Mondo News

Unraveling the origins of the universe’s first stars

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Recently, the James Webb Telescope (JWST) made a groundbreaking observation of a distant galaxy. These early galaxies challenge our understanding of galaxy formation and the physics of the early universe, appearing as bright, massive, fuzzy red dots.

One of JWST’s latest discoveries is the presence of “Tyrannosaurus Rex” Stars in a distant galaxy. The spectrum of this galaxy indicates a significant amount of carbon, raising questions about the origin of these stars.

These early stars are believed to be massive, unknown entities, and the carbon could be a remnant from their existence.

Early stars are rare because they formed in a pristine environment before the universe was polluted with heavy elements. Star formation was more challenging in this simpler time.

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Stars typically begin as balls of hydrogen gas that undergo nuclear fusion reactions to convert hydrogen into other elements.

Star formation requires cooling and compressing gas to ignite nuclear fusion reactions. Dust plays a crucial role in cooling the gas by absorbing and releasing energy during collisions.

The lack of heavy elements like carbon in the early universe posed a challenge for star formation. The first stars were likely more massive and exploded as supernovae, dispersing heavy elements and enabling the formation of stars like our sun.

Through observations of distant galaxies, JWST is providing insights into the origins of the universe and our place in it.

While we may not see the “space dinosaurs,” studying their remnants helps us understand how their existence paved the way for life on Earth.

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Utilizing Chatbots to Combat Phone Scammers: Exposing Real Criminals and Supporting True Victims

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

A scammer calls and asks for a passcode, leaving Malcolm, an older man with a British accent, confused.

“What business are you talking about?” Malcolm asks.

Again, I received a scam call.

This time, Ibrahim, cooperative and polite with an Egyptian accent, answered the phone. “To be honest, I can’t really remember if I’ve bought anything recently,” he told the scammer. “Maybe one of my kids did,” Ibrahim continued, “but it’s not your fault, is it?”

Scammers are real, but Malcolm and Ibrahim aren’t. They’re just two of the conversational artificial intelligence bots created by Professor Dali Kaafar and his team, who founded Apate, named after the Greek goddess of deception, through his research at Macquarie University.

Apetto’s goal is to use conversational AI to eradicate phone fraud worldwide, leveraging existing systems that allow telecommunications companies to redirect calls when they identify them as coming from scammers.

Kafal was inspired to strike back at phone scammers after he told a “dad joke” to the caller in front of his two children as they enjoyed a picnic in the sun. His pointless chatter kept the scammer on the line. “The kids had a good laugh,” Kafal says. “I thought the goal was to trick them so they would waste their time and not talk to other people.

“In other words, we’re scamming the scammers.”

The next day, he called in his team from the university’s Cybersecurity Hub. He figured there had to be a better way than his dad joke approach — and something smarter than a popular existing technology: Lennybot.

Before Malcolm and Ibrahim, there was Lenny.

Lenny is a rambling, elderly Australian man who loves to chatter away. He’s a chatbot designed to poke fun at telemarketers.

Lenny’s anonymous creator posted this on Reddit. They say they created the chatbot as “a telemarketer’s worst nightmare… a lonely old man who wants to chat and is proud of his family, but can’t focus on the telemarketer’s purpose.” The act of tying up scammers is called scamming.

Apate bot to the rescue

Australian telecommunications companies have blocked almost 2 billion scam calls since December 2020.

Thanks to $720,000 in funding from the Office of National Intelligence, the “victim chatbots” could now number in the hundreds of thousands, too many to name individually. The bots are of different “ages,” speak English with different accents, and exhibit a range of emotions, personalities, and reactions; sometimes naive, sometimes skeptical, sometimes rude.

Once a carrier detects a fraudster and routes them to a system like Apate, bots go to work to keep them busy. The bots try different strategies and learn what works to keep fraudsters on the phone line longer. Through successes and failures, the machines fine-tune their patterns.

This way, they can collect information such as the length of calls, the times of day when scammers are likely to call, what information they are after, and the tactics they are using, and extract the information to detect new scams.

Kafal hopes Apate will disrupt the call fraud business model, which is often run by large, multi-billion-dollar criminal organizations. The next step will be to use the information it collects to proactively warn of scams and take action in real time.

“We’re talking about real criminals who are making our lives miserable,” Kafal said. “We’re talking about the risks to real people.”

“Sometimes people lose their life savings, have difficulty living due to debt, and sometimes suffer mental trauma. [by] shame.”

Richard Buckland, a cybercrime professor at the University of New South Wales, said techniques like Apate were different to other types of fraud, some of which were amateurish or amounted to vigilante fraud.

“Usually fraud is problematic,” he said, “but this is sophisticated.”

He says mistakes can happen when individuals go it alone.

“You can go after the wrong person,” he said. Many scams are perpetrated by people in near-slave-like conditions, “and they’re not bad people,” he said.

“[And] “Some of the fraudsters are going even further and trying to enforce the law themselves, either by hacking back or engaging with them. That’s a problem.”

But the Apate model appears to be using AI for good, as a kind of “honeypot” to lure criminals and learn from them, he says.

Buckland warns that false positives happen everywhere, so telcos need a high level of confidence that only fraudsters are directing AI bots, and that criminal organisations could use anti-fraud AI technology to train their own systems.

“The same techniques used to deceive scammers can be used to deceive people,” he says.

Scamwatch is run by the National Anti-Fraud Centre (NASC) under the auspices of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), and an ACCC spokesman said scammers often impersonate well-known organisations and use fake legitimate phone numbers.

“Criminals create a sense of urgency to encourage their targeted victims to act quickly,” the spokesperson said, “often trying to convince victims to give up personal or bank details or provide remote access to their computers.”

“Criminals may already have detailed information about their targeted victims, such as names and addresses, obtained or purchased illegally through data breaches, phishing or other scams.”

This week Scamwatch had to issue a warning about what appears to be a meth scam.

Scammers claiming to be NASC officials were calling innocent people and saying they were under investigation for allegedly engaging in fraud.

The NASC says people should hang up the phone immediately if they are contacted by a scammer. The spokesperson said the company is aware of “technology initiatives to productize fraud prevention using AI voice personas,” including Apate, and is interested in considering evaluating the platform.

Meanwhile, there is a thriving community of scammers online, and Lenny remains one of their cult heroes.

One memorable recording shows Lenny asking a caller to wait a moment. Ducks start quacking in the background. “Sorry,” Lenny says. “What were you talking about?”

“Are you near the computer?” the caller asks impatiently. “Do you have a computer? Can you come by the computer right now?”

Lenny continues until the conman loses his mind. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”

“Can we wait a little longer?” Lennie asked, as the ducks began quacking again.

NASCAR Reveals Electric Race Car Prototype in Preparation for Chicago Street Race

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

NASCAR introduced a prototype electric race car over the weekend as part of their initiative to reduce emissions and electrify the sport.

This move represents a major step towards sustainability, which may seem contradictory to the traditional roots of stock car racing, but it is in line with NASCAR’s long-term goal of achieving net-zero operational emissions by 2035.

The debut of the vehicle is a result of a partnership with electrification and automation company ABB. NASCAR Chicago Street Race.

The ABB NASCAR EV Prototype, developed in collaboration with Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota, is an electric stock car capable of generating a peak output of 1,000 kW (1,341 horsepower). Equipped with a regenerative braking system, the race car converts kinetic energy from braking into electricity, similar to many existing hybrid and fully electric vehicles.

Officials at ABB highlighted that NASCAR’s efforts to decarbonize and reduce carbon emissions align with the broader energy transition happening in the United States.

Chris Sigas, U.S. public affairs director for ABB, expressed, “This partnership provides us with a platform to address issues impacting our nation and the direction we are collectively moving towards.”

While there are no immediate plans to phase out internal combustion engines from stock car racing, there is potential to explore high-performance electric cars for racing, as per sources.

Both organizations will collaborate to identify areas within NASCAR racing, specific race tracks, office operations, and long-haul transportation that can transition to electrification.

Sigas added, “We will evaluate all aspects of their operations – from long-haul trucking to golf carts on the track to EV charging stations. This multi-year partnership serves as an opportunity to showcase not just NASCAR but companies nationwide on how they can enhance their sustainability efforts.”

In the previous year, NASCAR committed to achieving net-zero emissions from operations by 2035 This commitment includes prioritizing 100% renewable electricity at owned race tracks and NASCAR facilities, expanding on-site EV charging stations, and developing sustainable race fuels.

Eric Nyquist, NASCAR senior vice president, stated in a release that the collaboration with ABB will support their endeavors to decarbonize operations and work towards achieving net-zero emissions in the next decade.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

Heatwave strikes California and other areas along the West Coast

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

The West Coast is facing a dangerous heatwave that is expected to peak on Saturday, putting people at risk of health issues long after temperatures reach their highest point. According to a national update on Friday, forecasters anticipate that a wide range of temperature records will be broken or tied, with temperatures in California expected to reach the 110s on Saturday. The hot weather will persist well into the following week, raising concerns about health risks such as heart attacks and heat strokes, especially among older adults and individuals with chronic diseases.

At Sunrise Farm near Coachella, California on July 3rd.Mario Tama/Getty Images

The heatwave is expected to persist for more than a week, prompting warnings from the National Weather Service about record-breaking temperatures in California, Oregon, and Washington. Areas like the Sacramento Valley, at the heart of the heat wave, are under warning until at least next Tuesday. Meteorologists predict some relief early next week, but temperatures are still likely to exceed 100 degrees in certain regions.

Heat-related illnesses, including heat stroke, pose a significant risk during prolonged periods of extreme heat. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows a sharp increase in heatstroke-related emergency room visits, with the incidence more than doubling in recent days. In regions like the San Joaquin Valley in California, extreme weather conditions are expected daily next week, impacting medical facilities and infrastructure.

A construction worker in Folsom, California, on July 3.David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In Portland, Oregon, health officials are concerned about residents unaccustomed to hot weather, particularly those attending outdoor events this weekend. Temperatures in Death Valley may reach deadly limits, posing risks even to healthy individuals. Experts emphasize the importance of staying hydrated and cool to prevent heat-related illnesses.

Research on the physiological limits of heat exposure indicates that older adults may succumb to heatstroke within hours when exposed to extreme heat, even indoors or in the shade without air conditioning. As temperatures continue to rise, it’s crucial to take precautions and monitor vulnerable populations to prevent heat-related fatalities.

“Understanding the impact of heatwaves on our health is vital to mitigating the risks and protecting communities,” said Dr. Lisa Patel. Stay aware of local heat advisories and follow safety guidelines to stay safe during the ongoing heatwave.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

The Collaboration of James Muldoon, Mark Graham, and Callum Canto Enhances the Benefits of AI

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

JAmes Muldoon is a lecturer in management at the University of Essex, Mark Graham is a professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and Callum Cantt is a senior lecturer at the Essex Business School. They Fair Worka project to evaluate working conditions in the digital workplace, of which they are co-authors. Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor that Powers AI.

Why did you write that book?

James Muldoon: The idea for the book came from field research that we did in Kenya and Uganda about the data annotation industry. We spoke to a lot of data annotators, and the working conditions were just horrible. And we thought this was a story that everyone needed to hear: people working for less than $2 an hour on precarious contracts, and work that’s largely outsourced to countries in the global south because of how hard and dangerous the work is.

Why East Africa?

Mark Graham: I started my research in East Africa in 2009, working on the first of many undersea fiber optic cables that would connect East Africa with the rest of the world. The focus of my research was what this new connectivity would mean for the lives of workers in East Africa.

How did you gain access to these workplaces?

Mark Graham: The basic idea of Fair Work is to establish fair labor principles and then rate companies on those principles. We give companies a score out of 10. Companies in Nairobi and Uganda opened up to us because we were trying to give them a score and they wanted a better score. We went to them with a zero out of 10 and said, “Here’s what we need to do to improve.”

Will the company accommodate me? Will they dispute your low score?

Mark Graham: We get a variety of responses. Some people will argue that what we’re asking for is simply not possible. They’ll say, “It’s not our responsibility to do these things,” and so on. The nice thing about the score is that we can point out other companies that are doing the same thing. We can say, “Look, this company is doing it. What’s wrong with your company? Why can’t you offer these terms to your employees?”

Can you talk about the reverberations of colonialism that you found in this data work?

Mark Graham: The East African Railway once ran from Uganda to the port of Mombasa. It was funded by the British government and was basically used to extract resources from East Africa. What’s interesting about the East African fiber optic connection is that it runs along a very similar route to the old railway, and again, it’s an extractive technology.

Could you please explain the concept of the “extractor”?

Callum Cant: When we look at AI products, we tend to think of them as something that is relatively organically created, and we don’t think about the human effort, the resource requirements, and all the other things that go on behind the scenes.

For us, the extractor is a metaphor that invites us to think more deeply about whose labor, whose resources, whose energy, whose time went into the process. This book is an attempt to look beyond the superficial appearance of sleek webpages and images of neural networks to really see the embodied reality of what AI looks like in the workplace and how it interacts with people.

James Muldoon: I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that 80% of the work behind AI products is actually data annotation, not machine learning engineering. If you take self-driving cars as an example, one hour of video data requires 800 hours of human data annotation. So it’s a very intensive form of work.

How does this concept differ from Shoshana Zuboff’s idea of surveillance capitalism?

James Muldoon: Surveillance capitalism best describes companies like Google and Facebook, which make their money primarily through targeted advertising. It’s an apt description of the data-to-ads pipeline, but it doesn’t really capture the broader infrastructural role that Big Tech now plays. The Extraction Machine is an idea we came up with to talk more broadly about how Big Tech profits from the physical and intellectual labor of humans, whether they’re Amazon employees, creatives, data annotators, or content moderators. It’s a much more visceral, political, and global concept of how all of our labor is exploited and extracted by these companies.

