Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Magazines, Podcasts, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – June 20, 2024

June 19, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

‘Nature Magazine – June 19, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Soar Point’ – Air sacs below the wings help soaring birds to glide…

Ancient graves reveal taxes’ sharp bite nearly 3,000 years ago

Buried items show that the poor got poorer as the Assyrian empire and its bureaucracy swelled.

CRISPR improves a crop that feeds billions

The gene-editing system, normally used to disrupt a gene, is applied to improve the function of a gene in rice.

How cutting-edge computer chips are speeding up the AI revolution

Engineers are harnessing the powers of graphics processing units (GPUs) and more, with a bevy of tricks to meet the computational demands of artificial intelligence.

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – June 21, 2024

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Times Literary Supplement (June 19, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Booking A Holiday’ – TLS critics choose their summer reading; Artistic license – The relationship between ‘loveliness and lucre’; Christopher Isherwood in full; How to be a Liberal; Story of a ghost painter and Fine-art fraud…

This week’s @TheTLS, featuring our contributors’ summer books; Zachary Leader on Christopher Isherwood; @lindseyhilsum in Omdurman, Sudan; @MayaJaggi on Chigozie Obioma; @DanielB89913888 & @HDrochon on liberalism; @irinibus on Borges and the medieval – and more pic.twitter.com/XYoZDcJa1E
— George Berridge (@George_Berridge) June 19, 2024

Arts & Literature, Culture, Homes, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Previews: Country Life Magazine – June 19, 2024

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Country Life Magazine (June 18, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Why we adore Venus’, Move over Buckingham Palace – Our grandest houses, Jeremy Clarkson’s favorite painting and Old Masters – Chippendale and Coward revisited…

Jeremy Clarkson’s favourite painting

The television presenter and farmer immerses himself in the age of steam by selecting a 19th-century masterpiece that really stokes the imagination

Venus was her name

Michael Hall lays bare the story of the art world’s enduring love affair with the alluring goddess Venus, from the 4th century BC right up to the modern era

Tripping the light fantastic

Iridescence is one of the natural world’s greatest special effects. Laura Parker showcases the shimmering, jewel-like hues that can take your breath away

The good stuff

It’s the final straw for Hetty Lintell as she picks perfect summer accessories crafted from raffia

Interiors

Giles Kime is whisked through a Sicilian palazzo, a Gothic castle and a Baroque bedroom thanks to the wonders of WOW!house

‘Makes Buckingham Palace seem rather dull’

The London homes of the British aristocracy were often grander than their country counterparts and perfect for entertaining, says Lucien de Guise

Native herbs

Mugwort is connected with child-birth as ‘the mother of herbs’, but John Wright prefers to focus on its many uses in the kitchen

Having the last laugh

Why are beaming faces such a rarity in our portrait galleries? Claudia Pritchard seeks out the grins among the grimaces

‘The oldest Old Thing in England’

Puck has been causing mayhem and misery for a millennium and more. Ian Morton traces the story of the mischievous sprite

Bend it like Beckham

Scotland’s only furniture school is keeping alive the old crafts of upholstery and marquetry, doing justice to its Chippendale name, as Mary Miers discovers

Coward on a mission

Michael Billington finds a depth of emotion behind the laughs in a rare revival of Noël Coward’s last work — a welcome antidote to mind-boggling technology

Opening the shutters

In the second of two articles, John Goodall applauds the remarkable revival of Wolterton Hall in Norfolk as a modern home equipped for the 21st century

The legacy

Victoria Marston hails Douglas Bunn, whose desire to test top British riders to the max led to the drama of the Hickstead Derby

Bourne to run

Kathryn Bradley-Hole finds no end of reasons to stop and stare as she explores the dramatic garden created from a flat water-side site at Emmetts Mill, Surrey

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson conjures up a trio of dishes to demonstrate the versatility of the courgette

Culture, Essays, Magazines, Media, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – July 2024

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE – June 17, 2024: The latest issue features Resisting Artificial Intelligence; A visual history of the Olympics and What remains of Syria…

The Gods of Logic

AI images generated by Phillip Toledano for Harper’s Magazine © The artist/Institute. Toledano’s book Another America was published in May by L’Artiere Edizioni.

Before and after artificial intelligence

We will never know how many died during the Butlerian Jihad. Was it millions? Billions? Trillions, perhaps? It was a fantastic rage, a great revolt that spread like wildfire, consuming everything in its path, a chaos that engulfed generations in an orgy of destruction lasting almost a hundred years. A war with a death toll so high that it left a permanent scar on humanity’s soul. But we will never know the names of those who fought and died in it, or the immense suffering and destruction it caused, because the Butlerian Jihad, abominable and devastating as it was,…

Metal Machine Music

Can AI think creatively? Can we?

