#ETH Zürich

[averycanadianfilm]

ETH Zürich

#ETH Zürich

[mudwerks]

(via This four-legged robot learned parkour to better navigate obstacles | Ars Technica)

you cannot escape

#ETH Zürich team #anymal #four-legged robot #parkour #will get yer ass #wherever you try to hide #navigate obstacles #tech #robotics

[hengheng7]

ETH Zuerich Hönggerberg

#ETH #Zürich #Hönggerberg

[intlforestday]

Innovation is advancing ecosystem restoration as a powerful nature-based solution to multiple global challenges.

14.30-15.30 - Panel Discussion entitled'' Innovation is advancing ecosystem restoration as a powerful nature-based solution to multiple global challenges.''

Keynote speaker: Tom Crowther, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH) Moderator: Khalil Walji, The Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF)

Panelists

Tom Crowther, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH)

Yelena Finegold, FAO Forestry Officer       

Chetan Kumar, International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)       

Adrien Leitoro, Nature and People as One       

Fabiola Zerbini, Brazilian National Secretariat for Biodiversity, Forests and Animal Rights

#21 march #nature-based solution #fao forestry #panel discussion #international day of forests #International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) #Nature and People as One #Brazilian National Secretariat for Biodiversity #Forests and Animal Rights #Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH) #CIFOR #Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF)

[dlyarchitecture]

#Maintenance 1:1 – Creating a Meeting Place / ETH Zürich + University of Antwerp

[nyancrimew]

hey, so, remember the talk i did on hacktivism and stalkerware at the end of last november? the recording of that is now finally available, so if you missed the talk, wanna rewatch it or wanna share it with someone you can now finally do that!

#maia arson crimew #FuckStalkerware #talk

[annie19900818]

Cheers to Bitcoin on the Moon! Investors!^_^^_^^_^

#BTC #ETH #Cryptocurrency #Virtual currencies #berlin #switzerland #schweiz #suisse #heidelberger schloss #kölner dom #deutschland #zürich #don’t worry darling #home

[blueiskewl]

Three Students Just Deciphered the First Passages of a 2,000-Year-Old Scroll Burned in Vesuvius’ Eruption

A Roman scroll, partially preserved when it was buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, has been virtually unwrapped and decoded using artificial intelligence.

The feat was achieved by three contestants in the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition launched in March 2023 in which people around the world raced to read the ancient Herculaneum papyri.

Papyrologists working with the Vesuvius Challenge believe the scroll contains “never-before-seen text from antiquity,” and the text in question is a piece of Epicurean philosophy on the subject of pleasure. The winning submission shows ancient Greek letters on a large patch of scroll, and the author seems to be discussing the question: are things that are scarce more pleasurable as a result?

The author, whose identity is unconfirmed, doesn’t think so: “As too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant,” one passage from the scroll reads.

The three members of the winning team had previously individually made significant contributions to the competition. Luke Farritor, a computer science student at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Youssef Nader, a machine learning Ph.D. student at Freie University in Berlin, had been two of the first contestants to detect a smaller number of letters, winning $40,000 and $10,000 respectively. Julian Schilliger, a robotics student at ETH Zürich, developed a tool that began to automatically segment the scrolls. They will share the $700,000 grand prize.

Nat Friedman, a tech investor and executive, and one of the challenge’s organizers, recently printed out the winning submission. “All this has been in this dreamlike digital world in my imagination before," Friedman says. "Seeing it on paper, rolling it up, it just made it so tangible.”

There’s a lot more to discover. The scroll partially decoded by the winning submission was one of 800 discovered in a southern Italian villa that was first uncovered in 1750. The combined efforts of the competitors and organizers so far have resulted in around 5% of one scroll being read.

The final scramble to read the scrolls

Since the Vesuvius Challenge launched nearly a year ago, participants had both cooperated and competed, sharing their latest techniques with each other and posting pictures of their progress. But as the race for the grand prize intensified, the Discord, a social media platform where the participants shared information, went dark, says Friedman.

Of the eighteen submissions for the grand prize, most of them were received on the last day of the contest, Dec. 31, and three were sent in the final ten minutes, according to Friedman. Friedman recalls he was at home with his family around Christmas, decorating for the holiday while compulsively refreshing his phone, when the winning submission came in. “I ran into my little office at home and popped it open,” he says. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is really magnificent.’”

In accordance with the criteria set in March 2023, the winning submission contains four passages of 140 characters each, with at least 85% of the characters in each of those passages recoverable by professional papyrologists. It also contains a further 11 columns of text.

