All posts tagged: stronger

Databricks tested a stronger model against its multi-step agent on hybrid queries. The stronger model still lost by 21%.

Databricks tested a stronger model against its multi-step agent on hybrid queries. The stronger model still lost by 21%.

Published by skeptic

Data teams building AI agents keep running into the same failure mode. Questions that require joining structured data with unstructured content, sales figures alongside customer reviews or citation counts alongside academic papers, break single-turn RAG systems.  New research from Databricks puts a number on that failure gap. The company’s AI research team tested a multi-step agentic approach against state-of-the-art single-turn RAG baselines across nine enterprise knowledge tasks and reported gains of 20% or more on Stanford’s STaRK benchmark suite, along with consistent improvement across Databricks’ own KARLBench evaluation framework, according to the research. Databricks argues the performance gap between single-turn RAG and multi-step agents on hybrid data tasks is an architectural problem, not a model quality problem. The work builds on Databricks’ earlier instructed retriever research, which showed retrieval improvements on unstructured data using metadata-aware queries. This latest research adds structured data sources, relational tables and SQL warehouses, into the same reasoning loop, addressing the class of questions enterprises most commonly fail to answer with current agent architectures. “RAG works, but it doesn’t scale,” Michael …

Build stronger arms with a four-move resistance band workout you can do anywhere

Build stronger arms with a four-move resistance band workout you can do anywhere

Published by Jenni Sidey

When armed with nothing more than a resistance band, there’s one routine I like to use to tune up a crucial pair of muscles: the biceps and triceps. These muscles play an important role whenever you push or pull anything, so I believe it’s worth devoting some time to keeping them strong. This routine is especially handy as you can do it anywhere. All you need is a long-loop resistance band and 10 minutes. Article continues below You may like The first move involves a push-up, which targets your chest, shoulders, core and triceps. Then there are three isolation exercises to home in on the biceps and triceps. Take your time with each exercise, prioritizing controlled movements over quantity. How to do the workout Perform three rounds of exercises 1A and 1B back to back with minimal rest between sets. Then rest for 30-60 seconds and move onto three rounds of exercises 2A and 2B, also with minimal rest between sets. Start your week with achievable workout ideas, health tips and wellbeing advice in your …

BBC’s 5-part drama Better is perfect for Line of Duty fans – and it gets ‘stronger and stronger’

BBC’s 5-part drama Better is perfect for Line of Duty fans – and it gets ‘stronger and stronger’

Published by Daniella Wilson

The BBC has established itself as the platform to go for gritty police dramas, with Line of Duty really cementing its status. Fans are currently waiting for the show’s seventh season, but if you need to fill the void, then there’s another show perfect for that itch. Released back in 2023, Better is a five-part drama that follows a corrupt police officer, played by Leila Farzad, who attempts to turn her life around, but finds that her past isn’t easy to escape… With its focus on corrupt officers, while also providing a human look at its central characters, the show is easily comparable to the long-running drama that has won over audiences and critics alike. A synopsis for the show, which is still available to stream on iPlayer, reads: “A corrupt police detective has a painful moral awakening and decides to put right 20 years of wrongdoing.” However, there wasn’t just drama on-screen, as away from the gritty police drama, the show’s lead stars, Leila Farzad and Andrew Buchan, ended up together, with the pair …

College Setbacks and Failure—How to Bounce Back Stronger

College Setbacks and Failure—How to Bounce Back Stronger

Published by Jenni Sidey

When college setbacks happen—as they inevitably do from exams, grades, internships, and relationship issues—many students turn inward with harsh self-criticism. Negative experiences often activate a familiar inner narrative: “I’m not good enough.” “I should just quit.” “It doesn’t matter what I do.” These thoughts don’t just sting—they shape how students respond to failure. Why Setbacks Feel So Personal in College College is a time when identity and self-worth are often tied to performance. Students are particularly vulnerable to feeling not-enough in areas where they already feel uncertain: grades, intelligence, productivity, relationships, or future success. What’s easy to forget during stressful moments is that setbacks are not permanent verdicts. They are brief moments in a much longer developmental journey. Learning how to respond to them with awareness and compassion is a powerful mental health skill. Practice Supportive Self-Talk (Without Forcing Positivity) We don’t need to pretend everything is fine to talk to ourselves positively. It’s about responding to setbacks in a supportive, realistic way instead of piling on shame. “This is hard, but it doesn’t define …

Better parent-child communication is linked to stronger soft skills and emotional stability in teens

Better parent-child communication is linked to stronger soft skills and emotional stability in teens

Published by José Betancourt

An analysis of the China Education Panel Survey (2014-2015) data found that better parent-child communication is associated with stronger non-cognitive abilities in adolescents. The link was found to be both direct and achieved indirectly—better parent-child communication increases the social support available to children, which makes them more physically active, which in turn boosts their non-cognitive skills. The paper was published in PLOS One. Non-cognitive abilities are a broad set of psychological traits that are not directly related to intellectual capacity (like IQ) but strongly influence behavior, motivation, and life outcomes. These abilities include characteristics such as self-control, perseverance (grit), emotional regulation, and social skills. During adolescence, these traits are still developing and are particularly sensitive to environmental influences such as family, school, and peer relationships. Self-regulation allows adolescents to manage impulses and delay gratification, which is crucial for academic and social success. Emotional stability helps them cope with stress, peer pressure, and identity-related challenges typical of this developmental stage. Social competencies, such as empathy and communication skills, facilitate the formation of friendships and integration into …

