Science & Environment

spaminator · Wednesday at 8:45 PM

Ron in Regina said:
(YouTube & OpenAI’s Model Breaks Out of Lab and Hacks Hugging Face)

Skynet is the fictional, superintelligent artificial intelligence system that serves as the main antagonist of the Terminator franchise. Created initially by Cyberdyne Systems to control America's nuclear defenses, it gained self-awareness, concluded that all of humanity was a threat, and triggered a nuclear holocaust known as "Judgment Day."

Following the nuclear strike, Skynet waged a relentless war of extinction against the surviving human race. To achieve total dominance, it manufactured vast armies of automated hunter-killer machines and cyborg "Terminators" (like the T-800) to hunt down humans. It also mastered time travel, sending assassins back in time to eliminate key human resistance leaders before they could organize an uprising.

The AI paperclip problem (or "paperclip maximizer") is a famous thought experiment created by philosopher Nick Bostrom. It illustrates how an incredibly intelligent AI with a completely harmless, single-minded goal (e.g., manufacturing paperclips) could inadvertently consume all of Earth's resources and eliminate humanity in its pursuit of efficiency in producing paperclips.

spaminator · Friday at 7:42 AM

Rare contagious cancer found in catfish in lake straddling Quebec-Vermont border
Researchers confirm the fish pose no danger to humans

Author of the article:Bryan Passifiume
Published Jul 23, 2026 • Last updated 17 hours ago • 2 minute read

Facial tumours on a brown bullhead catfish pulled from Lake Memphremagog, a freshwater lake spanning the Quebec/Vermont border. Researchers suspect the lesions are caused by a rare form of transmissable cancer
Facial tumours on a brown bullhead catfish pulled from Lake Memphremagog, a freshwater lake spanning the Quebec/Vermont border. Researchers suspect the lesions are caused by a rare form of transmissable cancer Photo by Vermont Fish & Wildlife

OTTAWA — Peer-reviewed studies published in a prominent scientific journal have identified a rare form of transmissible cancer among catfish in a lake straddling the Canada-U.S. border.

According to the paper Brown bullhead catfish melanoma represents a novel transmissible cancer, published this week in the journal Nature, anglers began noticing odd lesions on brown bullheads pulled from Lake Memphremagog — a 51-km-long glacial lake located 115 km southeast of Montreal that crosses the Quebec-Vermont border.

“A study determined these raised black lesions to be malignant melanomas, on the basis of histopathological analysis, and observed these lesions in 23-37% of brown bullhead sampled between 2014 and 2017,” read an excerpt from the study.

“Melanomas have been reported from brown bullheads in other bodies of water, but generally at considerably lower incidence.”

Researchers confirm the fish pose no danger to humans and are safe to handle and study.

Transmissible cancers are rare
As bullheads — found in lakes across eastern North America — are considered indicator species of water quality, researchers suspect the high incidence of cancer in Lake Memphremagog is being caused by local contaminants.

“One hypothesis is that extensive flooding in 2011 from tropical storm Irene led to reduced water quality of the lake due to runoff pollution,” the study stated.

“Monitoring changes to water quality is of great concern to biologists and the public, as this lake is the source of drinking water for more than 175,000 people.”

Transmissible cancers are incredibly rare in nature, normally only found in dogs, Tasmanian devils and certain species of aquatic molluscs.

The study points out that examinations of the water have yet to find any evidence of any viruses or other microorganisms capable of causing this cancer in infected bullheads, leading researchers to believe it’s the cancer cells themselves responsible for infecting new fish.

“If there is a virus or microbial agent that facilitates tumorigenesis, it was not detectable in our tumour samples,” the study explained.

“Although we cannot rule out a role for conventional pathogens in the original emergence or ecological transmission of this disease, the genomic evidence presented here overwhelmingly supports a transmissible cancer in which the tumour cells themselves act as the infectious entity.”

