The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, has opened "Dead Sea Scrolls: The Exhibition," featuring a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts along with 200 other artifacts. The Dead Sea Scrolls may be even older than researchers thought, according to a new study driven by an artificial intelligence (AI) model. A group of researchers from the Netherlands, Italy and Denmark recently published their findings in the journal PLOS One on June 4. The researchers said they developed an AI-based date-prediction model named Enoch, a nod to the biblical patriarch of the same name. Enoch "was trained as a machine learning-based date-prediction model applying Bayesian ridge regression on established handwriting-style descriptors," according to the study.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A specially designed artificial intelligence program named after a Judaic prophet suggests one of biblical archeology's greatest finds require reexamination. According to an international team of researchers in consultation with "Enoch," some of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be a bit older than we thought. Their evidence is laid out in a study published on June 4 in the journal PLOS One. The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most remarkable and revolutionary archeological discoveries ever made.

Determining the chronology of ancient handwritten manuscripts is essential for reconstructing the evolution of ideas. For the Dead Sea Scrolls, this is particularly important. However, there is an almost complete lack of date-bearing manuscripts evenly distributed across the timeline and written in similar scripts available for palaeographic comparison. Here, we present Enoch, a state-of-the-art AI-based date-prediction model, trained on the basis of new radiocarbon-dated samples of the scrolls. Enoch uses established handwriting-style descriptors and applies Bayesian ridge regression. The challenge of this study is that the number of radiocarbon-dated manuscripts is small, while current machine learning requires an abundance of training data. We show that by using combined angular and allographic writing style feature vectors and applying Bayesian ridge regression, Enoch could predict the radiocarbon-based dates from style, supported by leave-one-out validation, with varied MAEs of 27.9 to 30.7 years relative to the radiocarbon dating. Enoch was then used to estimate the dates of 135 unseen manuscripts, revealing that 79 per cent of the samples were considered 'realistic' upon palaeographic post-hoc evaluation. We present a new chronology of the scrolls. The radiocarbon ranges and Enoch's style-based predictions are often older than the traditionally assumed palaeographic estimates. In the range of 300-50 BCE, Enoch's date prediction provides an improved granularity. The study is in line with current developments in multimodal machine-learning techniques, and the methods can be used for date prediction in other partially-dated manuscript collections. This research shows how Enoch's quantitative, probability-based approach can be a tool for palaeographers and historians, re-dating ancient Jewish key texts and contributing to current debates on Jewish and Christian origins.

To mitigate local warming, cities including Milan have wrapped condominium balconies and high-rise facades in expansive vertical gardens. A dense stack of vegetation can help keep a building cool by creating natural shading and releasing moisture into the air, says Theodore Endreny, a professor of environmental resources engineering at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The compact foliage augments the benefits trees and plants naturally provide when planted on sidewalks or roofs, including pollution removal, carbon dioxide sequestration and oxygen production. A look at how innovation and technology are transforming the way we live, work and play. Crews of urban arborists certified as tree climbers will be hired to rappel down buildings and maintain these ecosystems as they sprout on more buildings, says Dr. Endreny.

Looter games always struggle when it comes to story, and "Outriders" might appear to be a mixed bag. It has a strong, clear premise: Earth is destroyed, so humans run off to another faraway planet called Enoch, only to find that it's ravaged by a reality-bending storm called the Anomaly. This Anomaly creates superpowered beings such as yourself, while also destroying the precious few resources rescued from Earth. This sparks -- of course -- a civil war on another planet. After 30 years, you are tasked with finding the source of a mysterious radio signal that was received when the humans first reach Enoch.