As good as gold

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. AI cracks the code on an ancient Roman board game, research uncovers a link between long Covid and Alzheimer’s, and you won’t believe the comeback story of this once fiery river 😲

Let’s get into it!

An oval-shaped stone tablet was discovered at an archeological site in Heerlan, Netherlands, which was once an ancient Roman town named Coriovallum. In the journal Antiquity, a study published the other day revealed the tablet is actually a board game from centuries before such games were thought to exist.

“We identified the object as a game because of the geometric pattern on its upper face and because of evidence that it was deliberately shaped,” said Walter Crist, the study’s lead author and an archaeologist at Leiden University whose field of expertise is ancient board games.

“Further evidence that it was a game was presented by visible damage on the surface that would be consistent with abrasion caused by sliding Roman-era game pieces on the surface.”

The problem, however, was these patterns didn’t line up with any game previously known to Crist and his colleagues. Luckily, artificial intelligence does have plenty of uses today, including being able to study the geometric patterns on an ancient stone to identify the movements that likely created them.

Two AI engines were pit against one another to learn, understand, and then play the game, which they revealed was a blocking game similar to Ticket to Ride.

Crist said the study marks the first time AI has been leveraged using standard simulated gameplay and archeological tactics to identify the origins of an ancient board game.

A study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia found a possible link between long COVID and certain indicators that someone may be developing or have Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers from NYU Langone Health focused on the choroid plexus (CP), which is a group of blood vessels that generates cerebrospinal fluid, regulates immune responses, and assists with waste clearance in the brain.

They found those suffering from long COVID—a condition in which the symptoms of the virus sustain for months or even years after infection—had 10% larger CPs than those who had COVID but recovered at a normal pace.

An inflamed CP slows blood flow and forces the vessels to work harder as they navigate the scar tissue built up from an overstimulated immune response.

On top of inflammation, the long COVID patients’ CPs were also producing more pTau217, a protein strongly associated with Alzheimer’s.

"Our work suggests that long-term immune reactions caused in some cases after an initial COVID infection may come with swelling that damages a critical brain barrier in the choroid plexus," said senior study author Yulin Ge, MD, a professor in the Department of Radiology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

"Physical, molecular, and clinical evidence suggests that a larger CP may be an early warning sign of future Alzheimer's-like cognitive decline."

Toronto is home to the Don River, which flows through the eastern end of the city on its way to Lake Ontario. As the industrial age boomed, the river saw raw sewage pumped directly into it beginning in the 1860s. By the early 1930s, the river was so polluted it literally caught fire.

Now, nearly a 60 years after being declared “biologically dead,” it officially has a clean bill of health. At least 20 species of fish have been documented swimming through the zig-zagging oasis in recent years, including Atlantic salmon, large mouth bass, and Ontario native fish called emerald bowfin.

Over $1 billion was invested in the restoration of this once-swimmable river, mostly at its mouth into the Toronto Inner Harbour, which rectified the mistake once made to create unnatural 90 degree channels to increase waterflow, but at the expense of marine wildlife.

The rehabilitated channels—which are a part of the last industrial remnants of Toronto’s port lands—include more nature-like zig-zagging and a delta island called Ookwemin Minising, a 5,000-year-old Ojibwa term that means “the place of the black cherry trees.”

Toronto’s name itself originates from the Mohawk word Tkaronto, which means “where there are trees standing in the water,” and aptly describes the famous Toronto Islands that sit just a 10 minute ferry ride across the city’s harbour.

Just how hard could it be to hit a hole-in-one on a golf simulator?

Well, if a simulator is true to its intentions, then it’s just as hard as on an actual course! That would make the odds about 12,500 to one for an average golfer, and 3,000 to one for a tour pro.

Tour pros play in the Tomorrow Golf League (TGL), and after 27 matches in the budding competition’s history, the league finally got its first ace the other day when PGA Tour rookie Neal Shipley holed the course’s 110-yard “Set In Stone” from the tee.

Englishman Tommy Fleetwood had already driven the ball to within 12 feet, but Shipley put a little English on it himself, sticking it about ten feet past the whole, then pulled the string as the ball slid back directly into the cup.

“This is different than any hole-in-one I’ve ever had before,” Shipley said. “This is amazing. Wow, this is so cool. A lot of energy in here. The craziest thing is, too, Luke called it. He was like, ‘Let’s go make an ace right here,’ right before we stepped up on the tee. And yeah, just hooped it.”

You can watch the exciting feat here, following which Shipley was swarmed by his excited Bay Golf Club team mates.

Big screen romance

Time to double down, with today’s trivia 🤣 If you know your movie couples, you’ll do just fine!

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Thursday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder!*