Junior Digest

Oct 20,2024: Bold advancements are currently reshaping the path to interplanetary travel, with SpaceX at the forefront of these changes. Recently, they completed their fifth Starship test flight, and it marked quite the leap forward for the company—and for humanity. The highlight? SpaceX successfully used its towering launch structure, affectionately dubbed Mechazilla, to catch the Super Heavy booster as it descended back to the Texas launchpad.

The highly anticipated catch occurred just seven minutes after the launch, which saw the rocket ascend approximately 232 feet before the first-stage booster made its way back to Earth. The achievement sent ripples of excitement across the SpaceX team, with CEO Elon Musk enthusiastically proclaiming on social media, “a large step toward making life multiplanetary was made today.” SpaceX’s Chief Operating Officer, Gwynne Shotwell, echoed those sentiments, expressing her awe with the words, “I didn’t know what to say!”

This mission was no small feat. It involved meeting “thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria” to make such a catch possible on the very first attempt. SpaceX reported, “Thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers, we succeeded with the catch on our first attempt.” With this milestone, SpaceX advances toward creating the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, which is foundational to their goals of potential missions to other planets.

Upon separation from the booster, the spacecraft continued on its mission, eventually splashing down safely in the Indian Ocean. The dual successes of the booster recovery and safe water landing highlight the versatility of the Starship system. It also shows how SpaceX intends to establish Jackson’s dream of reusable launch systems.

SpaceX has already mastered the recovery of the first-stage boosters of its Falcon 9 rockets, which have returned successfully to ocean platforms or land. This new technique demonstrates how the ambitious company aims to retrieve sizeable components directly from the launchpad, significantly cutting costs and streamlining launch operations.

Historically, the pursuit of lower costs per kilogram has been pivotal for space travel—something Starship is positioned to tackle. At present, sending one kilogram of material to low Earth orbit can run $1,000 USD. Some estimates suggest Starship could bring those costs down to between $10 and $100 per kilogram. This dramatic reduction could serve as the key to unlocking the future of mass spaceflight, opening pathways for more frequent launches and heavier payloads.

But there’s much more at stake than just financial figures. The ability to send more mass to orbit isn’t just about putting more satellites up there; it’s about enabling broader possibilities for space exploration and habitation. From radiation shielding to closed-loop life support systems, many hurdles related to space colonization fundamentally boil down to mass—and SpaceX is poised to change the game with its innovative designs.

With each successful test flight, the rate at which SpaceX can develop solutions to these challenges could increase exponentially. If they can maintain their current momentum and reduce launch costs significantly, the very fabric of space travel and exploration may shift dramatically, allowing technologies to advance more fluidly.

Looking forward, visionary plans are set to materialize as SpaceX eyes its potential 2026 window for placing unmanned ships on Mars. For Musk, the ultimate dream of sending humans to the red planet is moving closer to reality. The next window to reach Mars occurs every 26 months, and if everything goes according to plan, SpaceX aims to send more unmanned flights to demonstrate their viability before committing to human crews.

The notion of humans reaching Mars within the next decade is more than feasible—it’s now viewed as nearly inevitable by many experts. Although the initial missions will focus on robotics, success could lead to ambitious plans for human exploration shortly after, marking the beginning of what could be humanity’s next bold endeavor.

Such aspirations carry weight within the scientific community. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson applauded SpaceX’s latest progress, remarking on how these advancements prepare both SpaceX and NASA for upcoming lunar missions under the Artemis program. Nelson’s praise hints at the collaborative future of space exploration, wherein various agencies and companies may work hand-in-hand to push our species beyond Earth.

Creating not just technology but potential lifelines for humanity, SpaceX continues to drive the narrative of becoming multi-planetary. The ability to send people to Mars—far beyond simply landing them there—could lead to complete ecosystems being established on the red planet, aiming to support human life and potentially create civilizations anew. Such strides may also reshape the very nature of life on Earth as well.

Imagining the future is often fraught with uncertainty, yet one thing is clear: prospects at the forefront of space exploration are set to explode even farther. New settlements might arise on Mars, along with developments of space habitats surrounding Earth and the Moon. Within these habitats, thousands could travel on regular spacecraft much more affordably than present options allow. Indeed, they could even establish entire industries beyond our planet.

Yet, one must not overlook the broader societal impact of these missions. If the first human expeditors on Mars manage to set up sustainable living conditions, it could attract more adventurous souls willing to take the plunge. By developing infrastructure, these pioneers would help pave the way toward making Mars a second home for people from Earth.

Recent successes on the engineering front have proven transformative for both humanity and science. While challenges remain—from safety protocols to technology advancements—the field has entered uncharted territory thanks to the innovative spirit fueled by companies like SpaceX. The recent testing means dramatic changes are brewing around mankind’s relationship with space.

What’s more, the ripple effects of successful space missions will echo far beyond the quiet confines of our atmosphere. SpaceX intends not only to catch rocket boosters on their launchpad but also to lead the charge for exploration, innovation, and, perhaps, even economic growth beyond Earth’s boundaries.

With so much at stake, one must ask: Are we mere spectators, or bright-eyed participants witnessing the dawn of interstellar civilizations? Whatever the answer may be, the achievements of SpaceX seem poised to not only captivate our imagination but redefine the limitations once deemed insurmountable. Times are changing; let’s see how high humanity can soar.
courtesy: https://evrimagaci.org

Oct 15,2024: The Nobel memorial prize in economics has been awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for research into differences in prosperity between nations.

The three economists “have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

Review of Power and Progress: Unequal world

“Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better. The laureates’ research helps us understand why,” it added.

