“Magic mushroom” anti-depressive psychedelic affects perception of music

Reports and Proceedings

EUROPEAN COLLEGE OF NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY

Scientists have found that the psychedelic drug psilocybin, in development as an anti-depressive treatment, changes the emotional state of people listening to music. Psilocybin is the active psychedelic ingredient in ‘magic mushrooms’. Clinical trials of psilocybin generally use selected music playlists to support the drug-induced psychedelic experience, and this work shows that enhanced emotional processing may be a positive outcome of combining psilocybin with music, suggesting that music should be an active component of psilocybin therapy.   This work is presented at the ECNP Congress in Lisbon.

There has been considerable interest in the use of psychedelics in the treatment of hard-to-treat depression and other mental health conditions. Psilocybin, found naturally in several species of mushrooms, is the psychedelic most suitable for clinical development, in part because the psilocybin ‘trip’ can be contained within a working day, which is important for a supervised clinical treatment.  In the treatment of depression, psilocybin is normally administered with psychological support, and with accompanying music. Previous studies have shown that the psychedelic LSD interacts with music*, and of course in the 1960’s psychedelics were intimately related to the experience of music for many. Now for the first time a group of Danish scientists have shown that psilocybin affects the way that music elicits emotions.

In the study, 20 healthy participants (50% women) were tested on their emotional response to music before and after given psilocybin; 14 of these participants were also tested after being given ketanserin (ketanserin is an anti-hypertension drug, commonly used to as a comparison in psychedelic experiments). Whether ketanserin or psilocybin was given first was randomly selected and each person was thus able to report on the changes effected by both psilocybin and ketanserin. At the peak of drug effects participants listened to a short music programme and rated their emotional response.

The emotional response to the music was rated according to the Geneva Emotional Music Scale.  The music used was a short programme comprising Elgar’s Enigma Variations no 8 and 9, and Mozart’s Laudate Dominum, together lasting around 10 minutes.

According to lead researcher, Associate Professor Dea Siggaard Stenbæk (University of Copenhagen):

“We found that psilocybin markedly enhanced the emotional response to music, when compared to the response before taking the drugs. On the measurement scale we used, psilocybin increased the emotional response to music by around 60%. This response was even greater when compared to  ketanserin.  In fact, we found that ketanserin lessens the emotional response to music. This shows that combination of psilocybin and music has a strong emotional effect, and we believe that this will be important for the therapeutic application of psychedelics if they are approved for clinical use. Psilocybin is under development as a drug to treat depression, and this work implies that music needs to be considered as a therapeutic part of the treatment.

Our next step is to look at the effect of music on the brain while under the influence of psilocybin in data material we have already collected, using an MRI”.

She continued:

“Interestingly, some of the music we used, Elgar famous ‘Nimrod’ variation (the 9th variation) describes his close friend Augustus Jaeger. Jaeger encouraged Elgar to write the variations as a way out of depression, so we’re pleased to see it used again to help understand more about mental health”.

Commenting, Professor David J Nutt (Imperial College, London) said:

“This is further evidence of the potential of using music to facilitate treatment efficacy with psychedelics. What we need to do now is optimise this approach probably through individualising and personalising music tracks in therapy”.

This is an independent comment; Professor Nutt was not involved in this work  

There is evidence that Magic mushrooms have been taken by humans for over 6000 years. Psilocybin was first isolated and synthesised in 1958, by the Swiss Chemist Albert Hoffman, the same man who first synthesised LSD. There was extensive early research into medical uses of psychedelics, but this became difficult after the US introduced a ban on their use in 1970. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/end-the-ban-on-psychoactive-drug-research/ for background.

*See: LSD enhances the emotional response to music, Kaelen et al, Psychopharmacology 232, 3607–3614 (2015). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-015-4014-y

The 34th ECNP Annual conference takes place in Lisbon and online from 2-5 October, see https://www.ecnp.eu/Congress2021/ECNPcongress . The European College of Neuropsychopharmacology is Europe’s main organisation working in applied neuroscience.

