March 27, 2024: An ancient scroll is read for the first time in 2,000 years, measles outbreaks around the country, and shipping companies are rerouting around the collapsed Baltimore bridge. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Three undergraduate students used AI tools to decipher 2,000 characters of an ancient papyrus that had been scorched and buried by pyroclastic flow from the nearby eruption of Mount Vesuvius in C.E. 79. Experts believe the author of the scroll found in Herculaneum could be Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher and poet who lived from approximately 110 B.C. to 35 B.C. The characters on the scroll read: "As, too, in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant."
How they did it: The students, Luke Farritor (computer science student), Youssef Nader (a data science student) and Julian Schilliger (a robotics student) teamed up to create an AI model that could detect and decode the ancient ink on the carbonized scrolls. All three were participants in a worldwide contest to solve the scrolls, called the Vesuvius Challenge. Researchers had previously made CT scans of cross sections of the target scroll that were then digitally reassembled. The contest winners trained machine learning algorithms to recognize ink and then decipher the nearly invisible text.
What the experts say: If the technological advances continue and can be rolled out to the many unopened scrolls (nearly 1,800 from Herculaneum alone), "we could see a recovery of ancient texts at a volume not seen since the Renaissance," says Tobias Reinbhardt, a classics scholar at the University of Oxford who helped to confirm the winning entry from Farritor, Nader and Schilliger. | | | Hundreds of papyrus scrolls in the ancient city of Herculaneum were preserved after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. For thousands of years, no one could open them without doing irreparable damage.Credit: Courtesy of EduceLab/University of Kentucky | | | So far this year the CDC has reported 58 measles cases from outbreaks across 17 states—a case number equal to the total measles infections reported in all of 2023. In the middle of the last century, measles killed some 3 million to 4 million Americans every year. But the widespread use of a two-shot vaccine regimen in the 1990s decreased transmission of the virus so much that the U.S. declared measles eliminated from the country in 2000. The disease can cause a red, itchy rash, watery eyes and cold symptoms, along with ear infections, diarrhea, pneumonia, encephalitis, and sometimes death. Children are especially susceptible.
Why is this happening? Some experts believe a surge in antivaccine sentiment that began during the COVID pandemic may be partially responsible. Vaccine exemption rates among kindergartners rose nationally to 3 percent during the 2022–2023 school year—a 0.4 percent jump from the previous year—and in 10 states, more than 5 percent of those students had exemptions for getting vaccines. One person with measles infects, on average, 12 to 18 others.
What the experts say: Check your MMR vaccine status (it covers measles, mumps and rubella and has been safely administered for decades). "Most of us are fortunate enough not to know what most vaccine-preventable diseases look like, and sometimes we can take that for granted," says Jerne Shapiro, an instructional assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida. | | | Percentage of kindergarteners by state who have received the two doses of the MMR vaccines as of the 2023-2024 school year. Credit: Amanda Montañez; Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (data) | | | • The collapse of the Baltimore bridge yesterday disrupted the supply chain of major automakers and blocked access to the nation's second-largest port for coal exports, sending companies scrambling to reroute shipments. | 5 min read | | | • Two populations of orca whales off the Pacific Northwest have such different cultures they are actually two different species. And genetics backs it up. | 4 min read | | | • New research published last month showed that a lack of testing during the mpox outbreak in 2022 led to a significant underestimation of the global spread of the disease prior to July 2022. "If the phylogenetic analysis had been available in real time, perhaps public health officials would have acted more quickly," potentially preventing cases and hundreds of deaths, writes Joseph Osmundson, associate professor in the department of biology at New York University. | 5 min read | | | Life expectancy in the U.S. in the middle of last century was about 50 years old. Fifty! We've gained thirty years of life expectancy in the time since then, which many attribute to life-saving public health policies. But the state of the U.S. public health system is in disarray and neglect, making us vulnerable to the reemergence of diseases (measles) and new plagues ( like COVID). PBS has a fascinating new documentary called "The Invisible Shield" that explores the hidden public health infrastructure that makes modern life possible. You can check it out on their website. And let me know what you think! | Send me your ideas and feedback anytime: newsletters@sciam.com. I read all your notes and respond to many. See you tomorrow. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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