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One nest, dubbed the ‘Rokin nest’ after the canal it was found in, contained 635 bits of plastic. (Auke-Florian Hiemstra)
Researchers have unpicked a bird nest made of layers of plastic going back 30 years. The Eurasian coot (Fulica atra) nest was taken from an Amsterdam canal. The outer layers contained a dozen face masks from the pandemic and the base held a Mars bar wrapper promoting the 1994 FIFA World Cup. Usually, coots build a fresh nest every year; but in cities, “reusing the foundation of older plastic nests may save time, giving these birds more opportunities to forage or defend their territory”, suggests biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra, who led the work. “But all these face masks in their nests — our pandemic layer — are a dangerous trap for coots, with their chunky, dinosaur-like feet.”
From the 30-year-old expiration dates printed on some of the plastic pieces recovered from the nest, researchers believe it has been home to three generations of coot. (Menno Schilthuizen, Barbara Gravendeel, Auke‐Florian Hiemstra/Ecology)
Sticking to the current approach and technologies used to build and improve artificial-intelligence (AI) tools is unlikely to produce systems with human-level reasoning, say experts in the field. More than three-quarters of respondents to a survey said that enlarging AI systems probably won’t lead to what is known as artificial general intelligence (AGI) and it’s doubtful that the neural networks underpinning AI can match human intelligence by themselves. What’s more, less than one-quarter of respondents said that achieving AGI should be the core mission of the AI community.
Reference: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence survey results
A temporary blackout of PubMed — a US government-funded database of biomedical literature — over the weekend sent many researchers globally into a panic. The platform, which indexes more than 37 million articles, is an essential resource for researchers, health-care providers and students. Although the disruption does not seem to have been deliberate, and the service has since been restored, the episode highlights scientists’ reliance on the website and raises concerns about how they access essential scientific information should disruptions happen again.
China’s supreme court says research fraud should be severely punished and that lower courts should crack down on paper mills — businesses that churn out fraudulent or poor-quality manuscripts and sell authorships. Some researchers are cautiously optimistic that the court’s guidance will help curb the use of these services, while others think the impact will be minimal. “Paper mills are very popular in China and there is a very huge business” involving them, says Gengyan Tang, who studies research integrity in China.
Features & opinion
The appetite for electricity to power artificial intelligence (AI) systems is certainly growing, but by how much? And how much is too much? In the US state of Virginia — known as the data-centre capital of the world — communities are worried that facilities could drive up costs for residents and strain the area’s power infrastructure beyond its capacity. The same questions are being asked all over the world, and they have researchers struggling to answer. “The real problem is that we’re operating with very little detailed data and knowledge of what’s happening,” says Jonathan Koomey, who has studied the energy use of computing for more than 30 years. Companies are close-lipped about what they consume, and “nobody has any idea what data centres, either AI or conventional, will use even a few years from now”.
Source: HuggingFace AI Energy Score Leaderboard
“Communities that might be affected by research should be asked for input respectfully, early and often,” says Raeka Aiyar, who, in 2013, co-authored the first reported genome sequence of a HeLa cell line — and was unprepared for the backlash from the family of Henrietta Lacks, whose tumour sample was used to create HeLa cells in the 1950s without her knowledge. Aiyar is one of four health-equity specialists who share lessons about how to do research that engages under-represented people. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your scientific knowledge makes you an expert on everything, advises biomedical scientist Uma Palanisamy, who has developed an app to help Deaf Malaysians access healthcare. “The benefit is obvious: ensuring that the product, intervention or other outcome is useful in the real world.”
In her hit 2013 book, Braiding Sweetgrass, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, made the argument for bringing together knowledge from Western and Indigenous science. In The Serviceberry, she turns her microscope on the damaging disconnects between capitalist economics and the circular economy of nature. “What are the boundaries of the self?” she asks. “If we define the self to be just an individual and their material needs in the world, that’s one kind of economy… I want to say, “Oh, okay, what would an economy look like if we advanced self-interest when the self is expanded to our natural kinfolk?”
Today I’m enjoying a delicious glass of London tap water — one of my favourites — while I read about the best of the rest. At the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting festival, judges assess the taste and terroir of waters from still to sparkling — including seven-time ‘best municipal water the the world’ winner from the Clearbrook Waterworks District in Abbotsford, Canada. Lucky for me, being adjacent to my home town, I’ll be able to make a pilgrimage to an Abbotsford public drinking fountain soon enough.
While I stay hydrated, why not send us your feedback on this newsletter? Your e-mails are always welcome at [email protected].
Thanks for reading,
Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing
With contributions by Jacob Smith and Smriti Mallapaty
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