“Far as the east from even, / Dim as the border star, / Life is the little creature / That carries the great cigar.” So wrote Emily Dickinson, with some unfortunate help from a computer. As I read that stanza in February 2022, I was more than six months into a scientific experiment I was conducting with my friend and colleague Morten Christiansen, a cognitive psychologist at Cornell, where he and I are professors. In 2021, two years before ChatGPT would become a household name, Christiansen had been impressed by the initial technical descriptions of GPT-3, the recently released version of the generative large language…

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 24, 2024

June 17, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Eager parents dressed in clothing with contemporary popculture references walk behind their embarrassed daughter.

The New Yorker (June 17, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Adrian Tomine’s “Eternal Youth” – For parents trying to look hip, no effort goes unpunished.

Rise of the Nanomachines

Nanotechnology can already puncture cancer cells and drug-resistant bacteria. What will it do next?

By Dhruv Khullar

After the European Elections, President Macron Makes a Gamble

The rise of the far right in Europe might help Americans deprovincialize their own crisis. The single wave has struck many coastlines.

By Adam Gopnik

Deaccessioning the Delights of Robert Gottlieb

The eminent editor’s wife and daughter sift through a lifetime’s worth of collectibles: quirky plastic purses, a porcelain Miss Piggy, and many, many books.

By Zach Helfand

Business, Magazines, Previews, Reviews, Technology

Harvard Business Review – July/August 2024 Issue

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Harvard Business Review (June 15, 2024) –

Why Entrepreneurs Should Think Like Scientists

Founders of start-ups who question and test their theories are more successful than their overly confident peers.

How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk

Models and forecasts can be seductive, but it’s time for executives to reclaim their economic judgment.

The Middle Path to Innovation

Forget disruption and incrementalism. Here’s how to develop high-growth products in slow-growth companies.

Green Design, Reviews, Sustainability, Technology, Videos

World Economic Forum: Top Stories – June 15, 2024

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World Economic Forum (June 15, 2024) – The top stories of the week include:

0:15 Mini-factories in space – Space Forge says its technology could revolutionize manufacturing. The satellites contain miniature manufacturing systems. They take advantage of the conditions in low-Earth orbit such as microgravity, extreme temperatures and a contaminant-free environment to forge materials that would be impossible to manufacture here on Earth.

1:53 Biodiversity credits explained – Nature is under unprecedented threat. Around 2 million plant and animal species could go extinct in the next few decades as climate change and habitat loss push ecosystems towards irreversible tipping points. To fight this crisis, experts are coming up with new ways to protect life on Earth by assigning value to the ecosystems around us. These innovations include biodiversity credits.

6:58 Nairobi switches to electric buses – Private minibuses called matatus are the main mode of public transport in Nairobi. Most matatus are old, diesel-powered and inefficient and 60% of the city’s population rely on them to get around. Electric mobility start-up BasiGo has built an all-electric alternative. The first bus rolled off its Nairobi production line in early 2024. Nairobi bus operators have already ordered 500 more. More than 90% of Kenya’s electricity is generated renewably, which means BasiGo’s buses are virtually emission-free.

8:40 How to build healthier cities – This architect designs buildings that bring communities together – Sumayya Vally grew up in post-Apartheid Pretoria, South Africa in what had been an Indian-only township and saw how division kept communities apart. Vally founded the Johannesburg-based architecture practice Counterspace to fight the built legacies of colonization and highlight the peaceful coexistence between communities.

Magazines, Podcasts, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Science Magazine – June 14, 2024

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‘Science Magazine – June 13, 2024: The new issue features ‘Follow The Leader’ – A surface layer ensures photoactive perovskite growth….

Hubble telescope down to last gyroscopes, limiting science

Despite failing hardware, NASA has no plans to pursue a servicing mission to the aging, iconic instrument

Astronauts face health risks—even on short trips in space

New studies include health data collected from space tourists on first privately funded orbital mission

Sacrificed Maya boys tied to myth of ‘Hero Twins’

Ancient DNA shows continuity between living and ancient Maya communities

Culture, Magazines, Politics, Previews, Reviews, Society

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – June 14, 2024

June 13, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The Guardian Weekly (June 13, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Blood Lines’ – The human cost of Europe’s cocaine habit’; The Far Rights surges across EU; A doughnut theory of the universe; The muscular rise of steroids…

In a week when much of the attention in Europe was on far-right political gains in the parliamentary elections, the Guardian Weekly’s cover shines a light on another of the continent’s disturbing undercurrents.

A Guardian investigation has found that hundreds of unaccompanied child migrants across Europe are being forced to work for increasingly powerful drug cartels to meet the continent’s soaring appetite for cocaine.

In cities including Paris and Brussels, gangs are exploiting the “unlimited” supply of vulnerable African children at their disposal, using brutal means to control their victims, including torture and rape if they fail to sell enough drugs, as they seek to expand Europe’s $13bn cocaine market.

Mark Townsend reveals the plight of the illegal trade’s child foot soldiers, while Annie Kelly explains the growing problem of cocaine use in Europe. And from Ecuador, Tom Phillips reports on how death and destruction follow the drug on its complex journey across the Atlantic.