All posts tagged: scientist

When is the best time to drink a protein shake? Here’s what one supplement scientist thinks

When is the best time to drink a protein shake? Here’s what one supplement scientist thinks

Published by skeptic

Fit&Well created this content as part of a paid partnership with Onnit. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of Fit&Well. A protein shake is a quick and convenient way to increase your protein intake, but is there an optimal time to drink one? Some people have one immediately after a workout, others prefer one before bed. However, Steven Kahn, a product development scientist at Onnit, suggests there may be a tendency to overthink the issue. When is the best time to drink a protein shake? “I don’t think there’s a bad time to take whey protein,” says Kahn. “Ultimately, as long as you’re hitting your daily protein goals, that’s more important than the timing of anything you’re eating or consuming.” However, Kahn says there could be a benefit in reaching for your shaker soon after your gym session. “You are going to have a slightly better response to protein immediately post-workout, especially if you’re training fasted in the morning. The impact would be a little more elevated …

‘I see cocaine in wild shrimp in Suffolk’: meet the scientist who analyses our wastewater | Life and style

‘I see cocaine in wild shrimp in Suffolk’: meet the scientist who analyses our wastewater | Life and style

Published by skeptic

If you live in London, Dr Leon Barron knows what you’re up to. He knows what prescribed drugs you’re on – painkillers, antidepressants, antipsychotics or beta blockers – and what illicit ones you’re taking for fun. He knows if you’ve been drinking and when (“Friday and Saturday are the main ones”); perhaps even if you’re worried about your dog getting fleas. Of course, I only mean the collective “you”, the city. Barron, who leads the Emerging Chemical Contaminants team at Imperial College, has no idea what any individual is taking or doing; he explains that very clearly and carefully. He has a research scientist’s precision plus the slight wariness of someone whose research has grabbed headlines, with the inaccuracies and misinterpretations that brings (I wonder what he thought about “Prawn to be wild”, reporting his research on cocaine residue in wild river shrimps.) But he’s also infectiously enthusiastic and generous with his time, spending a whole morning taking me round his lab and through his groundbreaking work. That work is analysing the chemical composition of …

Chinese scientist who published COVID-19 virus sequence allowed back in his lab after sit-in protest 

Chinese scientist who published COVID-19 virus sequence allowed back in his lab after sit-in protest 

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BEIJING —  The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China said he was allowed back into his lab after he spent days locked outside, sitting in protest. Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post on Wednesday, just past midnight, that the medical center that hosts his lab had “tentatively agreed” to allow him and his team to return and continue their research for the time being. “Now, team members can enter and leave the laboratory freely,” Zhang wrote in a post on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. He added that he is negotiating a plan to relocate the lab in a way that doesn’t disrupt his team’s work with the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, which hosts Zhang’s lab. Zhang and his team were suddenly told they had to leave their lab for renovations on Thursday, setting off the dispute, he said in an earlier post that was later deleted. On Sunday, Zhang began a sit-in protest outside his lab after he found he was locked out, a sign …

Chinese Scientist Who Shared Covid Sequence Protests Lab Closure

Chinese Scientist Who Shared Covid Sequence Protests Lab Closure

Published by Sam

A well-known Chinese scientist who defied a Chinese government gag order by being the first to disclose the genome of the Covid virus to a global database four years ago held a rare protest this week in Shanghai after being locked out of his lab. The scientist, Zhang Yongzhen, had run a laboratory in Shanghai since 2018, but found over the weekend that the facility had been sealed off with one of his colleagues locked inside, according to a Chinese news outlet. Dr. Zhang’s key card had been canceled and the elevators had been turned off. On Sunday evening, he began sleeping outdoors on flattened cardboard in front of locked blue doors at the sidewalk entrance to the lab, photos posted online by students showed. At least five security guards could be seen in one of the photos. Another news outlet, the online website of a state media agency in Shandong Province, reported on Monday about Dr. Zhang’s sit-in, and quoted him as saying then that, “I am still waiting for the problem to be …

Scientist Warns That NASA’s Voyager Probes Are “Dodging Bullets Out There”

Scientist Warns That NASA’s Voyager Probes Are “Dodging Bullets Out There”

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Cosmic rays are beating up our spacecrafts, the scientist explains. Friendly Fire A scientist who’s been working on NASA’s Voyager mission for more than half a century has helped shepherd the iconic spacecraft all the way to interstellar space — and now, he says that the probes are straight-up catching strays. In an interview with Mashable, Alan Cummings, a cosmic ray physicist at NASA and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who’s been on the probes’ missions from the very start, explained that Voyagers 1 and 2 are in greater danger than ever now that they’ve left the Sun’s protective bubble. Last week, NASA was mighty relieved when Voyager 1 regained contact with Earth after a whopping five months incommunicado. It took Herculean engineering ingenuity to make that happen, and as Cummings notes, scientists still aren’t sure what the exact problem was. “We don’t know everything,” the scientist said. “But I do think galactic cosmic rays are the guilty party here for most of these problems.” Ray Gun While Voyager 1’s five-month quiet spell was unusually long, it was …

