Lifeboat Foundation

An international team of interdisciplinary researchers has successfully created a method for better 3D modeling of complex cancers. The University of Waterloo-based team combined cutting-edge bioprinting techniques with synthetic structures or microfluidic chips. The method will help lab researchers more accurately understand heterogeneous tumors: tumors with more than one kind of cancer cell, often dispersed in unpredictable patterns.

The research, “Controlled tumor heterogeneity in a co-culture system by 3D bio-printed tumor-on-chip model,” appears in Scientific Reports.

Traditionally, medical practitioners would biopsy a patient’s tumor, extract cells, and then grow them in flat petri dishes in a lab. “For 50 years, this was how biologists understood tumors,” said Nafiseh Moghimi, an applied mathematics post-doctoral researcher and the lead author of the study. “But a decade ago, repeated treatment failures in human trials made scientists realize that a 2D model does not capture the real tumor structure inside the body.”

Möbius strips are fun geometrical shapes that only have one side. Take a strip of paper – it’s got a front and a back. Now twist it and glue the two short edges together. Suddenly there is no front or back. You could draw a line across its whole surface without having to lift the pencil from the paper. Forty-six years ago mathematicians suggested the minimum size for such a strip but they couldn’t prove it. Now, someone finally has.

Since the creation of the strip by August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing, its simplicity in making and visualizing it had to be balanced with the mathematical complexity of such a shape. It is not surprising that in 1977, Charles Sidney Weaver and Benjamin Rigler Halpern created the Halpern-Weaver Conjecture, which stated the minimal ratio between the width of the strip and its length. They suggested that for a strip with a width of 1 centimeter (0.39 inches), the length had to be at least the square root of 3 centimeters (about 1.73 centimeters or 0.68 inches).

For smooth Möbius strips that are “embedded”, meaning they don’t intersect with each other, the conjecture had no solution. If the strip can go through itself, it is a much easier problem to solve, Brown University’s mathematician Richard Evan Schwartz proposed in 2020 – but he had made a mistake. In a paper posted as a preprint – meaning it is yet to be subjected to peer review – Schwartz corrected the error and found the right solution for the conjecture.

As Shor looked for applications for his quantum period-finding algorithm, he rediscovered a previously known but obscure mathematical theorem: For every number, there exists a periodic function whose periods are related to the number’s prime factors. So if there’s a number you want to factor, you can compute the corresponding function and then solve the problem using period finding — “exactly what quantum computers are so good at,” Regev said.

On a classical computer, this would be an agonizingly slow way to factor a large number — slower even than trying every possible factor. But Shor’s method speeds up the process exponentially, making period finding an ideal way to construct a fast quantum factoring algorithm.

Shor’s algorithm was one of a few key early results that transformed quantum computing from an obscure subfield of theoretical computer science to the juggernaut it is today. But putting the algorithm into practice is a daunting task, because quantum computers are notoriously susceptible to errors: In addition to the qubits required to perform their computations, they need many others doing extra work to keep them from failing. A recent paper by Ekerå and the Google researcher Craig Gidney estimates that using Shor’s algorithm to factor a security-standard 2,048-bit number (about 600 digits long) would require a quantum computer with 20 million qubits. Today’s state-of-the-art machines have at most a few hundred.

The new book Minding the Brain from Discovery Institute Press is an anthology of 25 renowned philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians who seek to address that question. Materialism shouldn’t be the only option for how we think about ourselves or the universe at large. Contributor Angus Menuge, a philosopher from Concordia University Wisconsin, writes.

Neuroscience in particular has implicitly dualist commitments, because the correlation of brain states with mental states would be a waste of time if we did not have independent evidence that these mental states existed. It would make no sense, for example, to investigate the neural correlates of pain if we did not have independent evidence of the existence of pain from the subjective experience of what it is like to be in pain. This evidence, though, is not scientific evidence: it depends on introspection (the self becomes aware of its own thoughts and experiences), which again assumes the existence of mental subjects. Further, Richard Swinburne has argued that scientific attempts to show that mental states are epiphenomenal are self-refuting, since they require that mental states reliably cause our reports of being in those states. The idea, therefore, that science has somehow shown the irrelevance of the mind to explaining behavior is seriously confused.

