Group items tagged

At particular sites, an itchy individual can attract the attention of the bluestreak cleaner wrasse—a slender fish, with blue and yellow markings and a prominent black stripe. On seeing these colors, the itchy “client” strikes a specific pose, allowing the wrasse to snake across its body, mouth, and gills, picking off parasites and dead skin along the way. The wrasse gets a meal. The client gets exfoliated. A single wrasse works for around four hours a day, and in that time, it can inspect more than 2,000 clients.

The wrasse are remarkably savvy about how they perform their services. Redouan Bshary, from the University of Neuchâtel, has shown that they sometimes cheat their clients by taking illicit bites of the protective mucus covering their skin. If the clients are watching, the wrasse restrain themselves from such shenanigans, in an effort to maintain their reputation. If disgruntled clients chase them, they try to make amends by offering a complementary fin massage. If high-status clients pop by—large, visiting predators like sharks or groupers—the cleaners prioritize them over smaller fish that live in the area. They’re surprisingly intelligent for fish.

And it seems that, by removing parasites, they also make other fish more intelligent.

A tidal wave of interest is building in farming the seas. It’s part of a global rush to exploit oceanic resources that’s been dubbed the “blue acceleration.” Optimistic projections say that smart mariculture – fish farming at sea – could increase ocean fish and shellfish production

We see far fewer technical, economic and resource constraints for freshwater aquaculture than for ocean farming, and far greater potential for land-based fish farms to contribute to global food security.

The most important species groups – carp, tilapia and catfish – are herbivorous or omnivorous, so they don’t need to eat animal protein to thrive.

The essence of philosophy is abstract reasoning – not because the philosopher is too lazy to attempt a more hands-on approach, but because the subjects at issue do not readily submit to it. If we could simply weigh the fish, we gladly would. In recent centuries, philosophers in fact have discovered how to weigh that allegorical fish, in various fields, and on each occasion a new discipline has been born: physics in the 17th century; chemistry in the 18th; biology in the 19th and psychology in the 20th.

The remaining problems of philosophy today concern issues like justice, morality, free will, knowledge and the origins of the universe. In dismissing philosophy as an antiquated relic of our prescientific past, the scientist is making a very large and dubious assumption: that the abstract methods of philosophy, despite the discipline’s string of successes over recent centuries, have nothing more to contribute to our developing understanding of the world

Philosophy today continues to rest, albeit somewhat precariously, at the center of human inquiry, continuous at one end with the sciences to which it gave rise, and at the other end with history and literature. Professional philosophers tend to crowd around the scientific end of that spectrum, busily looking for new ways to weigh their fish. But much of what gives philosophy its continuing fascination is its connection with the humanities. To weigh the fish is doubtless desirable, but there is just as much to be learned in understanding where that fish came from, and in telling stories about where it might go.

When she was a young physician, Dr. Martha Gulati noticed that many of her mentors were prescribing vitamin E and folic acid to patients. Preliminary studies in the early 1990s had linked both supplements to a lower risk of heart disease.She urged her father to pop the pills as well: “Dad, you should be on these vitamins, because every cardiologist is taking them or putting their patients on [them],” recalled Dr. Gulati, now chief of cardiology for the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix

But just a few years later, she found herself reversing course, after rigorous clinical trials found neither vitamin E nor folic acid supplements did anything to protect the heart. Even worse, studies linked high-dose vitamin E to a higher risk of heart failure, prostate cancer and death from any cause.

More than half of Americans take vitamin supplements, including 68 percent of those age 65 and older, according to a 2013 Gallup poll. Among older adults, 29 percent take four or more supplements of any kind

Unlike their American counterparts, material and supply shortages have forced some Brazilian burn centers to deviate from the standard medical practice which advocates for early skin grafts, instead being relegated to using traditional gauze-and-silver sulfadiazine cream dressings.

After undergoing a thorough cleaning process, the sterilized tilapia skins are applied directly to the wound.

Bangladesh is one of dozens of countries on the frontline of the climate emergency. Here global heating is no theoretical calamity of the future, but a very real, present danger.By 2050, it is predicted that one in seven people in the country will be displaced by climate breakdown. The sea level is projected to rise by 50cm over this time period and Bangladesh may lose approximately 11% of its land. Deadly storms are usually a question of when, not if.

For example, Mondal says that where once his peers would farm mainly rice, now they have taken to fishing. They use floating cages, allowing fish to breed in a secure area. Also, if water levels rise, the cages will too, so flooding is less of an issue.“About 20 to 30 years ago there would be a minimum of two crops per farming family but now because of waterlogging we have no more than one,” he says. Each cage is owned by one home and yields about 15,000 taka (£135) in additional income for the families a year. It’s also a consistent source of food, which could be vital if natural disaster hits. “In the last two years there was not too much rain but two years ago we were flooded,” Mondal says. “We worry about the future. If there is heavy rainfall the water could remain logged for a long period of time and we would have to take shelter on main road. We would stay there with our remaining belongings.”

As many as one million seabirds died at sea in less than 12 months in one of the largest mass die-offs in recorded history -- and researchers say warm ocean waters are to blame.

