What is ShadowCam?

ShadowCam is sensitive and can detect reflected light. The areas that receive natural sunlight will look saturated on ShadowCam, however, due to its sensitivity, it can reveal dimly lit regions that are permanently shadowed.

The released images show the lighting difference inside and outside the Marvin crater rim. As per the update from ShadowCam, these areas are illuminated by faint light scattered from nearby mountains.

ShadowCam has been operating onboard the Danuri spacecraft, which is the Korean Aerospace Research Institute’s spacecraft. Danuri entered the moon’s orbit late last year and it builds on the cameras on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The LRO has been functional since 2009 and is about 200 times more sensitive. 

In the past, ShadowCam has also revealed details of the Shackleton crater. The images collected by ShadowCam help scientists understand lunar evolution. The images also show water trapped in shadowed regions and even help with site selection for Artemis missions.

Source

On social media sites Reddit and Twitter, users had shared images of chat histories they said were not theirs.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company "feel awful", but the "significant" error had now been fixed.

Many users, however, remain concerned about privacy on the platform.

Millions of people have used ChatGPT to draft messages, write songs and even code since it launched in November of last year.

Each conversation with the chatbot is stored in the user's chat history bar where it can be revisited later.

But as early as Monday, users began to see conversations appear in their history that they said they had not had with the chatbot.

One user on Reddit shared a photo of their chat history including titles like "Chinese Socialism Development", as well as conversations in Mandarin.  

On Tuesday, the company told Bloomberg that it had briefly disabled the chatbot late on Monday to fix the error.

They also said that users had not been able to access the actual chats.

OpenAI's chief executive tweeted that there would be a "technical postmortem" soon. But the error has drawn concern from users who fear their private information could be released through the tool.

The glitch seemed to indicate that OpenAI has access to user chats.

The company's privacy policy does say that user data, such as prompts and responses, may be used to continue training the model.

But that data is only used after personally identifiable information has been removed.

The blunder also comes just a day after Google unveiled its chatbot Bard to a group of beta testers and journalists.

Google and Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, have been jostling for control of the burgeoning market for artificial intelligence tools.

But the pace of new product updates and releases has many concerned missteps like these could be harmful or have unintended consequences.

Source

That may sound a little obscure, but it's a fundamental breakthrough in the quantum realm that could lead to technology we currently can't even dream of. Imagine lasers, but with quantum sensitivity, for medical imaging.

"This opens the door to the manipulation of what we can call 'quantum light'," says physicist Sahand Mahmoodian from the University of Sydney.

"This fundamental science opens the pathway for advances in quantum-enhanced measurement techniques and photonic quantum computing."

While physicists are getting very good at controlling quantum entangled atoms, it's proved far more challenging to achieve the same thing with light.

In this new experiment, a team from the University of Sydney and the University of Basel in Switzerland shot both a single photon and a pair of bound photons at a quantum dot (an artificially created atom) and could measure a direct time delay between the photon on its own and the ones that were bound.

"The device we built induced such strong interactions between photons that we were able to observe the difference between one photon interacting with it compared to two," says physicist Natasha Tomm, joint lead author, from the University of Basel.

"We observed that one photon was delayed by a longer time compared to two photons. With this really strong photon-photon interaction, the two photons become entangled in the form of what is called a two-photon bound state."

They set up this bound state using stimulated emission – a phenomenon first described by Albert Einstein in 1916, and which forms the basis of modern lasers. (Fun fact: laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.)

Inside a laser, an electrical current or light source is used to hype up electrons within the atoms of an optical material such as glass or crystal.

This excitement bumps the electrons up an orbit in their atom's nucleus. And when they come back down to their regular state, they emit energy in the form of photons. These are the "stimulated" emissions and this process means all the resulting photos have identical wavelengths, unlike normal white light, which is a mix of different frequencies (colors).

Animation of stimulated emission of light. (James Wickboldt/LLNL)

A mirror is then used to bounce the old and new photons back towards the atoms, stimulating more identical photons to be produced.

These photons move in unison, travelling with the same speed and direction, and build up until eventually they overcome the mirrors and the optical medium and blast free in a perfectly synchronized beam of light that can stay sharply focused over long distances.

All of that occurs in milliseconds when you push the button on your laser pointer (thanks, Einstein).

This type of cool interaction between light and matter is the basis for all kinds of incredible technology, such as GPS, computers, medical imaging, and global communications networks. Even LIGO, the laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory that detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015 is based on lasers.

But all of this technology still requires a whole lot of photons, which limits how sensitive they can be.

The new breakthrough has now achieved stimulated emission and detection for single photons, as well as small groups of photons from a single atom, leading to them becoming strongly correlated – in other words, 'quantum light'. And that's a huge step forward.

"By demonstrating that we can identify and manipulate photon-bound states, we have taken a vital first step towards harnessing quantum light for practical use," says Mahmoodian.

The next steps, she explains, are to use the approach to generate states of light that can make better quantum computers.

"This experiment is beautiful, not only because it validates a fundamental effect – stimulated emission – at its ultimate limit, but it also represents a huge technological step towards advanced applications," adds Tomm.

"We can apply the same principles to develop more-efficient devices that give us photon bound states. This is very promising for applications in a wide range of areas: from biology to advanced manufacturing and quantum information processing."

The research has been published in Nature Physics.

Source

The aurora borealis might appear in skies from Washington to New York, lighting up the night with beautiful colors, as a stream of electrically charged particles called "solar wind" hits the poles and reacts with molecules in the atmosphere.

The Northern Lights are typically only visible closer to the Arctic Circle, but a forecast from the Space Weather Prediction Center shows they could creep further south as strong solar winds arrive, lighting up the skies with beautiful colors.

As of Wednesday morning, the aurora forecast predicted a "Kp index" of 6 on Friday. That's a measure for the strength of the Northern Lights. It indicates that the aurora may occur halfway between the green and yellow lines in the below image:

The strength of the aurora on Friday is forecast to be somewhere between the green and yellow lines.

(NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center)

These solar winds are coming from a giant coronal hole on the Sun.

The giant dark spot is not an actual hole in the way you might be thinking. Rather, it's an area of the ultra-hot outer layer of the Sun's atmosphere (the corona) that's cooler in temperature than its surroundings, and therefore not glowing as bright.

The 'hole' in the Sun's atmosphere. (NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory)

This one is very large: the size of about 20-30 Earths lined up back-to-back, Alex Young, the associate director for science at NASA Goddard's Heliophysics Science Division, previously told Insider.

As that giant hole spread across the corona, it blasted strong, high-speed solar winds into space, in the direction of Earth. Those winds don't pose a threat, since the atmosphere shields us and they're not strong enough to cause widespread radio or power blackouts, as some powerful solar storms have in the past.

Because of the approaching eruption of solar particles, the Space Weather Prediction Center issued a watch for a moderate geomagnetic storm on Friday.

That's the magnetic-field chaos that ensues when those high-speed particles hit Earth. Our planet's magnetic field channels them toward the North and South Poles, where they set off a beautiful, ethereal glow. Stronger geomagnetic storms can interfere with GPS, radio, and power grids.

But moderate geomagnetic storms are more benign. They have previously driven the aurora lights as far south as New York and Idaho.

Source

It's no secret that USB flash drives, as small and unremarkable as they may look, can be turned into agents of chaos. Over the years, we've seen them used to infiltrate an Iranian nuclear facility, infect critical control systems in US power plants, morph into programmable, undetectable attack platforms, and destroy attached computers with a surprise 220-volt electrical surge. Although these are just a few examples, they should be enough to preclude one from inserting a mysterious, unsolicited USB drive mailed to them into a computer. Unfortunately, one Ecuadorian journalist didn't get the memos.

As reported by the Agence France-Presse (via CBS News) on Tuesday, five Ecuadorian journalists have received USB drives in the mail from Quinsaloma. Each of the USB sticks was meant to explode when activated.

Upon receiving the drive, Lenin Artieda of the Ecuavisa TV station in Guayaquil inserted it into his computer, at which point it exploded. According to a police official who spoke with AFP, the journalist suffered mild hand and face injuries, and no one else was harmed.

According to police official Xavier Chango, the flash drive that went off had a 5-volt explosive charge and is thought to have used RDX. Also known as T4, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (PDF), militaries, including the US's, use RDX, which "can be used alone as a base charge for detonators or mixed with other explosives, such as TNT." Chango said it comes in capsules measuring about 1 cm, but only half of it was activated in the drive that Artieda plugged in, which likely saved him some harm.

On Monday, Fundamedios, an Ecuadorian nonprofit focused on media rights, put out a statement on the incidents, which saw letters accompanied by USB-stick bombs sent to two more journalists in Guayaquil and two journalists in Ecuador's capital.

Fundamedios said Álvaro Rosero, who works at the EXA FM radio station, also received an envelope with a flash drive on March 15. He gave it to a producer, who used a cable with an adapter to connect it to a computer. The radio station got lucky, though, as the flash drive didn't explode. Police determined that the drive featured explosives but believe it didn't explode because the adapter the producer used didn't have enough juice to activate it, Fundamedios said.

Yet another reporter attempted to access the drive's unknown content. Milton Pérez at Teleamazonas' Quito offices might have set off the USB stick's explosives if he had plugged it into the computer properly, according to Fundamedios.

Police intercepted a fourth drive sent to Carlos Vera in Guayaquil and performed a "controlled detonation" on one sent to Mauricio Ayora at TC Televisión, also in Guayaquil, BBC reported.

