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A political scientist who studies what helps people connect across differences. A novelist whose books about Native American communities in Oakland, California, sparked a passionate following. A photographer whose black and white images investigate poverty in America. Hahrie Han, Tommy Orange, and Matt Black are among the 22 fellows selected this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and announced Wednesday. It’s a recognition often called the genius award, which comes with an $800,000 prize, paid over five years that fellows can spend however they choose. The foundation selects fellows over the course of years, considering a vast range of recommendations, largely from their peers. Each class doesnt have a theme and were not creating a cohort around a certain idea,” said Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows program. “But I think this year, we see empathy and deep engagement with community figures prominently in this class.” Through different methodologies, many of the fellows boldly and unflinchingly reflect what they see and hear from deep engagement with their communities, she said. Because fellows don’t apply or participate in any way in their selection, the award often comes as a shock and sometimes coincides with difficult moments. Nabarun Dasgupta, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, had just left a team meeting where he shared that a longtime collaborator in harm reduction work had died when he saw multiple missed calls from a Chicago number, which then called again. It was the MacArthur Foundation. They were awarding him the fellowship in recognition of his work, which includes helping to start a testing program for street drugs to identify unregulated substances and helping to overcome a shortage of naloxone, which reverses an opioid overdose. To make sense of the intense moment that mixed deep loss and recognition, Dasgupta wrote the following in a journal. We are surrounded by death every day. Sometimes, you have to give yourself a pep talk to get out of bed. Other mornings, the universe yells in your ear and tells you to keep going because what were doing is working. In an interview with The Associated Press, he added, I feel like this couldnt have been any clearer of a signal that the work has to go on. Other fellows were contacted by the foundation through email, asking to speak with them about potential projects. Tonika Lewis Johnson, a Chicago-based artist, planned to take the call in the car. The foundation representatives tried to get her to pull over before breaking the news, but she declined. They were definitely worried about my safety, she said laughing, and she did then stop driving. Johnson’s projects are rooted in her neighborhood of Englewood, located on Chicago’s South Side. She has photographed the same addresses in north and south Chicago, beautified residents’ homes and made predatory housing practices visible. All together, her work reveals the very specific people and places impacted by racial segregation. This award is validation and recognition that my neighborhood, this little Black neighborhood in Chicago that everyone gets told to, Dont go to because its dangerous, this award means there are geniuses here, Johnson said. For Ángel F. Adames Corraliza, an atmospheric scientist at the University of WisconsinMadison, the award is also a recognition of the talent and grit coming from Puerto Rico, where he is from, despite the hardships his community has endured. His research has uncovered many new findings about what drives weather patterns in the tropics, which may eventually help improve forecasting in those regions. Adames said usually one of his classes would be ending right when the foundation would publish the new class of fellows, so he was planning to end the lecture early to come back to his office. He said hes having trouble fathoming what it will be like. I am low-key expecting that a few people are just going to show up in my office, like right at 11:02 a.m. or something like that, he said. Before getting news of the award, Adames said he was anticipating having to scale down his research in the coming years as government funding for climate and weather research has been significantly cut back or changed. He said he had been questioning what was next for his career. The prize from MacArthur may allow him to pursue some new theoretical ideas that are harder to get funded, he said. I think people do care and it does matter for the general public, regardless of what the political landscape is, which right now is fairly negative on this, he said about climate and weather science. ___ Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. Thalia Beaty, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Forget magical virtual worlds. In its quest to broaden the audience for virtual reality, Meta is now embracing much more familiar surroundings: Owners of Metas Quest VR headsets will soon be able to create digital replicas of any room in their house, and then invite others to visit them in those spaces. Imagine, for instance, having a spontaneous family reunion in a metaverse version of your living room perhaps even with an avatar that looks just like you, and not