From the article: The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to approve a three-year study to determine whether sending huge solar farms into space could effectively meet the world's energy demands, a report from the BBC reveals.

A space-based solar power plant would be launched into a geostationary orbit, meaning it would orbit in a fixed location over the Earth that would be hit by the Sun 24/7.

So, if all goes to plan, the technology could one day harvest massive amounts of energy from space — enough to power millions of homes.

The ESA's space-based solar power initiative is called Solaris, and it is one of several similar projects worldwide, including ongoing research by China's Xidian University, which has built a 75-meter-tall (246-feet-tall) steel tower to test the technology for a ground receiving station, and Caltech's Space Solar Power Project.

Research ministers at the ESA's triennial council are expected to meet today, Tuesday, November 22, to discuss the ESA'S idea. They will also consider several other proposals before deciding the budget for the next phase of the space agency's space technology development plans.

In an interview with the BBC, ESA director general Josef Aschbacher said, "we do need to convert into carbon neutral economies and therefore change the way we produce energy and especially reduce the fossil fuel part of our energy production. If you can do it from space, and I'm saying if we could, because we are not there yet, this would be absolutely fantastic because it would solve a lot of problems."

From the article: The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to approve a three-year study to determine whether sending huge solar farms into space could effectively meet the world's energy demands, a report from the BBC reveals.

A space-based solar power plant would be launched into a geostationary orbit, meaning it would orbit in a fixed location over the Earth that would be hit by the Sun 24/7.

So, if all goes to plan, the technology could one day harvest massive amounts of energy from space — enough to power millions of homes.

The ESA's space-based solar power initiative is called Solaris, and it is one of several similar projects worldwide, including ongoing research by China's Xidian University, which has built a 75-meter-tall (246-feet-tall) steel tower to test the technology for a ground receiving station, and Caltech's Space Solar Power Project.

Research ministers at the ESA's triennial council are expected to meet today, Tuesday, November 22, to discuss the ESA'S idea. They will also consider several other proposals before deciding the budget for the next phase of the space agency's space technology development plans.

In an interview with the BBC, ESA director general Josef Aschbacher said, "we do need to convert into carbon neutral economies and therefore change the way we produce energy and especially reduce the fossil fuel part of our energy production. If you can do it from space, and I'm saying if we could, because we are not there yet, this would be absolutely fantastic because it would solve a lot of problems."

From the article: Two neuroimaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography showed that people with similar personalities tend to have similar brain responses when viewing naturalistic stimuli. This effect was stronger than that of similarity in gender, ethnicity, or political affiliation. The study was published in Nature Scientific Reports.

Each person perceives the surrounding world in her/his own specific way. One person might be inspired by looking at a piece of art, another would not even notice it. One person might enjoy participating in an activity, another would see it as a hassle.

Researchers have explored the roots of these alignments at the neurological level and found that shared experiences, close relationships, but also gender and cognitive styles affect whether two persons experiences would be aligned or not. People also tend to synchronize their brain activities during social interactions. It happens passively when the neural activity is evoked by a common stimulus (something triggering our senses). But is this passive neural synchronization related to personality traits?

“Given the growing polarization in our world nowadays, being able to understand how to see the world from someone else’s perspective seems like a critical thing. Our interest was in understanding what enables such alignment across various levels: from behavioral and psychological to the systemic and neural,” said study authors Sandra Matz of Columbia Business School and Moran Cerf of Northwestern University.

From the article: In two daily diary studies on couples and undergraduate students, researchers found that feeling appreciated buffered the negative link between avoidant attachment style and prosocial behavior towards their partners. People who are uncomfortable with intimacy were more willing to do things they do not like for the benefit of their partner if they felt appreciated. The study was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

At a young age, individuals learn to avoid intimacy when their close others are untrustworthy, unreliable and unwilling to meet their needs. They develop an avoidant attachment style. Later in life, avoidantly attached persons do not expect others to be prosocial towards them i.e., to take care of their needs. This often makes them, in turn, less willing to themselves act in a prosocial way towards others.

