4. It was a “match of the century” between human champion of the Chinese board game Go and Google’s computer program kicked off in Seoul last Wednesday, which drew great attention. Google’s artificial intelligence software has won its third straight match against a grandmaster of an ancient board game called Go. Google’s program, AlphaGo, won four games and lost one in a series of five against Lee Sedol, who’s considered one of the world’s best Go players. This means Google has secured the $1 million in prize money from the competition, which it says it will donate to charity. But this was about more than money and bragging rights for Google.
5. The Zika virus was first isolated in 1947 from a monkey in the Zika forest of Uganda. Its historical home has been in a narrow equatorial belt stretching across Africa and into equatorial Asia. For decades, the disease, transmitted by the Aedes genus of mosquito slumbered, affecting mainly monkeys. In humans, Zika occasionally caused a mild disease of low concern. In 2007, Zika expanded its geographical range to cause the first documented outbreak in the Pacific islands, in the Federated States of Micronesia. From 2013-2014, 4 additional Pacific island nations documented large Zika outbreaks.
6. China’s stunning economic rise is one of the biggest legends of this generation. In just three decades since beginning to embrace market economics, China has left its desperate poverty behind to become the world’s top exporting nation. The transformation has occurred so quickly that myths and misperceptions abound about the challenges and opportunities that China poses to America and the rest of the world.
