【推荐2】In a box stands a baby black-tailed godwit, which is only a few days old and, in a few weeks, this bird will set off on an extraordinary journey. First, it will be carefully loaded into the back of a truck with nine other young godwits and driven 1,000 kilometers east to Poland. From there, it will join the local black-tailed godwits on a vast migration (迁徙), traveling 3,600 kilometers south to sub-Saharan Africa.

In the process, this little bird will help answer a fundamental question that has been troubling shorebird biologist Theunis Piersma for more than 30 years: Are godwits born with their migratory routes programmed into their genes (基因), or do they learn it from other birds?

Piersma and his co-workers raised dozens of wild black-tailed godwits they collected from nests in the Netherlands’ north. They equipped the birds with tiny devices and freed them to migrate. Half were let go from their home; the others were trucked to Poland. Every 36 hours, the birds’ solar-powered devices reported their locations to passing satellites—and on to the biologists’ computers.

Throughout 2015 and 2016, the scientists tracked 80 godwits, and all but one of the birds trucked to Poland assumed the Polish birds’ route. By tracking the birds’ progress, Piersma proved his idea that social learning, not genes, is driving the godwits’ migration.

Though how the birds are learning from each other remains unclear, Piersma thinks the godwits are not simply following the crowd. Instead, he believes they are somehow sharing information of their route with each other before they leave.

Piersma believes that the key point of this work—that scientists have been overvaluing the contributions of genes to bird migration—can extend (扩展) beyond shorebirds to other groups, such as songbirds, whose migration routes are seemingly related to their genes.

In a changing world, Piersma believes godwits’ ability to learn new migration routes may make them more adaptable.

【推荐2】Type in words like “a chocolate bar riding a bicycle in the style of Picasso” and artificial intelligence tools like Stable Diffusion can produce an image for you in seconds. They do so by integrating elements from the vast libraries of digitally available images and artwork from across the Internet that they have been trained on.

But in doing so, are those AI tools violating the copyrights of the artists behind those images? That question is at the heart of two new lawsuits.

Last week, Getty Images announced that it has initiated legal action against Stability AI the maker of Stable Diffusion. Getty Images claims that the company has copied millions of its images and “chosen to ignore practicable licensing options and long-standing legal protections in pursuit of their stand alone commercial interests”. Stability AI was also named as a defendant in a class action lawsuit in San Francisco by three visual artists on behalf of the visual arts community. Both lawsuits argue that AI image generators unjustly steal from artists, using their work without crediting or rewarding them.

“The harm to artists is not conjectural—works generated by AI Image Products ‘in the style’ of a particular artist are already sold on the Internet,” the class action lawsuit states. In response to the artists’ lawsuit, a spokesperson for Stability AI says the company takes these matters seriously and that anyone that believes that this isn’t fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law.

Midjourney CEO David Holz compared the process behind his image generating service to the process behind human creativity, which often involves drawing inspiration from other artists. “Can a person look at somebody else’s picture and learn from it and make a similar picture?” Holz said. “Obviously, it’s allowed for people and if it wasn’t, then it would destroy the whole professional art industry, probably the nonprofessional industry too.

Old trains are very attractive and mysterious, whether it’s because of their history and their function or simply because they look so fierce and huge. Many old derailed trains have been transformed into anything like homes, art galleries and even amusement parks. As part of a recovery program to restore a failed railway, Ecuadorian design firm Al Borde transformed a tired, old train into a mobile cultural center, which they call “Wagon of Knowledge” (Vagon del Saber).

Selected by the Ecuadorian(厄瓜多尔)Ministry of Culture and Heritage, the community oriented project is to reactivate settlements along its route. After more than a decade of absence, these areas not only recover a means of communication but are enhanced economically, as the cultural promoters use the train car as an activator of public space and a meeting point for the locals. The multifunctional nature of the carriage — it is without a strictly defined architectural program and can therefore be designed flexibly — allows for musical performances, theater shows, training programs and celebrations.

The train was renovated(修复)to achieve the greatest number of uses with the minimum number of elements.

A public square and a theater with a capacity of 60-80 people, as well as work spaces for 20 users were incorporated by attaching three extensions to the train: a roof with several deployment( 部 署 )options, retractable furniture and two storage spaces — simple systems operated by the cultural romoters turn the cart into their desired requirements. Set to travel around the route, the cultural unit will begin to accumulate and facilitate new stories.

Intended to move from place to place without a strict set of limitations to define its use, it becomes something flexible that adapts to the needs of the moment, so that it “carries neither goods nor tourists, but culture and public space”. As we can see here, there are a lot of possibilities, thanks to various interchangeable components that can allow the train to shift from conference space to a performance venue in a snap.

It’s a creative way to give new life to a historically important train that was once even derailed, and to ensure that it can keep on serving the public. One more thing, people don’t have to go to this public space; it will travel to come to them.