Developments You Overlooked During the Earthquake Process

The Kahramanmaraş earthquakes mobilized all of us and shifted our focus to the people affected by the earthquake. Numerous individuals, institutions and organizations are still working day and night in order to get over what happened.

In fact, when this unfortunate earthquake made a worldwide impact, many countries supported us and continue to do so. While the work in this area continues uninterruptedly, we have prepared a bulletin for the important developments around the world, which we have left behind by focusing on the earthquake agenda.

Let’s start with the developments in the world of artificial intelligence and technology.

ChatGPT’s mental age has been determined.

THE DECODER

A test by Stanford University psychologist Michal Kosinski resulted in ChatGPT performing at the level of a 9-year-old. The subject that ChatGPT was responsible for was “theory of mind”. This is roughly defined as “the ability to understand the states of other living things such as knowledge, emotions and beliefs”.

The study, which is still pending referee approval, has been published in ArXiv. The result of such a resounding language model is quite interesting.

Claims that “ChatGPT is banned in China”:

According to Nikkei Asia, technology companies in China are prohibited from providing ChatGPT-related services. The reason for this was cited as the fact that this US-based language model gave false information that could be harmful to sovereignty.

This information included sensitive and critical issues such as human rights violations against Uyghurs. In addition, a language model to rival ChatGPT is under development in China. As a result, companies are told not to use ChatGPT, rather than an official ban.

Books written by artificial intelligence language models fill the marketplaces.

Books written in different language models, especially ChatGPT, are sold in marketplaces such as Amazon, according to Reuters. In fact, Kindle, Amazon’s e-book service store, has featured more than 200 books written with artificial intelligence this month alone.

It was noteworthy that ChatGPT was among the authors of these books. This shows that artificial-intelligence-detection (?) tools have not reached the desired level yet.

We saw the value of artificial intelligence in these earthquakes.

xView2

The artificial intelligence system called xView2 was used in situations such as search and rescue and damage assessment after earthquakes in our country. Emerging from the blending of satellite data with machine learning, this system shows debris locations in satellite images with varying color intensities to show the severity of the debris.

In this context, the darker the color, the more serious the wreckage appears to be. The system, which has an accuracy rate of 85 to 90 percent, reduces operations that would normally take days to a few hours. Its only drawback is that it can only show the buildings from above, so it cannot provide information about the damage that occurred on the sides or under the building. Still, it’s no doubt speeding things up a lot.

Audio revolution in artificial intelligence: ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs, which makes it possible for you to make many people and characters say what you want with artificial intelligence, has brought famous names to the agenda with scandalous records. From this system, where quite entertaining content is extracted; For example, recordings that made a lot of noise, such as Emma Watson reading a section from Mein Kampf and Rick from Rick and Morty saying that he would be violent to his wife, appeared on 4chan.

These very realistic records indicate that the subject of deepfake will appear many times in the future. ElevenLabs, stating that certain measures are being worked on for the abuse of the system, preferred not to comment in response to Vice’s request.

Bard, Google’s weak AI breakthrough:

After the development of its rival ChatGPT to be integrated into Bing, Google, which started its breakthroughs, supports the Bard chatbot with the LaMDA language model. This system, which will be integrated with Google, will also be able to answer complex or specific questions.

Apart from this, different tools that will be integrated into the search engine will also present difficult to digest or long content to the user in an easy to consume form.

We will see Bard’s situation together against ChatGPT, which can write long codes, articles, books at once and is often preferred even though it has many problems.

The AI-controlled aircraft remained in the air for 17 hours.

DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) said in its announcement that it has developed an algorithm that will enable the F-16 aircraft to fly unmanned. In the test, the landings and take-offs of the F-16 were observed in different conditions. Apart from this, tests were also conducted to determine how much the pilots could rely on automation.

Apart from the very positive tests, it is also known that the USA has invested in different areas of defense. It is claimed that the country invests billions of dollars every year in the field of artificial intelligence.

