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Out-hallucinating the AI interviewer:
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-job-interview-llm-prompt-hacking-haywire
Everybody should do this.
#AI #NoAI
Remote
RDN
@rdnielsen@floss.social
mastodon 4.7.3Retired environmental scientist (biology/oceanography), data analyst, data manager.
Mostly posting links related to #Environment, #Nature, #DataAnalysis, #DataVisualization, #FLOSS, #Health, #Fitness, #Psychology, #USPolitics
Posts auto-delete after one year. Some posts are compiled at https://dblog.vitumbre.tech/dart/ under the "Links" topic.
Avatar by @orbite@mastodon.social
290 Followers
408 Following
42 Posts
Joined March 23, 2024
Blog profile:
SQL script processor:
Map-based data explorer:
A stroke can lead to cavities in the brain where tissue has died. A new rat study injected these cavities with extracellular vesicles collected from astrocytes in vitro, and bound to a porous hydrogel. Immune cells, blood vessels, and nerve tissue then migrated into the cavities, and the rats regained lost motor function.
Summary: https://scitechdaily.com/new-stroke-treatment-turns-brain-cavities-into-repair-hubs/
Original paper: https://www.cell.com/cell-biomaterials/fulltext/S3050-5623(26)00199-6?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS3050562326001996%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
#Science #Health #Stroke
A new study that takes advantage of a change in availability of the shingles (*Herpes zoster*) vaccine in Wales finds that vaccination reduces dementia symptoms in those already diagnosed with the disease, and reduced deaths from dementia by approximately 30% over the following nine years.
Summary: https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/shingles-vaccine-dementia
#Science #Health #Dementia #Alzheimers #Shingles #HerpesZoster
GPS tracking of 13 pygmy falcons during the breeding season for three years found that each pair foraged over less than 1 km^2. This is only 1/14th that of the Lesser Kestrel, but consistent with expectations from allometry.
Summary: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1133639
Original paper: https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-raptor-research/volume-60/issue-3/jrr2553/Breeding-Home-Range-of-the-Pygmy-Falcon--The-Smallest/10.3356/jrr2553.full
Researchers have yet to determine definitively whether this is the cutest raptor.
#Science #Falcon #PygmyFalcon #Raptors #Birds #Breeding #Foraging
Re-wetting drained peatlands restores their carbon-capture ability but eliminates their value as cropland. Installing solar panels provides a substitute income. Monitoring of bird calls showed that bird biodiversity subsequently increased, and included not just peatland species but also other species that benefit from the presence of the solar panels.
https://eos.org/articles/for-the-birds-solar-panels-over-peatlands-may-increase-avian-biodiversity
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2688-8319.70259
#Biology #Birds #SolarPower #AlternativeEnergy #Biodiversity
Weekly monitoring of 368 Finnish children through the first year of life found that those from families with dogs had fewer respiratory infections and required fewer courses of antibiotics. Three dog-associated bacterial genera explained 25% of the protective effect. Protection may also be provided by aspects of the dog-owning lifestyle.
Summary: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-early-dog-exposure-babies-infections.html
Original paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pai.70408
#Science #Health #ChildRearing #Dogs
Replying to
@diazona@techhub.social @qlp@linh.social @astraluma@tacobelllabs.net
It feels non-Pythonic because it is in opposition to van Rossum's dictum that "We're all adults here" regarding method visibility.
A randomized clinical trial of Vitamin D supplementation in 80 women undergoing chemotherapy in preparation for breast cancer surgery found that, in the treatment group, 43% of the cancers disappeared, whereas only 24% of the cancers disappeared in the control group.
Summary: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/04/260428004119.htm
Original paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01635581.2025.2480854
Wings of the tobacco hawkmoth have been found to have chemosensory pores that can detect airborne pyrrolidine and piperidine, which are released by nightshade plants that the moths prefer for laying eggs.
Summary: https://phys.org/news/2026-07-moth-wings-reveal-unexpected-ability.html
Original paper: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/229/14/jeb252047/372157/Noses-on-the-wing-the-olfactory-capacity-of
#Science #Biology #Olfaction #Hawkmoth
A randomized crossover study of 119 people living in an area of high traffic-originated aerial particulates found that cognitive performance (mental flexibility and executive function) of adults 40 or older increased by 12% after one month of living with with a HEPA air purifier.
Original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-48063-8
Cognitive test scores of over 1.2 million Swedish people (mostly men) recorded during military enlistment were combined with tax records on charitable giving, voting records, and vehicle registrations. Those with the highest cognitive scores were more likely to contribute to charities, to vote, and to own an eco-friendly car.
