#Study Data Science in the UK

[the-proeducator-blog]

Why Study Information Technology in the UK? Key Benefits and Opportunities

Are you considering pursuing a degree in Information Technology (IT) and wondering if the UK is the right place for you? The UK is home to some of the best universities for IT education, offering world-class programs that cater to various interests within the tech world. From data science to artificial intelligence (AI), the opportunities to learn and grow in this field are endless.

To find out more about the best universities for Information Technology UK, and explore your options for an IT career that could open doors to exciting global opportunities.

Top Reasons to Study Information Technology in the UK

The decision to study Information Technology in the UK comes with numerous advantages that can set you on the path to a successful career. Here’s why the UK is one of the best destinations for IT students:

1. High-Quality Education

UK universities are recognized worldwide for their academic excellence, offering cutting-edge IT programs that blend theory and practical experience. These universities use state-of-the-art technology in their curricula and maintain strong links with industry, ensuring that students gain the skills employers are looking for.

2. World-Class Universities and Programs

The UK is home to some of the most renowned universities globally, offering specialized IT programs in fields such as Software Engineering, Data Science, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and more. Studying in these universities not only guarantees a top-tier education but also connects you with a global network of professionals.

To learn more about the best universities for Information Technology UK, and explore which institution aligns best with your career goals.

3. Strong Industry Connections and Networking Opportunities

Studying in the UK means you’ll have access to one of the most vibrant tech industries in the world. Many UK universities collaborate closely with major tech companies, offering internships, industrial placements, and research opportunities. As a student, you’ll be able to gain practical experience and network with professionals, giving you a head start in your career after graduation.

Diverse Career Opportunities After IT Studies in the UK

Graduating with an IT degree from a UK university opens doors to a wide range of career opportunities. The IT industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors worldwide, and the UK’s tech industry is no exception. Whether you’re interested in becoming a software developer, data scientist, or cybersecurity expert, the demand for IT professionals is consistently high.

1. Access to High Paying Jobs

The UK is home to major global companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, along with numerous start-ups and tech firms. As an IT graduate, you’ll have access to a wealth of job opportunities with competitive salaries. The UK’s thriving tech industry, along with its emphasis on innovation, ensures that IT professionals are highly sought after.

2. Global Recognition of UK Degrees

Degrees from UK universities are highly regarded worldwide. Employers across the globe recognize the quality of education you receive in the UK, which enhances your employability no matter where you want to work. Whether you’re planning to stay in the UK, return to your home country, or work internationally, a degree from a UK institution adds credibility to your CV.

3. Cultural Diversity and International Student Community

Studying in the UK offers an enriching cultural experience, with students from all over the world coming together. This diversity allows you to gain new perspectives, learn about different cultures, and make lasting connections with people from various backgrounds. This multicultural environment can be particularly valuable if you plan to work in international IT teams or companies.

What Makes IT Education in the UK Unique?

1. Cutting-Edge Research and Innovation

UK universities lead the way in IT research and development. With their focus on emerging technologies such as AI, machine learning, and blockchain, students have the opportunity to engage in groundbreaking research. Many UK universities partner with industry leaders to bring the latest technologies into their curriculum, giving students the chance to work on real-world problems and innovate.

2. Flexible Course Options

UK universities offer a variety of course options for IT students, including undergraduate, postgraduate, and PhD programs. Whether you’re looking for a general IT degree or a specialized course, you’ll find plenty of options to tailor your education to your interests and career goals.

Conclusion: Is Studying Information Technology in the UK Right for You?

If you’re passionate about technology and eager to pursue a career in IT, studying in the UK could be one of the best decisions you make. With top-ranked universities, strong industry connections, and a thriving job market, the UK offers everything you need to succeed in the tech industry.

To explore the best universities for Information Technology UK, and get insights on the best IT programs.

Whether you're interested in software development, data science, cybersecurity, or AI, the UK provides an outstanding environment to kick-start your IT career. Get ready for a future full of opportunities in the ever-growing tech world!

[curlicuecal]

playing science telephone

Hi folks. Let's play a fun game today called "unravelling bad science communication back to its source."

Journey with me.

Saw a comment going around on a tumblr thread that "sometimes the life expectancy of autism is cited in the 30s"

That number seemed..... strange. The commenter DID go on to say that that was "situational on people being awful and not… anything autism actually does", but you know what? Still a strange number. I feel compelled to fact check.

Quick Google "autism life expectancy" pulls up quite a few websites bandying around the number 39. Which is ~technically~ within the 30s, but already higher than the tumblr factoid would suggest. But, guess what. This number still sounds strange to me.

Most of the websites presenting this factoid present themselves as official autism resources and organizations (for parents, etc), and most of them vaguely wave towards "studies."

Ex: "Above And Beyond Therapy" has a whole article on "Does Autism Affect Life Expectancy" and states:

The link implies that it will take you to the "research studies" being referenced, but it in fact takes you to another random autism resource group called.... Songbird Care?

And on that website we find the factoid again:

Ooh, look. Now they've added the word "some". The average lifespan for SOME autistic people. Which the next group erased from the fact. The message shifts further.

And we have slightly more information about the study! (Which has also shifted from "studies" to a singular "study"). And we have another link!

Wonderfully, this link actually takes us to the actual peer-reviewed 2020 study being discussed. [x]

And here, just by reading the abstract, we find the most important information of all.

This study followed a cohort of adolescent and adult autistic people across a 20 year time period. Within that time period, 6.4% of the cohort died. Within that 6.4%, the average age of death was 39 years.

