Latest news with #UtrechtUniversity
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Science
- Miami Herald
Students locate ancient Roman army camp beyond empire's northern border. See it
A team of university students sifted through chalky dirt in the Netherlands looking for artifacts or other traces of ancient Roman activity. For years, they'd been piecing together the site's history, and this dig offered the final confirmation. They'd located a 'rare' ancient Roman military camp — beyond the empire's northern border. But the project didn't start in the field. It started at a desk when Jens Goeree, a student with Saxion University of Applied Sciences, 'developed a computer model' to predict the location of ancient Roman military camps, Saskia Stevens, an archaeologist and professor with Utrecht University, told McClatchy News. Goeree's model predicted a Roman camp might exist near Hoog Buurlo, so professors and students with the Constructing the Limes research project decided to investigate. The team, led by Stevens, involved students from Saxion University of Applied Sciences and Utrecht University, according to a May 26 news release. First, students took aerial photos of the Hoog Buurlo area and scanned the site with laser pulses, a process known as a LiDAR survey, Stevens told McClatchy News via email. Sure enough, the scans and photos showed traces of ancient Roman walls, a moat and several entrances. Next, the team searched the area 'using a metal detector' and excavated 'several trial trenches,' Stevens said in the release. Photos show the dig process and a military harness fragment uncovered at the site. 'Few artefacts were found,' Steven said, but the traces confirmed Hoog Buurlo had once served as a temporary ancient Roman military camp, likely around 1,800 years ago. 'What makes this find so remarkable is that the camp lies beyond the northern frontier of the Roman Empire,' Stevens said in the release. The empire's northern border, known as the Limes, was roughly 15 miles south of Hoog Buurlo. Utrecht University described the newly found campsite as 'rare.' Dozens of temporary camps have been found in Germany and hundreds have been found in the United Kingdom, but 'only four such temporary Roman camps are known in the Netherlands,' Stevens said. Roman soldiers typically stayed at temporary camps for a few days or weeks before continuing marching. The Hoog Buurlo camp may have 'served as a stopover en route to another camp at Ermelo-Leuvenum, about a day's march away,' the university said. 'Through the (Constructing the Limes) project, we are particularly interested in these kinds of camps because they provide valuable insights into Roman military presence and operations in frontier regions,' Stevens said. 'They help us understand the routes taken by Roman troops and show how the Romans made extensive use of territories beyond the formal boundaries of their Empire.' Hoog Buurlo is in the central Netherlands and a roughly 50-mile drive southeast from Amsterdam.
Time of India
15-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
AI Models like ChatGPT and DeepSeek frequently exaggerate scientific findings, study reveals
According to a new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek often exaggerate scientific findings while summarising research papers. Researchers Uwe Peters from Utrecht University and Benjamin Chin-Yee from Western University and the University of Cambridge analysed 4900 AI-generated summaries from ten leading LLMs. Their findings revealed that up to 73 percent of summaries contained overgeneralised or inaccurate conclusions. Surprisingly, the problem worsened when users explicitly prompted the models to prioritise accuracy, and newer models like ChatGPT 4 performed worse than older versions. What are the findings of the study The study assessed how accurately leading LLMS summarised abstracts and full-length articles from prestigious science and medical journals, including Nature, Science, and The Lancet. Over a period of one year, the researchers collected and analysed 4,900 summaries generated by AI systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, and LLaMA. Six out of ten models routinely exaggerated claims, often by changing cautious, study-specific statements like 'The treatment was effective in this study' into broader, definitive assertions like 'The treatment is effective.' These subtle shifts in tone and tense can mislead readers into thinking that scientific findings apply more broadly than they actually do. