'Blatant Moral Hypocrisy': ICC Prosecutor Requests Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, Hamas Leaders

Can America Afford a Cold War With China?

The impact of war on the migration of an endangered species has been revealed for the first time. The study looked at the migration of the greater spotted eagle through Ukraine, before and after it was invaded by Russia back in 2022.The investigation into the effects of war came about unexpectedly, as the team from the University of East Anglia (UEA), the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), and the Estonian University of Life Sciences were already studying these birds before the invasion began in February. They had initially been investigating the influence of disruptive weather events including drought, destruction of habitats, and changing land use, and then human conflict got added to the list.In total, 19 greater spotted eagles had been fitted with GPS tracking devices as part of the research, and this revealed that they were exposed to multiple conflict events during their journey through Ukraine from March through to April. Warfare included artillery fire, jets, and tanks, as well as unprecedented movement of people as civilians were displaced and soldiers moved through the landscape.The results showed that the eagles were having to make big deviations from their ordinary migratory route, spending less time at refueling sites in Ukraine, or failing to stop at them at all. From 2018 – 2021, 90 percent of the birds were stopping at refueling sites, but after the invasion, this dropped down to just 30 percent.Fewer birds were stopping to refuel after the war began.Image credit: Charlie RusselMigrating males moved more slowly, and on average the eagles were traveling an extra 85 kilometers (53 miles) to reach the breeding grounds. That amounted to a pre-conflict migration time of around 193 hours for females jumping to 246 hours, meanwhile, males jumped from 125 hours to 181 hours.The combination of longer flying times and fewer opportunities to stop off for food makes it likely that the birds’ fitness is impacted, which – considering the journey is made ahead of the breeding season – could have a very negative impact on an already endangered species.“The war in Ukraine has had a devastating impact on people and the environment,” said the study’s lead author Charlie Russell, a postgraduate researcher in the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA, in a statement. “Our findings provide a rare window into how conflicts affect wildlife, improving our understanding of the potential impacts of exposure to such events or other extreme human activities that are difficult to predict or monitor.”“These types of disturbances can have significant impacts on the behaviour, and potentially fitness of the eagles. For individuals breeding in these areas, or other species that are less able to respond to disturbance, the impacts are likely to be much greater."The study is published in Current Biology.

Google, perhaps feeling it has been left behind in the artificial intelligence (AI) arena, has made a number of updates in the last year in attempt to compete with smaller firms like OpenAI. The latest move has been a rollout of "AI overviews" to topics you are searching for. Instead of the usual list of websites, users – starting in the US – may see an AI overview of the topic at the top of their search results, summarizing the topic.    IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.The move is not without controversy. Not because of fears of rogue AIs or other speculation about artificial general intelligence (AGI) etc, but for similar reasons that creatives have protested against large language models and image generating AIs, which have been trained on human work. Previously when you googled something (should you shower in the morning or evening, for example) you would be met with a list of algorithmically selected web pages, which you would then click on to learn more. These articles have (generally) been written by humans, and clicking on them and reading the content allows these humans to make money for their work (e.g. through advertising revenue or subscription models), as well as be credited for it. Now you may be met with an AI summary (with all the hallucinations and errors they still produce) made through training on other people's work. "AI Overviews show links to resources that support the information in the snapshot, and explore the topic further. This allows people to dig deeper and discover a diverse range of content from publishers, creators, retailers, businesses, and more, and use the information they find to advance their tasks," Google explains of the update. "Google's systems automatically determine which links appear."The AI will present you with a link, but there are concerns that people will simply read the overview and leave, cutting off a vital revenue stream for people and companies writing about these topics. Though we're certain tech bros will celebrate that, AI models rely on having human-created text for training. Feed them too much AI-generated content to learn from, and the whole model could collapse."Our primary conclusion across all scenarios is that without enough fresh real data in each generation of an autophagous loop, future generative models are doomed to have their quality (precision) or diversity (recall) progressively decrease," one team looking into such a scenario wrote in a yet-to-be-reviewed paper posted to preprint server arXiv. "We term this condition Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD), making analogy to mad cow disease."From a user perspective, all you may be interested in is getting useful information. But AI models are not quite up to the task, still regularly hallucinating. Users have reported finding these errors with Google's AI overview, including the AI assuming an iconic quote from literary classic Of Mice and Men was from an episode of zombie TV show The Walking Dead, claiming that fish lay their eggs at temperatures which would cook them, and suggesting that fish suck pacifiers that fall into their aquarium as practice for breastfeeding.    IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Unfortunately for any Google users who are not fans, there is currently no way to turn off the AI assistant. However, you can select the "web" tab (sometimes hidden under "more" on the options) if you only want to see results from humans, who are hopefully a little more aware of the fact that fish are not huge breastfeeders. The function is currently being rolled out in the US, with plans for further rollouts to the rest of the world in the coming months.

