How AI Can Save the Zebras
Nautilus Magazine
Cutting-edge science, unraveled by the very brightest living thinkers.
Hello, friends of Nautilus.
We'll start today's edition with the story of how a joke about a "bar code reader for zebras" led Researcher Tanya Berger-Wolf to develop a system for a full census of Kenya's zebra population. Wild stuff.
Then, for your free story (no paywall, regardless of your membership status) take a journey to the limits of the knowable with Caspar Henderson , and ponder what it means to live as a post-human. Will you still login to LinkedIn after the singularity is achieved?
Then, meet some of the recent artists that have contributed to Nautilus. If you didn't already know, we take the visual presentation of our stories very seriously. We've won an American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) Award for Best Style and Design of a magazine cover, which may strike you as unusual for a science publication. It is! A new series spotlighting the artists behind our original illustrations is a can't-miss.
Let's get into it.
Scanning animal patterns like bar codes boosts conservation.
By Karen Bakker
Tanya Berger-Wolf didn’t expect to become an environmentalist. After falling in love with math at 5 years old, she started a doctorate in computer science in her early 20s, attracting attention for her cutting-edge theoretical research. But just as she was about to graduate, she became obsessed with a topic that surprised her professors and even herself: zebras.
While still an undergraduate, Berger-Wolf began working as a research assistant at the ecology department, building computer simulations of wildlife populations. She was intrigued by the fact that digital technologies and biodiversity were following exponential trends, but in opposite directions. While the digital sector was burgeoning, endangered species populations were crashing. And in contrast to the deluge of data she had experienced in computer science, Berger-Wolf was shocked at how little data existed about the world’s most endangered species.
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The Death and Life of the Frontier
A voyage to the limits of the knowable.
Where does the world begin and where does it end? In many creation stories the Earth has well-defined edges. In early Mesopotamian mythology it is a flat disk floating in the ocean and surrounded by a circular sky. The Hopi people of northeastern Arizona envision it as a series of layered worlds, of which humans have emerged into the fourth tier, escaping from the turmoil below through a hollow reed in the Grand Canyon. The ancient Greeks were probably the first to light on the idea of the Earth as science understands it today: as a sphere, and therefore without an end point on its surface.
MEET OUR ARTISTS
Original art is a core part of the Nautilus identify. We ask illustrators to give us their most creative interpretation of the stories, and let them loose. When the art and stories are in tune, they sing together, and it's a joy to experience. You can read about these artists' contributions to the stories, and their journeys through the arts, in our monthly Meet the Artist series. Check it out, why don't you?
Jorge Colombo: Why Artists Should View The World Through The Eyes Of A Tourist
Mark Bellan: Building a Bridge Between Data and Art
John Hendrix: The Call to Adventure and the Pit of Despair
Jennifer Bruce: The “Tortured Artist” Inside All Of Us
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