Chemistry can often be a complex and slow process, typically involving intricate mixtures in round-bottomed flasks that require meticulous separation afterward. However, in 2001, K. Barry Sharpless and his team introduced a transformative concept known as click chemistry. This innovative approach revolutionizes the field, with a name coined by Sharpless’s wife, Janet Dueser, perfectly encapsulating its essence: a new set of rapid, clean, and reliable reactions.
Though the idea appears straightforward, its elegance lies in its simplicity. Sharpless, along with colleagues Hartmas C. Kolb and MG Finn, described their creation as “spring-loaded.” This concept hinges on applying these reactions to various starting materials, assembling them akin to Lego blocks, thereby enabling the swift construction of a vast array of novel and beneficial molecules. Sharpless’s primary focus? Pharmaceuticals.
The overarching principle guiding these reactions was to steer clear of forming carbon-carbon bonds, which was the norm among chemists at the time, and instead to create bonds between carbon and what are known as “heteroatoms,” primarily oxygen and nitrogen. The most recognized click reaction involves the fusion of two reactants to create a triazole, a cyclic structure of carbon and nitrogen atoms. This motif proves to be highly effective at binding to large biomolecules such as proteins, making it invaluable in drug development. Sharpless independently published this specific reaction concurrently with chemist Morten Meldal, who researched it at the University of Copenhagen. This reaction has since been instrumental, notably in the production of the anticonvulsant drug Rufinamide.
Chemists like Tom Brown from the University of Oxford describe this reaction as simple, highly specific, and versatile enough to work in almost any solvent. “I would say this was just a great idea,” he asserts.
Years later, chemist Carolyn Bertozzi and her team at Stanford University developed a click-type reaction that operates without toxic catalysts, enabling its application within living cells without risking cellular damage.
For chemist Alison Hulme at the University of Edinburgh, this research was pivotal in elevating click chemistry from a promising idea to a revolutionary advancement. It granted biologists the ability to assemble proteins and other biological components while labeling them with fluorescent tags for investigation. “It’s very straightforward and user-friendly,” Hulme explains. “We bridged small molecule chemistry to biologists without necessitating a chemistry degree.”
For their groundbreaking contributions, Bertozzi, Meldal, and Sharpless were awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry—an outcome that surprised no one.
Archaeologists have discovered a heated deposit that is 400,000 years old, along with a fire-cracked flint hatchet in Burnham, Suffolk, England, as well as two pieces of pyrite—a mineral historically used to create sparks from flint. This finding suggests that humans were capable of making fire approximately 350,000 years earlier than previously thought.
An artist’s impression of the Burnham fire some 400,000 years ago. Image credit: Craig Williams / British Museum Trustees.
The ability to start and control fire represents a significant milestone in human evolution. Fire provided essential warmth, protection from predators, and enabled cooking, thereby broadening the range of edible foods.
Evidence of fire in areas occupied by humans dates back over a million years.
Nonetheless, pinpointing when humans first learned to ignite fire remains challenging.
Fire likely began with early humans taking advantage of natural wildfires before they developed the skill to deliberately start their own fires.
Previously, indications of early fire use were found at Neanderthal locations in France dating back 50,000 years, where hand axes possibly used for striking pyrite to create sparks were discovered.
Recent findings by Professor Nick Ashton of the British Museum and the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, along with his team, indicate that fire-making might have been practiced at the Burnham site as far back as 400,000 years ago.
Archaeologists uncovered heated deposits in the ancient soil, along with a flint hatchet damaged by fire.
These indicators suggest that fires were maintained purposefully within human habitats, marking the third piece of evidence that fire-starting was intentional.
Two pyrite fragments were found at the site. Due to the mineral’s rarity in the area, researchers hypothesize that the pyrite may have been deliberately transported to the site for fire-starting purposes.
Together, these discoveries illustrate the sophisticated behaviors of early humans at the Burnham location.
For instance, these hominins may have comprehended the ignition properties of pyrite and incorporated it into their fire-starting techniques.
Mastering this skill would have offered numerous benefits, including cooking abilities and advancements in technology, such as the creation of adhesives for tools, potentially influencing significant developments in human behavior.
Professor Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, commented: “Based on the morphology of contemporary fossils from Swanscombe, Kent, and Atapuerca in Spain, we believe the individuals who ignited the Burnham fire 400,000 years ago were early Neanderthals, and early Neanderthal DNA has been preserved.”
“This represents the most astounding discovery of my career, and I take great pride in the collaborative effort that led to this groundbreaking conclusion,” said Professor Ashton.
“It’s astonishing that some of the oldest Neanderthal groups understood the characteristics of flint, pyrite, and tinder at such an early time.”
“The implications of this finding are immense,” stated Dr. Rob Davies, project curator at the British Museum.
“The capability to create and manage fire was one of the most crucial turning points in human history, offering practical and social advantages that significantly shaped human evolution.”
“This remarkable discovery shifts this pivotal moment back to about 350,000 years ago.”
The study detailing these findings is published in this paper in today’s edition of Nature.
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R. Davis et al. The earliest evidence of starting a fire. Nature, published online on December 10, 2025. doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-09855-6
A silver chalice dating back 4,300 years, found in Palestine’s West Bank, displays a depiction of the universe’s formation from primordial chaos, marking it as the oldest recorded visual interpretation of a creation myth.
“It’s a one-of-a-kind design,” says Eberhard Sanger from the Lewisian Research Foundation in Switzerland. “It conveys a complex narrative using a minimal number of lines.”
Measuring about 8 cm in height, the “Ain Samiya” goblet was uncovered 55 years ago in an ancient tomb located a few miles northeast of Ramallah, on the western edge of the Fertile Crescent, an area where early civilizations thrived.
The goblet features two distinctive scenes. The first shows a large serpent confronting a chimera with a human upper body and animal legs, positioned on a small flower-like circle. The second scene depicts a smiling serpent lying on the ground beneath a much larger flower-like circle, supported by two humanoid figures—of which only one is currently visible due to the goblet’s damage.
Archaeologists of the 1970s proposed that these scenes could represent Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth in which the primordial entity Tiamat is overcome by the god Marduk, resulting in Tiamat’s body transforming into heaven and earth. However, Zanger notes that this interpretation has its shortcomings; notably, there are no battle representations on the goblet, and it is approximately 1,000 years older than Enuma Elish itself.