Sarcasm is so easy to convey via text. Nothing’s easier. If this sarcastic statement wasn’t apparent, then perhaps there’s a reason why researchers are trying to develop new algorithms to better detect it.Even in person, some sarcastic verbal statements can be tricky to pick up on. That’s because sarcasm is used to convey something other than the literal meaning of the sentence – in most cases, the meaning of the sarcastic statement is the opposite of what has actually been said.If we find it difficult to always detect sarcasm or irony, computers have an even harder time. The subtle changes in tone that convey it confuse computer algorithms, which limits virtual assistants and content analysis tools.Now a team of researchers have developed a multimodal algorithm that is better equipped to deal with our ironic or sarcastic turns of phrase. It does so by examining multiple aspects of audio recordings that help it hone its accuracy.Typically, sarcasm detection algorithms rely on a single parameter to produce their results, which is the main reason why they often miss the mark. To overcome this, the researchers used two complementary approaches – emotional recognition using audio recordings and sentiment analysis that relies on text. Together, these approaches provide a more complete picture of what is going on.“We extracted acoustic parameters such as pitch, speaking rate, and energy from speech, then used Automatic Speech Recognition to transcribe the speech into text for sentiment analysis,” Xiyuan Gao of the Speech Technology Lab at the University of Groningen, Campus Fryslân said in a statement.“Next, we assigned emoticons to each speech segment, reflecting its emotional content. By integrating these multimodal cues into a machine learning algorithm, our approach leverages the combined strengths of auditory and textual information along with emoticons for a comprehensive analysis.”You may be thinking “yeah, this is so useful” (sarcasm or sincerity?), but the team believes the algorithm has value beyond simply identifying wit.“The development of sarcasm recognition technology can benefit other research domains using sentiment analysis and emotion recognition,” Gao added. “Traditionally, sentiment analysis mainly focuses on text and is developed for applications such as online hate speech detection and customer opinion mining. Emotion recognition based on speech can be applied to AI-assisted health care. Sarcasm recognition technology that applies a multimodal approach is insightful to these research domains.”Gao and the rest of the team are confident that their algorithm will perform well, but they are already exploring ways to improve it.“There are a range of expressions and gestures people use to highlight sarcastic elements in speech,” said Gao. “These need to be better integrated into our project. In addition, we would like to include more languages and adopt developing sarcasm recognition techniques.”If the team’s algorithm works, perhaps one day we will all be free to confidently express our sarcasm without fear we will be seen as genuine. :PThe work was presented on Thursday, May 16 as part of a joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Canadian Acoustical Association.

