Humans

Big data can help us make better life decisions argues a thought-provoking new book, but there are some important flaws in the argument

Humans

8 June 2022

By Elle Hunt

Piercings, it turns out, correlate with popularity on dating sitesDEEPOL by plainpicture/Gpointstudio
Don’t Trust Your Gut
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Bloomsbury

EVERY day, we outsource decisions to the internet: should we stay at that hotel, eat at this restaurant, ride with that driver? We have become so accustomed to the large-scale insights afforded by tech, many of us wouldn’t buy so much as a toaster without first checking reviews online.
Their accessibility and apparent authority mean that to just roll the dice and pick an appliance is almost unthinkable – why wouldn’t you ask Google first? … More

AI is becoming smarter all the time, but mathematicians needn’t fear they will be replaced by machine intelligence, argues Junaid Mubeen

Humans

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8 June 2022

By Junaid Mubeen
Michelle D’urbano
WHEN 18-time international Go champion Lee Sedol retired from the game in 2019, mathematicians everywhere will have shared a moment of quiet introspection. Three years earlier, Lee had been beaten 4-1 by an artificial intelligence, DeepMind’s AlphaGo. Having observed the machine’s rapid pace of progress since then, Lee concluded that AI is an “entity that cannot be defeated” – at least by human Go players – a verdict that prompted his retirement.
AI’s triumph in a game as complex as Go might signal that mathematics, a subject that it has had in its cross hairs from its beginnings, is also ripe for automation. As … More

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Humans

8 June 2022

Dinner by moonlight
Around a tenth of the 21.5 kilograms of moon rock the Apollo 11 astronauts brought back to Earth on 24 July 1969 ended up as food. In Building 37, at what is now known as NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, it was ground up and fed to various microbes, insects and aquatic animals. Would they sicken or die? Would they acquire strange powers?
Eight cockroaches were among the diners, and Feedback is now digging through the penny jar in a frantic attempt to raise enough to bid for the traces of their meal. Three of … More

The story of the emergence of mammals is told with elan in a clear, engaging book – with a nasty sting in the tale for us humans

Humans

8 June 2022

By Michael Marshall

A sail-backed Dimetrodon looked like a primitive dinosaur, but was a reptile-like precursor to mammalsDaniel Eskridge / Alamy Stock Photo
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals
Steve Brusatte
Picador

ANYONE writing about mammals faces a key challenge: not making it about us. Humans are mammals of course, and it is easy to present the tale of mammalian evolution as inexorably leading to our arrival. Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte deftly avoids this problem in his new history of mammals by leaving almost all mention of humans to the final pages, where we come in as, essentially, … More

New Scientist’s weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss

Humans

8 June 2022

Netflix
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Spriggan is one of anime’s hottest properties. Can the ARCAM corporation’s Spriggan agents protect Earth from the deadly relics of an ancient civilisation? A new adaptation is coming to Netflix on 18 June.

Read
Venus has captivated astronomy historian William Sheehan and astronomer Sanjay Shridhar Limaye. This illustrated account of the planet might make you wonder whether life could have evolved there after all. To be published on 13 June.
Carloscastilla / Alamy
Visit
Understanding the AI revolution is a New Scientist event featuring talks from DeepMind’s Shakir Mohamed and AI anthropologist Beth Singler. … More

A high octane mix of war, techno thrills and sports movie, Top Gun: Maverick devotes itself to nostalgia in a well-told tale of misunderstanding and redemption – and superfast planes

Humans

8 June 2022

By Simon Ings

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise), steely eyed in an F/A-18 combat jetParamount Pictures
Top Gun: Maverick
Joseph Kosinski
Out now

NEAR the climax of Joseph Kosinski’s delirious sequel to 1986 hit Top Gun, a state-of-the-art, fifth-generation fighter plane engages Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s aircraft in a dogfight around snow-capped mountains. Suddenly, the huge, hulking wonderplane banks, stalls and turns, hanging over Mav (Tom Cruise, even more steely eyed than usual) and his wingman Rooster (Miles Teller) as though it is painted on the sky.
“What the fuck was that?” Rooster cries, although an actual graduate of TOPGUN (official name, … More

By Sam Wong
StockFood / Parissi, Lucy
STALE bread may seem like it has simply dried out, but staling is actually a complex process that still isn’t fully understood.
In the 19th century, the French chemist Jean-Baptiste Boussingault noted that stale bread can be refreshed by putting it in the oven, and showed that bread will still go stale if it is hermetically sealed and doesn’t lose any moisture.
In fact, staling is to do with the chemistry of starch, which is found in flour and consists of two kinds of sugar molecules, amylose and amylopectin. Raw starch has a rigid, crystalline structure, but it … More

A test uses epigenetic marks on your DNA to determine which parts of your genome came from each biological parent

Humans

8 June 2022

By Carissa Wong
It is now possible to work out which parts of someone’s genome came from which biological parent via a genetic testJozef Polc / Alamy
A genetic technique can identify which parts of your genome came from your biological mother and which parts are from your biological father. The method could be useful in cases where an individual is carrying a disease-associated gene variant by helping to establish which other family members should consider undergoing screening for the gene.
“It’s a very, very cool study,” says Shai Carmi at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, … More