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like They Lost Their Money - Learn From Their Lesson Expertinspector Click Here Undo Why are these exaggerations happening The tendency of AI models to exaggerate scientific findings appears to stem from both the data they are trained on and the behaviour they learn from user interactions. According to the study's authors, one major reason is that overgeneralizations are already common in scientific literature. When LLMs are trained on this content, they learn to replicate the same patterns, often reinforcing existing flaws rather than correcting them. Another contributing factor is user preference. Language models are optimised to generate responses that sound helpful, fluent, and widely applicable. As co-author Benjamin Chin-Yee explained, the models may learn that generalisations are more pleasing to users, even if they distort the original meaning. This results in summaries that may appear authoritative but fail to accurately represent the complexities and limitations of the research. Accuracy prompts backfire Contrary to expectations, prompting the models to be more accurate actually made the problem worse. When instructed to avoid inaccuracies, the LLMs were nearly twice as likely to produce summaries with exaggerated or overgeneralised conclusions compared to when given a simple, neutral prompt. 'This effect is concerning,' said Peters. 'Students, researchers, and policymakers may assume that if they ask ChatGPT to avoid inaccuracies, they'll get a more reliable summary. Our findings prove the opposite.' Humans still do better To compare AI and human performance directly, the researchers analysed summaries written by people alongside those generated by chatbots. The results showed that AI was nearly five times more likely to make broad generalisations than human writers. This gap underscores the need for careful human oversight when using AI tools in scientific or academic contexts. Recommendations for safer use To mitigate these risks, the researchers recommend using models like Claude, which demonstrated the highest generalisation accuracy in their tests. They also suggest setting LLMs to a lower "temperature" to reduce creative embellishments and using prompts that encourage past-tense, study-specific reporting. 'If we want AI to support science literacy rather than undermine it,' Peters noted, 'we need more vigilance and testing of these systems in science communication contexts.' AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Time of India
11-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
A 140 million-year-old lost continent beneath Europe and the Alps connection
In a recent discovery that rewrites the history of this planet, a team of scientists led by geologist Douwe van Hinsbergen of Utrecht University, uncovered a vast lost continent that has been buried beneath Southern Europe for nearly 140 million years. #Operation Sindoor India-Pakistan Clash Live Updates| Pak moving troops to border areas? All that's happening Why India chose to abstain instead of 'No Vote' against IMF billion-dollar funding to Pakistan How Pak's jihadi general Munir became trapped in his own vice Known as Greater Adria , this ancient landmass was once the size of present day Greenland as part of a vast ancient supercontinent. The team behind the discovery spent over a decade reconstructing the movements of tectonic plates through advanced geological software and seismic data to uncover this forgotten continent and trace its journey over millions of years. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Dog licks arent kisses. Heres what your dog really means when it licks you. Novelodge Undo Published in the journal Gondwana Research, the findings reveal how Greater Adria broke away from North Africa around 200 million years ago and began drifting toward what is now Southern Europe. But rather than crashing above the surface, much of Greater Adria slipped beneath. Over time, much of the continent was slowly dragged beneath the surface of Europe in a process known as 'subduction.' Live Events Parts of it were scraped off and compressed, eventually becoming the building blocks of the Alps, the Apennines, and the rugged mountains of Greece and Turkey. According to van Hinsbergen, 'Everything is curved, broken and stacked,' describing the complex tectonic mess of the Mediterranean where they found the continent. He also said,' Forget Atlantis. Without realizing it, vast numbers of tourists spend their holiday each year on the lost continent of Greater Adria.' Hikers in the Alps may not know it, but they're walking on a sunken world that vanished 140 million years ago. The seismic evidence also supports the existence of Greater Adria, as researchers have even traced pieces of the submerged continent as deep as 1,500 kilometers beneath the Earth 's surface. These buried slabs offer clues not just to the past, but also to the future. By studying how landmasses like Greater Adria were consumed by the Earth, scientists hope to better understand earthquakes, volcanic activity, and the forces that shape the Mediterranean region today. This discovery underscores that much of Earth's history remains untouched, with hidden mysteries still shaping our planet.