The announcement was made Monday in Stockholm.

Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robinson conducts his research at the University of Chicago.

The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes.

Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, it is always presented together with the others on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

The economics prize wraps up this year’s Nobel season, which honoured achievements in artificial intelligence for the physics and chemistry prizes, while the Peace Prize went to Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, committed to fighting nuclear weapons.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in physics went to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

The 2024 Nobel Prize for chemistry was shared by David Baker “for computational protein design” along with Demis Hassabis and John Jumper “for protein structure prediction.”

South Korea’s Han Kan won the literature prize — the only woman laureate so far this year — while the medicine prize lauded discoveries in understanding gene regulation.

The Nobel Prizes consist of a diploma, a gold medal and a one-million-dollar lump sum.

They will be presented at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel.

Nobel Prize in Medicine 2024: The Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2024 has been awarded to American scientists for the discovery of micro RNA. The awarding institution announced on Monday that scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of micro RNA and its role in gene regulation. They will receive a prize amount of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million). As every year, the Medicine Prize is the first Nobel Prize, which is the most prestigious award in the fields of Medicine, Literature, and Peace, and the remaining five prizes will be announced in the coming days.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2024 has been awarded to American scientists for the discovery of micro RNA. The awarding institution announced on Monday that scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of micro RNA and its role in gene regulation. They will receive a prize amount of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million). Every year, the Medicine Prize is the first Nobel Prize, which is the most prestigious award in the fields of Medicine, Literature, and Peace, and the remaining five prizes will be announced in the coming days.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded since 1901 to recognize achievements in the fields of Medicine, Literature, and Peace, while Economics was added later. Different institutions award prizes in various fields, with the Peace Prize being the only one awarded in Oslo instead of Stockholm. Notably, last year’s Medicine Prize was awarded to Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and American colleague Drew Weissman for their discoveries that paved the way for COVID-19 vaccines, which helped control the pandemic.

United Nations, Oct 10 (UNI) More than 370 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to sexual violence before age 18, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.

“More than 370 million girls and women alive today – or 1 in 8 – experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18,” the organisation said in a statement on the occasion of the International Day of the Girl.

If “non-contact” forms of sexual violence, such as online violence or verbal abuse, are included, the number of girls and women affected worldwide will be 650 million, or one in five, the statement read.

The largest number of victims is in sub-Saharan Africa, where 79 million girls and women have been affected, the statement said. It is followed by East and South-East Asia with 75 million victims, Central and South Asia with 73 million, Europe and North America with 68 million, Latin America and the Caribbean with 45 million, North Africa and West Asia with 29 million and Oceania with 6 million.

At the same time, an estimated 240 to 310 million boys and men – or about one in 11 – have been victims of rape or sexual abuse as children, the organisation added. This number rises to 410 to 530 million if “non-contact” forms of abuse are included.

Oct 10,2024:The Swedish Academy has awarded the 2024 prize to South Korean writer Han Kang “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.

In awarding the top prize to a 53-year-old Asian writer at the peak of her writing career, the academy has ensured a wider readership of an “innovator in contemporary prose” who with her experimental style has conjured up universal tales of the human condition. With a radical and poetic imagination, she writes about women battling patriarchy, violence, grief and also about historical wrongs and injustices.

Her literary career began with a book of poems but her breakthrough novel was The Vegetarian, first published in Korean in 2007, and translated into English by Deborah Smith in 2015. It immediately scooped up many honours including the Man Booker International Prize in 2016. The story revolves around a woman and the consequences of her decision to give up eating meat, and was expanded from her short story, ‘The Fruit of My Woman’. As the protagonist Yeong-hye defends her radical stand, and small act of independence, her family reacts in extraordinary, violent ways to make her change her mind. The obsessive tale has been compared to Kafka’s nightmarish stories.

Winning the Booker opened the door for her other books, Human Acts, The White Book and Greek Lessons, to be translated into English. Another, We Do Not Part, the story of two women told in the backdrop of a hidden chapter in Korean history, a massacre that happened in the 1940s, is being translated by e. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, and will be published in early 2025.

In its bio-bibliography, the academy says that in We Do Not Part, Han Kang, with “imagery that is as precise as it is condensed, conveys the power of the past over the present,” and also “traces the friends’ unyielding attempts to bring to light what has fallen into collective oblivion and transform their trauma into a joint art project, which lends the book its title.”

In terms of “imagery of pain”, it is closely linked to her 2017 novel, The White Book, which is an “elegy dedicated to the person who could have been the narrative self’s elder sister, but who passed away only a couple of hours after birth.” The story is narrated “in a sequence of short notes, all concerning white objects; it is through this colour of grief that the work as a whole is associatively constructed.”

Han Kang takes on Korean history in another of her novels, Human Acts (2016). Setting the story around a historical event, a massacre undertaken by the South Korean military in 1980 on protesting students and civilians, she seeks “to give voice to the victims of history,” but in an experimental style that is “as visionary as it is succinct.” Her 2023 novel, Greek Lessons (first published in Korean in 2011) is a story of a relationship between two vulnerable individuals, a young woman who has lost the power of speech and her teacher who is losing his power to see. “From their respective flaws, a brittle love affair develops. The book is a beautiful meditation around loss, intimacy and the ultimate conditions of language,” the academy notes.

In her oeuvre, the academy says Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose,” it contends. But most of all, through her writing, Han Kang has shown the power of literature to “speak the truth.”

