Answer: What's the story with the greenhouses?

 Greenhouses... 

... come in two types--decorative (the ones with beautiful orchids and flowers for visitors to see) and functional ones (see the images above, for growing food and flowers).  

In some places, (e.g., Weifang, China) greenhouses spread over more than 820 square kilometers. 

Seeing all of these from the air sparked this week's Challenge with a few curious questions for you to ponder.  Can you find the answers?  If so, what did you do to discover the results?  

1. How long have greenhouses been around?  If greenhouses date to around Roman times (as I've heard), what were the greenhouses made of?  

I started with a simple: 

[ history of greenhouses] 

as a way to find reasonable resources and read from them directly.  The Wikipedia article on Greenhouses tells of an early origin (30 AD) when the Roman emperor Tiberius needed a "cucumber a day" to keep him in the best of health.  Clever people then made simple frames, "cucumber houses" glazed with either oiled cloth known as specularia or with sheets of selenite.  That's according to the historical description by Pliny the Elder. 

Oiled cloth I understand, but selenite?  It's a crystal that sometimes forms sheets (like mica), but I didn't think it would be very large.  But, a quick search for [selenite] and a couple of images of mineral sample showed me that they can form reasonable sizes rectangles that would be good  for making greenhouse window panes.  (You can even buy nice rectangles of selenite on Amazon.  Who knew?)  

Of course I read several articles to see if they all agreed--and they do--with the most authoritative voice coming from a paper in Horticultural Science (History of Controlled Environment Horticulture: Ancient Origins, by Jules Janick and Harry Paris) 

So... greenhouses have been around for at least 2000 years, with early Roman greenhouses covered in oiled-cloth or small windows of selenite.  

2. What is growing under all of those greenhouses? What's grown in Weifang that needs SO many greenhouses? 

Searched for:  

     [ vegetables grown in greenhouses in Weifang ] 

led me to lots of sources, including an interesting video on X where poster Teacher James walks through some of those greenhouses, pointing out what's growing there.  Answer: LOTS of veggies--I spotted sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, eggplants, many kinds of greens, and flowers.  There was no one thing in particular--just lots of varieties.  

Answer: Everything, mostly veggies, of a huge variety and number.   

I also found a really beautiful illustration of side-by-side / before-and-after NASA Earth images at A Greenhouse Boom in China.

Try this yourself at the NASA website.

If you visit the page, you can pull the slider left and right to see how individual places have changed.  On the left, green area are/were regular fields open to the sky.  On the right, gray areas are greenhouses.  That's a huge change in 37 years!  

3. Those robotic greenhouses... how well are they doing?  Has there been a boom in robotic and/or vertical greenhouses in the past 10 years?  Is it a growth industry?  

It's pretty clear that robots are (and will) change the way agriculture works.  The bots aren't perfect, but getting better all the time.  

Let's split this Challenge into two parts: (a) How well are robots in greenhouses doing?  and (b) How well are vertical greenhouses doing?  

Robots: I put this question to Gemini 

[how well are robots working out in greenhouses? Show analyses of how effective robots are at working in greenhouses.  Show both upsides and downsides of robots in greenhouses.] 

This gave me a fairly generic answers, and (annoyingly) without citations.  I had to do an additional query to get the citations, only to find they were mostly old-ish. In a field that's moving as rapidly as this, references from 2020 are not super-relevant.  I had to ask for ONLY works from 2024-2025.  

By the 3rd query, I finally got a reasonable answer in the form of a tradeoff table (pluses and minuses). It still didn't give references, so I had to ask a 4th query. 

When I tried the same task with Perplexity, I got somewhat better results (with citations and links included), although many of the sources were very upbeat promotional sites for robo-agricutural companies.  That's useful data, but they don't show the downsides.  

But it DID lead me to a recent paper (late 2024) that's a survey of robots in greenhouses: "Robots in greenhouses: A scoping review" with an extensive set of citations covering all of the issues and tech needed to build successful working greenhouse robots.  