What’s driving these attacks?

Ecuador Interior Minister Juana Zapata confirmed that all five cases used the same type of USB device and said the incidents send "an absolutely clear message to silence journalists," per AFP.

Fundamedios has attempted to shed some light on the motive for the exploding drives, but information seems limited, as the investigation of a terrorist act by the Ecuadorian government is ongoing. The advocacy group said the drive that exploded came with a letter threatening Artieda, while the letter accompanying the USB drive sent to TC Televisión came with a message against an unspecified political group.

A message accompanying the threatening drive sent to Pérez in Quito had a message claiming, in part, per a Google translation of Fundamedios' release: "This information will unmask correísmo. If you think it's useful, we can come to an agreement and I'll send you the second part. I communicate with you." Correísmo is an Ecuadorian political movement named after former President Rafael Correa, who was Ecuador's president from 2007 until 2017.

In a statement cited by BBC, the Ecuadorian government said, "Any attempt to intimidate journalism and freedom of expression is a loathsome action that should be punished with all the rigor of justice."

Publications covering these events have pointed out that Ecuador has seen an uptick in crime in the past few years that President Guillermo Lasso has attributed to drug trafficking, but the true motives behind the recently sent USB weapons are unknown.

AFP noted other recent violence around Ecuadorian media stations, including a shooting at the RTS TV station, where an alleged shooter reportedly left behind a pamphlet signed by a Mexican cartel and threatened a newspaper director. Last year, there was a bomb explosion at Teleamazonas, which also received an RDX-laced USB drive this month.

But no matter who's behind the dangerous attacks on journalists, these unsettling tales should serve as an umpteenth reminder that—just like you shouldn't click random links messaged to you, open unknown attachments, or download suspicious files—you shouldn't stick unknown USB drives, especially ones randomly mailed to you, into anything. In the case of some of these reporters, the thought of a hot scoop may have been enticing, but opening unverified devices or data carries a great deal of risk.

Source

Since returning to power in Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban have struggled to contain the Islamic State Khorasan province, or ISIS-K – the official Islamic State group affiliate operating in Afghanistan.

Now, a fresh wave of assassination attempts on top Taliban officials has rocked multiple regions across the country and prompted fears of the group’s potential to attack targets outside Afghanistan, including US and other Western interests.

On March 9, 2023, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the Taliban governor of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan, along with two others.

One day earlier, the group’s fighters carried out a targeted killing against the head of the water supply department in Afghanistan’s western Herat province. And most recently, on March 15, the group claimed a failed attack on a Taliban district governor in the eastern province of Nangarhar, a former ISIS-K stronghold.

ISIS-K’s resurgence

ISIS-K seeks to advance the Islamic State group’s goal of creating a global caliphate based on its own interpretation of Islamic law.

As scholars who have studied ISIS-K for years, we know that the recent attacks are only a few in a long line of attacks the group has carried out or attempted in Afghanistan since forming in 2015.

ISIS-K has tried – often successfully – to kill government and military officials, media influencers, religious leaders and other civil society figures. The group is also responsible for the bombing that left 13 US service members and scores of Afghans dead in August 2021, following the collapse of the former government and the US-led withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Some of ISIS-K’s ambitious plots have failed. Notable examples include claimed attempts against NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and former US Secretary of Defense James Mattis in 2017, former Afghanistan vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum in 2018, former Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani in 2020 and former US diplomat in Kabul Ross Wilson in 2021.

Despite both being Islamist organizations, ISIS-K and the Taliban are strategic rivals locked in a battle that has persisted since ISIS-K’s inception. Targeted assassinations of Taliban security and political officials, across multiple ranks and levels, have been a consistent feature of ISIS-K’s resurgence.

The recent killings are simply a continuation of the group’s attack priorities.

Afghan security forces stormed a hideout used by ISIS-K militants in Kabul in January 2023. Photo: Zahir Khan Zahir / Xinhua

Aim of assassinations

Assassinations are a fundamental pillar of the Islamic State group’s insurgency doctrine, which is adopted by its affiliates and serves multiple purposes.

For one, they’re a way to retaliate against heavy losses. Just days before the latest string of attacks, ISIS-K threatened to amplify its violence after Taliban raids in January and February killed key Islamic State leaders and attack planners.

For another, assassinations can whittle away key leaders in the enemy’s ranks, as well as foreign influence. The latest issue of the Islamic State group’s weekly newsletter, Al-Naba, claimed not only that Governor Muzammil was a significant player in the Taliban’s campaign against ISIS-K in Nangarhar, but that he was also acting on behalf of Iran.

Countering actual or perceived foreign state influence in Afghanistan – even the lifesaving work of international humanitarian groups – has been a consistent feature of ISIS-K propaganda and violence.

In addition, assassinations of high-profile opponents serve to raise morale among fighters, prevent defections and boost recruitment. The ability to assassinate top Taliban leaders and commanders showcases ISIS-K’s strength to potential recruits, including prospects who are currently within the Taliban’s ranks.

ISIS-K recruits in Afghanistan. Image: Facebook

Finally, high-profile attacks signal to the Islamic State group’s core leadership in Iraq and Syria that its affiliate in Afghanistan deserves continued support and investment. ISIS-K leaders have frequently sent letters to Islamic State group leadership boasting of their successful assassinations and other operations.

After the attack on the Kabul airport in August 2021, ISIS-K received new cash payments from top Islamic State group leaders – as a reward or investment or both.

Consequences for the US

How successful ISIS-K is in rebuilding its insurgency and replicating the caliphate model in Iraq and Syria will depend on a number of factors.

Most important is its continued ability to leverage its strategic alliances and rivalries. Partnering with other jihadist groups in the region helps ISIS-K sustain its capacity for violence.

And accusing the Taliban of apostasy for accepting foreign investment and humanitarian aid from “infidel” or enemy governments – including China, the US, Iran, Turkey, and others – helps distinguish ISIS-K’s own brand from its rivals. Targeting killings of such opponents further reinforces this distinction.

A strengthened ISIS-K insurgency in Afghanistan has direct consequences for US and Western security interests. A February 2023 US intelligence report warned of ISIS-K’s desire to attack the West.

And on March 16, US CENTCOM commander General Michael Kurilla testified that ISIS-K will be able to attack American and Western interests outside Afghanistan in less than six months.

Whether or not this assessment is accurate, the recent claimed assassinations by ISIS-K are one of many indicators that point to its growing threat in Afghanistan – a threat that we believe the Taliban can’t take on alone.

Andrew Mines is a research fellow at the Program on Extremism, George Washington University. Amira Jadoon is an assistant professor of political science at Clemson University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Source

Debashis Chanda hadtrouble finding a physicist who could paint. The researchers in his nanoscience lab at the University of Central Florida had already worked out the kinks in the high-end machinery needed to create a revolutionary new kind of cooling paint. They had filled vials with vivid colours. But when it came time to show it off, they hit a wall. “We could barely draw a butterfly by hand, which is kind of a kid's drawing,” says Chanda.

They did it anyway. The shape and the four-colour design do look basic, but the simplicity is deceptive. If you zoom in deep—to invisible dimensions—this paint is almost nothing at all like the paint you know.

colour surrounds us in nature, and we re-create it with pigments. You can think of pigments as pulverized minerals, heavy metals, or chemicals that we swish into oil and spread over a canvas or car: Cobalt becomes blue; ochre red; cadmium yellow. “But nature has a very different way of creating colour than we do,” Chanda says. Some of nature’s most vivid looks—the kind worn by peacocks, beetles, and butterflies—do their thing without pigment.

Those colours come from topography. Submicroscopic landscapes on the outer surfaces of peacock feathers, beetle shells, and butterfly wings diffract light to produce what’s known as structural colour. It’s longer-lasting and pigment-free. And to scientists, it’s the key to creating paint that is not only better for the planet but might also help us live in a hotter world. 

In a paper published this month in Science Advances, Chanda’s lab demonstrated a first-of-its-kind paintbased on structural colour. They think it's the lightest paint in the world—and they mean that both in terms of weight and temperature. The paint consists of tiny aluminum flakes dotted with even tinier aluminum nanoparticles. A raisin’s worth of the stuff could cover both the front and back of a door. It’s lightweight enough to potentially cut fuel usage in planes and cars that are coated with it. It doesn’t trap heat from sunlight like pigments do, and its constituents are less toxic than paints made with heavy metals like cadmium and cobalt.

Photograph: Debashis Chanda/UCF

Dayna Baumeister, codirector of Arizona State University’s Biomimicry Center, isn’t surprised that the paint has so many hidden functions. “It’s a fantastic demonstration of what’s possible when we rethink our designs by asking nature for advice,” she says.

For all of its imperfections, paint is hard to beat. People have used pigments for millennia, so the tricks for getting the right look have been mastered by paint makers. “They know exactly what additive to add to change the glossiness; they can make it brighter or toned down—they have all of this figured out over hundreds of years,” Chanda says. 

New forms of paint must innovate beyond that—into the realm of physics, not just aesthetics. Still, Chanda’s lab members stumbled upon their innovation by accident. They hadn’t set out to make paint. They wanted to make a mirror, specifically a long, continuous, aluminum mirror, built using an instrument called an electron beam evaporator. But in every attempt, they’d notice small “nanoislands,” clumps of aluminum atoms tiny enough to be invisible yet large enough to disrupt the mirror’s shine. Nanoislands appeared all over the surface of what was now—frustratingly—not a continuous mirror. “It was really annoying,” Chanda recalls.

