MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: US grave-robbing case traced to suspects through microscopic moss

📌 MAROKO133 Breaking ai: US grave-robbing case traced to suspects through microsco

A case involving systematic desecration of human remains at Burr Oak Cemetery, Illinois, surfaced in 2009. Preliminary investigations revealed that over 100 bodies were exhumed and relocated to vacant areas to facilitate the illegal resale of the burial plots.

While the investigators struggled to pinpoint exactly when the reburials happened, a microscopic clump of moss proved to be the primary evidence in resolving one of the most notorious cemetery scandals in Illinois history.

The “silent witness” found just eight inches below the surface helped bring down the defendants.

The botanical breakthrough

FBI investigators first brought a tiny green moss sample to Matt von Konrat, head of botany collections at the Field Museum. The main challenge was determining whether the moss naturally grew at the burial site or had been moved there.

“People lie, but moss does not,” von Konrat said, a phrase now featured in a permanent exhibit at the Field Museum.

After analyzing the sample, von Konrat identified it as Fissidens taxifolius, or pocket moss. Further analysis revealed that this moss did not grow near the new location of the graves. Instead, a large patch was found in another part of the cemetery where the investigators believed the bodies had first been dug up.

Chlorophyll and criminal timelines

Beyond identifying the origin of the remains, the moss acted like a biological clock that the defence could not challenge. The defendants claimed that the graves were disturbed years before they started working there, but the moss’ metabolic state told a different story.

Similar to the radiocarbon dating of fossils, the level of metabolic deterioration in moss can reveal when the plant was harvested or moved.

Researchers measured the metabolic deterioration of the moss and compared its chlorophyll content to museum samples. The results concluded that the moss was only a year or two old at the time of discovery. This established that the plant and the bodies were moved during the defendant’s tenure.

“This is the cool thing about moss,” von Konrat mentioned. “When we’re dead, we’re dead, but with mosses, it’s bizarre. Even when we might think they’re dead, they can still have an active metabolism.”

The legacy of the case

The findings eventually led to the convictions of the cemetery’s former manager and three gravediggers. This new peer-reviewed study highlights a field of “forensic bryology” that is often overlooked in traditional crime investigations.

Von Konrat noted that although forensic botany often focuses on flowering plants, mosses offer a unique advantage due to their resilience and distinct growth patterns. “Mosses are often overlooked,” added von Konrat, adding that he hopes this research will highlight the important role non-flowering plants play in the justice system.

The original moss sample is now a permanent part of the Field Museum’s botanical collection.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 MAROKO133 Update ai: Anthropic launches Cowork, a Claude Desktop agent that work

Anthropic released Cowork on Monday, a new AI agent capability that extends the power of its wildly successful Claude Code tool to non-technical users — and according to company insiders, the team built the entire feature in approximately a week and a half, largely using Claude Code itself.

The launch marks a major inflection point in the race to deliver practical AI agents to mainstream users, positioning Anthropic to compete not just with OpenAI and Google in conversational AI, but with Microsoft's Copilot in the burgeoning market for AI-powered productivity tools.

"Cowork lets you complete non-technical tasks much like how developers use Claude Code," the company announced via its official Claude account on X. The feature arrives as a research preview available exclusively to Claude Max subscribers — Anthropic's power-user tier priced between $100 and $200 per month — through the macOS desktop application.

For the past year, the industry narrative has focused on large language models that can write poetry or debug code. With Cowork, Anthropic is betting that the real enterprise value lies in an AI that can open a folder, read a messy pile of receipts, and generate a structured expense report without human hand-holding.

How developers using a coding tool for vacation research inspired Anthropic's latest product

The genesis of Cowork lies in Anthropic's recent success with the developer community. In late 2024, the company released Claude Code, a terminal-based tool that allowed software engineers to automate rote programming tasks. The tool was a hit, but Anthropic noticed a peculiar trend: users were forcing the coding tool to perform non-coding labor.

According to Boris Cherny, an engineer at Anthropic, the company observed users deploying the developer tool for an unexpectedly diverse array of tasks.

"Since we launched Claude Code, we saw people using it for all sorts of non-coding work: doing vacation research, building slide decks, cleaning up your email, cancelling subscriptions, recovering wedding photos from a hard drive, monitoring plant growth, controlling your oven," Cherny wrote on X. "These use cases are diverse and surprising — the reason is that the underlying Claude Agent is the best agent, and Opus 4.5 is the best model."

Recognizing this shadow usage, Anthropic effectively stripped the command-line complexity from their developer tool to create a consumer-friendly interface. In its blog post announcing the feature, Anthropic explained that developers "quickly began using it for almost everything else," which "prompted us to build Cowork: a simpler way for anyone — not just developers — to work with Claude in the very same way."

Inside the folder-based architecture that lets Claude read, edit, and create files on your computer

Unlike a standard chat interface where a user pastes text for analysis, Cowork requires a different level of trust and access. Users designate a specific folder on their local machine that Claude can access. Within that sandbox, the AI agent can read existing files, modify them, or create entirely new ones.

Anthropic offers several illustrative examples: reorganizing a cluttered downloads folder by sorting and intelligently renaming each file, generating a spreadsheet of expenses from a collection of receipt screenshots, or drafting a report from scattered notes across multiple documents.

"In Cowork, you give Claude access to a folder on your computer. Claude can then read, edit, or create files in that folder," the company explained on X. "Try it to create a spreadsheet from a pile of screenshots, or produce a first draft from scattered notes."

The architecture relies on what is known as an "agentic loop." When a user assigns a task, the AI does not merely generate a text response. Instead, it formulates a plan, executes steps in parallel, checks its own work, and asks for clarification if it hits a roadblock. Users can queue multiple tasks and let Claude process them simultaneously — a workflow Anthropic describes as feeling "much less like a back-and-forth and much more like leaving messages for a coworker."

The system is built on Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK, meaning it shares the same underlying architecture as Claude Code. Anthropic notes that Cowork "can take on many of the same tasks that Claude Code can handle, but in a more approachable form for non-coding tasks."

The recursive loop where AI builds AI: Claude Code reportedly wrote much of Claude Cowork

Perhaps the most remarkable detail surrounding Cowork's launch is the speed at which the tool was reportedly built — highlighting a recursive feedback loop where AI tools are being used to build better AI tools.

During a livestream hosted by Dan Shipper, Felix Rieseberg, an Anthropic employee, confirmed that the team built Cowork in approximately a week and a half.

Alex Volkov, who covers AI developments, expressed surprise at the timeline: "Holy shit Anthropic built 'Cowork' in the last… week and a half?!"

This prompted immediate speculation about how much of Cowork was itself built by Claude Code. Simon Smith, EVP of Generative AI at Klick Health, put it bluntly on X: "Claude Code wrote all of Claude Cowork. Can we all agree that we're in at least somewhat of a recursive improvement loop here?"

The implication is profound: Anthropic's AI coding agent may have substantially contributed to building its own non-technical sibling product. If true, this is one of the most visible examples yet of AI systems being used to accelerate their own development and expansion — a strategy that could widen the gap between AI labs that successfully deploy their own agents internally and those that do not.

Connectors, browser automation, and skills extend Cowork's reach beyond the local file system

Cowork doesn't operate in isolation. The feature integrates with Anthropic's existing ecosystem of connectors — tools that link Claude to external information sources and services such as Asana, Notion, PayPal, and other supported partners. Users who have configured these connections in the standard Claude interface can leverage them within Cowork sessions.

Additionally, Cowork can pair with Claude in Chrome, Anthropic's browser…

Konten dipersingkat otomatis.

🔗 Sumber: venturebeat.com