drb493

This project has been ongoing for about 25 years now:

https://foldingathome.org/faq/how-it-works

I'd discourage claiming any biological process is "solved."

But to your point: No--AlphaFold is an amazing machine learning approach to predicting protein structure but Folding@Home is still immensely useful for simulating how proteins fold up over a timescale. They are/will be complimentary methods.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11892350/

The distributed compute part of the project has turned off but data analysis continues.

I know what you mean these types of projects inspired me to contribute as a young citizen scientist.

A different domain, but https://foldingathome.org/ is still running. Using distributed compute to study protein folding.

While the other recommendations are great, they are more psychologically focused.

Check out Eric Kandel's "In Search of Memory". I really can't recommend it enough. He talks about his early work with aplysia and contemporary research into the basis of memory.

J&J tries to weasel out of paying compensation. If a half-trillion dollar company can't afford to pay restitution to its victims then maybe jail-time for the executives involved would be a more palatable option.

Seaman for dreamcast utilized a microphone in which you would talk to your fish (that also would develop to grow a human head). It relied on voice commands. You could praise it, scold it, order it to clean its tank. In response it would insult you or ask you trivia facts.

The game also used the dreamcast clock to age the fish even when the game was not running. It had an anti-cheat mechanism where it would detect if you altered the clock and would punish the cheater accordingly.

Kudos to the editors for taking a stand.

Absurd cost for publications was a major reason I left academia as a postdoc. Senior scientists with large grants and salaries write it off as a business expense but paying 2-3k for a paper is insane for junior staff that are already being underpaid.

Arxiv and opensource publishing options exist. But for neuroscience, the funding and direction of research is implicitly governed by the reviewers and chief editors whom are embedded in these journals. Thus for your work to get exposure and citations it is critical to publish in the given journal for your domain.

Journals have a reciprocal relationship with chief editors in that journals will publish "special" editions essentially allowing the editors to publish their work with their collaborators carte blanche. Switching to an open source model is objectively a better option, but there are entrenched incentives that prohibit this change.

If one's goal is a revolution of thought, than perhaps being immersed in the past process is ultimately constraining.

Deference to past authority is an easier road to follow than direct inquiry into one's own experiences. If human society has been plagued throughout its existence by the same innumerable problems then why do we continue on with this current line of reasoning?

I don't have any answers, but thank you for posting this thought provoking piece.

Ask and ye shall receive....a stabilized version of the link

https://imgur.com/gallery/PImiVMC

BF Skinner approached the military during WW2 with a proposal to use pigeon-guided missiles.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/bf-sk...

There are also programs to train dolphins to search for naval mines.