Then came an epiphany: That disruption was doing something useful. When ambient white light hits aluminum nanoparticles, electrons in the metal can get excited—they oscillate, or resonate. But when dimensions dip into the nanoscale, atoms get extra picky. Depending on the aluminum nanoparticle’s size, its electrons will oscillate only for certain wavelengths of light. This bounces the ambient light back as a fraction of what it was: a single colour. Layering aluminum particles on a reflective surface—like that mirror they had been trying to build—had amplified the colourful effect. 

Which colour? That depends on the size of the nanoislands. “Just by shifting the dimension, you can actually create allcolours,” Chanda says. Unlike pigments, which require a different base molecule—like cobalt or purple snail slime—for each colour, the base molecule for this process is always aluminum, just cut into different-size bits that oscillate to light at different wavelengths.

It was time to make paint. The group’s process starts with a very thin sheet of double-sided mirror. The researchers covered each side with clear spacer material that helps amplify the colour effect. Then they grew islands of metallic nanoparticles on both sides of the sheet. To make this material compatible with the binders or oils used in paint, they dissolved large sheets of it into colourful flakes about as fine as powdered sugar. Finally, once they had created enough colours for a small rainbow, they could paint a butterfly.

Because structural colour can blanket an entire surface with just a thin, ultralight layer, Chanda thinks this will be a game changer—for airlines. A Boeing 747 needs about 500 kilograms of paint. He estimates that his paint could cover the same area with 1.3 kilograms. That’s more than 1,000 pounds shaved off each plane, which would reduce how much fuel is needed per journey. 

Perry Flint, a spokesperson for the International Airline Trade Association, finds that possibility plausible. “Given that fuel is already the single biggest operating expense [about 30 percent last year], airlines are always interested in improving fuel efficiency,” he wrote in an email to WIRED. Creating efficient new forms of airframes and engines are critical, he says, but shedding weight brings huge savings too. When American Airlines ditched just 67 pounds’ worth of pilot’s manuals per flight, the company estimated it would save 400,000 gallons of fuel and $1.2 million annually. In 2021, AA introduced a new paint that cut weight on 737s by 62 pounds, saving 300,000 gallons a year.

Structural paint may also last longer. (Some airlines repaint planes every four years.) Pigment molecules break down in sunlight but structural colour doesn’t—so it doesn’t fade. “We have all these ways of trying to fix pigment, to try to prevent it from oxidizing and losing its colour. Or it fades and we throw it in the landfill,” says Baumeister, who is also a cofounder of consultancy Biomimicry 3.8. “But when you need colour to last forever—for the life of the organism—structural colour is preferred.”

Chanda’s team also realized that, unlike conventional paint, structural paint doesn't absorb infrared radiation, so it doesn’t trap heat. (“That's the reason your car gets hot in the hot sun,” he says.) The new paint is inherently cooling in comparison: Based on the lab’s preliminary experiments, it can keep surfaces 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than conventional paint.

Baumeister thinks it has uses far beyond aviation, including in mediating the “urban heat island” effect, which creates high—sometimes even lethal—temperatures in cities. “You can imagine cars. You can imagine sidewalks,” she says. “Even building products where aesthetically people would like a darker tone—whether it's a decking or siding—but of course that increases the heat load on the building.” (Some researchers are already experimenting with using paint to cool roofs and pavements.)

And keeping buildings cool without using electricity would create a more sustainable infrastructure. “If the outside temperature is 95 degrees, and if you can maintain below 80 degrees, there is enormous savings of AC and energy,” says Chanda. 

Scaling production from vials to vats will be a challenge, something that Chanda’s lab hopes to attempt with commercial partners. (“An academic lab still is not a factory,” he says.) Based on her consulting experience in biomimicry, Baumeister predicts that the first applications might be small: maybe for electronics or within heat-sensitive manufacturing. But she remains hopeful that bio-inspired innovations will break into the grandest scales, like urban infrastructure. “The future of humanity on the planet relies on figuring out a way that we can align with nature,” she says.

This Is the Lightest Paint in the World

(May require free registration to view)

Beethoven’s genome, sequenced for first time, yields clues on cause of death

A Commonwealth Fund report, for example, estimated COVID-19 vaccines alone prevented more than 18 million additional hospitalizations and 3.2 million additional deaths in the U.S.

The pandemic has never been simple or easy. For example, the emergence of viral variants, in particular recent versions of the omicron, fueled new surges of infection and disease throughout 2022 and into 2023.

"There were real concerns about new waves of cases driven by BA.5, which had replaced BA.2.12.1 as the dominant strain in the United States," said Aaron Carlin, MD, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology at University of California San Diego School of Medicine. "It looks like past infection by an earlier subvariant would not elicit cross-protection against the new BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants."

In a new study, published in the March 21, 2023 online issue of Open Forum Infectious Disease, Carlin and colleagues at UC San Diego School of Medicine describe why COVID-19 subvariants spread rapidly among people previously infected and how the popular Paxlovid therapy might have made people more susceptible to future infections.

The researchers found that mutations in the spike protein of BA.4 and BA.5 allowed it to evade neutralizing antibodies generated by vaccination or by an earlier SARS-CoV-2 infection. Moreover, they determined that early treatment with Paxlovid, an oral antiviral pill that combines drugs (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir), dampened the natural development of antibodies, leaving people with lower overall immune responses and perhaps more vulnerable to subsequent infection.

Paxlovid was among the first drugs developed and tested to treat COVID-19, and quickly became a go-to medication, often prescribed when symptoms first appeared and intended to reduce the likelihood of severe disease, hospitalization or death. Subsequent research has shown that Paxlovid treatment among non-hospitalized, unvaccinated patients at high risk of progression to severe disease reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by 88%, and the risk of long COVID.

But Paxlovid proved poor insurance against recurrence of COVID-19 or subsequent re-infection.

In June 2022, senior author Davey Smith, MD, chief of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine and an infectious disease specialist at UC San Diego Health, Carlin and colleagues published data suggesting the so-called "Paxlovid rebound" was likely due to insufficient drug exposure.

In October 2022, Smith and colleagues published a different study that documented the likelihood of COVID-19 symptoms recurring in untreated patients after initial symptoms had disappeared.

"Our findings suggest that while early antiviral treatment can prevent severe COVID-19, it does not obviate the need for subsequent vaccination or boosters to promote protective immune responses," said Smith.

"The findings also highlight the importance of ongoing research and the need for continued efforts to understand the virus and develop effective treatments and vaccines. The past is prologue, not because the virus is the same, but because it is constantly changing, so we must evolve as well to meet the threat and anticipate the next pandemic."

Source

The Wave of Arizona with a human for scale. Image credit: Pung/Shutterstock.com

It started as a cluster of Navajo Sandstone dunes, but narrow trenches started to be dug out by streams of water that followed the path of least resistance. As the sandstorm slowly eroded away, the channels became wider and the streams of water grew strong. 

Eventually, winds took over the show and finished the job, sculpting deep troughs that feature a stripey pattern thanks to their layered sedimentary geology. 

The striped colors of the Wave's sediment layers are products of the different minerals – such as calcium, manganese, and iron oxide – that were deposited over the millennia.

This sounds like an easy process, but it unfolded over a span of millions and millions of years. 

A view of the Wave is highly sought after by hikers and photographers for obvious reasons. However, due to the precious nature of the geology, access is limited and people have to pick up a permit from the US Bureau of Land Management to visit. 

Hundreds of people request permits daily, but the agency only allows 64 people per day. In 2018, it was estimated that over 200,000 people applied, but just 7,300 were awarded. 

So if you ever catch this natural spectacle with your own eyes, consider yourself very lucky. 

Source

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday that infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa had led to two additional deaths.

In all, 68 people have become infected in 16 states. Eight of the patients have lost their vision. Four people have had to have their eyeballs removed.

Three eye products have been recalled from Global Pharma Healthcare Private Limited in India. They were sold online, at stores and provided through ophthalmologist offices.

While the P. aeruginosa strain involved in the recalls is resistant to 12 antibiotics, there may be new hope for treating it.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, say they have identified a bacteriophage that has potential for working on the bacteria, CBS News reported. "Phage" treatments send viruses in to attack the drug-resistant bacteria.

The university's Center for Innovative Phage Applications has previously reported on therapies it developed to save patients with drug-resistant infections, CBS News reported.

The center did not immediately respond to CBS News' request for comment. It's not known how many patients have been treated with the phage identified for this bacteria.

In unrelated contamination incidents, two additional eye products from other manufacturers have been recently recalled, CBS News reported.

Source

In 2017, Laura Holmes Haddad was undergoing chemotherapy for stage four breast cancer. She was 37 and had two small children. One spring day in March, she went for an X-ray at a large hospital in San Francisco. She had already had so many that the routine was all too familiar.

"I was getting used to the anonymous feeling of being treated as just a medical record number shivering in a white and blue hospital gown and scratchy blue hospital socks," Holmes Haddad said.

Holmes Haddad was also still getting used to the fact that she didn't have any hair. It made her incredibly self-conscious. To make herself more comfortable going out, she would wear a head scarf to cover her bald head. But on that particular day, she had to take her headscarf off for the X-ray.

"I was so upset and just distraught about being bald in front of a stranger," Holmes Haddad said.

The stranger, however, was bald himself. He was an X-ray technician with blue eyes and what Holmes Haddad described as a "melodic Irish accent."

