But are machines capable of this type of thinking? In the late 1980s, Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn, philosophers and cognitive scientists, posited that artificial neural networks — the engines that drive artificial intelligence and machine learning — are not capable of making these connections, known as “compositional generalizations.” However, in the decades since, scientists have been developing ways to instill this capacity in neural networks and related technologies, but with mixed success, thereby keeping alive this decades-old debate.

Researchers at New York University and Spain’s Pompeu Fabra University have now developed a technique — reported in the journal Nature — that advances the ability of these tools, such as ChatGPT, to make compositional generalizations. This technique, Meta-learning for Compositionality (MLC), outperforms existing approaches and is on par with, and in some cases better than, human performance. MLC centers on training neural networks — the engines driving ChatGPT and related technologies for speech recognition and natural language processing — to become better at compositional generalization through practice.

Developers of existing systems, including large language models, have hoped that compositional generalization will emerge from standard training methods, or have developed special-purpose architectures in order to achieve these abilities. MLC, in contrast, shows how explicitly practicing these skills allow these systems to unlock new powers, the authors note.

“For 35 years, researchers in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and philosophy have been debating whether neural networks can achieve human-like systematic generalization,” says Brenden Lake, an assistant professor in NYU’s Center for Data Science and Department of Psychology and one of the authors of the paper. “We have shown, for the first time, that a generic neural network can mimic or exceed human systematic generalization in a head-to-head comparison.”

In exploring the possibility of bolstering compositional learning in neural networks, the researchers created MLC, a novel learning procedure in which a neural network is continuously updated to improve its skills over a series of episodes. In an episode, MLC receives a new word and is asked to use it compositionally — for instance, to take the word “jump” and then create new word combinations, such as “jump twice” or “jump around right twice.” MLC then receives a new episode that features a different word, and so on, each time improving the network’s compositional skills.

To test the effectiveness of MLC, Lake, co-director of NYU’s Minds, Brains, and Machines Initiative, and Marco Baroni, a researcher at the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies and professor at the Department of Translation and Language Sciences of Pompeu Fabra University, conducted a series of experiments with human participants that were identical to the tasks performed by MLC.

In addition, rather than learn the meaning of actual words — terms humans would already know — they also had to learn the meaning of nonsensical terms (e.g., “zup” and “dax”) as defined by the researchers and know how to apply them in different ways. MLC performed as well as the human participants — and, in some cases, better than its human counterparts. MLC and people also outperformed ChatGPT and GPT-4, which despite its striking general abilities, showed difficulties with this learning task.

“Large language models such as ChatGPT still struggle with compositional generalization, though they have gotten better in recent years,” observes Baroni, a member of Pompeu Fabra University’s Computational Linguistics and Linguistic Theory research group. “But we think that MLC can further improve the compositional skills of large language models.”

Researchersexamined the exceptionally bright gamma-ray burst GRB 230307A, which was caused by a neutron star merger. The explosion was observed using an array of ground and space-based telescopes, including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

Publishing their findings today in Nature(25 Oct), the international research team which included experts from the University of Birmingham, reveal that they found the heavy chemical element tellurium, in the aftermath of the explosion.

Other elements such as iodine and thorium, which are needed to sustain life on earth, are also likely to be amongst the material ejected by the explosion, also known as a kilonova.

Dr Ben Gompertz, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Birmingham, and co-author of the study explains: “Gamma-ray bursts come from powerful jets travelling at almost the speed of light — in this case driven by a collision between two neutron stars. These stars spent several billion years spiralling towards one another before colliding to produce the gamma-ray burst we observed in March this year. The merger site is the approximate length of the Milky Way (about 120,000 light-years) outside of their home galaxy, meaning they must have been launched out together.

“Colliding neutron stars provide the conditions needed to synthesise very heavy elements, and the radioactive glow of these new elements powered the kilonova we detected as the blast faded. Kilonovae are extremely rare and very difficult to observe and study, which is why this discovery is so exciting.”

GRB 230307A was one of the brightest gamma-ray bursts ever observed — over a million times brighter than the entire Milky Way Galaxy combined. This is the second time individual heavy elements have been detected using spectroscopic observations after a neutron star merger, providing invaluable insight into how these vital building blocks needed for life are formed.

Lead author of the study Andrew Levan, Professor of Astrophysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands, said: “Just over 150 years since Dmitri Mendeleev wrote down the periodic table of elements, we are now finally in the position to start filling in those last blanks of understanding where everything was made, thanks to the James Webb Telescope.”

GRB 230307A lasted for 200 seconds, meaning it is categorised as a long-duration gamma-ray burst. This is unusual as short gamma-ray bursts, which last less than two seconds, are more commonly caused by neutron star mergers. Long gamma-ray bursts like this one are usually caused by the explosive death of a massive star.

The researchers are now seeking to learn more about how these neutron star mergers work and how they power these huge element-generating explosions.

Dr Samantha Oates, a co-author of the study while a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Birmingham (now a lecturer at Lancaster University) said: “Just a few short years ago discoveries like this one would not have been possible, but thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope we can observe these mergers in exquisite detail.”

Dr Gompertz concludes: “Until recently, we didn’t think mergers could power gamma-ray bursts for more than two seconds. Our next job is to find more of these long-lived mergers and develop a better understanding of what drives them — and whether even heavier elements are being created. This discovery has opened the door to a transformative understanding of our universe and how it works.”

But findings from a new paper published in the journal Nature could lead to reanalysis of that data. An international team of researchers discovered the presence of a molten silicate layer overlying Mars’ metallic core — providing new insights into how Mars formed, evolved and became the barren planet it is today.