Scientist Slams Politicians For Banning Geoengineering Experiments

Scientist Slams Politicians For Banning Geoengineering Experiments

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“Such rules would halt or hinder scientific exploration of technologies that could save lives and ease suffering.” For Science’s Sake A scientist is warning against regulatory attempts to ban geoengineering, which seeks to alter the climate as global warming threatens to make the planet less habitable for us humans. In an editorial for the MIT Tech Review, Cornell’s Daniele Visioni wrote that even as researchers and governments begin studying — and sometimes conducting early-stage tests — various geoengineering prospects, which often “seed” the clouds to spur on rain, dry out the stratosphere, or reflect sunlight away from the ground below, some critics are calling to shut these experiments down. “The growing interest in studying the potential of these tools… has triggered corresponding calls to shut down the research field, or at least to restrict it more tightly,” wrote Visioni, an expert in the field. “But such rules would halt or hinder scientific exploration of technologies that could save lives and ease suffering as global warming accelerates.” As Visioni notes, politicians have already begun banning geoengineering experiments. …

SETI Scientist Says Announcement of Alien Life Could Be Imminent

SETI Scientist Says Announcement of Alien Life Could Be Imminent

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The James Webb Telescope is going to be the one that does it, too. Webby Awards One of the world’s foremost experts in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) believes that with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, humans are closer to discovering life outside our planet than ever before. Lisa Kaltenegger, who directs the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell, told The Telegraph this week that because the Webb Telescope is designed to detect biosignatures — the scientific word for “signs of life,” including organism-produced methane gas — we may well find ETs very soon. Kaltnegger, whose new book “Alien Earths: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos” was published this month, waxed enthusiastic when discussing the JWST, bragging that with its technological leaps, humanity is now in “this era of golden exploration, with thousands of other worlds on our doorstep, that we now can actually explore.” The scientist is particularly interested in the four planets surrounding Trappist-1, a red dwarf planet located just 40 light-years away that’s suspected to contain water and, potentially, life. Discovered …

The Large Language Laboratory: AI as Scientist and Subject

The Large Language Laboratory: AI as Scientist and Subject

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Source: Art: DALL-E/OpenAI As we push harder to utilize and understand artificial intelligence (AI), the untapped potential of large language models (LLMs) is becoming increasingly apparent. These powerful models, trained on vast troves of data, hold within them an immense wealth of knowledge that extends far beyond their ability to generate human-like text. However, much of this knowledge remains dormant, waiting to be unlocked and harnessed for practical applications. A new paper presents a novel approach to extracting this latent wisdom, transforming LLMs into both scientists and subjects through the use of Structural Causal Models (SCMs) and carefully crafted prompting techniques. The Unique Duality of LLMs as Scientists and Subjects The paper by Manning et al. introduces a shift in how we interact with and learn from LLMs. By integrating SCMs, a tool from statistical analysis and machine learning, with LLMs, the researchers create virtual laboratories where complex human interactions and decision-making processes can be simulated and studied under controlled conditions. In this approach, LLMs take on the roles of both scientists, designing and executing …

Meta AI Scientist: AGI is a Pipe Dream

Meta AI Scientist: AGI is a Pipe Dream

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News <!– –> April 11, 2024 2 Artificial Intelligence Human intelligence still can’t be matched by a soulless algorithm News <!– –> April 11, 2024 2 Artificial Intelligence Predictions on AI’s ever-developing complexity have tech optimists counting the days until the machine replaces the human mind. Artificial general intelligence is the term they use to describe the point in which AI will officially overtake human intelligence. However, certain experts in the field, among them Robert J. Marks, host of the Mind Matters podcast, protest the assumption. AI researcher and scientist Yann LeCun, the AI chief at Meta, said recently that the current AI systems are nowhere close to achieving human-like intelligence. LeCun said, “We’re easily fooled into thinking they are intelligent because of their fluency with language, but really, their understanding of reality is very superficial,” he said. “They’re useful, there’s no question about that. But on the path towards human-level intelligence, an LLM is basically an off-ramp, a distraction, a dead end.” -Thomas Macaulay, Meta’s AI chief: LLMs will never reach human-level intelligence (thenextweb.com) This …

Scientist Who Gene-Edited Human Babies Back in the Lab Again After Prison Release

Scientist Who Gene-Edited Human Babies Back in the Lab Again After Prison Release

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Image by GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world in 2018, when news emerged that he had used the powerful gene-editing technique CRISPR to tinker with the genetic code of several human embryos that were later born as babies. The experiments led to a massive uproar, with scientists, ethicists, and regulators balking at the “egregious scientific and ethical lapses.” In 2019, He was sentenced to three years in prison for violating medical regulations. Now, roughly a year and a half after being released from prison, the scientist has resumed his research on human embryo gene editing — and only has a few regrets about his past work. In a new interview with Japanese newspaper the Mainichi Shimbun, He reflected on his belief that we’ll soon be facing a demand for “designer babies.” “We will use discarded human embryos and comply with both domestic and international rules,” he said, shutting down rumors that he was working on a follow-up to the twin sisters, who were born back in 2018 after modifying …