Despite having roamed the planet millions of years ago, thanks to advances in technology, dinosaurs aren’t as inscrutable today as they once were. And over the past decades, in addition to studying what they acted like, including their habits and diets, researchers have specialized in reconstructing and depicting what they looked like — all the way down to specific details like texture and color.But how do scientists go about pinpointing these details for creatures that died 65 million years ...read more
The seizures started when Samantha Gundel was just four months old. By her first birthday, she was taking a cocktail of three different anticonvulsant medicines. A vicious cycle of recurrent pneumonia, spurred on by seizure-induced inhalation of regurgitated food, landed the young toddler in and out of the hospital near her Westchester County home in New York State.Genetic testing soon confirmed her doctors’ suspicions: Samantha, now age 4, has Dravet syndrome, an incurable form of epilepsy. H ...read more
On 1 April, the Italian government banned ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence system that generates human-like text and computer code. ChatGPT is trained on massive amounts of data scraped off the internet and the Italian authorities were concerned that this constituted a breach of privacy for those who owned the data. The ban continues as it investigates further.But this ban has had an unintended consequence. One of the big questions about ChatGPT and other so-called large language models, is h ...read more
In June 2022, Pakistan started to receive an abnormal amount of rain. Within a month, the downpours had submerged substantial swaths of the country.Wherever the water accumulated, it brought destruction and death. And though the rain stopped several months ago, millions of people are still affected by its wreckage. With this in mind, what were the causes and the consequences of these floods, and what part, if any, did climate change play in the development of the disaster?What Were the Causes of ...read more
Hurricane season — from June through November in the Atlantic — is right around the corner. And while we won’t know the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) official predictions for another few weeks, that hasn’t stopped other long-range forecasters from staking their claims.In Colorado State University’s 2023 forecast are six hurricanes and two major hurricanes (meaning Category 3 or greater). Researchers at North Carolina State University tend to agree with that ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
