A new EU-funded project will use AI to investigate and recreate the scents that have molded Europe‘s cultural heritage.

The “Odeuropa” team will develop machine learning and computer vision techniques to scour documents and images for references to smells such as tobacco and the stench of industrialization. A selection of the scents will then be “reconstructed” using heritage science techniques.

“ Smells shape our experience of the world, yet we have very little sensory information about the past,” said project lead Inger Leemans, a professor of cultural history at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam .

“Odeuropa will dive into digital heritage collections to discover the key scents of Europe and the stories they carry, then bring them back to our noses today.”

The multi-disciplinary team of historians, scientists, and perfumers aims to explore how scents are expressed in different languages and the places, events, and emotions to which they’re linked.

“Our goal is to develop a ‘computer nose‘ able to trace scents and olfactory experiences in digital texts over four centuries and seven languages,” said researcher Sara Tonelli of Italy’s Fondazione Bruno Kessler.

The recreated scents will be shared with museum visitors in a series of public events over the next three years, while an online archive of all the smells and their meanings will be made accessible to all.

If there’s a particular scent you’d like to preserve, you can let the Odeuropa team know on Twitter .

You’ll be injecting robots into your bloodstream to fight disease soon

What if there was a magical robot that could cure any disease? Don’t answer that. It’s a stupid question. Everyone knows there’s no one machine that could do that. But maybe a swarm made up of tens of thousands of tiny autonomous micro-bots could?

That’s the premise laid out by proponents of nanobot medical technology. In science fiction, the big idea usually involves creating tiny metal robots via some sort of magic-adjacent miniaturization technology.

Luckily for us, the reality of nanobot tech is infinitely cooler. A team of researchers from Australia have developed a mind-blowing prototype that could work as a proof-of-concept for the future of medicine.

Called “autonomous molecular machines,” the new nanotechnology eschews the traditional visage of microscopic metal automatons in favor of a more natural approach.

Per the team’s research paper :

DNA nanobots are synthetic nanometer-sized machines made of DNA and proteins. They’re autonomous because DNA itself is a self-assembling machine.

Our natural DNA not only carries the code our biology is written in, it also knows when to execute. That’s part of the reason why, for example, your left and right feet tend to grow at roughly the same rate.

Previous work in the field of DNA nanotechnology has demonstrated self-assembling machines capable of transferring DNA code, much like their natural counterparts.

But the new tech out of Australia is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

According to the paper:

These particular nanobots can transfer more than just DNA information. Theoretically speaking, they could deliver any conceivable combination of proteins throughout a given biological system.

To put that in simpler terms: we should be able to eventually program swarms of these nanobots to hunt down bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells inside of our bodies. Each member of the swarm could carry a specific protein and, when they’ve found a bad cell, they could assemble their proteins into a formation designed to eliminate the threat.

It’d be like having an army of overpowered killer robots floating through your bloodstream looking for monsters to destroy.

We’re a long ways away from that, but this research represents a giant-sized leap in the right direction. As far as we know, this is the first time a DNA nanobot capable of carrying arbitrary cargo has been demonstrated.

Hypothetically speaking, scientists should eventually be able to use these nanobots to engineer smart materials capable of responding autonomously to stress — think self-repairing clothing or windows.

And, perhaps most exciting, it may be possible in the far-future to build fully-functioning molecular computers using DNA nanobots.

In a century or two, all humans could have molecular computer systems inside their bodies. These living machines would, essentially, build and control internal bio-factories that make hunter-killer nanobots out of the proteins we ingest. They’d keep us disease-free for life.

The best part is that these computers would be completely secure. We’d inherit them from our parents’ DNA, so they’d be as much a part of us as our hearts or brains — no 5G required.

Meta’s relaxed rules on anti-Russian hate speech have set a divisive precedent

“Orwellian” references are invoked to the point of cliche, but big tech sure makes them hard to resist.

The latest temptress is Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta . In a move redolent of 1984’s Two Minutes Hate , the company has temporarily permitted calls for violence and deaths.

The social media behemoth has provisionally permitted hate speech in certain Facebook and Instagram posts. There’s no need to worry, however: the malice can only target Meta-approved baddies.

Violent speech will now be permitted when targeting Russian soldiers and Russians in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters .

Meta is also now allowing posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.

The provisional policy change applies to Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania.

“These are temporary measures designed to preserve voice and expression for people who are facing invasion,” Meta said in a statement.

“As always, we are prohibiting calls for violence against Russians outside of the narrow context of the current invasion.”

This new acceptance of hatred has been accompanied by a more affectionate exemption.

According to internal policy materials obtained by The Intercept , Meta will now permit praise of the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit.

These dispensations arrive in horrific circumstances. Violent speech is a natural reaction to a brutal invasion, and the voices of victims should not be silenced. However, Meta’s exemption has opened up a huge can of worms.

The moves have added to suspicions that Meta makes up the rules as it goes along and follows the foreign policy objectives of the US government.

The company maintains a secret blacklist of “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” that critics say punishes certain communities.

A reproduction of the material published by The Intercept last October revealed that nearly everyone on the list is considered a foe or threat by the US or its allies.

Accepting calls for violence against Russians is also a risky move for a company that’s been blamed for inciting genocide .

Inevitably, the temporary exemptions have sparked fury in Russia.

In response, Russian regulators have restricted access to Instagram , while prosecutors in the country want to designate Meta as an “extremist organization.”

Russia had previously blocked access to Facebook in retaliation for restrictions on state-owned media.

These reactions have heightened concerns that Russia is slipping into a different version of the internet.

A conflict that imperils the borders of nations now also threatens to Balkanize the web.