These indirect systems rely on a combination of field sampling—foresters roaming among the trees to measure their height and diameter—and remote sensing technologies like lidar scanners, which can be flown over the forests on airplanes or drones and used to measure treetop height along lines of flight. This approach has worked well in North America […]

“We’ve been really pushing on ‘thinking,’” says Jack Rae, a principal research scientist at DeepMind. Such models, which are built to work through problems logically and spend more time arriving at an answer, rose to prominence earlier this year with the launch of the DeepSeek R1 model. They’re attractive to AI companies because they can […]

The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub is a small office in the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy that tracks and counters foreign disinformation campaigns.  In shutting R/FIMI, the department’s controversial acting undersecretary, Darren Beattie, is delivering a major win to conservative critics who have alleged that it censors conservative voices. Created […]

The volunteers running the experiment were not completely hands-off. Submitted ideas were screened according to a moderation policy, and redundant ideas were not posted. Ford says that 51% of ideas were published, and 31% were deemed redundant. About 6% of ideas were not posted because they were either completely off-topic or contained a personal attack. […]

Yet, broad adoption of this advanced automation has lagged. “That’s not necessarily or just a technology gap,” says John Hart, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Production Technologies at MIT. “It relates to workforce capabilities and financial commitments and risk required.” For small and medium enterprises, and those with brownfield […]

1. Sophie and Martin are at the 2012 Gordon Research Conference on the Biology of Aging in Ventura, California. It is a foggy February weekend. Both are disappointed about how little sun there is on the California beach. They are two graduate students—Sophie in her sixth and final year, Martin in his fourth—who have traveled […]

Since Donald Trump announced his plans for sweeping tariffs last week, the vibes have been, in a word, chaotic. Markets have seen one of the quickest drops in the last century, and it’s widely anticipated that the global economic order may be forever changed.   While many try not to look at the effects on their […]