a character that has escaped from a video game.There is something very magical about scanning a space that you know, bringing someone else who knows that space into it and feeling like you’re there together, says Vishal Shah, the vice president of Metas metaverse.That magic, in turn, could help Meta turn its vision of a 3D metaverse as a social-3D realm into a reality one that has cost the company close to $70 billion to date.When your headset is also a cameraMeta demonstrated the first version of such digital replicas with an app called Hyperscape at its Connect developer conference last year. In the most recent version of the app, people can explore high-resolution 3D captures of a handful of places, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsays home kitchen and Chance the Rappers recording studio.The scans look so detailed and real that you can feel your mouth water when inspecting the ham on Ramsays kitchen counter. Meta even felt the need to add a warning about not leaning on any of the furniture in these virtual rooms.Chance The Rapper’s recording studio [Animation: Meta]But Metas Hyperscape ambitions dont stop there: With an impending operating system update, Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3s owners will also gain the ability to scan their own rooms with their headsets built-in cameras. My first thought was that they probably took a very expensive camera rig to capture these data sets because they look really quite lifelike, says 3D capture tech expert Michael Rubloff. That all of the scenes were captured with just a Quest device [is] completely mind-blowing.Capturing a room with a Quest VR headset is a relatively simple process. First, the headset overlays everything in the room with a kind of mesh of geographic shapes to record its general dimensions and the rough outlines of furniture and other objects. In a second pass, it fills in those shapes with 3D data, a process that to the naked eye looks like generating a mosaic of lots of little photos. Finally, the headset prompts people to look up and around to capture additional height information for any given room.Gordon Ramsay’s home kitchen [Animation: Meta]The whole process of capturing an average room takes less than 20 minutes, according to Meta employees who worked on the project. Then, the raw capture data gets uploaded to Metas servers, where the 3D replica of the room gets rendered over a couple of hours. Once ready, each space will be streamed directly from the cloud — no time-consuming downloads required.Metas digital-room replicas are powered by a novel technology known as Gaussian splatting. In a nutshell, Gaussian splatting doesnt just capture the surfaces of objects like a regular photo camera would. Instead, it deconstructs every object into a collection of three-dimensional blobs, complete with information on how those blobs look from different angles, along with attributes like transparency. To date, most Gaussian splats have been captured with cell phones. However, turning the VR headset itself into a capture device has some distinct advantages. For one thing, Meta controls the hardware, which allows the company to optimize its code for a certain type of camera, instead of having to work with a myriad of different smart phones. Plus, people tend to wave their hands too quickly when trying to capture something. The head movement is not as fast as the phone, explains Meta research scientist Jan-Michael Frahm.Next step: adding avatarsAt launch, spaces replicated with Metas Hyperscape will be private, and only available to the person who captured them. The company is working towards letting people share their captures, and eventually turn them into locations for social get-togethers. Hyperscape captures already run on a game engine that Meta is using for its Horizon Worlds metaverse. Currently, Horizon Worlds is essentially a collection of games and spaces generated from computer graphics that people can explore together in VR. In the future, Horizon users will be able to import their own Hyperscape rooms into Horizon, and invite their friends to join them on a digital replica of their living room couch.I think there’s a real human connection opportunity here, where the environment is just as important in some cases as the people, Shah says.Its also an opportunity for Meta to expand VR beyond its current audience. The company has had more success than some critics give it credit for in establishing VR as a medium for video games and adjacent experiences, including gamified workouts. Meta had sold close to 20 million headset sales in early 2023, and some developers have been able to turn games for Metas Quest headset into real money makers. Ten apps on Metas Horizon store have generated more than $50 million in revenue, while the number of apps with more than $1 million has surpassed 300, according to data shared last month by Meta executives.Mademoiselle Collette French Bakery [Screenshot: Meta]But recently, Quest headset sales seem to have plateaued. Some developershave also complained about declining revenue amid an influx of younger users primarily interested in free titles like the hit VR game Gorilla Tag. Meta aims to counter those trends by broadening the appeal of VR among older users who may