Leading Edge

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Missing

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One morning, the Tiger Salamander was nowhere to be seen in his habitat. I thought it was unusual since his face was always visible at his burrow entrance. I still couldn't see him the next day. Oh well , I thought, salamanders like to dig, so he's probably hiding deep in the substrate. He'll come up when he gets hungry. Days kept passing with no sign of him. I started to get more and more worried. I shone a flashlight down his burrow hole. Nothing. I gently poked my finger around the substrate. No movement.  After a week and a half, I was convinced something terrible had happened. Did he get trapped, starve, or impossibly escape? For what I was convinced was a rescue or recovery mission, I stripped down his habitat and started excavating the substrate as if I were an archaeologist seeking fragile artifacts. After some digging, I lifted the large fern and I felt a leap of relief. There was the tail end of the salamander. He wiggled, telling me he was alive and not pleased a...
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Spot the AI

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I have a friend who shares AI-generated photos on her Facebook page with this challenge: how can you tell this photo is not real? Sometimes it's as obvious as a woman's third arm. Sometimes the clues are more subtle, like shadows cast in different directions. As AI becomes more popular, it is an important skill to spot phony images and be critical of trusting AI-generated content. An animal trainer recently published a paper reviewing a training framework called the Constructional Approach. In one of her live video chats, she shared an AI-generated slide presentation summarizing her paper. I've been confused about her approach since hearing about it, and the AI clip clarified some concepts for me. It was a nice synopsis with fancy-looking graphics. I was impressed. But then I looked back at the slides with a more critical eye. Can you spot the AI graphics that made me scratch my head?  1st image: Why is the banana thinking? What is it thinking? It appears to be a lightbulb...
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A New Crate

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If you've been following my articles, you may know that little things can delight me. One of those little things tickled my fancy this week when I spotted a few plastic dog kennels at the UCC garage sale.  I began picturing our emergency bird crate at the Museum. The crate sits outside, just in case a fire or other disaster prevents us from entering the building. The emergency crate could help us evacuate one of the birds. Unfortunately our emergency crate was pretty janky. A creative person, long ago, modified this crate to stand upright on the metal door. The old emergency crate. (click for larger image) I've only kept it because it would theoretically hold a bird in an emergency.  When I saw the crates at the UCC sale, I realized we could finally replace it with an affordable, more reliable option. My eyes lit up when I saw this particular crate. It's an old style that I can't find online anymore. The plastic is more sturdy and it has perfectly placed ergonomic hand ...
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