Unprepared

Most nuclear power plants in the United States are not prepared for the increase in flooding and severe weather that climate change will soon bring.

Of the roughly 60 operational plants in the U.S., 90 percent have at least one design flaw that will render them susceptible to flood damage and storm surge, according to Bloomberg. If preventative measures aren’t taken and upgrades made, then the U.S. may face radiation leaks like the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

Meltdown

Speaking to Bloomberg, the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Matthew Wald argued that such a meltdown was incredibly unlikely in the U.S. thanks to emergency equipment installed in some reactors.

“There is a perennial problem in any high-tech industry deciding how safe is safe enough,” Wald said, “The civilian nuclear power industry exceeds the NRC-required safety margin by a substantial amount.”

But often, individual reactors and nuclear industry organizations are allowed to set those standards themselves. Bloomberg reports that these groups were allowed to estimate not only their own reactors’ resilience in the face of climate change, but also just how bad they expected the effects of climate change to get in their area.

Oversight

With that lack of regulation, it’s no surprise that the nuclear energy industry cleared the hurdles — the industry is basically bragging about how it slam-dunked on a children’s basketball hoop.

“Any work that was done following Fukushima is for naught because the commission rejected any binding requirement to use that work,” Gregory Jaczko, who was chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2011 during the Fukushima meltdown, told Bloomberg. “It’s like studying the safety of seat belts and then not making automakers put them in a car.”

READ MORE: U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Weren’t Built for Climate Change [Bloomberg]

More on nuclear power: See the Centaur-Like Robot Designed to Handle Nuclear Reactors

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Climate Change Could Cause Fukushima-Style Meltdowns in the US

Spring Cleaning

Puerto Rico has a plan in motion to shut down its coal-burning power plants by next year.

The Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act, recently signed by Puerto Rico’s governor Ricardo Roselló, puts the island on track to completely ditch non-renewable energy sources by 2050, according to The Rising — a heartening sign that Puerto Rico plans to rebuild its infrastructure to be as environmentally-friendly as possible in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

Nitty Gritty

According to the bill, coal-burning power plants will get the axe in 2020, and all other coal-burning in Puerto Rico will be eliminated in 2028 . Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, which in 2017 only got two percent of its energy from renewable sources, will reach 40 percent by 2025 and 100 percent by 2050.

“I’m pretty sure that this will be, by leaps and bounds, the quickest transition to renewables that’s ever happened anywhere on the planet” P.J. Wilson, President of the Solar and Energy Storage Association of Puerto Rico, told The Rising. “To go from [2] percent today to 40 percent by five years from now will be the biggest challenge the renewable energy industry has ever faced, on top of a very challenging political situation and a challenging financial situation.”

READ MORE: Puerto Rico to Adopt 100% Renewable Energy [The Rising]

More on Puerto Rico: When It Comes To Natural Disasters, Technology Has An Unavoidable Dark Side

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Puerto Rico Will Stop Burning Coal Next Year

Death Metal

In a project called “Relentless Doppelganger,” a neural network is grinding out the blast beats, super-distorted guitars, and bellowing vocals of death metal.

The best part of all: it’s streaming its brutal creations 24 hours a day on YouTube — an intriguing and public example of AI that’s now able to generate convincing imitations of human art.

Dadabots

The neural network is the work of Dadabots, a research duo that experiments with creating music using artificial intelligence tools.

The death metal project, which they trained using tracks by death metal band Archspire, is the first that they’ve livestreamed instead of releasing as an album, and the change in format had everything to do with the quality of the neural network’s output.

In Dadabots’ previous experiments, which dabbled in black metal and Beatles-inspired tracks, only about 5 percent of the AI-generated tracks were usable, co-creator CJ Carr told Futurism, and the programmers had to curate it.

“The remarkable part is the high quality-to-shit ratio,” Carr told Futurism of this new project. “Here, we livestream 100 percent of it,” he said. “Zero curation necessary.”

Black Metal

Part of the success of “Relentless Doppelganger,” Carr suspects, is the relentless speed of Archspire’s songs.

“It seems the faster the blast beats, the more stable the music,” he told Futurism. “Archspire is insanely fast.”