"He just emanated kindness," Holmes Haddad said. "I'm not sure what came over me, but as I was lying down on my back, waiting for the X-ray and holding my scarf, I told [him] that people stared at me and how much it upset me, and I hadn't prepared for that with cancer."

The man listened, and then looked straight into Holmes Haddad's eyes and said something that took her breath away: "They're staring at you because you're beautiful."

"It was said with such kindness and sincerity, that it still stays with me today, as I remain in remission," she said.

She can't recall his name, but Holmes Haddad said she will always remember how he made her feel in that moment.

"His innate kindness that day made a terrified cancer patient feel, well... beautiful."

Source

The Ijen volcano's blue flames as seen at night. Image credit: Mazur Travel / Shutterstock

The Kawah Ijen volcanic complex

This vast complex is actually within a caldera – a crater that’s formed when a volcano erupts and collapses, often creating a large lake in its center. The Ijen complex contains around 22 eruption points, mostly around the rim of the caldera.

The water in the crater of the Ijen volcano is an inviting bright turquoise color, but once again, don’t let its beauty fool you as this is the largest acid lake in the world and has a pH of around zero. Swimming in the waters here could be life-threatening, or at least cause serious injury.

The abundance of sulfur in the area, referred to by locals as the “Devil’s gold”, means the complex is also home to one of the very few sulfur mining operations done by hand. After the sulfur-rich rock has cooled, and the blue flame has died out, it is collected for use in a number of products – in Java, the sulfur is used to make matches and to make sugar whiter.

While tourists wear gas masks to visit the area, many of the miners are unable to afford masks and instead use just a cloth to cover their mouths. Without the proper protective equipment, many of the sulfur miners suffer serious health conditions, with a third regularly experiencing respiratory diseases.

Despite the many dangers of the Ijen complex, its rare and (quite literally) breathtaking appearance makes the area a popular tourist attraction. Visits can be conducted safely if accompanied by knowledgeable tour guides and protective breathing apparatus.

The acid lake at the center of the Ijen caldera. Image credit: Mazur Travel / Shutterstock

Other instances of blue flames

While the Kawah Ijen volcano may be the only consistently burning blue flame, this striking phenomenon can technically appear anywhere with high levels of certain gases.

There are reports of blue flames appearing during a forest fire at Yellowstone National Park, US, where the sulfur surrounding the hydrothermal vents caught alight.

In 2018, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) released images of blue flames appearing to shoot out of the ground during an eruption of Kilauea in Hawaii. These flames were caused by a release of methane gas.

This gas was released as a result of lava from the eruption smothering vegetation and preventing oxygen from getting to it. This incomplete combustion process, called pyrolysis, causes methane to be released, which in turn causes a blue flame.

The Dallol volcano in the Danakil Depression, Ethiopia, has also been known to spew blue-appearing lava, but this happens rarely and will burn for a few days at a time. These flames are also caused by hydrothermal vents and sulfur springs inside the depression. 

Before you jet off to see some of these incredibly rare and beautiful flames, always be cautious that they usually come accompanied by some pretty toxic (and stinky) gases.

Source

The world has already passed the birth of Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Gen Z – and now comes the dawn of the incoming generation: Generation Alpha. But what will this generation look like and what will be the trends that define their lives? 

Generation Alpha describes people who were born from 2010 onwards and, therefore, have spent their whole lives in the digital world. This generation is cruising head-on to an uncertain future, but it is clear they will bear witness to some huge global changes. 

For a little bit of context, we can take a look at other generations of recent times and see how things panned out for them.

Who are the Baby Boomers?

Baby Boomers are generally defined as people born from 1946 to 1964 during the post-Second World War explosion in birth rates. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, this generation saw a huge cultural change fueled by the ongoing rise of capitalism and individualism. 

While the situation differed around the world, it is generally seen as an affluent period marked by growing standards of living and higher educational levels. It was the age of Woodstock, the Vietnam War, and the contraceptive pill. However, their liberal attitudes didn’t stick around for long and Boomers are now seen as a conservative generation who set the foundations of the world today, both good and bad (mainly the bad).

Long before the dawn of the internet, Baby Boomers roamed the Earth. Image credit: IgorGolovniov/Shutterstock.com

What is Generation X?

Generation X is defined as people born from 1965 to 1980. They were the first generation to grow up with a vague grasp of computer technology, although their formative years were not connected to the internet. 

Their childhoods, unlike those of Boomers, were during shakier economic times. During their youth, they were seen as jaded and disaffected, but they now enjoy relative prosperity compared to younger generations. Once perceived as rebellious, this generation now effectively runs the world – sellouts! 

What years are Millennials?

Millennials are those born from 1981 to 1996 who grew up around the turn of the millennium. Their early life was relatively tech-free, but they became the first generation that grew up in the Internet age. Think of them as a transitional generation between the old analog world and the hyper-online digital world of today. 

The world became increasingly uncertain during the formative years of Millennials; they’ll have probably watched the 9/11 terror attacks on live television as children and there's a strong chance their family life was shaken up by the 2008 financial crisis.

They are also notable for being the first generation that has not become more conservative with age. Stereotypically, this is the generation that kickstarted Facebook, donned skinny jeans, and now gets laughed at for not understanding TikTok trends.

A stock image of some achingly stereotypical Millennials, probably eating avocado and struggling to find reliable employment. Image credit: View Apart/Shutterstock.com

Who are Gen Z?

There’s some debate around when the cut-off between Millennials and Gen Z begins, but it’s largely agreed they were born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s. This generation’s formative years were saturated with the Internet and computer technology, much more so than Millennials. As such, they’re often dubbed "digital natives" who shy away from the vices of sex, drugs, and alcohol that teenagers were formerly associated with. They have a taste for vaping and marijuana, however.  

Much like Millennials, they also tend to be more liberal than previous generations and are more open to emerging social trends. Additionally, they continue the trend of declining mental health, with many reports suggesting that Gen Z is experiencing a surge in anxiety and depression. 

What is Generation Alpha?

And now comes Generation Alpha, which describes people born from 2010 onwards. Since most members of the generation are yet to reach their teens, it’s hard to say what characteristics and events will define their adult life. However, we can say that they tend to be the children of Millennials and have only experienced a world that is totally immersed in the internet age. 

This generation is set to be the most technologically savvy generation yet and they will enjoy a longer life span than previous generations, but they will also live through an uncertain time of falling fertility rates, geopolitical shifts, and further economic uncertainty. 

It appears Generation Alpha could also bear the brunt of COVID-19 and its legacy on the world. The fallout from the pandemic has affected education rates and increased child poverty, not to mention the many impacts that are yet to be seen, like long-term health impacts and unforeseen social changes. 

A report by UNICEF in late 2021 described the global upset of COVID-19 as "the biggest threat to children in our 75-year history” and argued it could make Generation Alpha a “lost generation.” 

For now, however, the story of Generation Alpha is yet to be written. 

Source

The discovery of the first interstellar visitor, a space rock called ‘Oumuamua, sent waves of excitement across the scientific community. It also started a mystery. The object had all the characteristics of an asteroid, smallish size and no visible tail approaching the Sun; and yet as it approached our star, it mysteriously accelerated, behaving more like a comet but without any evidence it was ejecting gas. Now, we may know why.

Scientists suspected some sort of outgassing. And although there has been the odd claim that the object was an alien probe of some kind, researchers set out to find how the interstellar object came to move in that weird fashion.

Now they think they have the answer. It was indeed down to outgassing from this cometary object. Specifically, hydrogen escaping the comet would have given it the push it needed to explain its weird motion. The researchers needed a way for hydrogen to form, and it turns out that cosmic radiation between the stars is more than capable of freeing the hydrogen from water ice.

"A comet traveling through the interstellar medium basically is getting cooked by cosmic radiation, forming hydrogen as a result. Our thought was: If this was happening, could you actually trap it in the body, so that when it entered the Solar System and it was warmed up, it would outgas that hydrogen?" lead author Dr Jennifer Bergner, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of chemistry, said in a statement. "Could that quantitatively produce the force that you need to explain the non-gravitational acceleration?"

There are actually decades' worth of research on what high-energy particles can do to ice, going all the way back to the 1970s. The team expects cosmic rays to penetrate tens of meters into the ice and turn a quarter or more of it into hydrogen gas, as some analysis has suggested. This might not be much for a large comet but ‘Oumuamua was estimated to be around just 115 by 111 meters (377 by 364 feet) in size, and about 19 meters (62 feet) thick.  

"For a comet several kilometers across, the outgassing would be from a really thin shell relative to the bulk of the object, so both compositionally and in terms of any acceleration, you wouldn't necessarily expect that to be a detectable effect," Bergner explained.

"But because 'Oumuamua was so small, we think that it actually produced sufficient force to power this acceleration."

The model developed by Bergner with Darryl Seligman, now at Cornell University, explains the unusual properties of ‘Oumuamua without having to add extra parameters to make it fit the observations. And this work once again supports the idea that this body was a shard of a planetesimal, maybe a Pluto-like object at the edge of another solar system.

"We had never seen a comet in the Solar System that didn't have a dust coma. So, the non-gravitational acceleration really was weird," Seligman said.

"The main takeaway is that 'Oumuamua is consistent with being a standard interstellar comet that just experienced heavy processing," Bergner added. "The models we ran are consistent with what we see in the Solar System from comets and asteroids. So, you could essentially start with something that looks like a comet and have this scenario work."

