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In our current digital landscape, the concept of beauty is undergoing a profound transformation. What used to be a matter of human presence, talent and expression has increasingly become a matter of algorithmic creation, high-end rendering and social-media metrics. At the heart of this shift lies the phenomenon of AI-generated beauties or “virtual influencers” — digitally created models and personalities whose purpose is often to capture attention, drive engagement, and monetize youth and desirability.  The Rise of the Virtual Beauty One of the most prominent examples is Lil Miquela (Miquela Sousa), a “19-year-old Brazilian-American” digital character created in 2016 by the startup Brud. ([virtualhumans.org] Though she appears as a human on social-media feeds, she is entirely computer-generated. [Moody College of Communication] Her following is in the millions, and she has appeared in campaigns for luxury brands such as Prada and Calvin Klein. [cut-the-saas.com] More broadly, the c...

  Building Smarter Slopes: Technical Insights on Landslide Early Warning Systems A focused technical review of instrumentation, remote sensing, AI forecasting, and operational lessons for implementing robust LEWS in complex regions such as the Western Ghats . Target audience: geotechnical engineers, disaster management professionals, and researchers Introduction: complexity of slope hazards Landslides are a highly nonlinear geotechnical hazard. In steep, monsoon-dominated regions such as the Western Ghats, failure is typically triggered by a combination of antecedent saturation, intense rainfall, and anthropogenic stressors (deforestation, excavation, drainage obstruction). Modern Landslide Early Warning Systems (LEWS) combine multisource monitoring, predictive models, and tailored dissemination to provide timely, actionable lead time for evacuation and mitigation. Figure 1 — LEWS architecture: four pillars — Risk Knowledge, Monitoring & Forecasting, Dissemination, Response. ...