Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – June 14, 2024

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Times Literary Supplement (June 13, 2024): The latest issue features Freud’s Discontents – George Prochnik on the father of psychology; A great novel on the American Frontier; Death becomes them – The mourning rituals of the Victorians; Cover-up – An atrocity committed by US troops in the Philippines….

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – June 13, 2024

Volume 630 Issue 8016

Nature Magazine – June 12, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Complex System’ – AlphaFold 3 powers predictions of protein molecule interactions…

Mystery of huge ancient engravings of snakes solved at last

The depictions along South America’s Orinoco River are some of the biggest rock art known.

AI finds huge cache of anti-bacterial peptides hidden in genomic data

Machine-learning technique uncovers nearly 900,000 microbe-fighting peptide sequences in genomes collected from soils and other sources.

‘Sugar world’ sweetens the Solar System’s remote reaches

The icy body Arrokoth has a sugary coating that gives the body its distinctive red appearance.Research Highlight03 Jun 2024

A huge outbreak of butterflies hit three continents — here’s why

Swarms of painted ladies that descended on the Middle East, northern Africa and Europe have been traced to their source.

Previews: Country Life Magazine – June 12, 2024

Country Life Magazine (June 11, 2024): ‘The Green Issue’ features How to make the Countryside beautiful again….

The Country Life green manifesto

As the General Election looms large, we present our practical 10-point plan that could make a real difference to the planet

What lies beneath

Soil is both full of life and the very stuff of life, so it’s high time we stopped treating it like dirt, suggests Sarah Langford

Bridges to survival

Building ‘ecoducts’ to connect wildlife habitats separated by road and rail is the way forward, argues John Lewis-Stempel

Over the moon

Jane Wheatley meets the biodynamic farmers following the lunar calendar to tend their crops in tune with Nature

A woolly good story

What happened to the golden fleece? Harry Pearson tracks the fall of wool from medieval marvel to unwanted by-product

Country Life’s Little Green Book

Madeleine Silver profiles the people, places and products currently turning heads with genuinely green credentials

Neptune’s larder

Helen Scales wades in to forage for seaweed, seeking everything from sea spaghetti to sugar kelp

Rebel gardener

James Alexander-Sinclair talks to John Little about the amazing diversity of his garden in Essex

The man with his head in the clouds

Royal favourite Edward Seago lived a life as vibrant, varied and colourful as his paintings, discovers Peyton Skipwith

Lt-Col Frederick Wells’s favourite painting

The commanding officer of the Coldstream Guards chooses a majestic portrait of Elizabeth II

The best of both worlds

Minette Batters celebrates the remarkable recovery of grey partridge on the South Downs

Just right: Walpole’s balance

In the first of two articles, John Goodall examines the creation of Wolterton Hall in Norfolk

 ‘A better use of Sundays’

Russell Higham applauds the enduring appeal of Britain’s  elegant Victorian bandstands

The legacy

David Austen dedicated his life to creating the perfect English rose, as Tiffany Daneff reveals

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell casts her net far and wide for fishy accessories

Interiors

Giles Kime hails designers who are at one with the environment

Hard landscaping

The Dunvegan Castle gardens are a verdant oasis on the Isle of Skye, finds Caroline Donald

Native herbs

Wormwood is an old absinthe ingredient best kept at arm’s length, advises John Wright

You’ve got to break a few eggs

Tom Parker Bowles is hoping practice makes perfect as he eyes the immaculate omelette

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 17, 2024

People play chess in Washington Square Park.

The New Yorker (June 10, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Victoria Tentler-Krylov’s “Pawns in the Park” – The artist captures a corner of calm contemplation in the midst of New York’s hustle and bustle.

A Striking Setback for India’s Narendra Modi

The truly disquieting thought was that the cult of personality around the Prime Minister had become suffocating and seemingly impossible to pierce—until now. By Isaac Chotiner

A Journey to the Center of New York City’s Congestion Zone

A Journey to the Center of New York City’s Congestion Zone

After Governor Kathy Hochul’s flip-flop on congestion pricing, a cop reconsiders his retirement while inching his Lexus through snarled-up traffic on the F.D.R.

By Ben McGrath

How Liberals Talk About Children

Many left-leaning, middle-class Americans speak of kids as though they are impositions, or means to an end.

By Jay Caspian Kang

The Economist Magazine – June 8, 2024 Preview

A triumph for Indian democracy

The Economist Magazine (June 7, 2024): The latest issue features A triumph for Indian democracy

Billionares’ bad bet on Trump

A Trump victory would reward them. But not enough to justify the risks

In Crimea, Ukraine is beating Russia

The peninsula is becoming a death trap for the Kremlin’s forces

Robots are suddenly getting cleverer. What’s changed?