READ MORE: This YouTube Channel Streams AI-Generated Death Metal 24/7 [Motherboard]

More on AI-generated music: Expert: AI-Generated Music Is A “Total Legal Clusterf*ck”

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Listen to Brutal Death Metal Made by a Neural Network

Big Brother

The Oxford philosopher who posited 15 years ago that we might be living in a computer simulation has another far-out theory, this time about humanity’s future — and it’s not exactly optimistic.

On Wednesday, Nick Bostrom took the stage at a TED conference in Vancouver, Canada, to share some of the insights from his latest work, “The Vulnerable World Hypothesis.”

In the paper, Bostrom argues that mass government surveillance will be necessary to prevent a technology of our own creation from destroying humanity — a radically dystopian idea from one of this generation’s preeminent philosophers.

Black Balls

Bostrom frames his argument in terms of a giant urn filled with balls.  Each ball represents a different idea or possible technology, and they are different colors: white (beneficial), gray (moderately harmful), or black (civilization-destroying).

Humanity is constantly pulling balls from this urn, according to Bostom’s model — and thankfully, no one has pulled out a black ball yet. Big emphasis on “yet.”

“If scientific and technological research continues,” Bostrom writes, “we will eventually reach it and pull it out.”

Dystopian AF

To prevent this from happening, Bostrom says we need a more effective global government — one that could quickly outlaw any potential civilization-destroying technology.

He also suggests we lean into mass government surveillance, outfitting every person with necklace-like “freedom tags” that can hear and see what they’re doing at all times.

These tags would feed into “patriot monitoring stations,” or “freedom centers,” where artificial intelligences monitor the data, bringing human “freedom officers” into the loop if they detect signs of a black ball.

Two Evils

We’ve already seen people abuse mass surveillance systems, and those systems are far less exhaustive than the kind Bostrom is proposing.

Still, if it’s a choice between having someone watching our every move or, you know, the end of civilization, Bostrom seems to think the former is a better option than the latter.

“Obviously there are huge downsides and indeed massive risks to mass surveillance and global governance,” he told the crowd at the TED conference, according to Inverse. “I’m just pointing out that if we are lucky, the world could be such that these would be the only way you could survive a black ball.”

READ MORE: An Oxford philosopher who’s inspired Elon Musk thinks mass surveillance might be the only way to save humanity from doom [Business Insider]

More on Bostrom: Philosopher Hadn’t Seen “The Matrix” Before Publishing Simulation Hypothesis

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Professor: Total Surveillance Is the Only Way to Save Humanity

Marine Lizard

China has announced what local media is calling the “world’s first armed amphibious drone boat.”

The 39-foot-long Marine Lizard is designed to assist land assault operations and can form a web with other drone ships and airborne drones in order to act in tandem with them. It can reach a maximum of 50 knots (roughly 57 mph) in the water thanks to a diesel hydrojet engine — and on land it can reach only 12 mph (20 km/h) thanks to four track units mounted to its underbelly.

Autonomous Drone Ship

The Marine Lizard was built by the state-owned China Shipbuilding Industry Company (CSIC) to be truly autonomous: it can find its own way, maneuver around obstacles, or be remotely controlled via satellites with an impressive operating range of 7,450 miles (1,2000 km). When not in use, the vehicle can go into sleep mode for up to eight months while it’s not in operation, according to the Global Times.

The unusual amphibian drone is touted as a great way to assist recon missions from both aerial drones and other ships — and could do so very efficiently and with a low risk of casualties, according to the company.

READ MORE: China unveils the first autonomous amphibious military landing vehicle [The Verge]

More on unmanned ships: The U.S. Navy Wants to Roll out Autonomous Killer Robot Ships

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China’s Military Built an Autonomous Amphibious Landing Vehicle

New Best Friend

We’ve seen Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini climb stairs, pull heavy loads, and even dance like no one’s watching — and now, we’re finally getting a look at the version of the robo-dog that could one day do all those things on your command.

On Thursday, Boston Dynamics’ CEO Marc Raibert unveiled the production version of SpotMini at a TechCrunch-hosted startup showcase. He claims the company will produce about 100 of the robots this year, with production expected to begin in July or August — meaning it might not be long before we have bio-inspired robots navigating our homes.

A Better Bot

According to TechCrunch, the production version of SpotMini includes “redesigned components to make it more reliable, skins that work better to protect the robot if it falls and two sets of cameras on the front and one on each side and the back, so it can see in all directions.”

