I wish this article was several times longer than it actually is.
Although previous research has shown that groups with smarter leaders perform better by objective measures, some studies have hinted that followers might subjectively view leaders with stratospheric intellect as less effective. Decades ago Dean Simonton, a psychologist the University of California, Davis, proposed that brilliant leaders’ words may simply go over people’s heads, their solutions could be more complicated to implement and followers might find it harder to relate to them.
Well if you're not communicating in a way people can understand, you're not actually that bright. But more on that in a bit.
IQ positively correlated with ratings of leader effectiveness, strategy formation, vision and several other characteristics—up to a point. The ratings peaked at an IQ of around 120, which is higher than roughly 80 percent of office workers. Beyond that, the ratings declined. The researchers suggest the “ideal” IQ could be higher or lower in various fields, depending on whether technical versus social skills are more valued in a given work culture.
The study’s lead author, John Antonakis, a psychologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, suggests leaders should use their intelligence to generate creative metaphors that will persuade and inspire others—the way former U.S. President Barack Obama did. “I think the only way a smart person can signal their intelligence appropriately and still connect with the people,” Antonakis says, “is to speak in charismatic ways.”
From The Idiot Brain :
I'm a neuroscientist by training, but I don't tell people this unless directly asked, because I once got the response, "Oh, think you're clever, do you ?" Do other people get this ? If you tell people you're an Olympic sprinter, does anyone ever say, "Oh, think you're fast, do you ?" This seems unlikely... Someone who is more intelligent than you presents an unknowable quantity, and as such they could behave in ways you can't predict or understand. This means the brain cannot work out whether they present a danger or not, and in this situation the old, "better safe than sorry" instinct is activated, triggering suspicion and hostility.
Which could suggest that people who are a little bit cleverer than average get away with it because they're viewed as basically normal but with an extra skill. Those who are quite a lot cleverer may be unpredictable and therefore viewed as dangerous to ordinary folk. How can you know what someone else is likely to do if they're thinking five steps ahead of you ? How can you trust they have your best intentions at heart ?
On the other hand, perhaps IQ is a better measure of analytical intelligence than emotional intelligence and/or empathy. Hence the sample may have really chosen people with strong analytic skills but less concern for their team members, making them genuinely ineffective leaders despite (say) mathematical brilliance. Though it's a vastly overblown stereotype, there certainly do exist people with genius skills in one narrow area who are lousy at almost everything else.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-dislike-really-smart-leaders
Wednesday 31 January 2018
Making journalism semi-automatic
Squirrelled away at the Press Association's (PA) headquarters in London is a small team of journalists and software engineers.They're working on a computer system that can do the work of multiple human beings, picking out interesting local data trends - everything from crime statistics to how many babies are being born out of wedlock. As part of a trial, the PA has begun emailing selected machine-generated stories, no more than several paragraphs or so in length, to local newspapers that might want to use such material.
Mr Clifton points out that, at this stage, the system simply amplifies the work human journalists do, some of whom are involved in developing the system's output. The automated part is currently limited to trawling through the data, something that would take humans far longer to do.
Sometimes human journalists will rewrite or add to the algorithms' copy, but quite often, he says, it is published verbatim. Automated stories about smoking during pregnancy, recycling rates, or cancelled operations have all found their way online and in print.
The BBC does not currently publish stories that have been generated by algorithms, says Robert McKenzie, editor of the corporation's News Labs research team. But News Labs has worked on tools to automate other parts of journalists' jobs, he says, including "the transcription of interviews and identification of unusual trends in public data".
While AI is undoubtedly going to become more present in newsrooms, Joshua Benton at Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab doesn't think it yet poses a serious threats to jobs. There are far greater pressures, such as falling advertising revenues, he believes. And he also says the really difficult and most highly scrutinised part of what professional journalists do - carefully weighing information and presenting balanced, contextualised stories - will be very hard for machines to master.
"Good journalism is not just a matter of inputs and outputs, there is a craft that, however imperfect, has evolved over decades," he explains. "I'm not saying that machines will never get there, but I think they're still a pretty long way away."
The problem is that bad journalism is easy to automate, and bad journalism tends to be profitable.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42858174
Mr Clifton points out that, at this stage, the system simply amplifies the work human journalists do, some of whom are involved in developing the system's output. The automated part is currently limited to trawling through the data, something that would take humans far longer to do.
Sometimes human journalists will rewrite or add to the algorithms' copy, but quite often, he says, it is published verbatim. Automated stories about smoking during pregnancy, recycling rates, or cancelled operations have all found their way online and in print.
The BBC does not currently publish stories that have been generated by algorithms, says Robert McKenzie, editor of the corporation's News Labs research team. But News Labs has worked on tools to automate other parts of journalists' jobs, he says, including "the transcription of interviews and identification of unusual trends in public data".
While AI is undoubtedly going to become more present in newsrooms, Joshua Benton at Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab doesn't think it yet poses a serious threats to jobs. There are far greater pressures, such as falling advertising revenues, he believes. And he also says the really difficult and most highly scrutinised part of what professional journalists do - carefully weighing information and presenting balanced, contextualised stories - will be very hard for machines to master.
"Good journalism is not just a matter of inputs and outputs, there is a craft that, however imperfect, has evolved over decades," he explains. "I'm not saying that machines will never get there, but I think they're still a pretty long way away."
The problem is that bad journalism is easy to automate, and bad journalism tends to be profitable.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42858174
Farming rhinos to save them from extinction
I'd say that if a species is endangered, do whatever it takes to bring its population back to a healthy level. Then you can start trying to tackle the root causes of its demise (in this case the belief that keratin has magical powers). There's no point harping on about the commodification of wildlife if the species you claim to cherish goes extinct when you could have prevented it. Save the species first, tackle the social issues later.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-42863621/could-farming-rhinos-save-them-from-extinction
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-42863621/could-farming-rhinos-save-them-from-extinction
Naked mole rats do not age before they die
This is much better than the clickbaity versions calling them immortal.
Naked mole rats are very nearly hairless. They evolved that way by living in a harsh underground environment. They are also almost ectothermic (cold blooded). And now, it seems they do not age—at least in the traditional sense. Reports of long-lived mole rats prompted the team at Calico to take a closer look—they have a specimen in their lab that has lived to be 35 years old. Most "normal" rats, in comparison, live to be just six years old, and they age as they do so.
Naked mole rats also have some other interesting biological features—they very rarely develop cancer, they experience very little pain and they have been found able to survive without oxygen for up to 18 minutes by going into a plant-like vegetative state. Also, they never reach menopause, and can have offspring right up until their death—and their hearts and bones never show signs of aging. But it was their longevity that was the focus of this new effort.
The team collected what they describe as 3,000 points of data regarding the lifespan of the naked mole rat, and found that many had lived for 30 years. But perhaps more surprisingly, they found that the chance of dying for the mole rats did not increase as they aged... This, the researchers claim, suggests that mole rats do not age—at least in the conventional sense. They do eventually die, after all.
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-naked-mole-rat-defy-gompertz.html
Naked mole rats are very nearly hairless. They evolved that way by living in a harsh underground environment. They are also almost ectothermic (cold blooded). And now, it seems they do not age—at least in the traditional sense. Reports of long-lived mole rats prompted the team at Calico to take a closer look—they have a specimen in their lab that has lived to be 35 years old. Most "normal" rats, in comparison, live to be just six years old, and they age as they do so.
Naked mole rats also have some other interesting biological features—they very rarely develop cancer, they experience very little pain and they have been found able to survive without oxygen for up to 18 minutes by going into a plant-like vegetative state. Also, they never reach menopause, and can have offspring right up until their death—and their hearts and bones never show signs of aging. But it was their longevity that was the focus of this new effort.
The team collected what they describe as 3,000 points of data regarding the lifespan of the naked mole rat, and found that many had lived for 30 years. But perhaps more surprisingly, they found that the chance of dying for the mole rats did not increase as they aged... This, the researchers claim, suggests that mole rats do not age—at least in the conventional sense. They do eventually die, after all.
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-naked-mole-rat-defy-gompertz.html
Tuesday 30 January 2018
An example of Dunning-Kruger in action
Oh FFS.
Though of course, there is as yet no data (and probably won't be for some time) as to whether the overall effect is positive or negative. Users complaining are easy to spot; users accepting the information are not.
As the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference reaches a fever pitch, Facebook rolled out a new News Feed alert Monday night. The bulletin told users who followed pages created by Russian trolls that those pages have been removed. And some of the affected users did not like this.
A brief search revealed that numerous people believe that this is an act of censorship by Facebook. Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what’s “true, fake, or otherwise,” a challenge that’s bound to be a slippery slope in this era of algorithm-based confirmation bias.
https://gizmodo.com/facebook-users-cry-censorship-after-being-told-which-ru-1822552451
Though of course, there is as yet no data (and probably won't be for some time) as to whether the overall effect is positive or negative. Users complaining are easy to spot; users accepting the information are not.
As the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference reaches a fever pitch, Facebook rolled out a new News Feed alert Monday night. The bulletin told users who followed pages created by Russian trolls that those pages have been removed. And some of the affected users did not like this.
A brief search revealed that numerous people believe that this is an act of censorship by Facebook. Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what’s “true, fake, or otherwise,” a challenge that’s bound to be a slippery slope in this era of algorithm-based confirmation bias.
https://gizmodo.com/facebook-users-cry-censorship-after-being-told-which-ru-1822552451
Saving whales with a breathalyser
The catch techniques of Basque fishermen in the 16th and 17th centuries were tragically effective. "A very vicious type of whaling was enacted on them - what was termed 'bay whaling'. Right whales had very high fidelity to certain areas, to certain bays, and they would return every three years to produce young. The whalers would just sit in the bay and knock them out when they returned. And when no more came back, the whalers simply moved on to the next bay."
The northern species are in deep, deep trouble still. Individuals can be counted in just the hundreds, and ship strikes are killing the animals at an unsustainable rate. Fortunately, the southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) is estimated to be doing much better with its various populations adding up to more than 7,000.
"South Georgia was once the epicentre of commercial whaling," says Dr Jackson. "When you consider the havoc that place created - they killed more than 176,000 whales within a day's sail - it's amazing no-one's gone back since to do a proper assessment of how whales are doing now."
The scientists will be using acoustics to find the animals, and then photographing their lumps and bumps. The pattern of hard skin patches, or callosities, on the head of a right whale is a unique identifier. If possible, the team will also try to tag some animals with satellite trackers, and take skin samples to do DNA analyses. The animals' genetics hold clues about population history and the relationships between different groupings.
But surely the best bit :
One innovation that has seen increasing use in recent years is the "whale breathalyser". This involves flying a drone over the blowhole and catching a sample on a petri dish of whatever is vented by the animal. It is a way of determining a whale's microbiome - the family of bacteria, fungi and viruses held in the respiratory system. You can tell a lot about the health and condition of humans just from their breath. Likewise with whales.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42708207
The northern species are in deep, deep trouble still. Individuals can be counted in just the hundreds, and ship strikes are killing the animals at an unsustainable rate. Fortunately, the southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) is estimated to be doing much better with its various populations adding up to more than 7,000.
"South Georgia was once the epicentre of commercial whaling," says Dr Jackson. "When you consider the havoc that place created - they killed more than 176,000 whales within a day's sail - it's amazing no-one's gone back since to do a proper assessment of how whales are doing now."
The scientists will be using acoustics to find the animals, and then photographing their lumps and bumps. The pattern of hard skin patches, or callosities, on the head of a right whale is a unique identifier. If possible, the team will also try to tag some animals with satellite trackers, and take skin samples to do DNA analyses. The animals' genetics hold clues about population history and the relationships between different groupings.
But surely the best bit :
One innovation that has seen increasing use in recent years is the "whale breathalyser". This involves flying a drone over the blowhole and catching a sample on a petri dish of whatever is vented by the animal. It is a way of determining a whale's microbiome - the family of bacteria, fungi and viruses held in the respiratory system. You can tell a lot about the health and condition of humans just from their breath. Likewise with whales.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42708207
Monday 29 January 2018
DNA sequencing in your hand
Scientists have used a device that fits in the palm of the hand to sequence the human genome. They say the feat, detailed in the journal Nature Biotechnology, opens up exciting possibilities for using genetics in routine medicine.
It is a far cry from the effort to sequence the first human genome which started in 1990. The Human Genome Project took 13 years, laboratories around the world and hundreds of millions of dollars. Since then there has been a revolution in cracking the code of life.
Prof Nicholas Loman, one of the researchers and from the University of Birmingham, UK, told the BBC: "We've gone from a situation where you can only do genome sequencing for a huge amount of money in well equipped labs to one where we can have genome sequencing literally in your pocket just like a mobile phone That gives us a really exciting opportunity to start having genome sequencing as a routine tool, perhaps something people can do in their own home.".
But while the cost of the sequencing is tumbling, there remains a big barrier - being able to rapidly read the genetic code is not the same as understanding what it says.
Dr Sobia Raza, the head of science at the PHG Foundation genomics think tank, told the BBC: "Our ability to sequence whole genomes quickly and cheaply continues to improve. But short-term patient benefits also depend on how well and how fast we can analyse and make sense of the genomic data, and that is still quite a challenge."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42838821
It is a far cry from the effort to sequence the first human genome which started in 1990. The Human Genome Project took 13 years, laboratories around the world and hundreds of millions of dollars. Since then there has been a revolution in cracking the code of life.
Prof Nicholas Loman, one of the researchers and from the University of Birmingham, UK, told the BBC: "We've gone from a situation where you can only do genome sequencing for a huge amount of money in well equipped labs to one where we can have genome sequencing literally in your pocket just like a mobile phone That gives us a really exciting opportunity to start having genome sequencing as a routine tool, perhaps something people can do in their own home.".
But while the cost of the sequencing is tumbling, there remains a big barrier - being able to rapidly read the genetic code is not the same as understanding what it says.
