# acad: oops! a database of more than 18,000 retracted scientific papers and conference abstracts has been released

<< Nearly a decade ago, headlines highlighted a disturbing trend in science: The number of articles retracted by journals had increased 10-fold during the previous 10 years. >>

<<  It is not a perfect window into the world of retractions. Not all publishers, for instance, publicize or clearly label papers they have retracted, or explain why they did so. And determining which author is responsible for a paper's fatal flaws can be difficult. >>

Jeffrey Brainard, Jia You. What a massive database of retracted papers reveals about science publishing's 'death penalty'. Science. Oct. 25, 2018

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/what-massive-database-retracted-papers-reveals-about-science-publishing-s-death-penalty

Searchable database of more than 18,000 retracted papers and conference abstracts dating back to the 1970s

http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx?

the blog Retraction Watch, by Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus.

https://retractionwatch.com/

# game: cooperation and trust; cooperative behaviors (mediated by MDMA) without gullibility

<< Social decision-making is fundamental for successful functioning, and can be affected in psychiatric illness and by serotoninergic modulation. The Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) is the archetypal paradigm to model cooperation and trust. However, the effect of serotonergic enhancement is poorly characterised, and its influence on the effect of variations in opponent behaviour unknown. >>

<< MDMA [3,4-Methyl​ene dioxy​ methamphetamine ] increased cooperative behaviour when playing trustworthy opponents. Underlying this was a change in brain activity of regions linked to social cognition. [AA]  findings highlight the context-specific nature of MDMA's effect on social decision-making. >>

Anthony S Gabay, Matthew J Kempton, et al. MDMA increases cooperation and recruitment of social brain areas when playing trustworthy players in an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Journal of Neuroscience.  Nov 19,  2018, 1276-18. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1276-18.2018.

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2018/11/16/JNEUROSCI.1276-18.2018

MDMA makes people cooperative, but not gullible.  King's College London. Nov 19, 2018.

https://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2018-11-mdma-people-cooperative-gullible.html

MDMA  [3,4-Methyl​ene dioxy​ methamphetamine ]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA

# tech: terrestrial UFOs around us, by electroaerodynamics (ionic wind)

<< MIT engineers have built and flown the first-ever plane with no moving parts. Instead of propellers or turbines, the light aircraft is powered by an “ionic wind” - a silent but mighty flow of ions that is produced aboard the plane, and that generates enough thrust to propel the plane over a sustained, steady flight. >>

Jennifer Chu. MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts.
The silent, lightweight aircraft doesn’t depend on fossil fuels or batteries. MIT News Office. Nov 21, 2018.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/first-ionic-wind-plane-no-moving-parts-1121

Haofeng Xu, Yiou He, et al.  Flight of an aeroplane with solid-state propulsion.  Nature. volume 563, pages 532–535 (2018).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0707-9

# brain: about high creative abilities ...

<< Creative tasks range from what researchers call “little-c” creativity – making a website, crafting a birthday present or coming up with a funny joke – to “Big-C” creativity: writing a speech, composing a poem or designing a scientific experiment. >>

<< Recent evidence suggests that creativity involves a complex interplay between spontaneous and controlled thinking – the ability to both spontaneously brainstorm ideas and deliberately evaluate them to determine whether they’ll actually work. >>

AA << examined whether a person’s creative thinking ability can be explained, in part, by a connection between three brain networks. >>

Roger Beaty. New study reveals why some people are more creative than others. Harvard University. Jan 15, 2018.

https://theconversation.com/new-study-reveals-why-some-people-are-more-creative-than-others-90065

<< The findings thus reveal a whole-brain network associated with high-creative ability comprised of cortical hubs within default, salience, and executive systems-intrinsic functional networks that tend to work in opposition-suggesting that highly creative people are characterized by the ability to simultaneously engage these large-scale brain networks. >>

Roger E. Beaty, Yoed N. Kenett, et al. Robust prediction of individual creative ability from brain functional connectivity. PNAS Jan 30, 2018 115 (5) 1087-1092;  doi: 10.1073/pnas.1713532115.

http://www.pnas.org/content/115/5/1087

# gst: chaos from a double pendulum

<< Three double pendulums, all starting with near identical initial conditions, all rapidly diverging. >>

Ari Rubinsztejn. Chaos and the Double Pendulum. Nov 19, 2018.

https://gereshes.com/2018/11/19/chaos-and-the-double-pendulum

# ai-cpu: USB Neural Compute Stick 2 (99usd) by Intel

<< Intel has unveiled the Intel Neural Compute Stick 2. It looks like a standard USB thumb drive, and it runs on a USB 3.0 port, but is oh-more-special. CNET said the new AI "brain" sticks into the side of your PC. >>

<< Availability? And at what price? The new Intel NCS 2 is shipping worldwide from Nov 14. Kyle Wiggers, VentureBeat, had some details. It will be available through JD.com in China; RS Components in Europe, the Middle East and Asia; Switch Sciences in Japan; and Mouser worldwide, for $99. >>

Nancy Owano. USB form neural compute stick makes debut at developer event. Nov 15, 2018.

https://m.techxplore.com/news/2018-11-usb-neural-debut-event.html

https://software.intel.com/en-us/neural-compute-stick

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181114005183/en/Intel-Unveils-Intel-Neural-Compute-Stick-2

Also

1746 - competitive professionalità. Dec 22, 2004.

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/2004/12/1746-competitive-professionalit.html

1965 - metaMeccano neoProtele. Feb 26, 2006.

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/2006/02/1965-metameccano-neoprotele.html

# astro: a "zombie" star as a homing beacon to detect classes of black holes

<< The research explored whether a dormant white dwarf star-sometimes referred to as a "zombie" star-could reignite if it had a close encounter with an intermediate-mass black hole. >>

<< If the stars align, so to speak, a zombie star could serve as a homing beacon for a never-before-detected class of black holes. >>

<< The stretching phenomena can be very complicated (..) Imagine a spherical star approaching a black hole. As it approaches the black hole, tidal forces begin to compress the star in a direction perpendicular to the orbital plane, reigniting it. But within the orbital plane, these gravitational forces stretch the star and tear it apart. It's a competing effect. >> Rob Hoffman

<< It was exciting to see that the zombie star reignited in each of the close encounter scenarios we looked at, >> Peter Anninos

Nolan O'brien. 'Zombie' stars return from the dead. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Oct 31, 2018.

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-10-zombie-stars-dead.html

Peter Anninos, P. Chris Fragile, et al. Relativistic Tidal Disruption and Nuclear Ignition of White Dwarf Stars by Intermediate-mass Black Holes. The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 865, Number 1. Sep 17, 2018. doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aadad9.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aadad9/meta