conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about Before, San, Bernardino with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Action & Adventure?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'Almost Human'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Almost Human about Andi, Gilda, Pauling with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ngs veterinarian Andi Pauling, life is a precious commodity. That's why she is astonished when Gilda Hopkins makes an impassioned--and controversial--request. Gilda, dying painfully of cancer, asks Andi to kill her. But before Andi can recover from the shock, Gilda breathes her last.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Then Gilda's grown daughter suddenly accuses Andi of murder, forcing Andi to scramble for the truth. Striving to uphold her reputation, Andi soon confronts menace from a devious newspaperman, the distrust of her patients and staff, and a violent threat that could leave her stranded out in the desert with only the vultures for company....
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first two paragraphs for this story.. End with the sentence ' In a place where rain is unheard of, the chilly morning wetness is disconcerting, but tame compared to the sudden, bone-shaking cold, as low as twenty degrees Fahrenheit, in the ink-black darkness of the night.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Almost Human
  The fact that Finch and Teza are unaware of the reasons for the materials and that they are somewhat annoyed by their ignorance is indicative of the difficulty of maintaining a stable group dynamic here. Working together on the same project for a long period of time and now living together, a certain intimacy develops in which everyone assumes that he is totally aware of what everyone else is thinking and doing. But that is often not the case. When I ask Alan Waggoner and his assistant Dave Pane if Zoë's inability to see or know where she is disturbs them or their work, they both look up at me in surprise. "That's for the roboticists to deal with," Pane says. "We've got our own stuff to worry about."
  SEPTEMBER IS MIDWINTER IN THE ATACAMA, IN THE ATACAMA, SO IT IS quite chilly in the morning. Sometimes I wear a sweatshirt, a down vest, and a windbreaker on top of a turtleneck. We gradually peel our layers as the sun burns off the frigid air and dries the heavy morning dew. In a place where rain is unheard of, the chilly morning wetness is disconcerting, but tame compared to the sudden, bone-shaking cold, as low as twenty degrees Fahrenheit, in the ink-black darkness of the night.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me three more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Here too was the sum and substance, nuts and bolts, of their erstwhile leader, David Wettergreen—thorough and responsible, unflappable and forgiving to the bitter end. When I asked Wettergreen whether he knew the identities of the perpetrators and, if so, would there be consequences, he told me that he could guess the people responsible for the prank, but that he had no interest in confirming it or following up with recrimination. "I would have preferred that it had not happened," he said, "but I am not opposed to having a little fun, even at my expense. As long as nothing gets broken and no one gets hurt, and the project moves forward, a few jokes and tricks are fine with me."
  IT IS SEPTEMBER 7, 2005, NEARLY A YEAR TO THE DAY that I landed in Iquique with Alan Waggoner, Paul Tompkins, Dom Jonak, and Finch, who had picked us up at the airport in his Toyota HiLux and indoctrinated us with the wild and reckless driving habits of rookie roboticists. Those bouncing, harrowing road-warrior-like experiences will forever be lodged in my psyche, especially now at the start of a new school year at Carnegie Mellon, when I catch glimpses of Finch, who is matriculating this month as a Robotics Institute grad student. Finch always waves and grins broadly when I see him on campus, as if he still remembers and is secretly amused by how his "bat out of hell" driving scared us to death.
  Since last September, Alan Waggoner has stepped back from the LITA project. Carnegie Mellon will soon announce that Waggoner's MBIC will receive a $13.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a research center dedicated to understanding the inner workings of cells and how they can be used in the early detection and treatment of diseases ranging from cancer to cystic fibrosis. Waggoner's National Technology Center for Networks and Pathways will blend medicine, engineering, and computer science to develop technologies to allow scientists to examine what is going on inside living cells through fluorescent dyes. In addition to Waggoner, Paul Tompkins is absent from LITA. He has received his PhD, and has snagged a job as a researcher and programmer at NASA Ames, joining his roboticist fiancée, Vandi Verma, who has developed Zoë's health monitor.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The scope and breadth of vision pervades the robotics world at Carnegie Mellon. Heroes in science and technology are those men and women who embrace hard work and manifest the ability to see with clarity into the distant future, to believe in themselves and in their dreams and, most important, to never give them up.
  On the day Zoë made history, I asked Nathalie Cabrol if at that moment she was feeling a sense of pride for all she had accomplished.
  Thanks also to Peter Coppin, Angela Wagner, Dimitrios Apostolopoulos, Omead Amidi, Eben Meyers, Sanjiv Singh, Christopher Atkeson, Sarah Keisler, Al Rizzi, Greg Armstrong, Takeo Kanade, Geoff Gordon, Nancy Pollard, Ralph Hollis, James Morris, Howie Choset, Devin Balkcom, Rosemary Emery, Todd Simonds, Chuck Whittaker, Kathy Whittaker, Deborah Tobin, Michele Gittleman, Eric Close, Alonzo Kelly, George Stetten, Ruth Gaus, Steve Stancliff, Brenda Copeland, David Sobel, Rich (Ringo) Noel, Ron Dahl, Byron Spice, and Bruce Steele.
  A special thanks to Chuck Thorpe and Anne Watzman, who made my ongoing access into the Robotics Institute possible.
  And last but not least, thanks to Patricia Park for reading early drafts and her encouraging observations; to my editor, Amy Cherry, for her flexibility and her astute critiques; and to my agent, Andrew Blauner, for his steadfast and faithful support.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The scope and breadth of vision pervades the robotics world at Carnegie Mellon. Heroes in science and technology are those men and women who embrace hard work and manifest the ability to see with clarity into the distant future, to believe in themselves and in their dreams and, most important, to never give them up.
  On the day Zoë made history, I asked Nathalie Cabrol if at that moment she was feeling a sense of pride for all she had accomplished.
