Monday Links from the (Not Actually A) Lockdown vol. DCVIII

[NickFitz]

Another busy day here, but just time to cobble this lot together so you have something to read this afternoon

• Shipwrecked: A Shocking Tale of Love, Loss, and Survival in the Deep Blue Sea - ”Cavanagh began to relax, but then the boat rose over another wave, tilted hard, and never righted itself. Watching the dark waters of the Atlantic approach with terrifying speed through the window in front of him, Cavanagh braced for impact. An instant later, water shattered the window and began rushing into the boat. He jumped up from the floor with a single thought: He had to rouse Scaling from her bunkroom. He had to get everyone off the ship. The Trashman was going down.” People do this for fun, you know
• Computer Scientists Discover Limits of Major Research Algorithm - ”Many aspects of modern applied research rely on a crucial algorithm called gradient descent… despite this widespread usefulness, researchers have never fully understood which situations the algorithm struggles with most. Now, new work explains it, establishing that gradient descent, at heart, tackles a fundamentally difficult computational problem.” The full paper is available on Arxiv
• Seeing stars born at the dawn of the Universe - ”Astronomers have found six galaxies that look to be at the thin hairy edge of the observable Universe, so far away that we see them not long after their very first stars were born — the cosmic dawn.” Gravitational lensing FTW!
• German chemists identified over 7,700 different chemical formulas in beers - ”Thanks to advanced analytical techniques, scientists continue to learn more about the many different chemical compounds that contribute to the flavor and aroma of different kinds of beer. The latest such analysis comes courtesy of a team of German scientists who analyzed over 400 commercial beers from 40 countries. The scientists identified at least 7,700 different chemical formulas and tens of thousands of unique molecules.” Another one with the full paper available: On the Trail of the German Purity Law: Distinguishing the Metabolic Signatures of Wheat, Corn and Rice in Beer
• The Dresden Job - ”When a rash of sensational museum robberies stunned Europe, police zeroed in on a fearsome crime family—and a flashy new generation of young outlaws. Joshua Hammer unravels the case of a billion-dollar jewel heist and the race to catch a brutally audacious band of thieves.”
• Researchers discover ancient ‘weapon-making site’ - beside the skeleton of ‘hunted’ woolly mammoth - Meanwhile - well, a couple of years ago - in Siberia: ”Evidence on Arctic island show how people 10,000 or more years ago carved sharp slices off tusks to use for killing and cutting.”
• A Chemical Hunger – Part I: Mysteries - This ongoing series examines the mysteries surrounding the epidemic of obesity in the modern world: ”The first mystery is the obesity epidemic itself. It’s hard for a modern person to appreciate just how thin we all were for most of human history… Between 1890 and 1976, people got a little heavier. The average BMI went from about 23 to about 26. This corresponds with rates of obesity going from about 3% to about 10%. The rate of obesity in most developed countries was steady at around 10% until 1980, when it suddenly began to rise.”
• I can't talk now, 'cos he's here: The true story of Peter Cook's Where Do I Sit? - Cook's 1971 chat show managed three episodes before the BBC cancelled it: ”He wanted to do something new, something different and something dangerous. He wanted to do live television, where anything could happen. He wanted to be funny but sometimes serious, he wanted to be free to improvise and also to feature certain pre-recorded sequences - and he wanted some interesting guests with whom he could chat and interact. What essentially he wanted to do, he told Mills, was to reinvent the television talk show.” Mary Whitehouse didn't like it, so it can't have been that bad
• Mecabricks Workshop - Design and share Lego creations right in your browser
• A Grand Day Out – Taking the Boris Bikes to Paris - Ten years ago yesterday, Ian Mansfield and friend took a couple of Boris Bikes (the ones from the London bicycle hire scheme instituted by Ken Livingstone) to Paris and back: ”Last year I won a couple of tickets to Paris on the Eurostar, and while a trip to Paris to see the tourist sights is very appealing, simply visiting the obvious and doing the obvious is hardly the sort of thing you would this particular writer to content himself with… A check of the Boris Bike T&C’s showed that while there is a limit of 24 hours for hiring a bike, and oddly a limit on letting no more than three other people use the bike, there is no geographical or mileage restrictions.”
  
  

Happy invoicing!

[OwlHoot]

Computer Scientists Discover Limits of Major Research Algorithm - ”Many aspects of modern applied research rely on a crucial algorithm called gradient descent… despite this widespread usefulness, researchers have never fully understood which situations the algorithm struggles with most. Now, new work explains it, establishing that gradient descent, at heart, tackles a fundamentally difficult computational problem.” The full paper is available on Arxiv

I find that pretty surprising, as I would have thought a well-posed gradient descent problem is just a matter of sampling a sufficiently large number of points at a high enough resolution to guarantee finding every "local" solution and the global solution(s), unless the problem has some kind of weird fractal-like landscape.

[*]A Chemical Hunger – Part I: Mysteries - This ongoing series examines the mysteries surrounding the epidemic of obesity in the modern world: [I]”The first mystery is the obesity epidemic itself. It’s hard for a modern person to appreciate just how thin we all were for most of human history… Between 1890 and 1976, people got a little heavier. The average BMI went from about 23 to about 26. This corresponds with rates of obesity going from about 3% to about 10%. The rate of obesity in most developed countries was steady at around 10% until 1980, when it suddenly began to rise.”

From High-fructose corn syrup :

In the United States, HFCS was widely used in food manufacturing from the 1970s through the early 21st century, primarily as a replacement for sucrose because its sweetness was similar to sucrose, it improved manufacturing quality, was easier to use, and was cheaper. Domestic production of HFCS increased from 2.2 million tons in 1980 to a peak of 9.5 million tons in 1999. ... Consumption of HFCS in the U.S. has declined since it peaked at 37.5 lb (17.0 kg) per person in 1999. The average American consumed approximately 22.1 lb (10.0 kg) of HFCS in 2018, versus 40.3 lb (18.3 kg) of refined cane and beet sugar.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Stone me, there's a lot of words in that Chemical Hunger thing.

PFAs, there's a surprise.

Won't have to worry much once all the males have changed gender due to the chemicals in drinking water.