There is more to AI than ChatGPT

Research Preview: Science Magazine – June 7, 2024

Current Issue Cover

Science Magazine – June 6, 2024: The new issue features ‘Cellular Deformation’ – Rapidly stretching Protists snag a snack…

Little-known virus is on the rise in South America

Deforestation and climate change may be helping Oropouche virus spread far beyond the Amazon Basin

‘Google for DNA’ indexes 10% of world’s known sequence data

Achievement demonstrates feasibility of making all of life’s code easily searchable, researchers say

The evolution of thermogenesis in mammals

Comparative genomics elucidates the steps enabling heat production in fat tissue

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – June 7, 2024

Times Literary Supplement (June 5, 2024): The latest issue features Reading the Raj – E.M. Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’, Way-Out Philosophy, Michelangelo at the British Museum…

Culture: The American Scholar – Summer 2024

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR (June 4, 2024): The latest issue features ‘An Olympian for the Ages’ – Why George Eyser’s feats at the 1904 Games deserve to be celebrated today; Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympian, Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing, new poetry from Ange Mlinko, and more…

A Forgotten Turner Classic

Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?

Femmes Fantastiques

Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing

We Are the Borg

Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us?

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI by Ray Kurzweil

In the fall of 2014, an MIT cognitive scientist named Tomaso Poggio predicted that humankind was at least 20 years away from building computers that could interpret images on their own. Doing so, declared Poggio, “would be one of the most intellectually challenging things … for a machine to do.” One month later, Google released an AI program that did exactly what he’d deemed impossible.

Previews: Country Life Magazine – June 5, 2024

Country Life Magazine (June 4, 2024): The latest issue features Britain’s Wildlife Safaris; Tulips, tanks and teddies – The great passions….

Stuff and nonsense

Collectors explain their peculiar passions, from tanks to taxidermy, tulips to teddy bears, to Kate Green, Agnes Stamp, Tiffany Daneff and Octavia Pollock

A walk on the wild side

Ben Lerwill embarks on a great British safari, seeking out the best places to witness the full colour of Nature, from red deer to golden eagles and brown argus butterflies to grey seals

Standing on ceremony

The spectacle of The King’s Birthday Parade will summon up a vision from a bygone age, suggests Simon Doughty, as he chronicles the evolution of the ceremonial uniform

Beccy Speight’s favourite painting

The CEO of the RSPB chooses a dramatic and evocative work

Crossing the channel

Carla Carlisle reflects on the 80th anniversary of D-Day and wonders ‘what comes next?’

A Georgian vision

John Martin Robinson visits Gatewick in West Sussex and finds a modern country house harbouring an 18th-century spirit

The legacy

Kate Green hails F. M. Halford’s contribution to dry-fly fishing

The longest day and the shortest night

Harvest hopes and the magic of midsummer, with Lia Leendertz

Her green and pleasant land

Mary Miers paints a picture of Peggy Guggenheim’s rural idyll

Fresh as a summer breeze

Natasha Goodfellow picks out botanicals to add complexity and character to both food and drink

Interiors

A lambing shed turned home office wows Arabella Youens

London Life

  • Russell Higham on London Zoo memories)
  • Garden squares and gasholders
  • Gilly Hopper tucks into canal-side dining
  • Nick Foulkes indulges in The Emory experience

Floreat Etona

Education and horticulture still go hand in hand at Eton in Berkshire, as George Plumptre discovers

Kitchen garden cook

Savour tart gooseberries this summer, says Melanie Johnson

Native herbs

John Wright extols the virtues of the underused wild marjoram

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell’s deck-shoe shuffle

Travel

  • Emma Love sets sail on luxury yachts
  • Lauren Ho puts her best foot forward in Zambia
  • Pamela Goodman aces it

A little to the left

Being left-handed is no barrier to greatness, finds Bernard Bale

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 10, 2024

Donald Trumps small hands reach toward outstretched handcuffs.

The New Yorker (May 30, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features John Cuneo’s “A Man of Conviction” – The former President is found guilty on all thirty-four counts.

Trump Is Guilty, but Voters Will Be the Final Judge

The jury has convicted the former President of thirty-four felony counts in his New York hush-money trial. Now the American people will decide to what extent they care.

When the Verdict Came In, Donald Trump’s Eyes Were Wide Open

In the courtroom with the former President at the moment he became a convicted felon.