It isn’t known who authored the ancient scroll, but experts have developed theories. “Is the author Epicurus' follower, the philosopher and poet Philodemus, the teacher of Vergil? It seems very likely,” writes Richard Janko, professor of classical studies at the University of Michigan. “Is he writing about the effect of music on the hearer, and comparing it to other pleasures like those of food and drink? Quite probably.” Robert Fowler, a professor of Greek at the University of Bristol, also believes the author to be Philodemus. “Like other Epicureans, he valued pleasure above all - but pleasure rightly understood, not mere indulgence,” Fowler writes of the philosopher.

In the final section of the scroll, the author appears to criticize his intellectual adversaries, who “have nothing to say about pleasure, either in general or in particular, when it is a question of definition.”

“I can't help but read it as a 2000 year old blog post, arguing with another poster,” says Friedman. “It's ancient Substack, and people are beefing with each other, and I think that's just amazing.”

What comes next

The Vesuvius Challenge has issued a new grand prize for 2024 that will allow the AI-enhanced decoding to move at a faster pace.

The competitors largely have been developing algorithms for automatic letter detection—using AI to see traces of ink on segments of virtually unrolled scrolls. Aside from letter detection, the other main challenge associated with reading the scrolls is segmentation—separating the layers and virtually unrolling the scrolls. So far, this process has been highly manual; the Vesuvius Challenge employed three full-time segmenters. In order to ensure that they’d have segmented enough of the scroll for someone to win the grand prize, Friedman bought the team new monitors and computers to boost their productivity. The challenge for 2024 is to automate the segmentation process.

Friedman admits that he has had other tempting offers of new quests to pursue. Over the last year, he says his inbox has been filled with Robinson Crusoe-esque proposals, from people alerting him to lost shipwrecks and ancient cities, undecoded languages, and strange glyphs on the sides of mountains.

But he can’t walk away. He wants to help read all of the 800 scrolls already discovered in the villa. And some archeologists believe there is a main library containing tens of thousands of scrolls, still waiting to be excavated.

To expedite the excavation, Friedman has obtained the mobile number of the Italian civil servant responsible for the villa, whom he has texted, twice. “My hope is that I won't have to go and dig it out myself,” says Friedman. “But if that's what it comes to, I will.”

By WILL HENSHALL.

#AI reads ancient scroll buried by Vesuvius eruption #Three Students Just Deciphered the First Passages of a 2000-Year-Old Scroll Burned in Vesuvius’ Eruption #Herculaneum #Herculaneum papyri #Villa of the Papyri #Mount Vesuvius #ancient artifacts #archeology #archeolgst #history #history news #ancient history #ancient culture #ancient civilizations #roman history #roman empire #long post #long reads

[humanoidhistory]

Construction of the Hardturm Viaduct in Zürich, Switzerland, 1968.

(ETH Library)

#bridge #zurich #architecture #switzerland #1960s #hardturm viaduct

[modelarchitecture]

Comte/Meuwly — Architectes ETH SIA is an architectural firm based in Zürich and Geneva, Switzerland, founded by Adrien Comte and Adrien Meuwly.

#metal

[garadinervi]

Gottfried Honegger, Computerzeichnungen, in collaboration with ETH Zürich [CDC 1604-A mainframe + app. in FORTRAN programmed by Beat Kleiner], 1970 [© Gottfried Honegger Estate]

Exhibition: Max Frisch & Gottfried Honegger: Der Zufall hat es gut gemeint, Max Frisch-Archiv an der ETH-Bibliothek / ETH-Bibliothek / ETH Zürich, Department of Mathematics, Zürich, May 11, 2017 – September 29, 2017 [Galerie Römerapotheke]

#art #drawing #computer art #computer technology #computer drawing #plotter drawing #programming #geometry #gottfried honegger #max frisch #beat kleiner #max frisch archiv an der eth bibliothek #eth bibliothek #galerie römerapotheke #1970s #2010s

[hauntedbystorytelling]

Mascotte dancer, Junkers G 23, CH-134 of Ad Astra Aero AG in Dübendorf, 1925. Photographed for SwissAir. | src ETH Zürich

#dancer #mascotte dancer #dance troupe #switzerland #plane #1920s #promotional picture #dance pose #aviation #vintage photography

[elixir]

ETH Zürich university photo by u/Jhunter_1

#photography #art #aesthetic #architecture #brutalism #university #zurich #curators on tumblr

[assassinus]

BASICS

FULL NAME: YEONG MIREU [ 영미르 ]

GOVERNMENT NAME: IM MIREU [ 임미르 ]

» MEANING: Yeong [From Sino-Korean 英 (yeong) meaning "flower, petal, brave, hero", as well as other hanja characters that are pronounced similarly. It usually occurs in combination with another character, though it is sometimes used as a stand-alone name. This name was borne by Jang Yeong-sil (where Jang is the surname), a 15th-century Korean scientist and inventor.]; Mireu [From native Korean 미르 (mireu) meaning "dragon." It may be either derived from Old Chinese *mroːŋ (龍) or a cognate with 물 (mul) meaning "water."]

