All posts tagged: Longlost

Van Gogh Museum Denies Attribution for Long-Lost Portrait

Van Gogh Museum Denies Attribution for Long-Lost Portrait

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam said on Friday that a long-lost portrait was, in fact, not by Vincent van Gogh, contradicting a 458-page report by the New York–based firm LMI Group International that claimed it was by the famed painter. The painting in question, titled Elimar (1889), depicts a fisherman with a round hat on his head and a pipe in his mouth. The fisherman appears transfixed as he repairs his net near a shore. The word “Elimar,” presumed to be the man’s name, is scrawled in the lower righthand corner. LMI Group said that the portrait would have been created while van Gogh was at the Saint-Paul psychiatric sanitarium in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. Van Gogh had checked himself into the sanitarium; he remained there from May 1889 and May 1890. Related Articles To assess the painting, LMI Group assembled a team of roughly 20 experts from a variety of fields, including chemists, curators, and patent lawyers. In 2019, the firm paid an undisclosed sum for the work, purchasing it from an anonymous antiques collector who found it …

Introducing AI’s long-lost twin: Engineered intelligence

Introducing AI’s long-lost twin: Engineered intelligence

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More We are on the brink of a fourth AI winter, as faith has begun to waver that AI will produce enough tangible value to justify its cost. As articles from Goldman Sachs and other research institutes fall like so many leaves, there is still time to thwart this next AI winter, and the answer has been right in front of us for years. There’s something missing With most scientific disciplines, breakthroughs are made in laboratories, then handed off to engineers to turn into real-world applications. When a team of chemical researchers discover a new way to form an adhesive bond, that discovery is handed over to chemical engineers to engineer products and solutions. Breakthroughs from mechanical physicists are transitioned to mechanical engineers to engineer solutions. When a breakthrough is made in AI, however, there is no distinct discipline for applied artificial intelligence, leading to organizations investing in hiring data scientists who earned their PhD with the …

How to reconnect with long-lost friends, according to science

How to reconnect with long-lost friends, according to science

Contacting someone you haven’t spoken to in a while can be daunting ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images We often fear that long-lost friends wouldn’t want to hear from us or that reaching out would be awkward. Now, scientists have come up with an approach to ease our anxieties around making contact. “People aren’t averse to the idea of reconnection, they’re just worried about the risk of doing it,” says Lara Aknin at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. “They don’t want to be the one who sticks their neck out to initiate… Source link

Researchers uncover the long-lost secrets of major biblical events

Researchers uncover the long-lost secrets of major biblical events

Archaeologists used the power of radiocarbon dating to unveil the truth behind events chronicled in Biblical texts. (CREDIT: PLOS) Archaeologists have long sought to bridge the gap between the narratives of ancient texts and the tangible evidence hidden beneath the earth’s surface. In a groundbreaking study published in the prestigious PLOS ONE scientific journal, archaeologists have harnessed the power of radiocarbon dating to unveil the truth behind events chronicled in Biblical texts, particularly those centered around the enigmatic ancient Levantine city of Gezer. This captivating journey through time takes us back to the heart of Gezer, an archaeological site nestled in the historic landscapes of Israel. For centuries, Gezer has captivated the imagination of scholars and theologians alike, with its mention in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Biblical texts. Map showing location of the city of Gezer with respect to other important cities and Jerusalem. (CREDIT: holylandphotos.org) In this narrative, we explore how radiocarbon dating has shed new light on this ancient city’s tumultuous history, confirming some long-held beliefs while challenging others. Radiocarbon Dating: A Window into …

A ‘bionic eye’ scan of an ancient, scorched scroll points to Plato’s long-lost gravesite

A ‘bionic eye’ scan of an ancient, scorched scroll points to Plato’s long-lost gravesite

A research team’s “bionic eye” deciphered thousands of new words hidden within an ancient scroll carbonized during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius—and the new text points to the long-lost, potential final resting place of the philosopher Plato. The 1,800-scroll collection, located in the estate now known as the “Villa of the Papyri,” was almost instantaneously incinerated during the historic Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 CE, before being buried in layers of pumice and ash. The latest discovery is part of ongoing global efforts focused on the ancient Greek library believed to belong to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. Although rediscovered in 1792, the trove of text remained almost entirely inaccessible due to the carbonized parchment’s fragility and blackened writing. In recent years, however, contributors to projects like the Vesuvius Challenge have worked to finally reveal the charred artifacts’ potentially invaluable information. In February, the project’s organizers announced that a team successfully translated 2,000 characters within a scroll through a combination of machine learning software and computer vision programming. Now, a separate group’s “bionic eye” has uncovered even …