So this number is VERY MUCH not the average age of death for autistic people, or even the average age of death for the cohort of autistic people in that study. It is the average age of death IF you died young and within the 20 year period of the study (n=26), and also we don't even know the average starting age of participants without digging into earlier papers, except that it was 10 or older. (If you're curious, the researchers in the study suggested reduced self-sufficiency to be among the biggest risk factors for the early mortality group.)

But the number in the study has been removed from it's context, gradually modified and spread around the web, and modified some more, until it is pretty much a nonsense number that everyone is citing from everyone else.

There ARE two other numbers that pop up semi-frequently:

One cites the life expectancy at 58. I will leave finding the context for that number as an exercise for the audience, since none of the places I saw it gave a direct citation for where they were getting it.

And then, probably the best and most relevant number floating around out there (and the least frequently cited) draws from a 2023 study of over 17,000 UK people with an autism diagnosis, across 30 years. [x] This study estimated life expectancies between 70 and 77 years, varying with sex and presence/absence of a learning disability. (As compared to the UK 80-83 average for the population as a whole.)

This is a set of numbers that makes way more sense and is backed by way better data, but isn't quite as snappy a soundbite to pass around the internet. I'm gonna pass it around anyway, because I feel bad about how many scared internet people I stumbled across while doing this search.

People on quora like "I'm autistic, can I live past 38"-- honey, YES. omg.

---

tl;dr, when someone gives you a number out of context, consider that the context is probably important

also, make an amateur fact checker's life easier and CITE YOUR SOURCES

[reasonsforhope]

"People across the world, and the political spectrum, underestimate levels of support for climate action.

This “perception gap” matters. Governments will change policy if they think they have strong public backing. Companies need to know that consumers want to see low-carbon products and changes in business practices. We’re all more likely to make changes if we think others will do the same.

If governments, companies, innovators, and our neighbors know that most people are worried about the climate and want to see change, they’ll be more willing to drive it.

On the flip side, if we systematically underestimate widespread support, we’ll keep quiet for fear of “rocking the boat”.

This matters not only within each country but also in how we cooperate internationally. No country can solve climate change on its own. If we think that people in other countries don’t care and won’t act, we’re more likely to sit back as we consider our efforts hopeless.

Support for climate action is high across the world

The majority of people in every country in the world worry about climate change and support policies to tackle it. We can see this in the survey data shown on the map.

Surveys can produce unreliable — even conflicting — results depending on the population sample, what questions are asked, and the framing, so I’ve looked at several reputable sources to see how they compare. While the figures vary a bit depending on the specific question asked, the results are pretty consistent.

In a recent paper published in Science Advances, Madalina Vlasceanu and colleagues surveyed 59,000 people across 63 countries.1 “Belief” in climate change was 86%. Here, “belief” was measured based on answers to questions about whether action was necessary to avoid a global catastrophe, whether humans were causing climate change, whether it was a serious threat to humanity, and whether it was a global emergency.

People think climate change is a serious threat, and humans are the cause. Concern was high across countries: even in the country with the lowest agreement, 73% agreed...

The majority also supported climate policies, with an average global score of 72%. “Policy support” was measured as the average across nine interventions, including carbon taxes on fossil fuels, expanding public transport, more renewable energy, more electric car chargers, taxes on airlines, and protecting forests. In the country with the lowest support, there was still a majority (59%) who supported these policies.

These scores are high considering the wide range of policies suggested.

Another recent paper published in Nature Climate Change found similarly high support for political change. Peter Andre et al. (2024) surveyed almost 130,000 individuals across 125 countries.2

89% wanted to see more political action. 86% think people in their country “should try to fight global warming” (explore the data). And 69% said they would be willing to contribute at least 1% of their income to tackle climate change...

Support for political action was strong across the world, as shown on the map below.

To ensure these results weren’t outliers, I looked at several other studies in the United States and the United Kingdom.

70% to 83% of Americans answered “yes” to a range of surveys focused on whether humans were causing climate change, whether it was a concern, and a threat to humanity. In the UK, the share who agreed was between 73% and 90%. I’ve left details of these surveys in the footnote.3

The fact is that the majority of people “believe” in climate change and think it’s a problem is consistent across studies."

-via Our World in Data, March 25, 2024

[shuraa-education]

Are you ready to apply for MS in data science in UK

According to the report ‘Dynamics of Data Science Skills’, the demand for data science skills is high in the job market. Besides, there has been an increase in the rate of data scientists and data engineers in the last five years. Skills like data science, machine learning, and big data are frequently needed by companies and employers. So, if you are planning to pursue MS in data science in UK, then you are definitely on the right track. Popular institutes and universities in the UK offer various Data Science related programs to students from different parts of the world. For more information on various courses offered by UK universities, connect with Shuraa Education.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also presreved on our archive

A history of COVID-19 can double the risk of heart attack, stroke or death according to new research led by Cleveland Clinic and the University of Southern California.

The study found that people with any type of COVID-19 infection were twice as likely to have a major cardiac event, such as heart attack, stroke or even death, for up to three years after diagnosis. The risk was significantly higher for patients hospitalized for COVID-19 and more of a determinant than a previous history of heart disease.

Further genetic analysis also revealed individuals with a blood type other than an O (such as A, B or AB) were twice as likely to experience an adverse cardiovascular event after COVID-19 than those with an O-blood type.

Published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, the researchers used UK Biobank data from 10,005 people who had COVID-19 and 217,730 people who did not get infected between February to December 2020.