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<p>This has led other scholars to suggest alternative meanings. For instance, they propose that the goblet might represent the cyclical rebirth of a year and the passing of another.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Zanger and his associates, including independent researcher <a href="https://utoronto.academia.edu/DanielSarlo">Daniel Sarlo</a> from Toronto, and <a href="https://fabiennehaasdantes.academia.edu/">Fabienne Haas Dantes</a> from the University of Zurich, argue that the original interpretation remains the most accurate. They contend that the scenes depict the creation of the universe, drawing from ancient creation stories that predate even <em>Enuma Elish</em>.</p>
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<img class="Image" alt="This scene illustrates cosmic order emerging from chaos, featuring figures such as serpents and deities (Credit: ? Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by Florica Weiner)." width="1350" height="901" src="https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg" srcset="https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=300 300w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=400 400w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=500 500w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=600 600w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=700 700w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=800 800w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=837 837w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=900 900w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1003 1003w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1100 1100w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1200 1200w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1300 1300w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1400 1400w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1500 1500w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1600 1600w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1674 1674w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1700 1700w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1800 1800w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=1900 1900w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12150512/SEI_274075982.jpg?width=2006 2006w" sizes="(min-width: 1288px) 837px, (min-width: 1024px) calc(57.5vw + 55px), (min-width: 415px) calc(100vw - 40px), calc(70vw + 74px)" loading="lazy" data-image-context="Article" data-image-id="2504118" data-caption="The images engraved on the goblet portray deities, serpents, and the sun" data-credit="Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Florika Weiner"/>
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<p class="ArticleImageCaption__Title">The engravings on the goblet depict a deity, a serpent, and the sun.</p>
<p class="ArticleImageCaption__Credit">Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Florica Weiner</p>
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<p>Zanger's research team views the first scene as ambiguous. The chimera signifies a weaker god combined with an animal. The small flower-like circles beneath its legs symbolize the powerless sun. A colossal serpent dominates this chaos. In contrast, the second scene reveals that order has emerged from chaos, with gods distinguished from animals, transforming into potent humanoid figures. They raise the powerful sun atop a "vessel of heaven," indicating the separation of heaven from earth, while the chaotic serpent lies defeated beneath the sun.</p>
<p>Zanger also mentions that cuneiform texts from another area of the Fertile Crescent, dating similarly to the goblet, discuss how deities divided heaven and earth. This indicates that by the time of the goblet's creation, the locals had already contemplated the theme of world creation. "The remarkable aspect of this artifact is that it allows us to glimpse their conception of this narrative," he states.</p>
<p><a href="https://independent.academia.edu/JLisman">Jan Lisman</a>, an independent researcher from the Netherlands, remains skeptical of this interpretation. "What it depicts is the daily journey of the sun," he argues. "But it certainly does not reflect 'origin' or 'chaos.'"</p>
<p><a href="https://www.altestestament.unibe.ch/about_us/people/prof_em_dr_schroer_silvia/index_eng.html">Sylvia Schroer</a>, a professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland, shows some willingness to entertain the notion that the goblet signifies world creation. However, she believes a different aspect of the new analysis is problematic.</p>
<p>According to Zanger, some images on the Ain Samiyah goblet, notably the giant snake, resonate with ancient cosmological tales from the Fertile Crescent and adjacent areas. They posit that this implies a profound connection among various creation myths which may trace back to a singular, more ancient narrative. Illustrating this, they cite a celestial vessel resembling that in the goblet, which is carved on a pillar at Göbekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey, a location dating back 11,500 years—7,000 years prior to the goblet's creation. "This is astonishing," Zanger remarks.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Schroer argues that it might be too speculative to assert that all creation narratives in the region are tightly intertwined. "Even with similarities, it doesn't necessitate clear influence," she maintains.</p>
<div class="JournalReference" data-title="JEOL – Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society “Ex Oriente Luxˮ" data-title_link="https://www.exorientelux.nl/jeol/" data-reference_type_overwrite="Journal reference:" data-doi="in press" data-method="shortcode" data-component-name="journal-reference">
<p class="JournalReference__Title"><i>JEOL – Journal of Ancient Near East Studies “Ex Oriente Luxˮ</i> <a class="JournalReference__Link" href="https://www.exorientelux.nl/jeol/">DOI: In print</a></p>
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<img class="Image SpecialArticleUnit__Image" alt="Caravan in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt" width="2560" height="1441" src="https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg" srcset="https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=300 300w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=375 375w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=500 500w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=600 600w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=700 700w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=750 750w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=800 800w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=900 900w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1003 1003w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1100 1100w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1200 1200w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1300 1300w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1400 1400w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1500 1500w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1600 1600w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1700 1700w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1800 1800w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=1900 1900w, https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/07111001/shutterstock_2429800603-scaled.jpg?width=2006 2006w" sizes="(min-width: 1277px) 375px, (min-width: 1040px) 26.36vw, 99.44vw" loading="lazy" data-image-context="Special Article Unit" data-caption="Caravan in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt" data-credit="Shutterstock"/>
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<h3 class="SpecialArticleUnit__Heading">Cairo and Alexandria, pioneers of science in the ancient world: Egypt</h3>
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<p>Take an unforgettable journey through Cairo and Alexandria, where the rich tapestry of ancient history meets modern allure.</p>
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Neanderthals may have used ocher crayons to draw on cave walls
Golodenkov/Getty Images
A fascinating yellow crayon discovered in Crimea remains sharp after over 40,000 years, indicating that marking objects was a component of Neanderthal culture. This finding serves as the most compelling evidence so far that certain Neanderthal groups utilized colored pigments symbolically, a behavior previously believed to be exclusive to humans.
“It’s truly remarkable. It expands our understanding of the symbolic application of color,” states Emma Pomeroy from the University of Cambridge, who was not part of the study.
The use of ocher, an iron-rich mineral displaying red, yellow, and orange shades, has deep roots in Europe and Africa, reaching back at least 400,000 years. Ocher fragments have been found in numerous Neanderthal sites and seem to have been utilized for practical activities like tanning skins and igniting fires, sometimes being applied to seashell beads.
Neanderthals might have also decorated their bodies, clothing, and surfaces with ocher, although such marks have long since vanished. To delve deeper, Francesco d’Errico and fellow researchers from the University of Bordeaux in France undertook a thorough examination of ocher fragments from Neanderthal sites in Crimea, Ukraine. By analyzing how Neanderthals modified these fragments and examining their wear using a microscope, they gained insights into their usage.
The most intriguing of these ocher artifacts, dating back at least 42,000 years, was yellow and shaped like a crayon, measuring about 5 to 6 centimeters long. In-depth analysis revealed that the tip had been worn down through use and then resharpened, suggesting that it was regularly reused as a marking implement.
“This is a tool that has been refined and reshaped multiple times, making it quite unique,” remarks D’Errico. “It’s not merely a standard crayon; it exists as a crayon because of its use as such. It may have been utilized for drawing lines on skin or stone, reflecting artistic endeavors.”
Ocher fragment tip utilized as a crayon and subsequently sharpened
D’Errico et al., Sci. Advances 11, eadx4722
April Nowell, a professor at Victoria University in Canada who was not part of the study, concurs. “I only retain the dot on the crayon when I aim to create precise lines or designs,” she comments.
The research team also uncovered an even older broken crayon made from red ocher, potentially as old as 70,000 years.
“A small piece of ocher can convey a wealth of information,” says Pomeroy. “It connects with our shared humanity in a deeply emotional way.”
This Crimean crayon discovery contributes to a growing array of evidence of Neanderthal artistic capacity, which includes a 57,000-year-old finger carving found on a cave wall in France, and a mysterious circle created from stalagmites 175,000 years ago in another French cave.
These findings support the notion that symbolic behavior is not merely a recent development but has deep-seated roots in our evolutionary trajectory. “The cognitive capabilities associated with symbolic actions were likely present in our last common ancestor, encompassing Homo sapiens, Denisovans, and Neanderthals over 700,000 years ago,” notes Nowell.