Raibert doesn’t think the production version of the robo-dog will be limited to the capabilities it ships with, either.

During the conference he said he hopes SpotMini will become the “Android of robots,” a reference to Google’s mobile operating system. In other words, he envisions software engineers writing their own apps to give the robot new capabilities.

As for the big question that remains — How much for that robo-dog in the video? — Raibert said Boston Dynamics will reveal pricing details this summer.

READ MORE: Boston Dynamics debuts production version of SpotMini [TechCrunch]

More on SpotMini: Watch a Pack of Boston Dynamics’ Creepy Robot Dogs Pull a Truck

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Boston Dynamics Unveils SpotMini You’ll Actually Be Able to Buy

Target Acquired

After seemingly countless privacy scandals rocked Facebook in recent years, federal regulators are considering taking a more aggressive approach — including potentially holding CEO Mark Zuckerberg responsible for the social media giant’s misconduct.

The news comes from anonymous sources close to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s ongoing, confidential probe into Facebook’s business practices who spoke to The Washington Post. New governmental oversight for Zuckerberg would send a strong message to Facebook and other Silicon Valley data brokers — though probably not the one Zuckerberg hoped for when he requested new regulations for his industry earlier this month.

Big Stick

In the past, the FTC has considered fining Zuckerberg directly when his company mishandled user data, but never pulled the trigger. That regulators are returning to that option suggests that they’re fed up with Zuckerberg getting off scot-free when his company plays fast and loose with users’ privacy.

“The days of pretending this is an innocent platform are over, and citing Mark in a large scale enforcement action would drive that home in spades,” Facebook investor-turned-critic Roger McNamee told WaPo.

READ MORE: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg under close scrutiny in federal privacy probe, sources say [The Washington Post]

More on Facebook: Facebook “Unintentionally” Uploaded 1.5 Million Email Contacts

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The Government Wants to Make an Example out of Mark Zuckerberg

Bye, Watson

On Thursday, STAT published a story claiming that IBM is halting sales of Watson for Drug Discovery — a service that uses the company’s Watson AI to analyze connections between genes, drugs, and diseases on the hunt for useful new medications — citing as its source a person familiar with IBM’s internal decision-making.

“We are focusing our resources within Watson Health to double down on the adjacent field of clinical development where we see an even greater market need for our data and AI capabilities,” an IBM spokesperson told STAT — a sign that eight years after launching Watson Health, IBM still isn’t quite sure how AI should factor into the future of healthcare.

Overpromised, Underdelivered

The STAT source cited a “lackluster financial performance” as IBM’s reason for no longer developing and selling Watson for Drug Discovery. That mirrors the “lack of demand” reasoning IBM gave for scaling back the part of Watson Health dedicated to helping hospitals manage certain contracts in June 2018.

It’s hard to imagine why the systems would be in high demand, though — several healthcare experts told IEEE Spectrum earlier in April that IBM had “overpromised and underdelivered” with Watson Health.

“Merely proving that you have powerful technology is not sufficient,” healthcare data strategist Martin Kohn told the publication. “Prove to me that it will actually do something useful — that it will make my life better, and my patients’ lives better.”

READ MORE: IBM halting sales of Watson AI tool for drug discovery amid sluggish growth [STAT]

More on Watson Health: Doctors Are Losing Faith in IBM Watson’s AI Doctor

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IBM Pulls the Plug on Drug-Discovering Watson AI

Drug Discovery

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have discovered genetic variants, or mutations, that protect people from obesity and its symptoms — and they think the discovery could lead to new weight-loss medications.

“A powerful emerging concept is that genetic variants that protect against disease can be used as models for the development of medicines that are more effective and safer,” researcher Luca Lotta said in a news release.

The Weight Gene

In a study published on Thursday in the journal Cell, the team details how it analyzed the MC4R gene in half a million volunteers who participated in the U.K. Biobank study.

They already knew the gene played a role in regulating weight, but through their new research they discovered 61 distinct variants of it, some of which help people avoid becoming obese. Others provided protection against obesity symptoms, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Understanding Obesity

The study does more than just illuminate a path toward new weight-loss medications — it also shines a light on the very nature of obesity.