Published on October 25, 2023, the team’s paper details the use of seismic data to locate and identify a thin layer of molten silicates (rock-forming minerals that make up the crust and mantle of Mars and Earth) lying between the Martian mantle and core. With the discovery of this molten layer, the researchers determined that Mars’ core is both denser and smaller than previous estimates, a conclusion that better aligns with other geophysical data and analysis of Martian meteorites.

Vedran Lekic, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland and co-author of the paper, compared the molten layer to a ‘heating blanket’ covering the Martian core.

“The blanket not only insulates the heat coming from the core and prevents the core from cooling, but also concentrates radioactive elements whose decay generates heat” Lekic said. “And when that happens, the core is likely to be unable to produce the convective motions that would create a magnetic field — which can explain why Mars currently doesn’t have an active magnetic field around it.”

Without a functional protective magnetic field around itself, a terrestrial planet such as Mars would be extremely vulnerable to harsh solar winds and lose all the water on its surface, making it incapable of sustaining life. Lekic added that this difference between Earth and Mars could be attributed to differences in internal structure and the different planetary evolution paths the two planets took.

“The thermal blanketing of Mars’ metallic core by the liquid layer at the base of the mantle implies that external sources are necessary to generate the magnetic field recorded in the Martian crust during the first 500 to 800 million years of its evolution,” said the paper’s lead author Henri Samuel, a scientist with the French National Center for Scientific Research. “These sources could be energetic impacts or core motion generated by gravitational interactions with ancient satellites which have since then disappeared.”

The team’s conclusions support theories that Mars was at one time a molten ocean of magma that later crystallized to produce a layer of silicate melt enriched in iron and radioactive elements at the base of the Martian mantle. The heat emanating from the radioactive elements would then have dramatically altered the thermal evolution and cooling history of the red planet.

“These layers, if widespread, can have pretty big consequences for the rest of the planet,” Lekic said. “Their existence can help tell us whether magnetic fields can be generated and maintained, how planets cool over time, and also how the dynamics of their interiors change over time.”

NASA’s InSight mission officially ended in December 2022 after more than four years of collecting data on Mars, but the analysis of the observations continues. Samuel, Lekic and their co-authors are among the latest researchers to reexamine prior models of Mars using seismology to confirm the planet’s structure and turbulent history.

“This new discovery of a molten layer is just one example of how we continue to learn new things from the completed InSight mission,” Lekic said. “We hope that the information we’ve gathered on planetary evolution using seismic data is paving the way for future missions to celestial bodies like the moon and other planets like Venus.”

William Ripple, a distinguished professor in the Oregon State University College of Forestry, and former OSU postdoctoral researcher Christopher Wolf are the lead authors of the report, and 10 other U.S. and global scientists are co-authors.

“Without actions that address the root problem of humanity taking more from the Earth than it can safely give, we’re on our way to the potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems and a world with unbearable heat and shortages of food and freshwater,” Wolf said.

Published in BioScience, “The 2023 State of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory” notes that 20 of 35 planetary vital signs the authors use to track climate change are at record extremes.

The authors share new data illustrating that many climate-related records were broken by “enormous margins” in 2023, particularly those relating to ocean temperatures and sea ice. They also note an extraordinary Canadian wildfire season that produced unprecedented carbon dioxide emissions.

The report follows by four years the “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” published by Ripple and collaborators in BioScience and co-signed by more than 15,000 scientists in 161 countries.

“Life on our planet is clearly under siege,” Ripple said. “The statistical trends show deeply alarming patterns of climate-related variables and disasters. We also found little progress to report as far as humanity combating climate change.”

Among the key numbers in the report:

• Fossil fuel subsidies — actions by governments that artificially lower the cost of energy production, raise the price received by producers or lower the price paid by consumers — roughly doubled between 2021 and 2022, from $531 billion to just over $1 trillion.
• Already this year wildfires in Canada have pumped more than 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, greater than Canada’s total 2021 greenhouse gas emissions of 0.67 gigatons.
• In 2023, there have already been 38 days with global average temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Until this year, such days were a rarity, the authors note.
• The highest average Earth surface temperature ever recorded came this past July, and there’s reason to believe it was the highest surface temperature the planet has seen in the last 100,000 years.

“As scientists, we are hugely troubled by the sudden increases in the frequency and severity of climate-related disasters,” said Wolf, now a scientist with Corvallis-based Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates. “The frequency and severity of those disasters might be outpacing rising temperatures. By the end of the 21st century, as many as 3 to 6 billion people may find themselves outside the Earth’s livable regions, meaning they will be encountering severe heat, limited food availability and elevated mortality rates.”

The authors say policies are needed that take aim at the underlying issue of “ecological overshoot.” When human demand on the Earth’s resources is too large, the result in an array of environmental crises, including biodiversity decline. As long as humanity continues to put extreme pressure on the planet, any strategy that focuses only on carbon or climate will simply redistribute the pressure, they note.

“Our goal is to communicate climate facts and make policy recommendations,” Ripple said. “It is a moral duty of scientists and our institutions to alert humanity of any potential existential threat and to show leadership in taking action.”

The authors urge transitioning to a global economy that prioritizes human well-being and curtails overconsumption and excessive emissions by the rich. Specific recommendations include phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, transitioning toward plant-based diets, scaling up forest protection efforts and adopting international coal elimination and fossil fuel non-proliferation treaties.

They stress that all climate-related actions must be grounded in equity and social justice, noting that extreme weather and other climate impacts are being disproportionately felt by the poorest people, who have contributed the least to climate change.