Long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid quotes an intriguing new article from the Economist: Imagine a habitable colony on Mars or the Moon and the kinds of structures that come to mind are probably gleaming domes or shiny metallic tubes snaking over the surface. But with no Earth-like atmosphere or magnetic field to repel solar radiation and micrometeorites, space colonists would probably need to pile metres-thick rocks and geological rubble onto the roofs of such off-world settlements. More like a hobbit hole than Moonbase Alpha.

There could be another solution, however, that would offer future colonists safer and far more expansive living space than any cramped base built on the surface. Writing in Acta Astronautica, Raymond Martin, an engineer at Blue Origin, a rocket company, and Haym Benaroya, an aerospace engineer at Rutgers University, explore the benefits of setting up a Moon base inside giant geological tunnels that lie just below the lunar surface.

First discovered during the Apollo programme, these lunar lava tubes are a legacy of when Earth's nearest celestial neighbour was geologically hyperactive, with streams of boiling basaltic magma bursting from the interior to flow across the Moon's surface as lava. Found on Earth (see picture), and identified on Mars, lava tubes form when the sluggish top layer of a lava stream slows and cools, forming a thick and rocky lid that is left behind when the rest of the lava underneath eventually drains away.

Lava tubes on Earth are usually up to 15 metres wide and can run for several kilometres. But the reduced gravity on the Moon makes them hundreds of times bigger, creating colossal cave systems that are up to a kilometre across and hundreds of kilometres long.

RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) writes: A recent paper on ArXiv reports new spectroscopic analyses of the surfaces of 42 asteroids. The main result for space enthusiasts is that there is not one "M" class asteroid (metal-rich) surface in the collection.

The imagery that (many) people grow up with from Hollywood and TV "science" "documentaries" is that the Solar system is full of asteroids which are made of metal ready for mining to produce solid ingots of precious metals. That's Hollywood, not reality. This result is about what you'd expect from the proportion of metallic asteroids — otherwise estimated at about 0.5% of the population.

The asteroid mining fraternity dream of taking apart an M-type asteroid like Psyche, which is fair enough as a dream. Even as a dream for "asteroid mining" metal market speculators. But they are relatively rare asteroids. A realistic "ISRU" (In-Situ Resource Utilisation) plan is going to have to expect to digest around 200 silicate mineral (and clay ("phyllosilicate"), and ice) asteroids for every metallic one they digest.
Here's the home page for the project.

"The World Health Organization on Friday called on China to release new data linking the Covid pandemic's origins to animal samples at Wuhan Market after the country recently took down the research," reports CNBC.

The existence of the new data was revealed by the Atlantic earlier this week, in an article reporting that the newly-discovered samples showed the virus was present in creatures for sale there near the very beginning of the pandemic: A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019. It's some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans, rather than in an accident among scientists experimenting with viruses....

The genetic sequences were pulled out of swabs taken in and near market stalls around the pandemic's start. They represent the first bits of raw data that researchers outside of China's academic institutions and their direct collaborators have had access to. A few weeks ago, the data appeared on an open-access genomic database called GISAID, after being quietly posted by researchers affiliated with the country's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. By almost pure happenstance, scientists in Europe, North America, and Australia spotted the sequences, downloaded them, and began an analysis.

The samples were already known to be positive for the coronavirus, and had been scrutinized before by the same group of Chinese researchers who uploaded the data to GISAID. But that prior analysis, released as a preprint publication in February 2022, asserted that "no animal host of SARS-CoV-2 can be deduced...." The new analysis, led by Kristian Andersen, Edward Holmes, and Michael Worobey — three prominent researchers who have been looking into the virus's roots — shows that that may not be the case. Within about half a day of downloading the data from GISAID, the trio and their collaborators discovered that several market samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were also coming back chock-full of animal genetic material — much of which was a match for the common raccoon dog. Because of how the samples were gathered, and because viruses can't persist by themselves in the environment, the scientists think that their findings could indicate the presence of a coronavirus-infected raccoon dog in the spots where the swabs were taken....

