This study employs machine learning, historical analysis, and natural language processing (NLP) to examine recurring lethal stampedes at Indias mass religious gatherings, focusing on the 2025 Mahakumbh tragedy in Prayagraj (48+ deaths) and its 1954 predecessor (700+ casualties). Through computational modeling of crowd dynamics and administrative records, it investigates how systemic vulnerabilities contribute to these disasters. Temporal trend analysis identifies persistent choke points, with narrow riverbank access routes linked to 92% of past stampede sites and lethal crowd densities (eight or more persons per square meter) recurring during spiritually significant moments like Mauni Amavasya. NLP analysis of seven decades of inquiry reports reveals cyclical administrative failures, where VIP route prioritization diverted safety resources in both 1954 and 2025, exacerbating fatalities. Statistical modeling demonstrates how ritual urgency overrides risk perception, leading to panic propagation patterns that mirror historical incidents. Findings support the Institutional Amnesia Theory, highlighting how disaster responses remain reactionary rather than preventive. By correlating archival patterns with computational crowd behavior analysis, this study frames stampedes as a collision of infrastructure limitations, socio spiritual urgency, and governance inertia, challenging disaster discourse to address how spiritual economies normalize preventable mortality.

In this installment of What We're Listening To, Engadget writers and editors discuss some of the recent music releases we've had on repeat. It's safe to say there's some variety on this list. Sierra Ferrell seems almost like an anachronism in 2024, but in the best possible way. She has this effortless, old-timey country style that is at points reminiscent of the likes of The Carter Family or Flatt and Scruggs (her brilliant covers of songs once performed by the latter duo are permanently seared into my brain), and it's just so refreshing. Trail of Flowers, Ferrell's second studio album, toes a little further into a more modern sound, but it maintains this deeply Americana feel that just seems to roll off the West Virginia-born artist so naturally.

Did you know Neural is taking the stage this fall? Together with an amazing line-up of experts, we will explore the future of AI during TNW Conference 2021. Scientists have built an AI tool that forecasts Arctic sea ice conditions, which could help protect local wildlife and people from changes caused by global warming. The deep learning system, named IceNet, was developed by a research team led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and The Alan Turing Institute. The model was trained on climate simulations and observational data to forecast the next six months of sea ice concentration maps.

Breathtaking drone video taken in the Arctic Circle captured a spellbinding reindeer'cyclone.' When threatened, reindeer will begin to stampede in a circle, making it hard for a predator to find an individual target. In the clip, the herd's fawns and does are in the middle of the swirl with the bucks running around them in a protective'dance.' The deer stampede was captured by a photographer last week in Murmansk, Russia, right before a veterinarian was about to give the herd its anthrax vaccinations. Such behavior has been observed in dolphins, bison and even elephants, but the aerial view--coupled with the herd's speed and size--makes for a truly hypnotic visual.

In May of 1896, Charles Moisson and Francis Doublier traveled to Moscow on behalf of the Lumière Brothers company, bearing with them the newly developed Lumière Cinématogaphe camera. Their purpose: to document the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II--the last Emperor of Russia, though no one would have known that at the time. The coronation was an extraordinary event, soon to be overshadowed by even more extraordinary events in the Revolutionary years to come. An enormous celebration followed, with gifts, bread, sausage, pretzels, beer, and a commemorative cup to revelers. The promise of these gifts led to what was later called the Khodynka Tragedy.

In the stampede to build an AI strategy, executives fall into four main traps. It's almost impossible to pick up a trade journal, hear a start-up pitch or listen to a quarterly earnings call without hearing the two magic letters: AI. Over the past few years, interest in artificial intelligence has rocketed with no sign of abating. But in the stampede to build an AI strategy, executives fall into the following four main traps. As boards and corporations are flush with AI fever, they tend to speak of AI as one all-encompassing technology.

Psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists are currently studying the ability of the Stampede supercomputer in order to provide accurate predictions of risk for those with depression and anxiety. Stampede is one of the most powerful computing machines in the world. It is dedicated for open science research. Using Stampede to help medics to review data to detect depression involved developing a machine learning algorithm. The program is intended to identify commonalities among patients using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) brain scans, genomics data and other factors in order to make predictions of risk for those with depression and anxiety.

A persisting question in biology asks whether nature or nurture represents the primary determinant of biological variation among individuals of the same species. "Both," explains Levin as he describes the complex interaction of the two elements in a living being. "If we use an analogy comparing biological processes to a computational system, DNA specifies the hardware, and electrical transmission among cells is akin to the software. Electrical impulses are not only occurring in the brain; they are transmitted among cells throughout the body. DNA determines the expression of electrically-active proteins in cells, but an individual organism's electrical dynamics are unique and based on external factors as well as internal ones. In nature, living cells are programmed to perform computations and make decisions about patterning, healing, and regeneration of the body. If we can tap into those regulatory algorithms using mathematical models, we may find ways in the future to re-program cancer cells, and induce regenerative repair - as we are already doing in some animal model systems. We see our research as an important step toward a better understanding of these processes, hopefully enabling other scientists to expand on our findings toward biomedical applications."

There are a lot of creepy things you can do with the data gleaned from an online and mobile maps service used by 302 million people, but there are helpful ways to use it too. Baidu, China's version of Google, is making the case that it can use queries made on its maps service to predict areas where overcrowding may put people at risk for fatal accidents. In a paper titled "Early Warning of Human Crowds Based on Query Data from Baidu Map: Analysis Based on Shanghai Stampede," three Baidu researchers based in Beijing lay out an approach to using big data to give early warnings about potential crowd disasters 1-3 hours in advance. This data is already used by Chinese city planners to help them place transportation, facilities, and shops, according to MIT Technology Review. Now it can be used in the interest of public safety, the researchers assert.