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
Many things go wrong when a human spends months alone in a dark cave. Time stills and the body’s rhythms go awry. Sleep withers to a few hours a night, and menstruation may come to a halt. Enthralling stories, like that of Spanish climber and cave-dweller Beatrice Flamini's, shed light on what motivates someone to become a cave dweller.Flamini's Life as a Cave DwellerOn April 14, Flamini emerged from a cave in the country after spending a record 500 days isolated underground, save for a “tec ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