"Worldwide over a billion people have already experienced COVID-19. The findings reported are not a small effect in a small subgroup," said co-senior study author Stanley Hazen, M.D., Ph.D., chair of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences in Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute and co-section head of Preventive Cardiology. "The results included nearly a quarter million people and point to a finding of global health care importance that promises to translate into a rise in cardiovascular disease globally."

Certain genetic variants are already linked to coronary artery disease, heart attack and COVID-19 infection. The researchers completed a genetic analysis to see if any of these known genetic variants contribute to elevated coronary artery disease risk after COVID-19.

None of the known genetic variants were drivers of the enhanced cardiovascular events observed post COVID-19. Instead, the data highlighted an association between elevated risk and blood type.

Previous research has shown that people who have A, B or AB blood types were also more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.

"These findings reveal while it's an upper respiratory tract infection, COVID-19 has a variety of health implications and underscores that we should consider history of prior COVID-19 infection when formulating cardiovascular disease preventive plans and goals," said Dr. Hazen.

"The association uncovered by our research indicates a potential interaction between the virus and the piece of our genetic code that determines blood type and signals the need for further investigation," said Dr. Hazen. "A better understanding of what COVID-19 does at the molecular level may potentially teach us about pathways linked to cardiovascular disease risk."

Hooman Allayee, Ph.D., of USC's Keck School of Medicine, was co-senior author of the paper.

"Our data suggesting that risk of heart attacks and strokes was especially higher among COVID-19 patients with A, B, or AB blood types has significant clinical implications," Dr. Allayee said.

"Given our collective observations and that 60% of the world's population have these non-O blood types, our study raises important questions about whether more aggressive cardiovascular risk reduction efforts should be considered, possibly by taking into consideration an individual's genetic makeup."

The findings show that the long-term risk associated with COVID-19 "continues to pose a significant public health burden" and that further investigation is needed, according to the authors.

More information: COVID-19 is a Coronary Artery Disease Risk Equivalent and Exhibits a Genetic Interaction with ABO Blood Type, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1161/ATVBAHA.124.321001

www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/ATVBAHA.124.321001

[enbycrip]

On TDOV, a historian’s perspective on the transphobic nonsense some people spout about bones, burials and gender.

We have been finding burials of gender divergent folk and folk outside the binary since we started any form of organised study of archaeology. The 18th and 19th century European and European-derived archaeologists who didn’t recognise that were the ignorant ones, assuming their definitions of gender were “universal”. Including within the binary; their definitions were deeply reductionist and deeply inaccurate, failing to recognise that even societies they actively claimed some form of cultural descent from had very different definitions of what a “man” or “woman” was from theirs.

Notably, they came from a *very* colonialist society that was doing its best to destroy living cultures with fuller definitions of gender than it allowed. We are still living in a framework of repairing the damage they did in how we understand past cultures, and modern media is frequently very unhelpful on how it reports on discoveries and interpretations, erasing or flattening the huge element of interpretation and uncertainty involved even with the exciting level of data that new techniques can give us on any given site.

Anyone who takes even a cursory look into bioarchaeology will find out that “sexing” bones - which every modern archaeologist knows is at best one element in gendering the person they belonged to - is *incredibly* fucking difficult. A lot of the techniques for it involve measuring proportions of anatomical features that may well not be present - it’s rare for a specimen to be intact. And, frankly - humans are a spectrum in every physical feature. Height, weight, bone density, width of shoulders and pelvis etc etc. Cheaper and more widespread DNA testing is slowly making more people realise that chromosomes aren’t the final word they were told in first year high school biology either. For the remains of people from some cultures, we have some written history to cross-reference archaeology with about the meanings of artefacts. In others, we don’t - and even when we do, half the time what we have is the interpretation of two lines from some dude from a different culture altogether, or from an aside in a religious tract, or a recipe book.

Almost every older specimen we have has been reinterpreted multiple times. Probably the oldest remains as yet found in the UK, from circa 31,000 BCE based on current best estimates, were known as “the Red Lady of Paviland” because they were dyed red with ochre, and the person who found them in 1832 decided from that fact and fact that there was jewellery found with them that they belonged to a female Roman-era sex worker. From around 200 years more work, and considerably more data, we now interpret them as having belonged to a male hunter-gatherer, likely from a nomadic or semi-nomadic people who frequently lived much closer to the coast than the place in Wales where the remains were found. We do not have the information about this person’s culture, how their culture viewed gender, the pronouns their language used and if they related to gender; this was minimum 20,000 years before and on the other side of the world from the oldest writing we have as yet found. We are putting data together and interpreting as best we can, with the awareness that there could be a discovery tomorrow that could utterly change that.

I’m sorry if this seems an obscure topic to address for TDOV, but I do know how this idea of “the bones don’t lie” has got into plenty of folks’ heads when they are having a bad time. So I wanted to address the fact that not only is it bawbins, the entire series of assumptions it posits is bawbins of the type that TERFs and transphobes, like racists, misogynists, and fascists in general, like to spew out there - that gender, or indeed race, is biological, fixed, and essential, that their understandings of it are “fact-based”, and that science is a series of fixed, immutable facts that are just lying there like stones on a beach.

And all of that is complete and utter bawbins.

Gender, and race, like all human frameworks of knowledge and understanding, are constructs - tools we use to understand a ridiculously complex and difficult world. They may *reference* objective facts, but are not in *themselves* facts. None of which means they aren’t incredibly meaningful or don’t have massive impacts on our experiences as humans. But they are mutable, ever-evolving, and incredibly open to constant interpretation and re-definition, and while your individual experience of them will be mediated by your culture, it’s also unique to you too.