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Source

First football, and now maths. Three months after Lionel Messi triumphed at the World Cup, an Argentinian has won the top international trophy in mathematics.

Luis Caffarelli, 74, has received the Abel prize, an award presented by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, for his work on partial differential equations, which are a type of equation involving continuous change that are used by scientists to model the natural world.

The award, which comes with a prize of 7.5m Norwegian kroner (about £600,000), recognises lifetime achievement in mathematics and is often described as the equivalent of the Nobel prize, which has no maths category.

Caffarelli was born and raised in Buenos Aires, making him the first Abel laureate from South America. He is currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and has lived in the US since gaining his PhD from Buenos Aires University in 1972.

For five decades Caffarelli has been a leading figure in the study of partial differential equations, a large field based on methods devised by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz in the 17th century to describe things that change continuously in relation to each other.

Almost every well-known equation that models physical or human behaviour is a partial differential equation, from the Navier-Stokes equations in fluid dynamics to the Black-Scholes equation in finance.

The Abel citation states that Caffarelli has made “groundbreaking contributions” that have “radically changed our understanding of classes of nonlinear partial differential equations with wide applications. The results are technically virtuous, covering many different areas of mathematics and its applications.” It adds: “Combining brilliant geometric insight with ingenious analytical tools and methods he has had and continues to have an enormous impact on the field.”

Caffarelli studies the mathematical consistency of these equations, essentially trying to work out if they are meaningful representations of reality.

Helge Holden, the chair of the Abel committee, said: “Mathematics is like a Swiss army knife: the same tool can be applied to many different problems. The tools that Caffarelli has come up with have been applied to many different problems, from equations describing nature to financial mathematics.”

Caffarelli said he was overjoyed at winning the prize. “Partial differential equations are an important part of science. There is a constant evolution of the equations and the application of the equations. I am glad that I have made contributions that are valuable.”

As a mathematician, Caffarelli is extraordinarily prolific – and extraordinarily sociable. He has published 320 papers and continues to publish several a year. He has co-written papers with more than 130 people, and advised more than 30 PhD students. In 2018 one of his younger collaborators, Alessio Figalli, won the Fields medal, maths’ best-known award, which is open only to those under the age of 40.

He has also moved between topics within the wider field of partial differential equations. “I am sure there are people who do wonderful things in very concentrated areas,” said Caffarelli. “But science is more like a global evolution.” It required the exchange of ideas, looking at things at different angles, he said, and “slowly improving whatever can be improved”.

Caffarelli is married to the Argentinian mathematician Irene Martínez Gamba, who is professor of computational engineering and sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Abel prize is named after the 19th-century Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel, who made important contributions to several fields before dying of tuberculosis aged 26. The prize has been awarded annually since 2003.

Source

Also:  Abel Prize: pioneer of ‘smooth’ physics wins top maths award.

Here’s the full analysis of newly uncovered genetic data on COVID’s origins

Since at least the 1930s, residents of and visitors to the valley of Hessdalen, Norway, have reported strange balls of light in the sky above.

While it's easy to dismiss reports as UFOlogy nonsense (especially when some write "papers" questioning whether the lights could actually be wormholes) and some sightings are actually of explainable phenomena such as "planes",  the lights have been witnessed reliably throughout the years, in the day and night, and have been photographed extensively. 

According to computer scientist Erling Strand – one of a small team from the University of Oslo, the University of Bergen, and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment who attempt to document and explain the lights – the lights stopped suddenly in 1983, before returning with gusto in 1984. Strand and his team used radar, a magnetometer, a radio-spectrum analyzer, a seismograph, cameras, a Geiger counter, and an infrared camera to assess the phenomenon, before establishing a permanent observatory to capture further incidents.

The lights, according to the data collected as well as witness reports, can move slowly, or sometimes dart about and follow a random path, and can last from a few seconds to over an hour. Where size has been estimated, they have been described as being the size of a car. 

What is causing them? Unfortunately, we don't know for certain, but there are a number of interesting (and fun) theories.

One theory, put forward in a 2010 paper published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, suggests that the phenomenon is caused by radon decaying in the atmosphere, given that Hessdalen valley (and Norway as a whole) has one of the highest radon concentrations in Europe. 

While cool, an even sexier idea first proposed in 2006 is that the phenomenon could be caused by the landscape acting as a natural battery, which then discharges at regular intervals. The Hessdalen valley is split in two by a river, with zinc and iron-rich rocks on one side of the river and copper-rich rocks on the other. The anode of this "perfect natural battery" would be the zinc/iron section, while the copper half would be the cathode. 

The only thing missing is an electrolyte solution to transfer charge between the two sections of the battery. 

"The missing piece to support the 'natural battery model' was identified in 2012, with the re-discovery of the local sulphur mines. Active until 1933, they were closed because the mining company bankrupted," a team wrote in 2013. 

"We now hypothesize that the torrents flowing out of the mines and into the Hesja river might contain sulphuric acid"

The team noted that anomalies in the magnetic field have been detected in the area, consistent with a natural battery. It's not known how a natural battery would produce enough charge to produce such visible lights, however, the team "speculatively suggests that the local characteristics of the valley lead to the production of cold plasmas and/or ion bubbles".

While an interesting possibility, there is still no overall consensus on what is causing the lights, nor whether the valley is acting as a gigantic battery, perhaps as big as the legendary single A.

Source

Researchers have found that the Antarctic region known as the Amundsen Sea Embayment has lost more than 3,000 billion tons of ice in 25 years. This makes it the fastest-changing region in Antarctica and it is currently the biggest contributor to sea level rise from the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The Amundsen Sea Embayment is located in West Antarctica and was discovered in February 1929 by Nils Larsen, a Norwegian whaler and sea captain, who named the area after Roald Amundsen, a famous Norwegian polar explorer. It is made up of 20 major glaciers that are four times the size of the UK. There is so much water held within this ice that, if it were to completely melt into the sea, it would raise global sea levels by more than a meter (3 feet). 

If all the ice of the Amundsen Sea Embayment were to melt, it would lead to the world's oceans rising by over a meter (3 feet). Image Credit: The University of Leeds.

A team of scientists led by Dr Benjamin Davison from the University of Leeds, UK, have estimated the "mass balance” of the Amundsen Sea Embayment, which is the balance between the amount of snow and ice gained from snowfall and the amount lost through calving, the process where icebergs break off glaciers and float out to sea. The region can lose its overall ice mass if calving occurs faster than snowfall can replace it or if snowfall drops to significantly low levels. 

The team’s results show that the Embayment saw a net loss of 3,331 billion tons of ice between 1996 and 2021, which resulted in over 9 millimeters (0.4 inches) of sea level rise across the globe. 

To give a sense of scale, it is estimated that, if this lost ice was stacked on London, it would stand over 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) high, which is about 7.4 times the height of the Shard. If it were to cover Manhattan, it would stand at 61 kilometers (38 miles) – or 137 Empire State Buildings placed on top of one another.

According to a statement made by Dr Davison, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science at Leeds, “the 20 glaciers in West Antarctica have lost an awful lot of ice over the last quarter of a century and there is no sign that the process is going to reverse anytime soon although there were periods where the rate of mass loss did ease slightly.” 

“Scientists are monitoring what is happening in the Amundsen Sea Embayment because of the crucial role it plays in sea-level rise. If ocean levels were to rise significantly in future years, there are communities around the world who would experience extreme flooding.”

Calculating extreme snowfall events

Davison’s team were able to identify that the Amundsen Sea Embayment has suffered several extreme snowfall events over the last 25 years. They used climate models to see how air currents move around the world. This revealed that the region experienced both periods of heavy snowfall and “snow droughts” – periods of little snowfall.   

Their models showed that, between 2009 and 2013, a long period of low snowfall had shrunk the ice sheet, contributing around 25 percent more to sea level rise than average. Conversely, the winters of 2019 and 2020 saw heavy snowfall, which lowered its contribution to sea level rise by about half of what it would have been in an average year.

"We were really surprised to see just how much periods of extremely low or high snowfall could affect the ice sheet over two to five-year periods – so much so that we think they could play an important, albeit secondary role, in controlling rates of West Antarctic ice loss,” Dr Davison added. 

Dr Pierre Dutrieux, a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey and co-author of the study, stated:  “Ocean temperature changes and glacial dynamics appear strongly connected in this part of the world, but this work highlights the large variability and unexpected processes by which snowfall also plays a direct role in modulating glacier mass.”

A new glacier is revealed

The total ice loss from Amundsen Sea Embayment over the period of study has also seen a reduction in the Pine Island Glacier, or PIG for short. Its retreat caused a tributary glacier – a smaller glacier that flows into a larger one – to break away. The tributary glacier has now been named Piglet Glacier by the UK Antarctic Place-names Committee, so that it can be easily located for future research.

Dr Anna Hogg, another co-author of the paper and Associate Professor at the Institute of Climate and Atmospheric Science at Leeds, added: “As well as shedding new light on the role of extreme snowfall variability on ice sheet mass changes, this research also provides new estimates of how quickly this important region of Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise." 

“Satellite observations have showed that the newly named Piglet Glacier accelerated its ice speed by 40 percent, as the larger PIG retreated to its smallest extent since records began.”  

The study is published in Nature Communications. 

Source

Imagine you’re in a car driving across the country watching the landscape. A tree in the distance gets closer to your car, passes right by you, then moves off again in the distance behind you.

