Zebrafish are a common aquarium species, of value to hobbyists and scientists alike. Researchers have now engineered an unusual change in them that has echoes of Jurassic Park—but looks alone are deceiving.
It is not yet possible to predict earthquakes, but the analysis of different types of seismic data allows scientists to pinpoint where and when each type of earthquake originated, and hence better understand when and where tectonic slip might occur via damaging earthquakes. Tens of thousands of seismic stations around the world continuously record local seismic activity, with an output that is far beyond what scientists can process. Here, researchers from Northwestern University have called over 2,000 citizen scientists to the rescue for the crowd-based analysis of seismic recordings, rendered into audiovisual format, through the program Earthquake Detective on the Open-Science platform Zooniverse. They show that citizens are at least as accurate as machine learning, and can even identify tectonic tremors, which previously was only possible for trained professionals. The results are published today in Frontiers in Earth Science.
The overwhelming 'Whiteness' of artificial intelligence—from stock images and cinematic robots to the dialects of virtual assistants—removes people of colour from the way humanity thinks about its technology-enhanced future.