The number of translators working on Korean literature has increased dramatically, Han Kang said, after winning the Booker, “a phenomenon that seems to be also closely related to the global success of Korean cinema and pop music.” Several Korean writers have won accolades from the English-speaking world in the past few years from Kim Hyesoon, Bora Chung, Hwang Sok-yong to Cheon Myeong-kwan. Han Kang’s Nobel win will hopefully draw more readers to the rich legacy of the Asian literary world.

London,Oct 3,2024: The UK has announced it is giving up sovereignty of a remote but strategically important cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean after more than half a century.

The deal – reached after years of negotiations – will see the UK hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a historic move.

This includes the tropical atoll of Diego Garcia, used by the US government as a military base for its navy ships and long-range bomber aircraft.

The announcement, made in a joint statement by the British and Mauritian Prime Ministers on Thursday, ends decades of often fractious negotiations between the two countries over the islands.

The US-UK base will remain on Diego Garcia.

The deal is still subject to finalisation of a treaty but both sides have vowed to complete this as quickly as possible.

“Under the terms of this treaty the United Kingdom will agree that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia,” the statement from UK PM Keir Starmer and Mauritius PM Pravind Jugnauth read.

“At the same time, both our countries are committed to the need…to ensure the long-term, secure and effective operation of the existing base on Diego Garcia which plays a vital role in regional and global security.”

The treaty will also “address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare of Chagossians”, the statement read.

Mauritius will now be able to bring in a programme of resettlement on the Chagos Islands – excepting the military base island of Diego Garcia.
In recent years, the UK has faced rising diplomatic isolation over its claim to what it refers to as the British Indian Ocean Territory, with various United Nations bodies, including its top court and general assembly, overwhelmingly siding with Mauritius and demanding the UK surrender what some have called its “last colony in Africa”.

The government of Mauritius has long argued that it was illegally forced to give the Chagos Islands away in return for its own independence from the UK in 1968.

At the time, the British government had already negotiated a secret deal with the US, agreeing to lease it the largest atoll, Diego Garcia, for use as a military base.

Britain later apologised for forcibly removing more than 1,000 islanders from the entire archipelago and promised to hand the islands to Mauritius when they were no longer needed for strategic purposes.

But until very recently, the UK insisted that Mauritius itself had no legitimate claim to the islands.

For decades, the tiny island nation of Mauritius struggled to win any serious international support on the issue.

A handful of Chagos islanders, who’d been forced to abandon their homes in the late 1960s and early 70s, repeatedly took the British government to court.

But it was only recently that international opinion began to shift.

For a start, African nations began to speak with one voice on the issue, pushing the UK hard on the issue of decolonialisation.

Then Brexit left many European nations reluctant to continue backing the UK’s stance in international forums.

The Mauritian government went on the attack, accusing the UK government of verbal threats.

And the Mauritians began to wage an increasingly sophisticated campaign – at the UN, in courts, and in the media – even landing and planting a flag on the archipelago without British authorisation.

The negotiations that brought about Thursday’s deal began years before Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister.

But the timing of this breakthrough reflects a growing sense of urgency in international affairs, not least regarding Ukraine, with the UK keen to remove the Chagos issue as an obstacle to winning more global support, particularly from African nations, with the prospect of a second Trump presidency looming.

The Chagos islanders themselves – some in Mauritius and the Seychelles, but others living in Crawley – do not speak with one voice on the fate of their homeland.

Some are determined to return to live on the isolated islands, some are more focused on their rights and status in the UK, while others argue that the Chagos archipelago’s status should not be resolved by outsiders.

A backlash from some voices in the UK can be expected, even though successive Conservative and Labour prime ministers have both been working towards the same broad goal.

But there can be no doubting the historic significance of this moment.

Half a century or more after the UK relinquished control over almost all its vast global empire, it has finally agreed to hand over one of the very last pieces. It has done so reluctantly, perhaps, but also peacefully and legally.

The remaining British overseas territories are: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha, Turks and Caicos Islands.

New Delhi, Oct 9,2024: Ratan Tata, veteran industrialist and the chairman emeritus of the Tata group, passed away at a Mumbai hospital late on Wednesday night.
He was 86.
Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, in a statement, confirmed the death of Tata.
A pivotal figure in Indian industry, Ratan Tata’s leadership had transformed the Tata Group into a global powerhouse.
Born on December 28, 1937, Ratan Tata was the great-grandson of Jamsetji Tata, the founder of the Tata Group.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoled the death of Rata Tata and said, “Shri Ratan Tata Ji was a visionary business leader a compassionate soul and an extraordinary human being.”

“He provided stable leadership to one of India’s oldest and most prestigious business houses. At the same time, his contribution went far beyond the boardroom. He endeared himself to several people, thanks to his humility, kindness and an unwavering commitment to making our society better,” he wrote on twitter handle X.

Born in 1937 to a family of Parsis, an ethno-religious group of Persian descent in India who follow the Zoroastrian religion, Tata graduated from Cornell University where he studied architecture and structural engineering.

He returned to India in 1962 and joined the family firm, which was founded by Jamsetji Tata, Ratan Tata’s great grandfather, in 1868. He joined as an assistant and spent six months training at a company plant in Jamshedpur.

JRD Tata, who had led the group for over half a century, appointed Ratan Tata as his successor.

Ratan Tata took over as chairman in 1991, the same year India unleashed major economic reforms, including devaluing the rupee, to open its economy to the world. And as India looked increasingly outward, so did Tata.
The industrialist rose to global prominence with a series of high-profile international deals. In 2008, he famously oversaw Tata Motors’ purchase of British car brands Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford (F).