The new analysis builds on extensive previous research that points to the market as the source of the earliest major outbreak of SARS-CoV-2: Many of the earliest known COVID-19 cases of the pandemic were clustered roughly in the market's vicinity. And the virus's genetic material was found in many samples swabbed from carts and animal-processing equipment at the venue, as well as parts of nearby infrastructure, such as storehouses, sewage wells, and water drains. Raccoon dogs, creatures commonly bred for sale in China, are also already known to be one of many mammal species that can easily catch and spread the coronavirus. All of this left one main hole in the puzzle to fill: clear-cut evidence that raccoon dogs and the virus were in the exact same spot at the market, close enough that the creatures might have been infected and, possibly, infectious.

That's what the new analysis provides. Think of it as finding the DNA of an investigation's main suspect at the scene of the crime.
The article also notes that the genetic sequences "also vanished from the database shortly after the international team of researchers notified the Chinese researchers of their preliminary findings, without explanation." And it adds that all along China has "vehemently" fought the theory that Covid-19 originated from live animals being sold at Wuhan market. Although "in June 2021, a team of researchers published a study documenting tens of thousands of mammals for sale in wet markets in Wuhan between 2017 and late 2019, including at Huanan."

"The animals were kept in largely illegal, cramped, and unhygienic settings — conditions conducive to viral transmission — and among them were more than 1,000 raccoon dogs." And there's even photos of raccoon dogs for sale at the market in December of 2019.


More coverage of the newly-discovered data is now appearing in numerous news outlets, including the New York Times, NBC News, ABC News, the Guardian, PBS, and Science.

The UK Space Agency said Friday it would back research by Rolls-Royce looking at the use of nuclear power on the moon. CNBC reports: In a statement, the government agency said researchers from Rolls-Royce had been working on a Micro-Reactor program "to develop technology that will provide power needed for humans to live and work on the Moon." The UKSA will now provide [around $3.52 million] of funding for the project, which it said would "deliver an initial demonstration of a UK lunar modular nuclear reactor."

Rolls-Royce is set to work with a range of organizations on the project, including the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and Nuclear AMRC, and the University of Oxford. "Developing space nuclear power offers a unique chance to support innovative technologies and grow our nuclear, science and space engineering skills base," Paul Bate, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said. Bate added that Rolls-Royce's research "could lay the groundwork for powering continuous human presence on the Moon, while enhancing the wider UK space sector, creating jobs and generating further investment." According to the UKSA, Rolls-Royce [...] is aiming "to have a reactor ready to send to the Moon by 2029."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A cancer patient whose nude medical photos and records were posted online after they were stolen by a ransomware gang, has sued her healthcare provider for allowing the "preventable" and "seriously damaging" leak. The proposed class-action lawsuit stems from a February intrusion during which malware crew BlackCat (also known as ALPHV) broke into one of the Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) physician's networks, stole images of patients undergoing radiation oncology treatment along with other sensitive health records belonging to more than 75,000 people, and then demanded a ransom payment to decrypt the files and prevent it from posting the health data online. The Pennsylvania health care group, one of the largest in the US state, oversees 13 hospitals, 28 health centers, and dozens of other physicians' clinics, pharmacies, rehab centers, imaging and lab services. LVHN refused to pay the ransom, and earlier this month BlackCat started leaking patient info, including images of at least two breast cancer patients, naked from the waist up.

According to the lawsuit [PDF] filed this week, here's how one of the patients, identified as "Jane Doe" found out about the data breach -- and that LVHN had stored nude images of her on its network in the first place. On March 6, LVHN VP of Compliance Mary Ann LaRock, called Doe and told her that her nude photos had been posted on the hackers' leak site. "Ms. LaRock offered plaintiff an apology, and with a chuckle, two years of credit monitoring," the court documents say. In addition to swiping the very sensitive photos, the crooks also made off with everything needed for identity fraud.

