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01 / 05
Ancestry.com Uses AI to Boost Black Family Trees

Axios | Scientific Research

Ancestry.com Uses AI to Boost Black Family Trees

“This week, Ancestry is making available newspaper records from before 1870 connected to more than 183,000 enslaved people, Nicka Sewell-Smith, Ancestry’s senior story producer and genealogist, tells Axios…

Users can visit Ancestry’s new landing page dedicated to enslavement records and either search by name or explore a state with the most records. AI will comb through the once-hard-to-search records of newspapers for names of enslaved people, connecting names in Ancestry’s other databases of probate documents to piece together puzzles.”

From Axios.

CNN | Scientific Research

First Words Decoded in 2,000-Year-Old Charred Scroll

“Scholars are decoding an ancient scroll that was one of hundreds charred to a crisp during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

The artifact, which is kept at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries in the United Kingdom, is the fifth intact Herculaneum scroll to be virtually unrolled as part of the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition designed to accelerate the deciphering of the scrolls that form an unprecedented cache of information about ancient Rome and Greece.

Using artificial intelligence and other computer-based techniques to piece together the scroll and enhance the ink, the Vesuvius Challenge team has successfully generated the first images of text inside the scroll, known as PHerc. 172. The library group said Wednesday that it has begun to interpret the columns of text. 

One of the first words to be translated was the ancient Greek διατροπή, meaning ‘disgust,’ which appears twice within a few columns of text, the Bodleian Libraries said.”

From CNN.

Live Science | Science & Technology

New AI-Designed Material Is as Light as Foam but Strong as Steel

“Scientists have used artificial intelligence (AI) to design never-before-seen nanomaterials with the strength of carbon steel and the lightness of styrofoam.

The new nanomaterials, made using machine learning and a 3D printer, more than doubled the strength of existing designs. The scientists behind the new study said they could be used in stronger, lighter and more fuel-efficient components for airplanes and cars. They published their findings Jan. 23 in the journal Advanced Materials.”

From Live Science.

World Bank | Adoption of Technology

Senegal Closing on Universal Electricity Access

“Khady’s story reflects Senegal’s broader journey toward universal electricity access. The country has made significant strides, with a national access rate of 84% according to government sources. This progress has transformed millions of lives, yet the journey is far from over. While urban areas enjoy near-universal access, over 30 % of rural communities remain disconnected from the grid.”

From World Bank.

The Economist | Agriculture

Heritable Agriculture Is Bringing AI to Crop Breeding

“Crop breeding remains a fiddly business. Plant geneticists must decide which traits they are looking for, cross plants which appear to possess them, run a series of field trials and wait to see if their new plants are an improvement. The interplay between a plant’s genes and the weather, the soil condition and scores of other environmental variables in which it grows, are complex. Working out which genetics suit which conditions can take decades, as it did Borlaug in Mexico.

Heritable Agriculture, which spun out of X, Alphabet’s moonshot lab, in December, aims to speed things up. The idea is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict, for a given environment, which genetic changes will improve a crop’s yield, as well as other properties like taste, nutritional content and photosynthetic capacity…

Brad Zamft, Heritable’s co-founder, says the firm’s system can breed a crop with the right genetics to achieve a desired trait in just one year. He presented data validating Heritable’s approach at the Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego on January 13th. They showed that the firm’s software can be used to quickly breed corn with fine-grained control over the time it takes to flower. Heritable says it has already used its software to breed plants with specific properties for undisclosed customers, including tastier leafy green vegetables.”

From The Economist.