A lot of the concerns about AI have been about existential risks, or whether the technology could reinforce inequalities or biases that exist in the data it was trained on, but are you arguing that just introducing AI into the economy will create a whole range of other inequalities?

Callum Cant: You can see this very clearly in a workplace like Amazon. Amazon’s AI systems, the technology that orchestrates its supply chain, automate thought processes, and what humans have to do in Amazon’s warehouses is grueling, repetitive, high-stress labor processes. You get technology that is meant to automate menial tasks and create freedom and time, but in reality, the introduction of algorithmic management systems in the workplace means people are forced into more routine, boring, low-skilled jobs.

Callum Kant of Fair Work argues that Amazon’s system creates a “repetitive and burdensome” work process for employees. Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

In one chapter of the book, Irish actress Chloe discovers that someone is using an AI copy of her voice, similar to the recent dispute between Scarlett Johansson and OpenAI: She has the platform and the funds to challenge this situation, whereas most people do not.

Callum Cant: Many of the solutions actually rely on collective power, not individual power, because, like anyone else, we have no power to tell OpenAI what to do. OpenAI doesn’t care if some authors think they’re running an information extraction regime. These companies are funded by billions of pounds and shouldn’t care what we think about them.

But we have identified some ways that, collectively, we can begin to resist and try to change the way this technology is being deployed, because I think we all recognize that there is a potential for liberation here. But getting to it is going to require a huge amount of collaboration and conflict in a lot of places. Because while there are people who are getting enormously wealthy from this technology, the decisions made by a very small number of people in Silicon Valley are making all of us worse off. And I don’t think a better form of technology is going to come out of that unless we force them to change the way they do things.

Is there anything you would like to say to our readers? What actions can they take?

Callum Cant: It’s hard to give one universal piece of advice because people are all in very different positions. If you work in an Amazon warehouse, organize your coworkers and exert influence over your boss. If you work as a voice actor, you need to organize with other voice actors. But everyone has to deal with this in their own situation, so it’s impossible to make a diagnosis.

We are all customers of large tech companies: should we boycott Amazon, for example?

Callum Cant: I think organizing in the workplace is more powerful, but there is also a role for organizing as consumers. If there are clear differences and opportunities where you can make better use of consumption, especially if the workers involved are calling for it, then by all means, do so. For example, if Amazon workers call for a boycott on Black Friday, we would encourage people to listen. Absolutely. But no matter where people take action and what actions they take, they need a set of principles to guide them. One of the key principles is that collective action is the primary path forward.

Mark Aitken Captures Collie’s Struggle to Herd Lambs in Stunning Mobile Phone Photos

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

debtMark Aitken has been working on a photo series in Lapland for the past two years. The Presence of Absence“The work explores the delicate, sometimes eerie, boundary between life and death experienced by people living in this extreme climate and landscape,” he says.

Aitken, who was born in New Zealand, grew up in South Africa and has lived in London for many years, took the photo on a sheep farm this spring. “Kukkola is a small village on the Finnish-Lapland border on the Tornio River close to Sweden. The farm has been running for 20 years and this lamb is one of around 100 born in March and April,” Aitken says.

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The lamb doesn’t have a name, but the inquisitive collie does: “He’s a lively young male called Possu, which means piglet. I saw the two animals interacting when I went into the barn to find Jaana, one of the farm owners, and arrange a time to take her portrait.”

Aitken usually shoots on 35mm film and likes to take his time preparing to take a photograph, especially when working with people. “When the right atmosphere, light and mood is achieved, I press the shutter. I like this discipline. This process also applies to printing in the darkroom. Only then does the memory of that moment become associated with the photograph.”

That day, he didn’t have his camera with him, but he did have his iPhone SE, and before his eyes the theme of his series was playing out in a whole new way: “I was amazed and intrigued by the inter-species relationships. The possu were trying to herd the lambs, but they were failing. The lambs hadn’t yet learned fear.”

Have you met your future self who has traveled back in time?

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

If we think of the universe as a continuous chain of cause and effect and time as the sequence we experience moving forward along that chain, then there is no need for concern.

Under this interpretation, the past, present, and future are all determined by unchangeable physical laws.

Even events that appear random, such as radioactive decay, are predestined and impossible to predict, but should unfold in the same way every time.

Traveling back in time to meet your younger self implies that the event has already occurred in the past.

If you don’t recall, it’s possible you were incognito or had your memory erased afterward, but we have already established how this impacted your future.

Conversely, if you were to journey to the future and encounter your future self, you would need to return to your original time and continue living your life, or else there would be no one to meet in the future.

This means that the future version of you that you meet when traveling forward in time will already have memories of your encounter as a time traveler.

Or, if each cause-and-effect interaction generates parallel universes in an infinite branching series of potential timelines, then every version of reality already exists somewhere, and your actions may not matter in the grand scheme of things.

Fortunately, time travel remains purely theoretical, and all proposed methods require exotic matter or negative energy to operate on a large scale.

This is essentially explaining one impossible concept with another. The only form of time travel we are aware of involves progressing forward at a rate of one second per second.

This article is in response to a question from Andrew Robbins emailed to us: “If time travel were possible, could we actually avoid encountering our past selves?”

If you have any inquiries, please direct them to the email address provided below. For additional information:or send us a message Facebook, Xor Instagram Page (please include your name and location).

Ultimate Fun Facts For more amazing science, check out this page.

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NASA’s long-term plan to decommission the International Space Station

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

The International Space Station (ISS) has been operational since 2000 and is continuously manned by astronauts, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes.

Throughout its operation, the ISS has served as a hub for scientific experiments, space travel research, and international cooperation. Over 280 astronauts from more than 23 countries have visited the space station.

However, as the decade nears its end, the ISS is reaching the end of its functional lifespan, prompting the need to address its future once it’s no longer in use.

Abandoning the craft is not an option due to its size and potential risk to other satellites in orbit. NASA has explored various options, including pushing the ISS higher, but ultimately determined that salvaging parts for historical preservation or technical analysis would be too complex and costly.

Therefore, the only viable solution is to deorbit the ISS. SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, has been awarded an $843 million contract by NASA to develop and deliver a deorbit vehicle for the ISS.

Plans are still being finalized, but the general idea is for the deorbit vehicle to guide the ISS into the atmosphere, where most of it will burn up upon re-entry. Careful considerations will be made to ensure any remaining parts land in uninhabited areas.

With the ISS’s days numbered, the future of space habitation is shifting towards private sector initiatives, such as NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development program and the Lunar Gateway project.

Despite the end of the ISS era, experts like Dr. Darren Baskill emphasize the station’s contributions to science, exploration, and international collaboration, paving the way for future advancements in space.

About our experts

Darren Baskill is an Outreach Officer and Lecturer at the University of Sussex, with a background in astronomy and science outreach.

Carpenter ants possess the ability to perform life-saving amputation surgery on injured nestmates

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Carpenter Ants (Camponotus) – Jumping spiders, a diverse genus of large ants that inhabit many forested areas around the world, are able to selectively treat the injured limbs of their nestmates by cleaning or amputating the wounds.

Injured (marked in yellow) Camponotus floridanus. His wounds are being treated by his nestmates. Image credit: Frank others., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.06.021.

For animals, open wounds pose a significant risk of infection and death. To reduce these risks, many animal species apply antibacterial compounds to wounds.

In 2023, researchers discovered another ant species, Megaponera analis, uses special glands to inject antibacterial compounds into wounds, reducing the chance of infection.

Florida carpenter ant (Camponotus floridanus) and other species of the same genus Camponotus. Notably, they lack such glands and therefore appear to use only mechanical means to treat their nestmates.

Dr. Eric Frank from the University of Würzburg and his colleagues discovered that this mechanical care involves one of two pathways.

The ants either clean the wound using only their mouthparts, or clean it and then amputate the leg completely.

When choosing which route to take, Ali appears to be assessing the type of injury and tailoring the best treatment approach based on information.

The study analyzed two types of leg injuries: femur lacerations and ankle-like tibial lacerations.

All femur injuries involved a nestmate first cleaning the cut and then biting off the entire leg, in contrast to the tibia injuries, which involved only mouth cleaning.

In both cases, the intervention resulted in a significant increase in survival of ants with experimentally infected wounds.

“With femur injuries, we always end up amputating the leg, and we have about a 90 to 95 percent success rate. And with tibia injuries, where we don’t amputate, we achieve about a 75 percent survival rate,” Dr. Frank said.

“This is in contrast to the survival rates of untreated infected femoral and tibial abrasions, which are less than 40 percent and 15 percent, respectively.”

The scientists hypothesized that preferred methods of wound care may be related to the risk of infection from the wound site.

Micro-CT scans of the femur confirmed that it was mostly composed of muscle tissue, suggesting that it played a functional role in pumping blood, called hemolymph, from the leg to the trunk.

When the femur is damaged, the muscles are damaged and the ability to circulate blood that may be contaminated with bacteria is reduced.

The tibia, on the other hand, has very little musculature and little contribution to blood circulation.

“With a tibia injury, the hemolymph flow is less disrupted, allowing bacteria to enter the body more quickly, whereas a femur injury slows down the rate at which blood circulates in the leg,” Dr Frank said.

“If tibial injury would hasten infection, one might expect that amputation of the entire leg would be the most appropriate option, but in fact the opposite has been observed.”

“It turns out that the speed at which the ants can sever the legs makes a difference.”

“An amputation surgery using ants takes at least 40 minutes to complete.”

“Experiments have demonstrated that in the case of tibial injuries, the ants cannot survive unless the leg is removed soon after infection.”

“This means that the ants cannot cut their legs quickly enough to prevent the spread of harmful bacteria, so by taking their time cleaning the wound in their shins they try to reduce a potentially fatal infection,” says Dr Laurent Keller, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Lausanne.

“The fact that ants can diagnose wounds, determine whether they are infected or sterile, and then treat them accordingly over time with other individuals — the only medical system that could match that would be the human medical system.”

Given the sophisticated nature of these behaviors, the next question to ask is how these ants are able to perform such precise care.

“This is all innate behaviour; ants’ behaviour changes as individuals age, but there is little evidence of learning,” Dr Keller said.

of Investigation result Published in the journal Current Biology.

_____

Eric T. Frank othersIn order to combat infections in the ant community, they amputate legs depending on the injury. Current BiologyPublished online July 2, 2024; doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.06.021

This article is based on an original release by Cell Press.

Source: www.sci.news

Under Roman rule, Britain enjoyed centuries of economic prosperity.

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

A pile of Roman gold coins discovered beneath the floor of a Roman house in Corbridge, England

World History Archives/Alamy

After the Romans conquered Britain in AD 43, they brought with them technologies and laws that led to centuries of economic growth once thought to be limited to modern industrial societies, according to an analysis of thousands of archaeological finds from the period.

“In about 350 years, about two and a half years [fold] “Improved productivity per person.” Rob Weisman At Cambridge University.

Wiseman says the ancient world long believed that economic growth depended on increases in population and resources — for example, increasing food production required more land and more agricultural workers — a type of growth known as extensive growth.

In contrast, economic growth today is driven primarily by increases in productivity, or intensive growth: for example, mechanization and improved plant and animal breeding enable us to produce more food from the same amount of land with fewer workers.

Several recent studies have challenged the idea that rapid growth only occurred after the Industrial Revolution began, which led Wiseman and his colleagues to look at growth in Roman Britain from 43 to 400 AD.

Wiseman says the team’s research was made possible by British laws that require archaeological investigations when sites are developed. “As a result, tens of thousands of archaeological excavations have been carried out in this country, and the data is available to the public.”

By looking at how the number of buildings changed over time, the researchers were able to get a sense of how the population of Roman Britain grew — and there’s a strong relationship between the number of buildings and population size, Wiseman says.

To get a sense of economic growth, the team looked at three metrics: First, the size of buildings rather than the number of buildings: As people get wealthier, they build bigger homes, Wiseman said.

Another measure is the number of lost coins found at the excavation site: “That fell through the floorboards, that got lost in the bathroom, that sort of thing,” he says.

The idea is that the more coins there are in circulation, the more likely they are to be lost. The team didn’t count hidden hoards of coins because they reflect instability, not growth.

The third criterion is the ratio of cruder pottery, such as cooking and storing pots, to more ornate pottery, such as decorative plates. Economic growth requires people to interact more and socialize more, which means “showing off” when guests are present, Wiseman says.

Based on these indicators, the team found that economic growth exceeded what would be expected from population growth alone. They estimate that per capita growth was about 0.5% between 150 and 250 AD, slowing to about 0.3% between 250 and 400 AD.

“What we’ve been able to show is that there was indeed rapid growth after the Romans arrived,” Wiseman says. The rate of growth, rather than the type of growth, is likely what distinguishes the modern world from the ancient world, he says.

Researchers believe this growth was driven by factors such as roads and ports built by the Romans, laws they introduced that made trade safer, and technology such as more advanced flour mills and animal breeds suited to farming.

The period of rapid growth between AD 150 and 250 could have been the result of Britain catching up with the rest of the Roman world, Wiseman says: “It went from being a small, poorly-connected tribal society to a global economy.”

What’s not clear is whether this economic growth made people happier or healthier. “The fact that productivity rose doesn’t mean that invaded, colonized Britons were better off under the Roman Empire,” Wiseman says. “That’s an open question.”

To investigate this, researchers now plan to examine human remains to determine things like how long people lived.

“I believe they are right, and there was certainly intensive growth in Roman Britain.” Alain Bresson At the University of Chicago, Illinois.

“Many archaeologists have noted the compelling evidence of economic growth in Roman Britain, but this paper adds a welcome formal theoretical dimension to the debate.” Ian Morris At Stanford University, California.

But Morris suspects that the lower average growth rate from A.D. 250 to 400 actually reflected a period of higher growth that declined sharply as the Roman Empire began to collapse. Further research could help find the answer, he says.