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Bigleaf maple decline tied to hotter, drier summers in Washington state

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

 

IMAGE: A BIGLEAF MAPLE IN DECLINE IN WASHINGTON’S CENTRAL CASCADES REGION. view more 

CREDIT: JACOB BETZEN/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

As its name suggests, the bigleaf maple tree’s massive leaves are perhaps its most distinctive quality. A native to the Pacific Northwest’s wet westside forests, these towering trees can grow leaves up to 1.5 feet across — the largest of any maple.

But since 2011, scientists, concerned hikers and residents have observed more stressed and dying bigleaf maple across urban and suburban neighborhoods as well as in forested areas. Often the leaves are the first to shrivel and die, eventually leaving some trees completely bare. While forest pathologists have ruled out several specific diseases, the overall cause of the tree’s decline has stumped experts for years.

A new study led by the University of Washington, in collaboration with Washington Department of Natural Resources, has found that bigleaf maple die-off in Washington is linked to hotter, drier summers that predispose this species to decline. These conditions essentially weaken the tree’s immune system, making it easier to succumb to other stressors and diseases. The findings were published Sept. 16 in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.

“These trees can tolerate a lot, but once you start throwing in other factors, particularly severe summer drought as in recent years, it stresses the trees and can lead to their death,” said co-author Patrick Tobin, associate professor in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

In addition to warmer, drier weather, the researchers found that bigleaf maple are more likely to decline near roads and other development — especially in hotter urban areas. Across multiple years and sites in Western Washington, they weren’t able to find any single pest or pathogen responsible for the mass decline; rather, all signs point to climate change and human development as the drivers behind the regional die-off.

“Managing, protecting and utilizing our urban and wild ecosystems in the face of climate change and human population growth is and will continue to be one of the major challenges facing us,” said lead author Jacob Betzen, a biological technician with the U.S. Forest Service who completed this work as a UW graduate student. “This research investigating bigleaf maple is one small piece of that larger puzzle.”

From field sampling and lab work, the researchers found that bigleaf maple grew less in summers that were hot and dry, both in their overall mass as well as leaf size. One of the signature signs of distress, they found, was significantly smaller leaves. In drought conditions, trees use more energy trying to survive and defend themselves from diseases and other threats.

CAPTION

A healthy bigleaf maple leaf, left, next to an abnormally small leaf from a bigleaf maple tree in decline.

CREDIT

Amy Ramsey/Washington Department of Natural Resource

“These results show that summer heat and drought impact the health of iconic tree species of Washington, like bigleaf maple, even in Western Washington, a region known for abundant precipitation. Health impacts to our forests and tree species are likely to continue as we have increased periods of drought each year,” said co-author Amy Ramsey, an environmental planner and forest pathologist with Washington DNR.

For this study, the research team revisited a selection of sites around Western Washington where DNR in 2014 and 2015 had taken samples and performed testing on trees in decline. They also chose 36 roadside sites where maples were present. Finally, they randomly selected an additional 59 sites on public land across the region where bigleaf maple are known to exist. Across these randomly chosen sites, they found that nearly a quarter of the bigleaf maple trees showed signs of decline.

From each study site, they collected soil, leaves, stems and tree cores, which they analyzed in the lab. Tree cores allow scientists to learn about the age and growth rate of a tree — as well as weather history at that location — without having to cut it down.

From the analysis of the tree cores, the team found that the growth of bigleaf maple has varied significantly since 2011, and was especially lower in years with hotter, drier summers. They compared this growth to that of Douglas fir trees, which they also cored, and found their annual growth was consistent — meaning that bigleaf maple are especially sensitive to dry, hot weather.

CAPTION

A healthy bigleaf maple tree. The species is found in across urban, suburban and forested areas in western Washington.

CREDIT

Jacob Betzen/University of Washington

“For us, these analyses were a big piece of the puzzle,” Tobin said. “This helped us determine that their decline is a recent phenomenon that is linked to weather conditions.”

These findings will likely change the way foresters manage bigleaf maple in both urban and wild settings. This might mean planting the trees in different locations, watering more in urban areas or using seed stock better adapted to the projected future conditions of a site, Betzen said. In forests, it might mean a focus on keeping intact landscapes free from more urbanization.

Other co-authors are Gregory Ettl of the UW and Daniel Omdal of Washington DNR. This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture NIFA McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Program, Washington DNR and the David R.M. Scott Endowed Professorship in Forest Resources.