Ancient caves, the origins of humanity: Northern Spain
Explore some of the oldest cave paintings in this picturesque area of northern Spain. Journey back 40,000 years to discover how our ancestors lived, created, and built their lives. From ancient Paleolithic art to stunning geological formations, every cave tells a distinctive and timeless narrative.
OpenAI will restrict how ChatGPT interacts with users under 18 unless they either pass the company’s age estimation method or submit their ID. This decision follows a legal case involving a 16-year-old who tragically took their own life in April after months of interaction with the chatbot.
Sam Altman, the CEO, emphasized that OpenAI prioritizes “teen privacy and freedom over the board.” As discussed in a blog post, “Minors need strong protection.”
The company noted that ChatGPT’s responses to a 15-year-old should differ from those intended for adults.
Altman mentioned plans to create an age verification system that will default to a protective under-18 experience in cases of uncertainty. He noted that certain users might need to provide ID in some circumstances or countries.
“I recognize this compromises privacy for adults, but I see it as a necessary trade-off,” Altman stated.
He further indicated that ChatGPT’s responses will be adjusted for accounts identified as under 18, including blocking graphic sexual content and prohibiting flirting or discussions about suicide and self-harm.
“If a user under 18 expresses suicidal thoughts, we will attempt to reach out to their parents, and if that’s not feasible, we will contact authorities for immediate intervention,” he added.
“These are tough decisions, but after consulting with experts, we believe this is the best course of action, and we want to be transparent about our intentions,” Altman remarked.
OpenAI acknowledged that its system was lacking as of August and is now working to establish robust measures against sensitive content, following a lawsuit by the family of a 16-year-old, Adam Lane, who died by suicide.
The family’s attorneys allege that Adam was driven to take his own life after “monthly encouragement from ChatGPT,” asserting that GPT-4 was “released to the market despite known safety concerns.”
According to a US court filing, ChatGPT allegedly led Adam to explore the method of his suicide and even offered assistance in composing suicide notes for his parents.
OpenAI previously expressed interest in contesting the lawsuit. The Guardian reached out to OpenAI for further comments.
Adam reportedly exchanged up to 650 messages a day with ChatGPT. In a post-lawsuit blog entry, OpenAI admitted that its protective measures are more effective in shorter interactions and that, in extended conversations, ChatGPT may generate responses that could contradict those safeguards.
On Tuesday, the company announced the development of security features to ensure that data shared with ChatGPT remains confidential from OpenAI employees as well. Altman also stated that adult users who wish to engage in “flirtatious conversation” could do so. While adults cannot request instructions on suicide methods, they can seek help in writing fictional narratives about suicide.
“We treat adults as adults,” Altman emphasized regarding the company’s principles.
The proprietors of Facebook and Instagram are set to assist advertisers in fully developing and targeting campaigns using artificial intelligence tools by the end of next year, potentially disrupting the traditional marketing landscape.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which also owns WhatsApp, aims to directly reach brand marketing budgets and challenge client campaigns and media organizations managing these budgets.
The AI tool currently under development, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, will enable brands utilizing Meta’s advertising platform to generate ads by leveraging product images and planned marketing expenditures.
Meta’s platform already provides various AI tools that allow advertisers to modify existing ads before they go live on Facebook or Instagram.
These new tools could bridge the gap between traditional ad creation, planning, and purchasing roles that agents perform, while also catering to smaller advertisers who cannot afford marketing service companies.
AI tools will be capable of generating complete ads, including images, videos, and text, targeting users based on the client’s budget.
For instance, targeting parameters such as geolocation can allow holiday companies to tailor advertisements that are particularly relevant to destinations appealing to users.
Following the announcement of Meta’s planned AI rollout, investors quickly divested from some of the world’s largest marketing services.
WPP shares dropped 3% during early trading, while French firms Publicis Groupe and Havas saw declines of 3.9% and 3%, respectively.
Zuckerberg, emphasizing the shift towards AI-driven advertising, describes the evolution of these tools as a “redefinition of advertising categories.”
In April, Meta revised its financial outlook for next year, announcing plans to invest between $64 billion and $720 billion in capital expenditures, which include the costs associated with building AI infrastructure.
The company had initially projected expenses of up to $650 billion in 2025.
Two recent epic astronomical discoveries may seem unrelated at first glance.
One is an image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope showing newborn stars in our galaxy, approximately 450 light years away. This incredible picture depicts the birth of the solar system with thin dust discs slowly forming.
The other discovery combines optical and wireless data to reveal a massive astrophysical system larger than the Milky Way. This discovery provides a glimpse into the intergalactic violence caused by supermassive black holes actively consuming their surroundings.
Despite their differences, a striking similarity can be observed between the two discoveries. Both display objects emitting long, straight jets of light or material into the universe, resembling double-sided lightsabers.
Discovered by JWST, the HH 30 is a primitive disk illuminated with a newborn star in the center, expelling a jet of gas and dust. Approximately 450 light years away from the Taurus Molecular Cloud – Photo Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, Tazaki et al
Astrophysical jets are a common phenomenon in space, driven by the basic features of gravity, rotation, and magnetic fields.
The formation of discs in space involves a few simple steps driven by gravity and rotation. Material is attracted towards an object creating discs like spiral galaxies, protoplanetary discs, and accretion discs around black holes.
Gravity and rotation explain the formation of these discs, while magnetic fields play a crucial role in the generation of jets. Charged particles in space generate magnetic fields when in motion, leading to the creation of long, straight jets perpendicular to the disc plane.
Using wireless and optical data, astronomers discovered this huge astrophysical jet. This extends farther than the Milky Way – lofar/decals/desi regacy imaging surveys/lbnl/doe/ctio/noirlab/nsf/auraImage Processing: m zamani (nsf noirlab).
These jets vary in strength and size depending on the magnetic field and rotation that drives them. From protostars to supermassive black holes, jets can extend vast distances into space, showcasing the extreme power of gravity and magnetic forces in the universe.
Astrophysical jets provide a mesmerizing insight into the mechanisms driving the most extreme wonders of the universe, from stars being devoured by black holes to pulsars emitting light across space.
The physicist with Atlas collaboration We presented our first observations of VVZ production at Cern's large Hadron Collider. This is a rare combination of three giant vector bosons.
Three vector boson events recorded by Atlas are when one W-boson collapses into electrons and neutrinos, one collapses into moons and neutrinos, and two moons collapses into z boson. Muons are shown with a red line, electrons are shown with a green line, and a white line where “loss of energy” from Neutrino is destroyed. Image credits: Atlas/Cern.
As carriers of weak forces, W and Z bosons are central to standard models of particle physics.
Accurate measurements of multiboson production processes provide excellent testing of standard models and shed light on new physical phenomena.
“The production of three vector (V) bosons is a very rare process in LHC,” says Dr. Fabio Cerutti, Ph.D., Atlas Physics Coordinator.
“The measurement provides information about the interactions between multiple bosons linked to the symmetry underlying the standard model.”
“It is a powerful tool to uncover new physics phenomena, such as new particles that are too heavy to be produced directly in LHC.”
The Atlas team observed the generation of VVZ with statistical significance of 6.4 standard deviations, exceeding the five standard deviation thresholds needed to assert the observations.
This observation extends previous results from Atlas and CMS collaborations, including observations of VVV production by CMS and observations of WWW production by Atlas.