According to the lawsuit, LaRock also told Doe that her physical and email addresses, along with date of birth, social security number, health insurance provider, medical diagnosis and treatment information, and lab results were also likely stolen in the breach. "Given that LVHN is and was storing the sensitive information of plaintiff and the class, including nude photographs of plaintiff receiving sensitive cancer treatment, LVHN knew or should have known of the serious risk and harm that could occur from a data breach," the lawsuit says. It claims LVHN was negligent in its duty to safeguard patients' sensitive information, and seeks class action status for everyone whose data was exposed with monetary damages to be determined. Pennsylvania attorney Patrick Howard, who is representing Doe and the rest of the plaintiffs in the proposed class action, said he expects the number of patients affected by the breach to be in the "hundreds, if not thousands."

The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40% by the end of this decade, experts have said on the eve of a crucial UN water summit. From a report: Governments must urgently stop subsidising the extraction and overuse of water through misdirected agricultural subsidies, and industries from mining to manufacturing must be made to overhaul their wasteful practices, according to a landmark report on the economics of water. Nations must start to manage water as a global common good, because most countries are highly dependent on their neighbours for water supplies, and overuse, pollution and the climate crisis threaten water supplies globally, the report's authors say.

Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and a lead author of the report, told the Guardian the world's neglect of water resources was leading to disaster. "The scientific evidence is that we have a water crisis. We are misusing water, polluting water, and changing the whole global hydrological cycle, through what we are doing to the climate. It's a triple crisis." Rockstrom's fellow Global Commission on the Economics of Water co-chair Mariana Mazzucato, a professor at University College London and also a lead author of the report, added: "We need a much more proactive, and ambitious, common good approach. We have to put justice and equity at the centre of this, it's not just a technological or finance problem."

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Choked by a smog of sulfuric acid and scorched by temperatures hot enough to melt lead, the surface of Venus is sure to be lifeless. For decades, researchers also thought the planet itself was dead, capped by a thick, stagnant lid of crust and unaltered by active rifts or volcanoes. But hints of volcanism have mounted recently, and now comes the best one yet: direct evidence for an eruption. Geologically, at least, Venus is alive.

The discovery comes from NASA's Magellan spacecraft, which orbited Venus some 30 years ago and used radar to peer through the thick clouds. Images made 8 months apart show a volcano's circular mouth, or caldera, growing dramatically in a sudden collapse. On Earth, such collapses occur when magma that had supported the caldera vents or drains away, as happened during a 2018 eruption at Hawaii's Kilauea volcano. Witnessing this unrest during the short observation period suggests either Magellan was spectacularly lucky, or, like Earth, Venus has many volcanoes spouting off regularly, says Robert Herrick, a planetary scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Herrick, who led the study, says, "We can rule out that it's a dying planet."

The discovery, published today in Science and presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, makes Venus only the third planetary body in the Solar System with active magma volcanoes, joining Earth and Io, Jupiter's fiery moon. It means future missions to Venus will be able to study "bare, gorgeous new rock" that provides a sample of the planet's interior, Gilmore says. The discovery of more volcanoes, in old or future data, will also help scientists understand how Venus is shedding its interior heat and evolving. And it will shake scientists out of their long-standing view that a spasm of activity a half-billion years ago repaved the planet's surface -- as evidenced by a relative paucity of impact craters -- and was followed by a long period of quiet.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Have you ever found yourself in a self-imposed jam and thought, "Well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions"? It's a common refrain that exposes a deeper truth about the way we humans understand time and causality. Our actions in the past are correlated to our experience of the future, whether that's a good outcome, like acing a test because you prepared, or a bad one, like waking up with a killer hangover. But what if this forward causality could somehow be reversed in time, allowing actions in the future to influence outcomes in the past? This mind-bending idea, known as retrocausality, may seem like science fiction grist at first glance, but it is starting to gain real traction among physicists and philosophers, among other researchers, as a possible solution to some of the most intractable riddles underlying our reality.

In other words, people are becoming increasingly "retro-curious," said Kenneth Wharton, a professor of physics at San Jose State University who has published research about retrocausality, in a call with Motherboard. Even though it may feel verboten to consider a future that affects the past, Wharton and others think it could account for some of the strange phenomena observed in quantum physics, which exists on the tiny scale of atoms.