BepiColombo will be the first mission to Mercury in a decade, a joint collaboration between the European and Japanese space agencies ESA and JAXA. But almost a month ago, the mission team discovered a glitch that is causing a lack of power in its thrusters, potentially putting the mission in jeopardy.BepiColombo is three spacecraft in one. Two parts are satellites that will be deployed in orbit around Mercury in late 2025. They are the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Mio, the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The third one is the Mercury Transfer Module, which is taking everyone on board on their long complex trajectory to the innermost planet.To travel inwards, spacecraft need to lose speed, and that means using planets’ gravity and accurate burns to be in the right place at the right speed. This path actually caused BepiColombo to be mistaken momentarily for a dangerous asteroid ready to hit Earth.One of the maneuvers the spacecraft needed to do required a burn on April 26. However, the Transfer Module was not able to deliver enough electrical power to the spacecraft’s thrusters. This was a major problem – it took almost two weeks for an ESA team, working with the mission’s industrial partners, to work out the issue and apply a solution. Unfortunately, it is not a complete solution.By May 7, BepiColombo’s thrust was back to 90 percent of its original level, but they are yet to restore full thrust. The spacecraft is on schedule to do three flybys of Mercury over the space of five months, and while 90 percent is still enough to guarantee a rendezvous with the littlest planet, there are concerns for further down the line.  The mission team is now working in parallel on two issues: Understanding how the current propulsion levels might affect the upcoming maneuvers, and working out what exactly happened to the thrusters. The goal is to ideally restore the thrusters to the original power level, but if that won’t be possible, to deliver the maximum available power to the thruster.  The first flyby coming up is on September 5, and BepiColombo will stay pretty close to the planet ready for its following flyby on December 2. The final flyby will take place on January 9, 2025. Then the spacecraft will separate and enter into orbit on December 5, 2025, for the beginning of the scientific mission. 

In 1982, an ancient burial site was discovered by accident during the construction of a new road. The operator of a digger noticed skulls collecting in the machinery, triggering an excavation and investigation, uncovering over 177 human remains that date back 7,000 to 8,000 years ago.The peat-bottomed pond in what’s now known as Florida preserved the corpses so well that some were even found with brain tissue still present. Once thought to be incredibly rare, new research challenges the view that brains don’t preserve well, revealing we’ve found a great abundance of preserved human brains, sometimes with the once-squishy think organ being the only soft tissue still standing in an otherwise skeletonized body.The Windover bog bodiesThe Windover archaeological site has yielded around 177 bog bodies, making it one of North America’s most significant bog body sites ever discovered. The bodies appear to be related, as indicated by a shared allele in a highly variable part of the genome that scientists discovered when analyzing DNA from the remains. The conditions of the bog preserved the remains so well that Windover is considered the most extensively characterized wet site with regards to ancient human DNA.The Windover bog bodies were mostly buried in a flexed position on their sides, sinking to a depth of around 1 meter (3 feet) where they would sit undisturbed for 7,000-8,000 years. Excavations from 1984 to 1987 yielded the skeletal remains of 177 individuals, spanning all ages, and half of whom still had parts of their brains by the time they were retrieved.How did the Windover bog bodies remain so well preserved?Bogs are uniquely good at preserving remains, sometimes turning up bodies so fresh that they get mixed up with modern-day murders. The water chemistry at Windover was found to be a crucial part of what preserved the remains for so long, containing lots of minerals and being anaerobic within a few centimeters below the surface. Combined, these factors inhibit the kind of bacterial and fungal decomposition of tissues we typically see with dead bodies out in the open.The host of organisms that flock to a freshly dead corpse is known as the decomposition ecosystem, and insects are a crucial part of it. Want to learn how we’ve turned our knowledge of corpse-feeding insects to science’s favor? Tune in to CURIOUS Live where we’ll be speaking to Dr Erica McAlister and Adrian Washbourne all about the intriguing field of forensic entomology.

“Elite” already possesses magnetic energy and other forms of free energy, but everything is kept secret. They have scientific data that would soon bring happiness to the whole earth, but they do not want to share them. Energy is one of the means by which people can be mastered and controlled very easily. In 1997, a stunning book titled The Day After Roswell, written by Philip Corso was published. Colonel Philip J. Corso, intelligence officer, a member of the US National Security Council and head of the US Territorial Army Department of Technology, has had a military career for more… This premium content is for PLUS+ members only. Visit the site and log in/register to read. The post Down the rabbit hole: UAPs, Roswell, greys, reptilians and Tesla`s death ray appeared first on Anomalien.com.