In 2000, the group acquired British firm Tetley, owner of one of the largest global tea brands, for $432 million. Seven years later, Tata Steel prevailed in a $12.1 billion battle for control of Corus, a British steel company.

Tata retired as group chairman in 2012 and was chairman emeritus of holding company Tata Sons before his death. Since stepping down from day-to-day duties, the businessman had been throwing himself into improving the lot of India’s many stray animals.
“I think the one thing the family has done is it created a lot of industries in the early days, prior to independence, which were national industries,” Tata told CNN’s Sara Sidner in a rare interview in 2011. “And then gave most of it away in philanthropic grants. And that’s been something that’s been carried on by their successors through the years.”
In 2008, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Vibhushan, the country’s second-highest civilian honour.

New Delhi, Oct 14,2024: The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a plea against the proposed move of Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to nominate five members to the legislative Assembly and asked the petitioner to approach the state High Court.

The Bench asked the petitioner, former MLC and senior Congress leader Ravinder Sharma, to first move the Jammu and Kashmir High Court.

Senior Advocate Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi appeared for petitioner Ravinder Kumar Sharma and pleaded that the electoral verdict can be throttled. “Please let me come back here on delay,” Singhvi said.

A Bench comprising Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice P V Sanjay Kumar said that it will not entertain the matter.

Justice Khanna said, “In many cases, where we have entertained at first instance we see many things get left out.”

The matter pertains to the decision of the Lieutenant Governor to nominate five members to the Assembly just 24 hours before the poll results. The nominated members would be in addition to the 90 elected legislators.

Oct 9,2024: The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, as announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden on Tuesday.
This year’s Nobel Laureates in Physics have used physics tools to develop methods that form the basis of today’s powerful machine learning, said the official announcement.
John Hopfield created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other patterns in data. Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can automatically find properties in data, allowing it to identify specific elements in pictures.
This year’s laureates used tools from physics to construct methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning. John Hopfield created a structure that can store and reconstruct information. Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can independently discover properties in data and which has become important for the large artificial neural networks now in use.
They used physics to find patterns in information
Many people have experienced how computers can translate between languages, interpret images and even conduct reasonable conversations. What is perhaps less well known is that this type of technology has long been important for research, including the sorting and analysis of vast amounts of data. The development of machine learning has exploded over the past fifteen to twenty years and utilises a structure called an artificial neural network. Nowadays, when we talk about artificial intelligence, this is often the type of technology we mean.

Although computers cannot think, machines can now mimic functions such as memory and learning. This year’s laureates in physics have helped make this possible. Using fundamental concepts and methods from physics, they have developed technologies that use structures in networks to process information.

Machine learning differs from traditional software, which works like a type of recipe. The software receives data, which is processed according to a clear description and produces the results, much like when someone collects ingredients and processes them by following a recipe, producing a cake. Instead of this, in machine learning the computer learns by example, enabling it to tackle problems that are too vague and complicated to be managed by step by step instructions. One example is interpreting a picture to identify the objects in it.
Mimics the brain

An artificial neural network processes information using the entire network structure. The inspiration initially came from the desire to understand how the brain works. In the 1940s, researchers had started to reason around the mathematics that underlies the brain’s network of neurons and synapses. Another piece of the puzzle came from psychology, thanks to neuroscientist Donald Hebb’s hypothesis about how learning occurs because connections between neurons are reinforced when they work together.

Later, these ideas were followed by attempts to recreate how the brain’s network functions by building artificial neural networks as computer simulations. In these, the brain’s neurons are mimicked by nodes that are given different values, and the synapses are represented by connections between the nodes that can be made stronger or weaker. Donald Hebb’s hypothesis is still used as one of the basic rules for updating artificial networks through a process called training.
At the end of the 1960s, some discouraging theoretical results caused many researchers to suspect that these neural networks would never be of any real use. However, interest in artificial neural networks was reawakened in the 1980s, when several important ideas made an impact, including work by this year’s laureates.
Associative memory

Imagine that you are trying to remember a fairly unusual word that you rarely use, such as one for that sloping floor often found in cinemas and lecture halls. You search your memory. It’s something like ramp… perhaps rad…ial? No, not that. Rake, that’s it!

This process of searching through similar words to find the right one is reminiscent of the associative memory that the physicist John Hopfield discovered in 1982. The Hopfield network can store patterns and has a method for recreating them. When the network is given an incomplete or slightly distorted pattern, the method can find the stored pattern that is most similar.

Hopfield had previously used his background in physics to explore theoretical problems in molecular biology. When he was invited to a meeting about neuroscience he encountered research into the structure of the brain. He was fascinated by what he learned and started to think about the dynamics of simple neural networks. When neurons act together, they can give rise to new and powerful characteristics that are not apparent to someone who only looks at the network’s separate components.

In 1980, Hopfield left his position at Princeton University, where his research interests had taken him outside the areas in which his colleagues in physics worked, and moved across the continent. He had accepted the offer of a professorship in chemistry and biology at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena, southern California. There, he had access to computer resources that he could use for free experimentation and to develop his ideas about neural networks.

However, he did not abandon his foundation in physics, where he found inspiration for his under­standing of how systems with many small components that work together can give rise to new and interesting phenomena. He particularly benefitted from having learned about magnetic materials that have special characteristics thanks to their atomic spin – a property that makes each atom a tiny magnet. The spins of neighbouring atoms affect each other; this can allow domains to form with spin in the same direction. He was able to make a model network with nodes and connections by using the physics that describes how materials develop when spins influence each other.
The network saves images in a landscape

The network that Hopfield built has nodes that are all joined together via connections of different strengths. Each node can store an individual value – in Hopfield’s first work this could either be 0 or 1, like the pixels in a black and white picture.

