Fucking SCIENCE

is it possible to study science/medicine/research and pursue that as a career, even if you've majored in a humanity for undergrad and really have no prior work experience in the research field?

Yes and no. 

You can go to medical school with no research experience (I did) but you will have to have the basic science pre-med background. You can major in whatever you want, though. 

To pursue a scientific career you’re going to have to have some sort of STEM background and training, whether it’s technical school or bachelors/master’s level education. It’s hard to know what the requirements are without knowing more specifically what type of job you are thinking of.

Careers in scientific research are very competitive, actually. There is huge pressure to publish and there are fights for grant funds and university positions. You could work as a lab assistant in some cases with on-the-job training, but in most cases you’re going to need a pretty solid STEM background if you are going to design or run experiments. You have to have learned the basic lab techniques and the science behind your research to be able to actually do the research. 

In all these cases, even with a degree in the humanities, you can go back to school and bolster your science credentials, but going in with no experience is going to be tough.

Dear Neil, I think I've made a mistake. The thing is: I sent my manuscript to a small publishing house, that I really like (who have published my short story already). It was fine, they gave me feedback and said after that has been applied, they might like to publish my novel (no confirmation yet!). But it's my first novel ever. I've written/edited like 5-6 years. Maybe I should've let go long ago. The first novel isn't supposed to be published, right? It might have been a bad idea... Thoughts?

Either they will want to publish it, or they won’t. If they do, you didn’t make a mistake. If they don’t, then they’ll tell you, and you’ll be wiser than you were before, and that won’t have been a mistake either.

The Ancient Dragon had awoken, looked over the terrified villagers… and immediately started gushing about how cute they were.

Neurons have the right shape for deep learning

Deep learning has brought about machines that can ‘see’ the world more like humans can, and recognize language. And while deep learning was inspired by the human brain, the question remains: Does the brain actually learn this way? The answer has the potential to create more powerful artificial intelligence and unlock the mysteries of human intelligence.

In a study published in eLife, CIFAR Fellow Blake Richards and his colleagues unveiled an algorithm that simulates how deep learning could work in our brains. The network shows that certain mammalian neurons have the shape and electrical properties that are well-suited for deep learning. Furthermore, it represents a more biologically realistic way of how real brains could do deep learning.

Research was conducted by Richards and his graduate student Jordan Guerguiev, at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, in collaboration with Timothy Lillicrap at Google DeepMind. Their algorithm was based on neurons in the neocortex, which is responsible for higher order thought.

“Most of these neurons are shaped like trees, with ‘roots’ deep in the brain and ‘branches’ close to the surface,” says Richards. “What’s interesting is that these roots receive a different set of inputs than the branches that are way up at the top of the tree.”

Using this knowledge of the neurons’ structure, Richards and Guerguiev built a model that similarly received signals in segregated compartments. These sections allowed simulated neurons in different layers to collaborate, achieving deep learning.

“It’s just a set of simulations so it can’t tell us exactly what our brains are doing, but it does suggest enough to warrant further experimental examination if our own brains may use the same sort of algorithms that they use in AI,” Richards says.

This research idea goes back to AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton, a CIFAR Distinguished Fellow and founder of the Learning in Machines & Brains program, and program Co-Director Yoshua Bengio, and was one of the main motivations for founding the program in the first place. These researchers sought not only to develop artificial intelligence, but also to understand how the human brain learns, says Richards.

In the early 2000s, Richards and Lillicrap took a course with Hinton at the University of Toronto and were convinced deep learning models were capturing “something real” about how human brains work. At the time, there were several challenges to testing that idea. Firstly, it wasn’t clear that deep learning could achieve human-level skill. Secondly, the algorithms violated biological facts proven by neuroscientists.

Now, Richards and a number of researchers are looking to bridge the gap between neuroscience and AI. This paper builds on research from Bengio’s lab on a more biologically plausible way to train neural nets and an algorithm developed by Lillicrap that further relaxes some of the rules for training neural nets. The paper also incorporates research from Matthew Larkam on the structure of neurons in the neocortex. By combining neurological insights with existing algorithms, Richards’ team was able to create a better and more realistic algorithm simulating learning in the brain.

The tree-like neocortex neurons are only one of many types of cells in the brain. Richards says future research should model different brain cells and examine how they could interact together to achieve deep learning. In the long-term, he hopes researchers can overcome major challenges, such as how to learn through experience without receiving feedback.

“What we might see in the next decade or so is a real virtuous cycle of research between neuroscience and AI, where neuroscience discoveries help us to develop new AI and AI can help us interpret and understand our experimental data in neuroscience,” Richards says.

Underneath the Sky

Studio Ghibli

(Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, A Whisper in the Heart)

Biden is a 4-month-old Golden Retriever named after the former vice president. His owner Sidney took him to the Capitol to see Joe Biden give a speech.

“As soon as he saw the dog during his speech, he pointed at the dog, tapped his friend and then started like cracking up. Right towards the end, I kind of signaled him, and he gave me a wink to come over,” Sydney said.

“When I told him his name was Biden, his face lit up and he started kissing the dog, which is like exactly what I expected Joe Biden would do”

Source: Buzzfeed

I can relate to this on a spiritual level.

Scientist's accidental discovery makes coral grow 40x faster

There might be hope for our oceans, thanks to one clumsy moment in a coral tank.

It typically takes coral 25 to 75 years to reach sexual maturity. With a new coral fragmentation method, it takes just 3.