybees cluster together gives them a kind of evolutionary insulation has been fundamental for beekeeping practice, hive design and honeybee study. More recently, California beekeepers have even been putting bee colonies into cold storage during summer because they think it is good for brood health. But my study shows that clustering is a distress behaviour, rather than a benign reaction to falling temperatures. Deliberately inducing clustering by practice or poor hive design may be considered poor welfare or even cruelty, in light of these findings. Honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies don’t hibernate. In the wild they overwinter in tree cavities that keep at least some of their numbers above 18°C in a wide range of climates, including -40°C winters. But popular understanding of their overwintering behaviour is dominated by observation of their behaviour in thin (19mm) wooden hives. These man-made …

The way a sperm tail moves can be explained by mathematics worked out by Alan Turing

Published by skeptic

Alan Turing might be best know for his work helping to crack Germany’s “Enigma” communications code during the second world war. But he also came up with a theory where patterns can form just through chemical compounds spreading out (diffusing) and reacting with one another. This became known as reaction-diffusion theory for pattern formation. PhD student James Cass and I recently published a study in Nature Communications that revealed the tail of a sperm, known as a flagellum, generates patterns as it moves – and that these patterns can be described by Turing’s theory. Patterns formed by chemical interactions create a large variety of shapes and colours such as spirals, stripes and spots. They are everywhere in nature, and are believed to be behind animal markings such as those on zebras and leopards, the whorl of seeds in a sunflower head and patterns formed by beach sand. Turing’s theory can be applied to various fields in science, from biology and robotics to astrophysics. We wanted to explore whether there was a mathematical connection between these …

Why the man-hating feminist is a myth – according to science

Published by skeptic

As part of the “Women Against Feminism” campaign that launched in 2014, social media posts have featured young women holding placards with the message “I don’t need feminism because…” listing various reasons ranging from “I respect men” to “I am not a MAN-HATER”. This perception of misandry – a hatred of men – is perhaps the most prevalent and enduring stereotype about feminism. By this account, feminism is not really a movement to end sexism and bring about gender equality, but rather it is wholly concerned with dislike of men. While “Women Against Feminism” was ultimately eclipsed three years later by the #MeToo movement, it reflects a wider reality that stereotypes about feminism have caused women to spurn and even publicly denounce the movement. But is it actually true that feminists tend to dislike men? Not according to our recent research. A root cause of hatred Research evidence shows that awareness of negative tropes of feminists as “man-haters” reduces both women’s willingness to identify as feminists and their support of gender equality initiatives. The idea …

The vast majority of us have no idea what the padlock icon on our internet browser is – and it’s putting us at risk

Published by skeptic

Do you know what the padlock symbol in your internet browser’s address bar means? If not, you’re not alone. New research by my colleagues and I shows that only 5% of UK adults understand the padlock’s significance. This is a threat to our online safety. The padlock symbol on a web browser simply means that the data being sent between the web server and the user’s computer is encrypted and cannot be read by others. But when we asked people what they thought it meant, we received an array of incorrect answers. In our study, we asked a cross section of 528 web users, aged between 18 and 86 years of age, a number of questions about the internet. Some 53% of them held a bachelor’s degree or above and 22% had a college certificate, while the remainder had no further education. One of our questions was: “On the Google Chrome browser bar, do you know what the padlock icon represents/means?” Of the 463 who responded, 63% stated they knew, or thought they knew, what …

Florence Bell died unrecognised for her contributions to DNA science – decades on female researchers are still being sidelined

Published by skeptic

Almost 80 years ago, Florence Bell quietly laid the foundations for one of the biggest landmarks in 20th century science: the discovery of the structure of DNA. But when she died on November 23 2000, her occupation on her death certificate was recorded as “housewife”. Decades later, female researchers are still being sidelined. Research has shown that deep systemic problems block women from advancing or push them out of science. But this isn’t inevitable – there are changes universities could make to level the playing field. While promotion criteria differ across universities, credibility in academia is primarily established through the number of publications a researcher has authored. This means academics are under pressure to publish as much as they can even if quality suffers. Women in academia are more likely to work part time, hold teaching jobs and do extra admin tasks. This means women researchers often get less time to focus on their research, to make discoveries and publish about them. Yet it is research publications, grants and citations that are used in promotions …

Why a social media detox may not be as good for you as you think – new research

Published by skeptic

Whether you’re an influencer, an occasional poster, or just a lurker, you likely spend more time than you’d like on social media. Globally, working-age people with internet access now spend more than 2.5 hours per day on social platforms like Instagram, Facebook or X (Twitter). Social media use can become excessive and problematic when it interferes with school or work, causes conflict in your relationships or harms your mental health. While not formally recognised as mental health disorder, some scientists even argue that problematic social media use is an “addiction”. When you find yourself checking and scrolling your accounts excessively, you may decide it’s time to go on a digital “diet” or “detox” – cutting your use dramatically or even avoiding social media completely for a few days. But, as our new research shows, this approach can reduce the positive effects of social media just as much as the negative ones. And in fact, we were surprised at how little participants in our study missed social media when we asked them to cut back. This …

do they work? Experts explain how they help the winter blues

Published by skeptic

Have you ever noted that you sleep more in the winter months? Or eat more carbs or have low energy? If you do, then you might be one of the around 6% of the higher latitude populations with seasonal affective disorder (SAD). If you’ve searched the internet for tips on how to fight the winter blues you’ve probably been advised to buy a therapy lamp. So you may be wondering what research says about whether they are effective and how they work. Before we examine the evidence for light therapy it’s important to understand why mood might be affected by sunlight. Vitamin D is produced when your skin is exposed to sunlight and some scientists believe there is a link between depression and low vitamin D levels. Studies have found about 10% of the population of the far north, for example in Alaska and Finland, experience SAD. Interestingly, Icelanders, who also live in these very northern latitudes, do not appear to suffer so much from SAD. This might be because of their fish-packed diet, which …

AI makes Silicon Valley’s philosophy of ‘move fast and break things’ untenable

Published by skeptic

The unofficial motto of Silicon Valley has long been “move fast and break things”. It relies on the assumption that in order to create cutting edge technology and to be ahead of the competition, companies need to accept that things will get damaged in the process. However, this approach can have implications beyond just economics. It can endanger people and be unethical. As we mark the first anniversary of the release of AI chatbot ChatGPT, it’s worth considering whether the big tech companies could do with moving slowly and taking care not to break anything. ChatGPT’s impressive capabilities caused a sensation. But some commentators were quick to point to issues such as the potential it presented for students to cheat on assignments. More widely, the chatbot intensified a debate over how to control AI, a transformative technology with huge potential benefits – and risks of comparable significance. Let’s look at Silicon Valley’s record on other technology too. Social media was supposed to bring us together. Instead, it has threatened democracy and produced armies of trolls. …