The paper concludes by pointing out the key problems in building greenhouse robots: they're slow, they're expensive, and they need constant maintenance.  

I also asked Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity for their opinions (using the above prompts), and mostly got wide-ranging agreement.  The tech is cool and is attracting investment, but 

Bottom line:  There's a lot of promise in putting robots into greenhouses--but there are also a lot of difficult technical and economic problems to solve first.  

Some greenhouse-robot companies (like Iron Ox) go under after a few years of promising work.  The heavy capital expenditures, combined with the economics of operating in such a competitive and cost-sensitive domain, seems to make sustained growth untenable — a common challenge in high-tech farming circles.

Vertical farming test installation. P/C USDA

Vertical Greenhouses: I put this question to our favorite LLMs: 

 [how well are vertical greenhouses working out ? Show analyses of how well vertical greenhouses are performing economically.  Show both upsides and downsides of vertical greenhouses. Give citations.  Include work done in 2024-2025. ] 

Notice that I've learned from the previous queries: This time I added in a focus on economics and explicitly said that I want citations and recent work from 2024-2025.  

This change in the prompts gives much more useful results.  As Gemini says, 

"Vertical greenhouses (or vertical farms) are technically proficient but continue to face significant economic hurdles, primarily high operating costs. While the market is experiencing rapid expansion, the industry is currently undergoing a "shakeout" where many early ventures that scaled too aggressively are failing, while more efficient, specialized operators are beginning to achieve profitability."  

They're very efficient, but have large energy costs, and only work well for leafy greens and--significantly--not for the high value veggies that grow on vines or are big and difficult to handle (think cantaloups).  ChatGPT pointed out that: 

"The business is highly price-sensitive to electricity: with retail/industrial rates spiking the energy component alone can reach ~$6.75/kg lettuce—destroying margin unless prices normalize or power is hedged or renewable."

 

Bottom line:  It's a tough world out there for putting high-tech / new-tech into difficult environments, and vertical greenhouses, while promising, still have the old problem of making money.  Economics never goes away, no matter how shiny the tech.  

SearchResearch Lessons 

1. As you dig deeper into a topic, modify your query / prompts to get more of what you need.  Pay attention!  As you saw, between my first and second prompts I realized that I needed more of a research topic focus (economics) AND that I wanted citations AND only results from the past 2 years.  That all went into my modified prompts.  

2. LLMs (Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) work quite well for topics that call for broad ranging synthesis.  Yes, there are still errors of the types we've mentioned in previous posts.  But as Mike Caulfield helpfully points out in his post When wrong answers get you to the right information, you can often refine your question, ask a follow-up question, or use the citations given by the AI to lead you to useful resources. 

3. Be skeptical.  Be VERY skeptical of self-serving pronouncements by industry websites, articles, or promo pieces.  It's easy to find articles telling you that things are going incredibly well and that the market size will be $X billion in 5 years.  Be dubious, be skeptical.  Look to see how things are going now, and see if you can plausibly find a path from current conditions to a realistic future.   

 

Keep searching.  

SearchResearch Challenge (9/24/25): What's the story with greenhouses?

I've seen lots of these odd constructions... 

... from the air.  

They're greenhouses; a common sight as you fly over agricultural lands.  

These images are from: 36.699632, 118.730094 – China Weifang ; 43.547962, 16.293624 – Split, Croatia; 36.878222, -2.370747 – Almería, Spain ; 35.420553, -80.780018 – Huntersville, North Carolina, US

Sometimes they cover an enormous area of land, as in Weifang, China where greenhouses spread over more than 820 square kilometers.  (Weifang is a prefecture-level city in Shandong Province in northeastern China.)  

You'll also see lots of greenhouses from the air in Europe and the US.  Notably in southern Spain, around Almería.  Where, by some estimates, the greenhouses cover more than 40,000 hectares (150 square miles)—nearly all of Campo de Dalías.  

