A groundbreaking study released today reveals the alarming state of African elephant populations over the last 50 years. Both forest and savanna elephant species have experienced widespread declines due to overexploitation and habitat loss, mirroring the global trend affecting large-bodied animals.

Inner West Council pushes ahead with cafe in park in face of strong community opposition  ABC News

OpenAI's latest large language model, known internally as Orion, has fallen short of performance targets, marking a broader slowdown in AI advancement across the industry's leading companies, according to Bloomberg, corroborating similar media stories in recent days. The model, which completed initial training in September, showed particular weakness in novel coding tasks and failed to demonstrate the same magnitude of improvement over its predecessor as GPT-4 achieved over GPT-3.5, the publication reported Wednesday. Google's upcoming Gemini software and Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Opus are facing similar challenges. Google's project is not meeting internal benchmarks, while Anthropic has delayed its model's release, Bloomberg said. Industry insiders cited by the publication pointed to growing scarcity of high-quality training data and mounting operational costs as key obstacles. OpenAI's Orion specifically struggled due to insufficient coding data for training, the report said. OpenAI has moved Orion into post-training refinement but is unlikely to release the system before early 2024. The report adds: [...] AI companies continue to pursue a more-is-better playbook. In their quest to build products that approach the level of human intelligence, tech firms are increasing the amount of computing power, data and time they use to train new models -- and driving up costs in the process. Amodei has said companies will spend $100 million to train a bleeding-edge model this year and that amount will hit $100 billion in the coming years. As costs rise, so do the stakes and expectations for each new model under development. Noah Giansiracusa, an associate professor of mathematics at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, said AI models will keep improving, but the rate at which that will happen is questionable. "We got very excited for a brief period of very fast progress," he said. "That just wasn't sustainable." Further reading: OpenAI and Others Seek New Path To Smarter AI as Current Methods Hit Limitations.

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Continue reading Facebook, Instagram Release Top Checked-in Locations of 2013

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Familiar sounds of encouragement and needling filled a practice field at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick on Monday as Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story and the infielders took grounders and Charlie Blackmon and the outfielders gathered their bats and spikes. Only a few faces that always seemed to be around are missing as Spring Training begins.

If German Marquez, Kyle Freeland and Jon Gray want to battle it out for tops on the staff, that's perfectly fine with Rockies manager Bud Black.

The Blue Jays have followed the lead of several other teams around Major League Baseball by using a Rapsodo machine to analyze spin-rate data. A Rapsodo camer is used to understand how much movement, velocity and spin pitchers are getting on every toss.

Goal-directed visual attention is a fundamental cognitive process that enables animals to selectively focus on specific regions of the visual field while filtering out irrelevant information. However, given the domain specificity of social behaviors, it remains unclear whether attention to faces versus nonfaces recruits different neurocognitive processes. In this study, we simultaneously recorded activity from temporal and frontal nodes of the attention network while macaques performed a goal-directed visual search task. V4 and inferotemporal (IT) visual category-selective units, selected during cue presentation, discriminated fixations on targets and distractors during the search but were differentially engaged by face and house targets. V4 and IT category-selective units also encoded fixation transitions and search dynamics. Compared with distractors, fixations on targets reduced spike–LFP coherence within the temporal cortex. Importantly, target-induced desynchronization between the temporal and prefrontal cortices was only evident for face targets, suggesting that attention to faces differentially engaged the prefrontal cortex. We further revealed bidirectional theta influence between the temporal and prefrontal cortices using Granger causality, which was again disproportionate for faces. Finally, we showed that the search became more efficient with increasing target-induced desynchronization. Together, our results suggest domain specificity for attending to faces and an intricate interplay between visual attention and social processing neural networks.

Michael (Kenya) participates in a short-term mission trip to Romania and gives an account of God's transforming power at work amongst the Roma people.

In this second update from the Serbia/Croatia border, OM leader Volker Sachse describes moments of God’s peace that transforms people in a dire situation.

Sometimes it's not about handing out blankets, meals or having conversations, noticed OM worker Elizabeth when volunteering in the refugee ministry in Serbia.

Mahmood, a refugee from Sudan, travelled the 'West Balkan' migrant route. Months later, settled in The Netherlands, he recalls worship in OM's tent in Serbia.

Hope for Zurich connects with the community at Träff International, their outreach to the local immigrant population.

God uses bracelets to weave together a group of children from different cultures and backgrounds so they can experience His love.

Kochi, India :: Jeannette Zandbergen (Netherlands) is surprised to see an old friend in a photograph.

Seeing that there were few affordable activities for teens in Dobrinja, Bosnia, the OM team launches The House, a comfortable, safe place for young people.

God used a dangerous situation to change the life of a Salvadorian woman.

As the Bus4Life begins its seventh tour, former driver Tuukka Linkopuu reflects on his two-year ministry while Esa Tuuri prepares to take the wheel.

Over a thousand people visited the medical clinic that OM Ecuador recently installed in the small town of Cadeate. Many also came to faith.

In a nation filled with tribal tension, OM works toward reconciliation through youth conferences, relief outreaches and a bookshop filled with Bibles.

The CEO and cofounder defines adaptive messaging and shares the number one mistake marketers make when it comes to thinking about this concept. Plus, hear how Mary Poppins inspired his company's name

Yitzhak Rabin spoke of the importance of manpower and mobilizing reservists following the Yom Kippur War, echoing modern sentiments.

The incoming Trump team will be in contrast to some of those currently serving and those who served previously in key roles in the region.

Parts of Spain are bracing for more dangerous flooding on Wednesday as a fresh storm system is set to release huge amounts of rainfall.

The torrential downpours come just 15 days after a storm system triggered catastrophic flooding, killing at least 223 people and devastating the province of Valencia.

