Top
Best
New

Posted by nis0s 11 hours ago

Fukushima insects tested for cognition(news.cnrs.fr)
98 points | 59 comments
meonkeys 10 hours ago|
Should be: ...Tested for Impaired Cognition
fhars 9 hours ago||
Yeah. How could 1950's science fiction be so wrong?
cbdevidal 8 hours ago||
My stupid butt imagined new mutant superpowered insects like the Brain from Pinky and the Brain
ghurtado 6 hours ago|||
Well, to be fair, that's what that stupid title is designed to make you think
grues-dinner 4 hours ago||||
Show pitch: Pinky and the Brain but the Brain is a brain bug from Starship Troopers.
no_wizard 3 hours ago|||
I was thinking Rachni[0][1]

[0]: https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Rachni

[1]: origins have to start somewhere

layer8 7 hours ago||
They only seem to be testing individual bees though, not the hive mind.
folkrav 6 hours ago|||
Is there any scientific basis for some kind of shared collective thought I don’t know about? In other words, what’s the “hive mind” if not the collective result of individual minds?
AlecSchueler 5 hours ago|||
Changes in behaviour in the individual level might result in an apparent cognitive decline for that individual, but could still benefit the hive as a whole.
folkrav 4 hours ago|||
I was asking about the concept of “hive mind”. Is the concept accepted as a “thing”, has it ever been measured in any way, and if yes, what is it?
AlecSchueler 4 hours ago||
Yes, it's the idea that the colony exhibits behaviour with a level of intelligence impossible for any of the single bees. Things like choosing the location of the nest or managing the temperature of the nest, there's various decisions "made" by the colony as a kind of emergent property of the behaviour of the individual bees who themselves don't have the capacity to think at that level. The various aspects of colony behaviour have all been individually studied by quite a few people and groups, yes.
s1artibartfast 3 hours ago||
I think you are missing the point of the question, and it revolves around calling it a mind capable of decisions.
AlecSchueler 3 hours ago||
Am I? I just mentioned there's research that shows a colony of bees can make decisions that individual bees are incapable of. What am I misunderstanding?
kbelder 3 hours ago|||
If human society changed so that average individual intelligence decreased, but the human race as a whole acted more intelligently, did human intelligence increase or decrease?
lupire 5 hours ago|||
Why are they testing a whole brain instead of individual neurons? What is a brain if not the collective result of individual neurons?
folkrav 4 hours ago||
The comparison only works if the concept of a “hive mind” is as accepted and defined as the concept of a brain, which is quite literally what I was asking.
collingreen 3 hours ago||
"Hive mind" conjures ideas of an omnipresent, all-controlling intelligence to me like startrek's borg, but I think this is more about the idea of a "superorganism" [0] like some bees and most ants where the group exhibits traits and "behavior" and "decisions" as a whole, beyond the ability of any single, specialized individual. Less superintelligence and more emergent behavior and complexity.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superorganism

alex_suzuki 10 hours ago||
Nitpick: the article mentions that the bees are tracked with QR Codes, but I find that hard to believe, given the space constraints. In one photo it looks like it is an ArUco marker.
diggan 9 hours ago||
2mm QR codes according to the article:

> The protocol used at Fukushima is automated. Each bee is equipped with a 2-mm-wide QR Code which is read by a camera, activating the opening of the maze.

But yeah, doesn't look like a QR code at all, are there possibly different variations of QR codes? Haven't heard about that myself.

blueflow 9 hours ago|||
I can imagine the journalist referring to all Matrix Codes as "QR".
wanderingstan 7 hours ago|||
This is it. All matrix codes are now commonly referred to as “QR Codes”. I’ve noticed this especially at airports where both passengers and gate agents refer to the “QR codes” on boarding passes. (Which are IIRC Aztec codes)
alex_suzuki 7 hours ago||
Boarding passes are typically Aztec, but don‘t have to be. IATA allows other types as well: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/1dccc9ed041b4f3bbdcf8ee86...
thaumasiotes 7 hours ago|||
In China the normal word is 二维码 "two-dimensional code".
noduerme 4 hours ago||
is a barcode a one-dimensional code?
collingreen 3 hours ago||
Yes - even though it obviously has visual height the data only runs in one dimension. For the 2D codes like QR the data is in both directions, which is why orientation often comes up in their design.
ChrisMarshallNY 7 hours ago||||
Anyone remember these?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Capacity_Color_Barcode