Dr Sobia Raza, the head of science at the PHG Foundation genomics think tank, told the BBC: "Our ability to sequence whole genomes quickly and cheaply continues to improve. But short-term patient benefits also depend on how well and how fast we can analyse and make sense of the genomic data, and that is still quite a challenge."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42838821
"Takes one to know one !", screams Kremlin
Because the world desperately needs more bullshit.
An expected US report that could sanction Kremlin-linked oligarchs is an attempt to influence Russia's March presidential election, Moscow has said. The US treasury report is expected to detail the closeness of senior Russian political figures and oligarchs to President Vladimir Putin, who is standing for re-election.
US officials accuse Russia of meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections. Kremlin representatives have repeatedly denied the allegations. Mr Putin's spokesman said the forthcoming report would be analysed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42858750
An expected US report that could sanction Kremlin-linked oligarchs is an attempt to influence Russia's March presidential election, Moscow has said. The US treasury report is expected to detail the closeness of senior Russian political figures and oligarchs to President Vladimir Putin, who is standing for re-election.
US officials accuse Russia of meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections. Kremlin representatives have repeatedly denied the allegations. Mr Putin's spokesman said the forthcoming report would be analysed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42858750
SpaceX are giving something back to the fans
For its debut flight, the Falcon Heavy is carrying Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into space. Musk has said the launch, if successful, will deliver the Roadster into a heliocentric orbit that will eventually send the midnight-cherry-red electric car by Mars.
I personally am looking forward to recreating this scene from Star Trek Voyager in real life.
"There's a lot that could go wrong there," Musk said last year. "I encourage people to come down to the Cape to see the first Falcon Heavy mission; it's guaranteed to be exciting."
There was an interesting period when the first stage landings weren't yet working in which the satellites were launched successfully and we still got to see a rocket explode. Maybe that phase will return with the early Falcon Heavies...
https://www.space.com/g00/39519-spacex-first-falcon-heavy-rocket-launch-date.html?i10c.encReferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8%3D&i10c.ua=1
I personally am looking forward to recreating this scene from Star Trek Voyager in real life.
"There's a lot that could go wrong there," Musk said last year. "I encourage people to come down to the Cape to see the first Falcon Heavy mission; it's guaranteed to be exciting."
There was an interesting period when the first stage landings weren't yet working in which the satellites were launched successfully and we still got to see a rocket explode. Maybe that phase will return with the early Falcon Heavies...
https://www.space.com/g00/39519-spacex-first-falcon-heavy-rocket-launch-date.html?i10c.encReferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8%3D&i10c.ua=1
The surprisingly normal life of a Nazi
This week I accompanied British author Derek Niemann to a meeting in London, where he talked to a Jewish audience about his grandfather, an SS officer in the concentration camps. It came as the most profound shock to Derek, who writes gentle books about nature, to discover a family secret which had been hidden from him for more than 50 years.
Years of research, delving through archives, visits to Germany and difficult conversations with family members, produced the complex story of an ordinary man, captured vividly in Derek's book A Nazi in the Family. A pen-pusher, is how Derek's father Rudi described him - but it turned out that he rose to the equivalent rank of an SS captain and organised slave labour in the concentration camps on a colossal scale.
Derek and Sarah were aided in their quest by one of Karl's hobbies - he was a keen photographer. They discovered a treasure trove of about 500 old negatives which had been left in the house in Berlin which he abandoned in haste towards the end of the war.
Incredibly the negatives had been saved by the Jewish family who were given the house in war reparations. They reveal the intimate minutiae of a loving SS family, and a man who led a contradictory double life. He travelled to all the concentration camps, doing the financial books and running an SS commercial enterprise producing furniture and war supplies - all made by slave labour. But in the evening he came home, tended the garden and helped raise four children. His oldest son, Dieter, was killed in the closing days of the war, fighting with the Panzer tank division.
Derek was asked by a member of the audience if the denazification process after the end of the war was effective? Derek told them he didn't think it had any effect at all.
"My grandfather, in common with other SS officers, went through a very intensive brainwashing exercise. If you look at about 300 Nazi criminals who were in Landsberg Prison awaiting the death sentence, not one of them - not one - showed contrition for what they had done. They would very happily find religion. They would happily find priests who would absolve them of their sins, but they would not show any contrition whatsoever. They were so brainwashed."
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-42833644
Years of research, delving through archives, visits to Germany and difficult conversations with family members, produced the complex story of an ordinary man, captured vividly in Derek's book A Nazi in the Family. A pen-pusher, is how Derek's father Rudi described him - but it turned out that he rose to the equivalent rank of an SS captain and organised slave labour in the concentration camps on a colossal scale.
Derek and Sarah were aided in their quest by one of Karl's hobbies - he was a keen photographer. They discovered a treasure trove of about 500 old negatives which had been left in the house in Berlin which he abandoned in haste towards the end of the war.
Incredibly the negatives had been saved by the Jewish family who were given the house in war reparations. They reveal the intimate minutiae of a loving SS family, and a man who led a contradictory double life. He travelled to all the concentration camps, doing the financial books and running an SS commercial enterprise producing furniture and war supplies - all made by slave labour. But in the evening he came home, tended the garden and helped raise four children. His oldest son, Dieter, was killed in the closing days of the war, fighting with the Panzer tank division.
Derek was asked by a member of the audience if the denazification process after the end of the war was effective? Derek told them he didn't think it had any effect at all.
"My grandfather, in common with other SS officers, went through a very intensive brainwashing exercise. If you look at about 300 Nazi criminals who were in Landsberg Prison awaiting the death sentence, not one of them - not one - showed contrition for what they had done. They would very happily find religion. They would happily find priests who would absolve them of their sins, but they would not show any contrition whatsoever. They were so brainwashed."
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-42833644
Communication skills do not have a casual connection to scientific ability
Now, I am all for outreach, but this is singularly dreadful. Or rather, it feels like something that should be sent to a grant agency, not publically disseminated on arXiv, because that's just silly.
A better communicator is always a better scientist
That is the ludicrous claim of the title which is nowhere justified in the text.
Engaging in science communication improves the own understanding of the communicator. Indeed, concepts or ideas that look simple when used on a daily basis may reveal unexpected complexity if discussed with a non-expert audience. The contextualization of his/her own research also allows a better understanding of the implications and increases the self confidence. The visibility of the communicator among its community also benefits from its engagement in science communication. Finally, this engagement further helps to develop communication skills that will be useful to express ideas in any other professional situation.
Fair enough.
It is often thought that communication is at the expense of quality research.
Eh ? Who thinks that ? I've known people who fit into all parts of the science-communication quality map.
90degree South was a set of activities organized in the framework of the recent trip of G. de Wasseige, PhD student at the Interuniversity Institute for High Energies (ULB-VUB), to the South Pole. As a member of the IceCube collaboration, she has been selected to visit the IceCube neutrino telescope buried in the South Pole ice.
What she should therefore be doing is writing a bloody blog, not being third author on a "paper" about it.
This experiment contest was dedicated to primary and high school students. Open to science and non-science oriented students, the challenge was to design an experiment answering the question "Belgium-South Pole: what is the difference?". An international jury selected the 3 experiments that have been carried out at the South Pole.
That is not an experiment. That is an outreach activity. Sending people along to do outreach for the sake of it is fine, but that's not something that you write a paper about !
https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08874
A better communicator is always a better scientist
That is the ludicrous claim of the title which is nowhere justified in the text.
Engaging in science communication improves the own understanding of the communicator. Indeed, concepts or ideas that look simple when used on a daily basis may reveal unexpected complexity if discussed with a non-expert audience. The contextualization of his/her own research also allows a better understanding of the implications and increases the self confidence. The visibility of the communicator among its community also benefits from its engagement in science communication. Finally, this engagement further helps to develop communication skills that will be useful to express ideas in any other professional situation.
Fair enough.
It is often thought that communication is at the expense of quality research.
Eh ? Who thinks that ? I've known people who fit into all parts of the science-communication quality map.
90degree South was a set of activities organized in the framework of the recent trip of G. de Wasseige, PhD student at the Interuniversity Institute for High Energies (ULB-VUB), to the South Pole. As a member of the IceCube collaboration, she has been selected to visit the IceCube neutrino telescope buried in the South Pole ice.
What she should therefore be doing is writing a bloody blog, not being third author on a "paper" about it.
This experiment contest was dedicated to primary and high school students. Open to science and non-science oriented students, the challenge was to design an experiment answering the question "Belgium-South Pole: what is the difference?". An international jury selected the 3 experiments that have been carried out at the South Pole.
That is not an experiment. That is an outreach activity. Sending people along to do outreach for the sake of it is fine, but that's not something that you write a paper about !
https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08874
Fake readers for fake news
Well, I guess if you have fake news, you need fake readers to read it.
New York's chief prosecutor says the state is opening an investigation into a firm that allegedly sold millions of fake followers to social media users. "Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law," said Eric Schneiderman. The company, Devumi, stands accused of stealing real people's identities, which it denies, according to the New York Times. The paper linked the "follower factory" to a host of celebrity accounts.
On its website, Devumi offers customers the chance to order up to 250,000 Twitter followers, with prices starting at $12 (£8.50). Clients can also buy "likes" and retweets.The company sells followers on a range of other platforms, including Pinterest, LinkedIn, Soundcloud and YouTube.
The report alleges that Devumi has a stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, many of which are sold repeatedly. It alleges at least 55,000 of the accounts "use the names, profile pictures, hometowns and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42853067
New York's chief prosecutor says the state is opening an investigation into a firm that allegedly sold millions of fake followers to social media users. "Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law," said Eric Schneiderman. The company, Devumi, stands accused of stealing real people's identities, which it denies, according to the New York Times. The paper linked the "follower factory" to a host of celebrity accounts.
On its website, Devumi offers customers the chance to order up to 250,000 Twitter followers, with prices starting at $12 (£8.50). Clients can also buy "likes" and retweets.The company sells followers on a range of other platforms, including Pinterest, LinkedIn, Soundcloud and YouTube.
The report alleges that Devumi has a stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, many of which are sold repeatedly. It alleges at least 55,000 of the accounts "use the names, profile pictures, hometowns and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42853067
The ironic idiocy of militant vegans
[I don't agree with veganism, but I want to make it clear that it's only a particular brand of militant vegans that I would label as idiotic.
"When you're being called murderers and rapists, that is overstepping the mark, for fairly obvious reasons," says Alison Waugh, a trainee farmer in Northumberland. She has received death threats due to her work and told the Victoria Derbyshire programme other farmers are feeling threatened. "Which is quite ironic from people that want peace for animals, but then they tell you, 'I hope you and your family go die in a hole for what you do,'" she says.
Lead activist and Instagram star Joey Carbstron : "Slaughterhouse workers are a product of a sick society who want to consume animal flesh."
That's too idiotic to dignify with a response.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42833132
"When you're being called murderers and rapists, that is overstepping the mark, for fairly obvious reasons," says Alison Waugh, a trainee farmer in Northumberland. She has received death threats due to her work and told the Victoria Derbyshire programme other farmers are feeling threatened. "Which is quite ironic from people that want peace for animals, but then they tell you, 'I hope you and your family go die in a hole for what you do,'" she says.
Lead activist and Instagram star Joey Carbstron : "Slaughterhouse workers are a product of a sick society who want to consume animal flesh."
That's too idiotic to dignify with a response.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42833132
Legislation is hard, study finds
Quelle surprise.
Proposed legislation bringing existing EU law into UK law is "fundamentally flawed" and needs to be reworked, a Lords committee has said. It will be debated by peers for the first time on Tuesday.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019, and the EU (Withdrawal) Bill is a key part of the government's Brexit strategy. It aims to end the supremacy of EU law, which would be copied into UK law in order to ensure a smooth transition on Brexit day.
The Lords Constitution Committee said the aim of transposing EU law into UK law in time for Brexit was complicated by its complexity and because "in many areas the final shape of that law will depend on the outcome of the UK's negotiations with the EU". It said a new "retained EU law" category would create uncertainty and ambiguity, and powers to allow ministers to amend regulations without full parliamentary scrutiny were "overly-broad".
And without agreement from Holyrood and Cardiff Bay on devolution issues there could be "significant constitutional repercussions", the peers warned. "The bill is therefore fundamentally flawed from a constitutional perspective in multiple ways," the report said.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42853031
Proposed legislation bringing existing EU law into UK law is "fundamentally flawed" and needs to be reworked, a Lords committee has said. It will be debated by peers for the first time on Tuesday.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019, and the EU (Withdrawal) Bill is a key part of the government's Brexit strategy. It aims to end the supremacy of EU law, which would be copied into UK law in order to ensure a smooth transition on Brexit day.
The Lords Constitution Committee said the aim of transposing EU law into UK law in time for Brexit was complicated by its complexity and because "in many areas the final shape of that law will depend on the outcome of the UK's negotiations with the EU". It said a new "retained EU law" category would create uncertainty and ambiguity, and powers to allow ministers to amend regulations without full parliamentary scrutiny were "overly-broad".
And without agreement from Holyrood and Cardiff Bay on devolution issues there could be "significant constitutional repercussions", the peers warned. "The bill is therefore fundamentally flawed from a constitutional perspective in multiple ways," the report said.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42853031
Corbyn is popular among the young, but not enough to get them to actually vote
After the surprise of the Conservatives losing their majority in the June 2017 general election, people started looking for an explanation. One theory quickly came to prominence: Jeremy Corbyn had enthused previously disengaged young voters, who turned out in droves to vote Labour.
Certainly, Mr Corbyn appears to be popular with young people - he is often pictured surrounded by young supporters and that summer's Glastonbury Festival echoed to chants of "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn". Opinion polls lent weight to the idea - one polling organisation suggested that turnout among 18 to 24-year-olds went up by as much as 16 percentage points, another suggested an increase of 12 points.
But we now know there was no surge in youth turnout. Overall turnout did go up in 2017, but only by 2.5 percentage points.
Since 1964, the gold standard measure of electoral behaviour in Britain has been the British Election Study's face-to-face survey. Newly released results using this data show that there was very little change in turnout by age group between the 2015 and 2017 elections.
Younger voters were still much less likely to vote, older voters much more so. Among the youngest voters, the margin of error means that we cannot rule out a small increase - or decrease - in 2017.
That there was no surge in youth turnout should probably not be as surprising as it is. Everything we know about turnout suggests that voting is "sticky" - most people who vote in one election will go on to vote at subsequent elections, and most people who abstain will continue to do so. We also know that older people are more likely to vote than young people - something that has always been the case in Britain and other countries.
Labour was more popular among young people than old people in 2017 and its share of the youth vote did increase. But winning the support of more of the young people who vote is not the same as a surge in youth turnout. It is also worth pointing out that in 2017 Labour's popularity increased among all ages, except for those over 70.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42747342
Certainly, Mr Corbyn appears to be popular with young people - he is often pictured surrounded by young supporters and that summer's Glastonbury Festival echoed to chants of "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn". Opinion polls lent weight to the idea - one polling organisation suggested that turnout among 18 to 24-year-olds went up by as much as 16 percentage points, another suggested an increase of 12 points.
But we now know there was no surge in youth turnout. Overall turnout did go up in 2017, but only by 2.5 percentage points.
Since 1964, the gold standard measure of electoral behaviour in Britain has been the British Election Study's face-to-face survey. Newly released results using this data show that there was very little change in turnout by age group between the 2015 and 2017 elections.
Younger voters were still much less likely to vote, older voters much more so. Among the youngest voters, the margin of error means that we cannot rule out a small increase - or decrease - in 2017.
That there was no surge in youth turnout should probably not be as surprising as it is. Everything we know about turnout suggests that voting is "sticky" - most people who vote in one election will go on to vote at subsequent elections, and most people who abstain will continue to do so. We also know that older people are more likely to vote than young people - something that has always been the case in Britain and other countries.
Labour was more popular among young people than old people in 2017 and its share of the youth vote did increase. But winning the support of more of the young people who vote is not the same as a surge in youth turnout. It is also worth pointing out that in 2017 Labour's popularity increased among all ages, except for those over 70.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42747342
Sunday 28 January 2018
Self-healing mushroom concrete
If you get a cut or break a bone, your body heals itself. This everyday miracle is what inspired [Congrui Jin] to try to find a way to make concrete self-healing. The answer she and her colleagues are working on might surprise you. They are adding fungus to concrete to enable self-repair.
It isn’t just any fungus. The conditions in concrete are very harsh, and after testing twenty different kinds, they found that one kind — trichoderma reesei — could survive inside concrete as spores. This fungus is widespread in tropical soil and doesn’t pose any threat to humans or the ecology. Mixing nutrients and spores into concrete is easy enough. When cracks form in the concrete, water and oxygen get in and the spores grow. The spores act as a catalyst for calcium carbonate crystals which fill the cracks. When the water is gone, the fungi go back to spores, ready to repair future cracking.
Via Benjamin Gustafsson.
Originally shared by HACKADAY
Fungus heals small cracks in this biologically #hacked concrete, keeping water out for a much longer lifespan.
If you get a cut or break a bone, your body heals itself. This everyday miracle is what inspired [Congrui Jin] to try to find a way to make concrete self-healing. The answer she and her colleagues are working on might surprise you. They are adding fungus…
http://hackaday.com/2018/01/28/biologic-additive-may-lead-to-self-healing-concrete/
It isn’t just any fungus. The conditions in concrete are very harsh, and after testing twenty different kinds, they found that one kind — trichoderma reesei — could survive inside concrete as spores. This fungus is widespread in tropical soil and doesn’t pose any threat to humans or the ecology. Mixing nutrients and spores into concrete is easy enough. When cracks form in the concrete, water and oxygen get in and the spores grow. The spores act as a catalyst for calcium carbonate crystals which fill the cracks. When the water is gone, the fungi go back to spores, ready to repair future cracking.
Via Benjamin Gustafsson.
Originally shared by HACKADAY
Fungus heals small cracks in this biologically #hacked concrete, keeping water out for a much longer lifespan.
If you get a cut or break a bone, your body heals itself. This everyday miracle is what inspired [Congrui Jin] to try to find a way to make concrete self-healing. The answer she and her colleagues are working on might surprise you. They are adding fungus…
http://hackaday.com/2018/01/28/biologic-additive-may-lead-to-self-healing-concrete/
A lot of knowledge...
"It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated."
Alec Bourne
[Which is the very essence of why AI is hard and wikipedia is not sentient.]
Alec Bourne
[Which is the very essence of why AI is hard and wikipedia is not sentient.]
Fire-starting raptors are a very real thing
“At or around an active fire front, birds – usually black kites, but sometimes brown falcons – will pick up a firebrand or a stick not much bigger than your finger and carry it away to an unburnt area of grass and drop it in there to start a new fire,” says Bob Gosford, an ornithologist with the Central Land Council in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, who led the documentation of witness accounts. “It’s not always successful, but sometimes it results in ignition.”
“Observers report both solo and cooperative attempts, often successful, to spread wildfires intentionally via single-occasion or repeated transport of burning sticks in talons or beaks. This behaviour, often represented in sacred ceremonies, is widely known to local people in the Northern Territory,” write the authors behind the find in the Journal of Ethnobiology.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/australian-raptors-start-fires-to-flush-out-prey
“Observers report both solo and cooperative attempts, often successful, to spread wildfires intentionally via single-occasion or repeated transport of burning sticks in talons or beaks. This behaviour, often represented in sacred ceremonies, is widely known to local people in the Northern Territory,” write the authors behind the find in the Journal of Ethnobiology.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/australian-raptors-start-fires-to-flush-out-prey
Friday 26 January 2018
The glorious madness that was the Orion bomber
Catching up on my reading : the Orion bomber section is fascinating !
Strategic Weapon Delivery AKA raining nuclear warheads onto the nation that attacks us. This would require a full blown 12-meter Orion engine, because nuclear missiles are very heavy. And because you want to carry as many as you possibly can.
The wet mass was 6,800,000 kg (15,000,000 lbs), of which 136,000 kg (300,000 lbs) was payload. Stack height with the solid rocket boosters was 88 m (290 ft) (cluster of seven 156-inch solid rockets). At an altitude of 76.2 km (250,000 ft) and a speed of 3,100 m/s (10,000 ft/sec) the 12-meter Orion engine uses its 4,300,000 N (970,000 lbf) of thrust and 3,670 seconds of Isp to get the rest of the way to its patrol orbit. At this point it would still have a delta-V reserve of 23,000 m/s (75,000 ft/sec) for further maneuvers.
These mass ratios seem very poor for standard Orions, but I suppose that's because they include the booster rockets. And heck, it's still got enough delta-V to go on a jaunt around the Solar System if the crew get bored.
The crew will number 20 or more. A semi-closed ecological system will be used to permit a six-month tour of duty, with an emergency capacity of one year. It would require about 1 megawatt of onboard power for ship systems. The interesting details about the weapons loadout are either not defined or classified. They are not in the report at any rate. Drat!
Defensive weapons include decoys and antimissile weapons. Defensive weapons are carried because bombers are the enemy's prime targets. The enemy knows that every single strategic weapon a SSSWD carries is a mushroom cloud with their name on it.
The nukes could be launched in either of two ways. [1] warheads could be mounted on missiles, launched from deep space, and guided to their targets. [2] the Orion bomber could use its 23,000 m/s of delta-V to enter a close hyperbolic flyby of Terra and release the warheads when near Terra.
The second option means the Orion bomber has to go into harms way. The up side is it can use its awesome amount of delta-V to deliver the MIRVs ballistically. And it probably can deliver the warheads to the target much quicker than any missile. One can just imagine the enemy generals freaking out at the sight of a three-hundred-ton spacegoing ICBM-farm dive-bombing you at hyperbolic speeds on a trail of freaking nuclear explosions while machine-gunning your continent with city-killer nukes.
But perhaps the most fascinating section of all is not on the performance on this doomsday weapon, but on how much effort was put into its research :
General Power was not out there alone. He had the full support of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Curtis E. LeMay. Writing in a 1962 letter to Power, he said, “I share your views regarding the potential of ORION.”[5] Nor was it just talk: both the SAC commander and the US Air Force Chief of Staff were willing to put their money where their mouth was. In 1962, funding for the SEOB and Orion propulsion development together accounted for $1.36 billion (over $10 billion in 2014 dollars), or 18 percent of the total Air Force space development budget for fiscal years 1963–1967, as requested by LeMay in his Air Force Space Program.[6]
Fascinating. Terrifying. Gloriously mad.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns2.php#orionbomb
Strategic Weapon Delivery AKA raining nuclear warheads onto the nation that attacks us. This would require a full blown 12-meter Orion engine, because nuclear missiles are very heavy. And because you want to carry as many as you possibly can.
The wet mass was 6,800,000 kg (15,000,000 lbs), of which 136,000 kg (300,000 lbs) was payload. Stack height with the solid rocket boosters was 88 m (290 ft) (cluster of seven 156-inch solid rockets). At an altitude of 76.2 km (250,000 ft) and a speed of 3,100 m/s (10,000 ft/sec) the 12-meter Orion engine uses its 4,300,000 N (970,000 lbf) of thrust and 3,670 seconds of Isp to get the rest of the way to its patrol orbit. At this point it would still have a delta-V reserve of 23,000 m/s (75,000 ft/sec) for further maneuvers.
These mass ratios seem very poor for standard Orions, but I suppose that's because they include the booster rockets. And heck, it's still got enough delta-V to go on a jaunt around the Solar System if the crew get bored.
The crew will number 20 or more. A semi-closed ecological system will be used to permit a six-month tour of duty, with an emergency capacity of one year. It would require about 1 megawatt of onboard power for ship systems. The interesting details about the weapons loadout are either not defined or classified. They are not in the report at any rate. Drat!
Defensive weapons include decoys and antimissile weapons. Defensive weapons are carried because bombers are the enemy's prime targets. The enemy knows that every single strategic weapon a SSSWD carries is a mushroom cloud with their name on it.
The nukes could be launched in either of two ways. [1] warheads could be mounted on missiles, launched from deep space, and guided to their targets. [2] the Orion bomber could use its 23,000 m/s of delta-V to enter a close hyperbolic flyby of Terra and release the warheads when near Terra.
The second option means the Orion bomber has to go into harms way. The up side is it can use its awesome amount of delta-V to deliver the MIRVs ballistically. And it probably can deliver the warheads to the target much quicker than any missile. One can just imagine the enemy generals freaking out at the sight of a three-hundred-ton spacegoing ICBM-farm dive-bombing you at hyperbolic speeds on a trail of freaking nuclear explosions while machine-gunning your continent with city-killer nukes.
But perhaps the most fascinating section of all is not on the performance on this doomsday weapon, but on how much effort was put into its research :
General Power was not out there alone. He had the full support of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Curtis E. LeMay. Writing in a 1962 letter to Power, he said, “I share your views regarding the potential of ORION.”[5] Nor was it just talk: both the SAC commander and the US Air Force Chief of Staff were willing to put their money where their mouth was. In 1962, funding for the SEOB and Orion propulsion development together accounted for $1.36 billion (over $10 billion in 2014 dollars), or 18 percent of the total Air Force space development budget for fiscal years 1963–1967, as requested by LeMay in his Air Force Space Program.[6]
Fascinating. Terrifying. Gloriously mad.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns2.php#orionbomb
Motorbike-riding robots because why not ?
That's pretty much the coolest thing I've seen all week.
When this robot – Motobot – stops driving, you feel like it could climb off the bike and hunt you down as well – but it can’t, yet. Motobot 2.0 is a fully autonomous motorcycle-riding robot that was specially designed to drive around a racetrack at high speed on a Yamaha YZF-R1M, the same kind of motorbike that racing legend Valentino Rossi rides. Human operators can specify how aggressively Motobot should race on a scale of zero to 100% and it does the rest. This process is roughly parallel to how a racing team might discuss strategy with a human rider. The bike itself looks like the classic modern aerodynamic racing bike that overtakes you on the motorway.
In September, the team that developed Motobot 2.0 achieved one of its goals when the robot successfully hit speeds exceeding 200km/h (124 mph) on the race track – 50 km/h faster than its predecessor Motobot 1.0. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, this still fell short of the lap time of Valentino Rossi – which they were trying to beat – by about 30 seconds.
Hiroshi Saijou thinks the “cost to learn” is the reason why we didn’t see any depressing headlines about AI beating another human world champion. “The most significant one is the cost – not only money but time and resources - to learn,” he says. “AI for a board game, such as AlphaGo, can learn how to play and how to win pretty quickly since there is no risk of it getting damaged. I believe that there were millions of failures before it eventually won over a human champion. For Motobot, the learning cost is way more expensive and repairs take a long time. So, we needed to take extraordinary care each time we did a trial.”
The future of Motobot, it seems, might be on two legs. Motobot is different from most humanoid robots because it doesn’t walk… yet. But future versions might be able to walk up to the bike and get on it.
It will also wear a leather jacket and sunglasses and come out with memorable one-liners...
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180126-meet-the-motorbike-racing-robot
When this robot – Motobot – stops driving, you feel like it could climb off the bike and hunt you down as well – but it can’t, yet. Motobot 2.0 is a fully autonomous motorcycle-riding robot that was specially designed to drive around a racetrack at high speed on a Yamaha YZF-R1M, the same kind of motorbike that racing legend Valentino Rossi rides. Human operators can specify how aggressively Motobot should race on a scale of zero to 100% and it does the rest. This process is roughly parallel to how a racing team might discuss strategy with a human rider. The bike itself looks like the classic modern aerodynamic racing bike that overtakes you on the motorway.
In September, the team that developed Motobot 2.0 achieved one of its goals when the robot successfully hit speeds exceeding 200km/h (124 mph) on the race track – 50 km/h faster than its predecessor Motobot 1.0. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, this still fell short of the lap time of Valentino Rossi – which they were trying to beat – by about 30 seconds.
