Population dynamics at work on a global scale

 This is an interesting report from NPR about the birth rates in the US and all over the world. Women and families are having fewer babies than they were decades ago, with more and more families making the conscious decision to not have babies. This is beginning to create significant changes in global population projections, but more immediately this is affecting economies and national planning around the world. Most significantly, here in the US, as well as China, many European countries, and elsewhere, there are not enough young workers to help the rapidly increasing number of elderly people. The big question is, is this sustainable? More and more countries and states are now below the replacement rate for sustaining a stable and growing economy, which will cause disruptions in nations. Another question is how will this affect future climate models and change the predicted global demographics, which then affect the future course of the human race?

These are important questions, and mix in with the questions being faced with the advent of AI, advanced robotics, and climate change. This is an inflection point in human history, with an unknown pathway ahead of us. 

Interested in Climate Change? Can see some data in this report

 This is a recently published report showing evidence of climate change and global warming. Check it out if interested; it is always a good idea to actually see why scientists have been predicting and measuring climate change, induced by humans, since the late 1960s, when oil companies of all entities developed the first climate models. 

SHARE THIS: **THIS GETS TO THE HEART OF WHY WE MUST HAVE ETHICAL & REGULATIORY POLICIES FOR AI**

 Although this develops a very dark, maddening, and scary scenario for the future of humanity, it is the reality of our time that AI, and the quest of a handful of companies to "win the race" of AI dominance, is leading us down a potentially ridiculous pathway that limits human beings in what they will be able to do, and how one will be able to find purpose in life. 

This conversation between Jon Stewart and Tristan Harris is worth the watch - although terrifying, it is something we all should see, think about, debate, and take action by telling our representatives to actually WAKE UP and DO SOMETHING about developing guidelines, policies, regulations, and laws about what we want to happen with AI (and its integration into robotics and quantum computing). This will not be easy because it will fly in the face of what the AI Tech leaders want, who are all Mega-wealthy and powerful and integrated into the political world already, BUT WE HAVE TO TRY to build in something that still allows human beings to have purpose in this world. 

Keep in mind that just a few days prior to this post, Amazon announced it will be reducing its workforce by as much as 600,000 (one-third of its present workforce) by 2033, as they will be replaced by robots; they plan on automating 75% of its operations. This is happening in the present, and is no longer just a 'sci-fi' type possibility. 

Do humans really have an 'aura'? Yeah, sort of!

 Here's an interesting article about how your body, in some of the normal chemical reactions that occur every single day of your life internally, can create bio-photons that are emitted. This is a 'glow' that exists in and around your body, kind of like the classic notion of a human aura! We also know there are small electromagnetic fields that exist, since our bodies have electro-chemical signals zipping around our nervous and muscular systems. Pretty cool idea! 

Why did 'matter' win out over 'antimatter' after the Big Bang? In other words, why are we here?!

 New research out of the big particle accelerator in Europe (CERN) is the first to show something called CP violation in the class of particles that include the proton and neutron - baryons. Baryons are particles that are made of combinations of 3 quarks; my students should know that protons are up-up-down and neutrons are up-down-down combinations, for example. 

CP violation is a phenomenon in particle physics that gets a little technical, but basically if differences in these 'symmetries' are found between what we call normal matter and antimatter (e.g. an antiproton has all the same properties of protons, only with a negative charge instead of positive), it can be a possible explanation for why matter won out over antimatter right after the Big Bang happened. 

This is also a good example of how science will never end, that there are always new things to explore and both big and small questions to try and answer by looking at Nature! Below is a representation of the Standard Model, and the particles responsible for the observable universe.

Online donations now being accepted through a GoFundMe site!

 The GoFundMe site for the EMPATHY Project is up and running. Please consider ANY amount, even something like $5 is around 8500 kwacha, and all of this adds up quickly to help multiple schools feed their children for the entire school year! Everything helps, and is appreciated by everyone involved! 

Also, the spring planting season is fast approaching in the southern hemisphere, so this is an ideal time to contribute funds to help purchase seed and fertilizer! For more information, check out the EMPATHY Project site. 

THANK YOU for your consideration! Below is a photo of a field of corn one of the schools owns and maintains, and the harvest is used to feed kids throughout the entire school year! We help support two dozen schools, and thousands of children. 

              

A Useful, Extensive website: Our World in Data

 Our World in Data is a really interesting, and never-ending, website where you can find legitimate data on just about anything imaginable - not necessarily science data, like for physics, but governmental, societal, global, health, and so many other areas and fields that are out there! All the sources of information are vetted and provided on everything this group does. This could be really useful for those who are doing historical and social science type research. 

For those looking for science data, a good starting point is on the CABS site: online datasets. 

"Writing is Thinking" - editorial about the importance of humans doing their own writing, NOT AIs

 Nature, one of the premier peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world, had an editorial in June that specifically calls for and encourages scientists to do the writing of their papers that are submitted for publication, rather than have AI engines do the bulk of the writing. 

When we write, numerous sections of our brain are active, meaning there is a deeper level of thinking, analysis, reflection, creativity, and synthesis happening than when we do other activities. Very little of these processes happen when we ask an AI to do this for us. The editors argue that science will take a step backwards should this become the common, accepted practice, because the level of real human thinking will step backwards. 

Students, this is an early wake-up call to you, and do not fall into the trap of allowing ChatGPT or any other AI platform do the bulk of your work for you...engage your brain, think deeply about things, be creative and innovate new ideas and products! We need to exercise our brains just like muscles, if we don't want to see diminishment of what our amazing brains are capable  of doing! 

Study about teen screen time addiction, and its effects on mental health

  A huge concern many of us have had regarding the amount of time teens are on screens (primarily cell phones), is the effect on things like attention and motivation and engagement in school, but also the effect on one's mental health in general. This article summarizes a recently published study of America's teens. 

For those interested in this from a research perspective, if you dig into the actual study and the surveys used, perhaps you can do your own study(ies) regarding screen time more locally, and work with math teachers to do a statistical analysis - is your own school consistent with national results or not? What steps can your school do to help students with screen addiction, both for the short- and long-term? How do results vary with age and grade level? By gender and race, or socioeconomic status? Be thinking about how you can take research that has been done by others and in other contexts, and then build on it to make it a little different and original...then experience the real scientific process as you dig into it! 

Interested in Computational Research work? The Wolfram HS Research Program is a wonderful resource!

 The Wolfram High School Science Research page, of course totally in the realm of computational science research, is magnificent for getting ideas from just about any field of STEM. Each project, listed since 2018, has code (Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha) and write-ups on the work. It is a wonderful inspiration for any high school student who is into coding and computational work! Well done!