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Scientists create brain-controlled robot, with no involvement from Futurama

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Among the many strange robot designs in the past, a new contender has emerged as the world’s first robot powered by a real human brain, making it more human-like than ever.

Researchers from Tianjin University and Southern University of Science and Technology have managed to control the robot’s movements, such as tracking, grasping, and obstacle avoidance, using what they call “mini-brains.”

These miniature brains are not taken from human bodies but rather grown in labs for research purposes and then integrated into robots.

The researchers have utilized living organisms to create “brains on a chip,” which provide some intelligence to the robot’s brain but require assistance for full functionality.

Through the integration of these chips, scientists can debug the brain, send signals externally, and control specific functions like grasping in robots.

Professor Min Dong, Vice President of Tianjin University, explains that this brain-computer interface on a chip combines ex vivo cultured brains with electrode chips to interact with the outside world through encoding, decoding, and stimulation feedback.

With the brain chip, robots can perform tasks like tracking targets, avoiding obstacles, and learning to move their arms using electrical signals fed by the chips.

While robots do not have a human appearance, their brains process information through electrical signals from the chips. Training in simulated environments is possible, but understanding the real world remains a complex challenge.

The brain chip, known as MetaBOC, was developed as an open-source project and has been used in various experiments, including one where Neanderthal DNA was used to create mini-brains for robot control.

The latest research on robot-brain interaction focuses on utilizing ball-shaped organoids to create a more complex neural network for the brain-on-a-chip to function effectively.

Additionally, artificial intelligence algorithms have been integrated to enhance the robot’s capabilities through its mini-brain.

Although the advancements are groundbreaking, there is still progress to be made, with the current brain inside the robot being a model while the actual brain tissue is kept separate for testing purposes.

Read more:

Cats Manipulate Humans with Their Purring

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Cats are fascinating creatures with many behaviors that can leave their owners wondering. Questions like “Why does my cat purr?”, “Why did my cat knock over my plants again?”, and “Why does my cat always knock over plants right after I vacuum?” are common among cat owners.

While the behavior of knocking over plants might make you think your cat is a criminal mastermind, the reasons behind why cats purr are still a bit of a mystery. Many people assume that cats purr when they’re happy, but research suggests that the vibrations from purring may serve a variety of purposes, including manipulating our emotions.

Here are some strange scientific insights into the phenomenon of purring in cats.

How do cats purr?

The mechanism behind a cat’s purring is not as straightforward as it may seem. There have been different theories about the biology behind purring, such as a blood disorder theory that has since been debunked. The current understanding is that cats produce the purring sound by contracting a part of their larynx that touches their vocal cords, creating vibrations during their breathing cycle.

Read more about cat behavior:

Why do cats purr?

The exact reasons why cats purr are still unknown, but studies suggest several possibilities. One reason may be to communicate with humans, as seen in a study that found differences in the quality of purring sounds when cats were asking for food compared to when they were relaxed or being petted. The high-frequency components in a hungry cat’s purr mimic sounds similar to those of crying infants, possibly triggering a response in humans.

Another theory is that cats purr to soothe themselves in stressful or painful situations. Some research indicates that the vibrations from purring may have healing effects on bone growth and tissue repair. However, further studies are needed to fully understand the functions of purring in domestic cats.

About our experts

Dr. Lauren Finca is a Cat Welfare Scientist at International Cat Care and a Visiting Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University. Her research has been published in journals like PloS No. 1 and Feline Medical and Surgical Journal.

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Namibia was home to a massive salamander-like predator 280 million years ago

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

A newly described trunk tetrapod exceeding 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) in length Gaiacia geniae It was probably the largest organism of its kind.

Reconstructing your life Gaiacia geniaeImage courtesy of Gabriel Lio.

Gaiacia geniae It lived in what is now Namibia during the Early Permian period, about 280 million years ago.

“Most of our ideas about the early evolution of tetrapods come from fossils found in the vast coal-producing ancient equatorial wetlands of what is now Europe and North America,” said paleontologist Claudia Marsicano of the University of Buenos Aires and her colleagues.

“but Gaiacia geniae They come from far south and live in the area of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, around 55 degrees south latitude.”

The structure of the skull and jaw Gaiacia geniae It had a powerful bite that allowed it to catch large prey.

“Gaiacia geniae “This dinosaur was significantly larger than a human and likely lived near the bottom of a swamp or lake,” said Dr Jason Pardo, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum of Natural History.

“It has a big, flat, toilet seat-shaped head with an open mouth so it can suck in prey. It has huge fangs, and the whole front of its mouth is made up of giant teeth.”

“It's a large predator, but it could also be a relatively slow-moving ambush predator.”

Nearly complete skeleton Gaiacia geniae After preparation. Image courtesy of Claudia Marsicano.

At least four fossils Gaiacia geniaeRemains were found, including skull fragments and an incomplete spinal column. Gaias Layer Northwestern Namibia.

“When we found this enormous specimen lying in the outcrop as a giant concretion, we were truly shocked,” Dr Marsicano said.

“As soon as we saw it we knew it was something completely different. Everyone was so excited,” he said.

“When I examined the skull, the structure at the front of the skull caught my attention.”

“That was the only part that was clearly visible at the time, and it showed large tusks that interlocked in a very unusual way, creating a biting technique that was so typical of early tetrapods.”

“We had some really amazing material, including a complete skull, which allowed us to compare it to other animals from this period and learn what kind of animal it was and what makes it unique. We could see there's a lot that's special about this creature,” Dr Pardo added.

Gaiacia geniae They are related to the extinct family of amphibian-like animals called colosteids. Colostacea) are thought to date back even further, having been replaced by more modern amphibians and reptiles during the Late Carboniferous period, about 307 million years ago.

“There are ancient animals that survived 300 million years ago, but they were rare, small and had unique behaviours,” Dr Pardo said.

“Gaiacia geniae They are large, they are numerous, and they appear to be the primary predators in their ecosystem.”

“This shows that what was happening in the far south was very different from what was happening at the equator.”

“This is really important because we don't really know where a lot of the animal groups that showed up during this time came from.”

“What we discovered is Gaiacia geniae “This tells us that there must have been a rich ecosystem in the oceans far to the south that could support these very large predators.”

“The more we look, the more answers we may find about the major animal groups that interest us, such as the ancestors of mammals and modern reptiles.”

Team Investigation result Published in the journal Nature.

_____

CA Marsicano othersGiant trunk tetrapods were apex predators during the Late Palaeozoic glacial stages of Gondwana. NaturePublished online July 3, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07572-0

Source: www.sci.news

Wimbledon Incorporates AI Technology to Safeguard Players Against Online Harassment

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

The All England Lawn Tennis Club has become the first to use artificial intelligence to protect Wimbledon players from online abuse.

The AI-driven service monitors players’ public social media profiles and automatically flags death threats, racist and sexist comments in 35 languages.

High-profile athletes who have been targeted online, including former US Open champion Emma Raducanu and four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, have previously said they had to delete Instagram and Twitter (now named X) from their phones.

Britain’s number two, Harriet Dart, said she sometimes uses social media just because of the “hate” she sees online.

“I think there’s a lot of positives to take from this match,” Dart said after her win over British number one Katie Boulter on Thursday. [social media] But there was also a lot of negativity. If I opened the app today, I think I’d get a lot of hate, whether I won or not.”

Tournament director Jamie Baker said Wimbledon had deployed social media monitoring service Threat Matrix, developed by AI company Signify Group, which will also be rolled out to the US Open.

Baker said: “This is not something that would be found in the public domain. It’s not something that we would be shouting about, but we basically scroll through social media looking for this type of content and it means we have access to information that we wouldn’t have had access to before.”

“We’re not just going to rely on players to tell us what happened to them, but if there’s anything that we feel is of concern, then essentially our security team will step in and actually help address that.”

He said the AI-driven service is also supported by people monitoring accounts, and players can opt for a more robust service that scans for cheating and blackmail via private direct messages.

Baker, a former British number two, said Wimbledon would discuss the abuse with players and then report it to technology companies for removal or, if necessary, to police.

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Explaining how the service works, Baker said: “If there’s an issue that we feel is of concern or worth reporting, we’ll ultimately communicate with the player and then work through the next steps. The benefit of this service is that it allows us to officially register the situation with the appropriate personnel.”

“But we can’t take those steps without actually engaging with the players and their teams and finding out what’s going on.”

World Rugby also uses the service, and in April an Australian was charged after a referee and his wife received threatening and abusive messages via Facebook during the Rugby World Cup.

Wimbledon said Threat Matrix conducted an investigation, monitoring more than 1.6 million public posts from X and 19,000 Instagram comments sent to 454 players competing in various professional tennis tournaments in 2022, and found that one in four players had been the target of abuse. 546 offensive posts were identified from 438 accounts.

Experience an excerpt from the science fiction novel “Rosewater” by Tade Thompson

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Jane Komi/Moment RF/Getty Images

Rosewater: Opening Day 2066

now

Forty minutes into my job at Integrity Bank, anxiety hits me. This is how a normal day starts. This time, it's for a wedding and final exams, but it's neither a wedding nor an exam. From my window seat, I can see the city, but I can't hear any sounds. This high up in Rosewater, everything is orderly. Blocks, roads, streets, traffic slowly winding around the dome. From here, I can see the cathedral. The window is to my left, and I sit with four other contractors at the end of an oval table. We're on the top floor, 15th floor. A three-foot-by-three-foot skylight opens above us, and all that separates us from the morning sky is a security grid. The blue sky is dotted with white clouds. There's no scorching sun yet, but that will come later. Despite the skylight being open, the air conditioning in the room is controlled. It's a waste of energy, and Integrity Bank is fined every week. They're happy to cover the cost.

Bora, to my right, is yawning. She is pregnant and has been very tired lately. She also eats a lot, which I think is natural. I have known her for two years, and she has been pregnant the entire two years. I don't fully understand pregnancy. I am an only child and never grew up around pets or farm animals. My education was nomadic and I never had a strong interest in biology, except for microbiology, which I had to pick up later.

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I try to relax and focus on my bank customers, and the wedding anxiety kicks in again.

A holographic teleprompter rises from the center of the table. Right now it's made of random swirls of light, but within minutes it will project text. Next to ours is a room where the night shift is drawing to a close.

“I hear you read Dumas last night,” Bora says.

She's just having a conversation, it doesn't matter what the other shift people are reading, I just smile and say nothing.

The wedding is coming up in three months. The bride has gained some weight and is wondering if she should change her dress or get liposuction. Bora looks better during pregnancy.

“You've got 60 seconds,” a voice said over the loudspeaker.

I take a sip of water from the tumbler on the table. The other contractors are new. They're not dressed as formally as Bora and I are. They're wearing tank tops and T-shirts, with metal jewelry in their hair. They have implants in their phones.

I hate implants of any kind. I have one too. It's a standard locator with no extra features. It's really boring, but my employer requires it.

Exam anxiety fades away before you can identify and investigate its cause, and that's fine by me.

The metal pieces in the young men's hair are from plane crashes — planes have been shot down on every route in Nigeria since the early 2000s, in Lagos, Abuja, Jos, Kano and everywhere in between — and they wear pieces of the planes as talismans.

Bora noticed me staring, winked, and then she opened her snack. It was a packet of cold moin-moin, old-fashioned orange-colored tofu wrapped in a leaf. I looked away.

“Go,” the bullhorn says.

Plato's Republic Ghostly holographic shapes scroll slowly and steadily on the cylindrical display. I, like the others, begin to read, silently and then out loud. We enter the xenosphere, we configure the bank's firewall. I feel the usual momentary dizziness. Text swirls and becomes transparent.

With around 500 customers transacting financially at the facility every day and staff transacting all over the world every night, it’s a 24-hour job. Rough sensitives probe and push, and criminals try to pluck personal information out of the air. Dates of birth, pin numbers, mother’s maiden names, past transactions — it all lies dormant in each customer’s forebrain, in their working memory, waiting to be plucked out by hungry, untrained, predatory sensitives.

Contractors like me, Bora Martinez, and Metalfan are trained to fight these off. And we do. We read the classics and flood the alien sphere with irrelevant words and ideas. It’s a firewall of knowledge that reaches into the subconscious of our clients. A professor once did a study on this. He found a correlation between the material used for the firewall and the client’s activity for the rest of the year. Even people who have never read Shakespeare will suddenly find a piece of Shakespeare. King Lear It pops into my head for no apparent reason.

While it’s possible to track the intrusion, Integrity isn’t interested. Crimes committed on alien space are difficult and expensive to prosecute. If no lives are lost, the courts aren’t interested.

The queues at the cash machines, the crowds of people, the worries, desires, passions… I was tired of filtering other people’s lives through my own mind.

Yesterday I went to Piraeus with Glaucon, son of Ariston, to make a prayer to the goddess, and to see how they celebrated a festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants, but the Thracian procession was just as beautiful, if not more so. Having finished our prayers and admired the spectacle, we set out in the direction of the city.

When you enter the alien sphere, there is a projected self-image. Untrained wild sensitives project their true selves, but professionals like me are trained to create a controlled, selected self-image. Mine is a Gryphon.

The first attack today was from a middle-aged man who lives in a townhouse in Yola. He appeared to be thin and with very dark skin.

When I warned him, he backed away. A teenager quickly took his place, which made me wonder if they were in the same physical location as part of a hacker farm. Crime syndicates sometimes round up sensitive people into “Mumbai Combos,” a call-center model run by serial criminals.

I've seen it a lot before. There aren’t as many of those attacks now as there were when I started. I think they’re frustrated by how efficient we are at our work. Either way, I'm fed up.

Copyright Tade Thompson

This is the excerpt below Rose waterpublished by Orbit Books, is the latest selection from the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up here to read along with our members.

Is AI going to disrupt your favorite TV shows?