No one else’s definition of your gender can *ever* be more accurate than yours. Because it is *yours*.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility, everyone 🏳️‍⚧️💛🤍🖤💜🩷🤍💙

[mindblowingscience]

Scientists have found genetic variations associated with human bisexual behaviour for the first time, and they are linked to risk-taking behaviour and producing more children.  The University of Michigan-led study, which was published on Wednesday (3 January) in Science Advances, analysed data from more than 450,000 people in the UK’s Biobank database of genetic and health information. 

Continue Reading.

[river-taxbird]

The Four Horsemen of the Digital Apocalypse

Blockchain. Artificial Intelligence. Internet of Things. Big Data.

Do these terms sound familiar? You have probably been hearing some or all of them non stop for years. "They are the future. You don't want to be left behind, do you?"

While these topics, particularly crypto and AI, have been the subject of tech hype bubbles and inescapable on social media, there is actually something deeper and weirder going on if you scratch below the surface.

I am getting ready to apply for my PhD in financial technology, and in the academic business studies literature (Which is barely a science, but sometimes in academia you need to wade into the trash can.) any discussion of digital transformation or the process by which companies adopt IT seem to have a very specific idea about the future of technology, and it's always the same list, that list being, blockchain, AI, IoT, and Big Data. Sometimes the list changes with additions and substitutions, like the metaverse, advanced robotics, or gene editing, but there is this pervasive idea that the future of technology is fixed, and the list includes tech that goes from questionable to outright fraudulent, so where is this pervasive idea in the academic literature that has been bleeding into the wider culture coming from? What the hell is going on?

The answer is, it all comes from one guy. That guy is Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum. Now there are a lot of conspiracies about the WEF and I don't really care about them, but the basic facts are it is a think tank that lobbies for sustainable capitalist agendas, and they famously hold a meeting every year where billionaires get together and talk about how bad they feel that they are destroying the planet and promise to do better. I am not here to pass judgement on the WEF. I don't buy into any of the conspiracies, there are plenty of real reasons to criticize them, and I am not going into that.

Basically, Schwab wrote a book titled the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In his model, the first three so-called industrial revolutions are:

1. The industrial revolution we all know about. Factories and mass production basically didn't exist before this. Using steam and water power allowed the transition from hand production to mass production, and accelerated the shift towards capitalism.

2. Electrification, allowing for light and machines for more efficient production lines. Phones for instant long distance communication. It allowed for much faster transfer of information and speed of production in factories.

3. Computing. The Space Age. Computing was introduced for industrial applications in the 50s, meaning previously problems that needed a specific machine engineered to solve them could now be solved in software by writing code, and certain problems would have been too big to solve without computing. Legend has it, Turing convinced the UK government to fund the building of the first computer by promising it could run chemical simulations to improve plastic production. Later, the introduction of home computing and the internet drastically affecting people's lives and their ability to access information.

That's fine, I will give him that. To me, they all represent changes in the means of production and the flow of information, but the Fourth Industrial revolution, Schwab argues, is how the technology of the 21st century is going to revolutionize business and capitalism, the way the first three did before. The technology in question being AI, Blockchain, IoT, and Big Data analytics. Buzzword, Buzzword, Buzzword.

The kicker though? Schwab based the Fourth Industrial revolution on a series of meetings he had, and did not construct it with any academic rigor or evidence. The meetings were with "numerous conversations I have had with business, government and civil society leaders, as well as technology pioneers and young people." (P.10 of the book) Despite apparently having two phds so presumably being capable of research, it seems like he just had a bunch of meetings where the techbros of the mid 2010s fed him a bunch of buzzwords, and got overly excited and wrote a book about it. And now, a generation of academics and researchers have uncritically taken that book as read, filled the business studies academic literature with the idea that these technologies are inevitably the future, and now that is permeating into the wider business ecosystem.

There are plenty of criticisms out there about the fourth industrial revolution as an idea, but I will just give the simplest one that I thought immediately as soon as I heard about the idea. How are any of the technologies listed in the fourth industrial revolution categorically different from computing? Are they actually changing the means of production and flow of information to a comparable degree to the previous revolutions, to such an extent as to be considered a new revolution entirely? The previous so called industrial revolutions were all huge paradigm shifts, and I do not see how a few new weird, questionable, and unreliable applications of computing count as a new paradigm shift.

What benefits will these new technologies actually bring? Who will they benefit? Do the researchers know? Does Schwab know? Does anyone know? I certainly don't, and despite reading a bunch of papers that are treating it as the inevitable future, I have not seen them offering any explanation.

There are plenty of other criticisms, and I found a nice summary from ICT Works here, it is a revolutionary view of history, an elite view of history, is based in great man theory, and most importantly, the fourth industrial revolution is a self fulfilling prophecy. One rich asshole wrote a book about some tech he got excited about, and now a generation are trying to build the world around it. The future is not fixed, we do not need to accept these technologies, and I have to believe a better technological world is possible instead of this capitalist infinite growth tech economy as big tech reckons with its midlife crisis, and how to make the internet sustainable as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, the most monopolistic and despotic tech companies in the world, are running out of new innovations and new markets to monopolize. The reason the big five are jumping on the fourth industrial revolution buzzwords as hard as they are is because they have run out of real, tangible innovations, and therefore run out of potential to grow.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Titan’s mysterious wobbling atmosphere

The puzzling behaviour of Titan’s atmosphere has been revealed by researchers at the University of Bristol for the first time.

