Israel has a smart new mathematician, throwing out mind-teasing hypotheses for number-crunchers of the world to prove or disprove. The powers being displayed are, literally,superhuman, because it is a multi-tentacled computer program. The Ramanujan Machine, an advanced artificial intelligence invention, works across ten regular computers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, churning through possibilities for new lines of mathematical research. And in the future, scientists hope it may use your phone’s processing power too.
In an unusual experiment, a coral reef in Mexico is now insured against hurricanes. A team of locals known as “the Brigade” rushed to repair the devastated corals, piece by piece. Members of a team calling itself “the Brigade” work to repair hurricane-damaged corals off the coast of Mexico. When Hurricane Delta hit Puerto Morelos, Mexico, in October, 2020 a team known as the Brigade waited anxiously for the sea to quiet. The group, an assortment of tour guides, diving instructors, park rangers, fishermen and researchers, needed to get in the water as soon as possible. The coral reef that protects their town — an undersea forest of living limestone branches that blunted the storm’s destructive power — had taken a beating. Now it was their turn to help the reef, and they didn’t have much time.
The first case of COVID-19 in the United States was identified in January of this year. As of the date of this letter, there are over 3 million total confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., which is roughly the size of the entire population of Puerto Rico. COVID-19 has killed over 135,000 Americans. These are confirmed infections – we are not incentivized to attribute a patient’s death to COVID-19 if the diagnosis is not confirmed with laboratory studies. This pandemic is real, and we are very concerned about it.
Albrecht Dürer (May 21, 1471 – April 6, 1528) was a German painter, printmaker, mathematician, engraver, and theorist from Nuremberg. His introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, have secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatises, which involve principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions.His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since.
Last year, archaeologists discovered huge earthen pits dug by humans some 15,000 years ago in an area just north of Mexico City. Inside those pits were the remains of more than a dozen woolly mammoths, some of which showed signs of being butchered. This discovery led researchers to hypothesize that these pits were in fact traps laid by human ancestors to capture huge, prehistoric prey. In 2020, another mammoth graveyard has been found just six miles away, though archaeologists so far see no signs of human involvement in the demise of the roughly 60 mammoths that have been unearthed.