“This study drives home the fact that genetics plays a major role in why some people are obese,” researcher Sadaf Farooqi said in the news release, “and that some people are fortunate enough to have genes that protect them from obesity.”

READ MORE: Discovery of genetic variants that protect against obesity and type 2 diabetes could lead to new weight loss medicines [University of Cambridge]

More on MC4R: Mutated Animals Show Why Gene Editing Isn’t Ready for Human Trials 

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Slime Mold

Scientists just got one step closer to creating living machines — or at least machines that mimic biological life as we know it.

A new biomaterial built in a Cornell University bioengineering lab uses synthetic DNA to continuously and autonomously organize, assemble, and restructure itself in a process so similar to how biological cells and tissues grow that the researchers are calling “artificial metabolism,” according to research published in Science Robotics last week.

 We Can Regrow It

It’s clear that the scientists are dancing around the idea of creating lifelike machinery. They stop short of straight-up claiming that their metabolizing biomaterial is alive, but the research begins by coyly listing the characteristics of life that the material exhibits — self-assembly, organization, and metabolism.

“We are introducing a brand-new, lifelike material concept powered by its very own artificial metabolism,” Cornell engineer Dan Lui said in a university-published press release. “We are not making something that’s alive, but we are creating materials that are much more lifelike than have ever been seen before.”

Worming Along

The biomaterial mimics a biological organism’s endless metabolic cycle of taking in energy and replacing old cells. When placed in a nutrient-rich environment, the material grew in the direction of the raw materials and food it needed to thrive — not unlike how a developing brain’s neurons grow out in the direction of specific molecules.

Meanwhile, the material also let its tail end die off and decay, giving the appearance of a constantly-regrowing slime mold traveling around toward food.

While the little bio-blob isn’t alive, it does appear to move and grow like a living thing, suggesting that scientists are blurring the line between life and machine more and more.

READ MORE: FORGET ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE; THINK ARTIFICIAL LIFE [Hackaday]

More on biomaterials: Scientists Manipulated a Material for Robots That Grows Like Human Skin

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Scientists Create Material With “Artificial Metabolism”

Landing Attempt

Beresheet, the lunar lander built by Israeli space nonprofit SpaceIL, crashed into the surface of the Moon on Thursday.

It would have been the first privately-owned lander on the surface of the Moon, and would have made Israel the fourth country to reach the surface of the Moon — but the craft experienced engine failure during its final approach.

“We have a failure of the spacecraft,” said Israel Aerospace Industries general manager Opher Doron on livestream, according to CNBC. “We unfortunately have not managed to land successfully,”

Final Approach

As Beresheet was approaching the surface of the Moon, the main engine failed and Beresheet was forced to reset the engine.

With about 10 kilometers left to go (6.2 miles), the main engine cut out and the lander crashed into the Moon traveling at about 134 meters per second, according to the livestream.

“We failed the first try, we’ll make it in the second… within two years we’ll try it again,” Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, according to CNBC.

Definitely Tried

SpaceIL tweeted a photo of the lander’s final approach minutes before it lost contact with the craft. In it, the Moon looms ominously in the background.

“We didn’t make it. But we definitely tried,” said SpaceIL.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with additional details.

READ MORE: Israeli spacecraft Beresheet falls short of history as moon landing fails in final moments [CNBC]

More on Beresheet: The Israeli Moon Lander Is About to Touch Down

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Israel’s Lunar Lander Just Crashed Into the Moon

Algorithmic Assist

It took a team of more than 200 scientists to create the first image of the event horizon of a black hole — and the internet is currently in love with one of them.

Computer scientist Katie Bouman led the development of the algorithm that made the breathtaking black hole image possible, and soon after the Event Horizon Telescope team revealed the photo on Wednesday, another image — this one a shot of Bouman that she posted to her Facebook page — started making the rounds online.

“Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed,” the 29-year-old wrote of the photo, which was subsequently shared by everyone from CNN to Kamala Harris.

Here's the moment when the first black hole image was processed, from the eyes of researcher Katie Bouman. #EHTBlackHole #BlackHoleDay #BlackHole (v/@dfbarajas) pic.twitter.com/n0ZnIoeG1d

— MIT CSAIL (@MIT_CSAIL) April 10, 2019

Women Who Code

The online photo frenzy wasn’t over, though.

Many in the Twitterverse and beyond noted the similarities between an image of Bouman with piles of hard drives containing black hole image data and an image of another female computer scientist, Margaret Hamilton, standing next to the stacks of code she wrote to help NASA put astronauts on the Moon in 1969.

Still, Bouman, who is now an assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences at the California Institute of Technology, is quick to note that creating the first black hole image wasn’t a one-woman job.

“No one of us could’ve done it alone,” she told CNN. “It came together because of lots of different people from many different backgrounds.”

Left: MIT computer scientist Katie Bouman w/stacks of hard drives of black hole image data.

Right: MIT computer scientist Margaret Hamilton w/the code she wrote that helped put a man on the moon.

(image credit @floragraham)#EHTblackhole #BlackHoleDay #BlackHole pic.twitter.com/Iv5PIc8IYd

— MIT CSAIL (@MIT_CSAIL) April 10, 2019

READ MORE: That image of a black hole you saw everywhere? Thank this grad student for making it possible [CNN]

More on the black hole image: Scientists Just Released the First-Ever Image of a Black Hole

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We Wouldn’t Have the First Black Hole Image Without Katie Bouman

Mouse House

A first-of-its-kind study aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has yielded new insights into how humans adapt to spaceflight — and an entertaining video of mice in microgravity.

In a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center describe how they sent 20 mice to live in the ISS’s NASA Rodent Habitat to see how they’d behave when exposed to the same conditions as astronauts, including microgravity, radiation, and confinement.

“Our approach is yielding an interesting analogue for better understanding human responses to spacefight,” the researchers wrote, “and providing the opportunity to begin to address how physical movement influences responses to microgravity.”

Squeak By

The NASA team use cameras to observe the mice in microgravity and noted in the study that the animals appeared to adapt to their space lives quickly by “propelling their bodies freely and actively throughout the habitat, utilizing the entire volume of space available to them.”

After about a week, some of the mice began zipping around the sides of the Rodent Habitat, a behavior the researchers called “race-tracking.”

As for why the mice race-tracked, the researchers hazarded a guess in the study that the behavior might have been due to stress, a response to boredom, or even a form of entertainment — similar to how mice on Earth might choose to run on a wheel.

READ MORE: The First Detailed Study of How Mice Behave in Space Reveals Strange, Coordinated Zooming [Gizmodo]

More on microgravity: Alarming Research: Zero Gravity Makes Astronauts’ Brains Age Faster

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Space Station Mice Learned to Propel Themselves in Zero Gravity

Twin Study

For years, NASA has been analyzing the health effects of space travel by comparing astronaut twins Mark and Scott Kelly. In 2015 into 2016, Scott spent 340 days in orbit while Mark stayed on Earth, giving scientists rare data about how leaving the planet affects the human body.

The study, finally published Thursday in the journal Science, reveals that Scott experienced a number of genetic changes while he was in space. Surprisingly, most of them reversed once he landed back on Earth, the MIT Technology Review reports, giving researchers valuable insight as space agencies prepare for longer and deeper missions into space.

Back And Forth

Over the past few years, NASA scientists have gradually released some info about the twin study’s findings. Most surprising was how Scott’s time in space extended his telomeres, the protective caps that protect chromosome and — at least on Earth — slowly degrade over time.

While this finding will likely lead to speculation — and future research — into how spaceflight could affect human longevity, the changes were shortlived. Within half a year of his return to Earth, Scott’s lengthened telomeres returned to normal, while some new, shorter-than-usual telomeres that formed upon his return persisted.

Ready To Launch

Past research on astronauts suggested that extended space travel could compromise their immune systems. The new findings reveal that these changes are largely temporary and that astronauts quickly recover, which is a promising development for the prospect of sending people out to Mars and maybe even farther.

But because the twin study only involved one person in space, it’s hard to tell just how much each data point matters because the context is missing.

“It’s analogous to the very first time that we measured someone’s blood pressure,” lead researcher Chris Mason told MIT Tech. “We didn’t know what the actual reference numbers were until we started to measure more people.”

READ MORE: The first study of a twin in space looks like good news for a trip to Mars [MIT Technology Review]

More on the twin study: After a Year Away from Earth, Scott Kelly’s “Space Genes” Set Him Apart From His Twin

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NASA: Genetic Changes Caused by Space Travel Are Temporary

Side Hustle

A father and son team from Michigan were just charged for illegally selling human body parts — and failing to disclose that the corpses carried infectious diseases.