By analysing data from the Cassini-Huygens mission, a joint venture between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency, the team have shown that the thick, hazy atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon doesn’t spin in line with its surface, but instead wobbles like a gyroscope, shifting with the seasons.

Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a significant atmosphere, and one that has long captivated planetary scientists. Now, after 13 years of thermal infrared observations from Cassini, researchers have tracked how Titan’s atmosphere tilts and shifts over time.

“The behaviour of Titan’s atmospheric tilt is very strange!” said Lucy Wright, lead author and postdoctoral researcher at Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences. “Titan’s atmosphere appears to be acting like a gyroscope, stabilising itself in space.

“We think some event in the past may have knocked the atmosphere off its spin axis, causing it to wobble.

“Even more intriguingly, we’ve found that the size of this tilt changes with Titan’s seasons.”

The team studied the symmetry of Titan’s atmospheric temperature field and found that it isn’t centred exactly on the pole, as expected. Instead, it shifts over time, in step with Titan’s long seasonal cycle—each year on Titan lasts nearly 30 years on Earth.

Professor Nick Teanby, co-author and planetary scientist at Bristol said: “What’s puzzling is how the tilt direction remains fixed in space, rather than being influenced by the Sun or Saturn.

“That would’ve given us clues to the cause. Instead, we’ve got a new mystery on our hands.”

This discovery will impact NASA’s upcoming Dragonfly mission, a drone-like rotorcraft scheduled to arrive at Titan in the 2030s. As Dragonfly descends through the atmosphere, it will be carried by Titan’s fast-moving winds—winds that are about 20 times faster than the rotation of the surface.

Understanding how the atmosphere wobbles with the seasons is crucial for calculating the landing trajectory of Dragonfly. The tilt affects how the payload will be carried through the air, so this research can help engineers better predict where it will touch down.

Dr Conor Nixon, planetary scientist at NASA Goddard and co-author of the study, added: “Our work shows that there are still remarkable discoveries to be made in Cassini’s archive.

“This instrument, partly built in the UK, journeyed across the Solar System and continues to give us valuable scientific returns.

“The fact that Titan’s atmosphere behaves like a spinning top disconnected from its surface raises fascinating questions—not just for Titan, but for understanding atmospheric physics more broadly, including on Earth.”

The team’s findings contribute to a growing body of research suggesting Titan is not just Earth-like in appearance but an alien world with climate systems all its own, and many secrets still hidden beneath its golden haze.

TOP IMAGE: Purple haze around Titan – A false-colour image of Titan captured in 2004 by the Cassini spacecraft. The purple haze shows the dense atmosphere enveloping the moon’s golden body. Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

LOWER IMAGE: The wobble of Titan’s atmosphere. The atmosphere is tilted relative to Titan’s solid body, and this tilt varies in size and direction Credit Titan image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Diagram by Lucy Wright

[duskofastraeus]

Reading Week Study Plan 4th-10th of November {For those that do not study in the UK, reading week is basically a week in the middle of the semester without any lectures, dedicated for students to revise previous content from the last weeks of classes and to relax from constant lectures and seminars!} Here is a general list of what I will be doing (crossed = done):

Vector Calculus:

Re-do all weekly tests Re-do all exercise sheets Re-do all assignments Finish all Springer exercises

Optics:

Re-do all assignments Re-do all exercise chapters Revise all notes and problem classes

Quantum Mechanics:

Re-do all exercises Re-do all assignments Revise all material and assigned reading

Thermodynamics:

Re-do all assignments Re-do all assigned exercises Revise all material Make notes of lectures playlist

Philosophy of Science:

Finished all of Kuhn's readings Finished all of Popper's readings Start planning and structuring arguments

Additional work:

Finish occupational report and CV analysis Finish scientific computation report Finish Data Ethics Frameworks project

{My aim is to at least partially check this entire list. I have spent the last two days working solely on reports and projects and have deprived the revision of my module s' materials and preparation for exams. I wish all of those studying in the UK, a relaxing and productive reading week!}

[mariacallous]

AI-infused search engines from Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity have been surfacing deeply racist and widely debunked research promoting race science and the idea that white people are genetically superior to nonwhite people.

Patrik Hermansson, a researcher with UK-based anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, was in the middle of a months-long investigation into the resurgent race science movement when he needed to find out more information about a debunked dataset that claims IQ scores can be used to prove the superiority of the white race.

He was investigating the Human Diversity Foundation, a race science company funded by Andrew Conru, the US tech billionaire who founded Adult Friend Finder. The group, founded in 2022, was the successor to the Pioneer Fund, a group founded by US Nazi sympathizers in 1937 with the aim of promoting “race betterment” and “race realism.”

Hermansson logged in to Google and began looking up results for the IQs of different nations. When he typed in “Pakistan IQ,” rather than getting a typical list of links, Hermansson was presented with Google’s AI-powered Overviews tool, which, confusingly to him, was on by default. It gave him a definitive answer of 80.

When he typed in “Sierra Leone IQ,” Google’s AI tool was even more specific: 45.07. The result for “Kenya IQ” was equally exact: 75.2.

Hermansson immediately recognized the numbers being fed back to him. They were being taken directly from the very study he was trying to debunk, published by one of the leaders of the movement that he was working to expose.

The results Google was serving up came from a dataset published by Richard Lynn, a University of Ulster professor who died in 2023 and was president of the Pioneer Fund for two decades.