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Justine Bateman won’t name names, but a TV showrunner friend once came to her with a dilemma: Their team was well into shooting the second season of their show, and a network executive had an idea: A character in the pilot wasn’t going over well with viewers, so they wanted to replace him with a different character, using a bit of AI. The showrunner, and actor-director Bateman, were understandably furious. “When you change the beginning of something, you change the creative trajectory,” Bateman says. “It takes away what was set up in the pilot, and it doesn’t make sense, so people are going to be shocked when they see episodes three or four.” Using AI may have seemed like an easy solution for executives, but it was disastrous for the showrunners.

But AI is increasingly becoming a part of the TV industry, with potentially huge costs for the industry. WGA and SAG-Aftra made a big fuss about AI potentially taking jobs during last year’s Hollywood walkouts, but Recent Reports According to CVL Economics, 203,800 entertainment jobs in the US are likely to be “disrupted” by AI by 2026, making the technology a terrifying game changer for television and the entertainment industry as a whole.

While the use of AI is still considered something of a landmine in Hollywood, with most carefully avoiding public skepticism and the (rightful) perception that they’re replacing humans with computers, that doesn’t mean AI is already ubiquitous. “A lot of what people are calling ‘AI’ has been around for the last decade,” says Emily St. James, a TV writer, podcaster, and cultural critic. Disney+ is Speaker He transformed the hoarse voice of Mark Hamill, who was 68 years old at the time, into the voice of 20-year-old Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian.

The B.B.C. Amazon-MGM Studios has admitted to using AI to create marketing materials (including some bizarrely inaccurate ones) for shows like Doctor Who and Fallout. AI image of Los AngelesAnd Banijay, the global conglomerate behind more than 200 reality TV shows, including Deal or No Deal and Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Just released AI Creative Fund Create a new program. Already released Fake Showis an Italian series in which celebrities improvise comedy scenes generated by AI.

“AI doesn’t do quality work, AI just does a good enough job”… Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Photo: Landmark Media/AlamyThat doesn’t mean AI can produce entire shows, though. Not yet. “There’s still a big gap between machine learning simplifying technical processes in ways humans can’t and ‘dominating TV,'” St. James says. “Maybe I’m whistling past my grave, but I haven’t seen anything quite as convincing as the hype yet.”

Others agree, with creative director Lauren Fisher saying, “From what I’ve seen, all the pure ‘let’s have an AI do it all’ stuff is awful, but it’s novelty so I just admire it.” TV producer Benjamin Field adds, “AI can’t make quality stuff, it can only be good enough.” One showrunner quips anonymously, “AI will never replace good stuff, for the same reason that sex robots will never replace the real thing.”

“I think AI can do the mundane work,” says Guy Branum, a writer and producer who has worked on shows like Hacks, The Other Two, and The Mindy Project. “I was once tasked with writing the VMAs bios, which basically consisted of copying old bios and updating them to include current talent. ChatGPT could do that with the right oversight, but all it can really do is steal from existing work and summarize it in the most formulaic way.” But if a show has an established blueprint, like Big Brother, for example, then it’s a lot harder to write. Or for a show like “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” it may not be a question of “if” we’ll get to see AI-generated challenges and scripts, but rather “when.”

It’s more a question of “when” than “if,” but formulaic shows like Ru Paul’s Drag Race could soon be subject to AI material. Photo: Gerard Gethings and Greg BaileyBeing so reflective, most experts say AI probably won’t write great comedy, or at least topical satire like we see in shows like “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.” Still, there are plenty of TV shows that aren’t sharp or timely, from Netflix dating shows to Hallmark Christmas movies, all of which could conceivably be influenced by AI material. Of course, more channels and streaming services mean more content, and it all has to be written by someone or something.

“In the next six to 12 months, you’re going to see FAST (free ad-supported TV) or social media channels develop AI content,” Field says. “It’s probably going to be made by minimal creators and there’s no real money being spent on it, but it’s going to be out there somewhere. It might do some funny stuff, but it’s not going to change the world. It’s just going to be cheaper and less good.”

But that doesn’t mean creators are grudgingly embracing the technology. Field himself Co-founded the company They’re dedicated to creating “ethical, policy-based” synthetic media. “We’re in a terrible situation where budgets are being cut and AI has the ability to create content cheaper and faster,” Field said. “I don’t necessarily see it as something that’s going to force us into a corner and take away all our jobs, but I do think that as an industry we need to do better and work towards the future in a more sustainable way. Let’s take all the tools that are available to us and use them to create something new.”

Other creators are trying to thwart the rise of AI. Voice Actors Guild of America Nava has taken an active stance against the mistreatment of the group by overzealous executives and producers, and they’re not only working to change the voice-over industry, but lobbying the U.S. Congress for legal protections. Anti-Counterfeiting Law And that AI Fraud Prevention ActBoth are currently in the legislative process.

Television shows that are neither crisp nor timely are perfect for AI processing… Love is Blind. Photo: NetflixUnder copyright law, unlike a person’s name, portrait, or likeness, Currently not covered A person’s voice is a “voiceprint” of just three seconds. Credible copy using AI(In 2020, it would have taken roughly six hours of audio to achieve the same results.) This has resulted in some high-profile upsets. Scarlett Johansson was “infuriated” after learning that ChatGPT had used a voice that was “eerily similar to mine, so similar that close friends and the press couldn’t tell the difference” without her consent. Amazing deepfakesSome of them used fake voiceovers of President Biden to discourage people from voting in state primaries.

In the entertainment world, these cheap and easy voiceprints have made it much faster to get a busy actor to re-record a few lines, but also allowed companies to create large volumes of dialogue using an actor’s existing work. Veteran BAFTA-winning voice actor Cissy Jones says that a few years ago she found her voice in multiple productions on multiple websites, despite never having contributed to a single project. Fans of her show, The Owl House, were editing videos using her voice, saying lines she never recorded, which “quickly became quite pornographic,” she says.

“This was done without my consent and of course with no control over how it was used and no compensation whatsoever,” Jones said, adding that even though he’s an adult, he would be particularly troubled if such AI creations used the voices of child actors. “You can imagine that this is happening soon.” Jones’ voice was fed into an AI engine, and Jones said he had heard the sound engineer was asked to do so by the client to save money on script changes. They want voice actors to be able to decide whether they want a digital replica of their voice, and whether they have control and compensation every time their voice is used. To this end, the group Etoboxit has its own database of actors’ voiceprints, all of which are available for creators to use.

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After newsletter promotionThough fan edits using Jones’ voice aren’t allowed, some are optimistic that AI might create alternate-universe versions of fan-favorite shows. While the idea of studios being able to churn out new episodes of “I Love Lucy” or “The Brady Bunch” may seem odd from an artistic standpoint, some are hopeful that animated series like “The Simpsons” and “South Park” will see the value (and revenue potential) in letting fans make their own “episodes.”

“Maybe you’ll say, ‘Please put me in that episode. I want to be friends with the main character’… You could be on The Simpsons in no time.” Edward Saatchi, CEO Fable Simulationhis company says. Showrunner The company wants to put TV production in the hands of viewers. “Maybe you’re at home and you finish watching a particular season of a TV show,” he said. “You click to watch the next episode and you say, ‘I want to be in that episode. I want to be friends with the main character,’ or, ‘I want it to be roughly like this.’ We want to make it easier for you to tell original stories and make a TV show about your life.”

The showrunners also produce their own original programming, including: Deguchi Valleyis a satirical animated series that “stars” Silicon Valley billionaires. It has already released two episodes and is calling on its 1,000 users (7,500 on a waiting list) to create more. Users can enter prompts of 10-15 words to create full-scale scenes that run from 2 to 16 minutes. A jury of filmmakers and creators will be selected to choose the 20 best episodes, and Saatchi said the episode creators will receive a cash prize and a cut of stream revenue.

“We want to create something that will stand the test of time,” Saatchi said. “It has to be plausible that you’d love to sit down with your friends and watch that episode of Exit Valley. It has to be believable that it’s actually cool, not just because it was made by an AI.”

So-called amateur creators also dominate other markets with 295 million subscribers. Netflix Being watched around the world Mr. BeastCheck out our YouTube channel every week. The most popular stars Presenting the latest work Unconventional In fact, YouTube is already the most popular streaming service on TV, accounting for roughly 10% of U.S. connected TV viewership, more than any other service, an estimated 4.95 billion active users World wide.

“Traditional TV is already being disrupted,” says cultural critic and media expert Doug Shapiro. “For years, the argument has been that YouTube isn’t competitive and isn’t professionally producing content. But that 10% doesn’t even reflect mobile or PC viewing; it’s the percentage of people turning on the TV in their living room and watching YouTube. Disruption from below is already happening. The real question now with AI is whether these tools will add fuel to the fire and drive the tens of millions of creators who are already making their own content even further up the quality and performance curve, increasingly competing with Hollywood for people’s time.”

“To use a Game of Thrones analogy, Netflix vs. Disney is like House Targaryen vs. House Lannister, except there’s an army of the dead at the wall: tens of millions of individual creators,” Shapiro added.

As professionally produced content becomes interchangeable with consumer and AI-produced content, this sea change could have far-reaching effects on Hollywood beyond the loss of 200,000 jobs. If DIY AI TV becomes widespread, it could turn the entire concept of television upside down, upending art and fame as we know it. Or, as Saatchi puts it, if AI continues to make its way into TV, “you won’t get your 15 minutes of fame. You’ll get seven seasons and a syndication deal.”

FarmVille Celebrates 15 Years: The Impact of the Beloved Facebook Game on the Digital Landscape

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

debtFacebook users of a certain age may remember a particularly lonely-looking farm animal that appeared in their feeds during the platform’s heyday. A lonely cow wandered into FarmVille players’ pastures with a frown on its face and tears in its eyes. “She’s very sad and needs a new home,” the caption read, urging players to adopt the cow or message a friend for help. Ignore the cow’s pleas and you’ll likely lose both your friend and your food. Message your friends about it and you’ll have fueled one of the biggest online crazes of the 2010s.

When FarmVille was released 15 years ago, it was a smash hit. Over 18,000 players played on the first day, and by the fourth day that number had risen to 1 million. At its peak in 2010, over 80 million users were logging in each month to plant crops, care for animals, and harvest to earn coins to spend on decorations. They made their obsession public.McDonald’s created farms for promotions long before artists were releasing music on Fortnite. Lady Gaga performs new song From her second album to a cartoon farm sim. Not bad for a game made in five weeks.

By 2009, developer Zynga had established itself as a pioneer in social media gaming, when four friends from the University of Illinois presented plans for a farming sim. It was a hastily reworked version of a failed browser game they’d made that copied The Sims, but Zynga was impressed enough to buy the technology, hire the four people, and pair them with some in-house developers. Zynga quickly released FarmVille.

The world of FarmVille… Photo: PhotoEdit/Alamy

“Facebook was exploding in popularity and engagement in a way that was novel at the time,” says John Tien, a former director of product at Zynga. Farm Town, a farming simulation game with a similar cartoony look and design made earlier by another studio, was already attracting 1 million daily active users on Facebook’s platform. Facebook had previously courted game studios and told Zynga it would soon give third-party developers access to user data, friends lists, and news feeds.

“By opening up its platform to app developers like Zynga, Facebook has been able to create an almost symbiotic relationship,” Tien says. “Facebook has given Zynga access to a large, engaged user base, and Zynga has given Facebook users more to do on the platform.”

Features like the lonely cow, which gently nudged players by requesting their friends to help grow their farm, became central to the experience, and Facebook was flooded with posts and notifications promoting FarmVille to the masses. These viral mechanics gave the game a “meme-like buzz,” says former Zynga vice president and general manager Roy Segal. “It’s this water cooler effect: you see your friends playing and you want to join in.”

And once you were in, it was hard to get out. For each crop you planted, you had to return at a set time, a few hours later, to harvest it. If you left it for too long, it would wither and die. “The idea is that the player makes their own schedule,” says Amitt Mahajan, co-creator and lead developer of FarmVille. “That’s what keeps people coming back every day.”

The result, Tien says, is a game that players feel they have to accomplish. “We all have growing lists of things we need to do and we’re struggling to get them done in the time we want,” Tien says. “Checking things off a list is viscerally satisfying, and playing FarmVille was a way for players to experience that satisfaction.”

New features and content were added several times a week to keep players interested, but the real magic happened behind the scenes with Zynga’s in-house data analytics tool, ZTrack. The tool could monitor the most detailed player behaviors, from what features players used to how long they spent on them to where they clicked on the screen, with the goal of building an ever-evolving, data-driven picture of player interests.

“At any given time, we had hundreds, maybe thousands, of dashboards and experiments running,” says Tien. “We could see core metrics every five minutes. We could see immediately after a new feature was released whether it was having an effective impact.”

Metrics-based design is standard today across social media platforms, apps, online retailers and digital services. Reliance on big data to predict consumer behavior is the foundation of everything from Google’s advertising empire to Cambridge Analytica’s political consulting. But back in 2009, no one was doing it quite like FarmVille.

“Zynga’s approach to game analytics inspired the entire digital analytics industry,” says Jeffrey Wang, co-founder and chief architect of analytics platform Amplitude. “One of Amplitude’s earliest customers was a former Zynga product manager who had started his own company and was looking for a tool comparable to ZTrack. There was nothing even close at the time.”

ZTrack became the backbone of FarmVille – features were repeatedly tested, analyzed and optimized, and the results determined what to deploy, monetization options and how to integrate to maximize player retention.

“Zynga’s dirty secret is that none of our five company values are more important than our metrics,” the Zynga co-founder said. Andrew Trader Ken Rudin, former vice president of growth, analytics and platform technology at Zynga, went a step further: Quoted In 2010:[Zynga is] An analytics company disguised as a gaming company.”