Hiroshi Saijou thinks the “cost to learn” is the reason why we didn’t see any depressing headlines about AI beating another human world champion. “The most significant one is the cost – not only money but time and resources - to learn,” he says. “AI for a board game, such as AlphaGo, can learn how to play and how to win pretty quickly since there is no risk of it getting damaged. I believe that there were millions of failures before it eventually won over a human champion. For Motobot, the learning cost is way more expensive and repairs take a long time. So, we needed to take extraordinary care each time we did a trial.”
The future of Motobot, it seems, might be on two legs. Motobot is different from most humanoid robots because it doesn’t walk… yet. But future versions might be able to walk up to the bike and get on it.
It will also wear a leather jacket and sunglasses and come out with memorable one-liners...
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180126-meet-the-motorbike-racing-robot
Thursday 25 January 2018
Teeny-tiny holograms in mid air
Scientists have figured out how to manipulate nearly unseen specks in the air and use them to create 3-D images that are more realistic and clearer than holograms, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Nature . The study's lead author, Daniel Smalley, said the new technology is "printing something in space, just erasing it very quickly."
The tiny specks are controlled with laser light, like the fictional tractor beam from "Star Trek," said Smalley, an electrical engineering professor at Brigham Young University. Yet it was a different science fiction movie that gave him the idea: The scene in the movie "Iron Man" when the Tony Stark character dons a holographic glove. That couldn't happen in real life because Stark's arm would disrupt the image.
OK, Phys.org, PLEASE stop automatically including, "Read more at..." in the clipboard, it's frickin' annoying.
http://ow.ly/FfgY50geTNS
The tiny specks are controlled with laser light, like the fictional tractor beam from "Star Trek," said Smalley, an electrical engineering professor at Brigham Young University. Yet it was a different science fiction movie that gave him the idea: The scene in the movie "Iron Man" when the Tony Stark character dons a holographic glove. That couldn't happen in real life because Stark's arm would disrupt the image.
OK, Phys.org, PLEASE stop automatically including, "Read more at..." in the clipboard, it's frickin' annoying.
http://ow.ly/FfgY50geTNS
Trump hates sharks so much that people have donated money to save them
HAH !
Donald Drumpf's alleged hatred of sharks has inspired people to financially support international shark charities. The US president's dislike for the marine animal was revealed last week in an In Touch Weekly interview with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. He reportedly said that he would never give money to shark charities, adding: "I hope all sharks die." Shark conservation groups have since noted an uptick in donations, one with the message: "Because Drumpf."
According to Newsweek, someone adopted a 13-foot female white shark over the weekend last spotted off the coast of Mexico in the name of Donald J Drumpf. Even UK shark conservation groups like the Shark Trust, based in Plymouth, spotted a "noticeable" boost to their coffers. A spokesperson told the BBC that "passionate messages" came with the donations, but were not fit for publication.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42809865
Donald Drumpf's alleged hatred of sharks has inspired people to financially support international shark charities. The US president's dislike for the marine animal was revealed last week in an In Touch Weekly interview with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. He reportedly said that he would never give money to shark charities, adding: "I hope all sharks die." Shark conservation groups have since noted an uptick in donations, one with the message: "Because Drumpf."
According to Newsweek, someone adopted a 13-foot female white shark over the weekend last spotted off the coast of Mexico in the name of Donald J Drumpf. Even UK shark conservation groups like the Shark Trust, based in Plymouth, spotted a "noticeable" boost to their coffers. A spokesperson told the BBC that "passionate messages" came with the donations, but were not fit for publication.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42809865
Using photographs to record sound
OK, that's amazing.
By seeing how border pixels on an object fluctuated in color, the group’s algorithm can measure and calculate the object's minuscule movements (and even magnify a wine glass’s oscillations when a tone is played or visually reveal a heartbeat under the skin).
According to Davis, previous ways to recover sound remotely require more than just a video camera. By shining a laser on a vibrating object and measuring how the light scatters or how its phase changes, other researchers have been able to pull out detailed data about the sound.
The team’s processing algorithm lets them take a new tack: a completely passive recovery of the sound. By recording objects’ movements on high-frame-rate video, in ambient lighting—no laser needed—they are able to translate the vibrations caused by speech and music back to sound waves, with only a little bit of noise.
Low frame-rate footage from an ordinary digital camera posed a particular challenge because less signal could get through. But because of the way a “rolling-shutter” camera processes inputs, it could be made to exceed its frame rate and gather enough details to recover comprehensible sounds.
The link includes examples. The standard frame rate is not great, but still, one has to wonder how much can be recovered from existing videos... especially all those politicians having "private" conversations... probably not that much, but still. And the medical uses - having a high speed camera to work out what's happening internally with less need for invasive procedures, maybe ?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/your-candy-wrappers-are-listening
By seeing how border pixels on an object fluctuated in color, the group’s algorithm can measure and calculate the object's minuscule movements (and even magnify a wine glass’s oscillations when a tone is played or visually reveal a heartbeat under the skin).
According to Davis, previous ways to recover sound remotely require more than just a video camera. By shining a laser on a vibrating object and measuring how the light scatters or how its phase changes, other researchers have been able to pull out detailed data about the sound.
The team’s processing algorithm lets them take a new tack: a completely passive recovery of the sound. By recording objects’ movements on high-frame-rate video, in ambient lighting—no laser needed—they are able to translate the vibrations caused by speech and music back to sound waves, with only a little bit of noise.
Low frame-rate footage from an ordinary digital camera posed a particular challenge because less signal could get through. But because of the way a “rolling-shutter” camera processes inputs, it could be made to exceed its frame rate and gather enough details to recover comprehensible sounds.
The link includes examples. The standard frame rate is not great, but still, one has to wonder how much can be recovered from existing videos... especially all those politicians having "private" conversations... probably not that much, but still. And the medical uses - having a high speed camera to work out what's happening internally with less need for invasive procedures, maybe ?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/your-candy-wrappers-are-listening
Waxworms can eat plastic
Presumably dumping millions of wax worms in landfill sites is a bad idea, but perhaps some synthetic version of their plastic-digesting enzyme ?
Originally shared by Future Earth
These worms may solve the plastic waste problem!
Paolo Bombelli and Chris Howe from the University of Cambridge, and Federica Bertocchini from CSIC discovered that wax worms (Galleria mellonella) are capable of degrading plastic.
See more here >> https://youtu.be/WvokNSLDs14
Originally shared by Future Earth
These worms may solve the plastic waste problem!
Paolo Bombelli and Chris Howe from the University of Cambridge, and Federica Bertocchini from CSIC discovered that wax worms (Galleria mellonella) are capable of degrading plastic.
See more here >> https://youtu.be/WvokNSLDs14
Wednesday 24 January 2018
When the backfire effect does and doesn't happen
There does not seem to be an easy way for the truth to rule supreme. Frustratingly for scientists, presenting accurate facts which “disprove” a conspiracy theory does not usually help. In fact, it can even make a false belief stronger. Lewandowsky found that the stronger a person believes in a conspiracy, the less likely they are to trust scientific facts. It is more likely they will think the person attempting to reason with them is in on it. “What that means is that any evidence against a conspiracy theory is reinterpreted as evidence in favour of it.” The rejection of science is, in part, fuelled by conspiracy theorists, he further found.
I hope someone will eventually follow up on that interesting study some months back which found no evidence for the backfire effect. Anecdotally, it certainly does exist, yet the study seemed credible and well done.
This highlights the extent to which we live in a polarised world. One study looking at how conspiracy theories spread online, revealed that there is no overlap between those who share scientific news, and those who share conspiracies or fake news.
We now know that a person’s ideology is often related to their beliefs. The strongest predictor of climate denial, for instance, is a free-market ideology, Lewandowsky discovered. Through the work of Douglas and others, we now also know many of the traits that make people more susceptible to believing something without evidence. We need to realise that we are “drawn to patterns,” even when there are none, says Grimes. “The reality is, we live in a stochastic Universe. It’s tempting to draw a narrative, but there’s no narrative, there are no waves, we are joining dots in the sand,” says Grimes.
Although technology has created the many echo chambers and filter bubbles we see today, it could also help overcome them. One pioneering experiment in Norway introduced a quiz to make sure the person understood what they had read before they were able to comment on an article. This might help people “calm down” before distributing random noise, says Lewandowsky, but at the same time it is not censoring anyone from having a voice.
Still sorta think this should be applied to voting in some way.
Another strategy that could help is educating people to better understand trusted sources, as well as holding public figures to account when they spread misinformation. Several fact-checking websites and journalists already attempt to do this, but it doesn’t always work. Grimes has found that people set in their beliefs are unlikely to change their opinions, but those who “aren’t fully committed” can be swayed when presented with evidence. That, he hopes, means we can overturn many conspiracies if people are provided with compelling, fact-based evidence.
If we go on that very nice quote from a political article a few days ago, "it's very hard to reason people out of a position they haven't been reasoned in to", then perhaps those who are persuadable by evidence are simply those who are largely victims of misinformation. Those who are not persuadable are those with more serious neurological or psychological problems : poor pattern recognition, a deep belief in control figures, etc.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180124-the-enduring-appeal-of-conspiracy-theories
I hope someone will eventually follow up on that interesting study some months back which found no evidence for the backfire effect. Anecdotally, it certainly does exist, yet the study seemed credible and well done.
This highlights the extent to which we live in a polarised world. One study looking at how conspiracy theories spread online, revealed that there is no overlap between those who share scientific news, and those who share conspiracies or fake news.
We now know that a person’s ideology is often related to their beliefs. The strongest predictor of climate denial, for instance, is a free-market ideology, Lewandowsky discovered. Through the work of Douglas and others, we now also know many of the traits that make people more susceptible to believing something without evidence. We need to realise that we are “drawn to patterns,” even when there are none, says Grimes. “The reality is, we live in a stochastic Universe. It’s tempting to draw a narrative, but there’s no narrative, there are no waves, we are joining dots in the sand,” says Grimes.
Although technology has created the many echo chambers and filter bubbles we see today, it could also help overcome them. One pioneering experiment in Norway introduced a quiz to make sure the person understood what they had read before they were able to comment on an article. This might help people “calm down” before distributing random noise, says Lewandowsky, but at the same time it is not censoring anyone from having a voice.
Still sorta think this should be applied to voting in some way.
Another strategy that could help is educating people to better understand trusted sources, as well as holding public figures to account when they spread misinformation. Several fact-checking websites and journalists already attempt to do this, but it doesn’t always work. Grimes has found that people set in their beliefs are unlikely to change their opinions, but those who “aren’t fully committed” can be swayed when presented with evidence. That, he hopes, means we can overturn many conspiracies if people are provided with compelling, fact-based evidence.
If we go on that very nice quote from a political article a few days ago, "it's very hard to reason people out of a position they haven't been reasoned in to", then perhaps those who are persuadable by evidence are simply those who are largely victims of misinformation. Those who are not persuadable are those with more serious neurological or psychological problems : poor pattern recognition, a deep belief in control figures, etc.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180124-the-enduring-appeal-of-conspiracy-theories
Botox for camels
This kinda makes me wish there was such a thing as hump implants.
Twelve prized camels have been disqualified from a beauty contest in Saudi Arabia after their owners tried to tweak their good looks with Botox. Thousands of camels are paraded at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival to be judged on their shapely lips and humps. But judges stepped in when they discovered some owners had cheated in a bid to win the cash prizes. The festival, which also features camel racing and camel milk tasting, has combined prize money of $57m (£40m).
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42802901
Twelve prized camels have been disqualified from a beauty contest in Saudi Arabia after their owners tried to tweak their good looks with Botox. Thousands of camels are paraded at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival to be judged on their shapely lips and humps. But judges stepped in when they discovered some owners had cheated in a bid to win the cash prizes. The festival, which also features camel racing and camel milk tasting, has combined prize money of $57m (£40m).
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42802901
Virgin Orbit : cool, but it's no SpaceX
Sir Richard Branson has a low-cost satellite launcher going through the final phases of ground testing before attempting its first outing. Called simply enough LauncherOne, this 21m-long booster will be carried to cruising altitude by an old Virgin Atlantic jumbo, before then being released to power skywards. The rocket is designed to take spacecraft weighing up to 300-500kg into low-Earth orbit. If analysts are correct, the future will be dominated by satellites in this class, and smaller.
Walking around Virgin Orbit, as I did in the autumn, you see a mass of tanks, composites and propulsion motors in various stages of dress. The current timeline calls for the first fully assembled rocket to be flight-tested in the first six months of this year. Assuming that goes well, the production and flight rate will be ramped up sharply. There is capacity to make 24 LauncherOnes a year in Long Beach.
But it's not just the flexibility that this new breed of small rockets is playing off - it's also price, says Vector chief executive Jim Cantrell. After a couple of limited-altitude flights in 2017, his Arizona-based company's rockets will likely make their orbital debut this year as well. Vector is offering rides for payloads weighing up to some 50kg that cost no more than $1.5m.
"The smaller it is, the simpler you can make it," he told me. "Our rocket, for example, has 1,000 parts, and SpaceX's rocket - we estimated at about 26,000 parts. Think about the supply chain behind each of those parts. Each of those parts has someone who's making something or a machine is making it. It's a combination of all these things that's really made it possible to sell rockets for what seems like a ridiculously low price."
Small rockets are cool, but it's the heavy lifters that really interest me. Can't have space colonises without heavy lifting - or much in the way of planetary probes, or telescopes. As the launch cost falls, I wonder how much of an effect this will have on the price of the satellites themselves.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42780872
Walking around Virgin Orbit, as I did in the autumn, you see a mass of tanks, composites and propulsion motors in various stages of dress. The current timeline calls for the first fully assembled rocket to be flight-tested in the first six months of this year. Assuming that goes well, the production and flight rate will be ramped up sharply. There is capacity to make 24 LauncherOnes a year in Long Beach.
But it's not just the flexibility that this new breed of small rockets is playing off - it's also price, says Vector chief executive Jim Cantrell. After a couple of limited-altitude flights in 2017, his Arizona-based company's rockets will likely make their orbital debut this year as well. Vector is offering rides for payloads weighing up to some 50kg that cost no more than $1.5m.