"We have instincts about all sorts of things, and some are stronger than others," said Wharton, who recently co-authored an article about retrocausality with Huw Price, a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Bonn and an emeritus fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. "I've found our instincts of time and causation are our deepest, strongest instincts that physicists and philosophers -- and humans -- are loath to give up," he added. Scientists, including Price, have speculated about the possibility that the future might influence the past for decades, but the renewed curiosity about retrocausality is driven by more recent findings about quantum mechanics. [...] While there are a range of views about the mechanics and consequences of retrocausal theories, a growing community of researchers think this concept has the potential to answer fundamental questions about the universe. "The problem facing physics right now is that our two pillars of successful theories don't talk to each other," Wharton explained. "One is based in space and time, and one has left space and time aside for this giant quantum wave function."

"The solution to this, as everyone seems to have agreed without discussing it, is that we've got to quantize gravity," he continued. "That's the goal. Hardly anyone has said, 'what if things really are in space and time, and we just have to make sense of quantum theory in space and time'? That will be a whole new way to unify everything that people are not looking into."

Price agreed that this retrocausality could provide a new means to finally "eliminate the tension" between quantum mechanics and classical physics (including special relativity). "Another possible big payoff is that retrocausality supports the so-called 'epistemic' view of the wave function in the usual quantum mechanics description -- the idea that it is just an encoding of our incomplete knowledge of the system," he continued. "That makes it much easier to understand the so-called collapse of the wave function, as a change in information, as folk such as Einstein and Schoedinger thought, in the early days. In this respect, I think it gets rid of some more of the (apparently) non-classical features of quantum mechanics, by saying that they don't amount to anything physically real."

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms has created a tool to predict the structure of hundreds of millions of proteins using artificial intelligence. Researchers say it promises to deepen scientists' understanding of biology, and perhaps speed the discovery of new drugs. From a report: Meta's research arm, Meta AI, used the new AI-based computer program known as ESMFold to create a public database of 617 million predicted proteins. Proteins are the building blocks of life and of many medicines, required for the function of tissues, organs and cells. Drugs based on proteins are used to treat heart disease, certain cancers and HIV, among other illnesses, and many pharmaceutical companies have begun to pursue new drugs with artificial intelligence. Using AI to predict protein structures is expected to not only boost the effectiveness of existing drugs and drug candidates but also help discover molecules that could treat diseases whose cures have remained elusive.

With ESMFold, Meta is squaring off against another protein-prediction computer model known as AlphaFold from DeepMind Technologies, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet. AlphaFold said last year that its database has 214 million predicted proteins that could help accelerate drug discovery. Meta says ESMFold is 60 times faster than AlphaFold, but less accurate. The ESMFold database is larger because it made predictions from genetic sequences that hadn't been studied previously. Predicting a protein's structure can help scientists understand its biological function, according to Alexander Rives, co-author of a study published Thursday in the journal Science and a research scientist at Meta AI. Meta had previously released the paper describing ESMFold in November 2022 on a preprint server. Further reading: What metaverse? Meta says its single largest investment is now in 'advancing AI.'

Having high levels of caffeine in your blood may lower the amount of body fat you carry and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, research suggests. From a report: The findings could lead to calorie-free caffeinated drinks being used to reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes, though further research is required, the researchers wrote in the BMJ Medicine journal. Dr Katarina Kos, a senior lecturer in diabetes and obesity at the University of Exeter, said the research showed potential health benefits for people with high levels of caffeine their blood, but added: "It does not study or recommend drinking more coffee, which was not the purpose of this research."

She said any caffeinated drinks containing sugar and fat would offset the positive effects. The researchers said their work built on previously published research, which suggested that drinking three to five daily cups of coffee, containing an average 70-150mg of caffeine, was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. As those were observational studies, they made it difficult to pinpoint whether the effects were because of caffeine or other compounds, the researchers said. This latest study used a technique known as Mendelian randomisation, which establishes cause and effect through genetic evidence. The team found two common gene variants associated with the speed of caffeine metabolism, and used these to work out genetically predicted blood caffeine levels and whether this was associated with lower BMI and body fat.