Naturally, my curiosity is piqued by seeing such giant constructions, and it reminded me that not so long ago, there was a boom in highly efficient greenhouses that were going to be powered by AI, robots, and high-tech lighting.  

These lead me to a few curious questions for you to ponder.  Can you find the answers?  If so, what did you do to discover the results?  

1. How long have greenhouses been around?  If greenhouses date to around Roman times (as I've heard), what were the greenhouses made of?  

2. What is growing under all of those greenhouses? What's grown in Weifang that needs SO many greenhouses? 

3. Those robotic greenhouses... how well are they doing?  Has there been a boom in robotic and/or vertical greenhouses in the past 10 years?  Is it a growth industry?  

Let us know what you discover!  And just as importantly, tell us how you found the answers. 

Forward!  

Keep searching.  

SearchResearch Challenge (9/17/25): New agentic ways to get regular updates on a topic

Having a Research Assistant working for you is great... 

Image by Gemini showing [a scholar writing in front of a calendar], capturing the
need to do periodic updates on research topics. I love that it's SO old-fashioned.

... especially if you can get them to work on a regular schedule and produce useful, insightful summaries of things you should know.  

The advantage of a human Research Assistant (RA) working on your behalf is that they deeply understand what you're interested in and how that shifts and changes over time.  

The disadvantage of a human Research Assistant is that they're really expensive.  They're wonderful, but very few people can afford their own RA.  

We've discussed before about having regular Google Alerts that will constantly monitor the internet for items your cached searches will turn up.  

We've also talked about Google Scholar Alerts (same idea, except just within Scholar) and YouTube Alerts.  SemanticScholar has the same concept--a "standing query" that can run on a regular schedule, updating you with the latest results.  There are several other services that do similar things, discussed in this SRS post from 2023.

It should then come as no surprise to find that many of the current AIs have similar ideas.  ChatGPT and Gemini both have ways to set up a periodic alert-scan that will send you an update on whatever your topic-of-interest is. (Perplexity, Llama, and Claude don't currently support this.)  Basically, you set up an agent to periodically run a compare-and-contrast search for you on your topic.  

They're called different things by different companies, but whether you call them GPTs (OpenAI), GEMS (Gemini), subagents (Anthropic), characters (Meta)... or whatever... they all need a bit of setup.  

But setting them up is a bit like anticipating the chat you'll need to have.  Here are some tips about setting up these regular summaries.  

ChatGPT (Sep 16, 2025)

Once you've got your weekly task setup, you can click on the 3 dots to edit it.  You'll want to give it a reasonable name and clear instructions.  

Note that I've changed the default date/time of summary.  My prompt says what to search, the time scope (last 7 days), the topic (human sensemaking), with instructions about what kinds of sources I'm interested in (peer-reviewed papers...),  and how to create the summary (concise weekly summary with title, venue/source...).  

Here's a similar way to do this on Gemini: 

Gemini (Sep 15, 2025)  

(The instructions are clipped in this screencap.)  

In all cases, you want your prompt to follow all of the guidelines you know from setting up "regular prompts" (e.g., be specific, be directive, say what you want and what you don't want).  

Sample output looks like this (sent as email):  

ChatGPT output  (sent from OpenAI <noreply@tm.openai.com> on the sensemaking topic)

The output from Gemini is fairly similar.  I don't yet have enough experience with them to say which I prefer; I'll let you know if I find a big difference. 

Important:  How to manage your automated tasks.  

Gemini: Open a new Gemini window and go to the settings icon.  (Should be on the bottom left--looks like a gear icon.)  Click on "Scheduled Actions" to see all of your automated tasks.  

ChatGPT:  Very similar-go to Settings (bottom left). Click on the person icon (or your initials), then Settings, then "Schedules."  

From these pages you can edit the task or delete them.   

SearchResearch Lessons 

Upshot: Here's another method for keeping up-to-date on a topic area.  Now that we've got so many ways to do this, be careful to monitor your total feed--it's very possible to setup so many feeds (so many newletters!) that you can be overwhelmed.  

1.  Keep track.  I keep track of how much time I'm spending reading on a topic so I can be aware of how invested I am in a particular domain.  Every so often (roughly quarterly) I take an hour and assess how much time I'm spending on a given topic.  If it's too much, that's when you decide to delete something from your personal feed.  

2. Tune your instructions. When setting up your weekly prompt, be sure to write it out as clearly as you can.  Use your knowledge from doing regular prompting to inform your summary agent prompt.  

Keep searching!   (Just don't overdo it...)  

I changed the prompt to include "modern researcher writing on a dual monitor computer"

Answer: What kind of art is this?

When I see something out of the ordinary my curiosity kicks in ... 

A section of the painting showing the disarmament of the soldiers. P/C Wikimedia

It's not every day you walk past a hexadecagon (16 sides) building.  Especially one that's encased within a fairly square modernist square building.  

P/C Dan--captured from Google Maps satellite view

As mentioned, I went inside and found a completely remarkable painting of an important event in Swiss history--the internment of the French Armée de l'Est in neutral Switzerland at the end of the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War. 

It really is remarkable.  And led to our Challenges for this week:  

1. What is this kind of art installation called?  

I just did a simple Search-by-Image (with the pic above) and found the Wikipedia page about the Bourbaki Panorama in Lucerne.  On that page I learned that: 

The Bourbaki Panorama is a circular panoramic painting depicting the internment of the French Armée de l'Est in neutral Switzerland at the end of the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War. The army, led by General Charles-Denis Bourbaki, had been defeated in the field while attempting to raise the Siege of Belfort and fled to Switzerland in the aftermath. The Swiss admitted the French soldiers, and local villagers and the Swiss Red Cross provided aid. 

The Bourbaki Panorama is more than just a painting; it is a powerful denunciation of war and a testament to the first humanitarian actions of the Red Cross. Originally spanning 1500 m², the preserved 1000 m² of the painting vividly depict the harsh realities of war and the compassionate response of the Red Cross. This makes it a significant historical and humanitarian site for visitors to explore.

I happened to notice at the bottom of the Wikipedia page.  When you're doing research in a somewhat-unknown area, be sure to check down at the bottom of the page.  That's where you'll find the Categories section for the article.  

Each of these links is to another Wikipedia page that is a category for the topic.  In this case, the Bourbaki Panorama page is referred to by the pages "1877 paintings" and "Museums in Lucerne" "Cycloramas" ... etc.  

All of those categories make sense.  But you might not recognize the term "cyclorama" (I didn't).  It's worth clicking through to the Cyclorama page where you will learn that it is "A cyclorama is a panoramic image on the inside of a cylindrical platform, designed to give viewers standing in the middle of the cylinder a 360° view."  

This is an interesting distinction from a panorama, which is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space.  My phone camera can take "panoramas" and you've probably seen other 180 degree images that are also called "panoramas."  

But this kind of art installation is specifically a cyclorama, a panorama that you can walk in.  

A view from inside the Bourbaki cyclorama, with a railing and seating for longer contemplation.

2. Are there any of these giant 360-degree paintings still in use somewhere in the US?  (If so, where? Any in the eastern US still around?)  

Now that we know that this is cyclorama, it's an easy search to find other cycloramas.  (A big list is at the Cyclorama Wikipedia page.)   

I thought that searching for a cyclorama near me would be as easy as opening Google Maps and doing [cycloramas near me] -- but I was surprised.  I REALLY didn't work.  What I got was a bunch of photography studios and custom imaging places.  

Just out of curiosity, I clicked through to one of them and learned something fascinating:  A ‘Cyc Wall’ is an abbreviated term for “cyclorama,” also referred to as a cyclorama wall or cyc wall. It’s essentially a curved wall used as a photo or video background to suggest unlimited space.

All of the places shown by the query offered "cyc wall" services, either as a photographic service or as a display format.  (Yes, you can hire one of these companies to set up a "cyc wall" for you or rent one to you.)  

