The game of chess has long been central to computer science and AI-related research, most notably in IBM's Deep Blue in the 1990s and, more recently, AlphaZero. But the game is about more than algorithms, according to Marc Barthelemy, a physicist at the Paris-Saclay University in France, with layers of depth arising from the psychological complexity conferred by player strategies.
Now, Barthelmey has taken things one step further by publishing a new paper in the journal Physical Review E that treats chess as a complex system, producing a handy metric that can help predict the proverbial "tipping points" in chess matches.
I don’t want to sound dramatic, but I have to peer through my fingers like I’m watching a horror movie. Little pieces of concrete are flying through the sunshine—tiny bits of shrapnel shooting off in all directions, and it doesn’t look like we’re trying to catch a fish so much as free someone who’s been buried alive. Drew Moore has one leg in the water, his other knee hiked up on a collapsed section of seawall, and he’s slamming a piece of concrete the size of a human head into the corner of the crumbling causeway. With each cracking thud, the hole gets bigger and bigger, fistfuls of concrete and broken rebar splashing into the small cavern below.
It’s a Saturday morning in July and I’m at Lake Tawakoni’s 3rd Annual Big Cat Tournament, a 24-hour noodling bonanza where upwards of 20 participants are scouring roughly 37,000 acres for Texas’ biggest flathead catfish. By all accounts, I’ve come to the right place. East Texas is the epicenter of noodling in the state, an ecosystem so productive that it would be an understatement to call it a hot spot—a boiling cauldron might be more accurate. I haven’t seen the other participants, but a winner will be crowned in just under eight hours, and I’m pretty sure I’ve hitched my inner tube to the right flat-bottom boat.
Can architecture save the world? Vishaan Chakrabarti believes that designers had better give it a shot. In his recent book The Architecture of Urbanity: Designing for Nature, Culture, and Joy, the New York-based architect and planner asserts a bold vision for architecture’s role in tackling twin crises of our era: climate change and societal division. The world continues to urbanize, and city living helps to reduce our impact on the Earth.