NICKNAME: Yeong, his last name, but he is mostly called by his given name, which is Mireu. After his birth, his father named him after his year of birth which is the Dragon.

AGE: 35-years old.

DATE OF BIRTH: 1988 May 29th, Sunday, Year of The Dragon.

PLACE OF BIRTH: Busan.

OCCUPATION: Hacker and Assassin for Im Family.

RELIGION: N/A

ORIENTATION: Bisexual; Biromantic.

GENDER: Cisgender Male.

VERSES: City of Gods.

SPECIES: Human.

POWERS: He's badass.

PERSONALITY

STRENGTHS: Loyal, Adaptable, Strong, Brave, Passionate.

WEAKNESSES: Indecisive, Inconsistent, Proud, Loner, Anti-social [ sometimes. ]

APPEARANCE

FACE CLAIM: Lee Soo-hyuk.

HEIGHT: 6′0″ [183 cm.]

WEIGHT: 149 lbs. [68 kg.]

BUILD: Athletic. Mireu moves like a cat or so he's told.

GAIT: Confident.

HAIR COLOR: Dark brown.

EYE COLOR: Dark brown.

BIRTHMARK: Some.

OVERVIEW:

» SCARS: Various from fights...

» TATTOOS: Im Clan Tattoo like the other members.

BACKGROUND

HOMETOWN: Busan but he grew up in Seoul.

RESIDENCES: Busan, Seoul, Tokyo, New York, Bangkok.

ETHNICITY: Asian.

FINANCIAL STATUS: He makes good money.

EDUCATION LEVEL: University graduate; the Im Clan made sure that he's educated especially after the head of the family realized he has talent in hacking and arms skills as well.

DEGREES: Computer Science Degree from ETH Zürich in Switzerland.

SPOKEN LANGUAGES: Mireu is fluent in his native Hangul. He speaks Japanese, Mandarin, English, Swiss, German, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, and French.

RELATIONSHIPS

PARENTS: Mireu considers Im Su-hyeon-ssi, Shiro's mother and head of the Im Clan as a parent/mother figure. He was told his father was a loyal member of the family who passed right after he was born. His mother was killed soon after. He was adopted by the clan and raised him as their own.

SIBLINGS: None.

CHILDREN: None.

PETS: None.

SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIPS: Mireu serves the head of the clan, Im Su-hyeon and he is loyal to the leader's children, including Shiro. He's acquaintances with Choi Mal-chin and Ahn Ji-hoon. He is exceptionally fond of Eun-bin [ Bunnie ] and treats her as a younger sister. He is one of the very few who doesn't call Eun-bin by her nickname. [ He's probably like how Mal-chin is to Eon... ]

» TBA

FAMILY HISTORY: Mireu was an orphan who was taken in by the Im family. He grew up with the Im children. The fact that he was adopted was not hidden from him but he was not treated any different. He is loyal to the family and is legally named IM MIREU but he also uses his father's family name which Im Su-hyeon encouraged him to do.

ROMANTIC HISTORY: No time for relationships. He's serious about work. He's well aware of what happened to his family, especially his mother, and he feared that being romantically involved with another person might put them in danger.

PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS: Shiro, Mal-chin, Ji-hoon, Percy. If that's okay?

THOUGHTS ON LOVE: ...

HEALTH

PHOBIA(S): Losing someone very important to him.

HANDICAP(S): None.

MENTAL DISORDER: Depression.

PHYSICAL DISEASE(S): None.

PREDISPOSITION(S): Alcoholism.

#{ character sheet: mireu }

[dlyarchitecture]

#GLC Building ETH Zürich / Boltshauser Architekten

[bpod-bpod]

Concentrating in Corners

Computer modelling and cellular studies reveal the interplay between key regulatory molecule WNT9b and geometric effects to shape the branching ductal tissue of the developing kidney

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Malte Mederacke and Lisa Conrad and colleagues

Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zürich, Basel, Switzerland

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in bioRxiv, November 2023 (not peer reviewed)

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

#science #biomedicine #biology #kidney #renal #developmental biology #embryo development #computer modeling