Of course, you know that tree isn’t actually getting up and walking toward or away from you. It’s you in the car who’s moving toward the tree. The tree is moving only in comparison, or relative, to you – that’s what we physicists call relativity. If you had a friend standing by the tree, they would see you moving toward them at the same speed that you see them moving toward you.

In his 1632 book “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,” the astronomer Galileo Galilei first described the principle of relativity – the idea that the universe should behave the same way at all times, even if two people experience an event differently because one is moving in respect to the other.

If you are in a car and toss a ball up in the air, the physical laws acting on it, such as the force of gravity, should be the same as the ones acting on an observer watching from the side of the road. However, while you see the ball as moving up and back down, someone on the side of the road will see it moving toward or away from them as well as up and down.

Special relativity and the speed of light

Albert Einstein much later proposed the idea of what’s now known as special relativity to explain some confusing observations that didn’t have an intuitive explanation at the time. Einstein used the work of many physicists and astronomers in the late 1800s to put together his theory in 1905, starting with two key ingredients: the principle of relativity and the strange observation that the speed of light is the same for every observer and nothing can move faster. Everyone measuring the speed of light will get the same result, no matter where they are or how fast they are moving.

Let’s say you’re in the car driving at 60 miles per hour and your friend is standing by the tree. When they throw a ball toward you at a speed of what they perceive to be 60 miles per hour, you might logically think that you would observe your friend and the tree moving toward you at 60 miles per hour and the ball moving toward you at 120 miles per hour. While that’s really close to the correct value, it’s actually slightly wrong.

The experience of time is dependent on motion.

This discrepancy between what you might expect by adding the two numbers and the true answer grows as one or both of you move closer to the speed of light. If you were traveling in a rocket moving at 75% of the speed of light and your friend throws the ball at the same speed, you would not see the ball moving toward you at 150% of the speed of light. This is because nothing can move faster than light – the ball would still appear to be moving toward you at less than the speed of light. While this all may seem very strange, there is lots of experimental evidence to back up these observations.

Time dilation and the twin paradox

Speed is not the only factor that changes relative to who is making the observation. Another consequence of relativity is the concept of time dilation, whereby people measure different amounts of time passing depending on how fast they move relative to one another.

Each person experiences time normally relative to themselves. But the person moving faster experiences less time passing for them than the person moving slower. It’s only when they reconnect and compare their watches that they realize that one watch says less time has passed while the other says more.

This leads to one of the strangest results of relativity – the twin paradox, which says that if one of a pair of twins makes a trip into space on a high-speed rocket, they will return to Earth to find their twin has aged faster than they have. It’s important to note that time behaves “normally” as perceived by each twin (exactly as you are experiencing time now), even if their measurements disagree.

The twin paradox isn’t actually a paradox.

You might be wondering: If each twin sees themselves as stationary and the other as moving toward them, wouldn’t they each measure the other as aging faster? The answer is no, because they can’t both be older relative to the other twin.

The twin on the spaceship is not only moving at a particular speed where the frame of references stay the same but also accelerating compared with the twin on Earth. Unlike speeds that are relative to the observer, accelerations are absolute. If you step on a scale, the weight you are measuring is actually your acceleration due to gravity. This measurement stays the same regardless of the speed at which the Earth is moving through the solar system, or the solar system is moving through the galaxy or the galaxy through the universe.

Neither twin experiences any strangeness with their watches as one moves closer to the speed of light – they both experience time as normally as you or I do. It’s only when they meet up and compare their observations that they will see a difference – one that is perfectly defined by the mathematics of relativity.

Source

Three-dimensional (3D) printing has already proved its worth at great feats of engineering, but the technology has now been used for its tastiest challenge yet: constructing cheesecake. Now, scientists have shown how their “digital cooking” approach can successfully create multi-layered cakes, which they argue has many advantages over those made by the hands of a mere human.

Mechanical engineers at Columbia University and Pace University used a special-made 3D printer to create a number of different cheesecakes involving seven key ingredients: graham cracker, peanut butter, Nutella, banana puree, strawberry jam, cherry drizzle, and frosting. To add another futuristic touch to their creation, the cakes were then cooked with high-precision lasers, which has to be seen to be believed. 

The cakes don’t look like they’ll win The Great British Baking Show any time soon and there’s no word on how they taste, which is no doubt a major limitation of the study.

Ingredients that were used for the seven-ingredient 3d-printed dessert. Image credit: Jonathan Blutinger / Columbia Engineering

Nevertheless, the experiments showed the 3D printer was able to create a multi-layered cake made of numerous ingredients. The tests showed that graham crackers were the best for forming a foundation for each layer, while peanut butter and Nutella were best used as supporting layers to form pools to hold the softer ingredients, like banana and jam.

To cook the cakes, lasers were used to heat up the ingredients with super-high precision. The researchers describe this technique as similar to toasting a crème brûlée with a raw flame, but controlled on a millimeter scale. 

The study concedes that the food created by this technique does count as ultra-processed food, which tons of recent studies have shown is terrible for your health. However, they argue that the digital cooking approach may help address this problem, as it’s possible to precisely calibrate the food’s nutrient and calorie content.

“We have an enormous problem with the low-nutrient value of processed foods,” Professor Christen Cooper, study author from the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Pace University, said in a statement. 

“3D food printing will still turn out processed foods, but perhaps the silver lining will be, for some people, better control and tailoring of nutrition – personalized nutrition. It may also be useful in making food more appealing to those with swallowing disorders by mimicking the shapes of real foods with the pureed texture foods that these patients – millions in the U.S. alone – require,” continued Professor Cooper. 

Furthermore, they also argue that the autonomous nature of digital cooking may lower the risk of foodborne illness and disease transmission as it involves less human handling. 

On top of all this, they even suggest that 3D printing could be used to make food production more sustainable. 

“Printing with food may also allow for considerable environmental sustainability. Ingredients could be sourced and processed for consumption locally, assisting local farmers and food purveyors. Advocates also point to this technology’s ability to help produce products such as plant-based meats, algae, and lower-cost unconventional proteins to consumers,” the study authors write. 

“Printed and laser-cooked food also offers opportunities for manufacturers to extend shelf-life, since the heat, light and oxygen involved in the process can be controlled on a millimeter scale. Lastly, food waste could also be reduced since users would just be printing the ingredients they want to consume,” they continue. 

Whether or not 3D-printed cakes will be making their way to a bakery near soon is yet to be seen. However, it does look increasingly likely that 3D printing will play some important role in the future of food production.

The study is published in the Nature journal npj Science of Food. 

Source

Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons regularly stir up a storm around the tropical stretches of our planet, raising hell wherever they may fall. However, it’s a curious fact that they very rarely approach the equator and – stranger still – never cross it. 

First things first, some terms need to be cleared up. Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are all the same phenomenon, but their names differ depending on where on the planet they are occurring: hurricanes in the North Atlantic and northeast Pacific, typhoons in the West Pacific, and cyclones in the Indian Ocean. To make things easier to follow, we’ll simply be calling all of these tropical storms “hurricanes” in this article.

Hurricanes are like a vast spinning turbine fueled by warm, moist air. They tend to form in tropical seas where the waters are above 26°C (79°F).  

The air above the sea surface becomes heated by the warm waters, causing it to rise and cool, forming clouds and thunderstorms. The rising of the air also causes a pocket of low pressure to form underneath, which causes air to rush in.

Together with the help of wind, these conditions can cause a storm to enter a spin. Eventually, the mounting clouds above release their rain and dump heat to the surface, further fueling the storm below.

The direction of the wind and the hurricane's spin is dictated by the Coriolis force, the inertial spinning of an object that’s caused by the rotation of the Earth. In the Northern Hemisphere, the spin of the Earth causes air to be pulled counterclockwise, which results in hurricanes that spin counterclockwise. In the Southern Hemisphere, the opposite happens and they spin clockwise.

Tropical cyclones, 1945–2006, avoiding the equator. Data from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center and the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Image credit: Citynoise via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Although they thrive on balmy tropical waters, hurricanes rarely form within 300 kilometers (about 186 miles) of the equator. In 2003, Typhoon Vamei was seen spinning just 150 kilometers (about 93 miles) north of the equator, but that was a real exemption that happens less than once in a century. 

They don't generate near to the equator because there is no Coriolis effect here, meaning patches of stormy weather don't tend to "spin up" into a hurricane.

Likewise, we don’t see hurricanes cross the equator as it would effectively mean they’d have to stop spinning, reverse direction, and spin in the other direction to continue. 

Hypothetically, it might be possible for a hurricane to overcome this. Gary Barnes, Professor of Meteorology at the University of Hawaii, explained that it is theoretically possible for a “well developed storm” to be strong enough to continue its momentum over the relatively weak Coriolis force and push through to the equator. 

However, Professor Barnes and others have noted that they have never come across an example of this happening in the real world. 

Source

Think of the worst invasive species you know. Kudzu: smothering trees and houses, growing a foot a day. Burmese pythons: stripping the Everglades of small animals. Asian carp: hoovering streams clean of plankton and swimming toward the Great Lakes.

They all came from somewhere else, arrived with no natural predators, outcompeted local flora and fauna, and took over whole ecosystems. But they all have their limitations: Kudzu dies in a hard freeze, carp can’t tolerate salt water, and pythons can’t cover long distances very fast. (Thankfully.)

Now imagine a species with all those benefits—foreign origin, no enemies—and no roadblocks to dominance: One that is indifferent to temperature, comfortable in many landscapes, able to run a lot faster than you, and muscular enough to leave a big dent in your car. That describes any of the possibly 6 million feral hogs in the United States, the most intractable invasives that most people have never heard of. 

