NEW RESOURCES

National and University Library of Iceland: Increased access to older recordings and handwritten texts. “Bragi Þorgrímur Ólafsson from the National and University Library of Iceland and Unnar Ingvarsson from the National Archives of Iceland presented the Icelandic database in Transkribus. The Transkribus software is made for the purpose of creating an Icelandic base for handwritten texts from the 18th and 19th centuries. The project was carried out in collaboration with experts from the National Archives of Iceland and the National and University Library of Iceland. You can access the Icelandic base by downloading the Transkribus software.”

KTAR: Arizona Department of Education activates website for free tutoring program. “The web page for Arizona’s free tutoring program has been activated, the state Department of Education announced Friday. The Achievement Tutoring Program was designed for public district and charter school students in grades 3-8 who test below proficiency levels in reading, writing or math.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google’s emoji mashup maker is now available in Search. “You can now create your own emoji combinations directly in Google Search. The company has launched its Emoji Kitchen feature on the web (via 9to5Google), which lets you mash up existing emoji to create different combinations, like an angry pumpkin or a panda wearing a cowboy hat.”

Reuters: Google nears release of AI software Gemini, The Information reports. “Alphabet’s Google has given a small group of companies access to an early version of Gemini, its conversational artificial intelligence software, The Information reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Gemini is intended to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, according to the report.”

Bloomberg: Musk’s Denial of Ukraine’s Starlink Request Prompts Senate Probe. “The Senate Armed Services Committee is probing national-security issues raised by Elon Musk’s decision not to extend the private Starlink satellite network to aid a Ukrainian attack on Russian warships near the Crimean coast.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Mainichi: ‘Puurrfect’ product: Nissin Food’s virtual cat themed Cup Noodles a social media hit . “Nissin Food Products Co. recently launched ‘”Cup Nyadle,’ a new line of Cup Noodle products that allow people to play with the cat character ‘Nyadle’ on its website by taking a picture of the cat on the lid with their smartphones.”

City A.M.: StabilityAI: New AI music tool won’t wipe out musicians. “Notting Hill Gate-headquartered Stability AI, which was valued at $1bn last August in a $101m funding round, yesterday launched its Stable Audio product which allows users to generate music and sound via prompts.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Business Tech (South Africa): South Africa launches major investigation into Google, Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT. “The Competition Commission has published the final terms of reference for its Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry, which aims to sniff out imbalances and competition issues related to dominant news aggregators and local South African media publications. According to the commission, the inquiry is specifically looking at the growing imbalance between news publishers in South Africa and large platforms like Google, Facebook and Apple, which take extracts of copyrighted work and place them on aggregated news feeds.”

Clarkson University: Clarkson Professors Awarded Nearly $400k Grant from the NSF for Integrating Cybersecurity into Computing Curricula. “Four Clarkson Professors have received a $398K grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create and integrate Identity and Access Management (IAM)-themed project-based learning (PBL) curriculum into existing computer science and software engineering-related curricula.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT News: AI-driven tool makes it easy to personalize 3D-printable models. “MIT researchers developed a generative-AI-driven tool that enables the user to add custom design elements to 3D models without compromising the functionality of the fabricated objects. A designer could utilize this tool, called Style2Fab, to personalize 3D models of objects using only natural language prompts to describe their desired design. The user could then fabricate the objects with a 3D printer.” The code for Style2Fab will be released at an upcoming conference.

Clemson News: Clemson students’ deployment of novel camera alert system, TrailGuard AI, featured in BioScience, promotes coexistence of tigers, humans. “Last year, the Global Tiger Forum, the National Tiger Conservation Authority and RESOLVE partnered with Clemson University to test conservation technology: TrailGuard AI, a camera-alert system powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that remains hidden from poachers while detecting wild tigers and transmits real-time images to the cell phones and computers of concerned entities like park rangers.”

William & Mary News: Modeling social media behaviors to combat misinformation. “Alexander Nwala, a William & Mary assistant professor of data science, aims to address these forms of abuse proactively. With colleagues at the Indiana University Observatory on Social Media, he has recently published an Open Access paper in EPJ Data Science to introduce BLOC, a universal language framework for modeling social media behaviors.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute.