Tootfinder

Complex three-dimensional rearing environments amplify compensatory plasticity following early blindness https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.02.651847v1 "underscoring the role of experience in directing compensatory plasticity following early sensory loss.&q…

Complex three-dimensional rearing environments amplify compensatory plasticity following early blindness
The neocortex has a remarkable capacity to alter its functional organization and connectivity in response to sensory loss, particularly if this loss occurs early in life. A key question is whether this cross-modal reorganization is driven by sensory deprivation itself or through enhanced use of the spared senses. We investigated how different rearing environments shape neural responses in primary somatosensory cortex (S1) of short-tailed opossums ( Monodelphis domestica) , following elimination…

Meta's standalone Meta AI app, launched in April 2025, offers an uneven experience, often hallucinating facts and failing to provide personalized responses (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-08-15/meta-ai-app-ha…

I am astonished that the #Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/
still supports or at least has an account on X (Twitter). They have at least one account here. @…
I have written them to express my dismay and have urged them to drop their X account with no response. I believe that it would help if as many of us as possible would write them to express your feelings about this.
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/contact/
Please boost.

I can't find words to express what seeing a giant star suspended inside a classical building is doing to my feelings and my mind 🫨
https://youtu.be/BcWP3SyKr58?feature=shared

Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09321-3

I read "Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It" by Christof Koch.
Interesting book which spends like 8 or 9 chapters detailing all the experiments which prove beyond much doubt that consciousness, and self awareness, is a thing done by a brain.
It describes how perception is a construction of a description, has a chapter called "computational mind"
And then spends the last two chapters describing why he thinks the mind can't be computed, because drugs have made him think experience is some kind of magic associated with highly interconnected causal structures.
Apparently, he thinks, once things become interconnected enough they become able to cause things independently of the physics running those connections.
Which is crazy, obviously. There's nothing causal in direct connections between neurons that isn't equally causal in modeled connections between virtual neurons.
All his evidence in the book from neural MRI scans to the effects of psychedelic drugs and symptoms of strokes and disease point to the brain simulating a virtual reality which is the basis of perception.
That simulated world in which we live is full of colour and shape and sounds and emotions and millions of mental constructs that are built to be correlated by the senses with the outside world, but are not equal to the world itself. We live in a dream constructed to correlate with reality.
But then instead of taking the next step: That consciousness itself is a property of a simulated being inside that mental model of the universe, a property which the brain simulates and applies to the virtual self that's doing the experiencing inside that model, he jumps towards some magic implying pan-psychism or that sufficiently interconnected networks become causally self-complete for some reason nobody can fathom.
Sure, colour and shape and emotions are all made up by the brain but experience can't be! For some reason.
You see in truth dualism is false, in that there is no spirit realm in which ghosts animate the matter of the body somehow.
Yet also, dualism is true, in that there is a simulated mental reality which we live in, computed by the brain in which all perception and experience are created, which is related-to but separate-from the unfolding complicated dance of energy that is the universe our bodies interact with.
People take some DMT trip, and the model of the universe emulated by their brain collapses and breaks. Their virtual simulated self inside their mind has these experiences of being one with the universe or the experience of feeling dead yet conscious or whatever, and these hippies think that the broken down simulated experience is real and reflects how consciousness is more fundamental than the atoms that make up the neurons in their brain.
Instead of realizing it shows them that their experienced universe is a simulacrum, they think they get a more direct experience of reality somehow. A consciousness more pure than any mere base atom.
"Then I am myself the world" is a great title. Everything you ever experience is created and simulated in your brain like a dream, the whole universe is inside your head. Even the fact of experience itself.
But that isn't the conclusion Koch reaches somehow, he just jumps from describing the evidence that this is so straight into ascribing super-causal magic consciousness to particular arrangements of atoms that integrated information theory suggest have high correlation, and thinks therefore conciousness is itself the entire universe.
Ah well, fun book. I like arguing in my head with authors that are wrong.
#reading #books #consciousness #thenIAmMyselfTheWorld

A Parametric Study on the Pulsation of Burner-Stabilized CH4-O2 Flames Moderated by CO2 Addition -- Frequencies, Modes and Regime Diagrams
Xiangyu Nie, Shuoxun Zhang, Shengkai Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10905

A Parametric Study on the Pulsation of Burner-Stabilized CH4-O2 Flames Moderated by CO2 Addition -- Frequencies, Modes and Regime Diagrams
This study investigated the pulsating instability of burner-stabilized premixed CH4-O2 flames at various levels of CO2 dilution. Experiments were conducted using a water-cooled porous-plug burner of 18 mm diameter over a wide range of mixture compositions and flow rates, during which time-resolved measurements of flame chemiluminescence and gas temperature were obtained. The primary oscillation frequencies of the pulsating flames were determined using fast Fourier transform and harmonic power a…

I had a bad day and made a mistake, but I chose to do the right thing and move forward.
Proud bisexual, gender-fluid, autistic anarchist committed to building a world based on mutual aid, solidarity, and freedom for all.
If you believe in challenging power and creating change from the ground up, let’s connect and let’s grow this movement together.
Now, here I am, feeling stronger and ready for better days ahead.

Large ferromagnetic-like band splitting in ultrathin ${\mathrm{SmC}}_{6}$ films
Hao Zheng, Yifu Xu, Guowei Yang, Ze Pan, Yi Wu, Yuan Zheng, Tulai Sun, Jiefeng Cao, Yi-feng Yang, Ming Shi, Chao Cao, Yang Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11396

Large ferromagnetic-like band splitting in ultrathin ${\mathrm{SmC}}_{6}$ films
Two-dimensional (2D) magnetic materials provide a unique platform for exploring quantum phases from magnetic order in reduced dimensions. While there have been extensive studies on 2D magnetic materials based on 3$d$ electrons, experimental studies on 4$f$-electron counterparts are far fewer, particularly on their electronic structure. In this study, we report the successful synthesis of ultrathin ${\mathrm{SmC}}_{6}$ films using molecular beam epitaxy. Utilizing in situ angle-resolved photoemi…

Jensen Huang says Nvidia will exclude the Chinese market from its revenue and profit forecasts going forward, amid US restrictions on chip sales to China (CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2025/06/12/tech/nvidia-ceo-china-us-ai-chip-exports

Nvidia will stop including China in its forecasts amid US chip export controls, CEO says
Chipmaker Nvidia will exclude the Chinese market from its revenue and profit forecasts following the imposition of tough US restrictions on chip sales to China, its CEO said Thursday.