“His influence was massive. He was the superstar and the guiding light of that movement up until his death. Almost to the very end of his life, he was a core leader of it,” Hermansson says.

A WIRED investigation confirmed Hermanssons’s findings and discovered that other AI-infused search engines—Microsoft’s Copilot and Perplexity—are also referencing Lynn’s work when queried about IQ scores in various countries. While Lynn’s flawed research has long been used by far-right extremists, white supremacists, and proponents of eugenics as evidence that the white race is superior genetically and intellectually from nonwhite races, experts now worry that its promotion through AI could help radicalize others.

“Unquestioning use of these ‘statistics’ is deeply problematic,” Rebecca Sear, director of the Center for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University London, tells WIRED. “Use of these data therefore not only spreads disinformation but also helps the political project of scientific racism—the misuse of science to promote the idea that racial hierarchies and inequalities are natural and inevitable.”

To back up her claim, Sear pointed out that Lynn’s research was cited by the white supremacist who committed the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, in 2022.

Google’s AI Overviews were launched earlier this year as part of the company’s effort to revamp its all-powerful search tool for an online world being reshaped by artificial intelligence. For some search queries, the tool, which is only available in certain countries right now, gives an AI-generated summary of its findings. The tool pulls the information from the internet and gives users the answers to queries without needing to click on a link.

The AI Overview answer does not always immediately say where the information is coming from, but after complaints from people about how it showed no articles, Google now puts the title for one of the links to the right of the AI summary. AI Overviews have already run into a number of issues since launching in May, forcing Google to admit it had botched the heavily-hyped rollout. AI Overviews is turned on by default for search results, and can’t be removed without restoring to installing third-party extensions. (“I haven't enabled it, but it was enabled,” Hermansson, the researcher, tells WIRED. “I don't know how that happened.”)

In the case of the IQ results, Google referred to a variety of sources, including posts on X, Facebook, and a number of obscure listicle websites, including World Population Review. In nearly all of these cases, when you click through to the source, the trail leads back to Lynn’s infamous dataset. (In some cases, while the exact numbers Lynn published are referenced, the websites do not cite Lynn as the source.)

When querying Google’s Gemini AI chatbot directly using the same terms, it provided a much more nuanced response. “It's important to approach discussions about national IQ scores with caution,” read text that the chatbot generated in response to the query “Pakistan IQ.” The text continued: “IQ tests are designed primarily for Western cultures and can be biased against individuals from different backgrounds.”

Google tells WIRED that its systems weren’t working as intended in this case and that it is looking at ways it can improve.

“We have guardrails and policies in place to protect against low quality responses, and when we find Overviews that don’t align with our policies, we quickly take action against them,” Ned Adriance, a Google spokesperson, tells WIRED. “These Overviews violated our policies and have been removed. Our goal is for AI Overviews to provide links to high quality content so that people can click through to learn more, but for some queries there may not be a lot of high quality web content available.”

While WIRED’s tests suggest AI Overviews have now been switched off for queries about national IQs, the results still amplify the incorrect figures from Lynn’s work in what’s called a “featured snippet,” which displays some of the text from a website before the link.

Google did not respond to a question about this update.

But it’s not just Google promoting these dangerous theories. When WIRED put the same query to other AI-powered online search services, we found similar results.

Perplexity, an AI search company that has been found to make things up out of thin air, responded to a query about “Pakistan IQ” by stating that “the average IQ in Pakistan has been reported to vary significantly depending on the source.”

It then lists a number of sources, including a Reddit thread that relied on Lynn’s research and the same World Population Review site that Google’s AI Overview referenced. When asked for Sierra Leone’s IQ, the Perplexity directly cited Lynn’s figure: “Sierra Leone's average IQ is reported to be 45.07, ranking it among the lowest globally.”

Perplexity did not respond to a request for comment.

Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot, which is integrated into its Bing search engine, generated confident text—“The average IQ in Pakistan is reported to be around 80”—citing a website called IQ International, which does not reference its sources. When asked for “Sierra Leone IQ,” Copilot’s response said it was 91. The source linked in the results was a website called Brainstats.com, which references Lynn’s work. Copilot also referenced Brainstats.com work when queried about IQ in Kenya

“Copilot answers questions by distilling information from multiple web sources into a single response,” Caitlin Roulston, a Microsoft spokesperson, tells WIRED. “Copilot provides linked citations so the user can further explore and research as they would with traditional search.”

Google added that part of the problem it faces in generating AI Overviews is that, for some very specific queries, there’s an absence of high quality information on the web—and there’s little doubt that Lynn’s work is not of high quality.

“The science underlying Lynn’s database of ‘national IQs’ is of such poor quality that it is difficult to believe the database is anything but fraudulent,” Sear said. “Lynn has never described his methodology for selecting samples into the database; many nations have IQs estimated from absurdly small and unrepresentative samples.”

Sear points to Lynn’s estimation of the IQ of Angola being based on information from just 19 people and that of Eritrea being based on samples of children living in orphanages.

“The problem with it is that the data Lynn used to generate this dataset is just bullshit, and it's bullshit in multiple dimensions,” Rutherford said, pointing out that the Somali figure in Lynn’s dataset is based on one sample of refugees aged between 8 and 18 who were tested in a Kenyan refugee camp. He adds that the Botswana score is based on a single sample of 104 Tswana-speaking high school students aged between 7 and 20 who were tested in English.