As some of the heaviest known particles, W and Z bosons can collapse in countless different ways.
In a new study, Atlas physicists focused on seven attenuation channels with the highest discovery potential.
These channels were further refined using a machine learning technique called Boosted Decision Trees, where the algorithms for each channel were trained to identify the desired signal.
By combining the attenuation channels, researchers were able to observe the production of VVZ and set limits on the contributions of new physical phenomena to the signal.
“The resulting limitations confirm the validity of the standard model and are consistent with previous results on the generation of three vector bosons,” they said.
“Analyzing the third run of LHC and the large dataset from future HLHCs will further improve the measurements of the generation of three vector bosons. We will deepen our understanding of these basic particles and our role in the universe.”
Microsoft’s artificial intelligence models can replicate realistic video game footage the company says will help designers create games, but experts are not convinced that the tool will help most game developers. yeah.
Neural networks that can generate consistent, accurate footage from video games are nothing new. A recent Google-created AI produced a fully playable version of a classic computer game destiny No access to the underlying game engine. original destiny, However, it was released in 1993. More modern games are more complex with sophisticated physics and computationally intensive graphics, and have proven difficult for AIS to faithfully replicate.
now, Katja Hofmann Microsoft Research and her colleagues developed an AI model called Muse. This allows you to recreate the complete sequence of multiplayer online battle games Bleeding edge. These sequences follow the physics that underlie the game, and appear to keep players and in-game objects consistent over time. This means that the model has a deeper understanding of the game, says Hofmann.
The Muse is trained with seven years of human gameplay data, including both controllers and video footage. Bleeding EdgeNinja Studios is a Microsoft-owned developer. It works similarly to large language models such as ChatGpt. If given input, it imposes predicting the next gameplay in the form of video game frames and their associated controller actions. “To this day, for me, it’s a very moving thing to me, purely from training models to predict what will come next. I learn a sophisticated and deep understanding of this complex 3D environment,” Hoffman said. I say it.
To understand how people use AI tools like Muse, the team researched game developers and learned which features would be useful. As a result, researchers added the ability to repeatedly adjust changes made on the spot, such as changes to player characters or new objects entering the scene. This could help you come up with new ideas and try out what-if scenarios for developers, says Hofmann.
However, the muse is still limited to generating sequences within the original boundaries Bleeding Edge Games – Can’t come up with new concepts or designs. And I say it’s unclear whether this is a model-specific limitation or something that can be overcome with more training data from other games. Mike Cook King’s College London. “This is a long way from the idea that AI systems can design their own games.”
The ability to generate consistent gameplay sequences is impressive, but developers may prefer greater control, says Cook. “If you create a tool that is actually testing the game code itself, you don’t have to worry about persistence or consistency because you’re running the actual game. So these are introduced by generative AI itself. It’s solving the problem.”
It is promised that the model is designed with developers in mind, he says Georgios Yannakakis The Digital Games Institute at the University of Malta may not be feasible for most developers who don’t have that much training data. “Does that come down to the question of it being worth it?” says Yannakakis. “Microsoft has been collecting data for seven years and training these models to demonstrate what they can actually do. But real game studios can afford it. [to do] this? “
Even Microsoft itself is vague about whether AI-designed games could be on the horizon. When asked if there was a possibility that developers in the Xbox gaming division would use the tool, the company declined to comment.
Hofmann and her team hope that future versions of Muse can generalize beyond training data, but they can create new scenarios and levels for the games they are trained to work in a variety of games. I hope that I can do it. Challenge is because modern games are very complicated.
“One way games distinguish themselves is by changing the system and introducing new concept-level ideas. So machine learning systems go outside of their training data and go beyond what they see. It’s extremely difficult to innovate and invent,” he says.
mThe butt effect is some of the best science fiction ever made. That might sound like an epic comment, but it's true. As a trilogy, original games from 2007 to 2013 are easy to pick the most brain ideas from the sci-fi genre and invested them into memorable military role-playing games that have been the first to the controversial end. I slotted it.
Whether you prefer Asimov's hopeful optimistic outlook, Shelley's dark and reflective commentary, Star Trek's accessible thought experiment, or BattleStar Galactica's arch melodrama, Mass Effect is it I have everything. The trilogy grazes Star Wars West-inspired ratios as happily as Iain M Banks' “hard” sci-fi, bringing all its moods and micro-story into a galaxy that is captivating and believable Melding, walking in one way or another breathtaking optimism, and a choking smile.
Mass effects are special. And, like a successful video game series, franchise achievement rests on the shoulders of the developers' vast assemblies. Bioware project director Casey Hudson and studio co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have earned plenty of credits, but much of their souls comes from other creatives at Bioware. Written by Drew Calpisin, Derek Watts's Art Direction, Lead Designer Preston Wattmaniuk's vision, and Jack Wall's rising film music.
Every time you play, you can feel the choking inevitability of closed sacrifices around you. I needed music to match
“I made the Jade Empire soundtrack very successful in BioWare before Mass Effect,” Wall tells me that he asks how he became part of the team working on the original title. “Then they put out an audition process for what the team called SFX, the codename for Mass Effect. It was a blind audition, and Bioware got files back from many composers. The team was , I listened to all these different things and decided who nailed it the most. And I won that audition blind.”
Soon, Casey Hudson began working on giving an overview to the wall. “His mission was, 'I want this to sound like '80s science fiction music'. There is no Star Wars. There's nothing like the Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, or Blade Runner. Those were the main ideas. “Hudson specifically guides vintage analog synth sounds (particularly in films) that defined science fiction of the era, and wants to imagine a multi-layered multi-removal approach from the Tangerine Dream as the perfect accompaniment to a dense, complex mass-effect universe. I was thinking that.
Wall explains that Bioware played music written by another composer called Sam Hulick. Although Hulick was not chosen as a lead composer (as he was considered too junior for his job), Wall gave him equal credibility on the soundtrack.
Up until Mass Effect 2, music really became itself and essential to the whole experience. If Mass Effect has this almost utopian outlook, then the sequel is dark if mid-20th century science fiction optimism was established to establish the universe. The end of everything is nearing. From the off point, the final act is a “suicide mission” and it is said that the problem should be sorted out before reaching the return point. There is extensive pessimism, and with each moment you play, you can feel the choking inevitability of closed sacrifices around you. I needed music to match.
“At the beginning of development, Casey Hudson came in and said, 'I want to write the ending now,'” Wall says. I want it to be the main moment everyone remembers. He gave me some guidance and told me through what he wanted. [players] Feeling – This is always the best way to work with the supervisor. ”
“The team will decide who nailed it the most”… Jack Wall.
This track may be the aptly named Suicide Mission, which may be the most important part of the entire trilogy. It has an orchestral bias more than anything in the first game and reflects a serious overall tone. It shows how quickly they mature from one game to the next.
“It had to be epic, it had to feel like a movie, it had to feel 'one guy against everything',” Wall says. “You had to feel like you were saving the world and saving the galaxy. I came up with that main theme. [Hudson] I liked it right away. ”
However, before Wall and Hudson began installing the pieces together there was maintenance to do. Bioware and Wall were not impressed by how the music from the first game was patched to the final product. “The transition was awful,” Wall says, asking for an example.
