Bouquet #2: Eclectic Mind Food (AI Poetry, Aliens, Doomsday Seeds, Addiction Genes, Love & Neurons)

1. Poetry and AI

Now AI systems can generate - as in create - and not just search for poems!  All of those constraints, plus the linguistic choices and styles of individual writers, collectively yield the actual text produced by human writers — which accumulates as electronic data available for AI systems.

Can AI Write Authentic Poetry?

Cognitive psychologist and poet Keith Holyoak explores whether artificial intelligence could ever achieve poetic authenticity.

The MIT Press ReaderThe MIT Press Reader

2. The love for Aliens!

Humans have one big question that seems to have remained unanswered for scientists - whether were alone in the Universe?

As of now, only Earth shows definitive signs of life past or present. Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets over the past 30 years, identifying many Earth-sized, potentially inhabited worlds among them. Still, none of them have revealed themselves as actually inhabited, although the prospects for finding extraterrestrial life in the near future are tantalizing. And finally, the scientists have begun searching directly for any signals from space that might indicate the presence of an intelligent, technologically advanced civilization, through endeavors such as SETI the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and Breakthrough Listen.

Why scientists can’t give up the hunt for alien life

There will always be “wolf-criers” whose claims wither under scrutiny. But aliens are certainly out there, if science dares to find them.

Big ThinkEthan Siegel

3. Doomsday Seed Banks

In the event of a doomsday agricultural crisis in the driest environments of the world, how will humanity recover?   The seed bank in Morocco.  Seeds from this bank will be used to restock the harvests.  Located in the university hub of Irfane in Rabat, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, or ICARDA, hosts the largest collection of seeds in North Africa.  76 institutions with seeds from 223 different countries and territories have made deposits in the vault. The largest number of seeds come from India at 95 million.

What Seeds are in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault?

Looking out the back door of Svalbarði’s headquarters we can see the famous Svalbard Global Seed Vault right up the hill. Few people know what seeds are actually inside, so we decided to find out the facts by combing through operator NordGen’s detailed Seed Portal database of the 642 million seeds i…

Svalbarði Polar Iceberg WaterSvalbarði Blogger

Moroccan vault protects seeds from climate change and war

Should a doomsday agricultural crisis hit the world’s driest environments, scientists and farmers will turn to an up-and-coming research center and seed bank in Morocco to restock their harvests.

Phys.orgSamia Errazzouki

4. Genes and Addiction to Smoking and Alcohol

Scientists have identified nearly 4000 thousand genetic variants that may predispose people to alcohol and tobacco use, according to a study in in Nature.  A person’s smoking and drinking habits may be influenced by their environment, as well as their genetic makeup, research suggests.

Study of Millions Finds Genetic Links to Smoking and Drinking

In the largest study of its kind, scientists find nearly 4,000 genetic variants that may predispose people to alcohol and tobacco use behaviors.

The Scientist MagazineKatherine Irving

5. Beauty, Neurons, Brains and Love

Neuroscientist Robert Desimone, the director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, is researching on what it takes to predict whether two people are going to fall in love or not.

I asked Desimone if he thought that brain scientists of the future might be able to predict whether two people would someday fall in love, given a full readout of their neurons. Desimone replied with a boyish grin: “I’m a reductionist. So yes,” he told me. He allowed that, at the moment, our models are only probabilistic. They would say, “There’s a 70 percent probability you’ll fall in love with Mary, and a 40 percent chance you’ll fall in love with Alice.”

The Transcendent Brain

Humans are evolutionarily drawn to beauty. How do such complex experiences emerge from a collection of atoms and molecules?

The AtlanticAlan Lightman

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