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Calling IT specialists: join the Stanford & UN competition at NeurIPS 2026

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On August 17, 2026, SimulacraBench — a NeurIPS 2026 competition was launched: AI must model population groups from UN microdata. The organizers are Stanford's Digital Economy Lab and the STAIR research group (Stanford CS), together with UNHCR, UNICEF and the World Bank. The development phase runs until October 30; the finals and prizes — November 1–14, 2026. I, Boris Yarovoy , author of TRON — a technology for the short-term forecasting of earthquake magnitude, location and time — am assembling a volunteer team to take part in this competition. A strong result at NeurIPS means a leaderboard position, international visibility and, above all, partners and resources for testing and validating the TRON prototype — and, subsequently, for scaling the technology. I am looking for IT specialists who understand (or want to understand) how AI works. Short-Term Earthquake Forecasting System TRON (Technology Real-time Online Nucleus) Write to me on LinkedIn with the subject line...

TRON Pilot Experiment at Gemma 4 Kaggle Hackathon 2026

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Gemma 4 Kaggle Hackathon 2026 took place from April 3 to May 19, 2026. The goal was to create solutions based on Gemma 4 multimodal models to address real-world global challenges.  TRON startup participated in the Global Resilience direction - building systems for disaster prediction and response. 1,610 teams participated out of 14,523 registered participants.  TRON technology author, Boris D. Yarovoy competed as a solo team of one person, writing all the software code for the pilot experiment independently. Hypothesis Multimodal neural networks, such as Gemma 4 from Google DeepMind, can detect changes in animal behavior by analyzing video recordings. This enables the transition from manual animal observation by humans to a fully automated system. Why Gemma 4 The multimodal Gemma 4 model is capable of working with video in zero-shot mode (without fine-tuning). This allows overcoming the limitatio...

Fwd: Your CoCreate Pitch 2025 registration is complete!

Dear Boris,  We're thrilled to confirm your successful registration for CoCreate Pitch 2025 ! Thank you for joining our global competition, offering $1 million in prizes.  The CoCreate Pitch team will review your application and information. If you are selected to pitch at one of the final events, you will receive additional details from the project team via the email address you provided on your application. If you included your mobile phone number, we may also try to contact you via WhatsApp.     CoCreate is one of the world's leading sourcing events, connecting global ecommerce sellers, retailers, and wholesalers with top manufacturers and industry experts — empowering businesses like yours to discover innovative products, explore supply chain solutions, and build lasting partnerships.   As a valued participant, you're invited to secure exclusive early access to CoCreate 2025 in Las Vegas.  🎟️ Special offer : Enjoy...

Why earthquake prediction remains an unpredictable science

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 Experts say quake forecast is “extremely hard” because of the complexity of fault lines, points where massive and irregularly shaped slabs of solid rock meet below the Earth’s surface. An earthquake of 8.8 magnitude, one of the 10 strongest ever recorded,  struck  Russia’s Far East early on Wednesday, leading to a tsunami alert throughout the Pacific region. Even as “tsunami waves” were reported in Japan and Alaska, panic spread through Japan to the US state of Hawaii. Governments moved to evacuate coastal cities facing a greater risk of potentially massive waves crashing into urban areas. Despite giant scientific leaps that have enabled the human race to forecast major climatic and natural disasters, including tsunamis, earthquakes remain largely unpredictable. There is no accurate warning system for earthquakes, and any progress towards building one is hardly substantive. Experts  say  earthquake prediction is “extremely hard” because of the complexity of fau...

Blood cell counts and inflammatory indices predict acute kidney injury

On February 6, 2023, centered in the province of Kahramanmaraş, southerrn Turkey, two major earthquakes occurred with magnitudes of 7.7 and 7.6 on the Richter scale, with a 9-hour interval between them. These earthquakes resulted in tremendous number of deaths and injuries in 11 cities in the region. In events like these, dead-at-scene rates (coded black in disaster triage situations) are high, and additionally, crush syndrome (CS) is frequently encountered in patients rescued from the debris [1]. CS, also known as traumatic rhabdomyolysis, is most commonly seen in earthquakes, wars, mining accidents, landslides, volcanic eruptions, motor vehicle accidents, and multiple trauma victims, especially those who are trapped for a considerable time, which may result in CS and compartment syndrome [2]. Additionally, CS can be encountered in the emergency department (ED) for routine reasons such as poisoning, stroke, and falls [3]. Theoretically, any situation that results in prolonged immobili...

Earthquakes disrupt lake microbes by altering sediment and nutrient balance

  When an earthquake causes a landslide, debris flow, or erosion, it can change the makeup of nearby lakes by introducing larger sediment particles, causing faster sediment buildup, and affecting carbon sequestration. The sediments that build up on lake bottoms act as a historical archive, recording the lake's biological, physical, and chemical changes and how they affect microbes such as diatoms (microscopic glass-like algae). Yet little is known about how sudden, earthquake-driven disturbances may affect lake ecosystems. Xue and team looked at the long-term changes in Lake Cuopu (Lake Tsopu) in the Himalayas. The 200-kilometer radius around the lake experienced 63 earthquakes greater than magnitude 5 between 1900 and 2017. The lake's high altitude, alpine climate, and low human activity made it an ideal site to examine the microbial and geochemical changes caused by these earthquakes. In 2017, researchers took a 45-centimeter-long sediment core from the center of Lake Cuopu, ...

Global earthquake detection and warning using Android phones

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Editor’s summary Earthquake early warning systems depend on real-time analysis of waves detected at nearby seismic stations or by smartphone accelerometers. The latter approach, although less sensitive, is a promising way to offer alerts in areas without seismic stations. In a major step forward, Allen  et al . describe the outcomes of an alert system rolled out to Android phones in 98 countries, which increased total warning system access 10-fold to 2.5 billion people over 3 years. Issuing more than 1200 alerts over that period, the system recorded low-magnitude errors and provided preshake warnings consistent with other detection systems but on a much larger scale. —Angela Hessler Abstract Earthquake early-warning systems are increasingly being deployed as a strategy to reduce losses in earthquakes, but the regional seismic networks they require do not exist in many earthquake-prone countries. We use the global Android smartphone network to develop an earthquake detection capabil...