{"id":6427,"date":"2023-10-14T16:28:56","date_gmt":"2023-10-14T21:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=6427"},"modified":"2023-10-14T16:38:31","modified_gmt":"2023-10-14T21:38:31","slug":"purple-papyrology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=6427","title":{"rendered":"Purple Papyrology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

UC#2 is the WLBOTT<\/strong> staff papyrologist, and brought to our attention an exciting event taking place right now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n \n
\n Staff Papyrologist\n <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Jean Maspero<\/b>\n
\n \n \"\"\n <\/a>\n <\/td>\n 		\n Joseph von Karabacek<\/b>\n
\n \"\"\n <\/a>\n <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Note: despite the resemblance, these are not images of UC#2.\n Please help us stop the spread of this false information.\n <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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Congratulations, Luke!!!<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Just two days ago (10\/12\/2023), a young computer scientist, Luke Farritor<\/a>, claimed the $40,000 First Letters Prize<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the word is: Purple<\/strong><\/mark>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time of this writing, it is unknown if the word is preceded by “Deep”, or followed by “Haze”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Led by computer science professor Brent Seales, the team at the University of Kentucky has successfully utilized a technique called \u201cvirtual unwrapping\u201d to decipher the text on the scrolls. These ancient artifacts, which belong to the Institut de France in Paris, are believed to have originated from the personal library of a senior Roman statesman.<\/em>
– ts2.space<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How it all unfolded<\/strong><\/em>
Farritor and Nader\u2019s discoveries were inspired by Casey Handmer, a polymath who found a \u201ccrackle pattern\u201d resembling ink. According to the press release, Casey found ink and a letter by staring at the segmented CT scans of the unreadable scrolls for hours.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farritor then trained a machine-learning model on Casey\u2019s crackle pattern. He identified multiple ink strokes and more letters and used them as training data. His model started identifying letters and hints of words that weren\u2019t visible to him. After he submitted his findings to the program, a panel of papyrologists noted 13 letters and identified that the hidden word is \u201cPorphyras\u201d which means \u201cpurple\u201d and is a bit of a rarity in ancient texts.<\/em>
– Interesting Engineering<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The burned papyri cannot be read because of the black ink used to create the scrolls, but infrared pictures of surface fragments have shown Greek letters and symbols. Seales’s team trained their algorithm to recognize the letters from X-ray images alone using these data and X-ray images of identical fragments. After being taught, the system could detect new text concealed within the tightly bound scrolls.<\/em>
– Interesting Engineering<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From the New York Times<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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From The Guardian<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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For the Vesuvius challenge, Seales\u2019s team is releasing its software and thousands of 3D X-ray images of two rolled-up scrolls and three papyrus fragments. The hope is that $250,000 (\u00a3207,800) in prizes attracts global research groups who can improve the artificial intelligence and accelerate the decoding of the only intact library to survive from antiquity.<\/em>
– The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[note: prize money bumped way up since the publication of the Guardian article of 3\/15\/23]<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To get X-rays at the highest possible resolution, the team uses a particle accelerator to scan two full scrolls and several fragments. At 4-8\u00b5m resolution<\/strong>, with 16 bits of density data per voxel, they believe machine learning models can pick up subtle surface patterns in the papyrus that indicate the presence of carbon-based ink.<\/em> – ScrollPrize<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Semi-sequitur: Pix of Cigar Ash<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Herculaneum<\/strong> – Origin site of the Scrolls<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Herculaneum is close to Mt. Vesuvius: Flashback to my high school zit-a-thon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Actual Google street view of Mt. Vesuvius:<\/p>\n\n\n

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Pompeii: a novel by Robert Harris<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A very cool book. The main character is a young civil engineer in charge of the aqueduct system around Pompeii. Not to minimize the tragic events and great suffering, but the engineering surrounding the aqueduct system is truly incredible.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Will there be a Buffet?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Italian Restaurants Named “Pompeii”: 5.2 MegaPastas\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Italian Restaurants Named “Vesuvius”: 3.8 MegaPastas\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Since this is all gonna get billed back to the WLBOTT shareholders, let’s research “Palatial Italian Restaurants”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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UC#2 is the WLBOTT staff papyrologist, and brought to our attention an exciting event taking place right now! Staff Papyrologist Jean Maspero Joseph von Karabacek Note: despite the resemblance, these are not images of UC#2. Please help us stop the spread of this false information. Congratulations, Luke!!! Just two days ago (10\/12\/2023), a young computer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,9,37,41,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-europe","category-scholarship-erudition","category-technoblott","category-will-there-be-a-buffet"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6427"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6491,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427\/revisions\/6491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}