not be as interested in gaming. This includes a greater emphasis on traditional entertainment, including a partnership with James Cameron to produce 3D content for Quest headsets.That move mirrors efforts Apple has taken to promote its Vision Pro headset, which has faced its own set of obstacles. Priced far above Metas hardware, the Vision Pro has seen tepid sales, despite integrating with the companys computers for professional use cases. But that has done little to slow a broader industry interest in VR headsets and 3D technologies: Samsung and Google are expected to launch their own headset, code-named Project Moohan, later this month. Like the Vision Pro, it is geared towards immersive entertainment and work use cases.The company has also been working on more lifelike representations of users in VR through 3D-captured personas the company calls codec avatars. While still in development, Shah believes codec avatars could be the perfect complement for Hyperscape. You’re in an environment that looks photoreal. You are with people who look photoreal, he explains. For some people, that’s going to be the most magical thing in a headset.Even without those avatars, 3D capture could become an important time capsule for consumers. The same way photography has aided us with memory preservation, 3D also fulfills that promise for general consumers, argues Rubloff. It gives us the ability to really step back into a moment in time. [Weve been able to] capture the world in 2D for the last 200 years. [Now, were] able to do the same in 3D.
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E-Commerce
The global economy is holding up better than expected despite major shocks such as President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but the head of the International Monetary Fund says that resilience may not last. Buckle up, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a speech at a think tank Wednesday. Uncertainty is the new normal and it is here to stay. Her comments at the Milken Institute come on a day when gold prices hit $4,000 an ounce for the first time as investors seek safe haven from a weaker dollar and geopolitical uncertainty and before the IMF and World Bank hold their annual meetings next week in Washington. Trump’s trade penalties are expected to be in sharp focus when global finance leaders and central bankers gather. The worldwide economy is forecast to grow by 3% this year, and Georgieva is citing a number of factors for why it may not slip below that: Countries have put in place decisive economic policies, the private sector has adapted, and the tariffs have proved less severe than originally feared. But before anyone heaves a big sigh of relief, please hear this: Global resilience has not yet been fully tested. And there are worrying signs the test may come. Just look at the surging global demand for gold, she said. On Trump’s tariffs, she says the full effect is still to unfold. In the U.S., margin compression could give way to more price pass-through, raising inflation with implications for monetary policy and growth.” The Republican administration imposed import taxes on nearly all U.S. trading partners in April, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China and even the tiny African nation of Lesotho. Were the king of being screwed by tariffs, Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. While the U.S. has announced some trade frameworks with nations such as the United Kingdom and Vietnam, the tariffs have created uncertainty worldwide. Elsewhere, a flood of goods previously destined for the U.S. market could trigger a second round of tariff hikes, Georgieva said. The Supreme Court next month will hear arguments about whether Trump has the authority to impose some of his tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. In her wide-ranging remarks, Georgieva pointed to youth discontent around the world as many young people foresee a future where they earn less than their parents. The young are taking their disappointment to the streets from Lima to Rabat, from Paris to Nairobi, from Kathmandu to Jakarta, all are demanding better opportunities,” she said. “And here in the U.S., the chances of growing up to earn more than your parents keeps falling and here too, discontent has been evident and it has helped precipitate the policy revolution that is now unfolding, reshaping trade, immigration and many international frameworks. She also called for greater internal trade in Asia, more business-friendly changes in Africa and more competitiveness in Europe. For the United States, Georgieva urged the government to address the federal debt and to encourage household saving. The national debt is the total amount of money that the federal government owes to its creditors. The federal debt has increased from $380 billion in 1925 to $37.64 trillion in 2025, according to Treasury Department data. The Congressional Budget Office reported in July that Trumps new tax and spending law will add $3.4 trillion to that total through 2034. The IMF is a 191-country lending organization that seeks to promote global growth and financial stability and to reduce poverty. Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
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