In a recent study by scientists at UC San Francisco, human accelerated regions (HARs) have been identified as crucial to the rapid evolution of human brain complexity, distinguishing us from our closest evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees. These regions, evolving 10 times faster than the typical mammalian rate, enable the formation of intricate neural networks, which support advanced cognitive functions.
Integrated Information Theory (IIT) challenges the dominant computational-functionalist paradigm by offering a consciousness-first approach. The article explores the conflict between these two paradigms and the scientific developments surrounding IIT.
AAAI survey finds that most respondents are sceptical that the technology underpinning large-language models is sufficient for artificial general intelligence.
"More than three-quarters of respondents said that enlarging current AI systems ― an approach that has been hugely successful in enhancing their performance over the past few years ― is unlikely to lead to what is known as artificial general intelligence (AGI). An even higher proportion said that neural networks, the fundamental technology behind generative AI, alone probably cannot match or surpass human intelligence. And the very pursuit of these capabilities also provokes scepticism: less than one-quarter of respondents said that achieving AGI should be the core mission of the AI research community.
- TabPFN is a novel foundation model designed for small- to medium-sized tabular datasets, with up to 10,000 samples and 500 features.
- It uses a transformer-based architecture and in-context learning (ICL) to outperform traditional gradient-boosted decision trees on these datasets.
Scientists are exploring the capabilities of the DeepSeek-R1 AI model, released by a Chinese firm. This open and cost-effective model performs comparably to industry leaders in solving mathematical and scientific problems. Researchers are leveraging its accessibility to create custom models for specific disciplines, although it still struggles with some tasks.
A study examining the impact of gut microbiome modulation via prebiotic supplementation on muscle function and cognitive performance in older adults, finding no significant improvement in muscle function but a beneficial effect on cognition.
The study investigates how well bacterial spores maintain their structural and morphological biosignatures after exposure to harsh conditions simulating the surfaces of Enceladus and Europa. It finds that spore structure remains resilient even after exposure to radiation and temperature extremes, suggesting that methods targeting cell morphology could be valuable for future life detection missions.
This study compares the incidence of acute kidney injury (AKI) following COVID-19 vaccination and infection using a large cohort study. Results show that AKI risk is significantly higher after COVID-19 infection compared to vaccination.
The study, published in npj Vaccines, compared the incidence of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) following COVID-19 vaccination and infection in a large cohort using data from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). The study included 6,570,021 adults, with 2,953,219 receiving vaccines and 3,616,802 contracting infection. The absolute 30-day risk of AKI was 0.66% in the vaccination group versus 4.88% in the infection group. After adjusting for confounders, COVID-19 infection was associated with a significantly higher risk of AKI than vaccination (aHR = 10.31, P < 0.001). The study validated the hypothesis that COVID-19 vaccination is associated with a lower AKI risk compared to infection. Secondary analyses across different phases of the pandemic, extended follow-up periods, and AKI measurement methods supported the primary findings.
Large language models (LLMs) are traditionally used online, but open-weights versions and smaller models are changing that, enabling researchers to run powerful AI tools locally for privacy, reproducibility, and cost-effectiveness.
The article provides examples of researchers using local models for various tasks, including:
- Summarizing scientific data and publications
- Generating training data for other models
- Transcribing and summarizing patient interviews
- Designing novel proteins