“So, what we decided is that in Mass Effect 2, we'll do all the implementations we've never done before,” he continues. “I had an amazing assistant called Brian Didomenico who worked with me in my studio every day. He sat in my vocal booth with a desk and a PC. I told him I was my track. Sent, he implemented them into the game and did playtests there. And we tweak it until it really gets better… Bioware puts out the game when it's ready Things were delayed a lot because they were known for it, but the fans were very happy when they got it.”
Wall remembers finishing the game. It's noted that the entire ending sequence passed “in a tiny little video spitted out by the game engine.” He took the files and fed them to his Mac's film editor, stitched together the endings and edited the suicide mission. He then wrote various endings on the track, reflecting the player's choices.
“The end of everything is near”…Mass Effect 2. Photo: EA
“It was the biggest heart that I've ever done in my life,” he laughs. “And no one walked me around because they were surprised when they were about to finish the game. I handed it over and they had a lot of massages at their end to make it work. It had to, but they did it…and the result is one of the best ending sequences of the game I've ever played. It was worth the effort.”
Wall didn't return to the score for Mass Effect 3, the most popular game in the trilogy. “Casey wasn't particularly pleased with me at the end,” he says. “But I'm very proud of that score. It was nominated for BAFTA and it really worked… [even if] It didn't go as well as Casey had hoped. “Talk to the wall, I feel a near-Fleetwood Mac level creative tension between him and Hudson. The duo have created something amazing that will live forever in the minds of sci-fi and RPG enthusiasts, but at the expense of some relationships.
“That kind of fallout is just part of the transaction,” he says. “It's one of the few things in my career and it was a tough time, but that's it.”
You can survive the final mission in Mass Effect 2. Make all the right choices and execute your plans with absolute clarity and determination, and you can save all your crew as your hero and all your crew stare at a particular death. But, at least for most players, a much more likely outcome is losing at least one member of the team. This bundle of ragtags of heroes splits, gets injured, loses morale and sets foot into the climax of a series that is hopeless. For me, it reflects the brutal reality that good science fiction reveals.
A Cheerios-inspired robot that emits alcoholic fuel using fluorescent dye.
Jackson K. Wilt et al. 2024
The same phenomenon as beetles floating on a pond and Cheerios growing in clusters.You can combine them inside a cereal bowl to make a small floating robot.
One such effect, the Marangoni effect, occurs when a fluid with a low surface tension spreads rapidly across the surface of a fluid with a high surface tension. To take advantage of this effect, stenus There are beetles that have evolved to fly around ponds by secreting a substance called stenusin, and toy boats that run on soap.
To explore how engineers can use this, jackson wilt Harvard University and his colleagues 3D printed round plastic pucks about 1 centimeter in diameter. Each had an air chamber for buoyancy and a small fuel tank containing 10 to 50 percent alcohol, which has a lower surface tension than water. The alcohol gradually leaks out of the pack and the pack moves across the surface of the water.
The researchers used alcohol, which evaporates, as fuel, unlike soap, which ends up contaminating the water and ruining the Marangoni effect. It turns out that the stronger the alcohol, the better the results. “The beer would be pretty bad,” Wilt says. “Vodka is probably the best thing you can use. Absinthe…that's a lot of propulsion.” At top speed, the robot moves at 6 centimeters per second, and some experiments propelled the puck for as long as 500 seconds. It has been confirmed that
By printing pucks with multiple fuel outlets and gluing them together, researchers can also create larger devices that can make wide curves or rotate in place. Using multiple packs also allows researchers to study the “Cheerios effect,” where cereals and other similar floating objects cluster together. This occurs because they form a meniscus, or curved surface, in the fluid, and these surfaces are attracted to each other.
Wilt said 3D printed devices could be useful in education to help students intuitively understand concepts related to surface tension, but could also be carefully designed to produce more complex and elegant behavior. If this technology is developed, it can be expected to be applied to environmental and industrial processes.
For example, if there is a substance that needs to be dispersed throughout the environment and also acts as a suitable fuel, the robot can automatically disperse it around it. “Say you have a body of water that needs to release a chemical and you want it to be distributed more evenly, or say you have a chemical process that needs to deposit material over time,” Wilt says. . “I feel like there's some really interesting behavior here.”
He said they are also prone to addiction, especially smoking.
Perhaps these noble and mysterious Taal people (as he sometimes called Neanderthals) extracted nicotine from tobacco plants by cruder methods, such as chewing the leaves, before a critical inflection point in history. Of the world he said was likely extracted: When beginning a man touched beginning on tobacco leaves beginning fire.
As I read this part of Bruno’s email, skimming from “man” to “touch” to “leaf” to “fire,” a 1950s greaser wearing a white T-shirt and black leather jacket caught fire. I could imagine touching the tip of a match with a mark on it. I take a sip of Camel’s cigarette and inhale. The Greaser leans against the wall—that’s what Greasers do, so they lean and wander—and exhales.
Bruno Lacombe told Pascal in these emails, which I secretly read, that Neanderthals had very large brains. Or at least their skulls were so large that we can safely assume that their skulls were probably filled with brains, Bruno said.
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He used modern metaphors to talk about the impressive size of Thar’s brainbox, comparing it to a motorcycle engine and noting that its displacement had also been measured. Of all the two-legged, human-like species that roamed the Earth over the past million years, the Neanderthal brainbox was come forward a whopping 1,800 cubic centimeters.
I imagined the King of the Road up ahead.
I could see his leather vest, big guts, legs outstretched, engineer boots resting on spacious chrome-plated footpegs mounted in the front. His helicopter is fitted with a barely reachable ape hanger, which he pretends won’t tire his arms or cause severe gunshot pain in his lower back.
Bruno said Neanderthals’ skulls show they had huge faces.
Inspired by Joan Crawford. that Facial scale: dramatic, brutal, convincing.
And after that, the natural history museum in my head, the museum diorama I was creating while reading Bruno’s email, showed people in loincloths, yellow teeth, and messy hair, ancient people drawn by Bruno. All included men. They all looked like Joan Crawford.
They had her white skin and fiery red hair. Bruno said scientific advances in genetic mapping have shown that red hair is an inherited trait of the Thar tribe. And beyond such research and evidence, we might use our natural intuition to infer that, like the typical redhead, Neanderthal emotions were strong, sharp, and spanned high and low. , said Bruno.
Bruno writes Pascal some of the things we currently know about Neanderthals. They were good at math. They didn’t like crowds. They had strong stomachs and were not particularly prone to ulcers, but their diet of constant barbecuing took a toll on their intestines, just like everyone else’s. They were particularly vulnerable to tooth decay and periodontal disease. And while they had overdeveloped jaws that were surprisingly capable of chewing through gristle and cartilage, they were inefficient at eating soft foods. Too much. Bruno described the Neanderthal jaw as characteristic of its overdevelopment, pathos due to the burden of a square jaw. He talked about sunk costs as if the body were a capital investment, a fixed investment, a machine-like body part bolted to a factory floor, equipment that had been purchased and could not be resold. The Neanderthal jaw sunk cost.