"The smaller it is, the simpler you can make it," he told me. "Our rocket, for example, has 1,000 parts, and SpaceX's rocket - we estimated at about 26,000 parts. Think about the supply chain behind each of those parts. Each of those parts has someone who's making something or a machine is making it. It's a combination of all these things that's really made it possible to sell rockets for what seems like a ridiculously low price."
Small rockets are cool, but it's the heavy lifters that really interest me. Can't have space colonises without heavy lifting - or much in the way of planetary probes, or telescopes. As the launch cost falls, I wonder how much of an effect this will have on the price of the satellites themselves.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42780872
Falsification is useful but not everything
Well, I agree with Sean Carrol about there being shades of grey as to what constitutes a scientific or unscientific theory. I also agree with him regarding some people taking falsification to extremes, even if the references he cites don't actually demonstrate this.
I agree with the other authors that the multiverse isn't business as usual, because you can't test - not falsify, but merely even evaluate it against other theories - its major prediction. I think the Nature article linked by Carrol says it best :
As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.
Cosomology, someone once said, is always on the edge of mysticism. And regarding the Many Worlds interpretation - surely the philosophical next of kin to the inflationary multiverse - someome else once said, "surely it doesn't take the creation of an entire universe to kill one cat." And again from the Nature article :
In our view, cosmologists should heed mathematician David Hilbert's warning: although infinity is needed to complete mathematics, it occurs nowhere in the physical Universe.
However, I take issue with a couple of points in the Nature article :
In our view, the issue boils down to clarifying one question: what potential observational or experimental evidence is there that would persuade you that the theory is wrong and lead you to abandoning it? If there is none, it is not a scientific theory... Dawid argues that the veracity of string theory can be established through philosophical and probabilistic arguments about the research process... Instead of belief in a scientific theory increasing when observational evidence arises to support it, he suggests that theoretical discoveries bolster belief.
Well, this clearly does show that Carrol was not attacking a straw man when he said that some people take falsification and even testability too far. Yet while it's wrong to suggest that belief in a theory should increase because of theoretical arguments, that doesn't mean that theoretical arguments can't lend a preference for it. It's a very good thing, in my opinion, to prefer simple ideas that avoid infinities. You just shouldn't cling militantly to that mere preference in the face of the evidence.
I'll further muddy the waters by noting that "scientific" and "useful" are certainly not the same thing, nor is being useful even necessary for a scientific theory. The idea that the Universe may extend beyond the visible horizon is logical, rational, eminently scientific and perhaps even escapable given current knowledge. The idea that it extends to infinity and perhaps contains other spacetimes with different physical laws, well, I don't know if that's scientific or not - it's certainly not pseudoscience or mystical woo, so perhaps it's a new class of weird - but it's definitely useless (though see Hossenfelder's blog post).
Also :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/05/i-told-you-he-was-tricksy.html
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2016/03/youll-have-your-eye-out-with-that.html
Originally shared by Abhijeet Borkar
Some really interesting discussions going on in the field of Philosophy of Science:
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2018/01/17/beyond-falsifiability/
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9938
https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/peter-woit-vs-sean-carroll-string-theory-the-multiverse-and-popperazism/
and
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/01/22/579666359/scientific-theory-and-the-multiverse-madness
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2018/01/17/beyond-falsifiability/
I agree with the other authors that the multiverse isn't business as usual, because you can't test - not falsify, but merely even evaluate it against other theories - its major prediction. I think the Nature article linked by Carrol says it best :
As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.
Cosomology, someone once said, is always on the edge of mysticism. And regarding the Many Worlds interpretation - surely the philosophical next of kin to the inflationary multiverse - someome else once said, "surely it doesn't take the creation of an entire universe to kill one cat." And again from the Nature article :
In our view, cosmologists should heed mathematician David Hilbert's warning: although infinity is needed to complete mathematics, it occurs nowhere in the physical Universe.
However, I take issue with a couple of points in the Nature article :
In our view, the issue boils down to clarifying one question: what potential observational or experimental evidence is there that would persuade you that the theory is wrong and lead you to abandoning it? If there is none, it is not a scientific theory... Dawid argues that the veracity of string theory can be established through philosophical and probabilistic arguments about the research process... Instead of belief in a scientific theory increasing when observational evidence arises to support it, he suggests that theoretical discoveries bolster belief.
Well, this clearly does show that Carrol was not attacking a straw man when he said that some people take falsification and even testability too far. Yet while it's wrong to suggest that belief in a theory should increase because of theoretical arguments, that doesn't mean that theoretical arguments can't lend a preference for it. It's a very good thing, in my opinion, to prefer simple ideas that avoid infinities. You just shouldn't cling militantly to that mere preference in the face of the evidence.
I'll further muddy the waters by noting that "scientific" and "useful" are certainly not the same thing, nor is being useful even necessary for a scientific theory. The idea that the Universe may extend beyond the visible horizon is logical, rational, eminently scientific and perhaps even escapable given current knowledge. The idea that it extends to infinity and perhaps contains other spacetimes with different physical laws, well, I don't know if that's scientific or not - it's certainly not pseudoscience or mystical woo, so perhaps it's a new class of weird - but it's definitely useless (though see Hossenfelder's blog post).
Also :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/05/i-told-you-he-was-tricksy.html
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2016/03/youll-have-your-eye-out-with-that.html
Originally shared by Abhijeet Borkar
Some really interesting discussions going on in the field of Philosophy of Science:
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2018/01/17/beyond-falsifiability/
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9938
https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/peter-woit-vs-sean-carroll-string-theory-the-multiverse-and-popperazism/
and
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/01/22/579666359/scientific-theory-and-the-multiverse-madness
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2018/01/17/beyond-falsifiability/
Press releases about rockets should never be this boring
Say what you like about him, but Elon Musk would have given a cooler press release.
The decision to develop a new launcher system was taken in December 2014, when the member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) held their Council Meeting at Ministerial Level. They decided to opt for an enhancement of the existing generation of Ariane launchers in order to adapt to growing competition and heightened expectations on the world market. The new launcher was to build upon the existing components of Ariane 5. Depending on the configuration, Ariane 6 will be able to transport a payload of up to 11 tons into space, halving the cost of launches compared to Ariane 5. The new re-ignitable Vinci engine for the upper stage of Ariane 6 has been one of the elements tested at the DLR site in Lampoldshausen since 2005, and now the test runs for the new Vulcain 2.1 main stage engine have been added to the site's portfolio.
http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-25584/#/gallery/29560
The decision to develop a new launcher system was taken in December 2014, when the member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) held their Council Meeting at Ministerial Level. They decided to opt for an enhancement of the existing generation of Ariane launchers in order to adapt to growing competition and heightened expectations on the world market. The new launcher was to build upon the existing components of Ariane 5. Depending on the configuration, Ariane 6 will be able to transport a payload of up to 11 tons into space, halving the cost of launches compared to Ariane 5. The new re-ignitable Vinci engine for the upper stage of Ariane 6 has been one of the elements tested at the DLR site in Lampoldshausen since 2005, and now the test runs for the new Vulcain 2.1 main stage engine have been added to the site's portfolio.
http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-25584/#/gallery/29560
Tuesday 23 January 2018
What I want from flying cars
A nice, comprehensive summary of flying cars and electric planes.
What I want :
- To be able to get across any mid-sized city, to and from any points (within reason) of my choosing in 5 minutes or less.
- To be able to get from any city to any other city on the same continent in a reasonable time, and at price significantly less than current options. And this with spending no more than 10 minutes in airport queues for check in, immigration control and security.
Either of those would do.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/disruptors_up_up_and_away
What I want :
- To be able to get across any mid-sized city, to and from any points (within reason) of my choosing in 5 minutes or less.
- To be able to get from any city to any other city on the same continent in a reasonable time, and at price significantly less than current options. And this with spending no more than 10 minutes in airport queues for check in, immigration control and security.
Either of those would do.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/disruptors_up_up_and_away
Some people are just stupid
Forgotten Twitter log-in details have been blamed for delaying a public correction to Hawaii's missile alert earlier this month. Governor David Ige was told two minutes after a text message was issued by the Emergency Management Agency (EMA) that the threat warning was a false alarm. But his office did not share the information via social media until about 17 minutes later.
On Monday, Mr Ige acknowledged he had failed to recall his social media ID. "I have to confess that I don't know my Twitter account log-ons and the passwords, so certainly that's one of the changes that I've made," he said after his State of the State address, according to local newspaper the Honolulu Star Advertiser.
THEY WERE ON A POST-NOTE ON YOUR COMPUTER, YOU MUPPET !!!
The governor added that he now stored the details on his smartphone to avoid a repeat blunder.
What could possibly go wrong.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42787419
On Monday, Mr Ige acknowledged he had failed to recall his social media ID. "I have to confess that I don't know my Twitter account log-ons and the passwords, so certainly that's one of the changes that I've made," he said after his State of the State address, according to local newspaper the Honolulu Star Advertiser.
THEY WERE ON A POST-NOTE ON YOUR COMPUTER, YOU MUPPET !!!
The governor added that he now stored the details on his smartphone to avoid a repeat blunder.
What could possibly go wrong.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42787419
Wolves on treadmills, for science
Kinda hard to believe this will tell them anything much about wild animals, but still... wolves on treadmills.
“The central goal of the treadmill project is to have two or more animals running together to see how well they run and whether this affects their willingness to share food afterwards. Also, we want to see how this affects their heart rate and heart rate variability [Both dogs and wolves have learned to wear heart rate monitors]. We’ll be starting this winter. Wolves are social hunters, and we expect a great willingness to cooperate in wolves, but less so in dogs.
“Additionally, we want to expand this work to wolf-dog and wolf-human dyads (I already jogged with Kaspar [a wolf] as a trial). Questions of how well wolves and dogs coordinate with humans are, again, relevant for domestication.”
"Wolves spend a great amount of their time running together as a pack. Therefore, the treadmill should be a more natural way of testing how willing the animals are to work and run together and afterwards share their food. Does it depend on their partner? If yes, can we also see this in their behavior or physiology? Heart rate and cortisol will tell us something about how stressed or relaxed the animals are with different partners, and these parameters can also tell us something about energy expenditure; in humans, for example, it take more energy to work together with someone you don't like so much.”
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/why-the-world-s-longest-treadmill-was-created-for-wolves/
“The central goal of the treadmill project is to have two or more animals running together to see how well they run and whether this affects their willingness to share food afterwards. Also, we want to see how this affects their heart rate and heart rate variability [Both dogs and wolves have learned to wear heart rate monitors]. We’ll be starting this winter. Wolves are social hunters, and we expect a great willingness to cooperate in wolves, but less so in dogs.
“Additionally, we want to expand this work to wolf-dog and wolf-human dyads (I already jogged with Kaspar [a wolf] as a trial). Questions of how well wolves and dogs coordinate with humans are, again, relevant for domestication.”
"Wolves spend a great amount of their time running together as a pack. Therefore, the treadmill should be a more natural way of testing how willing the animals are to work and run together and afterwards share their food. Does it depend on their partner? If yes, can we also see this in their behavior or physiology? Heart rate and cortisol will tell us something about how stressed or relaxed the animals are with different partners, and these parameters can also tell us something about energy expenditure; in humans, for example, it take more energy to work together with someone you don't like so much.”
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/why-the-world-s-longest-treadmill-was-created-for-wolves/
Quidditch on the ISS, anyone ?
About 10 years ago, at an astronomy conference, I saw a full size mock up of a Mars rover in a miniature Martian landscape crawling around, very, very slowly to the tune of Wager's Ride of the Valkyries.
This is much the same.
Originally shared by J. Steven York
Nimbus 2018...
#space #nasa #iss #cosmonaut #harrypotter
https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/iss-space-station-cosmonaut-vacuum-cleaner-anton-shkaplerov/
This is much the same.
Originally shared by J. Steven York
Nimbus 2018...
#space #nasa #iss #cosmonaut #harrypotter
https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/iss-space-station-cosmonaut-vacuum-cleaner-anton-shkaplerov/
Monday 22 January 2018
Early research into EMP weapons
The date of Ariel-1’s demise was no coincidence. The satellite failed four days after the US detonated a 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead, in an experiment known as Starfish Prime, high in the atmosphere 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the Pacific Ocean. The explosion – the world’s most powerful high altitude nuclear test – created an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strong enough to disrupt global radio communications and even blow out streetlights on the ground in Hawaii. It also created a new (temporary) radiation belt around the Earth and it was this that did for Ariel-1.
When British officials finally pieced together the full story, it fell to science minister, Lord Hailsham, to write to the Prime Minister. His 1962 memo – typed over two pages – relates the saga in some of the most florid, and appropriately Shakespearean language, to ever grace a government document.
“Although badly wounded in his solar paddles,” wrote Hailsham to the PM, “he is not quite dead. He still utters intermittently – sometimes intelligibly. He may still improve sufficiently to tell us something of value, though he can hardly say ‘merrily shall I live now’. We have got a great deal out of him during his life (short, but neither nasty nor brutish). Before his accident he had transmitted for approximately a thousand hours, and it will take at least a year to analyse the significance of what he has said.”
Most well-written memo ever ? Perhaps.
Fears that this EMP technology might also proliferate in space have been much discussed by governments, parliaments and military strategists. But Quintana, who studies developments in weaponry, is not convinced. “It’s a largely overblown threat,” she contends. Space is already a hostile enough electromagnetic environment, with satellites and spacecraft being continuously bombarded with cosmic rays and charged particles from the Sun. An EMP weapon – even a repeat of Starfish Prime – Quintana argues, would have little additional effect on modern satellites already hardened against radiation.
Although Starfish Prime destroyed primitive space infrastructure in 1962, there are far more effective, and cheaper, technologies to take out modern satellite systems.