Like most Facebook apps at the time, users could not play FarmVille without giving Zynga permission to collect their personal Facebook data. But the details of what data would be shared were written in small print on click-through screens that most users habitually ignored. “We as citizens, and government policymakers, didn’t really know the extent of it. [online data harvesting]”We’ve seen the harm that can come from unrestricted data extraction,” says Florence Chi, an associate professor of communication at Loyola University Chicago. But since then, she says, “we’ve seen the harm that can come from unrestricted data extraction.” Discovered in 2010 They share players’ personal data with advertisers and online data brokers.

FarmVille’s success, driven by data-driven design, was short-lived. Over the next few years, players abandoned the game, Zynga turned to unpopular sequels, and Facebook eventually revoked access to developers the game relied on for its early virality. In 2020, Adobe dropped support for Flash, the software that powers FarmVille. The game suddenly went offline.

But Zynga’s success continued. Words with friendsmobile racing game CSR Racing, Draw Something and a suite of slot machine games all use player data to maximise engagement. Zynga still makes data-driven, aggressively monetised games for mobile phones under Take-Two Interactive, which acquired the company in 2022 for $12.7bn (£9.4bn).

For Chee, FarmVille was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur’s dream, and very much a product of its time. “If you look at today, there’s not really a Facebook social phenomenon like there was in 2009,” she says. “It was a very special time for a game like FarmVille to come out, and the recommendation systems and algorithms were just in the right place.”

The mystery of life’s origins on Earth: Unraveling the puzzle baffling scientists

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Life is abundant on Earth, from pigeons in the park to invisible microorganisms covering every surface. However, when Earth first formed 4.5 billion years ago, it was devoid of life. The question remains: how did the first life form emerge?

The answer is still unknown. If we understood the process, we could recreate it in a controlled environment. Scientists could replicate the right conditions with the right chemicals and potentially observe living organisms forming. Yet, this has never been accomplished before.

Although the exact origin of life remains a mystery, there are several clues that provide insight. Living organisms consist of various chemicals, including proteins and nucleic acids that carry genetic information. While these chemicals are complex, their basic building blocks are simple to create.

One of the first demonstrations of this concept came from chemist Stanley Miller in 1953. By simulating the early Earth’s conditions with water and gases, Miller produced amino acids, the fundamental components of proteins, through heating and electrical shocks resembling lightning.

Subsequent studies, such as one conducted by Sarah Simkuch, have shown how complex chemicals can arise from basic compounds. By starting with everyday chemicals like water and methane, researchers have generated thousands of substances found in living organisms.

While this abundance of chemical building blocks suggests a fertile environment for life to emerge, the transition from chemicals to life is not automatic. Several key factors contribute to the formation of life, including structure, sustenance, and reproduction.

As we all know, life requires proteins. Despite being complex chemicals, proteins form easily in nature © Getty Images

Research into the origin of life has focused on creating systems that encompass these essentials, such as genetic molecules capable of self-replication. However, the interdependence of these systems suggests a simultaneous emergence may be more plausible, possibly within confined spaces like deep-sea hydrothermal vents or terrestrial pools.

While the exact beginning of life remains uncertain, advancements in understanding have made the origin of life seem less inexplicable than before.

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Debatable: Speed Limiters Becoming Mandatory in EU and Northern Ireland

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

I
Traffic laws and courts leave no doubt as to what the big numbers in red circles mean, but as any quick drive on any city road or highway without enforcement cameras will show, many drivers still see speed signs as targets rather than limits.

Technology that becomes mandatory across Europe from this weekend could change that culture, because from July 7 all new cars sold in the EU and Northern Ireland must come standard with a suite of technological safety features, most notable of which is intelligent speed assistance, colloquially known as a speed limiter.

While the rest of the UK can theoretically enjoy the fullest range of post-Brexit freedoms, as ministers used to be fond of saying, the integrated nature of car manufacturing means that new cars here will also tell drivers to take their foot off the accelerator, combining satellite-navigation maps with a forward-facing camera that reads road signs and automatically sounds an alarm if you're going too fast in the zone you're in.

Drivers of newer cars will be accustomed to similar features already installed, but for now they can be easily disabled. As a representative for one major manufacturer said, “You have to balance whether it makes the car safer, but it's upsetting people. We've found that a lot of people actually have everything turned off.”

But as cars of the future are designed with systems that can never be turned off, restarting the engine every time it shuts off, will car enthusiasts see this as genuine progress?

“This is one of those things that's very hard to argue against,” says Steve Fowler, an automotive consultant and former editor of Autocar. “Observing the speed limit will not only save you in countless ways, it could potentially save your life.”

Safety is the biggest reason to slow down and, as charities such as Brake and Rospa highlight, even a small increase in speed of just over 30mph can make a big difference to outcomes, especially for people who are not driving.

Yousif Al Ani, lead engineer for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) at Thatcham Research, said: “Modern cars are very good at protecting occupants in the event of a crash, thanks to passive safety features such as airbags and crush zones, but the benefit to vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists is limited.”

In the UK, the number of road fatalities caused by speeding vehicles has increased at a faster rate than the overall number of fatalities since the spread of COVID-19, rising 20% to 303 out of 1,695 in 2022.

A significant minority of drivers admit to breaking the speed limit on all kinds of roads, but when you observe that traffic flows smoothly,
By the Ministry of Transport
This suggests that the percentage is much higher.
RAC's 2023 Automotive Report57% of drivers said they broke the 70 mph speed limit on freeways. In most urban areas a 30 mph speed limit was most likely to be observed, with only 40% breaking it. A Department of Transport study found that on free-flowing 20 mph roads, rather than residential areas with speed bumps, 80-90% of vehicles ignored the speed limit.

One of the most common arguments speeders make to the RAC is: “I drive at the same speed as other road users”. This kind of peer pressure may not be surprising to those struggling to stick to the 20mph speed limit on, say, London or Wales' major roads, where they are met with looks of infuriated incredulity from drivers behind, and on the M6 toll many seem to think that paying the £9.70 toll gives them the right to blaze past at 80mph as well as avoid Birmingham.

But with computers replacing erratic speedometer needles with more accurate readings and a new generation of speed cameras providing increased enforcement, denying liability may become harder. Lawyers say people who turned off their speed limiters when they started driving could find themselves in a difficult position if they end up in court.

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Not only will limiters be mandatory, but also other ADAS features such as automatic lane keeping and automatic emergency braking. Questions remain about whether the technology will work well enough in all real-world situations, and how comfortable people will be with a car telling them what to do, let alone controlling the steering, braking and acceleration, which can cause anxiety and disorientation.

“Balancing safety, performance and integration, and building a system that works with the driver, is a real challenge for manufacturers,” Al Ani says.

But most agree that the benefits far outweigh the risks. More and more drivers are willing to go slower and rely more on technology, Fowler said. “I think driving is changing, and drivers are changing, and I hate to say it, but they don't necessarily like the stuff that enthusiasts of the past liked, the engineering that's been put into it.”

“People are more aware that speeding increases fuel consumption. If you're going 80 miles per hour on the highway, your fuel consumption increases exponentially.”

With the rising cost of living putting as much emphasis on miles per gallon as speed, Fowler says that driving well may be more enjoyable than going fast. “We need to develop a new generation of drivers who realize that more relaxed driving can be just as rewarding. If you drive well without losing momentum, you won't have to stop and start as often, which saves fuel, saves money and saves on emissions. Maybe mpg will become the new mph.”

Michael Mosley’s innovative methods in science have improved lives and promoted health

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

My first encounter with Michael Mosley was at the BBC Summer Party. A recent documentary I had presented had just aired on horizon, making me eligible to attend the event. Feeling overwhelmed amongst the many celebrities present, I found solace at the bar, quietly observing the crowd, until Michael approached me.

“Hello, I’m Michael Mosley,” he introduced himself. I was well aware of who he was, and we ended up spending the evening conversing. Although I first worked with Michael at an event, that initial meeting at the party left a lasting impression on me. Despite not knowing me, he warmly welcomed me as a newcomer.

Michael’s extensive career as a producer, presenter, and writer at the BBC spanned over 40 years, establishing a unique style of ‘self-experimenting presenter’ in science presentations. He famously delved into self-experimentation, including infesting himself with tapeworms and popularizing the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet to manage his type 2 diabetes.

While Michael faced criticism for his methods, he aimed to communicate science rather than conduct formal experiments. His talent for simplifying complex concepts and making science accessible led to widespread education among audiences.

Personally, Michael served as a valuable mentor, offering practical advice and sharing techniques for effective communication in broadcasting. His influence extended to shaping my approach to interviews and on-camera presentations, guiding my work in academia and beyond.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of clear science communication has been highlighted, emphasizing the impact of effectively disseminating information on health issues. Michael’s contributions in this realm have greatly improved public health outcomes and potentially saved lives.

As a close colleague, respected mentor, and cherished friend, Michael Mosley will be deeply missed.

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Meeting the wind-powered sea monster with 30-metre tentacles: Nature’s most bizarre phenomenon

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

The Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia physalis) is named after an 18th-century sailing ship due to its resemblance to a ship under full sail.

In the open ocean, they appear as floating pink party balloons with long trailing blue ribbons.

The balloon part is a life buoy filled with carbon monoxide gas, which acts like a sail, rising above the water and catching the wind.

This is how Portuguese man-of-war travel across the ocean, sometimes in groups numbering in the thousands. They rely entirely on wind power and are not active swimmers.

Depending on which way the sail is facing in relation to the wind, it can be right-handed or left-handed.

They share some similarities with jellyfish, such as their appearance up close and the fact that they have a painful sting.

If you come across a deflated pale balloon with a blue string on the beach, be cautious – it’s likely a deceased Portuguese man-of-war, which loses its color when it dies but retains its ability to sting.

The Portuguese man-of-war is a tubular animal related to jellyfish, sea anemones, and corals.

There are about 175 species of cetaceans. Some live on the ocean floor, others swim in the depths, but the Portuguese man-of-war is the only one that floats on the surface.

What sets weevils apart is their unique construction. Unlike other animals that grow larger and develop specialized tissues and organs, tubular algae replicate themselves to create genetically identical zooids that form colonies and tubular bodies.

These zooids come together in specific arrangements to carry out tasks like feeding, digestion, reproduction, and defense.

Portuguese man-of-war play a crucial role in the Pulston ecosystem, which exists at the boundary between sea and air. As they drift, they capture fish and larvae with their tentacles, which can extend up to 30 meters and paralyze prey with venomous spines.

Other creatures that prey on Portuguese man-of-war include the blue dragon sea slug, which eats the tentacles and uses its stingers for defense, and the Blanketed Octopus, which waves its tentacles to find food and deter threats.

If you have any questions, please email the address below. For more information: Facebook Page, Twitter, or Instagram Page (remember to include your name and location).

Ultimate Fun Facts: For more incredible science, visit this page.

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Simple Tips from Professionals to Soothe a Stressed Dog on Independence Day

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Flashing lights, barbecues, parades, and red, white, and blue flags flying: Fourth of July celebrations have arrived in America, as Americans across the country come together to celebrate the nation’s independence.

But for our furry friends, fireworks may not be such a fun experience, especially as many dogs can find fireworks scary, even if they can only hear and see them from a distance.

Luckily, if your pup has an aversion to fireworks going off in the sky, there are ways to make the whole process a lot more relaxing. Dr. Zazie ToddWe spoke to an animal behavior expert for all the tips you need to keep your dog calm during a fireworks display.

Why are dogs scared of fireworks?

If you’ve ever whispered to your dog that you’re going for a walk, you’ll know that dogs have extremely good hearing — and this can be a problem when they encounter a particularly loud, scary sound like fireworks.

Without any context about what these sounds are, it can be a pretty frightening experience. “We know why there’s this loud explosion or this bright light going on, but dogs don’t,” explains Todd.

“If we don’t do anything to teach them that these sounds are OK, they’re likely going to get scared. And if they’re scared, they’re going to continue to get more scared every time they hear it.”

So how exactly can you teach your dog that loud noises outside aren’t a threat? Well…

Tips for keeping your dog calm during fireworks

Create a suitable environment for your dog

Drawing the curtains and turning on the TV is one way to protect your dog from outside noise and light, but while this may make the sound of fireworks less noticeable, it won’t block them out completely. “This helps, but it’s even more effective if you’re there to reward your dog when there are particularly loud noises,” says Todd.

“A room with closed blinds and soothing sounds is a dog’s happiest place, but that’s their choice. Tidy up the room, but don’t lock your dog in there. It won’t solve the problem, but it will help.”

Don’t be afraid to comfort them

It’s often said that you should not comfort a scared or anxious dog as this will make them more afraid, but there’s no scientific evidence to back this up.

“It’s perfectly OK to comfort your dog – in fact, you are important to them – and when they’re stressed, they’re looking to you for help and to make them feel better,” says Todd.

“Unfortunately, fireworks can be very frightening for them and even your comforts will make them difficult to cope with, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore them.”

Fireworks are a traditional way to conclude Independence Day celebrations in the United States. – Image credit: Getty

Try desensitization training

It takes planning, but training your dog properly at a young age can set you up for a lifetime of peaceful firework enjoyment.

“Puppies have a sensitive socialization period from three weeks of age to around 12 to 14 weeks, and we recommend exposing them to quiet firework sounds during this time to prevent any fear of fireworks,” Todd says.

“This will give them a more positive experience and reduce stress for them in the future. They don’t have to be puppies, you can train them at any age, but it’s easier when they’re younger.”

But what if your dog is already afraid of fireworks? Although this exposure training can work, a different approach may be more effective. Rather than getting your dog used to loud noises and flashing lights, building a fun association with the experience can be a great way to reduce the fear.

“The idea with desensitization or counterconditioning is to give your dog a tasty treat that he’ll enjoy every time a loud noise is heard,” Todd says.

“Over time, you develop what’s called a conditioned emotional response. You might even learn to love the sound of fireworks!”

Going to the vet

In some cases, your dog may have had no resistance to fireworks for a long time and then suddenly become extremely frightened of loud noises – in this case it’s worth seeking professional help.