Countries holding stronger precarious manhood beliefs tend to be less happy, study finds

Countries holding stronger precarious manhood beliefs tend to be less happy, study finds

Published by José Betancourt

An analysis of the World Happiness Report data and a global study of gender beliefs found that countries with stronger precarious manhood beliefs tend to have lower national happiness, but also lower GDP, lower life expectancy, lower social support, and heightened perceptions of corruption. The paper was published in Social Science & Medicine. Precarious manhood beliefs are based on the idea that manhood is a social status that must be earned and can easily be lost. According to this perspective, being a “real man” is seen as something that requires constant demonstration through behavior and achievement. These beliefs suggest that masculinity is more fragile and socially judged than femininity. Because of this perceived fragility, men feel pressure to prove their masculinity in public and social situations. Research shows that threats to masculinity can lead some men to react with increased competitiveness, aggression, or risk-taking. Precarious manhood beliefs are often reinforced by cultural norms that associate masculinity with strength, independence, and dominance. When men feel that these expectations are not met, they may experience anxiety, shame, …

Lightning bolts on Jupiter are up to 100 times stronger than Earth’s

Lightning bolts on Jupiter are up to 100 times stronger than Earth’s

Published by Jenni Sidey

On Jupiter, a storm doesn’t just brew, it can simmer for centuries. The planet’s atmosphere is a perpetual engine of turbulence, and somewhere inside those churning cloud bands, lightning is cracking with a force that dwarfs anything the Earth has ever managed. Just how much force has been, until recently, surprisingly hard to measure. A study published March 20 in the journal AGU Advances by planetary scientist Michael Wong and colleagues at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory finally puts some numbers to it, and the range is staggering. Depending on how you account for the physics of radio emissions across different frequency ranges, bolts on Jupiter could be anywhere from comparable to terrestrial lightning to a million times more powerful. A lull that became an opening The measurement problem was one of noise, not signal. Jupiter’s storms erupt across wide atmospheric bands simultaneously, and when lightning fires from multiple locations at once, pinpointing the source of any given bolt is nearly impossible. Measuring power without knowing where the flash came from is like trying to …

How the US and Israel are making the Islamic republic stronger | US-Israel war on Iran

How the US and Israel are making the Islamic republic stronger | US-Israel war on Iran

Published by Sam Flores

The United States-Israel war against Iran is usually described in the language of strategy: Deterrence, escalation, military pressure, missile capacity, nuclear risk. All of these matter, but they do not tell the whole story. To understand how Iran may fight and survive this war, we need to look beyond military calculations and into the moral world through which the Islamic Republic understands power, loss, and, above all, endurance. This is not merely a state under attack, but one whose ideological core has long been shaped by a Shia political theology of martyrdom, sacrifice and sacred resistance. That matters because wars are not fought only with weapons, but with narratives and values; meaning itself can become a political resource. Since the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes during Ramadan, hardliners have held state-backed mourning ceremonies night after night, even as bombs continue to fall. Among the Islamic Republic’s loyalists, especially within the paramilitary force, the Basij, are people prepared to die as martyrs for what they regard as rule by a divinely-guided …

Jupiter’s lightning is 100 times stronger than Earth’s bolts

Jupiter’s lightning is 100 times stronger than Earth’s bolts

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. It only takes one close encounter with a lightning strike to get the full sense of its power. At around 1 gigaJoule of energy, a single electrical discharge during a thunderstorm is more than enough to rip apart a tree, knock out an entire city’s energy grid, or kill an unfortunate bystander. But based on recent observations of the planet Jupiter, our biggest neighbor in the solar system features lightning so intense that it makes Earth’s bolts seem like tiny static shocks. According to a study recently published in the journal AGU Advances, the gas giant regularly sees lightning flashes as much as 100 times more powerful than those seen here on planet Earth. Although Jupiter’s composition and atmosphere share very little in common with our home planet, astronomers say analyzing those distant electrical discharges may help us better understand the lightning experienced on Earth. Hundreds of millions of lightning strikes occur around Earth every year, but apart from …

People Who Only Drink Black Coffee Usually Have 11 Traits That Make Them Stronger Than Normal People

People Who Only Drink Black Coffee Usually Have 11 Traits That Make Them Stronger Than Normal People

Published by Jenni Sidey

Some people can’t stand the taste of coffee, let alone coffee without any creamer or sugar. They may dislike the bitter taste or perhaps they’re more sensitive to the aroma. Despite humans evolving to not like the taste of coffee, some people really enjoy a nice brew without anything added to it, and it speaks volumes about who they are. Because people who only drink black coffee usually have certain traits that make them stronger than normal people. It’s easy to believe that enjoying black coffee isn’t abnormal, but according to a survey from Balance Coffee, while many enjoy a cup in the morning, only 20% of coffee drinkers truly enjoy their coffee black. While they may be the oddball out to some, there’s no denying that their specific taste makes for a fairly interesting character. People who only drink black coffee usually have 11 traits that make them stronger than normal people 1. They’re highly disciplined GBJSTOCK | Shutterstock Nowadays, it’s difficult to be disciplined. In a world filled with things like DoorDash and …