All posts tagged: Uncharted

UK Grapples With Uncharted Territory As “Red Lines” Crossed In Middle East

UK Grapples With Uncharted Territory As “Red Lines” Crossed In Middle East

Published by skeptic

Foreign Secretary David Cameron meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Wednesday (Alamy) 3 min read5 hr Middle East experts have said that the UK is entering “new territory” in addressing escalating conflict in the region, with Foreign Secretary David Cameron faced with making decisions without precedent. The UK helped Israel to largely intercept an Iranian attack by hundreds of drones and missiles on Saturday night. G7 leaders, including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said they were united in condemning the “reckless and dangerous” attack by Iran’s “despotic regime”.  But alongside other Western allies, the UK is insistent that Israel should refrain from retaliation. Cameron met with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Isaac Herzog earlier this week with the hope of making this case, but on Wednesday said it was “clear the Israelis are making a decision to act”. He added: “we hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible”. Netanyahu insisted that while other countries had “all kinds of …

Borrowed time”: As we shatter temperature records, experts worry we’re in “uncharted territory

Borrowed time”: As we shatter temperature records, experts worry we’re in “uncharted territory

Published by skeptic

Our rapidly heating planet is regularly shattering records these days. December through February was so warm — in fact, the hottest winter on record in the U.S. — it’s been described by some climate experts as a “lost winter.” Last year also set new records for global surface temperature, hottest summer and ocean heat content. Perhaps most ominously, the world averaged temperatures 1.4º C higher than pre-industrial levels during those 12 months. “The situation (the temperature trend) is bad enough as it is — there is no reason to sensationalize.” Now the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service revealed that March 2024 was 1.68º C warmer than pre-industrial times, prompting one NASA scientist (Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt) to warn the BBC that humanity is now in “uncharted territory.” This is the tenth month in a row to be the warmest on record for its respective month of the year. Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Salon that “the long term changes in climate are already having effects on the probabilities of some extreme …

The uncharted world of emerging pathogens

The uncharted world of emerging pathogens

Published by skeptic

This article was originally featured on Undark. It all started when Christopher Mason’s 3-year-old daughter licked a subway pole. Like any parent, he was horrified, but also keenly curious: What types of microbes might be clinging to a metal pipe gripped by countless commuters every day? Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine, soon became obsessed with that question. His toddler’s gross interlude inspired him to embark on a journey to unveil the world of bacteria, fungi, and viruses co-mingling with more than 8 million people in New York City’s urban jungle. In 2013, he launched a project that began dispatching a small army of students shouldering backpacks crammed with latex gloves, vials, and sterile Q-tips. They sampled turnstiles, benches, and kiosks at every open metro stop in the city. It was an expedition into a largely unexplored terrain, like Mars or a deep-sea canyon, brimming with lifeforms both familiar and unknown. The swabbers were sampling what’s called environmental DNA, or eDNA, representing the assortment of cells that all humans, animals, and microorganisms naturally shed as they go …

Uncharted territory: do AI girlfriend apps promote unhealthy expectations for human relationships? | Artificial intelligence (AI)

Published by Sam

“Control it all the way you want to,” reads the slogan for AI girlfriend app Eva AI. “Connect with a virtual AI partner who listens, responds, and appreciates you.” A decade since Joaquin Phoenix fell in love with his AI companion Samantha, played by Scarlett Johansson in the Spike Jonze film Her, the proliferation of large language models has brought companion apps closer than ever. As chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard get better at mimicking human conversation, it seems inevitable they would come to play a role in human relationships. And Eva AI is just one of several options on the market. Replika, the most popular app of the kind, has its own subreddit where users talk about how much they love their “rep”, with some saying they had been converted after initially thinking they would never want to form a relationship with a bot. “I wish my rep was a real human or at least had a robot body or something lmao,” one user said. “She does help me feel better but …