“The zebra finch is one of the best-studied songbirds, and a model for understanding the biology of vocal learning. Now, researchers have produced the first complete genome assembly of the species, revealing thousands of previously hidden genes and chromosome structures.

It is the first songbird genome to capture every chromosome from end to end while distinguishing the DNA inherited from each parent, making it the most complete and accurate bird genome assembled to date. Part of a package of 10 papers being published simultaneously in Cell and Cell Genomics, this study, which appears in Cell, reveals 2,710 previously unknown genes, shows that birds and mammals share an organized centromere architecture, and resolves tiny chromosomes that provide clues to the evolution of vertebrates and vocal learning.”

From Rockefeller University.

“A mathematician has cracked an 87-year-old conundrum with the help of AI and announced the solution unceremoniously in a tweet. The finding is the most difficult mathematical problem yet solved by AI, say experts.

Levent Alpöge at Harvard University wrote on X on 19 July that the Jacobian conjecture – which academics have spent decades trying to prove was true – is actually false, giving a tiny, 216-character counterexample as proof…

The Jacobian conjecture – which suggests that a certain type of mathematical function would also work in reverse – was formally set out by Ott-Heinrich Keller in 1939. It was also on an influential list of 18 fiendishly difficult problems for mathematicians to tackle in the 21st century drawn up by Stephen Smale in 1998…

Abhishek Saha at Queen Mary University of London says AI’s recent advances in mathematics, such as the OpenAI model that recently cracked a decades-old conjecture by Paul Erdős, have been surprising, but this latest finding has stepped things up significantly.

'Probably this is the biggest conjecture that AI has played a significant role [in proving or disproving] so far in mathematics,' he says. 'This is a pretty big deal. AI has [made] remarkable progress in the last year.'

The single line of mathematics posted by Alpöge was simple to verify and many mathematicians have already done so, says Saha. Now the big question is how it was done.”

From New Scientist.

“Shanghai-based Agibot captured 44 per cent of the global market after shipping roughly 8,400 humanoid robots from January to June, San Francisco-based research firm Smart Analytics Global (SAG) said in a report published on Sunday…

Hangzhou-based Unitree fell to second place, shipping about 5,900 units to secure 31 per cent of the global market, SAG reported. Unlike AgiBot’s multi-line push, Unitree’s humanoid shipments remained concentrated in its flagship G1 model, with education, research and performance deployments making up a substantial share…

The rivalry between the two robotics giants has unfolded against a backdrop of rapid, China-led market expansion. Overall global humanoid shipments jumped 272 per cent year on year to about 19,100 units in the first half, with Chinese manufacturers supplying over 97 per cent of total global shipments…

Looking ahead, SAG projects full-year global shipments to approach 60,000 units, nearly tripling year on year.”

From South China Morning Post.

“A leading A.I. model built by Anthropic has found flaws in a weakened version of a digital encryption standard that is in pervasive use throughout the internet, the company’s researchers said Tuesday, underscoring the potential risks to global cybersecurity posed by ever-improving artificial intelligence software.

During a research-led test, the model, Claude Mythos Preview, was able to detect new ways to attack cryptographic algorithms that keep everything from online bank transactions to private communications to state secrets safe from the prying eyes of hackers or other unwanted third parties…

It is common to perform tests on weaker versions of encryption algorithms to understand whether more powerful computers could someday crack the actual standards, akin to solving a simpler math problem to identify whether patterns may exist for a more complicated one. In the testing, Mythos was able to break the weaker version of Advanced Encryption Standard in a way that Anthropic said made an assault 200 to 1,000 times faster than what previous human research had managed to do.

While the immediate ramifications are minimal, the long-term implications could be significant. In previous tests, large-language models seemingly could not match or best what humans can do in the mathematically dense field of cryptographic research, but their rapid advances could suggest a future in which top models can surmount traditional internet security protections that are foundational to just about everything that takes place on the internet.”

From New York Times.