The same issue covers the opening of a radiation observation centre in Fukushima, where an area of 300 km² remains off limit. While the remainder of the Fukushima region is declared as safe as the whole of Japan, very few people have returned. One of the goals of the institute (F-REI) is to induce more confidence in the scientific validity of the above declaration, but it remains to be seen how effective it will prove. (I intended to hike nearby this summer but plans have changed!)
Still in the 14 May volume, a longer “feature” article on the dangers of AI-based bioweapons. Which seem real but also difficult to counteract. Especially if rogue states are involved and can create AI-controlled robotic labs for the production. The common recommendation that scientists should create adequate guardrails sounds naïve, at best, since generic LLMs are not designed with such guardrails. (It seems to me each article on the topic reaches the Asilomar trigger at some point!) Followed by a less doom-laden article on the use of AI “vibe coding” by scientists, if not of lesser interest. Which relates to the explosive call to LLMs to design or improve codes. (Also impacting our students and courses in a massive way.) The gains are mostly appreciable for those in the know, since newcomers without coding experience are unlikely to spot subtle errors. (Of course, we a.s. faced pre-AI codes with a subtle error that took ages to detect. Or may even still be there!) The issue also contains an “outlook” leaflet [supported by external sources, who assumedly do not influence the contents!] on antimicrobial (incl. antibiotic) resistance. Among the causes are the default use of antibiotics in farming, which again reflect on the difficulty of controlling such practice (banned in the EU, except in some imports!) and the urge to reduce faster meat consumption. And a book review of Canadian anthropologist Samson’s The Sleepless Ape, which offers an interesting theory of evolution thru sleep deprivation! (“The philosophers John Locke and David Hume thought that sleep hindered rationalism and the pursuit of knowledge.”)
This semester, I—as a teacher—came across two cases of heavily reliance on AI by master students, mostly for coding purposes, to which I had rather surprisingly not been exposed before. (Except for this plagiarised thesis two years ago that essentially rewrote existing papers with synonyms and for which we had to get to the disciplinary committee!) One project made a massive advance within two days, with hundreds of lines of beautiful python code, and reasonable output, but with my student unable to explain the code or the method behind… And anther case homeworks involving coding came back with extremely clean codes as well. Meaning they could not be graded and we had to switch to another type of evaluation. Oh well, welcome ol’me into the new age (just for a few years!)
Plenty of AI related entries in 
