Dreaming about flying might help you balance yourself better while running. A new study hypothesizes that dreams are created to introduce corrupted or stochastic data into our brains to sharpen our generalization skills and to prevent overfitting. Overfitting is the overspecialization of a neural network (biological or artificial) towards one dataset, and it makes it more difficult for neural networks to handle different data sets, making them perform worse at other tasks. Read full article here
Societal Issues
To curb drug deaths, communities turn to Reddit, texts and wastewater
With drug overdose deaths on the rise, authorities are attempting to curb the epidemic by tracking and sharing information in real time. In one unique effort, a nonprofit in New York City is using drug-testing equipment and stamping or marking habits of dealers to identify drug batches that may endanger users. Other approaches are also being used, such as monitoring drug-related chatter on Reddit and analyzing local wastewater for opioid and other drug levels. With the combination of these efforts, researchers hope to put a dent in the opioid crisis and reduce overdose deaths. Read full article here
Merv
June 1, 2023