Critics of the use of national IQ tests to promote the idea of racial superiority point out not only that the quality of the samples being collected is weak, but also that the tests themselves are typically designed for Western audiences, and so are biased before they are even administered.

“There is evidence that Lynn systematically biased the database by preferentially including samples with low IQs, while excluding those with higher IQs, for African nations,” Sears added, a conclusion backed up by a preprint study from 2020.

Lynn published various versions of his national IQ dataset over the course of decades, the most recent of which, called “The Intelligence of Nations,” was published in 2019. Over the years, Lynn’s flawed work has been used by far-right and racist groups as evidence to back up claims of white superiority. The data has also been turned into a color-coded map of the world, showing sub-Saharan African countries with purportedly low IQ colored red compared to the Western nations, which are colored blue.

“This is a data visualization that you see all over [X, formerly known as Twitter], all over social media—and if you spend a lot of time in racist hangouts on the web, you just see this as an argument by racists who say, ‘Look at the data. Look at the map,’” Rutherford says.

But the blame, Rutherford believes, does not lie with the AI systems alone, but also with a scientific community that has been uncritically citing Lynn’s work for years.

“It's actually not surprising [that AI systems are quoting it] because Lynn's work in IQ has been accepted pretty unquestioningly from a huge area of academia, and if you look at the number of times his national IQ databases have been cited in academic works, it's in the hundreds,” Rutherford said. “So the fault isn't with AI. The fault is with academia.”

[darkmaga-returns]

Norway has issued a chilling alert to the rest of the world after the nation’s leading scientists exposed a cover-up of data linking a global surge in excess deaths to Covid mRNA “vaccines.”

A group of Norwegian scientists is sounding the alarm after a major study of international mortality data exposed a global cover-up of excess deaths among the “vaccinated.”

While the link between deaths and Covid shots is not new, the researchers found evidence that reporting on the official data had been manipulated to hide the link to the injections.

They uncovered previously unreported data showing that excess deaths skyrocketed among the Covid-vaxxed.

In addition, the scientists found that previous studies showing high mortality rates among the unvaccinated had selectively used data for unhealthy cohorts.

This manipulation sought to suggest to the public that people who refused to get vaccinated were dying.

The team behind the study was led by Professor Jarle Aarstad of the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.

The study analyzed the UK government’s official Office for National Statistics (ONS) data for all-cause mortality among Covid-vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens ten years and older.

The researchers note that the data for England is typical for most other Western nations, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and the rest of Europe, as the same “vaccines” and similar pandemic protocols were deployed.

[sngl-led-auto-lights]

Why don’t governments ban white headlights for cars and bikes as the vehicle moving in the opposite direction finds it difficult to drive due to the upcoming vehicle with white headlights?

Governments won’t ban white headlights outright because color temperature itself isn’t the primary cause of glare – instead, regulations focus on beam intensity, alignment, and technology to balance visibility and safety. Here’s why bans aren’t the solution, and how modern standards address glare:

Why white light isn’t banned

Human vision science:

White light (4,000-6,500K) simulates daylight, which improves object recognition and reduces eye fatigue compared to yellow light (3,000K).

Example: EU regulations mandate white headlights (≥ 4,000K) for better peripheral vision.

Efficiency: White LED/HID produces 3-5 times more usable light than halogen lamps at lower energy consumption.

Regulatory standards: Global regulations (e.g., UNECE, FMVSS) allow white headlights, but strictly limit glare through:

Beam cutoff angle (e.g., low beam must remain below the horizon).

Maximum intensity cap (e.g. EU low beam max intensity capped at 1,500 lumens).

The real culprits of glare

Problem Cause Solution Misaligned beam Crash, accident or improper installation Alignment check mandatory during inspection. Aftermarket kit too bright Illegal for 10,000K LED/HID lamps exceeding 2,5000 lumens Fines for non-compliant bulbs (e.g. US DOT fines up to $1,000). Dirty/cloudy lenses Scattered light from oxidized plastics Enforcement of lens clarity standards (e.g. UK MOT test). Tall vehicles (SUV/trucks) beam directly into the rearview mirror, beam angle can be adjusted based on height.

How regulations address glare without banning white light

Adaptive headlights (ADB/AHS):

Use cameras/sensors to dim the portion of the beam that could dazzle oncoming vehicles (e.g. Mercedes’ digital lighting system). Auto-leveling:

Headlights adjust tilt based on vehicle load/terrain (mandatory for HID/LED headlights in the EU since 2006). Color temperature cap:

Some countries limit bulb color temperature to ≤6500K (e.g., India’s ARAI regulations) to avoid bluish glare. Tighter enforcement:

US: NHTSA tests for “blinding glare” in FMVSS 108.

EU: UNECE R112 mandates “sharp-cutoff” low beams.

Why banning white light is counterproductive

Safety tradeoff: Yellow light (3000K) reduces glare but reduces visibility by 20-30%, increasing nighttime collision risk.

Technology neutrality: Regulations focus on performance, not color. Banning white light would stifle innovations like laser headlights.

Real data: IIHS study shows that well-designed LED headlights can reduce nighttime crashes by 19%—glare problems stem from misuse, not the technology itself.

What drivers can do

Report illegal lights: Submit photos/videos of vehicles with glaring headlights to police (cite specific law, e.g., California’s CVC §25950).

Choose compliant bulbs: Look for DOT/ECE markings (e.g., OSRAM Night Breaker 200%: 4200K, ECE certified).

Adjust beams: Use a 25-foot wall to set low beams 2-4 inches lower than headlights.