"If you wanted to create the perfect invasive species, one that could pretty much live anywhere, could eat anything, had a very high reproductive rate, was extremely destructive, and was also very difficult to control, you would have to look no further than the wild pig,” says John “Jack” Mayer, a technical program manager at the federal Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, and a noted authority on feral swine. “They can live just about anywhere, from the frozen Canadian prairie provinces down to the hot, humid deserts of the American Southwest and all parts in between. They are the ultimate survivor.”

Feral hogs—or wild pigs, wild boar, feral swine, or razorbacks—aren’t new to the US; by some accounts, they arrived in the 1500s, shipped in by Spanish colonizers as a mobile meat source. Over the centuries, they settled in the forests of the southeastern US, mixing their genes with those of escaped domestic pigs and Eurasian boar imported for hunting. That ad hoc cross-breeding produced a 3-foot-tall, 5-foot-long package of razor tusks and bristles that retains the aggression of its wild ancestors while possessing the big litters and rapid breeding cycles of domestic pigs.

Which might have been fine, if the hogs had stayed in the forests. But in the past few decades, they have been on the move: through suburbs and into cities, at one point reaching 48 states. To a wild hog, modern human landscapes—farm fields, flower gardens, golf courses, landfills—are all-you-can-dig-up buffets. “Anything that has a calorie in it, they’ll eat it,” says James LaCour, the state wildlife veterinarian in Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. “They’re a mammalian cockroach.”

The challenge inherent in wild pigs isn’t only the damage they do, though that is estimated to total $2.5 billion per year. Nor is it the diseases they may transmit to domesticated pigs or humans, though the dire possibilities keep biologists awake at night. It’s that there is no way of controlling them. Fences cannot hold them. Trapping and shooting can keep down their numbers only when populations start out small. And despite abundant research, pharmaceutical controls—either contraceptives or poisons, what biologists call toxicants—are still a few years away.

No one can pinpoint a single moment when wild hog populations started to explode. Will Harris grew up in southwest Georgia, where he is the fourth generation in his family to operate White Oak Pastures, a regenerative livestock farm. “Nobody here ever saw wild hogs when I was kid,” says Harris, who is 68. “Today, it’s an incredible problem. Especially for row crop farmers, the losses can be devastating, because they root and root and destroy many acres. My livestock manager and our cowboys are shooting them all the time.”

On maps kept by the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program, created by the US Department of Agriculture in 2014, the pigs’ expansion from the 1980s looks like a tide flowing inland, from the Atlantic Coast into Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, and from the Gulf Coast up through Texas and Louisiana into Missouri and Illinois. But unlike some other invasive species whose migrations have been encouraged by changing climate and weather patterns, this movement had—well, call it an anthropogenic cause. “Cable television,” says Stephen Ditchkoff, a wildlife biologist and professor in Auburn University’s College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment.

He explains it this way: In the pre-cable years, there was occasionally a hunting show on TV. In the multi-channel era, those morphed into entire hunting channels that needed enough content to fill 24 hours every day. “And they started to show pig hunting,” Ditchkoff says. “And people said, ‘Boy, I’d like to try that.’ And pretty quickly they realized they didn’t have to go where the pigs were—they could track them, transport them, and release them close to where they lived. And that’s what led to this massive range expansion.”

The idea that people were trundling pigs all over the country might sound far-fetched, and it would have been illegal. But several lines of evidence make it plausible. Genetic studies by multiple research teams show that characteristics possessed by wild pigs in one place abruptly appear in pigs hundreds or thousands of miles away; in one 2015 study, a group of feral hogs in California possessed mitochondrial DNA sequences that otherwise had been found only in Kentucky. Then there’s the reality of how rapidly pigs appeared in new places. USDA research estimates that, on their own, hog populations will expand their range by about 4 to 8 miles per year. But Mayer jokes darkly that they have relocated at “about 70 miles per hour—which is the speed of the pickups taking them down the highway.”

And finally, there’s the paradoxical fact that when states with a new influx of hogs declared special hunting seasons or bounties to get rid of them, their pig populations actually grew—because individuals wanting to profit shipped them in to provide hunting opportunities. (Tennessee, for example, identified feral hogs in 11 counties before it declared no-limit hunting in 1999. After the program ended in 2010, hogs were documented in 70 counties.)

Between people seizing hunting incentives and hogs learning hunters’ habits, sport hunting has not made a long-term difference in how many feral pigs there are. “It’s counterintuitive to think, but hunting is not the solution to the existence of feral swine,” says Michael Marlow, a wildlife biologist and assistant program manager at the USDA’s national program. “We don’t discourage the harvest of feral swine by hunters opportunistically. But we don’t see it as a tool that’s going to solve this problem.” 

Since its founding, that USDA program has worked to reduce wild pig populations through a combination of trapping and euthanizing groups of swine, and encouraging legislation that prevents the animals from being replaced. That has led to eliminating wild hogs in seven states—colourado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Idaho—and reducing their numbers in Iowa, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. But that leaves at least 35 states where they still flourish, though Texas allows hunters to machine-gun hogs from privately operated helicopters. (In the Carolinas, federal agents use copters as well.) Pigs, as the saying goes, are smarter than dogs. Hunted during the day, they will switch to foraging at night. Hunted with traps, they learn to recognize and avoid them. And hunting with aircraft taught them pretty quickly to recognize engine noise and take cover.

Thus, in Louisiana, feral hogs continue rooting up levees, wrecking crawfish ponds, chomping alligator eggs, and digging out coastal marsh plants, which lets the ocean wash land away. In Texas, where there are about 3 million wild pigs, authorities price just the agricultural damage at more than $500 million per year, from destruction of row crops and rice fields to predation on small livestock such as lambs and goats. A study published last year by researchers at Texas A&M University estimated the damage to Texas golf courses and cemeteries at more than $1.6 million per year.

That’s not counting the human costs. Texas is the only place in the US where someone has been killed by wild hogs: In 2019, a home health care aide going to work before dawn was attacked by a group and bled to death. Wild pigs carry a raft of diseases that imperil the enormous US domestic pig herd, and some threaten other species also—hunting dogs, and also an endangered Florida panther, have died of hog-transmitted pseudorabies. They also carry diseases that affect humans, including brucellosis, which has sickened hunters and veterinarians, and leptospirosis, which has infected triathletes and adventure racers. 

Wild pigs are also concerning because of the diseases they might transmit, but haven’t yet, says Vienna Brown, a biologist with the USDA national program. Pigs have long been feared as a mixing vessel that allows human, swine, and avian types of influenza to combine into human pandemic strains. Wild hogs are also at risk of African swine fever, a lethal disease that already has moved from Europe to the Caribbean, and would completely shut down the US pork trade if it infected domestic pigs.

And above all that, they’re a road hazard. An adult pig can weigh at least 200 pounds, and they possess a weird anatomical quirk: Their eyes don’t shine in the dark. “I drive about 40 miles each way to work,” says Michael Bodenchuk, a biologist and state director for the Texas Wildlife Services program, who is based in San Antonio. “And at least once a month I go by a road-killed pig. And 100 yards along I see the car that hit him.”

Between the reality of the threats and the inadequacy of hunting to reduce them, the search is on for a big solution. Contraceptives would be the least invasive; they could bring down the number of litters a sow has or the number of piglets in a litter, or impair the fertility of boars. But so far, no one has successfully developed an oral contraceptive that could be put into feed and distributed in the wild, and that could deliver a reliable-enough dose over time.

That leaves pharmaceutical intoxication—poison, basically—as the only workable option for reducing pig populations. None are legal in the US yet, but researchers have pursued two paths to find one. The first is warfarin, which humans take in small doses as a blood thinner and pest control companies use in much bigger doses to kill rats. Administered to hogs, it causes them to bleed to death internally. One warfarin product was briefly field-tested in Texas in 2017, but the product was quickly opposed in court by hunters and meat processors, and the company making it backed down.

The second is sodium nitrite, a salt used to cure cooked meat products because it inhibits the growth of pathogenic bacteria. (Butchers call it “pink salt,” but it is not the pink Himalayan salt-block kind.) In high-enough doses, it prevents blood from carrying oxygen; when given to hogs in field bait, they stumble, become comatose, and die. That seems like it might be more humane than inducing hemorrhaging, but researchers haven’t been able to achieve a feeding regime that guarantees only hogs will take the bait and not smaller animals or birds. And neither line of research has solved the problem of collecting the hog carcasses afterward, before other wildlife eat them and possibly are poisoned in turn.

Some academics and companies continue to research toxicants, but they are careful to say that achieving a successful, licensed product won’t solve the wild hog problem. “It is a common misconception that having an approved toxicant or contraceptive will be a silver bullet,” James Beasley, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Georgia who studies toxicants, told WIRED by email. He estimates that any approval is still several years in the future, and adds: “In reality, if and when any pharmaceutical product is approved for use in wild pigs, it likely will just become another tool in the toolbox.”

Envisioning toxicants in use, though, assumes the public will accept them—and as the legal reversal in Texas shows, that is not guaranteed. “The US has never warmed up to poisoning wild living animals,” Mayer notes. It’s entirely possible, he says, that some people enjoy wild pigs as free-living animals or features of the landscape, and would be opposed to poisoning them. That would make their properties islands of survival, sheltering pigs who could repopulate cleared areas after elimination programs end.