Amazon.com plans to launch its first internet satellites to space in the first half of 2024 and offer initial commercial tests shortly after, the company said Tuesday, as it prepares to vie with Elon Musk's SpaceX and others to provide broadband internet globally. Reuters reports: Amazon's satellite internet unit, Project Kuiper, will begin mass-producing the satellites later this year, the company said. Those will be the first of over 3,000 satellites the technology giant plans to launch in low-Earth orbit in the next few years. "We'll definitely be beta testing with commercial customers in 2024," Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon devices, said at a conference in Washington.

The 2024 deployment target would keep Amazon on track to fulfill a regulatory mandate to launch half its entire Kuiper network of 3,236 satellites by 2026. Limp, who oversees Amazon's consumer devices powerhouse, said the company plans to make "three to five" satellites a day to reach that goal. With plans to pump more than $10 billion into the Kuiper network, Amazon sees its experience producing millions of devices from its consumer electronics powerhouse as an edge over rival SpaceX, the Musk-owned space company whose Starlink network already has roughly 4,000 satellites in space.

Amazon plans to launch a pair of prototype satellites early this year aboard a new rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance. The 2024 launch, carrying the initial production satellites, is expected to be the first of many more in a swift deployment campaign using rockets Amazon procured in 2021 and 2022. The company on Tuesday also revealed a slate of three different terminals, or antennas, that will connect customers with its Kuiper satellites in orbit. In a blog post on Tuesday, Amazon detailed its new terminals with photos and pricing.

Standard Customer Terminal: "Project Kuiper's standard customer terminal measures less than 11 inches square and 1 inch thick. It weighs less than five pounds without its mounting bracket. Despite this modest footprint, the device will be one of the most powerful commercially available customer terminals of its size, delivering speeds up to 400 megabits per second (Mbps). Amazon expects to produce these terminals for less than $400 each."

"Most Affordable" Terminal: "A 7-inch square design will be Project Kuiper's smallest and most affordable customer terminal. Weighing just 1 pound and offering speeds up to 100 Mbps, its portability and affordability will create opportunities to serve even more customers around the world. This design will connect residential customers who need an even lower-cost model, as well as government and enterprise customers pursuing applications like ground mobility and internet of things (IoT)."

"Most Capable" Antenna Model: "Project Kuiper's largest, most capable model is designed for enterprise, government, and telecommunications applications that require even more bandwidth. The device measures 19 inches by 30 inches, and will deliver speeds up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps)."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from STAT News: Health insurance companies have rejected medical claims for as long as they've been around. But a STAT investigation found artificial intelligence is now driving their denials to new heights in Medicare Advantage, the taxpayer-funded alternative to traditional Medicare that covers more than 31 million people. Behind the scenes, insurers are using unregulated predictive algorithms, under the guise of scientific rigor, to pinpoint the precise moment when they can plausibly cut off payment for an older patient's treatment. The denials that follow are setting off heated disputes between doctors and insurers, often delaying treatment of seriously ill patients who are neither aware of the algorithms, nor able to question their calculations. Older people who spent their lives paying into Medicare, and are now facing amputation, fast-spreading cancers, and other devastating diagnoses, are left to either pay for their care themselves or get by without it. If they disagree, they can file an appeal, and spend months trying to recover their costs, even if they don't recover from their illnesses.

The algorithms sit at the beginning of the process, promising to deliver personalized care and better outcomes. But patient advocates said in many cases they do the exact opposite -- spitting out recommendations that fail to adjust for a patient's individual circumstances and conflict with basic rules on what Medicare plans must cover. "While the firms say [the algorithm] is suggestive, it ends up being a hard-and-fast rule that the plan or the care management firms really try to follow," said David Lipschutz, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit group that has reviewed such denials for more than two years in its work with Medicare patients. "There's no deviation from it, no accounting for changes in condition, no accounting for situations in which a person could use more care."

STAT's investigation revealed these tools are becoming increasingly influential in decisions about patient care and coverage. The investigation is based on a review of hundreds of pages of federal records, court filings, and confidential corporate documents, as well as interviews with physicians, insurance executives, policy experts, lawyers, patient advocates, and family members of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries. It found that, for all of AI's power to crunch data, insurers with huge financial interests are leveraging it to help make life-altering decisions with little independent oversight. AI models used by physicians to detect diseases such as cancer, or suggest the most effective treatment, are evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. But tools used by insurers in deciding whether those treatments should be paid for are not subjected to the same scrutiny, even though they also influence the care of the nation's sickest patients.