Summary: https://www.psypost.org/intelligence-predicts-prosocial-behaviors-like-voting-and-charitable-giving-in-m/
Original paper: https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/135/668/1141/7914156?login=false
#Science #Cognition #Intelligence #Prosociality
Two studies in the U.S. and one in the U.K. examined the relationship between political affiliation and factual knowledge on climate related issues. Consistently, left-leaning participants showed greater factual knowledge than conservatives.
Summary: https://www.psypost.org/research-links-environmental-policy-support-to-factual-knowledge/
Original paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494425001239
A new solar cell coating generates electricity from the friction of raindrops, so electricity is generated both when the weather is sunny and when it's rainy.
Summary: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211285525010377
Original paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211285525010377
Replying to
@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
Here's a recent summary of non-designed flaws in the human body: https://theconversation.com/the-human-body-isnt-a-masterpiece-of-design-its-a-patchwork-of-evolutionary-compromise-279343
The knee, the epiglottis, and the sinuses are also often described as examples of the absence of intelligent design.
A prospective study that followed almost 40,000 people for 15 years found that egg consumption was inversely associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Eating one egg per day for five days a week reduced the risk of Alzheimer's by 27%.
Summary: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1126842
Original paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022316626001902
A study of about 600 American men examined the hypothesis that support for the 'tradwife' role for women resulted from protective paternalism, a form of benevolent sexism. Instead, the men's underlying attitudes were more those of patronizing and derogatory sexism.
Original paper (not open access): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03616843261433199
A new hypothesis to explain the Cambrian 'explosion' suggests that continually increasing complexity of the biotic and abiotic environment put selective pressure on development of more complex sensory systems and central nervous systems, followed by more specialized and differentiated physiology, and ultimately, greater diversity of species.
Summary: https://phys.org/news/2026-05-brain-scientist-rethinks-cambrian-explosion.html
Original paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.70136
A study of 112 men, briefly shown faces with differently emphasized male and female features, found that men with larger body sizes (height, weight, BMI) were less able to identify the sex of somewhat ambiguous faces, but were more sensitive to differences in male than female faces. The hypothesized reason is that more formidable men face less risk from misjudging other men.
Summary: https://www.psypost.org/bigger-men-are-less-sensitive-to-gendered-facial-features-study-finds/
Original paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1531324/full
#Science #Psychology #SexualDimorphism
Analysis of 500,000 records of the French Forest Inventory from 2015-2023 finds associations between premature tree death and climate variability, including three different drought patterns and increasing pest populations.
Summary: https://phys.org/news/2026-07-europe-trees-dying.html
Original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-74613-9
#Science #Trees #ClimateChange #Drought #Forests
For individuals with metabolic syndrome, a two-day calorie-restricted diet of oats produced a 10 percent decrease in LDL. The reduction persisted for 6 weeks. A six-week lower-dose supplementation with oats was not as effective. The gut microbiome shifted to increase metabolism of phenols, and those metabolites may have a role in LDL reduction.
Summary: https://scitechdaily.com/this-simple-48-hour-diet-cut-harmful-cholesterol-by-10-study-finds/
Original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-68303-9
#Science #Health #Cholesterol #LDL #Diet #Oats #GutMicrobiome
Replying to on mas.to
@kakape@mas.to
It's not a fatal complication, so arguably less deserving of attention, but I hope that somebody is also looking into lower limb lymphedema following mRNA vaccination.
Another new study finds that AI chatbots are terrible at answering medical questions. Also, none can produce an error-free reference list.
Summary: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-04-ai-health-wrong-convincing.html
Original paper: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/16/4/e112695
Grok, of course, is the worst.
#Science #Health #AI #LLMs #Chatbots #Gemini #DeepSeek #ChatGPT #Grok
A new take on the Wankel rotary engine is more compact and 30% more fuel-efficient than conventional gasoline engines, and may have a future in hybrid electric vehicles.
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/rotary-engines-liquidpiston-f055e6fb?st=NidKHv
Five years ago I posted a plot of the number of new programming languages by year, since 1970. Here's an updated version:
https://dblog.vitumbre.tech/dart/the-twilight-of-programming-language-development-revisited/
2025 is the first year since 1970 with no new programming languages identified.
Replying to
@LeafyEricScott@hachyderm.io
Somewhat coincidentally, Daniel Lakeland recently asked a similar question, but he was using Julia. My recommendation is the same: import the data to a database using SQL tools and then connect to the database or export to a cleaned CSV. Here's a SQL tool that has all the metacommands and configuration options you need: https://pypi.org/project/execsql/ (disclaimer: I wrote it).
