Mystery Portrait May Be a Raphael, Artificial Intelligence Suggests

In a meeting of high art and state-of-the-art facial recognition, researchers say they’ve used artificial intelligence to determine that a circular painting of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus, known as the de Brécy Tondo, or the Tondo for short, was likely painted by the Italian master Raphael. Many art historians, however, insist the Tondo is the result of another painter copying one of Raphael’s most famous works, the Sistine Madonna. He painted the latter around 1513 for the church of San Sisto in Piacenza, Italy. But since the 18th century, the Sistine Madonna has primarily hung in palaces

Poem: 'A Quantum Cento'

Science in meter and verse Source link

Chinese Spy Balloon Has Unexpected Maneuverability

Pentagon officials announced on Thursday that they had detected a Chinese “surveillance balloon” flying over Montana. On Friday the Pentagon’s press secretary said that the balloon is now over the central U.S. and moving eastward at an altitude of about 60,000 feet. Observers on the ground have been able to snap photographs and videos of the object, and the incident has prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a planned trip to China. Although China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly claimed that the object is merely a civilian weather observatory blown off course, later on Friday, the Pentagon press

A Climate Scientist Is Evaluating the U.S.’s Spy Programs

President Joe Biden's Intelligence Advisory Board now includes a top climate scientist. Biden recently announced the appointment of Kim Cobb, an earth sciences professor at Brown University and a lead author of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released in 2021, to the White House council that's tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of the nation's intelligence community. The council provides recommendation to the White House, and presidents have both followed and ignored its advice in the seven decades since it was founded. Shortly after taking office in January 2021, Biden issued a series of climate-related executive orders, including

A Secret Weapon in Preventing the Next Pandemic: Fruit Bats

More than four dozen Jamaican fruit bats destined for a lab in Bozeman, Montana, are set to become part of an experiment with an ambitious goal: predicting the next global pandemic. Bats worldwide are primary vectors for virus transmission from animals to humans. Those viruses often are harmless to bats but can be deadly to humans. Horseshoe bats in China, for example, are cited as a likely cause of the covid-19 outbreak. And researchers believe pressure put on bats by climate change and encroachment from human development have increased the frequency of viruses jumping from bats to people, causing what

War, Politics, Business Make Meeting 1.5 Degrees C Target Unlikely

Keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius is “currently not plausible,” warns a new report from the University of Hamburg. The types of swift, transformative social change needed to reach that target just aren’t happening fast enough. A less ambitious target of 2 C still could be in the cards, the report adds. But it would require world leaders to set more ambitious climate goals for their nations and put them in motion immediately. The report, known as the “Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook,” examines the factors affecting the world’s ability to meet its global climate goals. Nations participating in the Paris climate