“Scientists at the University of Lincoln Your dog associates fear with pain. “If the fear of fireworks starts later in life, it’s well worth getting tested just to be safe,” Todd explains.

This could be due to a different experience, but it’s best to check with your vet first to be safe.

Get a prescription for medicine

Some of the strategies above require a fair bit of advance planning, but what if you don’t have the time to train your dog?

“Your vet can discuss medications and will often prescribe medication to help your dog survive the fireworks,” explains Todd.

Obviously, this is best used as a one-off technique and you’ll be better off approaching training your dog in the long term.

About our experts

Zazie Todd Author of Pet Psychologyis an award-winning blog that brings you the latest science on our pets and evidence-based pet care practices. Todd has a PhD in Psychology, a Certificate in Training and Counseling from the prestigious Dog Trainer Academy, and an Advanced Certificate in Feline Behavior from International Cat Care. She is the author of the following books: Wag: The science behind making dogs happy and Purring: The science behind making cats happy.

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Scientists claim that fat can be burned naturally in new weight loss discovery

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Weight loss can be a challenging journey, but there may be a breakthrough discovery that could make it easier. Scientists have found a way to burn calories without changing your diet or exercising, thanks to a fat-burning mechanism in your body known as “beige fat.”

While diet and exercise are still crucial, researchers from the University of San Francisco have identified a way to convert regular white fat cells into beige fat cells.

In most mammals, including humans, there are three types of fat cells: white, brown, and beige. White fat cells store calories, brown fat cells burn energy for heat, and beige fat cells can do both.

This conversion from white to beige fat cells allows the body to naturally burn fat more efficiently.

Although the study was conducted with mice, it could pave the way for new weight-loss drugs and shed light on why previous trials have not been successful.

Scientists believed that stem cells were required to create beige fat, but the research shows that by inhibiting the production of a protein called KLF-15, white fat cells can be converted to beige fat cells. This finding offers promising insights into potential weight-loss treatments.

Feldman and his team discovered that KLF-15 controls the levels of the Adrb1 receptor, which plays a role in maintaining energy balance. Targeting this receptor with drugs could be a more effective approach for weight loss compared to current treatments.

By understanding the mechanisms behind beige fat cells, researchers hope to develop safer and more long-lasting weight-loss solutions for the future.

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At room temperature, metal-free organic molecules demonstrate strong phosphorescence

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

A metal-free organic 3-bromo-2-thienyl diketone exhibits fast and efficient room-temperature phosphorescence with high color purity under a variety of conditions, according to a new study led by chemists at Osaka University.

Artist's impression of fast phosphorescence. A beam of blue light enters the molecule, producing a thick yellow pillar, illustrating the acceleration of phosphorescence due to the mixing of singlet states. Image courtesy of YAP Co Ltd.

“Phosphorescence is a valuable optical feature used in applications such as OLEDs and cancer diagnostics,” said chemist Yosuke Tani of Osaka University and his colleagues.

“Until now, achieving highly efficient phosphorescence without using rare metals such as iridium or platinum has been a major challenge.”

“Phosphorescence, which occurs when a molecule goes from a high-energy state to a low-energy state, often competes with non-radiative processes where the molecule loses energy as heat,” the researchers added.

“This competition can slow down phosphorescence and make it less efficient.”

“Previous studies have shown that incorporating certain structural elements into organic molecules could make them phosphoresce faster, but these efforts have not matched the speed and efficiency of rare-metal-based materials.”

“Our breakthrough with thienyl diketones represents a major advance in this field.”

Dr. Tani and his co-authors were able to observe efficient narrowband room-temperature phosphorescence from 3-bromo-2-thienyl diketone in solution, amorphous polymer matrices, and crystalline solids.

“We discovered these molecules by chance and initially didn't understand why they performed so well,” Dr. Tani said.

“But as the research progressed, the pieces started to come together and we began to understand more.”

“Our work has led to a clearer understanding of the mechanisms behind the molecule's performance than any other organic phosphorescent material to date.”

“Still, we believe there is much more to explore and are excited about the potential applications.”

“This work provides new design guidelines for developing rare-metal-free organic phosphorescent materials, which have the potential to surpass and replace these materials in a variety of applications,” the authors conclude.

“The results of this research are expected to lead to major advances in areas such as OLEDs, lighting and medical diagnostics.”

This discovery paper In the journal Chemical Sciences.

_____

Yosuke Tani othersFast and efficient narrowband room-temperature phosphorescence from metal-free 1,2-diketones: rational design and mechanism. Chemical SciencesPublished online June 3, 2024; doi: 10.1039/D4SC02841D

Source: www.sci.news

Our view of artificial intelligence reflects our opinions on human intelligence

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

TThe notion that highly intelligent robots are extraterrestrial intruders “coming to steal our jobs” reveals significant flaws in our understanding of work, value, and intelligence itself. Work is not about competition and robots are not separate entities competing against us. Just like any other technology, robots are an extension of humanity, emerging from our society much like hair and nails grow from living organisms. Robots are an integral part of our species, blurring the lines between man and machine.

When we treat fruit-picking robots as the “other,” viewing them as adversaries in a zero-sum game, we overlook the real issue at hand: the dehumanization of workers who previously harvested fruit. These individuals were deemed dispensable by farm owners and society when they were deemed unfit for their jobs. This indicates that these human workers were already being treated as non-human entities, akin to machines. With the existing disconnect between individuals, seeing machines as alien entities only exacerbates the problem.

Many concerns regarding artificial intelligence stem from outdated traditions that highlight dominance and hierarchy. However, the narrative of evolution emphasizes cooperation, enabling simpler organisms to come together and create more complex and enduring structures. This collaborative approach has driven the development of eukaryotic cells, multicellular organisms, and human societies. Mutualism has been crucial in enabling progress and scalability.

As an AI researcher, my focus lies not on the “artificial” aspect of AI – computers – but on intelligence itself. Regardless of its form, intelligence thrives on scale. A significant milestone in 2021 was the development of the “Language Model for Dialogic Applications” or “LaMDA,” demonstrating the importance of scale in intelligence. State-of-the-art AI models have since grown exponentially in complexity and efficacy. This trend towards larger models mirrors the evolutionary growth in human brain size and social cooperation.

Human intelligence is a collective endeavor, drawing upon the collaboration of individuals, plants, animals, microbes, and technologies. Ignoring the contributions of these diverse entities and technologies reduces us to mere brains devoid of physicality. Our intellect continues to evolve and expand, becoming increasingly distributed and interconnected. Embracing this broader definition of “human” can aid us in navigating global challenges and fostering collective intelligence.

The concerns surrounding AI dominance are rooted in historical narratives of hierarchy and control. AI models exhibit intelligence comparable to human brains without the need for status-driven competition. These models rely on a symbiotic relationship with humans and the broader ecosystem, signaling a shift towards collaborative intelligence rather than hierarchical dominance.

The narrative surrounding robots as potential threats reflects deep-seated fears of domination and competition. However, the true threat to societal order stems from human inequality rather than robotic interference. Recognizing our interdependence with all beings – humans, animals, plants, and machines – can pave the way for a more harmonious and cooperative future.

Recent Update: Professor confirms abandoned bird nest is still present

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Nest: Still abandoned

Be prepared. A neglected bird's nest still remains in the mouth of a large ancient stone sculpture of a human face, hanging high on the wall at the northern end of the outdoor garden known as the “Michelangelo's Corridor” at the National Roman Museum in Rome, reports a professor at University College London (UCL). The professor discovered the nest during a visit to the museum in April this year and reported it to a colleague who is the director of a natural history museum in the Netherlands. The colleague visited the National Roman Museum the next day and asked if he could take the nest back to the museum in Rotterdam to add it to his biological curiosities collection, rather than having the staff remove it and destroy or dispose of it. The request was greeted with enthusiastic gratitude from two staff members at the Roman Museum, but a third staff member who happened to come across the scene with a ladder when the first two climbed the ladder to remove the previously unnoticed nest from the sculpture's mouth, and warned that no twig or pebble should ever leave his museum.

Photos of the nest in question can be seen in the May 8th feedback.

In early June, the UCL professor quietly revisited the National Museum of Rome and shortly thereafter sent out a “it's still there” report to Feedback.

Feedback: We are more than happy to receive reports from future visitors to Michelangelo's Cloister observing whether the empty nest (one might call it an “amuse-bouche”) is still nestled in the statue's mouth.

Not Your Way

Reader Ashok Khushalani contributes to Feedback's collection of inspiring and admirable organizational slogans that have been replaced, supplanted, or clearly abandoned, though not always obvious to the general public (May 18). Classic examples include IBM's “THINK” and Google's “Don't be evil.”

Khushalani laments the disappearance of Burger King's slogan, “Make it your way,” from everyday life, and he suggests that its absence has meaning.

If you know of a hot slogan that was highly promoted and is now in storage, please don’t say it with any ill intent and keep it to yourself.

Instead, please send it along with the documentation as feedback to “Mourning dead slogans”.

A weak theory

North Americans' fascination with rod-shaped objects and the human habit of proposing and then rejecting theories are two factors that have led to theDoes size matter? Penis dissatisfaction and gun ownership in America” “.

Reader Matthew Hall sent a copy to Feedback.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to formally examine the association between penis size and individual gun ownership in the United States,” Terence D. Hill and colleagues from Texas and Florida wrote. “Our findings do not support the psychosexual theory of gun ownership.”

The same team will be joined by two other researchers in 2021.Sexual Dysfunction and Gun Ownership in the United States: When hard data meets unfounded theory”.

They poured cold water on the often heated public debate, saying: “Our key finding is that [sexual dysfunction] They are no more likely to own a gun than men without SD.”

BustaOr so they apparently said in their previous paper, but that didn't stop them from continuing to write about it. Busta”Ultimately, these arguments are counterproductive to society because they distract us from tangible realities like penis dissatisfaction and gun ownership.”

Smell

The June 12 article about a famous pathologist's inability to smell led reader John Adams to reflect on his own journey as a medical professional.

“As for Sir Bernard Spilsbury's anosmia, I was told as a medical student that this was common because pathologists are exposed to large amounts of formaldehyde fumes which destroy the olfactory nerves. One of the reasons I avoided this specialty is because I want my patients to have answers.”

Feedback suggests that a similar (but milder) preference for conversation leads people to choose dentistry.

Telltale Title

Ideally, the title of a scientific report clearly summarizes its entire content. To encourage this habit, Feedback has compiled a collection called “The Title Tells You Everything You Need to Know.”

Let's look at two examples.The man's fractured sternum was likely caused by the weight of the snake during the fall.” appears British Medical Journal 1997.Experimental replication reveals knife made from frozen human feces doesn't work” was decorated Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports 2019.

If you find similarly impressive examples, please submit them as feedback to “Telltale titles,” along with details of the citation.

Marc Abrahams is the founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founder of the journal Annals of Improbable Research. He previously worked on unusual uses of computers. His website is Impossible

Do you have a story for feedback?

You can submit articles for Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week's and past Feedback can be found on our website.

Is the climate resilient enough to handle the escalating energy needs of the AI arms race?

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

The rise of artificial intelligence has propelled the stock prices of major tech companies to new heights, but this growth has come at the expense of the industry’s environmental efforts.

Google recently admitted that AI technology poses a challenge to its sustainability objectives. The company disclosed that its data centers, crucial for its AI infrastructure, have caused a 48% increase in greenhouse gas emissions since 2019. Google cited “significant uncertainties” in achieving its goal of net-zero emissions by 2030, particularly due to the complex and unpredictable environmental impacts of AI.

As the tech industry races ahead with AI advancements, the question arises: can technology mitigate the environmental impact of AI, or will the pursuit of cutting-edge innovation overshadow these concerns?

Why is AI a threat to tech companies’ environmental goals?

Data centers play a critical role in developing and operating AI models like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4. These centers house complex computing equipment that require substantial electricity, leading to CO2 emissions both from energy sources and the manufacturing processes involved. According to the International Energy Agency, data centers are projected to double their electricity consumption by 2026, equivalent to Japan’s energy demand. Additionally, studies suggest that AI’s water consumption could reach significant levels by 2027, potentially straining resources equivalent to England’s annual consumption.

What do experts say about the environmental impact?

Government-sponsored reports in the UK have highlighted the importance of energy sources in determining the environmental cost of technology. Some experts caution that the reliance on fossil-fuel-powered energy sources for training AI models remains a significant challenge. While tech companies are increasing their use of renewable energy to meet sustainability goals, concerns persist that the lack of clean energy may push other users towards fossil fuels.

Alex de Vries, founder of Digiconomist, notes the dual challenge of rising energy consumption in AI and the struggle to secure sustainable energy sources.

Will there be enough renewable energy?

Global efforts to triple renewable energy resources by the end of the decade face challenges due to surging energy demands from AI data centers. The International Energy Agency warns that current plans may only double renewable energy capacity by 2030, potentially impacting climate goals.

Technology companies may need to invest heavily in new renewable energy projects to meet the escalating electricity needs driven by AI.

How quickly can new renewable energy projects be built?

While renewable energy projects like wind and solar farms can be developed relatively quickly, bureaucratic hurdles and grid connectivity issues can delay the process for years. The pace of building offshore wind and hydroelectric schemes faces similar challenges, posing concerns about whether renewable energy can keep up with the expansion of AI.

The reliance on existing low-carbon sources by tech companies may divert clean energy away from other users, potentially increasing fossil fuel consumption to meet growing demands.

Will AI’s power demands keep growing?

The escalating energy needs of AI systems could lead to higher energy costs, prompting cost-saving measures in the industry. However, the competitive landscape and the push for cutting-edge AI technologies may result in excessive electricity consumption despite rising costs.

The pursuit of state-of-the-art AI systems has fueled a “winner takes all” mentality among tech giants, compelling heavy investments in the development of advanced AI. The pressure to remain at the forefront of AI innovation, including the race towards achieving AGI, threatens to escalate energy consumption and costs.

