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| Investigation into origins of Covid halted, New AI based search engines, Orca moms protect sons and other Science events of Week; Mufawad |
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| Image generated by Mufawad using AI |
So, welcome to my blog “Mufawad”. In this weekly writeup, I cover current science events, where I try to delve into the new science research that happened in the past week or so, trying to explore the latest technologies and breakthroughs/events that was achieved in science.
Whether you are a student, a professional, or simply a science enthusiast, this article will provide you an engaging and informative insights and update you about the fascinating research that happened in the field of science in past week/s.
In today's blog, you will read about:
- Investigation into origins of Covid halted
- Will you trust new AI based search engines
- Why Orca moms protect their sons
- Doomsday Glacier melting ‘albeit’ slowly
- Snakes hear better than you think
- Twitter to charge for its API use
Investigation into origins of Covid halted
The World Health Organization has covertly halted its study into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic as it is facing challenges to conduct crucial research from Chinese authorities. The study was said to be important to help prevent future outbreaks.
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| P.C: Xinhua |
A group of scientists assembled at Wuhan, China, in January 2021 to conduct Phase one of this particular study, that involved reviewing data on the timing and route of the virus's emergence. The researchers published the results describing four potential scenarios, with Covid most likely to have moved from bats to people, probably via an intermediary species.
Phase one was designed to lay the groundwork for a second phase of in-depth studies to pin down exactly what happened in China and elsewhere. But now WHO has halted its plans to conduct Phase two studies, largely to be blamed on Geopolitics that surround it.
There ‘definitely’ has been lot of Geopolitics going behind the stages and in Media. In 2020, US president Donald Trump made unfounded accusations that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory and American intelligence agencies afterwards claimed they had started an inquiry. This is because the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a secure laboratory that studies coronaviruses, located in Wuhan did raise few eye brows in the west.
However later in May 2020, a team from WHO visited Wuhan and released report in March 2021 that the Virus escaping the Laboratory was “very unlikely.” Later in July 2021, the WHO sent a circular to its member states describing its plans for advancing origins research.
The suggested actions included audit of labs in the region, assessments of the wild animal markets in and around Wuhan, and the farms that fed those markets. However, the Chinese rejected the WHO’s plans, raising particular issue of investigation of labs in area.
Even then the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, continued to engage directly with Chinese government officials to encourage China to be more open and to share data. The WHO staff have reached out to the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing to try to establish collaborations.
In November 2021, the WHO formed the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) to conduct origins studies for future outbreaks by evaluating evidence on SARS-CoV-2. The Chinese researchers also analyzed Pre-2019 Donor blood supplies and found no Covid 19 antibodies in 88,000 plasma samples from Wuhan Blood Centre dated Pre December 2019.
Will you trust new AI based search engines
Months after the chatbot ChatGPT wowed the world with its uncanny ability to write essays and answer questions like a human, artificial intelligence (AI) is now coming to Internet search.
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| P.C: Forbes |
Post this overnight success of such AI tools, now brace yourself for new types of internet search engine that are powered by AI.
The Google, Bing and Baidu are integrating ChatGPT like technology into their search engine products, allowing people to get direct answers or engage in conversations, rather than providing long list of Links to choose from.
Microsoft’s Bing uses Chat GPT, which was developed by Open AI of San Francisco, California. Google came up with its own AI-powered search engine, Bard, announced on 6 February, and is currently being used by a small group of testers. Baidu is also releasing ERNIE Bot in March this year.
Contrasted with a traditional Internet search, conversations would be far more intimate and customized in these AI search engines, which may also influence how search results are seen.
The researchers believe that consumers may be more likely to believe a chatbot's responses than those provided by orthodox search engine. People may trust chatbots more than search engines due to their personal nature.
In 2022 a study conducted by team of scientists at University of Florida on chatbots used by companies such as Amazon and Best Buy found that more the people perceived the conversation to be human-like, more likely they trusted the organization.
However, AI chatbots are fallible and prone to false answers, that may lead to the lack of trust. E.g. during a demo, Google's Bard misjudged a query on the James Webb Space Telescope and provided the incorrect response, leading to huge loss $100 billion value to the company.
Bard's blunder highlights the significance of a thorough testing procedure, something that google is beginning off with trusted-tester programme. Yet, stakeholders argue that if these inaccuracies are found, rather than fostering more trust, they would make consumers less trusting of chat-based search.
Besides that, how these AI-powered search engines are going to operate is also utterly opaque. This might have significant ramifications if the language model malfunctions, has hallucinations, or disseminates false information. Normally, search engines provide consumers a list of links that represent their sources and let them choose which ones to believe. On the other hand, the data that an LLM is trained on is rarely known.
A study conducted on people's perceptions of the "featured snippets," and "knowledge panels," of Google search engine were deemed to be accurate by 80% of people and objective by 70% of people that were surveyed.
Why Orca moms protect their sons
In a study published in Current Biology, researchers found that Orca whales protect and feed their Sons for prolonged times which leads to huge reproductive cost for mothers. The research was carried on a Pods of almost 73 Orcas found near British Columbian also called the southern residents.
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| Image generated by Mufawad using AI |
Orcas live their entire lives with their birth family, with matriarchs who can live up to 90 years. Females cease reproducing at the age of around 50 years. The only animals known to experience menopause, aside from humans, are orcas and a few other whale species.
A study going on since 2012 of southern resident orcas revealed that the older mothers supported the survival of adult offspring, particularly males. The Sons were found more likely to die within few years after the passing of their mothers.
