These 7 initial discoveries in 2024 that need independent confirmation

 Science News has a good article for 7 science discoveries this past year that could become BIG DEALS, should additional work confirm and strengthen them. Have fun with it, and remember that in science research, replication and independent confirmation of one's work is a necessity before the scientific community will begin to put real weight behind the discovery. 

Science is an organic, always evolving process that attempts to figure out how the world and universe work, based on physical evidence and observations, and we shouldn't want to take a single study's conclusions as 'fact' without independent studies and confirmations.

Hydraulic jump research - a personal favorite for high school students

 One of my favorite 'basement research' experiments is anything investigating hydraulic jump. There are so many ways a student can 'tweak' an old experiment to make it their own, that it makes for an effective subject from which to get numerous projects/studies. 

This is an article that mentions numerous types of studies that have been done, and that we can be clever with to build upon and get new ideas for our students to investigate! There are good references, as well, where details about experiments can be found. And don't forget, new ideas and how to pursue them can always be gained using AI platforms, such as ChatGPT. 

Astronomy photo techniques can help tell if a photo is a Deepfake

 Scientists have found a feature of photos that can be added to a list of things to determine if a photo is authentic or a deepfake. Deepfakes are electronically created photos or videos, using AI, that are nearly impossible for untrained eyes to determine if the photo/video is of something real or made-up. There are countless examples online, and perhaps the most deepfaked person is former President Obama. 

Using techniques and information learned primarily from astronomers, and how they take and analyze photos of distant galaxies, it turns our that for photos of humans the key is to check out the eyes. In real photos, generally the reflections of light in the eyes should be the same. AI has not learned this correctly - YET - so presently one can check the colors and reflections of eyes, and that can help determine if it is a fake or not. 

This is especially important right now, heading into fall elections, when different individuals and groups are trying to smear candidates and get disinformation to go viral online. Deepfakes have become so easy to create that the average person looking at ads and content would likely not be able to tell the difference, making it SO challenging to determine what's real or not. Here is another article if interested.                               Diagram from BioID.

How the Illinois Cancer Center uses AI to help in its mission

 I want to occasionally provide students and teachers examples of evolving fields in STEM, and quite literally every field of STEM has been using and will only be increasing the use of advanced AIs in their research. This article gives an example of AI being used in all aspects of cancer research at the University of Illinois. 

From drug development to trying to do molecular detection of cancers, and simulating pathways of tumor development and how it spreads in the body, AI and computational research is revolutionizing many areas of STEM.

Research Program: Lumiere Research Scholar Program

A FYI that was received: 

Create an independent research paper. Work with top researchers 

The Lumiere Research Scholar Program helps high school students work one-on-one with a scholar on an independent research project. At the end of the program, you'll develop an independent research paper that you could use for college admissions or future studies. Our mentors are PhD scholars from top research universities such as Harvard, MIT,  Stanford, Yale, Duke and LSE. The program was founded by a Harvard & Oxford PhD who met as undergraduates at Harvard.  

 

The program is rigorous and fully virtual. We offer need based financial aid for students who qualify. You can find the application in the brochure! To learn more, you can reach out to our Head of Growth and Partnerships, Maya Novak-Herzog, at maya.novak-herzog@lumiere.education or go to lumiere-education.com.

The early bird deadline for application to the Fall cohort is July 30th, 2024.

 

Link to the application: Lumiere Research Scholar Application.

Next level of AI 'thinking' and processing - CyberOctopus

  Using the way an octopus thinks about and navigates spatially, and also in time, researchers have created the next level of AI 'thinking' and processing information in its environment. This is episodic memory, and allows an AI to have better remembrances of past events it was involved in, learn from it, and have better thought out solutions to future problems based on those past events. It allows AI to be more animal-like rather than machine-like. Researchers have taken the leap from a sea slug brain, which is very simple, and made it more like an octopus brain...the evolution of this will ultimately, they think, to how a human brain operates, remembers, thinks things through, react to internal 'feelings', predict, and have creative, original thoughts. 

What are your thoughts about where AI is and where it will go? What should the ethics of creating and using AI's be? Who should make those decisions about AI? What are the consequences of more and more advanced AI in our human world, such as how will it change and replace humans jobs and careers? These are all vital questions we all should be thinking about, because AI is affecting most jobs and aspects of life already! 

Hurricane Beryl - a monster for this early in the hurricane season

For those interested in climate science and all that is related to it... 

The first major hurricane of the season, Hurricane Beryl, is hitting the Caribbean, and is now a category 5 (the strongest category) monster. This is a good article with an expert who says conditions for this year's season are unprecedented. In fact, this is the strongest storm on record this early in the season, due to the record high temperatures of the oceans and Gulf of Mexico. Remember, warm, moist air is the fuel for any storm, including hurricanes/cyclones, which is why the strengths of storms and amount of rain they release has been steadily rising the last couple decades. 

Photo of Hurricane Florence (Wikipedia)