But that wasn't really what I meant.  So I did a regular Google query:  

     [cyclorama building near me] 

and learned that there IS a cyclorama in Los Angeles--the Velaslavasay Panorama (with its own Wikipedia page).  (I hope to visit it in late October.  If I make it, I'll let you know.)  Oddly, the Velaslavasay cyclorama is NOT listed in the cyclorama categories Wikipedia page.  Imagine that: someone is wrong on the internet.  Inevitable XKCD reference.  

The Velaslavasay Panorama (cyclorama) at 1122 W 24th Street, Los Angeles, CA

3. How many of these things have survived from the 19th century into modern times?  (And... is there one you can visit near me?) 

Of course, the query:

     [ cyclorama building in the US ] 

gives several hits, including several in the eastern US.  Most famous is the Gettysburg cyclorama by the French artist Paul Philippoteaux depicting Pickett's Charge, the climactic Confederate attack on the Union forces during the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.  (How to visit the Gettysburg cyclorama.)

Accepting that the Wikipedia entry is incomplete, it's easy to see that while we're no longer in the age-of-cycloramas, a fair number still exist and can be visited.   Many of these are from the 19th century--but you have to check each one to determine its date of origin.  

You can do the same trick to find a cyclorama near you.  

4. What was the effect of this internment on the development of Switzerland?  Why was it such an important event?  

In the Wikipedia article it mentions that "...the reception and distribution of nearly 90,000 exhausted men internment across almost the whole of Switzerland was the first major humanitarian action of the very young Red Cross (founded in 1863), and was part of Switzerland's policy of perpetual neutrality."  

This kind of questions is actually an ideal use for an LLM, which can integrate information across multiple sources.  So I asked Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity this same question.  

[ At the end of the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War, the French Armée de l'Est was interned in neutral Switzerland.  The Swiss fed and medically cared the French army by the civilian population and housed in Swiss communities. What was the effect of this internment on the development of Switzerland?  Why was it such an important event?  Give citations for follow-up and validation. ]

The good news:  They all gave small variations on the same answer.  My summary of the AI answers is this: 

The  French“Armée de l’Est” had been defeated in the field while attempting the Siege of Belfort and fled to Switzerland in the aftermath. 

Besieged by the Prussian army, over 80,000 French troops crossed the border into the Vaud and Neuchâtel Jura regions to take refuge in Switzerland. 

The internment had a profound effect on Switzerland, primarily by strengthening its national identity and solidifying its foreign policy of armed neutrality.

The act of caring for a foreign army (that was about 3% of Switzerland’s total population) so quickly ended up uniting the Swiss people across linguistic and regional divides. Citizens from all cantons, regardless of whether they spoke French, German, or Italian, worked together to provide shelter, food, and medical care to the interned soldiers. This shared national effort fostered a sense of unity and collective purpose in the young federal state.

The experience also highlighted weaknesses in the Swiss military's logistical and command structures. The need to quickly mobilize and manage such a large number of troops led to significant reforms in the Swiss armed forces, strengthening the concept of a national militia, and ultimately reinforcing their sense of neutrality.  

The Bourbaki cyclorama was a key piece of national history-telling.  The event didn't just slide into obscurity, but was held up by the government as part of national identity.  

* 

Since the days of the cycloramas technology keeps evolving.  Now we have IMAX theatres with a huge field of view display.  And more recently there's the Sphere in Las Vegas with an extremely large immersive display space.  Doubtlessly the technology for large immersive displays will continue to evolve.  One of my favorites is Disney's "Soarin' Over California."  (YouTube video to give you an idea... but a small video is NOT the same as complete immersion.)  

SearchResearch Lessons

1. Be curious about what you find!  Reading all the way to the bottom of the Wikipedia page led us to the Categories... that's a useful thing to know.  

2. Note important term distinctions. A "panorama" is any wide-angle image.  But a "cyclorama" is specifically a 360 immersive panorama.  

3. Use the specialized terms for your searches.  Obviously... the more precise your language, the better your results. 

4. A good use for LLMs is to summarize text and concepts across a number of resources.  The last Challenge was a good example.  Naturally, you'll want to check the sources (I did), but in this case they all were in agreement.  

Keep searching!  

A short video about the Coffee Sniffers (a test video summary)

... so... I thought I'd try a little experiment with NotebookLM's video overview... 

  

I created a Notebook and then gave it the text of my post answering the Coffee Sniffers question.  (From July 30, 2025) 

After pouring it in, I asked for it to make a Video Overview that would summarize my post. Here's the result:   (Link)  

This is the kind of video I've wanted to make ever since this blog began.  But as you know (and as I know all too well, having edited a LOT of videos over the years), making one of these video shorts takes a long, long time.  

For those of you who've read the post, how does this compare with the text experience?  Good?  Better?  Less satisfying?  Did you take away anything new or more interesting from the video version?  

I'm looking for feedback here.  If you like it, I'll do more in future posts (and I'll talk about how much work this was--I admit to editing the raw video output from NotebookLM).  

Let me know in the comments!  

SearchResearch Challenge (9/3/25): What kind of art is this?

 While wandering around downtown Lucerne, Switzerland... 

A section of the painting showing the disarmament of the soldiers. P/C Wikimedia

... I came across a really interesting building.  It was clearly an old building in a regular polygonal shape--looks like a hexadecagon (16 sides).  It's obviously been embedded within a fairly square modernist building.  

P/C Dan--captured from Google Maps satellite view

I went inside and found a completely remarkable painting of an important event in Swiss history--the internment of the French Armée de l'Est in neutral Switzerland at the end of the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War.  (Note: in this case, "internment" doesn't mean being an intern for the summer, but rather describe a neutral country detaining belligerent armed forces and equipment on its territory during times of war, under the Hague Convention of 1907.)   

The thing is... the painting is huge, and in the round--it takes your breath away, it's that dramatic.  

You enter into the center of the vista from below and are immediately surrounded by a 360-degree view.  It's a 19th century version of VR.  In a world without movies, videos, 3D computer graphics, virtual reality, or augmented reality headsets, it was the closest thing you could get to being there in the middle of the action.  

Being in the middle of this circular painting reminded me that I'd visited another, similar installation a few years ago--although that visit was somewhere in the eastern United States.  But, I wondered, where would I have seen something like this? 

This makes a great SearchResearch Challenge for the week.  

1. What is this kind of art installation called?  

2. Are there any of these giant 360-degree paintings still in use somewhere in the US?  (If so, where? Any in the eastern US still around?)  

3. How many of these things have survived from the 19th century into modern times?  (And... is there one you can visit near me?) 

4. What was the effect of this internment on the development of Switzerland?  Why was it such an important event?  

The first 3 Challenges are pretty straight-forward, while the last one calls for a bit more thinking.  

As always, let us know how you found the answers.  (If you just know off the top of your head, that's fine, just say so.  If you called your favorite Swiss historian, let us know that as well.) 

But please share your method with us!  

Keep searching!  

Update: What are those bright patches of water without ripples?

 I was walking on the bluffs along the Pacific this week...

A very clear region of lighter water. P/C Daniel M. Russell.
Taken at Black Point Beach, Sonoma county, CA looking north.

... and saw another of those long, meandering regions of lighter water... pieces of the sea surface that seem to have much fewer ripples than the surrounding water. 

You might recall that we discussed this a while ago (July 25, 2019--"A couple of questions about Polynesia").  In that post, I decided they're called Langmuir circulation lines, formed when wind blows across the surface of water.  

But as you might also recall, a couple of weeks later, I recanted that opinion in the post "Rethinking Langmuir Circulation lanes."  

Why did I change my mind?  Because on that very day I'd driven past some very clear Langmuir circulation lanes in a nearby lagoon... and they didn't look like the "long, meandering regions."  Langmuir circulation lanes, I learned, are absolutely straight.  

But in the image above (or the images below), you can see that the "regions of lighter water" don't really fall in straight lines.  

I've taken multiple photos over the years as I've thought about this Challenge.  You can see the variety of lighter water forms, all caused by a clear lack of wavelets in the water.  

Near Split, Croatia.

Cozumel, Mexico.

The Golden Gate, near San Francisco, CA.

Meandering lanes of brighter water. I've even kayaked through some of these, and there's nothing obviously different in the lanes.  So.. what's going on? 

The memory of that old post reminded me that I was still uncertain about what was causing these...things.  I wasn't even sure what they're called.  (And as I've said about a thousand times, having a name for something is incredibly useful when trying to learn about a topic.)  

Since we're living in a new era of multimodal AI abilities, I thought I'd ask the AIs what's going on in these images.   

Short answer: My searches with AI tools totally flopped.  I couldn't get any of the AI tools to tell me what these things are. I got a lot of very confident answers... that were completely and utterly wrong.  

BUT.. regular search has improved since 2019 as well, so I thought I'd try regular search again.  

This time I searched for [light patches on ocean] 

Which led me to a Reddit thread on this exact question: "What are the brighter parts in the ocean called?"

As you know, Reddit can be a mixed bag, but as I've also said a bunch, even low-quality results can give you a great lead. 

In that Reddit post I found a reference to something I hadn’t seen before – Redditor Smellzlikefish  (a SCUBA diver and at least part-time marine scientist) wrote that “These are called surface slicks, and they serve as important nursery habitats for developing fish. You can read more about them here" with a link to a NOAA article entitled “Surface slicks are pelagic nurseries for diverse ocean fauna” (the article is worth reading... it has a great time-lapse video of surface slick formation and movement over the course of a day).  

A quick trip to Google Scholar showed me that Smellzlikefish is right: this really IS what these lighter-colored regions are called.  

As that NOAA article points out, they are basically biofilms that are accumulated fatty alcohols and acids produced by animals and plants living in the water.  This causes a thin, near monomolecular, film on the sea surface. The thin film causes a suppression of the tiny wavelets (aka "capillary waves") in the area, making water surface seem brighter (and with far fewer wavelets). 

And now I know what they are… and why they make long, meandering lines of brightness in calm seas.  

Thought you'd like to know. 

Keep searching!  

Answer: Best ways to do just-in-time learning. Part 3: getting a teaching summary with NotebookLM

 Last time... 

A woman studying a complex anatomy topic. P/C Pexels.com by RF._.studio _

      

we talked about asking your favorite LLM to give you a summary (say 500 words on a specified topic).     

But maybe there's a way to be even MORE specific.  Remember our Challenge:  

1. What are the best AI-inspired (or AI-driven) new Micro- and Meso-learning that you've found?  Have you actually tried this method?  How well has it worked out for you? 

Asking for an essay, especially one that you can have read aloud, is pretty handy.  

The downside is that you're getting the full LLM, and that may (or may not) be what you're looking for.  

Using Google's NotebookLM lets you start with a specific set of resources--presumably ones that you've hand picked to be reliable, accurate, and on-topic--and then create a summary in text, audio, or video formats!  

Here's what I did.  

1. Start a new Notebook.  Visit NotebookLM and create new notebook.  Then add sources by clicking "+ Add" in the upper left corner.  As you can see, I've added 5 papers I found by using regular Google Scholar 

The papers are summarized in the main Chat window (in the center).  In short, they're: 

1. Selgrath et al. (2024) reconstruct kelp forest changes over centuries in central California

2. Leichter et al. (2023) examine the impact of nutrient availability

3. Garcı́a-Reyes et al. (2022) demonstrate the predictive power of winter oceanographic conditions on summer bull kelp canopy cover in northern California

4. Butler et al. (2021) document the soundscapes within and around a marine protected area off La Jolla 

 

(A minor hassle here in the design of NotebookLM.  The references in the Chat window are all correct, but it's hard to know which of the links in the Sources window map onto the refs in the Chat.  You have to click on the source to see which is which, and it's not an obvious mapping. It also didn't tell me that source 2 and source 4 are duplicates, which is why there are only 4 sources listed in the summary. Argh!) 