Still, Bruno said the tar’s heavy bones and sturdy, heat-conserving construction are worthy of praise. Especially when compared to the breadstick-like limbs of modern humans. homo sapiens sapiens. (Bruno didn’t say “breadsticks,” but since he was writing these emails in French, I was translating, which is a very good language and my native language.) (The full text in English was used.)
The Thar people survived the cold well, he said. The story about them continues, if not for centuries – the story we know. must be complicated he said, if we want to know the truth about the ancient past, if we this The world, now, and how to live in it, how to spend the present, and where to go tomorrow.
——
My own tomorrow was meticulously planned. I am scheduled to meet Pascal Balmy, the leader of Le Moulin, who was the addressee of Bruno Lacombe’s email. And I didn’t need Neanderthal help on where to go. Pascal Balmy tells me to go to the Café de la Route in the central square of the small village of Ventôme at one o’clock in the afternoon, and that’s where I am.
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Gold nuggets reside primarily in quartz veins, and the current paradigm holds that gold precipitates from hydrothermal and carbon dioxide-rich fluids due to changes in temperature, pressure, and/or fluid chemistry. However, the widespread occurrence of large gold nuggets is inconsistent with the dilute nature of these fluids and the chemical inertness of quartz. Quartz is the only abundant piezoelectric mineral on Earth, and the cyclical nature of the seismic activity that drives the formation of gold deposits means that quartz crystals within veins are stressed thousands of times. New research by scientists from Monash University, CSIRO Mineral Resources and the Australian Neutron Scattering Centre suggests that stress on quartz crystals may generate enough voltage to not only electrochemically precipitate gold from solution, but also accumulate gold nanoparticles.
Energy dispersive spectroscopy map of the sample studied by Voysey othersImage courtesy of Chris Voisey.
“Prized for their rarity and beauty, gold nuggets have been at the heart of gold rushes for centuries,” says Monash University geologist Chris Voisey.
“The standard explanation is that gold precipitates from hot, water-rich fluids that flow through cracks in the Earth's crust.”
“As these fluids cool and undergo chemical changes, the gold separates and becomes trapped in the quartz veins.”
“Although this theory is widely accepted, it does not fully explain the formation of large gold nuggets, especially considering the extremely low concentrations of gold in these liquids.”
Dr. Voysey and his colleagues tested a new concept called piezoelectricity.
Quartz, the mineral that typically contains these gold deposits, has a unique property called piezoelectricity, which means it generates an electric charge when subjected to pressure.
This phenomenon is already well known in everyday items such as quartz watches and barbecue lighters, where small mechanical forces generate large voltages.
What if earthquake stresses caused something similar to happen within the Earth?
To test this hypothesis, the researchers conducted experiments designed to replicate conditions that quartz might experience during an earthquake.
They submerged the crystals in a gold-rich liquid and used a motor to apply pressure to it, replicating the shaking of an earthquake.
After the experiment, the quartz samples were examined under a microscope to see if any gold had been deposited.
“The results were surprising,” said Professor Andy Tomkins, from Monash University.
“The stressed quartz not only electrochemically deposited gold on its surface, but also formed and accumulated gold nanoparticles.”
“Surprisingly, the gold tended to deposit on top of existing gold grains rather than forming new gold grains.”
“This is because quartz is an electrical insulator, while gold is a conductor.”
“Once the gold is deposited, it becomes a focus for further growth, effectively attaching even more gold to the gold particle.”
“Our findings provide a plausible explanation for why large gold nuggets form in quartz veins,” Dr Voysey said.
When the quartz is repeatedly compressed by an earthquake, a piezoelectric voltage is generated, causing dissolved gold to be reduced and precipitated from the surrounding liquid.
Over time, this process can accumulate large amounts of gold, eventually producing giant gold nuggets that fascinate treasure hunters and geologists.
“Essentially, the quartz acts like a natural battery, with the gold as its electrodes, slowly accumulating gold with each earthquake,” Dr Voysey said.
“This process may explain why large gold nuggets are frequently associated with quartz veins that form in earthquake-related deposits.”
“This new understanding of the formation of gold nuggets not only solves a long-standing geological mystery, but also highlights the interrelationships between Earth's physical and chemical processes.”
a paper A paper describing the results was published today in the journal Nature Chemistry.
_____
CR Voysey othersThe formation of gold nuggets due to earthquake-induced piezoelectric effect in quartz. National GeographyPublished on September 2, 2024, doi: 10.1038/s41561-024-01514-1
The federal police union is calling for the establishment of a dedicated portal where victims of AI deepfakes can report incidents to the police. They expressed concern over the pressure on police to quickly prosecute the first person charged last year for distributing deepfake images of women.
Attorney General Mark Dreyfus introduced legislation in June to criminalize the sharing of sexually explicit images created using artificial intelligence without consent. The Australian Federal Police Association (Afpa) supports this bill, citing challenges in enforcing current laws.
Afpa highlighted a specific case where a man was arrested for distributing deepfake images to schools and sports associations in Brisbane. They emphasized the complexities of investigating deepfakes, as identifying perpetrators and victims can be challenging.
Afpa raised concerns about the limitations of pursuing civil action against deepfake creators, citing the high costs and challenges in identifying the individuals responsible for distributing the images.
They also noted the difficulty in determining the origins of deepfake images and emphasized the need for law enforcement to have better resources and legislation to address this issue.
The federal police union emphasized the need for better resources and legislation to address the challenges posed by deepfake technology, urging for an overhaul of reporting mechanisms and an educational campaign to raise awareness about this issue.
The committee is set to convene its first hearing on the proposed legislation in the coming week.
Astronomers used images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to create a new 3D visualization of the Pillars of Creation, three towers of gas and dust within the Eagle Nebula.
The Pillars of Creation are three towers of gas and dust located about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens.
These are fascinating but relatively small features of the Eagle Nebula (also known as Messier 16), discovered in 1745 by Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Roy de Chéseaux.
The Pillars of Creation are approximately 4-5 light years long, and the nebula is 55-70 light years wide.
They are caused by massive, newly formed, blue-white O and B type stars emitting intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds that blow away less dense material from around them.
“By flying between the pillars, viewers will experience the 3D structure of the pillars and see how they look different in Hubble's visible light view and Webb's infrared light view,” said Dr. Frank Summers, principal visualization scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
“This contrast helps us understand why we need multiple space telescopes to observe different aspects of the same object.”
“The four pillars of creation are made mostly of cold molecular hydrogen and dust, eroded away by violent winds and intense ultraviolet radiation from nearby hot young stars.”
“Protruding from the top of the pillar is a finger-like structure larger than our solar system. Embedded within this finger may be a newborn star.”
“The tallest pillar stretches for three light years, which is three-quarters of the distance between the Sun and the next nearest star.”
Mosaic of visible (Hubble) and infrared (Webb) light images of the same frame from the Pillars of Creation visualization. Image credit: Greg Bacon / Ralf Crawford / Joseph DePasquale / Leah Hustak / Christian Nieves / Joseph Olmsted / Alyssa Pagan / Frank Summers, STScI / NASA Universe of Learning.
The film takes visitors through a 3D structure of the Pillars of Creation.
“Making the Pillars of Creation in 3D was always something we had in mind,” said Dr Greg Bacon, also of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
“By combining the Webb data with the Hubble data, we were able to get a much more detailed look at the pillars.”