Protein was produced from scratch with artificial intelligence.

Just as the information on the Internet is fed into ChatGPT, learning the amino acid sequences of some 280 million different proteins through machine learning has made it possible for scientists to produce proteins from scratch. The scientists, who had to wait a few weeks for the information to settle, then made the system ready by making the necessary adjustments and adding background information.

Testing 100 of the millions of sequences produced by the model, the scientists compared those in this group with those in nature. As a result of the sequences, 5 proteins emerged to be tested in the cell. These were also challenged with an enzyme in egg white. Two of them managed to break through the cell wall in a very similar way to the natural one.

In addition, even enzymes developed with artificial intelligence, which have a similarity rate of only 31.4 percent with other known enzymes, were able to show activity. This development is expected to reinvigorate the field of protein engineering.

A technology featured in the movie Avatar was used in disease detection.

The outfits used in productions such as Avatar, which allow tracking the movements of the actors, attracted the attention of researchers in the United Kingdom. Again, in tests involving artificial intelligence, the severity of genetic disorders was detected 2 times faster by British experts compared to doctors by monitoring body movements.

The head of the study, Doctor Valeria Ricotti, worked on this method for 10 years with a group of researchers. In this context, two studies were conducted on patients with Friedreich’s ataxia and DMD. This study, which has made quite a sound in the sector, can also be used in the follow-up of the healing process of diseases that affect the physical condition. For now, permission is awaited for this method to be used in the treatment of the two diseases we mentioned.

GM makes a self-erasing touchscreen.

Judging by the new patent obtained by General Motors, the company wants to integrate a technology in which touch screens are self-cleaning and free from fingerprints.

In addition to red, green and blue, the new screens to be produced will also have a purple-violet pixel type that the human eye cannot see. This pixel will initiate the necessary reaction to remove fingerprints on non-sunny days or when the windows are covered with film, so it will not matter day or night for the process.

New imaging method from MIT engineers:

In the new method of MIT engineers, which aims to go beyond the red, green and blue order that we are accustomed to from the pixels, a sharper image can be obtained with the diodes arranged vertically on top of each other.

With the new technology in question, familiar colors can be created and this new system with a width of 4 microns enables a density of 5,000 pixels per inch. The next goal of the research team is to make the control of pixels more efficient. For this, Jiho Shin from the research team stated that they need a system that can control 25 million LEDs separately and that they are working on this issue.

After the technology news, we continue with the science news.

The territory of malaria-carrying mosquitoes is expanding every year.

According to research published in Biology Letters, mosquitoes that carry malaria, primarily due to climate change, are expanding their territory by 4.7 kilometers each year. Colin Carlson of Georgetown University is leading the work. Studying the distribution of anopheles mosquitoes in Africa over the past 120 years, the research group included 22 species of anopheles in this study.

Then, the movements of this species between 1898 and 2016 were monitored. It turned out that the anopheles spread 4.7 kilometers south each year. In addition, this species, which was discovered to be able to rise at an altitude of 6.5 meters higher, is 500 kilometers closer to the South Pole in total and 700 meters higher than its original state, according to the research. Don’t think of it as leaving where they are and heading south. For it is diffusion rather than progress.

According to research, air pollution causes a decrease in blood pressure in young people.

A UK study based on teenagers reveals that high levels of nitrogen dioxide and liquid or solid particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers cause low blood pressure in teenagers.

In addition, it has been stated that exposure to these particles causes disruption of circadian rhythm in people, thus negatively affecting blood pressure. The study was published in PLOS ONE.

Again, in a study conducted in England, a method was discovered to reduce the emissions of the iron/steel industry.

In a study carried out by a research group from the University of Birmingham, Doctor Harriet Kildahl said that with the new method they found, they aimed to convert the carbon dioxide that emerged in the industrial process into carbon monoxide.