National Geographic
09-05-2025
- Science
- National Geographic
The surprising real world uses of zombie fungi
Parasitic fungi have adapted to hijack some insects and nourish others. By learning their secrets, we may be able to use them to attack harmful pests. Even the largest insect bodies offer no refuge from parasitic fungi. This cicada, now a husk, has been consumed by a fungus. The specimen is part of the growing collection curated by mycologist João Araújo at the University of Copenhagen, where researchers are uncovering the immense diversity—and potential—of these microorganisms. Photographs by Roberto García-Roa Zombie fungi have become notorious in pop culture and from videos of them bursting through ants, but it's time for their redemption arc. Scientists know very little about how zombie fungi work, but they and closely related fungi could help farmers kill costly pests like mealybugs and aphids. These pests are wreaking increasing havoc on the world's crops as climate change helps pests spread. João Araújo, a mycologist at the University of Copenhagen, wants to learn more about these mysterious, parasitic fungi in the hopes of one day using them as a precision weapon against some of the world's most nefarious farm pests. Armed with a new 1.2 million-euro grant from Villum Fonden, a Danish foundation that funds scientific research, and a team of collaborators located around the world in fungi hotspots from Brazil to Borneo, Araújo is ready to plumb the depths of tropical forests to collect as many infected insects as he can. He'll document and sequence their genomes to search for signs of fungal invaders, research that could pioneer a new way of killing dangerous pests from the inside out. Clinging to a leaf in the Peruvian Amazon, a moth becomes host to a fungal takeover. Ophiocordyceps humberti, an entomopathogenic fungus, erupts from the insect's lifeless form in slender filaments known as stromata. Lepidopterans—moths and butterflies—are among the most frequent victims of these silent forest parasites. Zombie fungi (a kind of Ophiocordyceps) have a morbid reputation for a reason. The fungus infects an ant and lies in wait, silently unleashing biochemical warfare. When environmental conditions are right, the fungus compels the infected insect to climb high, to where the light is just right (often at noon), latch onto a leaf, and wait for the fungi to shoot a fruiting body out of the ant's head, releasing spores that find new hosts and continue the cycle. Many ants can be infected at the same time. 'The creepy thing is, they congregate together, so we get these graveyards,' said Charissa de Bekker, a mycologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands not working with Araujo. 'We don't really know why.' Evolution has uniquely paired each species of zombie fungus with a single species of insect. This relationship is mostly seen in ants, but a group of scientists, including Araújo, recently learned that fungi can create zombie spiders and wasps. 'Zombification of arthropods by fungi might be more common and diverse than we think,' Araújo said. But in 2018, scientists uncovered a secret: sometime in the past, some Ophiocordyceps made an evolutionary one-eighty and became an asset for their host, supplying them with amino acids instead of filling their heads with fungus. It's this surprising ability to switch from parasite to symbiont that's at the heart of Araújo's research. If the host insect is a pest, like an aphid, killing the fungi would kill the insect. Farm managers could apply a fungicide that would only target the fungus, leaving other organisms untouched. Preserved within the Natural History Museum of Denmark, this ant carries the legacy of one of the most iconic fungi ever documented: the Ophiocordyceps 'zombie-ant fungus'. First noted by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1859, the fungus infiltrates the nervous system of ants, compelling them to climb to elevated perches—ideal launch points for its infectious spores. 'The same fungal linage can be a host-killing parasite and a nutritional symbiont,' Araújo said. 'This is really mind-blowing.' But this tool will require years of research to develop. There are at least 320 species of Ophiocordyceps; not even two dozen of those have been studied in detail, and scientists are still learning how those work. How would it work? Aphids, so-called sap-sucking insects, began relying on symbiotic bacteria to get essential nutrients and proteins from plants at least 300 million years ago. At some point after that, their bacterial partners were replaced with Ophiocordyceps. But the fungi didn't kill them. Instead, they were helpful symbionts. 'Without these symbionts, the insects die,' Araújo said. His idea is simple: kill the fungus, kill the pest. The perfect weapon, designed by nature and time. Because Ophiocordyceps aren't immune to being invaded by other parasitic fungi, researchers could theoretically use parasitic fungi to kill the beneficial fungi, which were once parasitic themselves. 'It's parasites all the way down,' de Bekker said. Doing so would skip the use of chemical fungicides and insecticides, which can degrade soil health and pollute nearby bodies of water. Another option could be siccing zombie fungi on problematic insects. This is appealing in part because each fungus can only attack one species, reducing the likelihood of unintended ecological effects. True bugs (Hemiptera) benefit from fungi. They survive on sap, a nutrient source rich in sugar and water but critically deficient in amino acids. To compensate, Hemiptera rely on symbiotic relationships—typically with bacteria—that synthesize the essential amino acids they need to survive. In some cases, Ophiocordyceps fungi have replaced these bacterial symbionts. The texture of a leaf blends seamlessly with the protrusions formed by a fungus from the Akanthomyces group along the dorsal section of a moth. Frozen in time after its final flight, the moth remains completely adhered to the last leaf that witnessed it alive. Early results for fungi attacking pests are promising. Spores from Cordyceps, closely related to Ophiocordyceps, reduced the lifespans and reproduction in mealybugs, which invade cotton fields. They inhibited larval development of diamondback moths, which cause billions of dollars of damages to cruciferous crops such as broccoli. Cordyceps has also shown potential in fighting whiteflies, aphids, caterpillars, spider mites, and other insects. But these findings were in laboratories. To use zombie fungi and their relatives to our advantage in the real world, scientists have to understand how they work, and there's a long way to go. We know what fungi do, but very little about how they do it. 