MAROKO133 Hot ai: Drone detectives sniff whale breath in the Arctic to uncover hidden viru

📌 MAROKO133 Breaking ai: Drone detectives sniff whale breath in the Arctic to unco

In the frigid Arctic, drones are performing detective work rather than deliveries, quietly monitoring whales from the sky.

Interestingly, drones serve as non-invasive tools to monitor the health of wild humpback, sperm, and fin whales in the Arctic. 

King’s College London experts used drones to “collect” whale exhaled breath samples without ever touching these massive mammals. 

“Drone blow sampling is a game-changer. It allows us to monitor pathogens in live whales without stress or harm, providing critical insights into diseases in rapidly changing Arctic ecosystems,” said Professor Terry Dawson, co-author from the Department of Geography, King’s College London.

The misty spray expelled from their blowholes contains the respiratory droplets needed for advanced pathogen screening.

For the first time, researchers confirmed that cetacean morbillivirus is circulating above the Arctic Circle. This highly contagious virus is notorious for causing mass strandings and severe neurological and respiratory damage.

Drone equipped with a petri dish

This drive-by-like non-invasive health check took place between 2016 and 2025. 

The study’s dataset covers a wide geographic range, including humpback, sperm, and fin whale populations across northern Norway, Iceland, and the Cape Verde Islands.

Equipped with sterile Petri dishes, these drones were piloted into the mist of whale exhales to snatch respiratory droplets right out of the air.

Along with breath samples, the team also collected skin biopsies and a single organ sample, screening every piece for hidden infections using advanced molecular tools.

Cetacean morbillivirus was pinpointed in humpback whale groups in northern Norway, in a sickly sperm whale, and in a stranded pilot whale.

Since its discovery in 1987, cetacean morbillivirus has emerged as a lethal threat to marine life, causing devastating respiratory, neurological, and immune system failure in whales, dolphins, and porpoises. This highly contagious pathogen is notorious for triggering mass mortality events that can wipe out entire pods. 

The recent detection of the virus in the Arctic is particularly alarming. Experts fear that dense winter-feeding grounds — where whales, seabirds, and humans converge in close quarters — could become hot zones for a major outbreak.

Conservation using drones

The researchers also identified herpesviruses present in humpback whale populations across Norway, Iceland, and Cape Verde. 

Interestingly, the study found no evidence of avian influenza virus or Brucella bacteria — two common pathogens often blamed for whale strandings — suggesting they may not be as prevalent in these specific Northeast Atlantic groups.

“Going forward, the priority is to continue using these methods for long-term surveillance, so we can understand how multiple emerging stressors will shape whale health in the coming years,” said Helena Costa, lead author at Nord University. 

Drones could serve as an early warning system, allowing experts to spot viral threats before they trigger catastrophic mass strandings. 

This continuous surveillance is vital because high-risk pathogens like morbillivirus don’t act alone; they interact with environmental stressors — such as climate change and habitat loss — to turn manageable infections into deadly outbreaks.

The study team from The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies in the UK. 

Findings were reported in the journal BMC Veterinary Research on December 18.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 MAROKO133 Hot ai: TikTok Accounts Are Using AI Slop to Sell Seeds to Plants That

There are thousands of varieties of hosta — a leafy decorative plant that you’ve probably seen adorning outdoor spaces — being cultivated around the world, in a luxurious spread of colors, sizes, and textures. The hardy and easy-to-care-for plants thrive in the shade and can grow enormous leaves, making them a perfect project for amateur gardeners.

Yet despite the glorious natural biodiversity that already exists in the species, scammers on TikTok are using AI-generated slop videos to sell dubious seeds for hosta varieties that don’t exist.

A quick search for “hosta seeds” reveals countless videos of unnaturally colored hostas, from a fictitious variety featuring enormous, purple leaves, to “God’s rainbow,” a made-up plant that grows garish, rainbow-colored foliage, described as “so magical, your neighbors will think it isn’t real,” according to a robotic-sounding AI voiceover.

“It’s called midnight blue heart,” a voiceover says in a separate video. “A rare black and blue hosta that looks like it came from another planet.”

“It’s magical, it’s hardy, and only a few dollars,” the voice continues. “Tap the link below to order and bring the midnight blue heart home.”

The obvious hallmarks of half-baked AI are impossible to ignore, from water streams from garden hoses that flow straight through the foliage or miss the plant entirely to seeds that magically float by themselves while held in a hand. Many of the videos even claim their miraculous hostas can thrive even in snowy conditions, which is a nonsense prospect: hostas may be perennial, but aren’t very frost-tolerant and sustain damage from freezing temperatures.

The bizarre trend is part of a much larger deluge of AI slop drowning out human-authored content across social media platforms.

Author Bree Bridges noticed her TikTok feed becoming overwhelmed by the videos.

“TikTok has started giving me AI-generated garden content with videos of people supposedly growing plants that quite clearly look like they came from the ‘Avatar’ planet,” Bridges wrote in a post on Bluesky.

“And also they’re watering them indoors sometimes while watering the carpet and they grow in three days,” she added.

Experts have already warned that hosta lovers should stay far away from seeds that purport to grow into fantastical plants. Ads that New York-based NBC-affiliate WHEC showed to Bill Hegeman, co-president of the Genesee Valley Hosta Society, immediately raised red flags.

“Definitely all fake,” he said.

“Stop!” the TikTok account behind the outdoor living store Touch of Eco exclaimed in a recent clip. “If you see these colorful hosta seeds on TikTok, never buy them. These are fake, AI-generated.”

Even before the advent of generative AI, fake seeds were already a widespread scam on the internet. As YouTuber Atomic Shrimp explored in a video last year, seeds for made-up flowers like “cat face flowers” that inexplicably feature the faces of felines are being sold for considerable amounts of money.

On eBay, for instance, 50 seeds for a “cute cat face orchid” are being sold for $6.68. Poorly photoshopped or possibly AI-generated images show the faces of cats perched in the middle of fantastical plants.

During his investigation, Atomic Shrimp noticed that dodgy seed vendors were all using similar “cookie-cutter sites,” which are “probably very easy, cheap, and quick to deploy from a template.” The sites are also likely “acting as a front end for seedy, pun intended, drop shipping operations where the fulfilment, assuming there is such, is coming from the same sellers that list the same dodgy scam seeds for sale on Wish, AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, and other marketplaces.”

But instead of selling preposterously photoshopped seeds for “rainbow tomatoes,” scammers are using new tactics in a new age defined by AI slop.

One account on TikTok is even recycling the concept of a “cute cat orchid” by animating the images and turning them into a whole video.

Another video shows an adult cat’s face literally blinking its eyes as its disembodied head is reincarnated in the shape of a demonic orchid.

“How have 107 people bought this?” one TikTok account wrote in the comments.

“I can’t believe people actually fell for this,” another added.

More on AI slop: AI “Research” Papers Are Complete Slop, Experts Say

The post…

Konten dipersingkat otomatis.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com