A family picnic in the woods of northern California turned into an extraordinary encounter with what is believed to be Bigfoot. The incident, reported by a man identified only as Mark, occurred on August 2nd, 2022, near a quiet town in northern California. Mark, along with his wife and young daughter, had just bought fresh produce from a local farmer’s market before heading to a nearby forest for a relaxing picnic among the flowers. As they were setting up lunch, Mark’s daughter ran off to explore and play among the trees. Approximately fifteen minutes later, the tranquility was shattered by a piercing scream, prompting both parents to dash toward the source, fearing the worst. What they discovered would etch itself into their memories forever. There, sitting calmly on a tree log, was their daughter, seemingly at ease. However, next to her was a colossal, hairy figure. “She seemed completely relaxed and content but next to her was an enormous hairy creature that was easily seven or eight feet tall even while crouching,” Mark recounted. Describing the creature, Mark mentioned it was bipedal, covered in brown hair, and appeared to be playfully interacting with his daughter. Despite the creature’s intimidating size, the girl showed no signs of fear and did not attempt to flee. “It’s almost like the pair were playing a game of copycat, both tilting their heads and scratching their cheeks in turn,” said Mark. He also noted that the creature emitted low, rumbling grunts, almost as if it were laughing. When the girl finally noticed her parents, she ran over to them, and the creature, standing up to its full height, stared at the family briefly before retreating back into the forest. Despite several subsequent visits to the same location, neither Mark nor his wife ever encountered the creature again. This event, while lacking concrete evidence, adds another chapter to the ongoing lore of Bigfoot sightings in the region. The post Father reports daughter’s encounter with Bigfoot in California forest appeared first on Anomalien.com.

You can tell Politico is firmly on the Left by how outraged it is by "ultra-conservatives" limiting abortions in red states. Politico's Magazine posted an article by freelancer Cassidy Randall reporting on the alleged craziness of northern Idaho. No one expects this kind of an article from the congressional districts of "Squad" members. The headline:  North Idaho Has Drifted to the Extreme Right. One Republican Thinks It’s Hit Its Limit. One candidate is testing the power of a moderate coalition to stand up to extremism in a region that has been powerless to its advance. Including the headline, Politico offered 28 uses of "extreme," "extremist," or "extremism" on the right, and 14 uses of "far right." This does include the uses in quotes, which are selected by the reporter. They saved "ultra-conservative" for tweets:  Ultra-conservative policy on a range of issues like abortion dominates in north Idaho — but this Republican candidate thinks a new moderate coalition is ready to take a stand against extremism in his own party.https://t.co/RI82aKSoP7 — POLITICO Magazine (@POLITICOMag) May 19, 2024 Sometimes, the "far-right" and the "extremist" would overlap....suggesting overkill. "The political shift happening in north Idaho is taking place just as the rest of the country is seeing increasing extremism in state legislatures and far-right brinksmanship in Congress." (Politico links to The New Yorker!) The star of this story is Jim Woodward, a state senator who beat his rival Scott Herndon in 2018. But in 2022, Herndon ran again, and it "became personal and attack-driven, with mailers and local ads calling Woodward 'Liberal Jim,' showing him wearing a mask, claiming he would 'control your kids by turning schools into ‘woke’ indoctrination centers' and that he supported critical race theory and allowing transgender children to compete in school sports." Woodward told Politico he was blindsided by the “the viciousness of it.” He "hadn’t campaigned all that hard in retaliation, figuring that as the four-year incumbent in a small community, people knew him well enough to dismiss Herndon’s claims." Politico accepts Woodward at face value, but Herndon's website lists Woodward's liberal votes. So what about people who support abortion on demand, at any time and for any reason? Isn't that extreme? Not to Politico or Democrat donor Cassidy Randall. They're presented as "left-leaning."  Openly working across party lines is a fraught venture on both sides — which is why, says Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman, Idaho state director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, the trend is mostly underground. “Moderate Republicans may not think that left-leaning support will help their cause, and left-leaning organizations don’t want to hurt the chances of a moderate Republican by being public with their support,” she says.  In liberal-media reports, it has forever been the case that you can be somehow a "moderate Republican" who's totally pro-abortion. Being extremist in favor of abortion is popular, they say!  “People are starting to see that reproductive rights are wildly popular,” DelliCarpini-Tolman continued.  How can you be an "extremist" if you're wildly popular? Welcome to the liberal media.