The duo, both named Donald Greene, sold bodies that people donated to the Biological Resource Center of Illinois for the purpose of furthering scientific research, according to CBS Chicago.

No Returns

The family sold body parts to medical clinics such as the Detroit Medical Center’s sports medicine department between 2008 and 2014, according to the station, sometimes for up to $100,000 per CBS.

But they also failed to disclose that they were selling body parts that had tested positive for diseases including HIV, hepatitis, and sepsis, CBS reports.

Technicality

Strangely enough, selling body parts isn’t strictly illegal.

But selling bodies that had been donated for medical research constitutes fraud, according to the federal prosecutors who charged the Greenes, and failing to disclose the infections was against the law. Greene Sr. has been charged with wire fraud, and Jr. with concealing a crime.

READ MORE: Father And Son Charged With Selling Diseased Body Parts In Alleged Brokering Scheme [CBS Chicago]

More on body parts: Freezing And Storing Donated Organs Could Eliminate Some Transplant Waitlists

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Family Caught Selling Diseased Body Parts to Medical Centers

The Falcons Have Landed

The second time is apparently the charm for SpaceX.

In February 2018, Elon Musk’s space company launched a Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, but it wasn’t able to recover all three of the rocket’s boosters — rather than landing on SpaceX’s autonomous drone ship like it was supposed to, the center core splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. Whoops.

On Thursday, the company attempted its second Falcon Heavy launch, and this time it nailed the landing of all three boosters — marking a new milestone in reusable rocketry.

Watch SpaceX's #FalconHeavy rocket lands its center core on a ship for the first time pic.twitter.com/VltoKVaAox

— CNET (@CNET) April 12, 2019

Democratizing Space

The Falcon Heavy is currently the most powerful launch vehicle in operation. Because SpaceX designed the rocket to be reusable, it can keep the cost of launches lower than would otherwise be possible — and cheaper launches mean more launches, thereby advancing humanity’s efforts to study, explore, and exploit space.

Now that SpaceX has proven it can successfully recover all three Falcon Heavy boosters, it can start looking ahead to the five launches already on the rocket’s manifest — and the others that will likely follow.

Falcon Heavy’s side boosters land on Landing Zones 1 and 2 pic.twitter.com/nJCCaVHOeo

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 12, 2019

READ MORE: SpaceX launches mega rocket, lands all three boosters [Phys.org]

More on Falcon Heavy: The Falcon Heavy Launched. Here’s What’s Next for SpaceX.

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SpaceX Milestone: Company Lands Three Falcon Heavy Boosters

Photo Friends

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) wasn’t the only powerful device with its gaze fixed upon galaxy Messier 87 (M87) in April 2017.

While the EHT was focused on the event horizon of the black hole at the center of M87, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory was taking a wider view of the same target — and the image produced through those observations puts the black hole photo into stunning context.

1,000 Light Years

The Chandra team provided additional details on the dazzling display of bright particles captured in its black hole companion image in a blog post shared on Monday:

“While Chandra can’t see the shadow itself, its field of view is much larger than the EHT’s, so Chandra can view the full length of the jet of high-energy particles launched by the intense gravitational and magnetic fields around the black hole. This jet extends more than 1,000 light years from the center of the galaxy.”

READ MORE: Chandra and the Event Horizon Telescope [Chandra X-Ray Observatory]

More on the black hole photo: Scientists Just Released the First-Ever Image of a Black Hole

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The First Black Hole Photo Is Even More Amazing When You Zoom Out

Digital Shock

Back in 1961, psychologist Stanley Milgram shocked the world with controversial research in which everyday people followed a scientist’s instructions to electrocute someone who they thought was giving incorrect answers on a quiz — a damning indication that many people will acquiesce to brutal directives by an authority figure.

In December 2018, a team of London-based scientists repeated the experiment in a VR simulation in which they asked participants to zap a virtual avatar. Even though no one got hurt, participants were just as reluctant to pull the lever — even going so far as to try rigging the experiment so they didn’t have to, according to research published in the journal PLOSOne that breaks new ground in the psychology of how people relate to virtual characters.

