Weekly Science Headlines

[ᚼ]

The question, which goes back to at least 1955 and may have been pondered by Greek thinkers as early as the third century AD, asks, "How can you express every number between 1 and 100 as the sum of three cubes?" Or, put algebraically, how do you solve x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = k, where k equals any whole number from 1 to 100?

Speaking of sums of cubes ... There are only two integers that cannot be written as the sum of at most eight cubes: 239 and the infamous 23.

(Another property of 23 I haven't seen anywhere is that 23 is the first odd prime which is not a twin.

[bugmenоt]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/these-rats-learned-to-drive-tiny-cars-for-science/

Rats that learn to drive are more able to cope with stress. That might sound like the fever-dream of a former scientist-turned-car writer, but it's actually one of the results of a new study from the University of Richmond. The aim of the research was to see what effect the environment a rat was raised in had on its ability to learn new tasks. Although that kind of thing has been studied in the past, the tests haven't been particularly complicated. Anyone who has spent time around rats will know they're actually quite resourceful. So the team, led by Professor Kelly Lambert, came up this time with something a little more involved than navigating a maze: driving.

If you're going to teach rats to drive, first you need to build them a car (or Rat Operated Vehicle). The chassis and powertrain came from a robot car kit, and a transparent plastic food container provided the body. Explaining the idea of a steering wheel and pedals to rats was probably too difficult, so the controls were three copper wires stretched across an opening cut out of the front of the bodywork and an aluminum plate on the floor. When a rat stood on the plate and gripped a copper bar, a circuit was completed and the motors engaged; one bar made the car turn to the left, one made it turn to the right, and the third made it go straight ahead.

If proof were needed that many existing psychology tests are too simple, rats did not take long to learn how to drive. The driving was conducted in a closed-off arena (1.5m x 0.6m x 0.5m) where the goal was to drive over to a food treat. Three five-minute sessions a week, for eight weeks, was sufficient for the rats to learn how to do it. The placement of the treat and the starting position and orientation of the car varied throughout, so the rats had more of a challenge each time. At the end of the experiment, each rat went through a series of trials, conducted a day or two apart, where they were allowed to drive around the arena but without any food treats to see if they were only doing it for the food.

The subjects were 11 male rats, five of whom lived together in a large cage with multiple surface levels and objects to play with, and six who lived together in pairs in standard laboratory rat cages. Although both groups of rats learned to drive the car, the ones that lived in the enriched environment were quicker to start driving, and they continued to be more interested in driving even when there was no reward on offer beyond the thrill of the wind in one's fur.

The researchers also collected each rat's droppings at various points during the study to analyze them for metabolites of corticosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone, a pair of hormones. The ratio of these two hormones can show how stressed an animal is, and it changed in a pattern consistent with emotional resilience in all the rats over the course of the study. However, there was no significant difference between the enriched environment and the control group in this regard, which may well mean that the four-month process of teaching the rats to drive was itself a positive enriching environment.

Serious scientists usually refrain from imputing any further emotion onto research animals, but I'm no longer a serious scientist, so I'm happy saying that learning to drive made the rats more well-adjusted. And the study has further value; these complex activities may be more useful tests in rat models of neuropsychiatry than those in current use.

[Cain]

I'm amazed that humans - who literally invented bumper cars - are surprised to discover that driving tiny cars around is so popular.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Rats drive and chimpanzees have wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

[Frontside Back]

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-built-robots-entirely-out-of-living-frog-cells

PREPARE FOR ELDRITCH MEAT BLOBS!

[Doktor Howl]

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-built-robots-entirely-out-of-living-frog-cells

PREPARE FOR ELDRITCH MEAT BLOBS!

Sciencealert isn't about science.

It will never break my heart again.

[Frontside Back]

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-built-robots-entirely-out-of-living-frog-cells

PREPARE FOR ELDRITCH MEAT BLOBS!

Sciencealert isn't about science.

It will never break my heart again.

I actually found this in a popsci youtube video, and picked a random source to repost. I don't know shit about journalism, how do I know which ones are up to par?

[Cramulus]

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-built-robots-entirely-out-of-living-frog-cells

PREPARE FOR ELDRITCH MEAT BLOBS!

A) I think this is interesting as fuck
B) discussing this topic on facebook is predictably hilarious because everybody who has seen a Sci Fi movie thinks that they can predict the future ("I've seen this movie, they will obviously rise up against us!")
C) That's not to say that this isn't dangerous tech--but it's too new to know what its real practical applications are

Here's the link to the scientist's page about it, which has better details than the CNN or Independent or Sciencealert articles: https://cdorgs.github.io/ -- it also has a video of the thing moving

[Doktor Howl]

("I've seen this movie, they will obviously rise up against us!")

They will if I have anything to say about it.