For more information, contact Tobin at pctobin@uw.edu and Betzen at jacob.betzen@usda.gov.

Related: When trees are stressed, they can succumb to diseases that normally wouldn’t bother them. Researchers found this was this case in a recent sudden outbreak of powdery mildew on the leaves of bigleaf maple trees on the University of Washington campus.

CAPTION

A bigleaf maple tree that has nearly died in Washington state.

CREDIT

Washington Department of Natural Resources

CAPTION

Processed tree cores used in analyses to estimate the timing of decline in bigleaf maple trees.

CREDIT

Jacob Betzen/University of Washington

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JOURNAL

Forest Ecology and Management

DOI

10.1016/j.foreco.2021.119681 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Bigleaf maple, Acer macrophyllum Pursh, decline in western Washington, USA

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Sep-2021

Fungal transplants from close relatives help endangered plants fight off disease

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

 

IMAGE: MYRTLE RUST ON THE LEAVES OF EUGENIA KOOLAUENSIS, A CRITICALLY ENDANGERED ENDEMIC HAWAIIAN TREE. view more 

CREDIT: M. K. CHOCK

For the endangered Hawaiian plant, Eugenia koolauensis, fungi could be both its demise and its savior.  The fungal pathogen myrtle rust (Austropuccinia psidii) has been devastating populations of the endemic tree, along with many other native and cultivated plants.  However, researcher Mason Kamalani Chock thinks part of the solution might be . . . more fungi.

Endophytic fungi, which reside inside leaves, often protect plants from pathogens.  In a paper recently published in Phytobiomes Journal, Chock along with fellow University of Hawaii researchers Benjamin Hoyt and Anthony Amend, treated E. koolauensis plants with endophytic fungi isolated from the leaves of closely related plant species, then assessed the resistance of these inoculated plants against myrtle rust.  Although some individual strains of fungi seemed to decrease the pathogen severity, plants were most protected against the pathogen when treated with a complex mixture of microbes prepared from homogenized leaves of these related plants. 

This finding suggests that microbiome-based treatments could be a promising avenue of myrtle rust management for these endangered plants and emphasizes the beneficial effects microbiomes can have on their host plants.  “We need to be thinking about the entire microbial community rather than any individual player,” noted lead author Chock.

While beneficial microbes have been applied as biological control agents in agriculture, this new research suggests they could also be an important tool for plant conservation.  Diseases pose one of the biggest challenges for endangered plants, especially since low genetic variation in their small populations limits efforts to breed them for disease resistance.  Other solutions are temporary or potentially harmful in other ways, such as pesticide applications, which have to be continually applied to be effective and can have deleterious effects on soil health. 

Thus, mining plant microbiomes for beneficial strains or communities that can confer disease resistance may be a promising strategy for combating disease-driven declines of endangered plants.  And even if these microbial treatments are not strong enough to make their hosts completely disease resistant, every little bit of protection can help these endangered plants.   While Chock does not think the study’s findings indicate that microbiome transplants are “a silver bullet to stopping myrtle rust’s worldwide spread,” he thinks they may provide an “extra push for those plant species that are holding on to dear life due to the introduction of deleterious pathogens.'' 

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To learn more about this research, see the original article published in Phytobiomes Journal: “Mycobiome Transplant Increases Resistance to Austropuccinia psidii in an Endangered Hawaiian Plant.”

Lead researcher Mason K. Chock (@kamalanichock) is currently a Ph.D. student in the Koskella Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, who is interested in the factors that affect the assembly and succession of plant microbial communities. He is currently focusing on maternal effects and the assembly of plant microbiomes.

Author bio: Dr. Mia Howard (@mia_how) is an assistant feature editor for Phytobiomes Journal and a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Jen Lau’s lab at Indiana University.  She is fascinated by how plants—often with help from microbes—protect themselves from herbivores with toxic chemicals.

CAPTION

Scanning electron microscope image of myrtle rust.

