Plastic dinosaur toys aren’t made of real dinosaurs. Sinclair Oil Corporation cemented the notion that dinosaurs contributed to the bulk of fossil fuels after they ran with the idea for an ad campaign. So, if not dinosaurs, what’s oil (and plastic) actually made of? It turns out that it’s made out of dinos, but not the ones we’re familiar with; dead dinoflagellates, or plankton, from the age of dinosaurs were compressed by heat and pressure to create the oil we use today.
Read full article here
Societal Issues
AI Predicts Crime A Week In Advance With 90 Per Cent Accuracy
An artificial intelligence model built by Ishanu Chattopadhyay and his colleagues analysed crime data in Chicago from 2014 to 2016 and managed to predict future levels of crime down to the nearest 300 metres, a week before they actually happened. While extremely useful, this artificial intelligence has been shown to expose racial prejudice in law enforcement. Hopefully, as the study’s data and methodology have been made available for others to evaluate, these prejudices can be avoided in the next iteration. Read full article here
Merv
August 15, 2022