Haven't seen one in ages.

diggan 5 hours ago|||
We have something similar in Barcelona (maybe entire Spain? Apparently called NaviLens, colored squares rather than triangles) all around public transit points. They're used for blind people to navigate the public transit system :)

> As users sweep their environment with a smartphone, audio cues allow them to find and center the tag in the phone’s field of view. A shake of the wrist prompts the details contained within the tag to be read out (visually impaired people are often holding a guide dog or cane with their other hand). https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/135057/these-col...

alex_suzuki 6 hours ago||||
Never saw one of those in the wild. But I have seen NaviLens codes (on cereal packaging), they use color as well: https://www.navilens.com/en/
randall 6 hours ago|||
they’re at every new york subway station. i don’t know why.
ChrisMarshallNY 5 hours ago||
Surprised that they are still there.

It’s an old Microsoft standard. I’m pretty sure that MS rolled it up, years ago, so they may not be valid, anymore.

joecool1029 5 hours ago||
They are Navilens, new thing: https://www.mta.info/accessibility/innovations/navilens
ChrisMarshallNY 5 hours ago||
Ah. That makes sense. Different look, though. The Microsoft ones used triangles.
ants_everywhere 3 hours ago||||
possibly BEEtag? https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
alex_suzuki 7 hours ago|||
There‘s MicroQR, which is just a single finder pattern of a regular QR code, with some adjoining data. But it doesn’t look like one.
numpad0 9 hours ago|||
TIL: Wikipedia does not have a standalone article for ArUco markers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARTag
traceroute66 5 hours ago|||
There's something called a bCode...

https://theapiarist.org/barcoding-bees/

tokai 7 hours ago|||
Nitpick: QR code is widely used as a generic term for matrix barcodes.
Thorrez 9 hours ago||
>Although the results of the study have yet to be published, scientists are already reporting a decline in insect cognition in the contaminated area of Fukushima Prefecture.
blueflow 9 hours ago||
Troll-tier conclusion: Human presence improves cognition in insects
IAmBroom 8 hours ago||
Scientific research causes cancer in mice.

That's actually a fact; there are specific bloodlines prone to cancers.

gus_massa 7 hours ago||
I can see a direct relation in this test, but it may be my lack of imagination or knowdledge...

Anyway, animals in islands without predators lose escape hability, in particular the dodo.

GuB-42 6 minutes ago||
The conclusion is (emphasis mine):

Although the results of the study have yet to be published, scientists are already reporting a decline in insect cognition in the contaminated area of Fukushima Prefecture. "We can see correlations," Armant says. "However, a causal link with radioactive contamination has not yet been established. But since the area is no longer inhabited, it is unlikely that the effect is due to factors such as pesticides."

So, when people leave the area, insect cognition decline, therefore human presence improves cognition in insects.

miohtama 10 hours ago||
Teenage Mutant Ninja Bees
bornfreddy 6 hours ago||
Whoever has put the tag on that hornet in the last photo is a hero in my eyes. Things people do for science...
giardini 5 hours ago|
The Green Hornet!
blackoil 10 hours ago||
Have we tried increasing cognition by selective breeding. Get mice best at maze to breed 100 descendants and repeat it few times, with varying food supply and survival difficulties.
giraffe_lady 8 hours ago||
This gets you mice that are better at navigating mazes. The connection between that and general cognition or learning capacity is not as robust as you would hope. Just as likely they simply have better peripheral vision or something.
Traubenfuchs 9 hours ago||
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryon%27s_Rat_Experiment
cs702 10 hours ago||
Perfect fodder for a horror movie script.
sunrunner 9 hours ago||
> Each bee is equipped with a 2-mm-wide QR Code

I'm not sure why but this sentence feels vaguely menacing.

tonetegeatinst 7 hours ago||
Gives s whole new meaning to mobile storage.
sunrunner 6 hours ago||
See also: Benn Jordan's 'I Saved a PNG Image To A Bird' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQCP-5g5bo
crackleware 10 hours ago||
we should send contaminated insects to Mars
Gienoz100 6 hours ago||
[dead]
jonathaneunice 7 hours ago|
Future research should also test for induced meta-insect superpowers.

"Fukushima was a massive disaster. It was also Arthur Buzzby's origin story."