The underwater hunt for the Camargo, a long-lost U.S. slaving ship

The underwater hunt for the Camargo, a long-lost U.S. slaving ship

ANGRA DOS REIS, Brazil — Gilson Rambelli motored out into the dark waters, thinking of the crime that had haunted him for years. The evidence of it was down there, in the bay’s depths. That was where the researcher believed he’d find the Camargo, the long-lost slave ship of Nathaniel Gordon, the only person ever executed in the United States for the crime of trafficking enslaved Africans. As dense clouds muffled the December morning sky, Rambelli and his research team approached a small island off the coastline of Rio de Janeiro state. There wasn’t much to distinguish it from the dozens of others dotting this vast bay. But it was here that the crew dropped anchor. “This is it,” Rambelli said. For decades, Rambelli and others have researched the shipwreck. According to contemporaneous accounts, Gordon sailed his American-made vessel into Brazilian waters in December 1852. As authorities closed in on him, Gordon sold his “cargo” — more than 500 enslaved Mozambicans — to the coffee plantations in the mountains beyond. Then he burned and sank …

Scientists uncover long-lost secrets of major biblical events

Scientists uncover long-lost secrets of major biblical events

Archaeologists have harnessed the power of radiocarbon dating to unveil the truth behind events chronicled in Biblical texts. (CREDIT: PLOS) Archaeologists have long sought to bridge the gap between the narratives of ancient texts and the tangible evidence hidden beneath the earth’s surface. In a groundbreaking study published in the prestigious PLOS ONE scientific journal, archaeologists have harnessed the power of radiocarbon dating to unveil the truth behind events chronicled in Biblical texts, particularly those centered around the enigmatic ancient Levantine city of Gezer. This captivating journey through time takes us back to the heart of Gezer, an archaeological site nestled in the historic landscapes of Israel. For centuries, Gezer has captivated the imagination of scholars and theologians alike, with its mention in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Biblical texts. Map showing location of the city of Gezer with respect to other important cities and Jerusalem. (CREDIT: holylandphotos.org) In this narrative, we explore how radiocarbon dating has shed new light on this ancient city’s tumultuous history, confirming some long-held beliefs while challenging others. Radiocarbon Dating: A Window …

Billie Eilish’s Long-Lost Choir Teacher Speaks Out After Oscars Speech

Billie Eilish’s Long-Lost Choir Teacher Speaks Out After Oscars Speech

Billie Eilish’s Oscar Speech Shout-Out Speaks Up Before the Oscar ceremony, an announcer begged nominees not to waste airtime by name-checking their agents and publicists in their speeches — but nobody said anything about thanking old choir teachers. “Ms. Brigham, thanks for believing in me,” Billie Eilish gushed while accepting the trophy for best original song, adding cryptically, “Ms. T, you didn’t like me, but you were good at your job.” Although Ms. T’s identity remains a mystery, Rambling Reporter was able to track down Mandy Brigham, the aforementioned (and now retired) teacher who schooled 8-year-old Eilish on songbird stylings at Los Angeles Children’s Chorus back when she began attending in 2010. “I wasn’t watching the Oscars,” Brigham confesses. “I was at the tennis matches at the Indian Wells Open. And then I started to get text messages. More text messages than I’ve ever received in my life.” Not surprisingly, Brigham says she was “flabbergasted” by Eilish’s shout-out — “I never expected anything like that would ever happen to me” — adding that she was …

Paul McCartney reunited with long-lost bass guitar, stolen in 1972

Paul McCartney reunited with long-lost bass guitar, stolen in 1972

LONDON — For decades, the fate of Paul McCartney’s bass guitar baffled the music world. Heard in recordings of some of the most famous Beatles hits, including “Love Me Do” and “Twist and Shout,” the bass guitar had been lost since it was stolen in 1972 without a trace. Beatles fans flocked to help track down the guitar — and return it to its famous owner — as part of a project set up to solve the mystery. “Following the launch of last year’s Lost Bass project, Paul’s 1961 Höfner 500/1 bass guitar, which was stolen in 1972, has been returned,” a statement published on McCartney’s website said Thursday. McCartney, it added, “is incredibly grateful to all those involved.” Organizers of the crowdsourcing endeavor, known as the Lost Bass Project that was set up in 2018 to find the missing instrument, said they were “thrilled” by the news and “proud that we played a major role” in its rediscovery. “It has been a dream since 2018 that it could be done. Despite many telling us …

This long-lost, earliest MS-DOS precursor was discovered in a floppy disk collection

This long-lost, earliest MS-DOS precursor was discovered in a floppy disk collection

Although long-abandoned for far more advanced successors, MS-DOS remains a pivotal piece of computer history. Released to the public on the very first IBM Personal Computers back in 1980, MS-DOS quickly became a standard operating system within the growing PC market throughout the ensuing decade. While many versions are still preserved on their original floppy disks, a new archival discovery appears to be the influential program’s earliest known forerunner still in existence. As recently spotted by The Register and Ars Technica, “vintage code enthusiast” and flight simulator designer Gene Buckle recently unearthed a 86-DOS version 0.1-C floppy disk, reportedly the operating system’s oldest known, still accessible iteration—one that predates even the earliest public version of MS-DOS. [Related: Yes, the Pentagon still uses floppy disks for nuclear launches.] Contrary to what many may think, MS-DOS wasn’t actually the creation of Microsoft—the then-newcomers licensed the disk system from a company called Seattle Computer Products (SCP) in 1981. Before Microsoft’s “MS-DOS” rebrand, SCP first called their OS “Quick’n’Dirty Operating System” (QDOS), but soon swapped over to the more …