# acad: oops! the scientific world is abuzz ... scientists first and foremost should "embrace uncertainty" and "be thoughtful, open and modest." ...

<< The scientific world is abuzz following recommendations by two of the most prestigious scholarly journals – The American Statistician and Nature – that the term "statistical significance" be retired. In their introduction to the special issue of The American Statistician on the topic, the journal’s editors urge "moving to a world beyond 'p<0.05,'" the famous 5 percent threshold for determining whether a study’s result is statistically significant.  (..) scientists first and foremost should "embrace uncertainty" and "be thoughtful, open and modest." >>

Valen E. Johnson.  Is it the end of 'statistical significance'? The battle to make science more uncertain. Texas A&M University. April 1, 2019.
 
http://theconversation.com/is-it-the-end-of-statistical-significance-the-battle-to-make-science-more-uncertain-114161  

Ronald L. Wasserstein, Allen L. Schirm,   Nicole A. Lazar. Moving to a World Beyond "p < 0.05". Am Statistician. Pages 1-19  Mar 20,  2019. doi: 10.1080/ 00031305.2019.1583913

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2019.1583913

Scientists rise up against statistical significance. Valentin Amrhein, Sander Greenland, Blake McShane and more than 800 signatories call for an end to hyped claims and the dismissal of possibly crucial effects. Nature. COMMENT. Mar 20, 2019.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9  

# life ai: 'predictive attrition program' approach by Watson, IBM.

<< IBM artificial intelligence technology is now 95 percent accurate in predicting workers who are planning to leave their jobs, >>

<< AI suggests to each employee what they should be learning in order to get ahead in their career. >>

<< IBM HR has a patent for its "predictive attrition program" which was developed with Watson to predict employee flight risk and prescribe actions for managers to engage employees. >>

<< The best time to get to an employee is before they go,  (..)  I expect AI will change 100 percent of jobs in the next five to 10 years, >> IBM CEO Ginni Rometty.

Eric Rosenbaum. IBM artificial intelligence can predict with 95% accuracy which workers are about to quit their jobs. CNBC.com Apr 3, 2019.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/03/ibm-ai-can-predict-with-95-percent-accuracy-which-employees-will-quit.html

# trade behav: a deep learning approach to extract sentiment information

AA << develop an innovative deep neural network (DNN) supervised learning approach to extracting insightful topic sentiments from analyst reports at the sentence level and incorporating this qualitative knowledge in asset pricing and portfolio construction. >>

AA << find that topics reflecting the subjective opinions of analysts have greater impact than topics of objective facts and justification of the quantitative measures. >>

Hitoshi Iwasaki, Ying Chen. Topic Sentiment Asset Pricing with DNN Supervised Learning. SSRN e-journal  (2018) doi: 10.2139/ssrn.3228485.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3228485

Sentiment analysis for portfolio management. National University of Singapore.  Apr 1, 2019.

https://m.phys.org/news/2019-04-sentiment-analysis-portfolio.html

# age: apropos of flatworm regeneration

<< Unlike most multicellular animals, planarian flatworms can regrow all their body parts after they are removed. This makes them a good model for studying the phenomenon of tissue regeneration. They are also useful for exploring fundamental questions in developmental biology about what underlies large-scale anatomical patterning. >>

Electrical signals kick off flatworm regeneration. Cell Press. Mar 5, 2019.

https://m.phys.org/news/2019-03-electrical-flatworm-regeneration.html 

AA << propose a simple model of molecular-genetic mechanisms to explain how physiological events taking place immediately after injury regulate the spatial distribution of downstream gene expression and anatomy of regenerating planaria. >>

Fallon Durant, Johanna Bischof, et al.
The Role of Early Bioelectric Signals in the Regeneration of Planarian Anterior/Posterior Polarity. Biophysical Journal. Vol 116, Issue 5, P948-961, Mar 5, 2019  doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2019.01.029

https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(19)30065-7  

# evol behav: apropos singular convergences, the case of the sea snail Elysia cholorotica; it's unique, controversial, elusive ...

<< Elysia cholorotica, a sea slug found off the U.S. East Coast, can steal photosynthetic plastids from algae and survive by basking in the sun. >>

<< It’s unique; it’s controversial; it’s elusive; it never eats, (..)  If you don’t know exactly where you’re looking and what you’re looking for, you won’t find it. >> Patrick Krug.

<< But these special slugs are becoming increasingly rare, and the small number of experts who studied them have mostly retired or have moved on to other areas. >>

Douglas Main. Solar-Powered Slugs Hide Wild Secrets-But They’re Vanishing. The photosynthetic sea slug, which lives off the U.S. East Coast, is becoming almost too rare to research. NatGeo. Jul 22, 2018.

https://relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/animals/2018/07/solar-powered-photosynthetic-sea-slugs-in-decline-news

https://twitter.com/NatGeo/status/1112204138841034752

FonT

Elysia cholorotica, an example of a master in the game of life  ...

# evol: inside the "KT boundary", the day the dinosaurs died

<< When I saw that, I knew this wasn’t just any flood deposit, (..) We weren’t just near the KT boundary-this whole site is the KT boundary! (..) We have the whole KT event preserved in these sediments, (..) With this deposit, we can chart what happened the day the Cretaceous died. >> Robert DePalma.

<< No paleontological site remotely like it had ever been found, and, if DePalma’s hypothesis proves correct, the scientific value of the site will be immense. >>

Douglas Preston. The Day the Dinosaurs Died. A young paleontologist may have discovered a record of the most significant event in the history of life on Earth. The New Yorker. April 8, 2019 Issue.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died    

<< When I first read it, I kept saying ‘wow, wow, wow,’ >> H. Jay Melosh.

Ryan F. Mandelbaum. Scientists Find Fossilized Fish That May Have Been Blasted by Debris From Asteroid That Ended the Dinosaur Age. Gizmodo.com Mar 29, 2019.

https://gizmodo.com/scientists-find-fossilized-fish-that-may-have-been-blas-1833671176  

William J. Broad,  Kenneth Chang. Fossil Site Reveals Day That Meteor Hit Earth and, Maybe, Wiped Out Dinosaurs. A jumble of entombed plants and creatures offers a vivid glimpse of the apocalypse that all but ended life 66 million years ago. NYT. Mar 29, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/science/dinosaurs-extinction-asteroid.html  

# gst: programmed cell death (apoptosis) also in algae

<< bacteria that live on single-cellular algae can cause programmed cell death. "It is the first documentation of true apoptosis via bacterial pathogens in microorganisms like algae," >>  Rebecca Case.

Study shows first evidence bacterial-induced apoptosis in algae. University of Alberta.  Mar 21, 2019.

https://m.phys.org/news/2019-03-evidence-bacterial-induced-apoptosis-algae.html    

Anna R. Bramucci, Rebecca J. Case.
Phaeobacter inhibens induces apoptosis-like programmed cell death in calcifying Emiliania huxleyi. Scientific Reports. Volume 9, Article number: 5215 (2019) March 21.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-36847-6