Science

A new study based on the analysis of 370-year-old glass beads shows: indigenous communities were active in their “business operations” regardless of influences from Europe.

Glass beads made in cities such as Venice, Paris, Amsterdam and Rouen played an important role in establishing links between early European settlers and the communities that inhabited North America during the colonisation period. Most interestingly, analyses of more than 1,000 European-made beads from the western Great Lakes region have revealed: many of them predate the arrival of the first missionaries in the area.

The chemical similarities between these beads and those found as far away as Ontario indicate that they were traded between the indigenous peoples of the two regions without European involvement.

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Built on OpenAI’s GPT-4 and trained on thousands of documents from Cheyenne City Council meetings, the bot was developed by local librarian Victor Miller.

Miller and his brainchild already have political opponents, notably Secretary of State Chuck Gray. The latter believes that only humans should be allowed to participate in elections.

VIC is not the first attempt to include AI in politics. Back in 2022, a new political group called “Synthetic Party” emerged in Denmark, which promoted an AI chatbot called “Leader Lars” as the nominal leader of the party.

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Now failure has befallen Fisker, which produces a single model – an electric crossover called Ocean. As noted in the agency, the production of cars in the Austrian Graz was stopped, part of the company’s staff was made redundant, and the designer was forced to put up for sale his own house.

Reuters specifies that the production of Ocean stopped in the spring because of the inability of Fisker to pay the bills. Losses of the company only for the last quarter of last year are estimated at 463 million dollars, and despite the dismissal of staff, Fisker expected that the investor will be found, as there were talks with four major concerns. Nissan was rumoured to be one of the contenders to acquire the company, but no deal was struck.

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As the researchers noted, they used the available data to identify the parts of the human genome associated with whether a person would be inclined to drink coffee. After that, they identified directly the genes and biological processes that might underlie this habit.

The final analysis included data from the UK Biobank, as well as US-based DNA diagnostic company 23andMe. Scientists found a direct link between gene variants and coffee consumption, but many of these genes were also associated with an increased risk of obesity and to substance abuse.

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The principle of operation of organoids is similar to the functioning of an ordinary computer chip. They receive and send signals through neurons, which act like electric circuits. However, living neurons consume 1 million times less energy compared to digital processors.

The experts cultured the stem cells for a month until they formed neuron-like elements. Mini-brain was formed from 10 thousand living neurons with a diameter of approximately 0.5 mm.

Organoids were “trained” with the help of dopamine. After the correct fulfilment of the task, they received as a reward a stream of chemical substance. In addition, the mini-brain was surrounded by 8 electrodes and current was passed through them to influence the neuron. The electrodes carried out stimulation as well as recording the information being processed.

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