In any case, if you click on the "Video Overview" in the upper right corner, NotebookLM will create an 8 minute video summary of the contents of the sources.  Link to the YouTube video.  

You'll see the effect in  a minute or so... 

Let me repeat--the summary (while great to use for learning)--is NOT a replacement for reading the papers.  There's all kinds of detail that's not covered in the video overview.  That's why it's an overview, and not the papers themselves. 

As we mentioned earlier, you can also generate an audio overview.  Here's the M4a file of the summary of these papers. (14 minutes)  This is handy for putting onto your phone and listening as you walk.  (One minor annoyance--Google speech doesn't know how to pronounce the city name "La Jolla."  It's NOT "la-jala," it's "la-hoya.")  

ALSO note that you can customize both the video and audio overviews.  Click on the 3-dots in the upper right and you'll get a set of customization options: 

Obviously, you can get the overview in another language (handy, if you're studying that language) OR you can get it focused on a particular learning task, such as preparing for a quiz on the topic or a specific sub-topic within the collection of papers.  

I have to admit, even though I know a fair bit about this topic, I learned something by listening to the audio summary.  NotebookLM really does a good job of synthesizing something coherent and useful from the sources. 

 Last time we also mentioned using the Feynman technique for learning.  Using the prompt: 

[tell me about the Feynman technique for effective learning] 

.. this will cause Gemini to jump into the "Feynman teaching mode" on the topic of California kelp.  

If you give NotebookLM this prompt, it will give you a summary of the material, which you can then use to guide your own Feynman method. 

How use the Feynman Technique with NotebookLM

After you've uploaded your sources (documents, articles, etc). You can select a topic you'd like to understand in more detail.  

Prompt NotebookLM to explain: Ask the AI to explain the concept as if to a child or a beginner to force simplification and the creation of analogies. For example, you can use a prompt like, "Explain the relationship between purple urchins and the loss of bull kelp in California using the Feynman technique, as if teaching it to someone with no background in the topic."  (Don't worry about marking off the concept from the query--NotebookLM will figure out what you mean.)  

Evaluate the explanation: Review the AI's explanation for clarity and accuracy. Does it all make sense to you?  If not, you need to... 

Identify gaps in your understanding: If the explanation is still unclear or if it highlights weaknesses in your own understanding, make a note of these areas.  Once you've identified these issues... 

Return to your sources: Go back to your original documents within NotebookLM to find the information needed to fill those knowledge gaps. 

Refine your explanation: Go back to NotebookLM and re-explain the concept, incorporating the new information you've and simplifying the language further. 

Repeat the cycle: Continue this process of explaining, identifying gaps, researching, and refining your explanation until you fully grasp the concept. 

Make sense?  That's the value of having your own tutor on the topic you choose.  

Of course, your next step would be to find additional resources to extend your learning.  You could ask NotebookLM to: 

     [ recommend other papers to read on this topic] 

Or, you can use the Discover button (upper right of the Sources panel) to add additional sources.  

 

SearchResearch Lessons

This is Part 3 of our "how to learn rapidly" series.  We learned that: 

1. Using NotebookLM can give you control over the content you're trying to learn. Add the materials you need to learn to the Notebook, then ask for a summary, or ask questions of it as you wish.  

2. You can create audio or video summaries of the Notebook sources. This is remarkably handy as a way to learn-on-the-go.

The NotebookLM method promises to give you much higher quality summaries since it's basically answering questions (or generating your summaries) from the materials that you've selected. (Which you presumably selected for their accuracy!)  

There are many more AI-augmented learning methods out there.  Keep your eyes open and let us know if you find any that are particularly effective for you.  Keep those comments coming! 

Keep searching!