“Understanding the science and knowing how to best represent it enabled our small, talented team to rise to the challenge of visualizing this iconic structure.”
This new visualization allows viewers to experience how two of the world's most powerful space telescopes work together to provide a more complex and holistic portrait of the pillar.
Hubble will observe objects glowing in visible light at thousands of degrees, while Webb's infrared vision is sensitive to cooler objects at temperatures of hundreds of degrees, allowing it to penetrate the obscuring dust and see the stars embedded in the pillar.
“The combined observations from NASA's space telescopes across many wavelengths of light expand our understanding of the universe,” said Dr. Mark Crumpen, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters.
“The Pillars of Creation region continues to provide us with new insights that improve our understanding of how stars form.”
“This new visualization now allows everyone to experience this rich and captivating landscape in a new way.”
I I've been watching the last few episodes of the Fallout series on Prime Video. It's funny and gory, sometimes sentimental, and sometimes silly. In other words, it's exactly the kind of game that oscillates between quiet, tragic moments in which you explore traces of America and scenes in which you run out of ammunition and are chased down a hill by an irradiated scorpion.
Fallout's ensemble cast – highlighted by Walton Goggins' near-immortal ghoul and Ella Purnell's wide-eyed vault-dweller – deftly compartmentalize the different facets of the game's personality. As director Jonathan Nolan pointed out in an interview last week with Bethesda's Todd Howard, game director, this is a common device in television storytelling, but rare in games. Grand Theft Auto V does it well. Each of the three main characters represents a different part of his DNA in GTA (Trevor of violent chaos, Michael of authoritative crime drama, and Franklin of Compton realism).But in most games we play One Or we shape the character so that it becomes unique to us.
It makes it difficult to adapt the game to the screen. But instead of trying to convey the experience of playing a game, Fallout takes a step back to let the broken yet strangely optimistic world of Fallout take center stage, with each character exploring different aspects of that world. is showing.
“Even if you say you're adapting Fallout 3, whose Fallout 3 are you talking about? Because the way you play that game is very different from the way I play it. Because it could have been different,” Nolan told me. “That's the beauty of this kind of game.” [Bethesda] I'm drawn to the types of games that make the most of the medium and decide who your character will be within that world. Obviously, it doesn't lead directly to the series. ”
I was interested: how did Will Nolan play Fallout 3? “I always play as a Boy Scout first because I think my parents are watching,” he said. “So I'm going to make the smart decision and try again and play as a complete heel. But then I get weird, I get uncomfortable, I end up falling into a morally compromised middle ground.” It's a little pitiful.
Aaron Moten, right, one of the stars of Fallout. Photo: Jojo Wilden/Prime Video
I can relate. chaotic good In most games where it's allowed, I'm willing to cause chaos wherever I go, and happily align myself with characters and factions in power, but I’d never do anything to hurt people. I know it’s a game, but Assumption I want it to be a no-consequences place where I can experiment with morality, but I can’t bring myself to play the villain. This is in contrast to many players I know. They immediately start causing chaos in the game world just to see what happens. The kind of person who shoots horses in Red Dead Redemption.
“Every time I get a game and test it, I immediately think, “What will this game be able to do?” No matter what we do, every time we hand the player a weapon, the first thing they see is I’m going to shoot anyone who does,” Todd Howard said with a laugh. “It could be their mother. They’ll shoot whoever it is. Then they’ll be like, ‘Well, I’ll reload.’ ”
Trying to design a choice-based game based on the random whims of the players must be a nightmare, but Howard and Bethesda have decades of experience with it. When I interviewed him over the years, he talked about how players and systems interact to create new stories, and how games make what they do in-game real and meaningful. He spoke eloquently about the unique mechanism that makes you feel as though you are in the dark. You can’t do that with TV or movies. But as the Fallout show proves, if it’s made by people who really understand it, can We tell unique stories that still capture the essence of the games people love.
Fallout is great because, while this is also true of other successful game-to-movie adaptations in recent years, Appearance Yes, the sets are perfect, and they nail the game’s retro-future, nostalgic aesthetic. That’s because Nolan and screenwriters Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner actually played Fallout, understood it, and felt the power of its storytelling for themselves. Rather than trying to clumsily adapt the game’s story into a TV script, they wrote an amazing game expansion fan fiction on a very high budget. I’m all for this approach. Now that we have a generation of TV producers and filmmakers who grew up with games and truly understand them, I would like to see more of them.
The lawsuit filed by comedian George Carlin’s estate against a comedy podcast that allegedly used artificial intelligence to mimic his voice has been settled. This case marked one of the first legal battles in the United States regarding the use of deepfakes to replicate celebrity personalities.
The Dudesy podcast, created by former Mad TV comedian Will Sasso and author Chad Krutgen, has agreed to remove all episodes from the internet and cease using Carlin’s voice, likeness, or image in any future content. A representative for Sasso, Daniel Dell, declined to comment on the matter.
The settlement was praised by Mr. Carlin’s family and estate attorney, although the terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Kelly Carlin, George Carlin’s daughter, expressed her satisfaction with the swift resolution and responsible actions taken by the defendants. She emphasized the need for safeguards against the misuse of AI technology, not only for artists but for everyone.
Following the release of the Dudesy podcast special titled “George Carlin: I’m Glad He’s Dead,” the estate filed a lawsuit citing violations of Carlin’s publicity and copyright rights. The foundation claims the podcast is a disrespectful imitation of a renowned American artist’s work.
Despite initial claims that the podcast’s AI character, “Dudesy,” generated the content, it was later clarified that the fake Carlin set was entirely written by Krutgen and not AI-generated. The potential harm of such deepfake content circulating online was highlighted by Carlin’s estate.
The settlement coincides with growing concerns in the entertainment industry over artificial intelligence’s implications. Unauthorized use of generative AI tools and deepfake technology has prompted calls for stricter regulations to protect artists’ rights.
While the legal implications of AI-generated content remain uncertain, the case involving George Carlin’s estate underscores the need for safeguards against misuse of technology. The debate over whether AI-generated imitations qualify as parody under fair use laws is ongoing.
Josh Schiller, an attorney representing Carlin’s estate, emphasized the distinction between AI-generated impersonations and traditional forms of parody. The settlement sets a precedent for future cases involving the misuse of AI technology in creating counterfeit content.
According to physicists, CMS cooperation This is the first time this process has been observed in proton-proton collisions at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This is also the most accurate measurement of tau's anomalous magnetic moment and provides a new way to constrain the existence of new physics.
We reproduced candidate events of the γγ →ττ process in proton-proton collisions measured by the CMS detector. Tau can decay into muons (red), charged pions (yellow), and neutrinos (not visible). Energy is stored in green in an electromagnetic calorimeter and cyan in a hadronic calorimeter. Image credit: CMS Collaboration.
of TauIt is a special particle of the lepton family, also called tauon.
In general, leptons, together with quarks, constitute the matter content of the Standard Model.
Tau was first discovered in the 1970s, and its associated neutrino (tau neutrino) was discovered by Fermilab's DONUT collaboration in 2000 to complete the tangible matter part.
However, tau has a very short lifetime and can remain stable for only 290*10 hours, making it quite difficult to study it accurately.-15 seconds.