  Thanks also to Peter Coppin, Angela Wagner, Dimitrios Apostolopoulos, Omead Amidi, Eben Meyers, Sanjiv Singh, Christopher Atkeson, Sarah Keisler, Al Rizzi, Greg Armstrong, Takeo Kanade, Geoff Gordon, Nancy Pollard, Ralph Hollis, James Morris, Howie Choset, Devin Balkcom, Rosemary Emery, Todd Simonds, Chuck Whittaker, Kathy Whittaker, Deborah Tobin, Michele Gittleman, Eric Close, Alonzo Kelly, George Stetten, Ruth Gaus, Steve Stancliff, Brenda Copeland, David Sobel, Rich (Ringo) Noel, Ron Dahl, Byron Spice, and Bruce Steele.
  A special thanks to Chuck Thorpe and Anne Watzman, who made my ongoing access into the Robotics Institute possible.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Almost Human
  As we approached the cave entrance Rick and Steven led us to, I glanced about in the dark, getting my bearings, and tried to remember if I had ever been here before. Only a few hundred meters away was the outline of a hill, with Swartkrans near the crest of the opposite side. I had been there hundreds of times in the past 23 years. A little farther away I could see the lights of the Sterkfontein visitors center. We were right in the heart of the Sterkfontein Valley, the most explored fossil-bearing area on the continent. Standing there, I realized that not only had I been in this area before but in these precise caves, the Rising Star and Empire systems. I had surveyed this farm during the Atlas Project, and not more than 200 meters away was one of the fossil-bearing sites from that expedition.
  As we walked up the slight slope of the hill, our headlamps flickering across the uneven ground in front of us, I asked no one in particular questions about the site in advance of entering. "How far in is it?"
  I was quickly learning that this group of cavers didn't speak much, or at least tonight they were going to let me find out for myself. Maybe, I thought, there was a reason for this?
  We reached the cave entrance and I scanned the narrow opening with my headlamp. To the left was a black void, a drop-off of unknown depth. To the right, a tree obstructed the route in, forcing us to edge closer to the sheer drop-off. Nice.
  Just beyond that danger point was a rock archway that was clearly man-made, perhaps by miners blasting an entrance back in the 19th century. The experienced cavers were already starting down ahead of me. Matt eagerly followed. Slipping on my caving gloves, I followed the group down into the darkness.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The first metacarpal was just as fascinating. This is the bone in the palm of the hand that connects to the base of the thumb. Peter brought it to me from the Science Tent. "I've never seen anything like this," he said, holding it out in the palm of his hand.
  I picked it up, turning it over. Neither had I. In a modern human, the first metacarpal is a small bone that looks a lot like a cartoon dog bone: a stick with two identical fatter ends. But this one was narrow at the wrist and wide where the thumb attaches. I shook my head and said, "It's long, though." The length of that bone in the palm of the hand reflects the length of the thumb, and a long opposable thumb was a sure sign of a hominin.
  Peter nodded in agreement, though I could tell he was puzzled, too. "It doesn't look like anything I have ever seen," he repeated. Coming from Peter, this was saying quite a lot. Few people alive had dissected more apes and humans than Peter, who came from a long line of classical comparative anatomists in Zurich. He had also seen practically the entire hominin record in his more than 50 years in the field. If he hadn't seen anything like this thumb bone, it truly was unusual.
  I went back to the Command Center. It was time for Lindsay and Hannah to make their first trip into the Chamber. I sent a student to find them and tell them to kit up.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A few minutes of walking brought us to the solid rock edge of a deep pit with steeply sloped walls and trees growing up from the bottom. In the far wall of the pit was a dark opening with the look of a miner's old work.
  Lee stopped at the cave entrance, pulling a flashlight from a pouch at his hip and flicking it on. He led us into the darkness. Inside, the walls opened into an enormous cavern. We studied the walls carefully, breccia deposits covering some of them. We made our way around an enormous debris pile left behind after the mining activity—huge chunks of dolomite blasted from the ceiling. Lee's path trended to the opposite side of the cavern, where a shaft of daylight came from the cave roof above. Kevin and I fanned out, studying the cave walls and beaming our flashlights into every corner.
  I took the rock from his outstretched hands, carefully turning it over to inspect it. Two teeth caught my eye, each the size of a nickel. The bone of the jaw that contained them was light cream in color, strong and robustly built, perfectly in proportion for the large teeth. I glanced up at Lee, who simply stood watching me examine the ancient hominin jaw, an amused look on his face.
  ORIGINAL ART BY JOHN Hawks. Cover, Robert Clark; Jacket Flap, Brett Eloff, Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand; Gallery 1: , Brent Stirton/Getty Images Reportage; , Courtesy of Lee Berger; , Courtesy of Lee Berger; , Brent Stirton/Getty Images Reportage; , Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand; , Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand; , Brent Stirton, Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand; , Brent Eloff, Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand; , Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand; , Ismael MonteroVerdu, Courtesy of the ESRF and the University of the Witwatersrand; , Ismael MonteroVerdu, Courtesy of the ESRF and the University of the Witwatersrand; , Brett Eloff, Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand; , John Gurche/National Geographic Creative; , Brett Eloff, Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand; , Brett Eloff, Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand; , John Gurche/National Geographic Creative; , John Gurche; Gallery 2: , Courtesy of John Hawks; , Ashley Kruger; , Herman Verwey/Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images; , Robert Clark; , Robert Clark; , Robert Clark; , Elliot Ross; , Garrreth Bird; , Rachelle Keeling; , Courtesy of John Hawks; , Robert Clark; , Peter Schmid; , Courtesy of John Hawks; , Courtesy of John Hawks; , Robert Clark; , John Gurche; , Courtesy of John Hawks; , Jon Foster/National Geographic Creative.