The future: Smarter headlights Matrix LEDs (Audi, BMW): Black out individual pixels to avoid dazzling drivers.

V2X communications: Cars signal each other to pre-dim beams.

Summary: Glare issues can be solved with smart design and execution, not color bans. If your government lacks glare regulations, advocate for adoption of UNECE/FMVSS standards. Better engineering, not less light, is the solution. 🔧💡

[thoughtlessarse]

Far-right populists are significantly more likely to spread fake news on social media than politicians from mainstream or far-left parties, according to a study which argues that amplifying misinformation is now part and parcel of radical right strategy. “Radical right populists are using misinformation as a tool to destabilise democracies and gain political advantage,” said Petter Törnberg of the University of Amsterdam, a co-author of the study with Juliana Chueri of the Dutch capital’s Free University. “The findings underscore the urgent need for policymakers, researchers, and the public to understand and address the intertwined dynamics of misinformation and radical right populism,” Törnberg added. The research draws on every tweet posted between 2017 and 2022 by every member of parliament with a Twitter (now X) account in 26 countries: 17 EU members including Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, but also the UK, US and Australia. It then compared that dataset – 32m tweets from 8,198 MPs – with international political science databases containing detailed information on the parties involved, such as their position on the left-right spectrum and their degree of populism. Finally, the researchers scraped factchecking and fake news-tracking services to build a dataset of 646,058 URLs, each with an associated “factuality rating” based on the reliability of its source – and compared that data with the 18m URLs shared by the MPs. By crunching all the different datasets together, the researchers were able to create what they described as an aggregate “factuality score” for each politician and each party, based on the links that MPs had shared on Twitter. The data showed conclusively that far-right populism was “the strongest determinant for the propensity to spread misinformation”, they concluded, with MPs from centre-right, centre-left and far-left populist parties “not linked” to the practice.

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It's the only way they can win, i.e. by telling lies.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

Not covid specific, but good to remember: Masking and other airborne disease prevention keeps you from getting other diseases like the flu too. Covid's not the only threat to your long-term health out there.

By Felicity Nelson

A study of around 500,000 medical records suggested that severe viral infections like encephalitis and pneumonia increase the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Researchers found 22 connections between viral infections and neurodegenerative conditions in the study of around 450,000 people.

People treated for a type of inflammation of the brain called viral encephalitis were 31 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. (For every 406 viral encephalitis cases, 24 went on to develop Alzheimer's disease – around 6 percent.)

Those who were hospitalized with pneumonia after catching the flu seemed to be more susceptible to Alzheimer's disease, dementia, Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Intestinal infections and meningitis (both often caused by a virus), as well as the varicella-zoster virus, which causes shingles, were also implicated in the development of several neurodegenerative diseases.

The impact of viral infections on the brain persisted for up to 15 years in some cases. And there were no instances where exposure to viruses was protective.

Around 80 percent of the viruses implicated in brain diseases were considered 'neurotrophic', which means they could cross the blood-brain barrier.

"Strikingly, vaccines are currently available for some of these viruses, including influenza, shingles (varicella-zoster), and pneumonia," the researchers wrote in their paper published last year.

"Although vaccines do not prevent all cases of illness, they are known to dramatically reduce hospitalization rates. This evidence suggests that vaccination may mitigate some risk of developing neurodegenerative disease."

In 2022, a study of more than 10 million people linked the Epstein-Barr virus with a 32-fold increased risk of multiple sclerosis.

"After reading [this] study, we realized that for years scientists had been searching – one-by-one – for links between an individual neurodegenerative disorder and a specific virus," said senior author Michael Nalls, a neurogeneticist at the National Institute on Aging in the US.

"That's when we decided to try a different, more data science-based approach," he said. "By using medical records, we were able to systematically search for all possible links in one shot."

First, the researchers analyzed the medical records of around 35,000 Finns with six different types of neurodegenerative diseases and compared this against a group of 310,000 controls who did not have a brain disease.

This analysis yielded 45 links between viral exposure and neurodegenerative diseases, and this was narrowed down to 22 links in a subsequent analysis of 100,000 medical records from the UK Biobank.

While this retrospective observational study cannot demonstrate a causal link, it adds to the pile of research hinting at the role of viruses in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

"Neurodegenerative disorders are a collection of diseases for which there are very few effective treatments and many risk factors," said co-author Andrew Singleton, a neurogeneticist and Alzheimer's researcher and the director of the Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias.

"Our results support the idea that viral infections and related inflammation in the nervous system may be common – and possibly avoidable – risk factors for these types of disorders."

This study was published in Neuron.

Study link: www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)01147-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0896627322011473%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

[wayti-blog]

"For the first time, scientists have taken near-daily measurements of the sun's global coronal magnetic field, a region of the sun that has only been observed irregularly in the past. The resulting observations are providing valuable insights into the processes that drive the intense solar storms that impact fundamental technologies, and thus lives and livelihoods, here on Earth.

An analysis of the data, collected over eight months by an instrument called the Upgraded Coronal Multi-channel Polarimeter (UCoMP), has been published in Science."

""Global mapping of the coronal magnetic field has been a big missing part in the study of the sun," said Zihao Yang, lead author who pursued this research as a Ph.D. graduate at Peking University, China, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR).

"This research is helping us fill a crucial gap in our understanding of coronal magnetic fields, which are the source of the energy for storms that can impact Earth."

The international team is made of researchers from Northumbria University, UK; NSF NCAR; Peking University, China; and University of Michigan. The UCoMP instrument and is operated by NSF NCAR at the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory."

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