Despite advancements in AI efficiency, the industry’s drive for innovation may offset potential energy savings, akin to the economic concept known as “Jevons’ Paradox.”

Won’t AI companies learn to use less electricity?

While AI breakthroughs continue to enhance efficiency, the industry’s relentless pursuit of cutting-edge models may counteract potential energy savings. The growth in AI capabilities does not necessarily translate to reduced energy consumption, leading to a paradox similar to historical instances of technological advancements increasing use rather than conserving resources.

Making Time for Video Games: Insider Secrets

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

I I don’t often miss my teenage years, but I do miss the time I had to play video games. I used to get into games late into the night, but now that I’m a busy adult, I barely have the time to do that. Outside of covering games for work, I feel like I barely have time to play. So instead of the huge, engrossing role-playing games I once craved, I prefer games I can complete in a few nights. I’m pretty much used to this. The days of 100-hour epics and live service online games are long gone. They’ll come back eventually, when my kids are older.

But more than two years have passed since the release of Elden Ring, a game in my favorite genre by my favorite director, and I suddenly found myself tired of having barely played it. I’d been playing it bit by bit on my PS5, but I’d never been able to get past Rimgrave’s (admittedly vast) starting area. I kept hoping that my partner would take the kids for the weekend, or that I’d have a week off during term time so I could revert to my teenage habits and play hours alone. But… 2 yearsIf I want to play this game, or any big game, I have to make sure I fit it into my real life, which includes work, two small kids, and all the other responsibilities.

Is that even possible? There’s one thing that definitely helps: Steam Deck. Since having kids, I’ve become a lot more reliant on portable consoles. Spending hours uninterrupted in front of the TV without being seen is nearly impossible, and I don’t want to traumatize my kids by blasting them the violent and grotesque scenes of Elden Ring. I’ve been able to play both Zelda games on my Switch because I can take them anywhere and play them occasionally. Plus, these games are huge. So a few weeks ago I bought Elden Ring again, installed it on my Steam Deck, rebooted it, and resolved to defeat the infamous opening boss, Godric the Grafted, and see what’s beyond Stormveil Castle.

At home, I spent all my free time on Steam Deck, to the point of ignoring my family. Kids watching 30 minutes of TV before dinner? Elden Ring. Partner watching Euros? Elden Ring with eyes fixed on the score. Microwaving lunch? Time for Elden Ring. I tried small, achievable adventures like running around looking for unexplored ruins and getting surprised by a dragon in the middle of a lake. I made it through Stormvale Castle and back only to be totally beaten by Godric. I got used to giving up mid-battle, retreating, and looking for something else to do. Progression felt painfully slow, and I hated every time I had to stop playing in the middle of something. At the end of the first week, I checked my playtime. It was 6 hours.

“I left Godric at the castle and warped away to a safer location to just… have some fun.” Photo: Bandai Namco Europe

Six hours?! Is that all the free time I have available in a week? I was seriously depressed. It’s unnatural to play a game like this bit by bit, and when I add up all the stolen time, I’m left with a shockingly small amount of time. At this rate, it’ll take me six months to beat this game, and that’s without playing (or doing) anything else.

My problem was that I was only interested in finishing the game, rather than enjoying it. Six hours is better than zero. I couldn’t play the game the way I used to, so I had to think differently. Instead of reading guides to figure out the best way to progress through the game and trying to progress as quickly and efficiently as possible, I left Godric in the castle, warped to a safer area, and just… tried to have fun. I found a hidden boss and easily defeated it. I opened a treasure chest that teleported me to a terrifying underground mine full of insect-like wizards, then escaped and ended up in a ghostly city. I really liked the Wolverine-esque metal claws I found, but not because they were the best weapon, but because they were fun to use.

After a week of running around like this, I was relieved of the frustration I had felt before. Elden Ring is a terrible game if you try to complete it as quickly as possible in an extremely limited time frame, as most games are. It’s a great game if you focus on the adventure of the moment. I spent about 40 minutes in a smoldering little church trying to kill a red phantom warrior with a giant cleaver that could kill me in two hits, just to see if I could do it. When I managed two parries and killed her after a flurry of desperate sword strikes, I was beside myself. If I had insisted on getting through the game, I would have missed that moment entirely.

I beat Godric last night. With those funny claws that I love so much. I stopped watching the clock for how long I was playing. I stopped worrying about getting the most out of the least amount of effort. And now I’m really having fun. If you’re wondering how to play a huge game when you only have an hour, my advice is to use that hour. It’s the time you have. And an hour of enjoying a game is better than an hour spent wishing you could play longer.

What to Play

Demon’s Souls. Photo: Sony

If you’re ready to tackle a FromSoftware/Hayao Miyazaki game for the first time and want something more manageable than Elden Ring, I’d recommend the PS5 remake. Demon’s SoulsOriginally released in 2009, this rebuild fixes many of the control and camera flaws, offering a horror-infused dark fantasy vision and great, stress-free combat. It’s hard, but well worth it, and it takes less time than other Souls games.

Available on: PS5
Estimated play time: 30+ hours

What to Read

Positech Democracy 4. Photo: Positech Games

We did the cursed thing and ran a game simulating the first five years of each British party in power. Democracy 4Each party acted based on the policies set out in their manifestos, but it didn’t work at all.
Elden Ring creator Hidetaka Miyazaki mentioned the possibility of an Elden Ring movie or TV show in an interview last week. George R.R. MartinCo-wrote the game’s story. The blog suggests Something may already be in the works: “You may have heard rumours about a feature film or a TV series… but I have nothing to say. Not a word, no, nothing. I don’t know anything and you haven’t heard a word from me.”
There are several remakes of older works assassin’s creed Games in development, Ubisoft says This may also include the pirate-flavored Black Flag, but this is still the best in my opinion.
Capcom Remake announced of Dead Risinga satirical cult hit about killing zombies using items found in shopping malls, is due for release in September.

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Question Block

Is the consolidation of video game journalism a good thing for gamers? Photo: Josep Martinsson/FIFA/Getty Images

Reader Matt asks:

“What would be the consequences if IGN bought the video game news site Gamer Network? If Eurogamer shuts down, we’d riot.“

This may seem like an insider question, but it’s an important one for readers of gaming news and reviews — which of you, the Pushing Buttons reader, is a reader of that. In late May, the very large gaming website IGN (I’ll be honest, I worked at IGN from 2010 to 2013) announced that Bought out UK gaming websites include VG247, Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz (and, more specifically, I worked for all of these sites from 2006-2010 or so). There are currently just two companies that own pretty much all of the specialist gaming media in the UK: Future Publishing has GamesRadar, PC Gamer and a selection of their magazines, and IGN has everything else.

IGN has previously acquired gaming sites. 1up and GameSpyand they ended up closing down, which doesn’t inspire confidence. But you have to ask: why buy a bunch of beloved brands that are still making a profit from what I’ve heard, and close them down? In 2024, any company in online media needs all the traffic it can get; buying a competitor only to close it down would be a terrible investment in a shrinking advertising economy. That’s why IGN is cautiously hopeful that it will be a good owner of these sites and that it won’t lose a huge chunk of UK games media with this acquisition.

Why is this important? Gaming is one of the few entertainment verticals where specialized media still thrives. Music media is in decline; just look at the fate of NME and Pitchfork. TV and film journalism is mostly newspapers like this one now. But when it comes to games, mainstream media is far behind reporters and critics at IGN,

Video captured of Blue whale mother nursing her calf for the first time

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

The first ever video footage of a blue whale nursing a calf was captured by a snorkeler in East Timor, Southeast Asia, and has been released.

“It’s certainly not a newborn calf.” Karen Edivain “But they’re clearly still drinking milk,” said the researcher, from the Australian National University in Darwin.

Edibane says capturing the footage is an incredible feat that has never been achieved before. The action was captured on camera by a snorkeler on an ecotourism voyage swimming with the pygmy whales off the coast of the capital, Dili, in 2022, and has only now been made public.

Blue Whale (Mushibaga) is the largest known animal to have ever lived on Earth, sometimes reaching lengths of over 30 meters and weighing nearly 200 tons.Southern wolfThe sharks found off the coast of Timor-Leste are slightly smaller, reaching a maximum length of 24 metres.

Blue whale calves do not attach to their mothers when feeding, but rather release oily milk into the water, which the calf swallows.

Edivain said the large calf seen feeding in the video is probably in its second year of living with its mother — blue whales are weaned at three years.

Other significant blue whale behaviours have been sighted and filmed in the area as part of the decade-long study. Citizen Science Projects Project leader Edivine said a database of 2,700 pygmy blue whales had been compiled since 2014 and that Timor-Leste may be a base for one of the world’s largest migrations of pygmy blue whales.

Newborn calves, courtship behaviour, pre-mating behaviour and feeding behaviour have all been observed.

“We haven’t seen a penis yet, but we’ve seen very affectionate adults having a lot of fun playing with each other,” Edivain said.

Caprivec The head of marine life conservation for the Western Australian Water Environment Regulatory Authority said that until recently no one knew how many blue whales were migrating off the coast of Timor-Leste.

Beck says he was incredibly lucky to capture the footage. Blue whales are often found far offshore, in hard-to-reach locations. “It’s incredibly rare to even be in the water with a blue whale, and even rarer to be in the water at the right time and place to film a calf nursing.”

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Exploring the impact of TikTok on the 2024 general election in UK politics

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

If a week is a long time in politics, five years between elections feels like an eternity in the UK. The political landscape has changed dramatically since the Conservative Party’s landslide victory in 2019, but so has the social media landscape.

In 2019, TikTok was “the video-sharing app that became phenomenally popular among teenagers,” according to a commentator at The Guardian.

Fast forward to 2023 and an Ofcom investigation has found that: 10% of people aged 16 and over The number of people saying they get their news from TikTok is higher than BBC Radio 1 and on par with the Guardian, a significant increase from 1% in 2020 after the last election.

While some say the so-called battle over TikTok has been exaggerated, the platform’s creators are well aware that there is an audience among TikTok users, young and old, who enjoys political content.

To understand how the 2024 election unfolded on TikTok, we monitored the platform for one hour per day for a week using four separate accounts, searching for the widely used tag “#ukpolitics” as well as campaign-specific hashtags and terms.

Before we begin, a few disclaimers: No one outside TikTok knows how TikTok’s algorithm works, nor do we know whether and how the algorithm can be manipulated to promote certain content.

The platform is also notoriously difficult to measure: there’s no “most popular” section, so the sample is just a snapshot of what people saw on the site for one hour each day for one week over the duration of the campaign.

Straight TikTok: “Traditional” News for a New Audience

If you think of TikTok as all dance crazes, lip-sync challenges, and make-up artist tutorials, you’d be right – but you’ll also find some familiar faces, including BBC and ITV news anchors, LBC radio presenters, and broadcast journalists.

…

Conspiracy theorist

We found very few accounts spreading conspiracy theories, at least in the sample we collected, but they do exist.

While we do not intend to help conspiracy theorists by spreading their videos more widely on this platform, topics we saw included false claims that Labour would introduce Sharia law if it came to power.

Again, it is not known why such content was served, but AI Forensics warns that such content could be amplified by a “secret recipe” hidden in the platforms’ algorithms.

“Engagement can be both good and bad, so polarized discussions around extreme views and hate speech can drive up engagement metrics,” Romano said.

At least three accounts initially identified as containing conspiracy theories were removed during the investigation, though it is unclear whether this was of the accounts’ own volition or if they were removed by TikTok.

The most effective method to cool cities: White and reflective roofs.

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

White roofs in London would help keep the city cool during the hottest days.

NagyxMe/Imago/Alamy

In cities like London, painting roofs white or adding reflective coatings is the best way to cool them down during the heatwaves, and these “cool roofs” could work better than solar panels, green roofs or adding more trees to the ground.

Oskar Bruss Researchers at University College London ran a climate simulation to look at how temperatures in London would have changed on the hottest two days of the summer of 2018 if the city had implemented widespread cooling measures, from cooled roofs to air conditioners to cooling solar panels. The highest temperature was 35.6℃ (96.1°F).

The researchers found that the cool roofs outperformed all other countermeasures, reducing the city's average outdoor temperature by 1.2°C over the two days, and by as much as 2°C in some places. By comparison, adding more trees reduced temperatures by just 0.3°C, and solar panels reduced temperatures by 0.5°C.

The study found that while widespread air conditioning may keep indoor temperatures lower, it could increase outdoor temperatures by up to 1°C in parts of central London. “In London, cool roofs were the most effective at reducing outdoor temperatures at pedestrian level,” Bruce says.

While the study only used two days of data for its simulations, Bruce said: Similar published studies.

Applying reflective coatings or brightening roof surfaces across cities would be a relatively simple, low-cost climate adaptation measure, Bruce says. “In fact, I think it's probably the easiest thing to implement,” he says. “I see very little reason not to do this more widely.”

Beyond cooling, he says there are other reasons to install technologies: trees and green roofs can boost biodiversity and resident well-being, for example, and solar panels can provide clean electricity.

2023 Report A report by the Greater London Authority suggests that cool roofs could become a policy focus for the city government as summer temperatures rise due to climate change. “As temperatures in London are expected to rise and heatwaves become more frequent, reflective roofs are likely to become a key element of climate adaptation strategies,” the report said.

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AI Technology can accurately recreate visual perceptions using mind-reading capabilities

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Top row: Original image. Second row: AI-reconstructed image based on macaque brain recordings. Bottom row: Image reconstructed by the AI system without the attention mechanism.

Thirza Dado et al.

Artificial intelligence systems can currently create highly accurate reconstructions of what a person sees, based on recordings of brain activity, and these reconstructed images improve significantly as the AI learns which parts of the brain to pay attention to.

“As far as I know, these are the most accurate and closest reconstructions.” Umut Güçül Radboud University, Netherlands.