Hopfield described the overall state of the network with a property that is equivalent to the energy in the spin system found in physics; the energy is calculated using a formula that uses all the values of the nodes and all the strengths of the connections between them. The Hopfield network is programmed by an image being fed to the nodes, which are given the value of black (0) or white (1). The network’s connections are then adjusted using the energy formula, so that the saved image gets low energy. When another pattern is fed into the network, there is a rule for going through the nodes one by one and checking whether the network has lower energy if the value of that node is changed. If it turns out that energy is reduced if a black pixel is white instead, it changes colour. This procedure continues until it is impossible to find any further improvements. When this point is reached, the network has often reproduced the original image on which it was trained.

This may not appear so remarkable if you only save one pattern. Perhaps you are wondering why you don’t just save the image itself and compare it to another image being tested, but Hopfield’s method is special because several pictures can be saved at the same time and the network can usually differentiate between them.

Hopfield likened searching the network for a saved state to rolling a ball through a landscape of peaks and valleys, with friction that slows its movement. If the ball is dropped in a particular location, it will roll into the nearest valley and stop there. If the network is given a pattern that is close to one of the saved patterns it will, in the same way, keep moving forward until it ends up at the bottom of a valley in the energy landscape, thus finding the closest pattern in its memory.

The Hopfield network can be used to recreate data that contains noise or which has been partially erased.

Hopfield and others have continued to develop the details of how the Hopfield network functions, including nodes that can store any value, not just zero or one. If you think about nodes as pixels in a picture, they can have different colours, not just black or white. Improved methods have made it possible to save more pictures and to differentiate between them even when they are quite similar. It is just as possible to identify or reconstruct any information at all, provided it is built from many data points.
Classification using nineteenth-century physics

Remembering an image is one thing, but interpreting what it depicts requires a little more.

Even very young children can point at different animals and confidently say whether it is a dog, a cat, or a squirrel. They might get it wrong occasionally, but fairly soon they are correct almost all the time. A child can learn this even without seeing any diagrams or explanations of concepts such as species or mammal. After encountering a few examples of each type of animal, the different categories fall into place in the child’s head. People learn to recognise a cat, or understand a word, or enter a room and notice that something has changed, by experiencing the environment around them.

When Hopfield published his article on associative memory, Geoffrey Hinton was working at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. He had previously studied experimental psychology and artificial intelligence in England and Scotland and was wondering whether machines could learn to process patterns in a similar way to humans, finding their own categories for sorting and interpreting information. Along with his colleague, Terrence Sejnowski, Hinton started from the Hopfield network and expanded it to build something new, using ideas from statistical physics.

Statistical physics describes systems that are composed of many similar elements, such as molecules in a gas. It is difficult, or impossible, to track all the separate molecules in the gas, but it is possible to consider them collectively to determine the gas’ overarching properties like pressure or temperature. There are many potential ways for gas molecules to spread through its volume at individual speeds and still result in the same collective properties.

The states in which the individual components can jointly exist can be analysed using statistical physics, and the probability of them occurring calculated. Some states are more probable than others; this depends on the amount of available energy, which is described in an equation by the nineteenth-century physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. Hinton’s network utilised that equation, and the method was published in 1985 under the striking name of the Boltzmann machine.
Recognising new examples of the same type

The Boltzmann machine is commonly used with two different types of nodes. Information is fed to one group, which are called visible nodes. The other nodes form a hidden layer. The hidden nodes’ values and connections also contribute to the energy of the network as a whole.

The machine is run by applying a rule for updating the values of the nodes one at a time. Eventually the machine will enter a state in which the nodes’ pattern can change, but the properties of the network as a whole remain the same. Each possible pattern will then have a specific probability that is determined by the network’s energy according to Boltzmann’s equation. When the machine stops it has created a new pattern, which makes the Boltzmann machine an early example of a generative model.

The Boltzmann machine can learn – not from instructions, but from being given examples. It is trained by updating the values in the network’s connections so that the example patterns, which were fed to the visible nodes when it was trained, have the highest possible probability of occurring when the machine is run. If the same pattern is repeated several times during this training, the probability for this pattern is even higher. Training also affects the probability of outputting new patterns that resemble the examples on which the machine was trained.

A trained Boltzmann machine can recognise familiar traits in information it has not previously seen. Imagine meeting a friend’s sibling, and you can immediately see that they must be related. In a similar way, the Boltzmann machine can recognise an entirely new example if it belongs to a category found in the training material, and differentiate it from material that is dissimilar.

In its original form, the Boltzmann machine is fairly inefficient and takes a long time to find solutions. Things become more interesting when it is developed in various ways, which Hinton has continued to explore. Later versions have been thinned out, as the connections between some of the units have been removed. It turns out that this may make the machine more efficient.

During the 1990s, many researchers lost interest in artificial neural networks, but Hinton was one of those who continued to work in the field. He also helped start the new explosion of exciting results; in 2006 he and his colleagues Simon Osindero, Yee Whye Teh and Ruslan Salakhutdinov developed a method for pretraining a network with a series of Boltzmann machines in layers, one on top of the other. This pretraining gave the connections in the network a better starting point, which optimised its training to recognise elements in pictures.

The Boltzmann machine is often used as part of a larger network. For example, it can be used to recommend films or television series based on the viewer’s preferences.
Machine learning – today and tomorrow

Thanks to their work from the 1980s and onward, John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton have helped lay the foundation for the machine learning revolution that started around 2010.

