This paper describes CIC NLP's submission to the AmericasNLP 2023 Shared Task on machine translation systems for indigenous languages of the Americas. We present the system descriptions for three methods. We used two multilingual models, namely M2M-100 and mBART50, and one bilingual (one-to-one) -- Helsinki NLP Spanish-English translation model, and experimented with different transfer learning setups. We experimented with 11 languages from America and report the setups we used as well as the results we achieved. Overall, the mBART setup was able to improve upon the baseline for three out of the eleven languages.

AI is on the frontline of the fight to save the rainforests, with data from satellites and cloud-piercing radar combining with on-the-ground monitoring to detect and track threats right down to the level of a single tree. Previously, it might take months or even years before an illegal logging operation or incursion by cattle farmers was spotted. Now, these can be picked up before the first whine of the chainsaw. In the Brazilian state of Acre, deep in the Amazon, where deforestation is running rampant, indigenous forest agents from the Shanenawa people are using drones and GPS monitoring in collaboration with a sophisticated AI tool. Developed by Microsoft and Brazilian non-profit Imazon, it helps predict where incursions look likely to occur, allowing local people to nip them in the bud.

A newly discovered network of'lost' ancient cities has been discovered in the Amazon, using lidar technology – dubbed'lasers in the sky' – to peer through the tropical forest canopy. The cities, built by the Casarabe communities between 500-1400 AD, are located in the Llanos de Mojos savannah-forest, Bolivia, and have been hidden under the thick tree canopies for centuries. They feature an array of elaborate and intricate structures unlike any previously discovered in the region, including 16ft-high terraces covering 54 acres – the equivalent of 30 football pitches – and 69ft-tall conical pyramids. The international team of researchers from the UK and Germany also found a vast network of reservoirs, causeways and checkpoints, spanning several miles. The discovery challenges the view of Amazonia as a historically'pristine' landscape, the researchers say, showing it was instead home to an early'urbanism' created and managed by indigenous populations for thousands of years.

Ancient Amazonians laid out their settlements in circles 700 years ago -- with radiating mounds and roads as may have represented the cosmos -- a study found. Experts led from Exeter used lidar-based sensing equipment mounted on helicopters to see below the canopy of the overlying rainforest in south Acre State, Brazil. The 35 mounded villages were constructed to the distinctive and repeated pattern by the ancient Acreans between around 1300–1700 AD. Deforestation and archaeological digs in Acre State has previously revealed the presence of large earthworks and circular mound villages. However, the full extent of the constructions, their layouts and their organisation across the region had been obscured by the dense forest until now.

As per the records of theWorld Health Organization, the first formally reported incidence of Zika virus occurred in Brazil in May 2015. The disease then rapidly spread to other countries in Americas and East Asia, affecting more than 1,000,000 people. Zika virus is primarily transmitted through bites of infected mosquitoes of the species Aedes (Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus). The abundance of mosquitoes and, as a result, the prevalence of Zika virus infections are common in areas which have high precipitation, high temperature, and high population density.Nonlinear spatio-temporal dependency of such data and lack of historical public health records make prediction of the virus spread particularly challenging. In this article, we enhance Zika forecasting by introducing the concepts of topological data analysis and, specifically, persistent homology of atmospheric variables, into the virus spread modeling. The topological summaries allow for capturing higher order dependencies among atmospheric variables that otherwise might be unassessable via conventional spatio-temporal modeling approaches based on geographical proximity assessed via Euclidean distance. We introduce a new concept of cumulative Betti numbers and then integrate the cumulative Betti numbers as topological descriptors into three predictive machine learning models: random forest, generalized boosted regression, and deep neural network. Furthermore, to better quantify for various sources of uncertainties, we combine the resulting individual model forecasts into an ensemble of the Zika spread predictions using Bayesian model averaging. The proposed methodology is illustrated in application to forecasting of the Zika space-time spread in Brazil in the year 2018.

Very rare drone footage from Amazonas, Brazil shows members of a tribe walking through their jungle camp. Remarkable drone footage offers a rare glimpse of an isolated tribe in the Brazilian Amazon. In the 51-second clip released by FUNAI, the Brazilian government's Indian Affairs department, tribespeople are shown moving through a deforested area in the jungle and one tribe member appears to be carrying a bow and arrow. The agency said it captured the drone shots during an expedition last year to monitor isolated communities, but only released them on Tuesday to protect their study. FUNAI also released still images showing the tribespeople's existence in the remote region.