Ground squirrels reduce their metabolism during hibernation; could humans do it, too, with some genetic tweaks?
Hibernation is extremely complex – after all, it affects every cell in the body – and there are almost certainly multiple switches involved in the process. MIT neuroscience researcher Siniša Hrvatin has identified another brain region that seems to play a key role in the process. In a paper published earlier this year (but not yet peer-reviewed), he and his team targeted a region known as the preoptic area, which plays a key role in metabolism and temperature. By activating neurons in the preoptic area of hamsters, the researchers put them into torpor, lowering the animals’ body temperature to 15C.
The key would be whether this is possible in humans.
And, of course, whether revival can be timed and automated – or perhaps with robotic (AI) assistance…
Of course, science fiction has posited “sleeper ships” for decades now. The Songs of Distant Earth (Arthur C. Clarke, one of the “Big Three”) is probably the most well-known of the classic sleeper ship stories, but there are plenty of others to choose from…
Which languages do you speak and how did that impact your life?
I studied French from junior high through first year undergraduate.
I can’t speak it. I tried, but my teacher (MA from Tunisia) had to use a book based on Parisien French, even though my hometown is a stone’s throw from Québéc (not Paris!).
After failing to learn how to speak French, I switched to German in second year college. Borrowed money to go to Germany for a month that summer and met long-lost relatives.
Kinda could speak German. Forgot how to do so after leaving college. Nobody to talk to (and no reason to use it).
In my MFA program, I got bored by the “creative writing workshops” (wherein my classmates enjoyed sniping each other’s works). So I took up Irish Gaelic. Borrowed money (again) to visit An Gaeltacht (Conamara) near Galway, Ireland.
Marginal fluency. For a year. Forgotten just as quickly.
Two years later, I moved to Japan. Studied Chinese characters and Japanese grammar on my own primarily, with help occasionally from a Japanese colleague where I taught and a Japanese friend I made who ran a private English cram school.
After over 26 years, by far my strongest “second” (fifth) language.
So. How has language learning affected my life?
How has it not?
I am a language teacher. I am also a failed language learner. This has made me acutely aware of how hard it is for my Japanese students of English to use English, when on a daily basis they really have no need to do so. I respect them to no end.
Learning another language is hard. It’s especially hard when there’s no real reason to do so, when there’s no one to talk to in that language.
When it’s not really a part of who you are, as a person.
I had thought that, given my ancestry, French, German, and Irish would be good to learn. Turned out that wasn’t enough. I needed a real reason.
Someone to talk to.
I am now married to the love of my life, a Japanese woman who, like me, loves learning and teaching language. We have two wonderful daughters who likewise enjoy learning language.
Because we have a reason to learn them. People.
It’s all about people. Language is people. Not translation software, not AI. People.
“Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head, To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired…”
I dearly wish I had though of this. Then again, I don’t know Patrick Stewart…
“As a science fiction author, I’ve always loved hearing from fans of my fiction,” [US based author Jason Sanford] tells the Guardian. “But now when someone emails saying they loved one of my stories, my first thought is that this is yet another scammer setting me up for the kill.”
I, too, have been contacted repeatedly by people claiming to be literary agents, or to have connections with major publishers or bookstores.
I don’t trust any of them. And that’s sad.
All I want is for people to read and enjoy my work. Not steal it, scrape it, resell or repackage it. And certainly not to think I’m eager to give them thousands of dollars for horrible AI-generated videos.
I did not expect the machines to take over quite this way…
Incredible! What did he do with such power? As I said, he took his findings to the Verge. One of its reporters gave Azdoufal the serial number of a DJI Romo vacuum he’d just been testing for review; within minutes Azdoufal could see it cleaning the reporter’s living room, that it had 80% battery life remaining, and had it generate and transmit a floor plan of the house.
“WE will decide the fate of our Country – NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about,” Trump wrote.
Hmm. OK, what did this “Radical Left AI company” want?
US defense officials have pushed for unfettered access to Claude’s capabilities that they say can help protect the country, while Anthropic has resisted allowing its product to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input.
Adam’s Stepsons takes the core questions of Blade Runner and distills them into a tight, character-driven drama. It lacks the sweeping visuals of Villeneuve or the noir cityscape of Scott — but it delivers something arguably more intimate:
A quiet horror — and quiet triumph — in the collapse of identity, where the artificial doesn’t just mimic life…
It replaces it.
Over the weekend (my first with no student work to grade — finally! — since April), I decided to ask our “old” friend ChatGPT if it could analyze my sci-fi novella Adam’s Stepsons. Really, I was just curious what it would say.
It said…a LOT.
It correctly interpreted the title (something that many readers apparently didn’t get). It correctly identified the main themes as part of a “post-humanism” sub-genre of science fiction. And once I gave it three short excerpts (from the near the end of the story), it gave a frighteningly accurate thematic and symbolic analysis of the entire novella…just from three short excerpts of a total of about six pages.
I won’t copy all it gave me (you all can go try on your own and see what it says!). But let me share what the program thought were key themes:
Footage making the rounds on social media shows what appear to be astonishingly lifelike humanoid robots posing at the World Robot Conference in Beijing last week.
But instead of showing off the latest and greatest in humanoid robotics, two of the “robots” turned out to be human women cosplaying as futuristic gynoids, presumably hired by animatronics company Ex-Robots.
During the World Robot Conference 2024 in Beijing from Aug 21 – Aug 25, 🇨🇳 animatronics company EX-Robot (or EX Robots as reported by some news media) hired 2 women cosplayed as robots to spice up the exhibition.
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