Category: Blog

More than half a million people in the UK have inflammatory bowel disease, the two main forms of which are Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, with at least 7 million affected globally. They arise when the immune system attacks the bowel, causing an array of debilitating symptoms from abdominal pain and weight loss to diarrhoea…

The word “text” originated from the Latin word “textus,” which means “a weaving” or “a fabric.” In ancient times, textus referred specifically to the process of weaving fabric. Over time, the meaning of the word expanded to include written or printed material, reflecting the idea of words being woven together to create a coherent written…

The Canine Rainbow and How Dogs See the World — Read on kottke.org/24/05/the-canine-rainbow-and-how-dogs-see-the-world An olfactory highway to the occipital region

Susan Folstein and Michael Rutter at King’s College London recruited twins where one or both had autism. After interviewing the parents and assessing the children, they wrote one of the most important papers in the field, demonstrating for the first time that autism was largely genetic. Soon after, Lorna Wing and Judith Gould, also at…

The science is focused on the calyx of Held, the largest nerve terminal in the brains of all mammals, which processes sound. Auditory dysfunction has been widely recognized as the source of symptoms of disorders including autism that typically result in social and cognitive impairment. — Read on www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/may/30/neuroscientists-ai-brain-map-alzheimers-autism

It might sound like a stream of jolly nonsense, but the peculiar sounds babies produce could be an attempt to practise the vocal control necessary for speech, researchers have suggested. — Read on www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/29/babbling-babies-may-be-warming-up-for-speech-say-scientists i assumed that this was already established !

a person on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than a pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy…

We were able to measure a kind of “distance” between features based on which neurons appeared in their activation patterns. This allowed us to look for features that are “close” to each other. Looking near a “Golden Gate Bridge” feature, we found features for Alcatraz Island, Ghirardelli Square, the Golden State Warriors, California Governor Gavin…

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/05/a-theory-of-information-by-noah-smith.html

Then you start to ask yourself, ‘Is there even any meaning to it?’ And then you’re like, is there any meaning to anything? Some people would say that’s demoralising and horrible. But there is another side that says, well, actually now we’re really free. Because once you’re free of meaning and old-school narrative logic, then…