For around $20 for instance you could purchase a GPS jamming device. Illegal or, at best, semi-legal in most countries these locally block the weak signals from navigation satellites. Communications satellites are also relatively easy to jam by directly aiming a radio beam towards them. In recent years BBC Persia TV signals, for instance, have been blocked in this way by Iran. There is even evidence that China has developed a ground based laser system to dazzle spy satellites as they pass overhead.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150910-the-nuke-that-fried-satellites-with-terrifying-results
When British officials finally pieced together the full story, it fell to science minister, Lord Hailsham, to write to the Prime Minister. His 1962 memo – typed over two pages – relates the saga in some of the most florid, and appropriately Shakespearean language, to ever grace a government document.
“Although badly wounded in his solar paddles,” wrote Hailsham to the PM, “he is not quite dead. He still utters intermittently – sometimes intelligibly. He may still improve sufficiently to tell us something of value, though he can hardly say ‘merrily shall I live now’. We have got a great deal out of him during his life (short, but neither nasty nor brutish). Before his accident he had transmitted for approximately a thousand hours, and it will take at least a year to analyse the significance of what he has said.”
Most well-written memo ever ? Perhaps.
Fears that this EMP technology might also proliferate in space have been much discussed by governments, parliaments and military strategists. But Quintana, who studies developments in weaponry, is not convinced. “It’s a largely overblown threat,” she contends. Space is already a hostile enough electromagnetic environment, with satellites and spacecraft being continuously bombarded with cosmic rays and charged particles from the Sun. An EMP weapon – even a repeat of Starfish Prime – Quintana argues, would have little additional effect on modern satellites already hardened against radiation.
Although Starfish Prime destroyed primitive space infrastructure in 1962, there are far more effective, and cheaper, technologies to take out modern satellite systems.
For around $20 for instance you could purchase a GPS jamming device. Illegal or, at best, semi-legal in most countries these locally block the weak signals from navigation satellites. Communications satellites are also relatively easy to jam by directly aiming a radio beam towards them. In recent years BBC Persia TV signals, for instance, have been blocked in this way by Iran. There is even evidence that China has developed a ground based laser system to dazzle spy satellites as they pass overhead.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150910-the-nuke-that-fried-satellites-with-terrifying-results
Laser beams for weather control because what could possibly go wrong ?
Are you an evil supervillain ? Are you tired of having to choose between laser beams and lightning ? Worry no longer, you can have both !
Lasers are also being considered as a form of weather control, through laser inversion – the technique of using lasers to cool things down rather than heat them up. The process forms clouds and can even trigger lightning. “This is a new method based on ultra-fast, ultra-short laser pulses, which generate intense lasers that are low-energy as the pulse is very short,” says Jean-Pierre Wolf of the University of Geneva. This creates a spark in the atmosphere, which causes a shock that expels water droplets out of the way.
However, the problem, as with cloud seeding, is a question of scale. “We do not have the right laser and scale of lasers to do something dramatic in the atmosphere – we can create small cloud formations, but you would not see the clouds we produce,” admits Wolf. “There is a problem of scaling, such as creating a cumulous cloud, which is a kilometre long and spans over tens of kilometres. Then the question is whether it makes sense in terms of the energy you put into the system.”
Deploying laser inversion via satellites is more likely. Lasers do not need to be resupplied with materials and their power demands can be met through solar panels. “There are many examples in which lasers are being used for a very limited time, which means it is not in continuous operation,” says Lindenthal. “For example, there are ideas to remove space debris by flashing them with a laser.”
For now, controlling the weather remains unlikely – too costly and resource-hungry to make practical. “People are putting research into very efficient lasers that can be put into orbit,” says Lindenthal. “For me, itis only a matter of time.”
“We may, one day, have the technology to control the weather,” adds Bell, “but it will be in thousands, not hundreds, of years.”
Nah, because being able to trigger lighting with a laser beam is so high on the cool factor that people will refuse to wait that long.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180122-will-we-ever-have-satellites-that-can-control-the-weather
Lasers are also being considered as a form of weather control, through laser inversion – the technique of using lasers to cool things down rather than heat them up. The process forms clouds and can even trigger lightning. “This is a new method based on ultra-fast, ultra-short laser pulses, which generate intense lasers that are low-energy as the pulse is very short,” says Jean-Pierre Wolf of the University of Geneva. This creates a spark in the atmosphere, which causes a shock that expels water droplets out of the way.
However, the problem, as with cloud seeding, is a question of scale. “We do not have the right laser and scale of lasers to do something dramatic in the atmosphere – we can create small cloud formations, but you would not see the clouds we produce,” admits Wolf. “There is a problem of scaling, such as creating a cumulous cloud, which is a kilometre long and spans over tens of kilometres. Then the question is whether it makes sense in terms of the energy you put into the system.”
Deploying laser inversion via satellites is more likely. Lasers do not need to be resupplied with materials and their power demands can be met through solar panels. “There are many examples in which lasers are being used for a very limited time, which means it is not in continuous operation,” says Lindenthal. “For example, there are ideas to remove space debris by flashing them with a laser.”
For now, controlling the weather remains unlikely – too costly and resource-hungry to make practical. “People are putting research into very efficient lasers that can be put into orbit,” says Lindenthal. “For me, itis only a matter of time.”
“We may, one day, have the technology to control the weather,” adds Bell, “but it will be in thousands, not hundreds, of years.”
Nah, because being able to trigger lighting with a laser beam is so high on the cool factor that people will refuse to wait that long.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180122-will-we-ever-have-satellites-that-can-control-the-weather
Overall, fact-checking works, but the importance of fake news remains unclear
But all the fact-checking institutions in the world will never be able to beat down every rumour or fake "fact". And while some media reports have cast doubt on the efficacy of fact-checking, Mantzarlis is convinced that his work has an impact. "What we've seen over the past two years is that consistently, across the board, regardless of partisanship, when people get told a falsehood and get presented with a correction, their belief in the falsehood goes down," he says. People might be "fact resistant", but very few are "fact immune", he says.
"Google and Facebook have both said that they are going to be hiring a lot of people to review content and enforce their terms of service and keep fake and illegal stuff off their platform. I'm interested to see how that is actually done," Buzzfeed's Silverman says. "The opaqueness of these platforms and their power and the fact that so much speech has moved on to them is something that we need to pay attention to and make sure that we don't turn them from places where misinformation is running rampant to places that are so locked down that they are inhibiting speech," he says.
Alongside worries about the power of the social media companies, the experts also have concerns about the power of governments. "Sometimes well-intentioned but ill-informed legislators will overreach and do more harm that the problem they are trying to fix, with legislation on fake news," Mantzarlis says, noting that legislation is being proposed in several countries across Europe. The most sweeping such legislation came into effect on 1 January in Germany. The law demands that social media sites quickly remove hate speech, fake news and illegal material or face fines up to 50m euro (£44.3m, $61.1m).
Ever since the debate over the issue really took off a little over a year ago, there's been enormous disagreement as to whether false stories spread online actually have any impact on people's politics or voting patterns. In one of the first academic studies about the consumption of fake news, researchers at Princeton, Dartmouth and the University of Exeter estimated that about 25 percent of Americans visited a fake news website in a six-week period around the time of the 2016 US election.
But the researchers also found that the visits were highly concentrated - 10% of readers made 60% of the visits. And crucially, the researchers concluded "fake news does not crowd out hard news consumption." "The reach was relatively wide, but not so deep," Mantzarlis says. "It's quite a big step further to say, are people voting on this, making decisions on it. To say it's poisoning our democracy or it won this guy or the other guy an election, we need a lot more research to be able to say that."
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320
"Google and Facebook have both said that they are going to be hiring a lot of people to review content and enforce their terms of service and keep fake and illegal stuff off their platform. I'm interested to see how that is actually done," Buzzfeed's Silverman says. "The opaqueness of these platforms and their power and the fact that so much speech has moved on to them is something that we need to pay attention to and make sure that we don't turn them from places where misinformation is running rampant to places that are so locked down that they are inhibiting speech," he says.
Alongside worries about the power of the social media companies, the experts also have concerns about the power of governments. "Sometimes well-intentioned but ill-informed legislators will overreach and do more harm that the problem they are trying to fix, with legislation on fake news," Mantzarlis says, noting that legislation is being proposed in several countries across Europe. The most sweeping such legislation came into effect on 1 January in Germany. The law demands that social media sites quickly remove hate speech, fake news and illegal material or face fines up to 50m euro (£44.3m, $61.1m).
Ever since the debate over the issue really took off a little over a year ago, there's been enormous disagreement as to whether false stories spread online actually have any impact on people's politics or voting patterns. In one of the first academic studies about the consumption of fake news, researchers at Princeton, Dartmouth and the University of Exeter estimated that about 25 percent of Americans visited a fake news website in a six-week period around the time of the 2016 US election.
But the researchers also found that the visits were highly concentrated - 10% of readers made 60% of the visits. And crucially, the researchers concluded "fake news does not crowd out hard news consumption." "The reach was relatively wide, but not so deep," Mantzarlis says. "It's quite a big step further to say, are people voting on this, making decisions on it. To say it's poisoning our democracy or it won this guy or the other guy an election, we need a lot more research to be able to say that."
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320
Acoustic tractor beams
Acoustic tractor beams use the power of sound to hold particles in mid-air, and unlike magnetic levitation, they can grab most solids or liquids. For the first time University of Bristol engineers have shown it is possible to stably trap objects larger than the wavelength of sound in an acoustic tractor beam. This discovery opens the door to the manipulation of drug capsules or micro-surgical implements within the body. Container-less transportation of delicate larger samples is now also a possibility and could lead to levitating humans.
Researchers previously thought that acoustic tractor beams were fundamentally limited to levitating small objects as all the previous attempts to trap particles larger than the wavelength had been unstable, with objects spinning uncontrollably. This is because rotating sound field transfers some of its spinning motion to the objects causing them to orbit faster and faster until they are ejected.
The new approach, published in Physical Review Letters today, uses rapidly fluctuating acoustic vortices, which are similar to tornadoes of sound, made of a twister-like structure with loud sound surrounding a silent core.
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-world-powerful-acoustic-tractor-pave.html
Researchers previously thought that acoustic tractor beams were fundamentally limited to levitating small objects as all the previous attempts to trap particles larger than the wavelength had been unstable, with objects spinning uncontrollably. This is because rotating sound field transfers some of its spinning motion to the objects causing them to orbit faster and faster until they are ejected.
The new approach, published in Physical Review Letters today, uses rapidly fluctuating acoustic vortices, which are similar to tornadoes of sound, made of a twister-like structure with loud sound surrounding a silent core.
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-world-powerful-acoustic-tractor-pave.html
Amazon gets physical, ironically
In a move that could revolutionise the way we buy groceries, Amazon opens its first supermarket without checkouts - human or self-service - to shoppers on Monday. Amazon Go, in Seattle, has been tested by staff for the past year.
It uses an array of ceiling-mounted cameras to identify each customer and track what items they select, eliminating the need for billing. Purchases are billed to customers' credit cards when they leave the store. Before entering, shoppers must scan the Amazon Go smartphone app. Sensors on the shelves add items to the bill as customers pick them up - and deletes any they put back.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42769096
It uses an array of ceiling-mounted cameras to identify each customer and track what items they select, eliminating the need for billing. Purchases are billed to customers' credit cards when they leave the store. Before entering, shoppers must scan the Amazon Go smartphone app. Sensors on the shelves add items to the bill as customers pick them up - and deletes any they put back.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42769096
Sunday 21 January 2018
A bunch of girls skiing across Antarctica
Six women from the British Army have become the largest all-female group to ski coast-to-coast across Antarctica. The Ice Maiden team began the 1,000-mile expedition on 20 November - each pulling an 80kg sledge behind them.
After 62 days on the ice, the six soldiers crossed the finish line at the Hercules Inlet just before 10:00 GMT. Completing the challenge, Maj Nics Wetherill said: "I'm just so incredibly proud of the team. I can't believe how far we've come."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42759027
After 62 days on the ice, the six soldiers crossed the finish line at the Hercules Inlet just before 10:00 GMT. Completing the challenge, Maj Nics Wetherill said: "I'm just so incredibly proud of the team. I can't believe how far we've come."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42759027
Saturday 20 January 2018
Realistic science
Found on the internet.
Pretty much. Needs stuff about popularity and highly funded grants.
Hyperloop development continues but I'm still not convinced
I remain skeptical that this can be constructed on a large scale in the real world in an economically sensible way. Interesting to see how it develops though.
Arriving on the site in the desert 40 miles north of Las Vegas, you can immediately see this is a costly operation to run. A 500m (1,640ft) test track, or Devloop, has been constructed and a workforce of 300, including 200 high-calibre engineers, has been assembled. They have run a number of tests, propelling a pod through the tube at speeds of up 387km/h (240mph). So far, however, they have not put people on board.
Leading the engineering team is a fast-talking space scientist Anita Sengupta, recruited from Nasa where she helped develop the Mars Curiosity rover. She predicts that the project will have passed through safety certification and be ready to launch a commercial operation by 2021, which seems insanely optimistic.
It is the job of the chief executive Rob Lloyd to sell the Hyperloop to the commercial and government partners who will make it a reality. But when we met him at the giant CES tech show in Las Vegas, he appeared to think that the viability of the technology was a given, wanting to talk instead about an app that would connect future Hyperloop passengers with other modes of transport on arrival.
"You could build a Hyperloop between Gatwick and Heathrow and move between those two airports as if they were terminals in four minutes," he explained. Creating one giant seven-terminal airport without the huge cost and controversy of building a new runway might seem attractive. Sir Richard Branson, who now chairs the project, told us "a fast link between Heathrow and Gatwick would make a lot of sense". But it also sounds fanciful. The cost of tunnelling from Heathrow to Gatwick or the planning nightmare of running several tubes across the Sussex and Surrey countryside would surely make building a third runway seem like a piece of cake.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42730916
Arriving on the site in the desert 40 miles north of Las Vegas, you can immediately see this is a costly operation to run. A 500m (1,640ft) test track, or Devloop, has been constructed and a workforce of 300, including 200 high-calibre engineers, has been assembled. They have run a number of tests, propelling a pod through the tube at speeds of up 387km/h (240mph). So far, however, they have not put people on board.