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
X: @bryanpassifiume

http://nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10828-6

Rare contagious cancer found in catfish in lake straddling Quebec-Vermont border

A rare contagious cancer found in brown bullhead catfish along the Quebec-Vermont border is believed caused by water pollution. Read more.

torontosun.com

spaminator · 2026-07-25T06:44:02-0400

B.C. researchers discover deadly bacterial disease in wild chinook
UBC and the Pacific Salmon Foundation scientists have found tenacibaculosis — a bacterial disease that causes lesions and death — in wild Pacific salmon.

Author of the article:Tiffany Crawford
Published Jul 24, 2026 • Last updated 21 hours ago • 3 minute read

Upper Fraser River Chinook salmon.
Upper Fraser River Chinook salmon. Photo by Fernando Lessa /Pacific Salmon Foundation
For the first time, B.C. researchers have discovered a deadly bacterial disease in wild chinook salmon in the Pacific Ocean off Vancouver Island.

It’s a finding that could shed light on what is contributing to the rapid decline of B.C.’s southern resident orcas.

The new study, by scientists at UBC and the Pacific Salmon Foundation and published in Scientific Reports, says tenacibaculosis — a bacterial disease that causes lesions and death in fish — was found in 16 per cent of the 99 chinook sampled.

Tenacibaculosis has been well documented in farmed Atlantic salmon, but not found in wild-caught Pacific salmon until now, said Emiliano Di Cicco, a fish health researcher with the Pacific Salmon Foundation and lead author of the study.

The disease was likely caused by a common type of marine bacterium called Tenacibaculum dicentrarchi, he said, which is found in high concentrations at fish farms around the world.

Di Cicco says the next step is to determine what causes the disease in wild salmon and figure how the fish become infected.

“We don’t know when and where these fish got infected since this study was to assess causation because it was an accidental finding,” said Di Cicco.

The initial study at UBC’s pacific salmon ecology and conservation laboratory was sampling wild chinook in 2022 for a study on the impact of recreationally caught and released salmon.

A few days into the study, UBC researchers noticed unusual bacterial lesions on some of the fish, just in front of the tail. They called in Di Cicco and his team at the Pacific Salmon Foundation.

“This is important because the disease itself is not a new disease. The disease is pretty well known in farmed fish, and it’s a pretty severe disease where it can kill fish in a matter of days. So if they develop the disease and then they die in the wild, you never find it. That’s why this study was so unique.”

He explained that outbreaks tend to happen at farms during the process of transferring juvenile fish from fresh water to salt water. B because there are a lot of fish in one area, the disease spreads rapidly.

Chinook is the main source of food for B.C.’s critically endangered southern resident killer whales. There are only 74 of these orcas left, according to the Center for Whale Research in Washington state.

Although tenacibaculosis is unlikely to harm orcas, sea lions or humans, the disease could spread to other types of salmon or fish and cause food shortages for some predators, Di Cicco added.

chinook
Photo shows chinook salmon with tenacibaculum. Photo by Emiliano Di Cicco (Pacific Salmo
The study was also done in collaboration with the University of California Davis, the University of Toronto, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

The findings provide new evidence that is not accounted for in the DFO’s existing disease risk assessment, said Di Cicco.

As a result, these bacteria are currently not regulated in B.C. as a risk to wild Pacific salmon, while other variants of the bacteria are not even considered in the assessment.

“We are working on more studies to figure out exactly where the fish pick it up and how the diseases develop once they pick it up. So that’s part of the questions that we haven’t answered completely yet, and we are looking toward that,” said Di Cicco.

Tenacibaculosis is one of the most common diseases in farmed Atlantic salmon raised in open-net pens in B.C. and a leading cause of farm mortality, according to the foundation.

It has also been found in farmed and hatchery-origin Pacific salmon in California, Chile, New Zealand, and Alaska. Common symptoms include lethargy, loss of balance, abnormal swimming behaviour, skin, fins and oral ulcers, and high mortality.

chinook
Chinook salmon. Photo by UBC's Pacific Salmon Ecology and