Answer Key

During the experiment, participants quizzed a virtual character. A correct answer meant they could move on, while an incorrect answer meant the human participant had to administer a virtual electrical jolt. The scientists noticed that participants sometimes tried to feed the virtual avatar the correct answer by pronouncing it louder — in hopes that they wouldn’t be told to shock them.

And even though many participants continued to follow instructions, they were measurably stressed and anxious about doing so, the researchers write in a Scientific American blog post published Friday.

“At the end, even those who had cheated showed an increased stress level,” they wrote.

Big Picture

In their blog post, the scientists suggest that their research could be used to explain how people act under troubling leaders — just like how Milgram set out to explore the behavior of individual Nazis after World War II.

“If we look at our experiments as a proxy for resistance to authority, we can anticipate a psychological cost to the resisters. Even though their obedience isn’t genuine, those who persist endure additional stress compared to those who decide to quit,” they wrote. “In the long term they will also be facing the moral dilemma of engaged followership, wondering whether they engaged too much and in essence enabled a leader they did not want to obey.”

READ MORE: Would You Give a Virtual Electric Shock to an Avatar? [Scientific American]

More on Milgram: Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories – and How to Change Their Minds

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Follow-Up

New research suggests that fecal transplants can reduce the severity of conditions associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) — and that the changes last several years after the transplants.

Back in 2017, Arizona State University conducted a study on children with ASD of varying severity. Now, research published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports shows that the reduction in ASD symptoms persisted for two years after the fact, further demonstrating the link between the gut microbiome and the brain.

Drastic Change

In the original study, 15 of the 18 children had what was considered severe autism, with difficulty communicating and handling social interactions. Two years after the study, which involved eight weeks of fecal transplants that reintroduced a greater variety of healthy microbial flora into the participants’ gastrointestinal tracts, only three participants still fall within the “severe” classification, according to the research.

“We are finding a very strong connection between the microbes that live in our intestines and signals that travel to the brain,” Arizona scientist Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown told New Atlas. “Two years later, the children are doing even better, which is amazing.”

Early Days

The scientists are now working to design a larger and more thorough clinical trial in hopes of getting their treatment approved for use by the FDA, according to New Atlas.

And while the goal isn’t to “cure” a condition that some argue doesn’t need curing, this study suggests that fecal transplants could someday provide people with a way to help children with specific communicative or social difficulties.

READ MORE: Fecal transplants result in massive long-term reduction in autism symptoms [New Atlas]

More on fecal transplants: New Study Supports the Link Between Autism and Gut Microbes

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Fecal Transplants Reduce Symptoms of Autism Long Term

High Times

In the United States, marijuana used to have a bad reputation.

Now, more than two out of every three people in the United States support legalizing cannabis, and state laws are reflecting that shift in opinion. Medical marijuana is currently legal in 33 states plus Washington, D.C., and in 10 of those states and the nation’s capital, adults over the age of 21 can legally buy marijuana for recreational use.

Government officials are even starting to push for nation-wide cannabis legalization — and not just because they think more people should be getting high.

Legalize It

Here are seven ways experts predict cannabis legalization will lead to a better future:

1. Cannabis is already creating jobs more quickly than any other industry — and the number of new jobs is expected to keep increasing as more places legalize marijuana.

2. Scientists believe legalization could make it easier for them to develop cannabis-based medical treatments. One such medication is already helping children cope with a rare, previously untreatable form of seizure-causing epilepsy, and early studies show the plant’s potential to treat everything from brain aging to psychosis.

3. Legalization gives governments the opportunity to regulate cannabis cultivation, thereby ensuring farmers aren’t allowed to damage the environment while growing their crops.

4. It also decreases the strain on the justice system, freeing up police — and billions of dollars in state money — to fight other criminal activity.

5. Experts are hopeful cannabis could help end the opioid crisis by easing the symptoms of withdrawal.

6. The taxes from cannabis sales could go toward improving any number of societal institutions. Oregon, where recreational marijuana is legal, recently dedicated millions in cannabis taxes to its schools and public health services.

7. By driving down cannabis costs, legalization also drives cartels and black-market dealers out of business — taking violent activity along with them.

More on cannabis: New Senate Bill Would Legalize Marijuana Nationwide

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Seven Ways Cannabis Legalization Will Make the Future Better