Leading the engineering team is a fast-talking space scientist Anita Sengupta, recruited from Nasa where she helped develop the Mars Curiosity rover. She predicts that the project will have passed through safety certification and be ready to launch a commercial operation by 2021, which seems insanely optimistic.
It is the job of the chief executive Rob Lloyd to sell the Hyperloop to the commercial and government partners who will make it a reality. But when we met him at the giant CES tech show in Las Vegas, he appeared to think that the viability of the technology was a given, wanting to talk instead about an app that would connect future Hyperloop passengers with other modes of transport on arrival.
"You could build a Hyperloop between Gatwick and Heathrow and move between those two airports as if they were terminals in four minutes," he explained. Creating one giant seven-terminal airport without the huge cost and controversy of building a new runway might seem attractive. Sir Richard Branson, who now chairs the project, told us "a fast link between Heathrow and Gatwick would make a lot of sense". But it also sounds fanciful. The cost of tunnelling from Heathrow to Gatwick or the planning nightmare of running several tubes across the Sussex and Surrey countryside would surely make building a third runway seem like a piece of cake.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42730916
Friday 19 January 2018
Practical techniques to deal with fake news
The first half of this reads a bit like a Beginner's Guide To The Problems With The Internet In The Last Two Years. It's a good summary of filter bubbles, selected search results, the opacity of search algorithms, the Russians, etc. Aside from the lack of Cambridge Analytics it's pretty comprehensive, but there's not much new here. With the following economic exception that I hadn't considered :
I did not see it at the time, but the users most likely to respond to Leave’s messages were probably less wealthy and therefore cheaper for the advertiser to target: the price of Facebook (and Google) ads is determined by auction, and the cost of targeting more upscale consumers gets bid up higher by actual businesses trying to sell them things. As a consequence, Facebook was a much cheaper and more effective platform for Leave in terms of cost per user reached.
I would add a couple of things. First, that the influence of social media is important more as a nudge than a world-view altering behemoth. Brexit and Trump would never be a thing without a long history of crazies becoming the norm in their respective countries. For that I point the finger of blame firmly at the traditional media, not the internet giants.
Second, there is a something of a portrayal of Facebook etc. here as a somewhat innocent entity making fundamentally honest mistakes. That might be the case for Google and Twitter but I'm far from convinced about Facebook. Not that I'm particularly convinced that Zuckerberg is an evil manipulative Bond-esque villain either, just that there's some middle position between attributing to malevolence what you can't attribute to stupidity.
But it's the second part - how to do something about this - where things get much more interesting. Last time I asked the non-rhetorical question, "how should we regulate speech ?" I got an earful of free speech absolutism. This author has something better to offer, including but not limited to :
I recommend that Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others be required to contact each person touched by Russian content with a personal message that says, “You, and we, were manipulated by the Russians. This really happened, and here is the evidence.” The message would include every Russian message the user received.
[They later actually tried this. It didn't work, because apparently the people likely to believe the propaganda were so stupid that they continued to believe it in defiance of the official rebuttal. Unfortunately though, no information was released as to how many people accepted the rebuttal and how many rejected it, making this a purely anecdotal approach.]
Second, the chief executive officers of Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others—not just their lawyers—must testify before congressional committees in open session.. Forcing tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg to justify the unjustifiable, in public—without the shield of spokespeople or PR spin—would go a long way to puncturing their carefully preserved cults of personality in the eyes of their employees.
[They managed to try this as well in the US - the UK tried but Zuckerberg simply said no. It's probably safe to say that no-one likes Zuckerberg very much, but the questions asked by the committee were not exactly the most penetrating as most politicians are simply not tech-savvy enough.]
It’s essential to ban digital bots that impersonate humans. They distort the “public square” in a way that was never possible in history, no matter how many anonymous leaflets you printed. At a minimum, the law could require explicit labeling of all bots, the ability for users to block them, and liability on the part of platform vendors for the harm bots cause.
I'd prefer labelling, I'm not sure a ban makes any sense. A "bot" can be as simple as one line of code that prints the same thing forever. It can be done without malice or stupidity at all; bots are already used as digital assistants to (somewhat) positive effects. Or so I'm led to believe.
Second, the platforms should not be allowed to make any acquisitions until they have addressed the damage caused to date, taken steps to prevent harm in the future, and demonstrated that such acquisitions will not result in diminished competition... This allowed the platforms to centralize the internet, inserting themselves between users and content, effectively imposing a tax on both sides. This is a great business model for Facebook and Google—and convenient in the short term for customers—but we are drowning in evidence that there are costs that society may not be able to afford.
Eighth, and finally, we should consider that the time has come to revive the country’s traditional approach to monopoly. Since the Reagan era, antitrust law has operated under the principle that monopoly is not a problem so long as it doesn’t result in higher prices for consumers. Under that framework, Facebook and Google have been allowed to dominate several industries—not just search and social media but also email, video, photos, and digital ad sales, among others—increasing their monopolies by buying potential rivals like YouTube and Instagram. While superficially appealing, this approach ignores costs that don’t show up in a price tag. Addiction to Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms has a cost. Election manipulation has a cost. Reduced innovation and shrinkage of the entrepreneurial economy has a cost. All of these costs are evident today. We can quantify them well enough to appreciate that the costs to consumers of concentration on the internet are unacceptably high.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/
I did not see it at the time, but the users most likely to respond to Leave’s messages were probably less wealthy and therefore cheaper for the advertiser to target: the price of Facebook (and Google) ads is determined by auction, and the cost of targeting more upscale consumers gets bid up higher by actual businesses trying to sell them things. As a consequence, Facebook was a much cheaper and more effective platform for Leave in terms of cost per user reached.
I would add a couple of things. First, that the influence of social media is important more as a nudge than a world-view altering behemoth. Brexit and Trump would never be a thing without a long history of crazies becoming the norm in their respective countries. For that I point the finger of blame firmly at the traditional media, not the internet giants.
Second, there is a something of a portrayal of Facebook etc. here as a somewhat innocent entity making fundamentally honest mistakes. That might be the case for Google and Twitter but I'm far from convinced about Facebook. Not that I'm particularly convinced that Zuckerberg is an evil manipulative Bond-esque villain either, just that there's some middle position between attributing to malevolence what you can't attribute to stupidity.
But it's the second part - how to do something about this - where things get much more interesting. Last time I asked the non-rhetorical question, "how should we regulate speech ?" I got an earful of free speech absolutism. This author has something better to offer, including but not limited to :
I recommend that Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others be required to contact each person touched by Russian content with a personal message that says, “You, and we, were manipulated by the Russians. This really happened, and here is the evidence.” The message would include every Russian message the user received.
[They later actually tried this. It didn't work, because apparently the people likely to believe the propaganda were so stupid that they continued to believe it in defiance of the official rebuttal. Unfortunately though, no information was released as to how many people accepted the rebuttal and how many rejected it, making this a purely anecdotal approach.]
Second, the chief executive officers of Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others—not just their lawyers—must testify before congressional committees in open session.. Forcing tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg to justify the unjustifiable, in public—without the shield of spokespeople or PR spin—would go a long way to puncturing their carefully preserved cults of personality in the eyes of their employees.
[They managed to try this as well in the US - the UK tried but Zuckerberg simply said no. It's probably safe to say that no-one likes Zuckerberg very much, but the questions asked by the committee were not exactly the most penetrating as most politicians are simply not tech-savvy enough.]
It’s essential to ban digital bots that impersonate humans. They distort the “public square” in a way that was never possible in history, no matter how many anonymous leaflets you printed. At a minimum, the law could require explicit labeling of all bots, the ability for users to block them, and liability on the part of platform vendors for the harm bots cause.
I'd prefer labelling, I'm not sure a ban makes any sense. A "bot" can be as simple as one line of code that prints the same thing forever. It can be done without malice or stupidity at all; bots are already used as digital assistants to (somewhat) positive effects. Or so I'm led to believe.
Second, the platforms should not be allowed to make any acquisitions until they have addressed the damage caused to date, taken steps to prevent harm in the future, and demonstrated that such acquisitions will not result in diminished competition... This allowed the platforms to centralize the internet, inserting themselves between users and content, effectively imposing a tax on both sides. This is a great business model for Facebook and Google—and convenient in the short term for customers—but we are drowning in evidence that there are costs that society may not be able to afford.
Eighth, and finally, we should consider that the time has come to revive the country’s traditional approach to monopoly. Since the Reagan era, antitrust law has operated under the principle that monopoly is not a problem so long as it doesn’t result in higher prices for consumers. Under that framework, Facebook and Google have been allowed to dominate several industries—not just search and social media but also email, video, photos, and digital ad sales, among others—increasing their monopolies by buying potential rivals like YouTube and Instagram. While superficially appealing, this approach ignores costs that don’t show up in a price tag. Addiction to Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms has a cost. Election manipulation has a cost. Reduced innovation and shrinkage of the entrepreneurial economy has a cost. All of these costs are evident today. We can quantify them well enough to appreciate that the costs to consumers of concentration on the internet are unacceptably high.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/
Owl versus fox
The second video goes and puts a depressing spin on things. Stick with the first one.
The video begins with a fox running along the pier, when a snowy owl suddenly swoops in from behind and dive bombs the startled fox — which makes us wonder whether this is a continuation of an earlier incident between the two animals.The owl flies off over the lake, with the fox watching. The fox then wanders around the pier area sniffing before running off, at which point the owl flies in and lands in the pier area. It appears as if the owl is tracking the fox. The fox returns to the pier area and makes a small test lunge at the owl, apparently hoping to scare it off. The owl ruffles its feathers but stands its ground.
https://kawarthanow.com/2018/01/16/watch-this-standoff-between-a-red-fox-and-a-snowy-owl/
The video begins with a fox running along the pier, when a snowy owl suddenly swoops in from behind and dive bombs the startled fox — which makes us wonder whether this is a continuation of an earlier incident between the two animals.The owl flies off over the lake, with the fox watching. The fox then wanders around the pier area sniffing before running off, at which point the owl flies in and lands in the pier area. It appears as if the owl is tracking the fox. The fox returns to the pier area and makes a small test lunge at the owl, apparently hoping to scare it off. The owl ruffles its feathers but stands its ground.
https://kawarthanow.com/2018/01/16/watch-this-standoff-between-a-red-fox-and-a-snowy-owl/
Thursday 18 January 2018
Anti-science across the political spectrum
Interesting piece, via Michael J. Coffey.
In areas where left-wing opinions contradict scientific evidence, there’s an unfortunate tendency to suggest that such scientific research is morally problematic. This speaks to a common trope on the left: their views aren’t simply accurate, but moral. Though those on the left are quick to point to right-wing scientific illiteracy, they’re often steadfast in their refusal to recognize their own dogma.
Of course, no-one (with a few hardcore exceptions) believes that they themselves are irrational, anti-science lunatics. Everyone thinks that their viewpoint is the most rational and sensible.
There’s also considerable resistance, for example, to findings that genes significantly predict educational achievement and account for around 50% of personality. “The left-wing view is that everyone’s born the same and you can make everyone achieve the same way. From genetics research, we’ve shown that’s not true,” Saskia Selzam, a behavioral genetics researcher at King’s College-London, told me in 2016. Environment, of course, also has a huge effect on both achievement and personality, and this research shouldn’t be used to discount equal opportunity—indeed, researchers believe that understanding biological influences can engender more equality.
Never really understood why this idea was a thing, but apparently it is... I don't care how many courses you throw at me, I could never become a decent football player/musician/driver/innumerable other things.
If we know a child has a genetic risk for dyslexia, for example, it’s possible to address that disposition early on through environmental factors such as tutoring and individual support. That can eliminate the psychological distress often caused by undiagnosed dyslexia and reduce the the severity of the condition. Children who aren’t diagnosed at an early age are typically placed in classes where the teaching account for their dyslexia, and so have a much harder time at school as a result.
Presumably that's an ironic typo in the dyslexia section and that should be, "where the teaching doesn't account...
“Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that gender is not purely a social construct—and therefore malleable,” says Brenda Todd, a senior lecturer in psychology at City University London. “In reality, I believe that gendered behaviour results from an interplay between biological predispositions and social influences.” This sort of research doesn’t argue that biology dictates a strict gender binary; it rather suggests both biology and society influence what is inevitably a wide spectrum of gender identity.
Some other antiscientific views are surprisingly politically bipartisan. Skepticism about the value of vaccines and the belief that genetically modified foods are harmful—both views strongly rejected by scientists—are equally common across the political spectrum.
https://qz.com/1177154/political-scientific-biases-the-left-is-guilty-of-unscientific-dogma-too/
In areas where left-wing opinions contradict scientific evidence, there’s an unfortunate tendency to suggest that such scientific research is morally problematic. This speaks to a common trope on the left: their views aren’t simply accurate, but moral. Though those on the left are quick to point to right-wing scientific illiteracy, they’re often steadfast in their refusal to recognize their own dogma.
Of course, no-one (with a few hardcore exceptions) believes that they themselves are irrational, anti-science lunatics. Everyone thinks that their viewpoint is the most rational and sensible.
There’s also considerable resistance, for example, to findings that genes significantly predict educational achievement and account for around 50% of personality. “The left-wing view is that everyone’s born the same and you can make everyone achieve the same way. From genetics research, we’ve shown that’s not true,” Saskia Selzam, a behavioral genetics researcher at King’s College-London, told me in 2016. Environment, of course, also has a huge effect on both achievement and personality, and this research shouldn’t be used to discount equal opportunity—indeed, researchers believe that understanding biological influences can engender more equality.
Never really understood why this idea was a thing, but apparently it is... I don't care how many courses you throw at me, I could never become a decent football player/musician/driver/innumerable other things.
If we know a child has a genetic risk for dyslexia, for example, it’s possible to address that disposition early on through environmental factors such as tutoring and individual support. That can eliminate the psychological distress often caused by undiagnosed dyslexia and reduce the the severity of the condition. Children who aren’t diagnosed at an early age are typically placed in classes where the teaching account for their dyslexia, and so have a much harder time at school as a result.