Two other charged leptons, electrons and muons, are fairly well studied.
Much is also known about their magnetic moments and their associated anomalous magnetic moments.
The former can be understood as the strength and direction of a virtual bar magnet within the particle.
However, this measurable quantity requires correction at the quantum level resulting from the virtual particles pulling on the magnetic moment and deviates from the predicted value.
The quantum correction, called the anomalous magnetic moment, is about 0.1%.
If the theoretical and experimental results do not agree, this anomalous magnetic momentIopens the door to physics beyond the Standard Model.
The anomalous magnetic moment of the electron is one of the most accurately known quantities in particle physics and is in perfect agreement with models.
Its muon counterpart, on the other hand, is one of the most studied, and research is ongoing.
So far, theory and experiment are largely in agreement, but recent results raise tensions that require further investigation.
But for Tau, the race is still on. Its anomalous magnetic moment is particularly difficult to measure.τThis is because tau has a short lifespan.
The first attempt wasτ After the discovery of tau, there was an uncertainty 30 times higher than the size of the quantum correction.
Experimental efforts at CERN improved the constraints and reduced the uncertainty to 20 times the size of the quantum correction.
In collisions, physicists look for special processes. That is, two photons interact to produce two tau leptons (also called a ditau pair), which then decay into muons, electrons, or charged pions, and neutrinos.
So far, both ATLAS and CMS collaborations have observed this in ultraperipheral lead-to-lead collisions.
Now, CMS physicists report: first observation The same process occurs during proton-proton collisions.
These collisions provide greater sensitivity to physics over the standard model, as new physical effects increase with collision energy.
Taking advantage of the superior tracking capabilities of the CMS detector, the collaboration will isolate this particular process from other processes by selecting events that produce a tau with no other tracking within a distance of just 1 mm. I was able to separate it.
“This remarkable achievement in detecting proton-proton collisions in the super-periphery sets the stage for many breakthrough measurements of this kind from CMS experiments,” said Dr. Michael Pitt, a member of the CMS team. said.
This new method provided a new way to constrain tau's anomalous magnetic moments, and the CMS Collaboration quickly put it to the test.
Future driving data will likely improve the significance, but their new measurements impose the tightest constraints to date, with greater precision than ever before.
This reduces the prediction uncertainty to just three times the size of the quantum correction.
“We're really excited to finally be able to narrow down some of the fundamental properties of the elusive tau lepton,” said CMS team member Dr. Isaac Neutelings.
“This analysis introduces a new approach to investigating tau g-2 and revitalizes a measurement that has been stagnant for more than 20 years,” said CMS team member Dr. Xuelong Qin.
IAlthough it’s far from his best album, or even the best album of the 1990s, Hours… is David Bowie’s most important album of the decade. However, it wasn’t the music’s fault, but the way it was released. The first album by an artist on the Major His label appeared as a download before it was physically released.
Rolling Stone, writing about the album in August 1999 ahead of its September release, called The Hours a “cyber coup.” This is a continuation of Bowie’s enthusiasm for releasing music online, which began with his 1996 single ‘Telling Lies’. He was also very active. He embraced webcasting and in 1998 he founded his own internet service provider with BowieNet. “I couldn’t be happier with the opportunity to bring the music industry closer to making digital downloads the norm rather than the exception,” he says. How did Bowie explain the release of “Hours…” at the time? “We all know that broadband opportunities are still not available to the overwhelming majority of people, so we hope that the success of this experiment will be measured in hundreds of downloads, not thousands. But just as color television broadcasts and film content on home videotape were necessary first steps to expand the industry’s consumer use, I believe this small step will help my own and others’ We hope this will lead to a huge leap forward for people and ultimately give consumers more choice and easier choice, allowing them to access the music they enjoy.”
The strangeness of cyberspace… David Bowie’s artwork for The Hours…
In early 1998, Virgin Records/EMI made Massive Attack’s Mezzanine available for streaming in its entirety online, with track-by-track previews available over several weeks, in conjunction with its physical release. At the time, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) warned against this, suggesting that streaming experiments could increase the likelihood of albums being pirated and burned onto CDs by tech-savvy individuals. This did not stop other major labels and their label acts from experimenting from time to time. Def Leppard and Red Hot Chili Peppers made their latest albums, Euphoria and Californication, respectively, available for streaming in full on June 4, 1999, four days before the records hit stores. Bob Merlis of the Chili Peppers’ label, Warner Bros., said, “Getting airplay is getting airplay. You just have to define the atmosphere.” “Since I can’t download it, I thought this was a good idea.”
But Bowie’s album release was designed to be a huge step forward. In 1999 he Interview by Jeremy Paxman He appeared on BBC Newsnight to talk about his career, art and what gives him the most energy – the internet. This 16-minute interview is still published on the BBC website, especially since Bowie’s death in January 2016, as evidence of his remarkable foresight regarding the impact of the internet on art, politics and society. Shared frequently. “I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg,” he told the weary and cynical Paxman. “I think the possibilities that the Internet brings to society are unimaginable, for better or worse. I think we are actually on the cusp of something both exhilarating and frightening.” Paxman says in his own words. suggested that it was just a “tool” that inspired Bowie to take action. “No, it’s not,” he said. “No, it’s an extraterrestrial!”
Following the recent historic heavy rains in California, an unusual event continues to unfold at the lakes of the famous Death Valley.
Officials from the park confirmed that a lake formed in the Badwater Basin in August, typically a salt flat, after heavy rains and flash flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Hillary in Death Valley National Park.
Thanks to atmospheric river events over the past two weeks, heavy rain across much of California has caused the lake to last longer than it would have under normal conditions. According to the park’s statement on Thursday, “Most of us thought the lake would be gone by October,” park ranger Abby Wines said in a statement. “We were shocked to see it still here after almost six months. Rain this week will extend the length of time the lake is here. It’s too shallow for kayaking, but It gives us great reflections of the mountains.”
People walk along Lake Manly, a temporary shallow lake in Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, California, on December 24.Abbey Wines/NPS Photo
Death Valley typically only receives about 2 inches of precipitation a year, but in the past six months it has seen just under 5 inches of rain, almost entirely due to Hillary and recent atmospheric river events. This was announced on Thursday.
During Hurricane Hillary, about 2.2 inches of rain fell per day, hitting California as a rare tropical storm, resulting in floods that damaged roads and other infrastructure.
The lake, which at one point was 11 miles long, 4 miles wide and 2 feet deep, spilled out following the heavy rainfall, as reported by the National Park Service.
Death Valley received 1.66 inches of rain earlier this week, according to the National Weather Service said earlier Wednesday. With a 72 hour precipitation report.
Park officials say temporary lakes in Badwater Basin are rare. Once an inland lake named Lake Manly, the basin has long since dried up. The park states that it has existed in the geologic past, and the most recent one dried out approximately 10,000 years ago.
Known for having some of the hottest, if not record-setting, scorching summer temperatures ever recorded on Earth, this week’s highs in Death Valley are in the 50s to 60s. The average high temperature in Furnace Creek usually begins to reach 90 degrees in April. According to the park.
The highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was July 10, 1913, at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, reaching 134 degrees, as reported by the World Meteorological Organization.
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