Prosociality, proneness to behavior that will benefit others, is a key ingredient of caring relationships. This is particularly the case when done with the intention of enhancing partner’s well-being and not in order to promote self-interests. On the other hand, when avoidantly attached individuals do things they dislike for the benefit of the partner, they usually do so to avoid personal costs such as partner’s anger and frustration, rather than to make partner feel happy and loved.

Can feeling appreciated change that? Previous studies have shown that the behavior of avoidant individuals in a romantic relationship can be improved if their perception that their partner does not care about their needs is challenged.

From the article: Facebook parent company Meta has pulled the public demo for its “scientific knowledge” AI model after academics showed it was generating fake and misleading information while filtering out entire categories of research.

Released earlier this week, the company described Galactica as an AI language model that “can store, combine and reason about scientific knowledge”—summarizing research papers, solving equations, and doing a range of other useful sciencey tasks. But scientists and academics quickly discovered that the AI system’s summaries were generating a shocking amount of misinformation, including citing real authors for research papers that don’t exist.

“In all cases, it was wrong or biased but sounded right and authoritative,” Michael Black, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, wrote in a thread on Twitter after using the tool. “I think it's dangerous.”

From the article: Psychopathy might be linked to pyromania. According to a new study published in Frontiers in Psychology, people with certain “dark” personality traits show a heightened interest in fire. The study examined a cluster of antisocial characteristics known as the Dark Tetrad.

There are four personality traits that make up the Dark Tetrad. They are narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. Individuals who exhibit these traits tend to be manipulative, callous, and selfish. They often lack empathy and have a disregard for other people’s feelings. What’s more, they tend to be aggressive and take pleasure in causing pain.

Not surprisingly, people with Dark Tetrad personality traits are more likely to engage in criminal behavior. This led Caroline Wehner and her colleagues at Medical School Hamburg and Humboldt University of Berlin to wonder whether these traits were associated with the fascination with fire and the intentional act of setting a fire.

“Fire has always played an important role in humanity, either as a source of warmth and light, a means for cooking in traditional societies, or as a marker for social events and a source for entertainment in Western countries,” Wehner and her colleagues wrote.

“However, tragic cases like the recent wildfires in California and Greece or the Notre-Dame fire in 2019 also bring the destructive potential of fire to the public consciousness. When used deliberately or by accident fire causes severe damages to both humans and property… Due to this destructive potential, it is necessary to explore fire setting behavior and investigate which factors lead an individual to it.”

For their study, the researchers examined a sample of 222 psychology and medical students from German universities. The participants were presented with various fire-related situations (such as “Watching a house burn down” and “Watching a bonfire outdoors”) and were asked to rate how they would feel in each situation on a 7-point scale, which ranged from “most upsetting/absolutely horrible” (1) through “OK. doesn’t bother me” (4) to “very exciting. lovely, very nice” (7). The participants were also asked whether they had ever set a fire outside of socially accepted situations.

From the article: Participants of a web-based physical activity intervention saw improvements in their depression, anxiety, and stress levels, according to findings published in the journal Mental Health And Physical Activity. Interestingly, these mental health benefits seem to have occurred without notable improvements in physical activity.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that physical exercise can improve mental health, many adults do not meet current physical activity recommendations — the World Health Organization recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week. Evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic further decreased exercise levels among the public.

To encourage people to increase their movement, tech-based physical activity interventions have been developed. These interventions help support people in increasing their activity levels using online methods like smartphone apps, activity trackers, and social networks. Though these interventions are promising, it is unclear whether they offer mental health benefits.

“Web-based interventions have the potential to reach large populations cost-effectively,” explained study author Corneel Vandelanotte (@CorneelVDL), a research professor and Future Fellow at the Central Queensland University in Australia. “We know that they can improve physical activity outcomes, but much less is known on how they can positively influence mental health outcomes. The association between physical activity and improved mental health outcomes is well established, as such in theory web-based physical activity interventions should also improve mental health outcomes.”