Science

When faced with difficult choices, we often rank the alternatives to see how they stack up. This approach is ubiquitous, used from major business and policy decisions, through to personal choices such as the selection of a university course, place to live, or political voting preference.

Typically, criteria are identified and each one is “weighted” according to importance. The options are then scored against each criterion and the weightings applied. But this common approach is frequently flawed and not as rational as it first seems.

Fish are the most diverse group of vertebrates, ranging from tiny gobies and zebrafish to gigantic tunas and whale sharks. They provide vital sustenance to billions of people worldwide via fisheries and aquaculture, and are critical parts of aquatic ecosystems.

But fish around the world are getting smaller as their habitats get warmer. For example, important commercial fish species in the North Sea have declined in size by around 16% in the 40 years to 2008, while the water temperature increased by 1–2℃. This “shrinking” trend is forecasted to significantly exacerbate the impacts of global warming on marine ecosystems.

Scientists have used stem cells to create structures that resemble human embryos in the lab, in a first that has prompted calls for stricter regulation in the rapidly advancing field.

Several different labs around the world have released pre-print studies in the past seven days describing their research, which experts said should be treated with caution as the research has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Over the past eight years, I have been asked to submit astronomical evidence for court cases all over Australia.

Normally when we think of evidence in court, we think of eyewitnesses, DNA or police reports. Often, this evidence requires an expert to explain it – to be able to communicate the findings and data to the members of the court to make an informed decision. These experts are typically in medicine, engineering, psychology, or other fields.

“I made the line to pay for groceries.”

“He made a party to celebrate his son’s birthday.”

Researchers have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, according to media reports. Remarkably, these embryos have reportedly been created from embryonic stem cells, meaning they do not require sperm and ova.

This development, widely described as a breakthrough that could help scientists learn more about human development and genetic disorders, was revealed this week in Boston at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

The launch of ever-capable large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3.5 has sparked much interest over the past six months. However, trust in these models has waned as users have discovered they can make mistakes – and that, just like us, they aren’t perfect.

An LLM that outputs incorrect information is said to be “hallucinating”, and there is now a growing research effort towards minimizing this effect. But as we grapple with this task, it’s worth reflecting on our own capacity for bias and hallucination – and how this impacts the accuracy of the LLMs we create.

That matters to humans because the species act as managers of their marine ecosystems, maintaining delicately balanced food webs on which hundreds of millions of people rely.

The research, published in the journal Science, is the result of the Global FinPrint project, which collected more than 22,000 hours of video footage from reefs across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australasia and the Americas.