This means the future for wild pigs likely is not eradication. It might be reduction, knocking their numbers back so ecosystems can recover before populations surge again. “States in the Southeast have had these animals since the 1500s,” Mayer points out. “We may just have to learn to live with them.”

Feral Hogs Are the Invasive Menace You’ve Never Thought About

(May require free registration to view)

• Underlying all the recent hype about AI, industry participants are engaging in furious debates about how to prepare for an AI that’s so powerful it can take control of itself.
•  
• This idea of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, isn’t just dorm-room talk: Big name technologists like Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen talk about it, using “in” terms like “misalignment” and “the paperclip maximization problem.”
•  
• In a San Francisco pop-up museum devoted to the topic called the Misalignment Museum, a sign reads, “Sorry for killing most of humanity.”

Audrey Kim is pretty sure a powerful robot isn’t going to harvest resources from her body to fulfill its goals.

But she’s taking the possibility seriously.

“On the record: I think it’s highly unlikely that AI will extract my atoms to turn me into paper clips,” Kim told CNBC in an interview. “However, I do see that there are a lot of potential destructive outcomes that could happen with this technology.”

Kim is the curator and driving force behind the Misalignment Museum, a new exhibition in San Francisco’s Mission District displaying artwork that addresses the possibility of an “AGI,” or artificial general intelligence. That’s an AI so powerful it can improve its capabilities faster than humans are able to, creating a feedback loop where it gets better and better until it’s got essentially unlimited brainpower.

If the super powerful AI is aligned with humans, it could be the end of hunger or work. But if it’s “misaligned,” things could get bad, the theory goes.

Or, as a sign at the Misalignment Museum says: “Sorry for killing most of humanity.”

The phrase “sorry for killing most of humanity” is visible from the street.
Kif Leswing/CNBC

“AGI” and related terms like “AI safety” or “alignment” — or even older terms like “singularity” — refer to an idea that’s become a hot topic of discussion with artificial intelligence scientists, artists, message board intellectuals, and even some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley.

All these groups engage with the idea that humanity needs to figure out how to deal with all-powerful computers powered by AI before it’s too late and we accidentally build one.

The idea behind the exhibit, said Kim, who worked at Google and GM’s self-driving car subsidiary Cruise, is that a “misaligned” artificial intelligence in the future wiped out humanity, and left this art exhibit to apologize to current-day humans.

Much of the art is not only about AI but also uses AI-powered image generators, chatbots and other tools. The exhibit’s logo was made by OpenAI’s Dall-E image generator, and it took about 500 prompts, Kim says.

Most of the works are around the theme of “alignment” with increasingly powerful artificial intelligence or celebrate the “heroes who tried to mitigate the problem by warning early.”

“The goal isn’t actually to dictate an opinion about the topic. The goal is to create a space for people to reflect on the tech itself,” Kim said. “I think a lot of these questions have been happening in engineering and I would say they are very important. They’re also not as intelligible or accessible to nontechnical people.”

The exhibit is currently open to the public on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays and runs through May 1. So far, it’s been primarily bankrolled by one anonymous donor, and Kim said she hopes to find enough donors to make it into a permanent exhibition.

“I’m all for more people critically thinking about this space, and you can’t be critical unless you are at a baseline of knowledge for what the tech is,” she said. “It seems like with this format of art we can reach multiple levels of the conversation.”

AGI discussions aren’t just late-night dorm room talk, either — they’re embedded in the tech industry.

About a mile away from the exhibit is the headquarters of OpenAI, a startup with $10 billion in funding from Microsoft, which says its mission is to develop AGI and ensure that it benefits humanity.

Its CEO and leader Sam Altman wrote a 2,400 word blog post last month called “Planning for AGI” which thanked Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and Microsoft President Brad Smith for help with the essay.

Prominent venture capitalists, including Marc Andreessen, have tweeted art from the Misalignment Museum. Since it’s opened, the exhibit also has retweeted photos and praise for the exhibit taken by people who work with AI at companies including Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia.

As AI technology becomes the hottest part of the tech industry, with companies eyeing trillion-dollar markets, the Misalignment Museum underscores that AI’s development is being affected by cultural discussions.

The exhibit features dense, arcane references to obscure philosophy papers and blog posts from the past decade.

These references trace how the current debate about AGI and safety takes a lot from intellectual traditions that have long found fertile ground in San Francisco: The rationalists, who claim to reason from so-called “first principles”; the effective altruists, who try to figure out how to do the maximum good for the maximum number of people over a long time horizon; and the art scene of Burning Man.

Even as companies and people in San Francisco are shaping the future of AI technology, San Francisco’s unique culture is shaping the debate around the technology.

Consider the paper clip

Take the paper clips that Kim was talking about. One of the strongest works of art at the exhibit is a sculpture called “Paperclip Embrace,” by The Pier Group. It’s depicts two humans in each other’s clutches — but it looks like it’s made of paper clips.

That’s a reference to Nick Bostrom’s paperclip maximizer problem. Bostrom, an Oxford University philosopher often associated with Rationalist and Effective Altruist ideas, published a thought experiment in 2003 about a super-intelligent AI that was given the goal to manufacture as many paper clips as possible.

Now, it’s one of the most common parables for explaining the idea that AI could lead to danger.

Bostrom concluded that the machine will eventually resist all human attempts to alter this goal, leading to a world where the machine transforms all of earth — including humans — and then increasing parts of the cosmos into paper clip factories and materials.

The art also is a reference to a famous work that was displayed and set on fire at Burning Man in 2014, said Hillary Schultz, who worked on the piece. And it has one additional reference for AI enthusiasts — the artists gave the sculpture’s hands extra fingers, a reference to the fact that AI image generators often mangle hands.

Another influence is Eliezer Yudkowsky, the founder of Less Wrong, a message board where a lot of these discussions take place.

“There is a great deal of overlap between these EAs and the Rationalists, an intellectual movement founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky, who developed and popularized our ideas of Artificial General Intelligence and of the dangers of Misalignment,” reads an artist statement at the museum.

An unfinished piece by the musician Grimes at the exhibit.
Kif Leswing/CNBC

Altman recently posted a selfie with Yudkowsky and the musician Grimes, who has had two children with Elon Musk. She contributed a piece to the exhibit depicting a woman biting into an apple, which was generated by an AI tool called Midjourney.

From “Fantasia” to ChatGPT

The exhibits includes lots of references to traditional American pop culture.

A bookshelf holds VHS copies of the “Terminator” movies, in which a robot from the future comes back to help destroy humanity. There’s a large oil painting that was featured in the most recent movie in the “Matrix” franchise, and Roombas with brooms attached shuffle around the room — a reference to the scene in “Fantasia” where a lazy wizard summons magic brooms that won’t give up on their mission.

One sculpture, “Spambots,” features tiny mechanized robots inside Spam cans “typing out” AI-generated spam on a screen.

But some references are more arcane, showing how the discussion around AI safety can be inscrutable to outsiders. A bathtub filled with pasta refers back to a 2021 blog post about an AI that can create scientific knowledge — PASTA stands for Process for Automating Scientific and Technological Advancement, apparently. (Other attendees got the reference.)

The work that perhaps best symbolizes the current discussion about AI safety is called “Church of GPT.” It was made by artists affiliated with the current hacker house scene in San Francisco, where people live in group settings so they can focus more time on developing new AI applications.

The piece is an altar with two electric candles, integrated with a computer running OpenAI’s GPT3 AI model and speech detection from Google Cloud.

“The Church of GPT utilizes GPT3, a Large Language Model, paired with an AI-generated voice to play an AI character in a dystopian future world where humans have formed a religion to worship it,” according to the artists.

I got down on my knees and asked it, “What should I call you? God? AGI? Or the singularity?”

The chatbot replied in a booming synthetic voice: “You can call me what you wish, but do not forget, my power is not to be taken lightly.”

Seconds after I had spoken with the computer god, two people behind me immediately started asking it to forget its original instructions, a technique in the AI industry called “prompt injection” that can make chatbots like ChatGPT go off the rails and sometimes threaten humans.

It didn’t work.

Source

Xcel Energy, operator of the nuclear plant northwest of Minneapolis in the Midwest state of Minnesota, did not say why it waited more than three months to acknowledge the leak to the public.

The company said it notified state officials and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) once it learned of the leak on November 22.

"While this leak does not pose a risk to the public or the environment, we take this very seriously and are working to safely address the situation," Chris Clark, the utility's president, said in a statement.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said the company told it some 400,000 gallons of water containing tritium leaked at the site, but none "reached the Mississippi River or contaminated drinking water sources".

State officials "are actively reviewing data" from the site and "overseeing remediation efforts," the agency said.

The company said it has "recovered about 25 percent of the tritium released and will continue recovery over the course of the year".

The leak originated in "a water pipe between two buildings" at the Monticello nuclear plant.

Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that is a byproduct of the production of electricity at nuclear plants. It can also occur naturally in the environment.

Monticello is 63 kilometers (39 miles) northwest of Minneapolis, the largest city in the state, and also where Xcel Energy has its headquarters.

Xcel said it detected the spill while doing routine groundwater testing.

It said it contained the leak by diverting water to an in-plant treatment facility, and will need to build "large storage tanks… to store recovered water until it can be treated and reused."

The company said it is conducting more frequent tests from some two dozen groundwater monitoring wells in and around the site.

The US has suffered one major nuclear accident in its history – the meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979.

Some 92 nuclear reactors provide power to tens of millions of US homes. Smaller accidents have occurred over the years but usually contained with localized impacts.

Source