Search results

Here is a list of all the individuals whose mtDNA was determined from the samples tested in this study (on he assumption that the maternal lineage was not broken). Count numberName of Historical FigureDate of deathDynastySpousemtDNA HGSample IDTitleSource 1N.N.??Uroš IT2b2b1 2Marija of...

We had already discussed the pre-print last year here. Good to have the final paper. As mentioned before, there were two non-paternity events with Leszek and Kasimierz I

A summary of Steve Stewart-Williams's recent newsletter post, itself summarising Russell Warne's Quillette article "Education's Elephant in the Room" Most of us want to believe that a good school can level the playing field — that with the right teachers, curriculum, and resources, all...

It's important to keep in mind that this study found that AI lies specifically when it is under pressure. This made me wonder what it meant exactly by under pressure. The MASK benchmark study defines "under pressure" as exposing AI models to carefully crafted pressure prompts — situations where...

A team of researchers from the Center for AI Safety and Scale AI has published a groundbreaking study exposing a troubling gap in how we evaluate AI trustworthiness. Their benchmark, called MASK (Model Alignment between Statements and Knowledge), reveals that most leading AI models will readily...

This chart shows the evolution of house prices and happiness levels over a 10-year period from 2015 to 2025. It attempts to determine if there is a relation between rising unhappiness in English-speaking countries and the increase in housing prices. These are highlighted in orange...

We've all suspected it. Now there's peer-reviewed evidence. A study published in Science — co-authored by researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon — found that today's most popular AI assistants systematically validate users, even when those users are clearly wrong. The paper, led by PhD...

Sorry I thought you posted twice the same message.

In what world are the Epstein files, anywhere remotely as important as this war? Over 3,000 people have already died in this conflict. As far as I know, nobody died in the Epstein files. Rape is bad but not as bad as death.

Personally, I believe it's all just an act. Just think about who wins in this situation. As long as the Strait of Hormuz stays closed petroleum prices increase. And who is the biggest oil producer in the world? The United States. Gulf countries basically cannot sell their oil anymore. So who...

Here are four other strong tea-drinking cultures. Iranian people consume 1.5 kg of dried tea leaves per capita per year, placing them in between British and Russian people. Polish people drink one kilo per year, about the same as Japanese people, making them the biggest tea drinkers in Europe...

That's a question that had been on my mind. How do countries differ in the age at which children start drinking tea in tea-drinking cultures such as Britain, Turkey, Morocco, Russia and Japan. I also wondered whether tea was usually available at school in these countries. Tea Around the World...

I asked the AI if among prominent historical feminists, be it writers, activists, or even politicians, a significant percentage of them ended up childless after their childbearing years? Answer : Based on a biographical analysis of 48 prominent historical feminists — spanning proto-feminist...

The way I see it is that the samples cluster with modern France have mixed local Batavian/Germanic ancestry with Roman/Italian (+ a few other regions). That's what the Y-DNA haplogroups suggest. The paper also says:

Here are the haplogroups. All the samples are from Valkenburg near Leiden in South Holland (not Valkenburg near Maastricht). They all date from the Early Imperial period (0-200 CE) except CL023 that dates from the Iron Age (500-100 BCE). Autosomally all cluster around the Low Countries and...

A new preprint from De Coster at al. Study Objective The research investigates the demographic makeup of Roman military communities stationed along the empire's frontier, known as the Lower Rhine Limes. To understand the origins of these populations, the authors utilized ancient DNA (aDNA) and...

I followed up by asking if that is why countries like Japan and South Korea, where people tend to be thinner and smaller, the COVID death rate was significantly lower than in countries with high obesity rates like Egypt, Russia, the Balkans, or the United States. This is especially striking in...

The COVID pandemic showed that the virus spread especially through a few people known as superemitters. In his book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explains that a British study found that a full 86 percent of all of the COVID virus particles detected in their group of infected...