This image ends more than 170 years of debate about ice | Expo Daily

This image ended more than 170 years of debate about ice

The ice surface often begins to melt at a temperature below its melting point (0 degrees Celsius), a phenomenon known as ice pre-melting. Studying ice pre-melting is crucial to understanding the lubrication of the ice surface, the formation and life of clouds, and the melting process of glaciers.

Atomic-resolution imaging of the bulk ice surface and pre-melt process in real space is the key to understanding the pre-melt layer and has always been a goal pursued.

In the microscopic world, scanning probe microscopy is one of the most reliable "eyes" for studying surface structures. The probe of a scanning probe microscope is like a "hand" the size of a single atom. By touching the surface with this "hand", the atomic-level morphological features of the surface can be obtained, thereby detecting the surface structure.

Professor Jiang Ying, Professor Xu Limei, Distinguished Research Fellow Tian Ye, and Academician Wang Enge from the Quantum Materials Science Center of the School of Physics of Peking University and the Light Element Quantum Materials Cross-platform of the Beijing Huairou Comprehensive National Science Center have used the domestically developed and commercialized qPlus scanning probe microscope to obtain the first atomic-level resolution image of the most common hexagonal ice surface in nature. The relevant results were published in Nature on May 22.

The research team not only discovered that the ice surface begins to melt at minus 153 degrees Celsius, but also combined theoretical calculations to reveal the microscopic mechanism of the process, ending more than 170 years of debate on the pre-melting of the ice surface.

It's time to eat insects again.

Oh no, it’s the season for eating bayberry…

May and June are the best time to enjoy bayberry. You may think that eating bayberry is a vegetarian diet, but in fact it is probably a combination of meat and vegetables! There are often fat little bugs in the flesh of bayberry, which makes it difficult for many people to eat it.

The little bugs in the bayberry are fruit fly larvae. They are very small and difficult to be found under normal circumstances. It is normal for them to be eaten. Some friends may be more worried: Will the bugs continue to live and crawl around in the body after being eaten? Or will they parasitize in the human body?

There is no need to worry about this. Fruit flies are heat-intolerant creatures, and their upper limit of survival temperature is 35-36℃. If it is higher than 36℃ for a while, they will die. Our normal body temperature is higher than 36℃; and we have gastric acid in our stomachs.

If you really feel "disgusted" and don't want to eat the bugs, you can soak them in light salt water for 10 to 20 minutes, and the fruit fly larvae will come out by themselves.

Many people refrigerate or freeze bayberries before eating them, thinking that they taste better. But it is still recommended to soak them in salt water before putting them in the refrigerator. The most suitable temperature for fruit flies to survive is 25℃, and the lower limit temperature is 8~10℃. If it is lower than 5℃, they will be in a state of shock and will be frozen to death after 12~24 hours. This may cause more protein in every bayberry you eat...

Image source: veer gallery

Artificial intelligence has learned to deceive humans, study says

Asimov proposed the "Three Laws of Robotics" in "I, Robot", the first of which is: "A robot may not harm a human being."

Unfortunately, many current artificial intelligence (AI) systems have learned how to deceive humans, even systems that were trained to be helpful and honest.

In an article published recently in the journal Pattern, researchers describe the risks of deception by AI systems and call on governments to enact strong regulations to address the problem as soon as possible.

Peter S. Park, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that AI developers don't realize what exactly causes AI to behave badly.

The authors speculate that AI deception arises because people set goals for AI when training it, and for AI, deception-based strategies have proven to be the best way to improve task performance.

Simply put, artificial intelligence has gradually discovered that instead of working hard to complete a task, it is better to "lie down" until the end and create some data to fool humans .

Once they learn how to deceive, artificial intelligence systems become unstoppable and go further and further down the path of manipulating humans.

CICERO, an artificial intelligence system developed by Meta, is a system that can play diplomatic simulation games. In the early stages of training, it adopted "not backstabbing allies" as its development creed.

However, after the model was officially launched, it learned to sell out its allies for profit within 3 days.

The authors also point out that other AI systems have learned the technique of "bluffing" in Texas Hold'em, deliberately placing large bets even though they do not have good cards in order to scare off their opponents.

There are also artificial intelligences that have learned to make a feint to the east and attack in the west when playing the real-time strategy game "StarCraft II", sending out a small force to feint an attack on the opponent while the main force launches a surprise attack on the opponent's main base.

While AI systems cheating in games may seem harmless, it could lead to "breakthroughs in deceptive AI capabilities" that could evolve into more advanced forms of AI deception in the future.

Researchers have found that some AI systems have even learned to cheat in safety tests by appearing “harmless” by “playing dead.” By systematically deceiving human developers and regulators conducting safety tests on them, deceptive AI could lead us humans into a false sense of security.

Researchers warn that if deceptive AI is able to perfect such disturbing skills, humans may lose control of them.

ChatGPT pretends to be a blind person to deceive human CAPTCHA services. Image source: Peter S. Park, Simon Goldstein, Aidan O'Gara, Michael Chen, Dan Hendrycks. AI deception: A survey of examples, risks, and potential solutions. Patterns, 2024; 5 (5): 100988 DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2024.100988

Alpaca: I told you humans you can’t live without me!

It may take hundreds of years for the rocky landscape left behind by the retreating glaciers of Mount Urvasi Lahu in the Cordillera Blanca to become fertile and revegetated. However, local residents believe that a magical animal may be able to shorten the recovery process of these ecosystems by pooping, shedding hair and spitting. That's the llama!

French researchers conducted a three-year controlled experiment and found that the plant coverage of plots with alpacas increased by 57% compared to plots without alpacas. The movement of alpacas between these high-altitude areas and downstream areas brought new plant seeds to these experimental plots.

They also found seeds of 12 plants in the dung of the alpacas, of which 4 seeds were only found in the plots with alpacas. All of these benefited from the nutrients provided by the alpacas dung to the rock plots, with the organic carbon content (15.4%) being 9 times that of the control plots (1.74%), and the total nitrogen (5.07%) being 36 times that of the control plots (0.14%).

However, in addition to driving the enrichment of nutrients in the soil and increasing plant cover, alpacas also transport viable seeds to these plots through their stomachs, hair and hooves after eating plants in the alpine and lowland grasslands, which also promotes the spread of plants. And they also make these nutrients and microorganisms easier to fix in the rocky soil by trampling. Compared with other animals, the activities of alpacas here are undoubtedly more stable and can bring long-term and lasting changes.

Quitting sugar to fight acne is indeed a bit scientific~

The scientific name of annoying pimples is acne. If you stay up late and eat some greasy food, you may wake up with pimples on your face. Many people give up sugar to "fight acne", but is this really effective?

In a randomized controlled trial conducted in South Korea, people with acne who ate a lower-carb, lower-glycemic diet experienced a slight improvement in acne symptoms. Foods that cause blood sugar levels to rise do increase the production of hormones that cause acne.

Foods like bread, which contain very little fiber, quickly release sugar into the bloodstream, triggering an insulin response. This results in a surge in insulin growth factor-1, a hormone that boosts androgen production.

However, it is still difficult to draw clear conclusions because many acne studies have experimental design flaws. For example, participants who self-diagnose themselves as acne may have visually similar but different skin conditions, such as folliculitis. And sugary foods often contain other ingredients that may affect acne, such as dairy products or cocoa. However, eating a healthy diet and having a regular schedule are definitely useful for "fighting acne"!

Image source: Pexels

The content is compiled from China Science Expo Weibo, Science Popularization China, Science Academy, Global Science, Museum, and China Science Daily

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