Month: March 2024

Enlarge / A view from a hospital as children receiving medical treatment, in capital Kabul, Afghanistan on April 18, 2022. More than 130 children have died from the measles in Afghanistan since the beginning of this year. (credit: Getty | Sayed Khodaiberdi Sadat)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association sent out separate but similar pleas on Monday for unvaccinated Americans to get vaccinated against the extremely contagious measles virus as vaccination rates have slipped, cases are rising globally and nationally, and the spring-break travel period is beginning.

In the first 12 weeks of 2024, US measles cases have already matched and likely exceeded the case total for all of 2023. According to the CDC, there were 58 measles cases reported from 17 states as of March 14. But media tallies indicate there have been more cases since then, with at least 60 cases now in total, according to CBS News. In 2023, there were 58 cases in 20 states.

"As evident from the confirmed measles cases reported in 17 states so far this year, when individuals are not immunized as a matter of personal preference or misinformation, they put themselves and others at risk of disease—including children too young to be vaccinated, cancer patients, and other immunocompromised people," AMA President Jesse Ehrenfeld said in a statement urging vaccination Monday.

Enlarge / The GB200 "superchip" covered with a fanciful blue explosion that suggests computational power bursting forth from within. The chip does not actually glow blue in reality. (credit: Nvidia / Benj Edwards)

On Monday, Nvidia unveiled the Blackwell B200 tensor core chip—the company's most powerful single-chip GPU, with 208 billion transistors—which Nvidia claims can reduce AI inference operating costs (such as running ChatGPT) and energy consumption by up to 25 times compared to the H100. The company also unveiled the GB200, a "superchip" that combines two B200 chips and a Grace CPU for even more performance.

The news came as part of Nvidia's annual GTC conference, which is taking place this week at the San Jose Convention Center. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivered the keynote Monday afternoon. "We need bigger GPUs," Huang said during his keynote. The Blackwell platform will allow the training of trillion-parameter AI models that will make today's generative AI models look rudimentary in comparison, he said. For reference, OpenAI's GPT-3, launched in 2020, included 175 billion parameters. Parameter count is a rough indicator of AI model complexity.

Nvidia named the Blackwell architecture after David Harold Blackwell, a mathematician who specialized in game theory and statistics and was the first Black scholar inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. The platform introduces six technologies for accelerated computing, including a second-generation Transformer Engine, fifth-generation NVLink, RAS Engine, secure AI capabilities, and a decompression engine for accelerated database queries.

Enlarge / Chicatana ants have a nutty, fatty flavor. They are consumed in parts of Mexico to add texture and flavor to dishes. (credit: Changqi Liu)

Edible insects, like ants, are considered a delicacy in many cultures, as well as being very nutritious and an environmentally sustainable source of protein. But many of us have a longstanding aversion to consuming insects. In hopes of changing that aversion, chemists at San Diego State University (SDSU) have analyzed the flavor profiles of different ant species and found that not all edible ants taste alike, according to their presentation at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans.

Several years ago, the French chef David Faure created an insect-based tasting menu at Aphrodite, his Michelin-starred restaurant in Nice. Adventurous diners could sample "crickets in a whiskey bubble with cubes of French toast and pears" or "squares of peas, carrot foam, and mealworms." The Michelin critics didn't share his enthusiasm for insect haute cuisine and took away his Michelin star in 2014. Aphrodite closed its doors for good in 2016.

Faure's gambit might have failed, but a 2018 study suggested that he had the right idea about appealing to Western diners' love of luxurious indulgence, presenting the fare as an exotic delicacy rather than as an environmentally sustainable protein source. (Food production accounts for as much as 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, with much of that due to livestock. Farming insects could reduce those emissions significantly.)

Enlarge / Chicatana ants have a nutty, fatty flavor. They are consumed in parts of Mexico to add texture and flavor to dishes. (credit: Changqi Liu)

Edible insects, like ants, are considered a delicacy in many cultures, as well as being very nutritious and an environmentally sustainable source of protein. But many of us have a longstanding aversion to consuming insects. In hopes of changing that aversion, chemists at San Diego State University (SDSU) have analyzed the flavor profiles of different ant species and found that not all edible ants taste alike, according to their presentation at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans.

Several years ago, the French chef David Faure created an insect-based tasting menu at Aphrodite, his Michelin-starred restaurant in Nice. Adventurous diners could sample "crickets in a whiskey bubble with cubes of French toast and pears" or "squares of peas, carrot foam, and mealworms." The Michelin critics didn't share his enthusiasm for insect haute cuisine and took away his Michelin star in 2014. Aphrodite closed its doors for good in 2016.

Faure's gambit might have failed, but a 2018 study suggested that he had the right idea about appealing to Western diners' love of luxurious indulgence, presenting the fare as an exotic delicacy rather than as an environmentally sustainable protein source. (Food production accounts for as much as 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, with much of that due to livestock. Farming insects could reduce those emissions significantly.)