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FLOWER SUCCESS. “Flowering plants (angiosperms), with reproductive security and speed conferred by the flower, replaced other seed plants in most ecosystems.” http://www.genetics.org/content/202/4/1255 View in LinkedIn

THE FLOWER IMPACTED THE PLANET. “The origin of the flower during the late Jurassic to early Cretaceous eras (most recent estimates are between 150 and 190 MYA) was a key evolutionary innovation that profoundly altered the Earth’s biota.” https://lnkd.in/dm8pYAd View in LinkedIn

REPRODUCTION IN FLOWERING PLANTS, a video by Larry Jensen. An outstanding video with brilliant graphics. A must-watch. https://youtu.be/0UEpq1W9C_E View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE considers the evolution of the carpel, the part of flowering plants that is the female flower ovary, the gnoeceium, the heart of reproduction in flowering plants. This single structure is credited with participating in creating ecosystems with other species and transforming the biota of planet Earth. View in LinkedIn

THE TROPHY. “The company made headlines in 2016 when it was reported its AlphaGo program successfully beat a human professional Go player.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_DeepMind View in LinkedIn

NUANCED CHALLENGE. “Go is considered much more difficult for computers to win than other games such as chess, because its much larger branching factor makes it prohibitively difficult to use traditional AI methods such as brute-force search.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo View in LinkedIn

A BIG LEAP FORWARD. “The carpel, or female reproductive organ enclosing the ovules, is one of the major evolutionary innovations of the flowering plants.” https://lnkd.in/dbZEjuz View in LinkedIn

UNIQUE STRUCTURES. “The angiosperm carpel is one of the defining characteristics of flowering plants. Carpels are unique to angiosperms and are found in all of its members. Yet, due to the distinctive structure and function of carpels, deducing homologies among carpels and other seed-plant organs has been difficult.” https://lnkd.in/dEJykw4 View in LinkedIn

NEW THINKING. “The DeepMind researchers discovered another bit of weirdness. When they had a neural network train itself to predict the moves of expert players, it did very well, though it took a bit longer to reach the standard of a system trained with human supervision. However, the self-trained network played better overall, suggesting “that AlphaGo Zero may be learning a strategy that is qualitatively different to human play.” https://spectrum-ieee-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/artificial-intelligence/alphago-zero-goes-from-blank-slate-to-grandmaster-in-three-dayswithout-any-help-at-all.amp.html View in LinkedIn