Natural language processing (NLP) is (possibly) helping to unlock the mysteries of sperm whale communication. NLP is a branch of artificial intelligence that analyses both written and spoken speech, for instance in the automatic translation of text from one language to another. Researchers who aim to use NLP to understand whale codas (utterances) are convinced ‘translation’ is possible, claiming that the codas have an underlying structure similar to human languages. Read full article here
Science
An Eerie Poisonous Fog
If you’re visiting a farm, keep an eye out for an ominous-looking bronze fog. Nitrogen tetroxide, a red-orange gas, is made by certain bacteria during fermentation when oxygen is lacking in the crop. The lack of oxygen causes the bacteria to use the nitrate within the crops, which then produces nitrogen tetroxide. Inhalation of the gas is known to cause permanent lung damage or kill people and livestock. To prevent this, farmers have started performing nitrate tests after four weeks of fermentation. Read full article here
Merv
November 30, 2022