A critique of the linear non-threshold model used by the U.S. EPA to assess cancer risk:
https://www.acsh.org/news/2026/04/28/assessing-cancer-risk-its-time-follow-science-50084
As noted in the article, this is a politically contentious topic. The author has had a long career in both the public and private sector, and does not appear to have a political agenda.
#Toxicology #RiskAssessment #Cancer #Environment #EnvironmentalToxicology #USEPA
The three-body advantage: modeling of the evolution of gas disks around binary stars finds that, far enough from the stars, formation of giant planets may be more common than in single-star systems.
Summary: https://phys.org/news/2026-04-suns-planets-binary-stars.html
Original paper: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/548/3/stag476/8661676?login=false
New studies in mice and people find a mechanistic link between production of inflammatory forms of glycogen by a suite of gut bacteria and neuroinflammation characteristic of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia.
Summary: https://www.sciencealert.com/gut-bacteria-could-be-a-hidden-trigger-for-neurodegenerative-diseases
A mouse study found that early-life stress and alcohol intake showed impaired learning and brain changes common to dementia disorders in late life, even after an extended period of abstinence.
Summary: https://scitechdaily.com/drinking-alcohol-to-cope-in-your-20s-could-damage-your-brain-for-life/
Original paper (not open access): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acer.70273
Replying to
@ghorwood
"Most problems have simple solutions, and usually they are wrong."
-- H.L. Mencken
A retrospective study of death certificates in the U.S. found that the suicide rate among those 15-34 years old fell below the expected rate after the rollout of the national 998 suicide and crisis hotline.
Summary: https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/22/988-hotline-linked-11-percent-drop-youth-suicide-jama-study/
Original paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2848066?guestAccessKey=e44e29be-7891-45b3-a22d-128a80e60dad
Crescent Island, a ~ 1.7 km2 island in Kenya's Lake Naivasha, had its link to the mainland cut in 2020, isolating populations of impala, waterbuck, zebra, dik dik, wildebeest, giraffes, and hippopatami, without any large predators. The result has been overgrazing, proliferation of invasive plants, declining plant diversity, habitat degradation, and possible rising disease prevalence.
Summary: https://www.iflscience.com/for-over-5-years-animals-have-been-trapped-on-a-predator-free-island-in-kenya-its-not-the-paradise-youre-picturing-84729
Original paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-tourism/articles/10.3389/frsut.2026.1904555/full
#Science #Ecology #IslandBiogeography
Replying to
@Nonya_Bidniss@infosec.exchange
If your 401(k) plan administrator allows you any control over the investments in the plan, you might see if there are any alternatives that might be safer than the current allocation. If not, you should be able to roll over the plan to another 401(k) plan or IRA where you do have that control.
Some of us in retirement have to now learn more about how to protect our money than we ever had to know while we were making it.
A series of experiments finds that people's names are remembered better when their faces are memorable.
Original paper (not open access): https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-47968-001?doi=1
Climate funding that addresses water and energy availability reduces, in a dose-responsive manner, intra-national conflicts over resource usage.
Summary: https://scienceblog.com/climate-money-can-quietly-stops-wars/
Original paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2026.2645656#supplemental-material-section
This is a wonderful piece of smart scholarship and compelling presentation.
Here is, also, a link to a PDF of her slides. They alone do not do justice to the presentation, but allow a more measured read of some of the slides and the references: https://bit.ly/EMB-Katz
Replying to
@ghorwood
It's also a functional programming language, so there's another little bit of beauty to it.
Modeling using new data on dark energy and a cosomological constant < 1 predicts that the Big Crunch--the end of the universe--will happen in only 33 billion years.
Original paper (preprint): https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.24011v2
It is later than you think
Sadly later than you think
Far, far later than you think.
-- Robert Service
Replying to
@LeafyEricScott@hachyderm.io @duckdb@mastodon.social
The execsql.py tool has configuration options to import only common columns, force all imports as text, and clean imported data and column headings in other ways. Those can make it easy to import everything into a single table. But even if you have to import the files into more than one table structure, a SQL query or two is then the easiest way to merge those tables into a single format.
A new study evaluated blood perfusion in the brain, and cortical thickness, in relation to self-reported alcohol consumption in adults aged 22-70 (45 for cortical thickness, 27 for perfusion). Higher alcohol consumption and greater age were associated with cortical thinning and lower perfusion.
Summary: https://www.sciencealert.com/even-low-levels-of-alcohol-could-damage-your-brain-study-finds
Original paper (not open access): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0741832926001771
A somewhat amusing review of the latest literature on practices of "subluxation-adjusting wackaloons" (i.e., chiropractors):
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/not-mine/
Not amusing, though, are the instances like those of coronary artery dissection and quadriplegia following chiropractic manipulations.