CREDIT

Mason K. Chock

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JOURNAL

Phytobiomes Journal

DOI

10.1094/PBIOMES-09-20-0065-R 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Mycobiome Transplant Increases Resistance to Austropuccinia psidii in an Endangered Hawaiian Plant

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

29-Sep-2021

Seismic forensics and its importance for early warning

The analysis of a flood disaster in the Himalaya may help establish an early warning system for flash floods

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GFZ GEOFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM POTSDAM, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE

 

VIDEO: THE SEISMIC SIGNALS WERE TRANSFERRED INTO ACOUSTIC WAVES ALLOWING TO LISTEN TO THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE FLOOD DISASTER. view more 

CREDIT: MICHA DIETZE/GFZ

The scientific description of the catastrophic rockslide of February 7, 2021, in India’s Dhauli Ganga Valley reads like a forensic report. A rockslide and the subsequent flood had killed at least a hundred people and destroyed two hydroelectric power plants. In the scientific journal Science (issue of 1 Oct., 2021), researchers from the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) together with colleagues from the National Geophysical Research Institute of India (NGRI), trace the disaster minute by minute using data from a network of seismometers. The team posits that seismic networks could be used to establish an early warning system for high mountain regions.

 

Although the ultimate trigger of the massive rockslide that initiated at an altitude of more than 5500 meters remains unresolved, one thing is certain: On Sunday, February 7, 2021, at just before half past ten in the morning, more than 20 million cubic meters of ice and rock began to rush downslope into the valley of the Ronti Gad River. Seismometers recorded the signal at 10:21 am and 14 seconds local time. 54 seconds later, the mass hit the valley floor at 3730 meters elevation, generating an impact equivalent to a magnitude 3.8 earthquake. In the valley, the mix of rock and ice mobilized debris and additional ice, which – mixed with water – rolled through the valleys of the Ronti Gad and Rishi Ganga rivers as a gigantic debris flow and flood. First author Kristen Cook of GFZ estimates that at first, the mass shot downhill at nearly 100 kilometers per hour; after about ten minutes, the movement slowed to just under 40 kilometers per hour. 

 

At 10:58 and 33 seconds, the flood reached a major road bridge near Joshimath. Within seconds the water there rose by 16 meters. Thirty kilometers further down the valley, the Chinka gauge station recorded a jump of 3.6 meters in water level, and another sixty kilometers down, the level still rose by 1 meter.  

 

Based on the ground-shaking signals recorded by the seismic stations, the collective research by partners from GFZ’s sections Geomorphology, Seismic Hazard and Risk Dynamics, and Physics of Earthquakes and Volcanoes, along with NGRI colleagues, identified three distinct phases of the catastrophic flood. Phase 1 was the rockslide and its massive impact on the valley floor. Phase 2 followed, with the mobilization of enormous amounts of material – ice, debris, mud, creating a devastating wall of material rushing through a narrow winding valley, where a great deal of material remained and the energy rapidly decreased with time. This lasted about thirteen minutes. Phase 3 (fifty minutes in duration) was more flood-like, with massive amounts of water that flowed downstream, carrying along large boulders up to 20 m across. 

 

The most important finding: “The data from seismic instruments are suitable as a basis for an early warning system that warns of the arrival of such catastrophic debris flows,” says Niels Hovius, last author of the study and acting scientific director of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. Another key point is the availability of a dense seismic network, operated by Indian colleagues at the Indian National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI). Hovius’ colleague Kristen Cook, first author of the paper, adds, “the available warning time for sites located in valleys depends on the downstream distance and speed of the flow front.” For example, Joshimath, where the river level rose 16 meters during the flood, was 34.6 km downstream from the landslide. Kristen Cook: “That means people in and around Joshimath could have received a warning about half an hour before the flood arrived.” For regions farther upstream, where the wave arrived just a few minutes after the landslide, it might still have been enough to shut down power plants. 

 

So why hasn't such a warning system been in place for a long time? Fabrice Cotton, Head of the Section Seismic Hazard and Risk Dynamics, says: “The problem is the different requirements for seismic measuring stations, which make many stations in our worldwide and regional earthquake networks less suitable for detecting rockfalls, debris flows or major floods. At the same time, stations that aim to monitor floods and debris flows in their immediate vicinity don't help as well in detecting events at a distance.” The solution the GFZ researchers are working on with their colleagues in India and Nepal is a compromise: Stations would have to be set up at strategic locations that would form the backbone of a high-mountain flood early warning system. According to Marco Pilz, “this trade-off, in a sense, is an optimization problem that future studies will have to address and where we have already made systematic progress, for example in the German Lower Rhein Bay region. Further analysis of flash floods and debris flows will help better understand how seismic signals can help with early warning.”

