Tuesday, July 2, 2024

The Obtain: Saving seals with synthetic snow, and AI’s results on politics

For millennia, throughout Finland’s blistering winters, wind drove snow into meters-high snowbanks alongside Lake Saimaa’s shoreline, providing prime actual property from which seals carved cave-like dens to shelter from the weather and lift newborns.

However in current many years, these snowdrifts have didn’t kind in enough numbers, as local weather change has introduced warming temperatures and rain instead of snow, decimating the seal inhabitants.

For the final 11 years, people have stepped in to assemble what nature can not reliably present. Human-made snowdrifts, constructed utilizing handheld snowplows, now home 90% of seal pups. They’re the most recent in a raft of measures which have introduced Saimaa’s seals again from the brink of extinction. Learn the complete story.

—Matthew Ponsford

Matthew’s story is from the following journal challenge of MIT Expertise Overview, set to go dwell this Wednesday April 24, on the theme of Construct. When you don’t already, subscribe now to get a duplicate when it lands.

Politics within the AI period

2024 is a banner yr for elections internationally, and it arrives simply as AI advances come thick and quick. This collision of occasions raises a vital query: how will the rise of AI change politics?

Be a part of MIT Expertise Overview Editor in Chief Mat Honan and Government Editor Amy Nordrum for a LinkedIn Reside occasion the place they’ll discover the impression of political influencers and deepfakes, and unpack trade insights and predictions. Register right here to tune in at 1pm ET tomorrow.

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