The development we are now witnessing has been made possible through access to the vast amounts of data that can be used to train networks, and through the enormous increase in computing power. Today’s artificial neural networks are often enormous and constructed from many layers. These are called deep neural networks and the way they are trained is called deep learning.

A quick glance at Hopfield’s article on associative memory, from 1982, provides some perspective on this development. In it, he used a network with 30 nodes. If all the nodes are connected to each other, there are 435 connections. The nodes have their values, the connections have different strengths and, in total, there are fewer than 500 parameters to keep track of. He also tried a network with 100 nodes, but this was too complicated, given the computer he was using at the time. We can compare this to the large language models of today, which are built as networks that can contain more than one trillion parameters (one million millions).

Many researchers are now developing machine learning’s areas of application. Which will be the most viable remains to be seen, while there is also wide-ranging discussion on the ethical issues that surround the development and use of this technology.

Because physics has contributed tools for the development of machine learning, it is interesting to see how physics, as a research field, is also benefitting from artificial neural networks. Machine learning has long been used in areas we may be familiar with from previous Nobel Prizes in Physics. These include the use of machine learning to sift through and process the vast amounts of data necessary to discover the Higgs particle. Other applications include reducing noise in measurements of the gravitational waves from colliding black holes, or the search for exoplanets.

In recent years, this technology has also begun to be used when calculating and predicting the properties of molecules and materials – such as calculating protein molecules’ structure, which determines their function, or working out which new versions of a material may have the best properties for use in more efficient solar cells.

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, Oct 4,2024: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday that Iran and its regional allies will not back down from Israel after an Israeli attack on Beirut that is thought to have targeted the heir apparent to Tehran-backed Hezbollah’s slain leader.

Iran raised the stakes when it fired missiles at Israel on Tuesday after its arch-foe assassinated Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, a towering figure who turned the group into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force with reach across the Middle East. Israel has vowed to respond.

“The resistance in the region will not back down even with the killing of its leaders,” Khamenei said in a rare appearance leading Friday prayers in Tehran, mentioning Nasrallah in his speech and calling its attack on Israel legal and legitimate.

He did not mention Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, rumoured to be Nasrallah’s successor. Axios reporter Barak Ravid cited three Israeli officials as saying that Safieddine had been targeted in an underground bunker in Beirut overnight.

Safieddine’s fate was not clear, Ravid said on X.

Israel’s military declined comment and Hezbollah made no comment on Safieddine’s fate. His brother Sayyed Abdallah Safieddine, who is Hezbollah’s representative to Iran, attended Khamenei’s speech in Tehran.

Iran’s proxies in its “Axis of Resistance” — Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq — have carried out attacks in the region in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza war. Khamenei said Afghanistan should join the “defence”.

Israel has assassinated leaders and commanders of Hezbollah and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group it has been seeking to wipe out in Gaza since its attack on Israel a year ago.

Oct 12,2024: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 to the Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.

In response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945, a global movement arose whose members have worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of using nuclear weapons. Gradually, a powerful international norm developed, stigmatising the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable. This norm has become known as “the nuclear taboo”.

The testimony of the Hibakusha – the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – is unique in this larger context.

These historical witnesses have helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience, and issuing urgent warnings against the spread and use of nuclear weapons. The Hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes nevertheless to acknowledge one encouraging fact: No nuclear weapon has been used in war in nearly 80 years. The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other representatives of the Hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo. It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure.

The nuclear powers are modernising and upgrading their arsenals; new countries appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons; and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons in ongoing warfare. At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.

Next year will mark 80 years since two American atomic bombs killed an estimated 120 000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A comparable number died of burn and radiation injuries in the months and years that followed. Today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power. They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically. A nuclear war could destroy our civilisation.

The fates of those who survived the infernos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were long concealed and neglected. In 1956, local Hibakusha associations along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific formed the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations. This name was shortened in Japanese to Nihon Hidankyo. It would become the largest and most influential Hibakusha organisation in Japan.

The core of Alfred Nobel’s vision was the belief that committed individuals can make a difference. In awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour all survivors who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace.

Nihon Hidankyo has provided thousands of witness accounts, issued resolutions and public appeals, and sent annual delegations to the United Nations and a variety of peace conferences to remind the world of the pressing need for nuclear disarmament.

One day, the Hibakusha will no longer be among us as witnesses to history. But with a strong culture of remembrance and continued commitment, new generations in Japan are carrying forward the experience and the message of the witnesses. They are inspiring and educating people around the world. In this way they are helping to maintain the nuclear taboo – a precondition of a peaceful future for humanity.

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 to Nihon Hidankyo is securely anchored in Alfred Nobel’s will. This year’s prize joins a distinguished list of Peace Prizes that the Committee has previously awarded to champions of nuclear disarmament and arms control.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 fulfils Alfred Nobel’s desire to recognise efforts of the greatest benefit to humankind.

Berlin, Oct 19,2024: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reaffirmed his unwavering support for Ukraine during a joint press conference with U.S. President Joe Biden in Berlin, but Scholz stressed that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) must not become a party to the war.

“We stand with Ukraine, as long as it is needed,” Scholz said, adding that actions have been very closely coordinated across the Atlantic.

Scholz stressed that NATO must not become a party to the war to prevent it from causing a greater disaster.

Biden noted that the two sides would hold talks to discuss ongoing efforts to surge support to Ukraine’s military, shore up Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure, and help Ukraine recover by unlocking the value of frozen Russian assets.

Biden arrived in Berlin on Thursday night for the final time before leaving office.

New York, Oct 11,2024: Hurricane Milton hit the southeast U.S. state of Florida overnight with strong winds, destructive tornadoes and heavy rain, leaving at least 9 dead and millions of people without power as of Thursday morning.

