nobel peace prize
The only person to win an Olympic medal and a Nobel Peace Prize
Philip Noel-Baker ran middle-distance races at the Olympics before dedicating his life to disarmament. In 1959, Philip Noel-Baker became the only person to ever win both an Olympic medal and Nobel Pease Prize. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The serious son of Quaker parents, Philip Noel-Baker was first a scholar, then an Olympian, and finally a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He is the only person ever to have won both an Olympic medal and a Nobel.
Russia targets Ukraine's energy as trilateral talks loom
Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Russia targets Ukraine's energy as trilateral talks loom As the presidents of Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepare to hold their first trilateral meeting to end Russia's war in Ukraine this weekend, almost half of Ukraine is without electricity and heat in sub-zero temperatures, following repeated Russian drone strikes targeting energy infrastructure. The strikes appeared designed to break Ukrainian resistance at the negotiating table on territorial concessions to Russia - the one issue Ukraine and the US said remained unresolved at the end of talks in Davos, Switzerland, between Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump this week.
Nobel Prize 2025: What they are, when will the awards be announced?
Nobel Prize 2025: What they are, when will the awards be announced? The Nobel Prize 2025 officially kicks off with the first award, for physiology or medicine, to be announced on Monday, setting the stage for a week of global anticipation. The full schedule, spanning from October 6 to 13, maps out a rapid succession of announcements: medicine, followed by physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and finally culminating with the economics prize next Monday. Here are the complete details of the schedule - and what to expect from this year's Nobel Prizes. What is the Nobel Prize?
Why is Meta's new AI chatbot so bad?
Earlier this month, Meta (the corporation formerly known as Facebook) released an AI chatbot with the innocuous name Blenderbot that anyone in the US can talk with. Immediately, users all over the country started posting the AI's takes condemning Facebook, while pointing out that, as has often been the case with language models like this one, it's really easy to get the AI to spread racist stereotypes and conspiracy theories. When I played with Blenderbot, I definitely saw my share of bizarre AI-generated conspiracy theories, like one about how big government is suppressing the true Bible, plus plenty of horrifying moral claims. But that wasn't what surprised me. We know language models, even advanced ones, still struggle with bias and truthfulness.
Disarming the world
For centuries, following bloody conflicts, military leaders acknowledged that some weapons were simply too awful to be used, but those same militaries generally continued to use them. The first world war (WWI) saw the successful deployment of chemical weapons on a massive scale for the first time. The horror of millions of dead soldiers, in trenches and on battlefields, shocked nations into signing the Geneva Protocol pledging to refrain from the use of chemical and biological weapons in future wars. Over the past century, the weapons that cause "unjustifiable" suffering in an indiscriminate and "unpredictable" manner have been subject to multilateral treaties that aim to disarm countries that possess them and control or ban the use of these weapons altogether. While some may feel sceptical that these efforts to disarm the world are effective, and challenges to disarmament remain, the disarmament treaties serve a key role in the regulation and reduction in stockpiles, as well as in the testing and use of certain weapons in conflicts.
Scientists Are Drowning, Artificial Intelligence Will Save Them - D-brief
There are over 34,000 scholarly, peer-reviewed journals in existence today, collectively publishing some 2.5 million articles every year. It's estimated that a single researcher, depending on their discipline, will read about 270 of them in the same time frame. Scientists will never keep up. They're going to miss key insights. Fortunately, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) tossed them a life preserver.