 

The first ideas to establish such an early-warning system based on a seismological approach came up well before the disaster as an outcome of a joint workshop of Helmholtz researchers and Indian colleagues in Bangalore in the spring of 2019. The current project of the study was initiated by Virendra Tiwari of NGRI and Niels Hovius. It made use of a collocation of the flood and a regional seismic network already set up by the Indian National Geophysical Research Institute. Hovius says: “Early warning is becoming ever more urgent, as mountain rivers are increasingly used for generation of hydropower, seen as an engine for economic development of some of the world's poorest mountain regions.  Given that catastrophic floods are also likely to become more frequent under a warming climate, driving rapid glacier retreat and precarious ponding of melt water in high locations, future risks will grow even further.”

  

CAPTION

Different stages of the landslide and the debris flow through the valley can be seen in the seismic signals.

CREDIT

Cook et al./Science

K. Cook et al.: „Detection, Tracking, and Potential for Early Warning of Catastrophic Flow Events Using Regional Seismic Networks“, Science; DOI: 10.1126/science.abj1227

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abj1227 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Detection, Tracking, and Potential for Early Warning of Catastrophic Flow Events Using Regional Seismic Networks

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Oct-2021

COI STATEMENT

none declared

 

Income inequality can harm children’s achievement in maths – but not reading, 27-year study suggests

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Inequalities in income affect how well children do in maths – but not reading, the most comprehensive study of its kind has found.

Looking at data stretching from 1992 to 2019, the analysis, published in the journal Educational Review, revealed that 10-year-olds in US states with bigger gaps in income did less well in maths than those living in areas of America where earnings were more evenly distributed.

With income inequality in the US the highest in the developed world, researcher Professor Joseph Workman argues that addressing social inequality may do more to boost academic achievement than reforming schools or curricula – favoured methods of policymakers.

Income inequality – a measure of how unevenly income is distributed through a population – has long been associated with a host of health and social problems including mental health issues, lack of trust, higher rates of imprisonment and lower rates of social mobility.

It may also affect academic achievement, through various routes.

For instance, income inequality is linked to higher rates of divorce, substance abuse and child maltreatment, the stresses of which may affect a child’s development.  It is also associated with higher odds of babies being of a low weight a birth – something which can raise their risk of developmental delays as they grow up.

Income inequality may also lead to some schools having a high concentration of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, making it more difficult for them meet each child’s needs.

Professor Workman, a sociologist at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, compared almost three decades of fourth graders’ maths and reading results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) with data on income inequality from all 50 states.

Also known as the Nation’s Report Card, the NAEP measures student achievement nationally, using a representative sample of youngsters from each state.

Income inequality in the US has followed a U-shaped pattern over the past century. Levels were high in the 1910s to 1930s before falling off between the 1940s and 1970s and then rising again.  Today, the income gap is the highest in the developed world.

The analysis showed that scores in maths were lower, on average, in states with higher levels of income inequality.

It also revealed that that income inequality didn’t just affect the poorer students but was associated with lower achievement for both poor and non-poor students alike.

The results couldn’t be explained away solely by poorer areas having more social problems and educational issues. Instead, it seemed that the concentration of income among top earners was driving down academic achievement.

Further analysis showed that the states that experienced the biggest rises in income inequality over time also recorded the smallest increases in maths results.

Scores in these states rose by an average of 17.5 points – compared to an increase of 24.3 points in states in which the income divide didn’t widen as quickly.

Reading grades were, however, not linked to income inequality overall.

Professor Workman explains: “For maths, income inequality was associated with lower achievement for both poor and non-poor students alike.

“But for reading, income inequality benefited non-poor students and harmed poor students. So, for reading the benefits and harms cancel out to no association overall.”
With preliminary evidence suggesting the same patterns apply to other age groups, Professor Workman believes his findings have important implications for policymakers.