A group of psychologists, two from Northwestern University and the third from the University of Oregon, has found via online testing that IQ scores in the U.S. may be dropping for the first time in nearly a century. Phys.Org reports: In this new effort, the researchers studied the results of online IQ tests taken by adults participating in the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project over a 12-year period. They found that IQ scores have dropped for all age groups, regardless of gender. They also found that the steepest declines were among young people. They also noted that while a few skills, such as spatial reasoning, were better than previous generations, other skills, such as problem solving, numerical series assessments and verbal reasoning, had all grown worse.

The researchers did not conduct any research to try to explain the drop, but suggest it might be linked to changes in the education system. They also did not address the controversial issue of the accuracy of IQ test scores in general as a means of measuring a person's intelligence. The paper has been published in the journal Intelligence.

All toilet paper from across the globe checked for toxic PFAS "forever chemicals" contained the compounds, and the waste flushed down toilets and sent to sewage treatment plants probably creates a significant source of water pollution, new research has found. From a report: Once in the wastewater plant, the chemicals can be packed in sewage sludge that is eventually spread on cropland as fertilizer, or spilt into waterways. "Toilet paper should be considered as a potentially major source of PFAS entering wastewater treatment systems," the study's authors wrote. PFAS are a class of about 14,000 chemicals typically used to make thousands of consumer products resist water, stains and heat. They are called "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally break down, and they are linked to cancer, fetal complications, liver disease, kidney disease, autoimmune disorders and other serious health issues.

The study checked 21 major toilet paper brands in North America, western Europe, Africa, Central America and South America, but it did not name the brands. The peer-reviewed University of Florida report did not consider the health implications of people wiping with contaminated toilet paper. PFAS can be dermally absorbed, but no research on how it may enter the body during the wiping process exists. However, that exposure is "definitely worth investigating," said David Andrews, senior scientist with the Environmental Working group, a public health non-profit that tracks PFAS pollution.

Slashdot readers madsh, Ellis Haney, and sciencehabit all submitted this report from Science: A recent study, scheduled to be presented at an upcoming computer vision conference, demonstrates that AI can read brain scans and re-create largely realistic versions of images a person has seen....

Many labs have used AI to read brain scans and re-create images a subject has recently seen, such as human faces and photos of landscapes. The new study marks the first time an AI algorithm called Stable Diffusion, developed by a German group and publicly released in 2022, has been used to do this.... For the new study, a group in Japan added additional training to the standard Stable Diffusion system, linking additional text descriptions about thousands of photos to brain patterns elicited when those photos were observed by participants in brain scan studies. Unlike previous efforts using AI algorithms to decipher brain scans, which had to be trained on large data sets, Stable Diffusion was able to get more out of less training for each participant by incorporating photo captions into the algorithm....

The AI algorithm makes use of information gathered from different regions of the brain involved in image perception, such as the occipital and temporal lobes, according to Yu Takagi, a systems neuroscientist at Osaka University who worked on the experiment. The system interpreted information from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, which detect changes in blood flow to active regions of the brain. When people look at a photo, the temporal lobes predominantly register information about the contents of the image (people, objects, or scenery), whereas the occipital lobe predominantly registers information about layout and perspective, such as the scale and position of the contents. All of this information is recorded by the fMRI as it captures peaks in brain activity, and these patterns can then be reconverted into an imitation image using AI. In the new study, the researchers added additional training to the Stable Diffusion algorithm using an online data set provided by the University of Minnesota, which consisted of brain scans from four participants as they each viewed a set of 10,000 photos.
If a study participant showed the same brain pattern, the algorithm sent words from that photo's caption to Stable Diffusion's text-to-image generator.

Iris Groen, a neuroscientist at the University of Amsterdam who was not involved with the work, told Science that "The accuracy of this new method is impressive."