Amazing that these 'living fossils' survived in these small pockets of forest that are the only remnant of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. How many other endemic species are clinging on in tiny spots around the globe?
Latest Claude LLM writes passable drafts of product documentation, such as tutorials, so I expect similar impact for technical writers. In my tests, the code samples all worked on the first prompt. Verifying code samples is much faster than writing them, but that was my favorite part of the career.
Summary: 'A more efficient and environmentally friendly approach to extracting rare earth elements that power everything from electric vehicle batteries to smartphones could increase domestic supply and decrease reliance on costly imports.'
Summary: 'The very first cells obtained their energy from geochemical reactions. Researchers have now managed to recreate this ancient metabolic process in their laboratory.'
'The findings de-emphasize the importance of the prefrontal cortex in consciousness, suggesting that while it's important for reasoning and planning, consciousness itself may be linked with sensory processing and perception. In other words, intelligence is about doing while consciousness is about being.'
Summary: 'An experiment seven years in the making has uncovered new insights into the nature of consciousness and challenges two prominent, competing scientific theories: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT). The findings mark a pivotal moment in the goal to understand the elusive origins consciousness.'
Summary: 'Scientists have collaborated to analyze the inner workings of Bolivia's 'zombie' volcano, Uturuncu. By combining seismology, physics models and analysis of rock composition, researchers identify the causes of Uturuncu's unrest, alleviating fears of an imminent eruption.'
Summary: 'New research has revealed that a massive meteorite struck northwestern Scotland about 200 million years later than previously thought, in a discovery that not only rewrites Scotland's geological history but alters our understanding of the evolution of non-marine life on Earth.'
'This model not only challenges traditional distinctions between short-germ and long-germ development—terms that refer to how many segments are defined early in an embryo's life—but also reframes the role of well-known genetic regulators such as Hox genes in defining segment and tagma identity.'
'Female bonobos team up to suppress male aggression against them -- the first evidence of animals deploying this strategy. In 85% of observed coalitions, females collectively targeted males, forcing them into submission and shaping the group's dominance hierarchy. This is the first study to test drivers of female dominance in wild bonobos. The study examined 30 years of demographic and behavioral data across six wild bonobo communities. The study suggests that power isn't solely determined by physical strength. It can be driven by social intelligence and coalition-building by females.'
'A 113-million-year-old hell ant that once lived in northeastern Brazil is now the oldest ant specimen known to science, finds a new report. The hell ant, which was preserved in limestone, is a member of Haidomyrmecinae -- an extinct subfamily that only lived during the Cretaceous period. These ants had highly specialized, scythe-like jaws that they likely used to pin or impale prey.'
'Bite marks found on a skeleton discovered in a Roman cemetery in York have revealed the first archaeological evidence of gladiatorial combat between a human and a lion.'
'A new study found that some rattlesnakes are producing simpler venoms containing fewer and more focused toxin families than complex venoms -- a surprising discovery that challenges long-held ideas about how living alongside a variety of other species influences evolution in a world increasingly shaped by human activity.'
Pretty sure that we’re talking apples and oranges. Yes to the arbitrary byte sequences used by tokenizers, but that is not the topic of discussion. The question is will the tokenizer come up with words not in the training vocabulary. Word tokenizers don’t, but character tokenizers do.
Source: Generative Deep Learning by David Foster, 2nd edition, published in 2023. From “Tokenization” on page 134.
“If you use word tokens: …. willnever be able to predict words outside of the training vocabulary.”
"If you use character tokens: The model may generate sequences of characters that form words outside the training vocabulary."
'By comparing the genomes of parents to their children, the researchers could detect how often new mutations occurred and were passed down, a rate that Jorde says is as fundamental to understanding human biology as the speed of light is for understanding physics.'