He says: “Assessments of the No Child Left Behind Act, which attempted to raise achievement and reduce achievement disparity by reforming schools, have provided scant evidence of the policy being effective in achieving its goals.

“An effective strategy to raise achievement may be to reduce income inequality. Policies such as progressive tax rates, wealth tax, inheritance tax and annual wealth tax can effectively reduce inequality.

“Higher tax revenues could be used on programmes that support child development, such as universal pre-kindergarten or summer learning programmes.”

It isn’t known, however, if a similar pattern exists in other developed nations with high levels of income inequality, such as the UK.

Professor Workman concludes that while it has been argued that income inequality provides motivation for success, rates in the US have “perhaps reached levels that are dysfunctional for society”.

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JOURNAL

Educational Review

DOI

10.1080/00131911.2021.1974349 

A model that can generate humorous versions of existing headlines

by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

Diagram summarizing the process through which the model generates humorous headlines. Credit: Alnajjar & Hämäläinen.

Over the past decade or so, computer scientists have developed a growing number of computational models that can generate, edit and analyze texts. While some of these models have achieved remarkable results, some aspects of human language and communication have proved particularly difficult to replicate computationally.

One of these aspects is humor, the human ability to say or write things that are funny. Humor is a subtle and inherently human quality; thus, reproducing it in machines is far from an easy task.

Researchers at University of Helsinki have recently attempted to artificially replicate humor in machines, by developing a framework that can turn existing news headlines into humorous ones. This model, first introduced in a paper pre-published on arXiv and presented at the 12th International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC 2021), was trained to analyze headlines in an existing dataset and replace words in them to give them comical or amusing qualities.

"Automated news generation has become a major interest for news agencies," Khalid Alnajjar and Mika Hämäläinen, the two researchers who conducted the study, wrote in their paper. "Oftentimes, headlines for such automatically generated news articles are unimaginative, as they have been generated with ready-made templates. We present a computationally creative approach for headline generation that can generate humorous versions of existing headlines."

The recent paper by Alnajjar and Hämäläinen draws inspiration from a previous work by three researchers at University of Rochester and Microsoft Research AI, who introduced Humicroedit, a dataset containing over 15,000 annotated news headlines. In this study, the researchers identified strategies for making headlines funny that are commonly used by humans, which they found to be aligned with existing theories of humor.

The team at University of Helsinki devised a model that uses some of these strategies to change non-humorous headlines and make them more amusing for readers. To do this, it tries to find funny substitutes for some of the words in existing headlines.

Two examples of the headlines generated by the researchers' model are: "Trump eats the wrong Lee Greenwood on Twitter" and "U.S. says Turkey is helping ISIS by combing Kurds in Syria."

Credit: Alnajjar & Hämäläinen.

To evaluate the effectiveness of their model, Alnajjar and Hämäläinen used it to change 83 headlines randomly selected from the Humicroedit dataset and make them more humorous. Subsequently, they asked reviewers on a crowd-sourcing platform to provide their feedback on whether they found the headlines generated by the model funny or not.

Overall, the researchers found that the humorous headlines produced by their model were comparable to those generated by humans on several levels. In addition, on average, they found that human evaluators sourced online considered the headlines produced by their system funny 36% of the time. If the model is improved further, it could eventually help media agencies and journalists to come up with new funny headlines for news articles.

"As the best headlines produced by our system for each original headline can, on average, reach to a human level in terms of most of the factors measured in our evaluation, an immediate future direction for our research is to develop a better ranking mechanism to reach the maximum capacity of our system," Alnajjar and Hämäläinen concluded in their paper. "Perhaps such ranking could be learned by training a long short term memory (LSTM) classifier on humor annotated corpora."Studies suggest finding automatic ways to spot fake news may be more complicated than anticipated

More information: When a computer cracks a joke: automated generation of humorous headlines. arXiv:2109.08702 [cs.CL]. arxiv.org/abs/2109.08702

"President vows to cut hair": dataset and analysis of creative text editng for humorous headlines. Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies(2019). DOI: 10.18653/v1/N19-1012

© 2021 Science X Network

'The Rescue' unearths rare footage of Thai cave saga

Issued on: 05/10/2021 

Filmmakers E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin teamed with National Geographic to tell the inside story of the 2018 Thai cave extraction in "The Rescue" 

VALERIE MACON AFP

Los Angeles (AFP)

After their Oscar-winning movie "Free Solo," about a daredevil rock climber, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin found an even more remarkable true story for their next film -- the rescue of a boys' soccer team from a Thai cave in 2018.