Their mothers consistently feeding them is probably one contributing cause. A female orca dives for a salmon and carries it in her mouth while facing sideways. Beside her, the progeny mostly male, would be waiting. The fish will essentially float back behind her to her waiting child when she jerks her head and bites down hard. This way the son receives this nutrition all of his life.
A mature male may just be too big to easily pursue a salmon that is running away. Female Orca which is slimmer and faster is presumably better at finding the fish owing to her years of expertise, in addition to being possibly better at capturing the fish.
This feeding of Male orcas by Mothers affects reproductivity of the mothers as per the study. Researchers found that the mothers who had a live son had a 50% lower annual chance of reproduction. But Scientists say that females may only have four or five progenies in her lifetime while as males would potentially have up to 20 progenies in their lifetime. Thus, a female orca may invest in her sons rather than her daughters or herself to have the highest evolutionary success before she approaches menopause.
Doomsday Glacier melting ‘albeit’ slowly
Thwaites glacier also known as “Doomsday glacier” is part of west Antarctic ice sheet and is known to be the widest glacier on the earth i.e., 120 KM wide and 1000 meters deep. Annually the glacier is losing 50 billion tonnes of ice which is said to have doubled in the last 30 years.
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| Image generated by Mufawad using AI |
Recently, researchers dropped a submersible vehicle down a hole in Antarctic ice to get their closest-ever look at the underside of Thwaites Glacier to get first-ever glimpse at the spot where the ice meets the land to help pin down one of the biggest uncertainties in current projections of rising global sea levels.
Sea levels are expected to increase by 38 to 77 centimetres by 2100, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but a metre more may potentially be added if Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets completely melts or disintegrate.
Thwaites is accountable for around 4% of the current increase in sea level worldwide due to "grounding-line retreat." When the grounding line advances inland, more and ever-thicker ice is raised and allowed to float on the water. As a result, the water level rises and the glacier advances more quickly. When the coastline ice erodes, kilometres of ice behind it can flow out to sea at an accelerated rate, potentially aggravating the collapse.
According to researchers, warm ocean water melting the ice beneath the glacier is what causes the grounding-line to recede. Wind patterns in the area have changed due to climate change, allowing a patch of h water to drift towards the West Antarctic.
To investigate this process, a team of scientists drilled into the glacier to have a look at the grounding line. using hot water, they created a hole about 30 centimetres wide through over 600 metres of ice, through which they dropped equipment and the Ice-fin remote-controlled vehicle. They were able to get a better look than ever before at the ice's underside and the grounding line.
They recorded photos and videos of the glacier's underbelly over the course of five days in January 2020, gathering information on the water's temperature, salinity, and other factors. Some of the equipment that was left behind has been collecting data for almost a year now.
The good news is that they found that the rate of melting of ice on the underside of the ice were just 2–5 metres per year, much lower than the 14–32 metres predicted by different models. The water's temperature was also found to be just 1.5 °C above freezing.
Moreover, below the ice, where fissures and steep, stair-like characteristics occurred, the melt rate was maximum. These features change the direction of the cold, shielding water, allowing the heat to penetrate the ice and melt it, thus widening crevasses.
Snakes hear better than you think
There is a general perception among the people that Snakes do not hear the sounds as they don't have external ears, but can only feel vibrations through the ground and via their bodies. Although, herpetologists knew that is not the case, but believed their hearing was comparatively weak compared to their other senses like taste and sight.
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| Image generated by Mufawad using AI |
Recent studies on 19 different types of snakes would make the researchers to revisit their theories. Scientists examined effect of ground and airborne noises ranging between the frequencies of 0 and 450 Hertz on 19 different kinds of snakes that live in different habitats. They were able to test both airborne and tactile hearing of the snakes via their internal ears and belly scales.
The various snake species responded differently to the airborne sound, although snakes from the same genus behaved identically suggesting inheritable responses. The researchers noted that a species of python tended to move toward sound, while taipans, brown snakes, and especially death adders move away from it.
According to researchers, it seems logical that the nocturnal woma python, which was the biggest snake studied and has naturally fewer predators, being less wary than smaller snakes that are most active during the day. These pythons also pursue monitor lizards, which are considerably bigger prey.
Even though some of the smallest snakes are among the most poisonous in the world, but raptors, monitor lizards, and wild cats would hunt them throughout the day. So they moved away from sounds.
According to the researchers, this shows that the reaction to airborne noises may represent possible avoidance behaviour and important part of their sensory skill set.
Twitter to charge for its API use
Application Programming Interface (API) are the a pivotal software tools that allows people to extract and process large amounts of data from any platform using set of definitions and protocols. Recently, Twitter ended its policy of providing free access to its API.
Twitter has long been providing free access of its API to researchers, a novel policy that has aided the development of computational methods for social media analysis.
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| P.C: Twitter |
However, the field went into the meltdown when the Twitter stated on February 2 that it would remove that free access in a few days. This will possibly grind to halt thousands of research projects going on across the world. Although, the Twitter is offering a new API platform with basic access to the data at the price of $100 and advanced access at higher prices.
For students or researchers from low-income nations, the policy shift would worsen inequities since their monthly costs may be too exorbitant to support lengthy study. This choice also has worldwide implications since Twitter is a global platform. Stakeholders believe that tools created to democratise research will no longer be free to use if the open access is discontinued.
The move is also said to be against EU’s Digital Services Act of 2021 which ensures data transparency and its access to research.