Güçül's team is one of several around the world using AI systems to understand what animals and humans see through brain recordings and scans. In a previous study, his team used a functional MRI (fMRI) scanner to record the brain activity of three people while they were shown a series of pictures.

In a separate study, the team used an implanted electrode array to directly record the brain activity of a single macaque monkey as it viewed AI-generated images — an implant done by a different team and for a different purpose, Güçül's colleagues say. Sarza Dado“We didn't put implants in macaques to restructure their perception,” she says. “That's not a good argument against doing surgery on animals.”

The research team has now reanalyzed the data from these earlier studies using an improved AI system that can learn which parts of the brain to pay most attention to.

“Essentially, the AI is learning where to pay attention when interpreting brain signals,” Gyuklüh says, “which of course in some way reflects what the brain signals pick up on in the environment.”

By directly recording brain activity, some of the reconstructed images were very close to the images seen by the macaques, as generated by the StyleGAN-XL image-generation AI. But accurately reconstructing AI-generated images is easier than real images, because aspects of the process used to generate the images can be incorporated into the AI training to reconstruct those images, Dado said.

The fMRI scans also showed a noticeable improvement when using the attention guidance system, but the reconstructed images were less accurate than those for the macaques. This is partly because real photographs were used, but Dado also says that it is much harder to reconstruct images from fMRI scans. “It's non-invasive, but it's very noisy.”

The team's ultimate goal is to develop better brain implants to restore vision by stimulating the higher-level parts of the visual system that represent objects, rather than simply presenting patterns of light.

“For example, we can directly stimulate the area that corresponds to a dog's brain,” Güçül says, “and in that way create a richer visual experience that is closer to that of a sighted person.”

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Long-Awaited Video Game ‘Kien’ Finally Released After 22 Years

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

IIn 2002, a group of five Italians garnered local attention for their ambitious project. They aimed to develop games for Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance, becoming the first company in the country to do so. Armed with just a few hundred euros and basic computers, these executives dove headfirst into the world of game development without prior experience or a team of programmers. Their motivation stemmed from a shared passion for gaming, a distaste for traditional employment structures, and unwavering optimism.

Over the ensuing two years, the team poured their hearts and souls into the project. Countless late nights and minimal time off characterized their relentless pursuit to bring their vision to life. Despite facing numerous challenges, they remained steadfast in creating a groundbreaking game with intricate features. The game, named Kien, remained in obscurity for years, eventually surfacing this year. However, most original team members had already moved on to other endeavors by then, with only game designer Fabio Belsanti persevering and seeing the project through.

Kien holds a unique distinction as the longest-delayed video game release, spanning 22 years. Surpassing the notoriety of Duke Nukem Forever, Kien’s delayed launch finally allows gamers to experience the action-platformer on a Game Boy Advance cartridge.

The game commences with players selecting between two protagonists: the Warrior and the Priestess. The Warrior wields a sword against hordes of enemies, presenting a formidable challenge. Kien’s gameplay keeps players engaged with challenging encounters and respawning adversaries, drawing comparisons to the difficulty level of Dark Souls. This nostalgic experience harkens back to the unconventional games of yesteryears that captivated youthful imaginations.

Take your chance… Priestess of Kien. Photo: Incube8 Games

While Kien’s journey to release was fraught with challenges, it was not initially intended to span decades. Following completed development and failed publisher negotiations, the game languished in obscurity. Belsanti’s dedication to uncovering lost 15th-century literature and merging it with Japanese gaming influences and classic action titles like Turrican shaped Kien’s unique narrative. Despite setbacks, Belsanti remained resolute, eventually finding a publisher in Incube 8 to revive Kien for a new audience.

In a digital landscape dominated by modern graphics and technical prowess, Kien’s revival on original hardware stands as a testament to its enduring charm. Its availability on retro cartridges accompanied by multi-page manuals rekindles a sense of nostalgia and reverence for gaming’s roots.

Looking ahead, AgeOfGames seeks to create a spiritual successor to Kien, staying true to their ethos of delivering compelling gameplay experiences over flashy visuals. Belsanti’s enduring passion for storytelling through gaming underscores the timeless appeal of simpler yet immersive game design.

Embracing a new era of retro gaming resurgence, Kien’s resurgence symbolizes a return to simpler times in digital entertainment. Its rediscovery by a new generation echoes the enduring power of captivating storytelling and imaginative gameplay experiences.

Experience Kien’s revival on original hardware through Incube 8, a pioneering company championing classic console gaming. Witness the magic of Kien’s long-awaited release and embark on a nostalgic journey back to the golden age of gaming.

The Southwest may have recorded its hottest June ever

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

LAS VEGAS — Some parts of Arizona, Nevada, and Texas have just had their hottest June on record, with scorching temperatures breaking several long-established records.

This record-breaking heat foreshadows another extremely hot summer for the U.S. and globally, raising concerns for the upcoming weeks and months as July and August are typically the hottest months of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

In Phoenix, the average temperature was 97 degrees Fahrenheit, marking it as the hottest June in the city’s over 100-year history. As reported by the National Weather Service.

Last month, the temperature was nearly two degrees higher than the previous record set in June 2021. Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport noted 14 days with temperatures surpassing 110 degrees in June, according to the weather service.

The scorching heat has already claimed 13 lives due to heatstroke in Maricopa County so far this year, which encompasses Phoenix and many surrounding areas, with 162 more deaths under investigation. According to the county public health department.

Last year, a record 645 people died from heatstroke in Maricopa County amidst unusually hot weather for the region. Phoenix reported temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or higher for 31 consecutive days last summer, surpassing the previous record of 18 days set in 1974.

July has already begun with challenges, as 110 million people across 21 states are under heat warnings or advisories heading into the Independence Day holiday.

The heatwaves were felt across the Southwest last month.

In neighboring Las Vegas, Nevada, the city recorded its highest-ever temperature in June.

“June 2024 was historically the hottest in Las Vegas,” stated the National Weather Service’s field office. According to a post on X from last Sunday. The previous record was set 8 years ago in 2016.

Triple-digit temperatures were recorded nearly every day last month, with an average temperature of 94.6 degrees in June, seven degrees above usual and 1.8 degrees higher than the previous record, as per the National Weather Service.

The heat persisted, with an average high temperature of 106.2 degrees Fahrenheit and an average low of 83 degrees Fahrenheit, providing little relief during the night.

Climate change is anticipated to bring more frequent heatwaves. Studies indicate that as the planet warms, heatwaves will become more common, prolonged, and intense.

The National Weather Service noted that it’s not just the new milestone that stands out. “What’s even more striking is how much it surpassed the previous record,” the statement said, highlighting the 1.2-degree difference between the average June high temperature and the previous record.

West Texas also saw scorching temperatures in June, with El Paso experiencing its hottest June on record, breaking a record from 30 years ago. According to the National Weather Service.

The average temperature in El Paso reached 89.4 degrees, surpassing the previous record set in 1994 by 0.4 degrees.

Extreme heat warnings and advisories are in place for various states along the West Coast and parts of the South, including Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and Florida.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

The Denisovans thrived on the Tibetan Plateau for over 16,000 years

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Archaeologists have discovered a new human rib specimen in the White Cliff Cave, one of two sites known to have been inhabited by Denisovans. Dating from 48,000 to 32,000 years ago, the specimen also belongs to the Denisovan lineage and indicates that the caves were present into the Late Pleistocene.

Portrait of a young Denisovan woman based on a skeletal profile reconstructed from an ancient DNA methylation map. Image courtesy of Maayan Harel.

The Denisovans are an extinct human group first identified from a genome sequence determined from a finger bone fragment found in the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia.

Subsequent genomic analyses revealed that the Denisovans diverged from Neanderthals 400,000 years ago, and that at least two distinct Denisovan populations interbred with the ancestors of modern Asians.

In 2019, a 160,000-year-old jawbone discovered in Baishiyi Cave, a limestone cave on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, was identified as being of Denisovan origin.

In 2020, archaeologists found Denisovan mtDNA in deposits from the cave, suggesting they were present around 100,000 years ago, 60,000 years ago, and possibly 45,000 years ago.

The new Denisovan rib, discovered in the Baishigai Karst Cave, dates to approximately 48,000 to 32,000 years ago.

“The combined fossil and molecular evidence indicates that the Amaka Basin, where the Baishiqai Cave is located, was a relatively stable environment for the Denisovans, despite its high altitude,” said Dr Frid Welker, an archaeologist at the University of Copenhagen.

“The question now is, when and why did the Denisovans on the Tibetan Plateau become extinct?”

In their study, Dr Welcker and his colleagues examined more than 2,500 bones discovered in the White Cliff Cave.

“We know that the Denisovans hunted, butchered and ate a wide range of animal species,” said Dr Geoff Smith, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Reading.

“Our study reveals new information about Denisovan behavior and adaptation to high-altitude environments and a changing climate.”

“We are only just beginning to understand the behavior of this incredible human species.”

The bone remains found in the Baixa Karst caves were broken into many fragments, making them difficult to identify.

The researchers used a new scientific technique that uses differences in bone collagen between animals to determine which species the bone remains belong to.

“Zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) allows us to extract valuable information from bone fragments that are often overlooked, providing deeper insights into human activities,” said Dr Huan Xia, a researcher from Lanzhou University.

Scientists have determined that most of the bones belong to blue sheep called bharals, as well as wild yaks, horses, the extinct woolly rhinoceros and spotted hyenas.

Bones from small mammals, such as marmots, and birds were also identified.

“Current evidence suggests that it was the Denisovans, and not other human groups, who lived in caves and made effective use of all available animal resources during their occupation,” said Dr Jiang Wang, also from Lanzhou University.

“Detailed surface analysis of the bone fragments shows that the Denisovans removed the meat and marrow from the bones, but also suggests that humans used them as raw material for making tools.”

This study paper In the journal Nature.

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H. Shea othersMiddle and Late Pleistocene Denisovan life in the Baishi Cliff karst caves. NaturePublished online July 3, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07612-9

Source: www.sci.news

The oldest known termite mound, active 34,000 years ago, astounds scientists.

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Scientists in South Africa were surprised to find that a termite mound standing in the country’s arid regions is over 30,000 years old, making it the oldest active termite mound known.

Located near the Buffels River in Namaqualand, several mounds have been dated back to 34,000 years ago by researchers from Stellenbosch University.

“I was aware of its age, but not to this extent,” said Michel Francis, a senior lecturer at the university’s soil science department who led the study. The findings were published in May.

These mounds existed during a time when sabre-toothed cats and mammoths roamed the Earth, and large parts of Europe and Asia were covered in ice. They even predate the oldest cave paintings in Europe.

While fossilized termite mounds millions of years old have been found, the oldest human-inhabited mound prior to this discovery was in Brazil and approximately 4,000 years old, visible from space.

Francis described the Namaqualand mounds as termite “apartment complexes”, showing evidence of a continuous termite colony living there.

Although termite mounds are a common sight in Namaqualand, their age was not questioned until samples were sent to Hungarian experts for radiocarbon dating.

The largest mounds, known as “heuweltjies” locally, can reach around 100 feet in diameter, with termite nests found up to 10 feet underground.

Researchers had to excavate parts of the mound for samples, but the termites went into “emergency mode” and started filling in the holes. The team reconstructed the mound to protect the termites from predators like aardvarks.

The project not only provided insight into ancient structures but also revealed information about the prehistoric climate, indicating Namaqualand was wetter when the mounds formed.

Southern harvester termites play a crucial role in capturing and storing carbon by collecting twigs and dead wood, contributing to offsetting climate change. This process also benefits the soil, supporting the growth of wildflowers on top of termite mounds in low rainfall areas.

Pope Francis encouraged further research on termite mounds for the valuable lessons they offer on climate change, ecosystem maintenance, and agricultural practices.

“Studying the termites’ activities within the mounds could provide valuable insights, considering the tedious job they are believed to have carried out,” she added.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

9 simple tips from a dermatologist to enhance your skincare regimen

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Dr Bab Shergill is a consultant dermatologist specializing in skin cancer treatment and is a Fellow of the British Association of Dermatology. Here are his top nine skincare tips:

Less is more

Most people only need a basic cleanser, moisturizer, and possibly sunscreen if they are going outside.

Some skin types require additional care

There are around 3,000 different skin-related conditions, such as eczema and psoriasis. If your skin is scaly, dry, and red, you may need a specific routine with moisturizers to hydrate the skin and short-term use of steroids to soothe inflammation.

Moisturizers do not hydrate the skin

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This is a common misconception: moisturizers work by creating a protective barrier and allowing moisture to move from deeper layers of the skin to the surface.

Need to know…
For most people, a basic cleanser, moisturizer, and sunscreen are sufficient.
Expensive products do not always mean better; look for key ingredients if you have specific needs.
To maintain healthy skin, eat well and limit alcohol consumption.

Expensive creams aren’t always better

There’s a psychological aspect to choosing expensive skincare products; sometimes we value them more because of their high price. However, if you have specific needs, it may be worth paying more for products with beneficial ingredients.

If you have brown spots known as “liver spots,” products containing vitamin B3 can be helpful.

Anti-aging creams are effective

Studies have shown that vitamin A-based compounds like retinol can reduce fine lines, boost collagen production, fade blemishes, and improve skin tone. Be cautious of using too much as it can cause irritation.

There is no difference between men’s and women’s skincare products

Aside from packaging and scent, there is no significant difference between products for men and women.

No need for separate day and night creams

If using a cream with retinol, consider applying it at night to avoid increased sun sensitivity.

read more A Scientist’s Guide to Life:

Avoid excessive alcohol consumption

Dehydration affects both your body and skin, so stay hydrated and eat a balanced diet. Foods rich in vitamins C and E can help combat damage from free radicals as antioxidants.

Consider your clothing choices

Wearing a wide-brimmed hat during sunny hours can protect your skin, especially for men with thinning hair on their scalp.

This article was first published on August 4, 2020

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