There is plenty of intriguing sci-fi on offer this month, whether it's solar-powered cities from Adrian Tchaikovsky or a strange future from M. John Harrison A father mysteriously slips through time in Joseph Eckert's Writing this as the UK swelters under an unprecedented May heatwave, perhaps it's small wonder that so many science-fiction authors are currently imagining miserable versions of an overheated future in which their characters are struggling to survive. I'm intrigued by the sound of sci-fi legend M. John Harrison's upcoming take on a dystopian future, but if post-apocalyptic hellscapes aren't your thing, I'm also happy to report that there are other options for sci-fi fans this month. Next, I'm going to explore Isabel J. Kim's sci-fi spin on immigration,, as soon as I can get my hands on it. I am excited about this book: M. John Harrison is a really classy writer, winner of all sorts of awards, and his latest novel sounds right up my street. It's set in a future years after an obscure "crisis" changed everything, in a world where the seas are full of new creatures.

In everyday conversations, humans can take on different roles and adapt their vocabulary to their chosen roles. We explore whether LLMs can take on, that is impersonate, different roles when they generate text in-context. We ask LLMs to assume different personas before solving vision and language tasks. We do this by prefixing the prompt with a persona that is associated either with a social identity or domain expertise. In a multi-armed bandit task, we find that LLMs pretending to be children of different ages recover human-like developmental stages of exploration. In a language-based reasoning task, we find that LLMs impersonating domain experts perform better than LLMs impersonating non-domain experts.

When Pam Cronrath's husband Bill died last year, after nearly 60 years of marriage, she knew what she wanted to do, but not exactly how. I promised him a super wake, she told the BBC. What she didn't expect was that keeping the promise would lead her into the world of holograms, technology more commonly associated with celebrities than memorial services in rural America. A self-confessed tech enthusiast, she says her outlook was shaped by a career that stretched back to the early days of the internet. Several years ago, while speaking at a medical conference, she watched a doctor appear as a full-body hologram broadcast live across the United States.

'Animals are traumatised too': Pet rescuers under fire in Ukraine On a morning in February, animal shelter staff were getting changed for their shift when a Russian drone slammed into the centre of their compound in the frontline Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia. The steel door at the entrance probably saved their lives. More than a dozen animals sheltering at Give a Paw, Friend were not so lucky. It was terrifying, to put it mildly, says the group's head Iryna Didur. Residents rushed to help clean up the rubble and catch the animals that had escaped in terror.

Trump administration'unlocks' 140MILLION barrels of precious Iranian oil with major policy change to fight back against'hoarding' China... here's what it means for your wallet Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Nicholas Brendon dead at 54 as'heartbroken' family reveal cause of death Joseph Duggar's wife Kendra is arrested for allegedly endangering welfare of a minor as he faces new charges Behind closed doors, the Duggar family's next nightmare began long before Joseph's arrest: Insiders reveal what they knew and how they plan to recover America is about to be torn apart by a financial tsunami - and it's not just an oil crisis to fear. However, it seems not every corner of Britain is quite so beautiful - as a survey has revealed the least scenic locations. Voters on the Scenic Or Not survey awarded the top spot to Basingstoke's Newbury Road. This unappealing location received the lowest possible score, with just one out of 10 for'scenicness'. And while Cornwall might be renowned for its beautiful scenery, a rather less attractive part of the county - the Electricity Station in Landulph - joins Basingstoke at the bottom of the pile.

Abigail Marsh has found that many psychopaths don't want to be cruel and uncaring, and argues that they deserve support to help them get there Think of a psychopath and you probably picture someone dangerous, someone whose ruthless self-interest leads to great harm for others and considerable success for themselves. Perhaps unsurprisingly, while only around 1 per cent of people in the general population have psychopathy, roughly 1 in 5 men in prison show signs of it, and research has also found a link between corporate leadership and psychopathic traits . But just as it is painful to know a psychopath, it isn't necessarily fun to be one either. Abigail Marsh, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Georgetown University in Washington DC, studies those with psychopathic traits who largely lead ordinary lives among us. She has uncovered something surprising: many don't want to be psychopathic at all. Researchers are still honing the precise definition, but psychopathy is characterised by callousness, a lack of empathy, glib social charm and impulsivity.

Three books unpack our infatuation with prediction, and what we lose when we outsource this task to machines. To be human is, fundamentally, to be a forecaster. Trying to see the future, whether through the lens of past experience or the logic of cause and effect, has helped us hunt, avoid hunted, plant crops, forge social bonds, and in general survive in a world that does not prioritize our survival. Indeed, as the tools of divination have changed over the centuries, from tea leaves to data sets, our conviction that the future can be known (and therefore controlled) has only grown stronger. Today, we are awash in a sea of predictions so vast and unrelenting that most of us barely even register them. As I write this sentence, algorithms on some remote server are busy trying to guess my next word based on those I have already typed.

Among those Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently named to a federal autism committee are people who tout dangerous treatments and say vaccine manufacturers are "poisoning children." US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filled an autism committee with friends, associates, and former colleagues who believe that autism is caused by vaccines. Autism advocates are now worried the group could pave the way for dangerous pseudoscientific treatments going mainstream. Last week, Kennedy announced an entirely new lineup for the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), a group that recommends what types of autism research the government should fund and provides guidance on the services the autism community requires. The group is typically composed of experts in the area of autism research, along with policy experts and autistic people advocating for their own community.

Is Good Taste a Trap? The judgments we use to elevate our lives can also hem them in. In Belle Burden's memoir, " Strangers," she describes the end of her marriage. It happened suddenly: until learning of her husband's infidelity, through a voice mail from a stranger, she had no idea anything was wrong. Burden and her husband shared an apartment in Tribeca and a house on Martha's Vineyard.

There's no need for an expensive retreat to practice meditation. Try it on your lunch break to recharge your mind and body. Launching straight back into work in the New Year can be challenging, but learning how to meditate can help you stay focused. Feel free to roll your eyes right about now, but numerous studies have shown that meditation can boost creativity, improve sleep quality, and manage stress . "Meditation is a practice to calm the brain by recentering our attention, most often on our breath," says Mel Mah, an instructor at the meditation app Calm .