When Sicily’s Mount Etna erupted in 2001, rivers of super-hot lava scoured the mountainside, leaving channels up to 6 meters deep in their wake. A volcanologist who observed one of those channels has now published results that contradict conventional wisdom about how volcanoes sculpt the earth. Full story (link)
A software program is using statistical algorithms to infer grammar from text and generate new and meaningful sentences. Given that scientists are still trying to understand how we learn language, the software’s methods can’t be called human-like. Even so, it could still be an important building block on the way to artificial intelligence. Full story (PDF)