[altered]

This is AWESOME technology, but ultimately the main danger is something switching the cancer switch on in one of those cells. That's how you get communicable cancers: free living cancer cells. Beyond that, they're just  not very dangerous. Too simple, currently. Also, likely to cause immune responses if they enter the human body, which reduces their danger further.

That all said, this is absolutely the real first step to realistic nanorobotics. Nature beat us to making molecular machines and has had a few million years to debug, the right move was always going to be biological.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-built-robots-entirely-out-of-living-frog-cells

PREPARE FOR ELDRITCH MEAT BLOBS!

To me it sounds more like Frankenstein's Monster. Except tiny.

[The Johnny]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/these-rats-learned-to-drive-tiny-cars-for-science/

Rats that learn to drive are more able to cope with stress. That might sound like the fever-dream of a former scientist-turned-car writer, but it's actually one of the results of a new study from the University of Richmond. The aim of the research was to see what effect the environment a rat was raised in had on its ability to learn new tasks. Although that kind of thing has been studied in the past, the tests haven't been particularly complicated. Anyone who has spent time around rats will know they're actually quite resourceful. So the team, led by Professor Kelly Lambert, came up this time with something a little more involved than navigating a maze: driving.

If you're going to teach rats to drive, first you need to build them a car (or Rat Operated Vehicle). The chassis and powertrain came from a robot car kit, and a transparent plastic food container provided the body. Explaining the idea of a steering wheel and pedals to rats was probably too difficult, so the controls were three copper wires stretched across an opening cut out of the front of the bodywork and an aluminum plate on the floor. When a rat stood on the plate and gripped a copper bar, a circuit was completed and the motors engaged; one bar made the car turn to the left, one made it turn to the right, and the third made it go straight ahead.

If proof were needed that many existing psychology tests are too simple, rats did not take long to learn how to drive. The driving was conducted in a closed-off arena (1.5m x 0.6m x 0.5m) where the goal was to drive over to a food treat. Three five-minute sessions a week, for eight weeks, was sufficient for the rats to learn how to do it. The placement of the treat and the starting position and orientation of the car varied throughout, so the rats had more of a challenge each time. At the end of the experiment, each rat went through a series of trials, conducted a day or two apart, where they were allowed to drive around the arena but without any food treats to see if they were only doing it for the food.

The subjects were 11 male rats, five of whom lived together in a large cage with multiple surface levels and objects to play with, and six who lived together in pairs in standard laboratory rat cages. Although both groups of rats learned to drive the car, the ones that lived in the enriched environment were quicker to start driving, and they continued to be more interested in driving even when there was no reward on offer beyond the thrill of the wind in one's fur.

The researchers also collected each rat's droppings at various points during the study to analyze them for metabolites of corticosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone, a pair of hormones. The ratio of these two hormones can show how stressed an animal is, and it changed in a pattern consistent with emotional resilience in all the rats over the course of the study. However, there was no significant difference between the enriched environment and the control group in this regard, which may well mean that the four-month process of teaching the rats to drive was itself a positive enriching environment.

Serious scientists usually refrain from imputing any further emotion onto research animals, but I'm no longer a serious scientist, so I'm happy saying that learning to drive made the rats more well-adjusted. And the study has further value; these complex activities may be more useful tests in rat models of neuropsychiatry than those in current use.

It was the year 2021, when the rats took over the Uber taxi service, much to the delight of customers, as they were more charismatic, and less accident prone than actual humans.

[minuspace]

Oh no... not that clever

[Cramulus]

An earlier universe existed before the Big Bang, and can still be observed today, says Nobel winner [Roger Penrose]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/earlier-universe-existed-big-bang-174323840.html

[Brother Mythos]

Contacts in the Early Bronze Age

"Bronze Age long-distance connections: Baltic amber in Aššur"

This article on caught my attention, as I'm almost finished reading 1177 B.C. - The Year Civilization Collapsed, a book by Eric. H. Cline.

As per this article:

"The extreme rarity of amber in the Mediterranean and the Near East before about 1550 BC and the restriction to high-ranking contexts can be explained by the fact that the Central German Únětice culture, whose wealth and importance is expressed, for example, in richly furnished princely tombs (Leubingen, Helmsdorf, Bornhöck) and the Nebra Sky Disk, controlled the paths over which the amber could reach the south.

The extremely rare amber finds from the early 2nd millennium BC are probably exclusive gifts from well-traveled people from Central or Western Europe to the elites in the south. After the end of the Únětice culture around 1550 BC., the picture changes and widespread trade is established, which made amber available in larger quantities in the Mediterranean and the Middle East."

(As per Eric H. Cline, all of this widespread trade ended by 1177 B.C.)

Here's the link to the summary article:      https://phys.org/news/2023-05-bronze-age-long-distance-baltic-amber.html

To my surprise, the long, original paper this article is based upon, "Baltic Amber in Aššur. Forms and Significance of Amber Exchange between Europe and the Middle East, c.2000–1300 BC," is freely accessible, and downloadable, from the embedded link at the end of this article.