The AI optimists can’t get away from the problem of consciousness. Nor can they ignore the unique capacity of human beings to reflect back on themselves and ask questions that are peripheral to their survival needs. Functions like that can’t be defined algorithmically or by a materialistic conception of the human person. To counter the idea that computers can be conscious, we must cultivate an understanding of what it means to be human. Then maybe all the technology humans create will find a more modest, realistic place in our lives.

This week, researchers proved empirically that life isn’t fair. Also, you’ll notice that, in a superhuman display of restraint, I managed to write a paragraph about the simulated universe hypothesis without once referencing “The Matrix.” (Except for this reference.)

Oh, so a European research team has proven that flipped coins aren’t actually fair? Buddy, life isn’t fair! Do you think the world owes you two equally probable outcomes as established by an axiomatic mathematical formalization? When I was a kid, we didn’t even have coins! We had to roll dice! It took 10 minutes to start a football game! Oh, so a coin is very slightly more likely to land on the same face as its initial position? Quit crying! It’s only a meaningful bias if you flip a coin multiple times!

Applying a recently discovered physical law, a physicist at the University of Portsmouth has contributed to the discussion about whether or not the universe is a simulation. The simulated universe hypothesis proposes that the universe is actually a simulation running on a vastly complex computing substrate and we’re therefore all just NPCs, walking through our animation loops and saying, “Hail, summoner! Conjure me up a warm bed!” and “Do you get to the Cloud District often?”

Consider the potential problems. Number one would be that any potential aliens we encounter won’t be speaking a human language. Number two would be the lack of knowledge about the aliens’ culture or sociology — even if we could translate, we might not understand what relevance it has to their cultural touchstones.

Eamonn Kerins, an astrophysicist from the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester in the U.K., thinks that the aliens themselves might recognize these limitations and opt to do some of the heavy lifting for us by making their message as simple as possible.

“One might hope that aliens who want to establish contact might be attempting to make their signal as universally understandable as possible,” said Kerins in a Zoom interview. “Maybe it’s something as basic as a mathematical sequence, and already that conveys the one message that perhaps they hoped to send in the first place, which is that we’re here, you’re not alone.”

A new magnum opus posits the existence of a hidden mathematical link akin to the connection between electricity and magnetism.

Arithmetic, rooted in our biological perception, is a natural consequence of how we perceive and organize the world around us. This connection between perception and mathematical truths suggests that mathematics is both a uniquely human invention and a universal discovery, highlighting a profound unity between the mind and the physical universe…

Prof. Donald Hoffman talks to Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra about his theory of conscious agents, according to which space and time are cognitive constructs in consciousness, not an objective scaffolding of the world outside. The interview also touches on Prof. Hoffman’s personal history and life, bringing the warmth of his humanity to the academic rigor of his theories.

00:00 Intro: Beyond the spacetime headset.
03:32 About Donalds personal background.
07:35 On the importance of mathematics.
13:22 Quantum theory and spacetime.
19:24 Why exactly is spacetime ‘doomed’?
24:34 Did physics ‘encounter’ consciousness in quantum theory?
32:49 On heavy vs light metaphysical claims.
37:36 How is your theory affecting your personal life?
42:17 Is The Matrix a good metaphor?
46:38 How can the space time interface affect consciousness?
53:09 What makes you say that if spacetime is not fundamental, consciousness must be fundamental?
55:44 Physicalism fails to give an accurate model of consciousness… 1:00:24 How can we put the spacetime headset off? 05:39 Beyond the spacetime fantasies of Christopher Nolan and the Matrix… 1:09:27 The ontology of conscious agents 1:15:05 Are meditation and psychedelics ‘hacks’ in the interface? 1:21:41 Should we revalue religious and mystic literature? 1:29:54 Could idealism as a worldview help us better solve the challenges humanity faces? 1:34:23 The role of mathematics in bringing together science and spirituality Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved. https://www.essentiafoundation.org.
1:00:24 How can we put the spacetime headset off?
05:39 Beyond the spacetime fantasies of Christopher Nolan and the Matrix…
1:09:27 The ontology of conscious agents.
1:15:05 Are meditation and psychedelics ‘hacks’ in the interface?
1:21:41 Should we revalue religious and mystic literature?
1:29:54 Could idealism as a worldview help us better solve the challenges humanity faces?
1:34:23 The role of mathematics in bringing together science and spirituality.

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