The husband-and-wife team had watched transfixed with the rest of the world as amateur divers, Navy SEALS and hundreds of volunteers pulled off a seemingly impossible rescue through miles of dark, perilous, flooded caves.

Once the 12 boys and their coach had been plucked miraculously from their subterranean prison, the documentary makers teamed with National Geographic to tell the inside story in "The Rescue," out in theaters October 8.

"It moved us as humans, as Asian parents and as storytellers. I think that this really is one of the great stories of the last 10 years," Vasarhelyi told AFP.

The mission to rescue a young Thai football team who had become trapped in a cave captivated the world 

Handout ROYAL THAI NAVY/AFP/File

The directors sifted through 87 hours of never-before-seen footage -- obtained from the Thai Navy Seals after two years' of negotiations during which military chiefs "said no in every possible form of 'no'," Chin recalled.

"For me it wasn't fair -- if it existed the world needed to see it," said Vasarhelyi.

The behind-the-scenes footage shows the euphoric moment two British divers returned to the cave's entrance with news they had located the children, and the precarious pulley contraption used to transfer them on stretchers out of the final cavern.

It was days into the 2018 Thai cave rescue operation before divers made contact with the trapped children 

Handout ROYAL THAI NAVY/AFP/File

But the film focuses mainly on the personalities and back stories of the rescue's unlikely heroes.

The rag-tag group of middle-aged hobbyists' unique skillsets and homemade equipment enabled them to reach sections of the cave that military divers could not begin to fathom.

"Here are these weekend warriors -- one's a retired fireman, one's a meteorologist, an IT consultant, an electrician," said Vasarhelyi.

"They're kind of misfits, they feel awkward, they have found purpose in this very strange subculture of cave diving on the weekends, which has allowed them to become the best in the world."

The divers not only appear in interviews, but re-enacted key moments of the rescue on camera for the movie.

Families kept vigil as the painstaking operation unfolded, and celebrated when contact was made with the 12 missing boys and their football coach 

LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA AFP/File

"This is the first film that we've made that we weren't present for the principal action," Vasarhelyi.

"The only way to really understand the gravity of tying a kid's arms together behind their back and putting their head underwater is when you see it."

- 'Risk everything' -

The interviews reveal hair-raising details about the rescue, for which the children were injected with a cocktail of drugs to sedate then.

One diver bringing out a child became disoriented and ended up swimming backwards to the previous cave -- following an electrical cable -- after losing his dive rope.

Royal Thai Navy divers and caving hobbyists joined forces to rescue the young boys Handout ROYAL THAI NAVY/AFP

Another accidentally stabbed himself with a ketamine syringe while underwater with a child who was recovering consciousness. Thankfully, it was empty at the time.

For Vasarhelyi, one of the rescue's most compelling features was the personal risk shouldered by the amateur divers, who were warned by embassies they could land in Thai jail if any of the children died, and given extraction plans in case it failed.

"If you're the only person in the world who can save these kids, are you going to risk everything to try to do it? And can we be our best selves? And what is the consequence of that?" she said.

The 12 boys rescued from a Thai cave were passed "sleeping" on stretchers through the treacherous passageways 

Handout Thai government public relations department (PRD)/AFP/File

"I think that even going to Thai prison would probably pale to what it would have been like to live with yourself, knowing that you participated in the death of 13 people," she added.

"And I don't think we can really ever overstate -- they really considered that saving one child would be a success."

Notably absent from the film is Elon Musk, who infamously traveled to Thailand with a prototype mini-submarine which was rejected as unusable by the divers -- triggering a bizarre spat.

Factfile on the 2018 Thai cave rescue Gal ROMA AFP

"This is such a rich story, and that particular incident really had no impact on the rescue itself," said Vasarhelyi.

"It felt like a diversion -- it just took away from the principal action. So we thought as it wasn't a big deal to the rescue itself, it shouldn't be a big deal in our film."

© 2021 AFP