Once again, the affected area is under orange alert for heavy rainfall.

In Valencia, dozens of municipalities have cancelled classes.

While the meteorological agency does not predict Valencia will get the worst of this storm, sewage systems are still full of mud from the last floods, which could complicate drainage.

This time, the areas under red alert are around the Malaga and Tarragona regions.

In Malaga, around 3,000 people have been evacuated from their homes on the banks of the Guadalhorce River. The same area also experienced flooding two weeks ago.

Residents of the province of Malaga received cell phone alerts on Tuesday night, warning of an “extreme risk of rainfall” and advising them to avoid travel.

Schools will not open on Wednesday across all of Malaga and the Granada coast. Meanwhile, some roads are being blocked, schools are closing, and rail lines are being cancelled in Tarragona, in the south of Catalonia.

The preventative measures on Wednesday stand in contrast to the lack of an early warning in Valencia two weeks ago.

There, despite being on red alert for rainfall, residents were generally not advised to stay home or seek higher ground until the flooding had already reached catastrophic levels.

Both storm systems were caused by a weather phenomenon known as a Dana in Spain or a “cut-off low.” These occur when low-pressure areas get cut off from the westerly winds of the jet stream. Since they are isolated from the jet stream, they can move slowly and erratically, releasing huge amounts of rain over small areas.

This storm system began affecting Spain on Tuesday and is expected to last until at least Friday, according to Spain’s meteorological agency.

Speaking at COP29 on Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez linked the intensity of these weather events to climate change. “Climate change kills,” he said, urging more action to reduce greenhouse gases to prevent future natural disasters.

Last week, hundreds of residents of a Valencia suburb particularly badly hit by last week’s deadly floods protested during a visit by Spanish King Felipe and Prime Minister Sanchez, with some throwing mud at them.

Chanting “Murderers, murderers!” they vented pent-up anger over what has been widely perceived by local residents as tardy alerts from the authorities about the dangers of the storm and flooding in the Valencia region, and then a late response by the emergency services when disaster struck.

“It was known and nobody did anything to avoid it,” a young man told the king, who insisted on staying on to talk to the people despite the turmoil, while the prime minister had withdrawn.

Background

Asthma exacerbations in children pose a significant burden on healthcare systems and families. While traditional risk assessment tools exist, artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential for enhanced prediction models.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) released by various cells play crucial roles in intercellular communication within the respiratory system. This review explores the historical context and significance of research into extracellular vesicles. Categorised into exosomes (sized 30–150 nm), microvesicles (sized 50–1000 nm) and apoptotic bodies (sized 500–2000nm), based on their generation mechanisms, extracellular vesicles carry diverse cargoes of biomolecules, including proteins, lipids and nucleic acids. Respiratory ailments are the primary contributors to both mortality and morbidity across various populations globally, significantly impacting public health. Recent studies have underscored the pivotal role of extracellular vesicles, particularly their cargo content, in mediating intercellular communication between lung cells in respiratory diseases. This comprehensive review provides insights into extracellular vesicle mechanisms and emphasises their significance in major respiratory conditions, including acute lung injury, COPD, pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary fibrosis, asthma and lung cancer.

5 rare supernova images captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope  India.com

‘Zebra’, starring ‘Daali’ Dhananjaya and Satyadev, is directed by Eashvar Karthic

MADRID — Flood-hit towns near the eastern city of Valencia were rushing on Tuesday (Nov 12) to clear the sewage system of mud and debris, pile sandbags and cancel school classes as they prepared for another approaching storm. Two weeks after the worst floods in Spain's modern history killed more than 200 people, national weather service AEMET issued an orange alert, the second-highest, for strong or torrential rains expected on Wednesday in the same area. AEMET forecasts as much as 120mm of rain in 12 hours. While the storm is not expected to be as powerful, it could be devastating for the towns that are still recovering. The impact of the rain could be severe because of the quantities of mud already on the ground and because of the condition of the sewage system, Rosa Tauris, a spokesperson for Valencia's emergency committee, told reporters. Thousands of workers are cleaning buildings while removing the mud that accumulated on roads and sidewalks and clogged the sewage pipes and drains in towns and suburbs around Valencia.

How to change additional place of business as main place of business in gst portal

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Spotting a rapid surge in the Pre-Placement Offers (PPO) this year, students of IITs are also anticipating a growth in placements.

Facebook has acquired emotion detection start-up FacioMetrics to push its artificial intelligence (AI) research into building facial gesture controls.

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In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, NASA's Spitzer and Swift space telescopes have joined forces to unveil an elusive brown dwarf - thought to be the missing link between planets and stars, with masses up to 80 times that of Jupiter.

Giving more power to its 1.2 billion daily users, Facebookwill now allow them to automatically launch its crisis response tool "Safety Check" in case of an earthquake, terror attack, tsunami and so on.

Giving more power to its 1.2 billion daily users, Facebookwill now allow them to automatically launch its crisis response tool "Safety Check" in case of an earthquake, terror attack, tsunami and so on.

Two leading Indian companies have been awarded for their leadership in sustainability, corporate social responsibility, eco consciousness and community care at the third annual Asia Corporate Excellence and Sustainability Awards (ACES).

Abhishek Anil Kapur and Sandeep Kewlani helmed Sky Force is all set to release next year.

The third instalment of this iconic franchise is running super-strong at the box office. The latest surpassed the previous box office records and became the highest-grossing film of the franchise. Sadly, the original choices of this franchise were Aishwarya Rai and Vidya Balan.

NASA's Artemis programme will send the first woman and the next man to the Moon. By using advanced technology, they will explore more of the Moon's surface than we have ever seen before, collecting new information and ensuring the astronauts stay safe and healthy during the mission.

Acreage is higher in Punjab, Haryana, UP but slips in MP, Rajasthan