Digital rights organizations urge the FTC to investigate Character.AI and Meta's "unlicensed practice of medicine facilitated" by therapy AI chatbots (Samantha Cole/404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/ai-therapy-bots-meta-character-ai-ftc-comp…
This is also how a movie's VFX are made when clients change their minds right until the deadline.
https://oldbytes.space/@tschak/114661574560412783
Ukraine detonated a massive underwater blast t
argeting the key road and rail bridge connecting the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula to Russia,
damaging its underwater supports.
The operation, claimed by Kyiv’s SBU security service, is the second high-profile operation by Ukraine in days striking significant Russian assets after a sophisticated drone raid on Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet on Sunday
Way back in 2022, as the world tried to readjust back to "normal" following COVID - I helped to co-organise a bootcamp with sponsorhop from the @… IASC, @… and a generous dollop of help from @… and @… colleagues.
We gathered 10 senior scientist mentors and 22 students in an old torpedo research station (now used by Roskilde University) for 10 days. It was an extremely intense period but the 4th paper produced by this talented group has just come out.
I consider facilitating #EarlyCareerScientists to work on important science problems an extremely rewarding part of my job, and I'm looking forward to the next one already as part of our PISCO project.
In the mean time, go and read this extremely cool work, collecting together a huge number of radiosonde observations going back to the 1950s over the Arctic Ocean and using them to assess how well CMIP6 models represent lower atmosphere.
#CMIP6 #ClimateModels #Arctic #ArcticClimate #SeaIce
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JD041412
I know an academic who does the same thing. He schedules a 3-4 hour online research meeting from time to time, but he really uses the slot to run a #TTRPG session for us.
His field of study isn’t TTRPGs. https://masto…
#NewPaper out: Anne Reichmuth , Kühn I, Schmidt A, Doktor D (2025) Forested Natura 2000 sites under climate change: effects of tree species distribution shifts. Web Ecology 25: 59–89.
We have modelled and analysed the effect of possible tree species distribution shift in Norway spruce (Picea abies), European beech (Fagus sylvatica), and two oak species (Quercus petraea and Quercus robur), considered jointly on forested Natura 2000 sites, an EU-wide conservation area network. The modelling procedure was performed using 3 to 4 bio-climatic variables derived from 26 variables of the EURO-CORDEX Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate simulations for the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5 until 2098. Our results reveal a severe decline in Picea within Natura 2000 sites in central Europe and lower elevations and confirm a strong shift towards higher elevations and latitudes. This amounts to an 18 % absolute mean change (−18 % mean loss, 15 % mean gain). Quercus sp. reveal similar results, with 23 % absolute mean change (−23 % loss, 24 % gain) at Natura 2000 sites, whereas Fagus remains stable throughout the model results with 8 % absolute mean change (−7 % loss, 9 % gain). As ecosystems of any type are highly dynamic, climate change can lead to additional severe pressure on statically defined conservation goals and associated management activities.
#biodiversity #ecology #ClimateChange #conservation
Enormous early-season wildfireshave erupted across the prairie provinces of Canada this week,
taxing local emergency response and threatening a long stretch of dangerous air quality across eastern North America.
The country’s largest fires
– the Bird River fire and the Border fire
– remain completely uncontained in northern Manitoba.
In Manitoba alone, wildfires have burned about 200,000 hectares already this year – already about three times the recent full-year …