The birds, a fish-eating species called the common murre, were severely emaciated and appeared to have died of starvation between the summer of 2015 and the spring of 2016, washing up along North America's west coast, from California to Alaska.

The heat wave created the Blob -- a 1,000-mile (1,600 km) stretch of ocean that was warmed by 3 to 6 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 10.8 Fahrenheit). A high-pressure ridge calmed the ocean waters -- meaning heat stays in the water, without storms to help cool it down.

Adhering to the most extreme form of religious creationism, the exhibits "prove" that the Earth is only around 6,000 years old, and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.

Unfortunately, Nernberg just dug up a 60-million-year-old fish

Local outlets report that the man is far from shaken by the bony fish, which he found while excavating a basement in Calgary.

Analysis of the fossil record shows a mysterious mass extinction that decimated the diversity of sharks in the world’s oceans, and they’ve never fully recovered.

these events give scientists an intimate look at how life recovers after a cataclysm

This extinction event transpired in the world’s oceans and decimated shark populations

You probably know the broad outline of the story: 66 million years ago, a giant meteorite landed in what is now the Gulf of Mexico, and ended the dinosaurs. This year, various teams of scientists, working independently, helped fill in the picture of exactly what happened on that fateful day.

An exhaustive analysis of hundreds of bird species in the United States and Canada contained a warning: The majority of bird species are in decline, many by huge numbers. The likely culprits? Habitat loss and pesticides

Quantum computing had a big year. Google claimed to have reached a long-sought breakthrough called “quantum supremacy,” allowing computers to perform calculations at inconceivable speeds.

fish not only suffer from depression, they can be easily diagnosed.

fish depression can be induced by getting them “drunk” on ethanol, then cutting off the supply, resulting in withdrawal. These fish mope around the tank floor until they’re given antidepressants, at which point they begin happily swimming near the surface again.

About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study has found.

The magnitude of the diet’s benefits startled experts. The study ended early, after almost five years, because the results were so clear it was considered unethical to continue.

The diet helped those following it even though they did not lose weight

Theories of consciousness come from religion, from philosophy, from cognitive science, but not so much from evolutionary biology. Maybe that’s why so few theories have been able to tackle basic questions such as: What is the adaptive value of consciousness? When did it evolve and what animals have it?

The Attention Schema Theory (AST), developed over the past five years, may be able to answer those questions.

The theory suggests that consciousness arises as a solution to one of the most fundamental problems facing any nervous system: Too much information constantly flows in to be fully processed. The brain evolved increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for deeply processing a few select signals at the expense of others, and in the AST, consciousness is the ultimate result of that evolutionary sequence

In “That Sugar Film,” which first had its debut in Australia this year, Mr. Gameau gives up his normal diet of fresh foods for two months to see what happens when he shifts to eating a diet containing 40 teaspoons of sugar daily, the amount consumed by the average Australian

What was your diet like before the start of the film? A. I kept away from processed foods as much as I could. I’d have eggs for breakfast. I’d eat healthy fats like avocado, and I’d snack on nuts and a little cheese. I’d have lots of fruits and vegetables and protein sources like fish. I just tried to eat real foods, and I kept it really simple.

Mr. Gameau finds that his health and waistline quickly spiral out of control.

Fish argued that Watson “does not come within a million miles of replicating the achievements of everyday human action and thought.” In defending this claim, Fish invoked arguments that one of us (Dreyfus) articulated almost 40 years ago in “What Computers Can’t Do,” a criticism of 1960s and 1970s style artificial intelligence.

At the dawn of the AI era the dominant approach to creating intelligent systems was based on finding the right rules for the computer to follow.

GOFAI, for Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence.

Unprecedented Level of Human Harm to Sea Life Is Forecast

A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them.

A number of experts said the result was a remarkable synthesis, along with a nuanced and encouraging prognosis.

It’s been well established by now that the agricultural systems producing our food contribute at least one fifth of global anthropogenic carbon emissions—and up to a third if waste and transportation are factored in.

According to calculations conducted by the report’s 26 authors, bottom trawling is responsible for one gigaton of carbon emissions a year—a higher annual total than (pre-pandemic) aviation emissions.

measures how much each so-called “pixel” contributes to global marine biodiversity, fish stocks and climate protection, based on a complex analysis of location, water temperature, salinity and species distribution, among other factors. It also tracks how much CO2 each pixel is capable of absorbing as a carbon sink.

Most of the 360 or so North Atlantic right whales alive today bear scars from entanglements in fishing gear and collisions with speeding ships and, according to a new study, they are much smaller than they should be.

they are much smaller than they should be.

suggests that human-induced stressors, primarily entanglements, are stunting the growth of North Atlantic right whales, reducing their chances of reproductive success and increasing their chances of dying.

Before the advent of Caribbean genetic studies, archaeologists provided most of the clues about the origins of people in the region. The first human residents of the Caribbean appear to have lived mostly as hunter-gatherers, catching game on the islands and fishing at sea while also maintaining small gardens of crops.

Archaeologists have discovered a few burials of those ancient people. Starting in the early 2000s, geneticists managed to fish out a few tiny bits of preserved DNA in their bones. Significant advances in recent years have made it possible to pull entire genomes from ancient skeletons.

“We went from zero full genomes two years ago to over 200 now,”