An iceberg sealed the penguin colony's entrance, triggering a 70% survival drop. A group of Emperor penguin chicks is walking on the fast ice at the Emperor penguin colony at Snow Hill Island in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. A massive iceberg has triggered a catastrophic die-off of Emperor Penguin chicks in Antarctica, blocking thousands of parents from reaching their young. The event claimed the lives of approximately 14,000 chicks at the Coulman Island colony in the Ross Sea, the region's largest breeding ground.

An analysis of the expansion of cracks in the Thwaites Glacier over the past 20 years suggests that a total collapse could be only a matter of time. Known as the "Doomsday Glacier," the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers on Earth, and its future evolution is one of the biggest unknowns when it comes to predicting global sea level rise. The eastern ice shelf of the Thwaites Glacier is supported at its northern end by a ridge of the ocean floor. However, over the past two decades, cracks in the upper reaches of the glacier have increased rapidly, weakening its structural stability. A new study by the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) presents a detailed record of this gradual collapse process.

In the realm of aerial imaging, the ability to detect small objects is pivotal for a myriad of applications, encompassing environmental surveillance, urban design, and crisis management. Leveraging RetinaNet, this work unveils DDR-Net: a data-driven, deep-learning model devised to enhance the detection of diminutive objects. DDR-Net introduces novel, data-driven techniques to autonomously ascertain optimal feature maps and anchor estimations, cultivating a tailored and proficient training process while maintaining precision. Additionally, this paper presents an innovative sampling technique to bolster model efficacy under limited data training constraints. The model's enhanced detection capabilities support critical applications including wildlife and habitat monitoring, traffic flow optimization, and public safety improvements through accurate identification of small objects like vehicles and pedestrians. DDR-Net significantly reduces the cost and time required for data collection and training, offering efficient performance even with limited data. Empirical assessments over assorted aerial avian imagery datasets demonstrate that DDR-Net markedly surpasses RetinaNet and alternative contemporary models. These innovations advance current aerial image analysis technologies and promise wide-ranging impacts across multiple sectors including agriculture, security, and archaeology.

What is it about human brains that allows us to reason symbolically whereas most other animals cannot? There is evidence that dynamic binding, the ability to combine neurons into groups on the fly, is necessary for symbolic thought, but there is also evidence that it is not sufficient. We propose that two kinds of hierarchical integration (integration of multiple role-bindings into multiplace predicates, and integration of multiple correspondences into structure mappings) are minimal requirements, on top of basic dynamic binding, to realize symbolic thought. We tested this hypothesis in a systematic collection of 17 simulations that explored the ability of cognitive architectures with and without the capacity for multi-place predicates and structure mapping to perform various kinds of tasks. The simulations were as generic as possible, in that no task could be performed based on any diagnostic features, depending instead on the capacity for multi-place predicates and structure mapping. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that, along with dynamic binding, multi-place predicates and structure mapping are minimal requirements for basic symbolic thought. These results inform our understanding of how human brains give rise to symbolic thought and speak to the differences between biological intelligence, which tends to generalize broadly from very few training examples, and modern approaches to machine learning, which typically require millions or billions of training examples. The results we report also have important implications for bio-inspired artificial intelligence.

Spatial phenomena often exhibit heterogeneity across spatial extents and in proximity, making them complex to model-especially in dynamic regions like ice shelves and sea ice. In this study, we address this challenge by exploring the linkages between sea ice retreat and Antarctic ice shelf (AIS) melt. Although atmospheric forcing and basal melting have been widely studied, the direct impact of sea ice retreat on AIS mass loss remains underexplored. Traditional models treat sea ice and AIS as separate systems. It limits their ability to capture localized linkages and cascading feedback. To overcome this, we propose Spatial-Link, a novel graph-based framework that quantifies spatial heterogeneity to capture linkages between sea ice retreat and AIS melt. Our method constructs a spatial graph using Delaunay triangulation of satellite-derived ice change matrices, where nodes represent regions of significant change and edges encode proximity and directional consistency. We extract and statistically validate linkage paths using breadth-first search and Monte Carlo simulations. Results reveal non-local, spatially heterogeneous coupling patterns, suggesting sea ice loss can initiate or amplify downstream AIS melt. Our analysis shows how sea ice retreat evolves over an oceanic grid and progresses toward ice shelves-establishing a direct linkage. To our knowledge, this is the first proposed methodology linking sea ice retreat to AIS melt. Spatial-Link offers a scalable, data-driven tool to improve sea-level rise projections and inform climate adaptation strategies.

Large language models (LLMs) are widely used for long-form text generation. However, factual errors in the responses would undermine their reliability. Despite growing attention to LLM factuality, the effect of response length on factuality remains underexplored. In this work, we systematically investigate this relationship by first introducing an automatic and bi-level long-form factuality evaluation framework, which achieves high agreement with human annotations while being cost-effective. Using this framework, we conduct controlled experiments and find that longer responses exhibit lower factual precision, confirming the presence of length bias. To explain this phenomenon, we empirically examine three hypotheses: error propagation, long context, and facts exhaustion. Our results reveal that facts exhaustion, where the model gradually exhausts more reliable knowledge, is the primary cause of factual degradation, rather than the other two hypotheses.

Artificial intelligence can help accurately map and track penguin colonies in Antarctica by analysing tourist photos. "Right now, everyone has a camera in their pocket, and so the sheer volume of data being collected around the world is incredible," says Heather Lynch at Stony Brook University in New York. Haoyu Wu at Stony Brook University and his colleagues, including Lynch, used an AI tool developed by Meta to highlight Adélie penguins in photographs taken by tourists or scientists on the ground. With guidance from a human expert, the AI tool was able to automatically identify and outline entire colonies in photos. This semi-automated method is much faster than doing everything manually because the AI tool takes just 5 to 10 seconds per image, compared with a person taking 1 to 2 minutes, says Wu. The team also created a 3D digital model of the Antarctic landscape using satellite imagery and terrain elevation data.

Foehn winds, characterized by abrupt temperature increases and wind speed changes, significantly impact regions on the leeward side of mountain ranges, e.g., by spreading wildfires. Understanding how foehn occurrences change under climate change is crucial. Unfortunately, foehn cannot be measured directly but has to be inferred from meteorological measurements employing suitable classification schemes. Hence, this approach is typically limited to specific periods for which the necessary data are available. We present a novel approach for reconstructing historical foehn occurrences using a combination of unsupervised and supervised probabilistic statistical learning methods. We utilize in-situ measurements (available for recent decades) to train an unsupervised learner (finite mixture model) for automatic foehn classification. These labeled data are then linked to reanalysis data (covering longer periods) using a supervised learner (lasso or boosting). This allows to reconstruct past foehn probabilities based solely on reanalysis data. Applying this method to ERA5 reanalysis data for six stations across Switzerland and Austria achieves accurate hourly reconstructions of north and south foehn occurrence, respectively, dating back to 1940. This paves the way for investigating how seasonal foehn patterns have evolved over the past 83 years, providing valuable insights into climate change impacts on these critical wind events.