Milton made its landfall along the west-central coast of Florida on Wednesday night as a Category 3 storm and weakened to a Category 1 as it plowed quickly across central Florida.

St. Lucie County confirmed four fatalities as a result of tornadoes spawned by hurricane.

“Numerous homes and structures across St. Lucie County, including the City of Port St. Lucie and unincorporated areas, suffered significant damage,” said the county in a news release.

“As Hurricane Milton makes its way into the Atlantic, St. Lucie County Emergency Management officials strongly encourage residents to stay off the roads and stay inside until it has been deemed safe to do so,” said the release, adding that unnecessary traffic or bystanders will hinder response and recovery efforts.

Three people were confirmed died in Volusia County, including one person killed after a tree fell, according to NBC News.

In addition, two storm-related fatalities occurred in City of St. Petersburg, the news outlet reported.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wrote on X Thursday morning that over 3 million households are without power.

Milton is the fifth hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast so far in 2024 with three of them striking Florida.

New Delhi, Oct 5,2024: Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) successfully conducted three flight-tests of the 4th Generation, technically-advanced miniaturised Very Short Range Air Defence System (VSHORADS) at the Pokhran Field Firing Ranges in Rajasthan.

The tests were carried out against high speed targets, demonstrating very critical parameters of maximum range and maximum altitude interception, a Defence Ministry statement said on Saturday.

The flight-tests were conducted on October 3rd and 4th.

These development trials showcased repeatability of hit-to-kill capability of the weapon system in various target engagement scenarios covering approaching, receding and crossing modes.

The development of VSHORADS missiles has been completed and two production agencies have been engaged in the Development cum Production Partner (DcPP) mode.

In these trials, the missiles realised through DcPPs have been successfully used, thus paving the way for early user trials and production in a short time span in line with the Government’s vision of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’.

VSHORADS is a Man Portable Air Defence System designed and developed indigenously by Research Centre Imarat (RCI) in collaboration with other DRDO laboratories and DcPPs.

The three Services have been associated with the project right from the beginning and participated during the developmental trials.

Meanwhile, Defence Minster Rajnath Singh has congratulated DRDO, Armed Forces and the Industry involved in the successful development trials.

This new missile equipped with modern technologies will give further technological boost to the Armed Forces against aerial threats, he said.

Secretary, Department of Defence R&D and Chairman DRDO, Samir V Kamat also congratulated the DRDO team, industry partners and users for the successful flight-tests.

New Delhi, Oct 18,2024: The Supreme Court on Friday said that the Parliament should consider outlawing child betrothals by amending the Prevention of Child Marriage Act (PCMA), 2006.

A bench, comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra, was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the Society for Enlightenment and Voluntary Action, which sought steps to combat child marriages.

While addressing the issue of child marriages, the bench observed that ‘marriages arranged during a child’s minority violate their free choice, autonomy, agency, and childhood.’

The court emphasized that such practices deprive children of the ability to choose a life partner once they have matured and developed their sense of agency.

The ruling comes with several guidelines aimed at strengthening the implementation of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA).

The court also pointed to international agreements, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which oppose child betrothals.

The judgment suggested that Parliament could consider banning child betrothals, noting that such practices might be used to avoid penalties under the PCMA.

“A betrothed child may be considered a child in need of care and protection under the Juvenile Justice Act, but the practice requires targeted remedies for its eradication,” the bench observed.

In the judgment authored by Chief Justice Chandrachud, the court stressed the importance of spreading awareness within communities, rather than focusing solely on prosecutions.

“We must not be understood as discouraging prosecution; however, the goal should not be to simply increase prosecutions without taking measures to prevent child marriages,” the CJI said.

The bench emphasized the need for a “community-driven approach” to create awareness while being mindful of the potential impact of criminalization on families and communities.

New Delhi, Oct 17,2024: The Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court by a 4:1 majority on Thursday upheld the Constitutional validity of Section 6 A of the Citizenship Act of 1955, introduced after the Assam Accord in 1985, which barred Indian citizenship to Bangladeshi immigrants who entered India before March 1971.

Section 6A considered those entering India between 1966-71 as citizens sans voting rights for 10 years.

A five-judge Constitution bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, Justices Surya Kant, MM Sundresh and Manoj Misra upheld the validity of the provision in a 4:1 verdict , with Justice J B Pardiwala dissented.

The bench upheld the constitutional validity of Sec 6A. It said Parliament had legislative competence to enact it.

Justice Pardiwala’s dissenting judgement quashed Section 6A prospectively.

The Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court was hearing a batch of petitions challenging Section 6A of the Citizenship Act 1955.

The Court had reserved judgment almost 11 months back in December 2023.

As per Section 6A, people who entered India between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971, and have been living in Assam will be allowed to register as citizens of India, subject to the provisions of sub-section (6) and (7), all persons of Indian origin who came before the 1st day of January 1966 to Assam from the specified territory (including such of those whose names were included in the electoral rolls used for the General Election to the House of the People held in 1967) and who have been ordinarily resident in Assam since the dates of their entry into Assam shall be deemed to be citizens of India as from the 1st day of January 1966.

The CJI said, “The Central government could have extended the application of the Act to other areas, but it was not done because it was unique to the magnitude of Assam.”

Reading out the majority judgment, Justice Chandrachud said enactment of Section 6A was a political solution to a unique problem faced by Assam because the huge influx of illegal immigrants to the state after the creation of Bangladesh seriously threatened its culture and demography.