Said to be a thermochemical cycle, this change could reduce the massive emissions from iron/steel work by 88 percent. Not only in terms of environmentalism, it is stated that if the method in question can be implemented, it will both keep 1.28 billion pounds in pocket and reduce emissions by 2.9 percent in 5 years.

The effect of teaching early in the morning on students:

In a study conducted by experts from the University of Singapore, the effect of teaching early hours on university students was observed. University internet access data of 23 thousand 391 students were examined and their attendance to the courses was monitored. 10 percent lower attendance was detected in the lesson at 08:00 in the morning compared to the rest of the day.

Wearable devices were also involved, and students’ sleep patterns were also looked at. As a result, it was found that students were unable to wake up for approximately one-third of the classes at 08:00 in the morning.

The said data were also compared with the grades of 3,818 students, and it was found that the grades of the students who took classes in the morning were lower.

A company called Living Carbon has planted genetically modified ‘supertrees’.

Living Carbon

Drawing attention to the slow growth of trees and the need to store as much carbon as possible in a short time due to climate change, the company planted genetically modified trees that collect more carbon from the air than an ordinary tree. The trees in question are planted in suitable forest areas in the US states of Georgia and Pennsylvania.

The first 60,000 saplings are poplar trees that grow faster, are more resistant to heat and can store more carbon. The company aims to plant 4 million saplings of this type by the end of 2023.

Researchers have developed a paper-thin solar cell.

This tool, which has the potential to turn any ground into a power source, came from MIT engineers. These highly durable and flexible cells can play a critical role, especially for power loss in remote locations. Apart from that, they can generate power continuously in vehicles, clothes, ships and in different places.

Claimed to be more durable than their predecessors, these cells are made with nano-materials in the form of printable electronic ink. Fabric material is used to maintain durability.

An ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) patient broke the word record with a brain implant.

The previous record was 18 words per minute with an accuracy rate of 94.1 percent, this time it was 62 words per minute. This record, broken by a volunteer named Subject T12, is even more than 3 times the previous one. The natural speaking rate is normally known as 160 words per minute. This shows that the implants in question are getting better and better.

Traces of 3,000 years of brain surgery have been found in Israel.

According to the information given by archaeologists, the surgery performed on a male patient aimed to clean the skull fragments from the brain and reduce the head pressure as a result of a traumatic accident. In the shared study, it is stated that the person who underwent the surgery was between the ages of 20 and 40.

The name of the operation was angular notched trepanation. It is also stated in the study that the patient’s scalp was cut during the surgery and a piece of the bone in the front was taken with a sharp tool.

Method that can solve the heating problem of electronic devices more effectively: Hydrogel

In a study, the research team pointed out that the energy emitted from electronic devices is wasted in the form of heat, and the research team aims to prevent this waste by using hydrogel that absorbs moisture in the air.

According to the study, it is sufficient to place a hydrogel layer up to 1 millimeter thick on the heatsink, which we are familiar with from computers. This method is likened to the way human skin regulates it by sweating when it gets too hot. The fact that this method does not require a separate energy like liquid cooling and other methods and works passively all the time makes it more attractive.

There is also a development that will enable the efficient use of heat in the human body.

This pattern you see can be placed on the body as it is both soft and flexible. It can then convert the body’s heat into electrical energy. Tested outdoors with this device that is both long-lasting and virtually maintenance-free.

The cold (white) part of the device, which generates electricity with the temperature difference, was 8 degrees lower than the temperature of the environment, while the hot (black) parts were up to 14 degrees above the ambient temperature. In this way, there was a difference of 22 degrees, and the silicon cables took this heat and converted it into 6 microwatts of electricity per square meter.

NASA has developed a new rocket engine for distant voyages.

It is said that this engine, named RDRE (rotating detonation rocket engine), will also guide future designs. This model, which differs from other rockets with its “supersonic combustion” method, can produce more power with less fuel. For this reason, it is planned to be used in both manned missions and interplanetary travels.

We will see what kind of doors this new design will open for us, which has successfully passed the tests and produces huge amounts of power.

Earthquake agenda: