Google’s research tool NotebookLM made waves recently for a new feature that lets users generate what sounds a lot like podcasts. But while the company has been adding new features, it’s also seeing more and more use cases in the enterprise arena. 

NotebookLM lets users upload PDFs, websites, Google Docs, Google Slides and paste text into a notebook keeping information in one place. People can also ask Gemini questions about the documents inside the notebook. First launched in July 2023 and generally available in the U.S. since Dec. 2023, NotebookLM has slowly expanded the kinds of files it can read.

However, one use case that has seen an uptick is through corporate teams sharing research and information on NotebookLM. 

Raiza Martin, product manager at Google handling NotebookLM, told VentureBeat that they’re seeing corporate teams take advantage of the product’s organizational capabilities that let people find the information they need in one place. 

“We saw students using it to accelerate their learning and understanding and analysis, but we also know that the same thing students are doing is the exact same things that professionals are trying to do,” Martin said, adding that over months, Google has seen “an equal, if not larger amount of professionals using NotebookLM.”

Make a podcast to explain your research

Since launching NotebookLM, Google has slowly added new capabilities to the platform. The newest update allows users to generate audio explaining information in the notebook, with two speakers discussing the topic. 

“The conversation style is the first one that we picked because we thought it was novel, and in our early test, it was very engaging. The double speaker dynamic helped people sort of latch on to the content in a totally different way than a single speaker,” Martin said. 

Google observed users and teams have used NotebookLM to bring together research and analysis, even some other information employees may need to know. One way enterprises can use NotebookLM is as a shortcut to store data that ultimately makes its way to retrieval augmented generative (RAG) search queries. Martin said NotebookLM itself is a RAG tool that benefits from Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro. 

I got to use the audio generation feature early and was able to point it to one of my notebooks. I had given NotebookLM several documents about global AI regulations, such as the text of the European Union’s AI Act. The audio it generated summarized the act, but since the other file in the same notebook was an analytical blog post, the discussion took sides. To me, it sounded a lot like the tech-related podcasts I regularly listen to, without the personal banter between hosts.

Some users have begun posting how they’ve used the audio feature, including explaining code bases. 

The next full moon is arriving just in time for the weekend. According to NASA, the Buck Moon will make an appearance for three days, from Friday evening to Monday morning, reaching its peak at 6:17 a.m. EDT on Sunday.

The moon is also known as the Thunder Moon, given its overlap with thunderstorm season.

NASA advised viewers to stay safe from the lightning that comes with the storms, but also to indulge in a little fun as the Buck Moon arrives: “As usual, the wearing of suitably celebratory celestial attire is encouraged in honor of the full Moon.”

Why is it called the Buck Moon?

The name stems from a tradition established by the Maine Farmers’ Almanac in the 1930s, according to NASA, when the publication started listing the names of full moons. The Algonquin tribes of the Northeast reportedly called this month’s moon the Buck Moon – a nod to the deer that emerge this time of year.

“Early summer is normally when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur,” NASA said.

Other monikers for July’s full moon include Thunder Moon, Asalha Puja, Guru Full Moon, Hay Moon. and Mead Moon.

When will the next full moon take place?

August’s full moon — known as the Sturgeon Moon, according to the almanac.com — will peak on Monday, Aug. 19. This will be the first supermoon of the year, which means it will appear brighter and larger than other full moons.

Another event for stargazers to look forward to is a meteor shower on Saturday, July 31. Those on the East Coast will have to rise early if they want to catch the spectacle of light. According to NASA, the best time to see the shower from Washington, D.C., will be around 2 a.m. 

UPchieve, the free, 24/7 online tutoring and college counseling app for low-income students, announced Thursday it’s giving teachers in Title 1 middle schools and high schools a new tool to ensure their students get the academic support they need.

The new offering, called “UPchieve for Teachers,” allows teachers to offer 1:1 support to their students. They can invite students to sign up for tutoring, create classes, and monitor students’ platform usage. Previously, students had to sign up for tutoring services themselves, but with this new product, teachers can now recommend students for 1:1 tutoring at no cost. In the coming weeks, they’ll also be able to assign tutoring sessions to entire classes.

UPchieve for Teachers is available to educators working in Title 1 middle schools and high schools. Title 1 is a federal aid program provided to K-12 schools with the highest number of low-income families within school districts. Approximately 43% of public schools qualify for Title I funding, with fewer than 50,000 schools benefiting from the program.

This new offering is expected to help UPchieve expand its user base by reaching students who may not be aware of free services like this or who may not be actively seeking additional assistance.

“The product is going to be really valuable to teachers because it’s going to help them accomplish some of the hardest parts of their job,” founder Aly Murray told TechCrunch. “Students are coming into the class with different gaps in their foundational skills. Teachers have to try to support all of their students, but there’s not enough time to support each student individually, so that’s a natural place where a tutor can help. We’re really excited about launching a product that’s going to give teachers more control.” 

UPchieve was founded in 2016, shortly after Murray graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. As a former low-income student herself, she struggled to access academic support services throughout her schooling and wanted to make it easy for other students to be able to get help whenever they needed it, even when working on homework late at night. 

“I was raised by a single mom, and as an immigrant to the United States, she often wasn’t able to help me with schoolwork and with my college applications. And so that had a big impact on my life. It made things very difficult, and I found that I often needed help late at night when there was really nowhere I could turn to for support,” Murray said. 

UPchieve says it has matched over 190,000 tutoring requests from more than 20,000 students across all 50 states. Its 24/7 online tutoring sessions are conducted in the in-app messenger or via voice chat on the web or mobile app. UPchieve covers over 30 subjects, including math, science, English, history, humanities, and more.

Tutors can volunteer by signing up on the website. Volunteers can even be students themselves; however, they must be in 9th grade or higher. UPchieve currently has around 2,400 tutors active on the platform. 

“All of the volunteers on UPchieve go through a background screening, training, and certification process to become a volunteer tutor. Before they’re ever going to work with a student, they have to pass a quiz in every subject that they want to help students with,” Murray explained.

Similar to other edtech companies, the company utilizes OpenAI’s GPT-4o to assist tutors in providing AI-generated feedback and progress reports to students after the sessions are over. In the future, the company also plans to use AI to help tutors create practice problems and offer AI-generated summaries of student sessions through its Teachers product. 

“We have no plans to replace our human tutors with AI tutors anytime in the near future,” Murray added.

As a nonprofit organization, UPchieve relies on charitable donations, grants, and paid partnerships with schools, districts, and corporations. Donors include Atlassian, AT&T, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Guggenheim Capital, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, the Skyline Foundation, and Verizon. 

UPchieve has partnered with over 50 schools, and each school or organization pays a $10,000 partnership fee per year or is sponsored by a donor or corporation who pays the fee on their behalf. The company also graduated from Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch. 

In 2023, UPchieve raised over $4 million through philanthropy and earned revenue from paid partnerships. The company claims its annual recurring revenue (ARR) is currently $840,000, which comes solely from paid and sponsored partnerships. 

Netflix’s newest games are actually a bit old. During its Geeked Week 2024 presentation, the streaming service revealed it’s adding Civilization VI and Street Fighter IV: Champion Edition as well as a host of other titles to its ever-increasing and legitimately impressive gaming lineup.

For Civ 6, players will have access to all the game’s expansion packs that were a part of the Platinum Edition version of the game. Meanwhile, Netflix will host the Champion Edition of Street Fighter IV featuring all 32 fighters released over the game’s lifetime. Also, iOS and Android users will be able to compete against each other online exclusively via Netflix. Neither game has a launch date just yet, with Netflix saying both are coming soon.

Street Fighter and Civilization will join the other games announced for the platform, including Don’t Starve Together, Stardew Valley-with-Hobbits simulator Tales of the Shire, Lab Rat, Carmen Sandiego, Monument Valley, Spongebob Bubble Pop F.U.N., and Battleship.

Sharks in the waters off Brazil have tested positive for cocaine, marine biologists said in a new study, marking the first time the drug has been found in the free-ranging predators. 

Thirteen sharpnose sharks were taken from the coast off of Rio de Janeiro and tested for the cocaine and benzoylecgonine, the primary molecule in cocaine. Each shark’s liver and muscles tested positive for high levels of cocaine, the study found, and the female sharks tested had higher concentrations of cocaine in their muscles than male sharks. 

The scientists — who dubbed the study “Cocaine Shark” — posited that this may show a correlation between a shark’s weight and size and how it metabolizes cocaine, but the study noted that more research was necessary. 

CBS News partner BBC News reported that experts have multiple theories on how the illicit substances are entering the water. It’s possible that illegal labs where cocaine is manufactured could be to blame. Scientists also said that it could be entering the waterway through the excrement of drug users. A less likely theory is that packs of cocaine lost or dumped at sea could be to blame. Cocaine and other illicit drugs have previously been found in water drainage systems and in rivers. 

It’s the first study to show levels of cocaine and benzoylecgonine in free-ranging sharks. More research is necessary to see how cocaine consumption affects sharks and other wildlife, the scientists said. 

It’s not clear how the cocaine consumption affects the sharks, the study said. Some of the female sharks were pregnant at the time of the study, and it remains unclear how the illicit drugs may have affected the fetuses.  

The findings are “very important and potentially worrying,” marine eco-toxicologist Sara Novais, from the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre of the Polytechnic University of Leiria, told Science magazine. 

Researchers have tried to study the impact of illicit drugs on sea life in other parts of the world. Last year, Discovery TV aired a show called “Cocaine Sharks” (which was also the title of a 2023 horror movie) that used experiments to show how sharks might be affected by cocaine. Tracy Fanara, an environmental engineer who worked on the show, told CBS News that the experiments and their results were preliminary, but said it’s likely that sharks are coming in contact with the illicit drug. 

“My goal of this experiment was to shed light on the real problem of chemicals in our waterways and impacting our aquatic life and then eventually impacting us,” Fanara said in 2023. “But the goal of the study was basically to see if this is a research question worth exploring more. And I would say, yes, it is.”