He said that one of the major reasons for students agitation in Assam was the dilution of voting rights of the indigenous population because of the huge influx of illegal migration from Bangladesh and Section 6A attempted to address the precarious situation.

The Bench also upheld the March 24, 1971 cut-off date for entry of Bangladeshi migrants, saying India had taken a sympathetic view given the atrocities on Bangladeshis during Pakistan’s operation Searchlight. After March 1971, the influx of migrants was viewed differently by the goverment, it said.

In a separate opinion, Justice Surya Kant, writing for himself and Justices M M Sundresh and Manoj Misra, agreed with CJI’s opinion. Justice Kant examined Sec 6A threadbare and said the government was competent to take measures to preserve law and order as well as the interest of citizens.

Rejecting arguments that Section 6A can’t be enacted only for Assam and not applied to West Bengal, Meghalaya and Mizoram which too faced an influx of Bangladeshi migrants, Justice Kant said the problem of Assam was more severe and hence the government could act to address the situation there.

Justice Kant, referring to Sarbananda Sonowal’s judgments for the detection of Bangladeshi illegal migrants, said the state has the power to identify and deport illegal migrants through not only the Foreigners Act but also under other similar laws for the purpose.

The Bench asked the Centre and state government to effectively implement directions in Sarbananda Sonowal judgments for the identification, detection and deportation of Illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

Justice Kant said the Supreme Court will from now onwards monitor this identification and deportation process.

The majority judgment by Justice Kant declared that those who have entered Assam from Bangladesh on or after March 25, 1971, are all illegal immigrants, who must be identified, detected and deported.

New Delhi, October 10,2024: The University Grants Commission (UGC) is set to launch the Apprenticeship Embedded Degree Programme (AEDP), to enhance the employability of students pursuing undergraduate level-degree programs by providing practical industry experience.
The UGC has prepared a draft guideline for the programme.
The guidelines, which were reviewed during the UGC’s meeting on October 3 will soon be available on the UGC website for public consultation and feedback from stakeholders.
The AEDP is designed to enhance the employability of undergraduate students by incorporating apprenticeship training into their degree programmes, as per the draft guidelines.
Prof M Jagadesh Kumar, UGC Chairman, emphasized the value of these guidelines, stating, “Students will gain experiential learning alongside theoretical knowledge, equipping them with the competencies employers seek. We urge all eligible higher education institutions to take advantage of these guidelines and offer AEDP programmes starting from the January-February 2025 academic session.”

The draft guidelines mention that the programme is applicable to undergraduate courses offered by UGC-recognized higher educational institutions (HEIs) with specific accreditation or ranking criteria.
AEDPs aim to integrate classroom learning with structured on-the-job training (OJT), providing students with industry-relevant skills. The guidelines focus on achieving specific learning outcomes, ensuring students develop the attributes required in the workforce. A stronger partnership between HEIs and industries is encouraged to align curricula with industry needs.
As per the draft guidelines, apprenticeships can begin from the second semester, accounting for up to 50 per cent of the degree duration. A minimum of one semester of continuous apprenticeship is required. Credits are awarded based on the number of hours spent in training, with a system aligned to the National Credit Framework. A full year of apprenticeship equates to at least 40 credits.
A comprehensive evaluation process will involve industry professionals, faculty mentors, and the HEI. Students may receive stipends depending on whether the AEDP is offered through the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS) or the Apprentices Act, 1961.
HEIs will monitor student progress after completing the AEDP to assess the programme’s effectiveness, according to the draft guidelines. A unique aspect of the guidelines is the tripartite agreement between the HEI, industry, and student, ensuring clear roles and responsibilities. The UGC is also emphasizing the importance of tracking students post-training to measure success and identify areas for improvement.
The draft guidelines will be open for comments, suggestions, and recommendations from all stakeholders, including students, HEIs, and the general public, before final implementation.

Oct 10,2024: David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper won the prize.They cracked the code for proteins’ amazing structures.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 is about pro­teins, life’s ingenious chemical tools. David Baker has succeeded with the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures. These discoveries hold enormous potential.

The diversity of life testifies to proteins’ amazing capacity as chemical tools. They control and drive all the chemi­cal reactions that together are the basis of life. Proteins also function as hormones, signal substances, antibodies and the building blocks of different tissues.

“One of the discoveries being recognised this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences. Both of these discoveries open up vast possibilities,” says Heiner Linke, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Proteins generally consist of 20 different amino acids, which can be described as life’s building blocks. In 2003, David Baker succeeded in using these blocks to design a new protein that was unlike any other protein. Since then, his research group has produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors.

The second discovery concerns the prediction of protein structures. In proteins, amino acids are linked together in long strings that fold up to make a three-dimensional structure, which is decisive for the protein’s function. Since the 1970s, researchers had tried to predict protein structures from amino acid sequences, but this was notoriously difficult. However, four years ago, there was a stunning breakthrough.

In 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper presented an AI model called AlphaFold2. With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified. Since their breakthrough, AlphaFold2 has been used by more than two million people from 190 countries. Among a myriad of scientific applications, researchers can now better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can decompose plastic.

Life could not exist without proteins. That we can now predict protein structures and design our own proteins confers the greatest benefit to humankind.

David Baker, born 1962 in Seattle, WA, USA. PhD 1989 from University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Professor at University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA and Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA.

Demis Hassabis, born 1976 in London, UK. PhD 2009 from University College London, UK. CEO of Google DeepMind, London, UK.

John M. Jumper, born 1985 in Little Rock, AR, USA. PhD 2017 from Uni­versity of Chicago, IL, USA. Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, London, UK.