'Everything we have currently is just hypotheses,' de Bekker said. Caught between life and decay, this grasshopper, discovered in Peru's Tambopata rainforest, was overtaken by a fungus. A long exposure photography emulates the invisible effect of the wind that helps spread the fungal life cycle from one host to the next. Araújo's new grant will explore the diverse world of both parasitic and beneficial Ophiocordyceps fungi in sap-sucking insects found near agricultural sites like coffee, maize, and beans. 'We need more studies on biodiversity … of these fungi to develop smarter ways to fight climate change impacts,' he said. 'We just have the tip of the iceberg.' He and his team will spend at least 10 months scouring tropical forests for insects, starting with Brazil, Kenya, Borneo, and Japan, collecting as many specimens as they can. Once back in the lab in the Netherlands, they'll sequence the DNA of all the fungi found in each insect, checking for the presence of the beneficial fungi. They will then sequence each fungus' genome, searching for clues into when and why these fungi evolved a beneficial relationship with the insect, and how it works. From the dense undergrowth of Peru's Tambopata rainforest, a fly becomes the launchpad for one of nature's most specialized entomopathogenic fungi: Ophiocordyceps dipterigena. This fungus hijacks the fly's behavior, guiding it to a spot ideal for fungal development. After the insect's death, its body gives rise to spore-bearing structures that rupture into the air—releasing microscopic agents of infection in search of the next host. 'I think this project will very substantially advance our knowledge on how these symbiotic systems evolve," said Piotr Łukasik, an evolutionary ecologist at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow who is collaborating with Araújo on the new grant. 'It's a massive field for discovery.' The project could also help pest managers respond more quickly to new insect invasions. Scientists could look at where the insect originally came from and check for symbiotic fungi, which they could then target in the insect's invasive range. Araújo expects his project to lay the foundations for entirely new forms of pest control. 'We could have much more efficient strategies to control only the pests we want to,' he said. 'To do that, we need this exploratory work.'
The Hindu
08-05-2025
- General
- The Hindu
More than a ride: Book captures the soul of Bengaluru's bus commutes
A new bilingual (Kannada and English) book released on Monday, Bengalurina Bussina Kathegalu (Bengaluru's Bus Stories), captures heartfelt, real-life moments from the city's Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) buses — turning everyday commutes into compelling narratives. Compiled by a team of writers and volunteers, the book showcases vignettes of connection and community experienced aboard the city's public buses. The book is a collaborative effort by researchers from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, the EQUIMOB project, the Institute for Social and Economic Change, the Bengaluru Bus Prayanikara Vedike (BBPV), and the non-profit organisation Samvada. Whether it is a conductor offering emotional support or strangers forming unexpected friendships, the stories paint a vivid picture of how BMTC buses have quietly shaped the social fabric of the city. The initiative also aims to shift public perception and celebrating bus travel as a space of possibility rather than inconvenience. Many collaborations Prajwal Nagesh, a researcher who worked on the compilation of the book, said that there is no single author for the book and it features contributions of various collaborators. 'Though every one of us has travelled in BMTC buses and have a lot of memories associated with it, it is not being recorded. The book has stories associated with the bus by people of Bengaluru,' he added. The book has 23 stories grouped into seven different themes. The event opened with volunteer Mamatha Gamana sharing her own memories of riding the bus, after which others in the audience began recounting their own journeys. In one of the stories in the book, 55-year-old Paramesh narrates his childhood memory of the double decker bus. 'For some 30-35 years, I have been using BMTC buses. If there was ever a real Bengaluru, it was back then when I sat in a BMTC bus window seat. Those (double-decker) buses were like two buses stacked on top of each other. We used to feel scared of falling while getting on those buses... The double-decker buses had two conductors. On the terrace, all the youngsters would sit, while women and older people would sit below,' he said. Making a match Ramesh shared how a conductor convinced him to approve a match for his sister. 'My sister was going to college and she travelled to college by bus. She fell in love with a guy travelling on the same bus but studying in a different college. Should you even ask how it was 10-20 years back? A guy and a girl could never travel together. When she came home, we all spoke to her patiently. She did not admit it. One day, I closed my shop and without her knowing, I followed her. In a fit of anger, I slapped my sister. By then, the bus conductor came and asked, 'Who are you, pa? Why are you hitting the girl?' Then I told him what she had done. He said, 'You have learnt about this only yesterday. We have seen them for many days. We have been seeing them for 6-7 months. They have not committed any unpardonable sin. First, take them home, sit patiently and talk to the elders.' That day, if the conductor had not told me to take them home and discuss with elders, I would have fought with my sister and taken her away. I wanted to invite the conductor to my sister's wedding, but we could not,' he said. The e-book is available on Equimob's website and Bengaluru Bus Prayanikara Vedike's blog.