Presumably that's an ironic typo in the dyslexia section and that should be, "where the teaching doesn't account...
“Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that gender is not purely a social construct—and therefore malleable,” says Brenda Todd, a senior lecturer in psychology at City University London. “In reality, I believe that gendered behaviour results from an interplay between biological predispositions and social influences.” This sort of research doesn’t argue that biology dictates a strict gender binary; it rather suggests both biology and society influence what is inevitably a wide spectrum of gender identity.
Some other antiscientific views are surprisingly politically bipartisan. Skepticism about the value of vaccines and the belief that genetically modified foods are harmful—both views strongly rejected by scientists—are equally common across the political spectrum.
https://qz.com/1177154/political-scientific-biases-the-left-is-guilty-of-unscientific-dogma-too/
World's deadliest cat is soooooper cute
Dat da kooootest ting eva.
Or something.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/worlds-deadliest-cat_us_5a5ece74e4b00a7f171b9893?7hg
Or something.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/worlds-deadliest-cat_us_5a5ece74e4b00a7f171b9893?7hg
Wednesday 17 January 2018
Working longer is generally pointless and counter-productive
"Some of the superheroes of our time, they are the guys who say, 'I work 90 hours, 100 hours, 120 hours,'" says design company director Marei Wollersberger. "People read those figures and they say, 'That's what's going to make me successful, I'm going to do the same,'... but that's not true." Staff at her company, Normally Design, in London, work a four-day week but are paid as if they were doing the traditional five days. The days remain eight-hours long.
She says it's key to the company's success - they can be just as profitable in fewer hours, as employees work more efficiently. In fact, working outside of business hours is not seen as a positive - managers check if there is anything wrong if it happens.
"There's a social encouragement to make sure you use that fifth day for yourself and not to do work," he says. "You're not going to get Brownie points for replying to emails on the fifth day."
Ms Wollersberger says: "We've seen people wait for their whole life for the big moment when they retire and then have the luxury to do all of the things you really want to do and fulfil your dreams. "But we've seen in a few cases that never happens as you get ill or you're older by then. Maybe we can just flip that round. Maybe we can take that time and move it forward and give it back to ourselves and our employees."
I think if this attitude were more prevalent, the world would be a happier place. The goal of having a strong economy should be improving living conditions, not generating an even stronger economy. Work should serve a purpose, not be the goal in itself.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42705291
She says it's key to the company's success - they can be just as profitable in fewer hours, as employees work more efficiently. In fact, working outside of business hours is not seen as a positive - managers check if there is anything wrong if it happens.
"There's a social encouragement to make sure you use that fifth day for yourself and not to do work," he says. "You're not going to get Brownie points for replying to emails on the fifth day."
Ms Wollersberger says: "We've seen people wait for their whole life for the big moment when they retire and then have the luxury to do all of the things you really want to do and fulfil your dreams. "But we've seen in a few cases that never happens as you get ill or you're older by then. Maybe we can just flip that round. Maybe we can take that time and move it forward and give it back to ourselves and our employees."
I think if this attitude were more prevalent, the world would be a happier place. The goal of having a strong economy should be improving living conditions, not generating an even stronger economy. Work should serve a purpose, not be the goal in itself.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42705291
Sean Carroll on falsification
A very interesting essay, worth reading in its entirety if you have the time. Some selected highlights for those that don't.
In its strongest from, the objection argues that the very idea of an unobservable multiverse shouldn't count as science at all, often appealing to Karl Popper's dictum that a theory should be falsifiable to be considered scientific. At the same time, proponents of the multiverse (and its partner in crime, the anthropic principle) will sometimes argue that while multiverse cosmologies are definitely part of science, they represent a new kind of science, "a deep change of paradigm that revolutionizes our understanding of nature and opens new fields of possible scientific thought".
In this essay I will stake out a judicious middle position... The point is not that we are changing the nature of science by allowing unfalsifiable hypotheses into our purview. The point is that "falsifiability" was never the way that scientifictheories were judged (although scientists have often talked as if it were)... The best outcome of current controversies over the multiverse and related ideas (other than the hopeful prospect of finding the correct description of nature) is if working scientists are nudged toward accepting a somewhat more nuanced and accurate picture of scientific practice.
Science proceeds via an ongoing dialogue between theory and experiment, searching for the best possible understanding, rather than cleanly lopping off falsified theories one by one. (Popper himself thought Marxism had started out scientific, but had become unfalsifiable over time as its predictions failed to come true.) While philosophers of science have long since moved past falsifiability as a simple solution to the demarcation problem, many scientists have seized on it with gusto, going so far as to argue that falsifiability is manifestly a central part of the definition of science.
The multiverse, therefore, is a case of science as usual: we evaluate it on the basis of how likely it is to be true, given what we know on the basis of what we actually have observed. But it is not only examples of literal new data that can cause our credences in a theory to change. The multiverse hypothesis reminds us of how better understanding, as well as actual experimental or observational input, can serve as "data" for the purposes of Bayesian inference... A correct accounting for the multitude of influences that shape our credences concerning scientific hypotheses is in no sense a repudiation of empiricism; it is simply an acknowledgment of the way it works in the real world.
The best reason for classifying the multiverse as a straightforwardly scientific theory is that we don't have any choice. This is the case for any hypothesis that satisfies two criteria: 1) It might be true. 2)Whether or not it is true affects how we understand what we observe.
None of which is to say that there aren't special challenges posed by the multiverse. At a technical level, we have the measure problem: given an infinite multiverse, how do we calculate the relative probabilities of different local conditions? Skeptics will sometimes say that since everything happens somewhere in the multiverse, it is impossible to make even probabilistic predictions. Neither of these two clauses is necessarily correct; even if a multiverse is infinitely big, it does not follow that everything happens, and even if everything happens, it does not follow that there are no rules for the relative frequencies with which things happen... There still remains the question, even if there is a correct measure on the multiverse, how will we ever know? It seems hard to imagine doing experiments to provide an answer. That, in a nutshell, is the biggest challenge posed by the prospect of the multiverse. It is not that the theory is unscientific, or that it is impossible to evaluate it. It's that evaluating it is hard.
Well, I remain a skeptic. I don't see how you get a meaningful explanation of anything if you throw an infinity in there - to me, that's a sign of a theoretical failure. Sure, the world might be like that, but that would basically reduce it to being fundamentally illogical. I can't conceive of how you can have meaningful probabilities in an infinite reality. Maybe you can, but it feels an awful lot like cheating to me.
IMHO, string theory, inflation, the multiverse and all that jazz are not straightforward, "business as usual" scientific theories. They're a far cry from being pseudoscientific bunk, but neither are they comparable to relativity or Maxwell's eqauations. They hardly represent some wonderful new advanced sort of science, rather, they are more in the fuzzy grey area between genuine pseudoscientific woo and hard physical reality. See, while I agree wholeheartedly that "falsification" can't be the whole definition of a scientific theory, I do hold that the prospect of falsifiability is always better. That doesn't lead to anything so binary as "non-falsifiable is bad, falsifiable is good", let alone scientific/unscientific. But it does suggest that there is something at least different about unfalsifiable ideas like the multiverse.
I maintain that a scientific idea should be at least testable, if not falsifiable. You have to be able to evaluate its success with respect to observational evidence and other competing theories. The multiverse might satisfy that criteria, but currently string theory does not. That doesn't preclude them from ever becoming testable, however. Perhaps we should think of them as proto-science.
See also : http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/05/i-told-you-he-was-tricksy.html
https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.05016
In its strongest from, the objection argues that the very idea of an unobservable multiverse shouldn't count as science at all, often appealing to Karl Popper's dictum that a theory should be falsifiable to be considered scientific. At the same time, proponents of the multiverse (and its partner in crime, the anthropic principle) will sometimes argue that while multiverse cosmologies are definitely part of science, they represent a new kind of science, "a deep change of paradigm that revolutionizes our understanding of nature and opens new fields of possible scientific thought".
In this essay I will stake out a judicious middle position... The point is not that we are changing the nature of science by allowing unfalsifiable hypotheses into our purview. The point is that "falsifiability" was never the way that scientifictheories were judged (although scientists have often talked as if it were)... The best outcome of current controversies over the multiverse and related ideas (other than the hopeful prospect of finding the correct description of nature) is if working scientists are nudged toward accepting a somewhat more nuanced and accurate picture of scientific practice.
Science proceeds via an ongoing dialogue between theory and experiment, searching for the best possible understanding, rather than cleanly lopping off falsified theories one by one. (Popper himself thought Marxism had started out scientific, but had become unfalsifiable over time as its predictions failed to come true.) While philosophers of science have long since moved past falsifiability as a simple solution to the demarcation problem, many scientists have seized on it with gusto, going so far as to argue that falsifiability is manifestly a central part of the definition of science.
The multiverse, therefore, is a case of science as usual: we evaluate it on the basis of how likely it is to be true, given what we know on the basis of what we actually have observed. But it is not only examples of literal new data that can cause our credences in a theory to change. The multiverse hypothesis reminds us of how better understanding, as well as actual experimental or observational input, can serve as "data" for the purposes of Bayesian inference... A correct accounting for the multitude of influences that shape our credences concerning scientific hypotheses is in no sense a repudiation of empiricism; it is simply an acknowledgment of the way it works in the real world.
The best reason for classifying the multiverse as a straightforwardly scientific theory is that we don't have any choice. This is the case for any hypothesis that satisfies two criteria: 1) It might be true. 2)Whether or not it is true affects how we understand what we observe.
None of which is to say that there aren't special challenges posed by the multiverse. At a technical level, we have the measure problem: given an infinite multiverse, how do we calculate the relative probabilities of different local conditions? Skeptics will sometimes say that since everything happens somewhere in the multiverse, it is impossible to make even probabilistic predictions. Neither of these two clauses is necessarily correct; even if a multiverse is infinitely big, it does not follow that everything happens, and even if everything happens, it does not follow that there are no rules for the relative frequencies with which things happen... There still remains the question, even if there is a correct measure on the multiverse, how will we ever know? It seems hard to imagine doing experiments to provide an answer. That, in a nutshell, is the biggest challenge posed by the prospect of the multiverse. It is not that the theory is unscientific, or that it is impossible to evaluate it. It's that evaluating it is hard.
Well, I remain a skeptic. I don't see how you get a meaningful explanation of anything if you throw an infinity in there - to me, that's a sign of a theoretical failure. Sure, the world might be like that, but that would basically reduce it to being fundamentally illogical. I can't conceive of how you can have meaningful probabilities in an infinite reality. Maybe you can, but it feels an awful lot like cheating to me.
IMHO, string theory, inflation, the multiverse and all that jazz are not straightforward, "business as usual" scientific theories. They're a far cry from being pseudoscientific bunk, but neither are they comparable to relativity or Maxwell's eqauations. They hardly represent some wonderful new advanced sort of science, rather, they are more in the fuzzy grey area between genuine pseudoscientific woo and hard physical reality. See, while I agree wholeheartedly that "falsification" can't be the whole definition of a scientific theory, I do hold that the prospect of falsifiability is always better. That doesn't lead to anything so binary as "non-falsifiable is bad, falsifiable is good", let alone scientific/unscientific. But it does suggest that there is something at least different about unfalsifiable ideas like the multiverse.
I maintain that a scientific idea should be at least testable, if not falsifiable. You have to be able to evaluate its success with respect to observational evidence and other competing theories. The multiverse might satisfy that criteria, but currently string theory does not. That doesn't preclude them from ever becoming testable, however. Perhaps we should think of them as proto-science.
See also : http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/05/i-told-you-he-was-tricksy.html
https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.05016
Incredible, as in, "not credible"
US President Donald Drumpf has shown no abnormal signs following a cognitive exam and is in excellent health, his White House doctor says. "I have no concerns about his cognitive ability or neurological functions," Ronny Jackson said on Tuesday.
"All data indicates the president is healthy and will remain so for the duration of his presidency," he said. "He continues to enjoy the significant long-term cardiac and overall health benefits that come from a lifetime of abstinence from tobacco and alcohol," he added.
When asked by a reporter how a man who consumes fried chicken and Diet Coke and does not exercise could be in good shape, Dr Jackson replied: "It's called genetics... He has incredible genes."
He knows genes, he has the best genes...
Come on. Doesn't the medical exam include tests forbeing a cunt personality disorders ? The fact that this test apparently doesn't spot something so buggeringly obviously stupid as Trump makes me highly skeptical of its usefulness.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42708826
"All data indicates the president is healthy and will remain so for the duration of his presidency," he said. "He continues to enjoy the significant long-term cardiac and overall health benefits that come from a lifetime of abstinence from tobacco and alcohol," he added.
When asked by a reporter how a man who consumes fried chicken and Diet Coke and does not exercise could be in good shape, Dr Jackson replied: "It's called genetics... He has incredible genes."
He knows genes, he has the best genes...
Come on. Doesn't the medical exam include tests for
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42708826
Tuesday 16 January 2018
The Ariane 5 program is ending - what next ?
A final order for a batch of 10 Ariane 5 rockets has been raised. The vehicle, which has been the mainstay of European launcher activity for the past 20 years, will be phased out once its successor is in place. ArianeGroup, the French-led industrial consortium, expects its new Ariane 6 to be flying no later than mid-2020, and in full operational service in 2023. At that point, Ariane 5 can be retired. The last order ensures sufficient rockets are available for the handover.
After a couple of early-career failures, the Ariane 5 has become a super-reliable vehicle. Its most recent outing in December was the 82nd straight successful flight. However, the vehicle is now considered too expensive for the way the launcher market is developing. And this need for change is emphasised by the rising prominence of the American SpaceX company which is able to recover and re-fly rockets, gaining further price advantage on top of the more modern production methods it uses.
The Ariane 6, although not designed for reusability in the first instance, will nonetheless have a considerably cheaper ticket price than the Ariane 5. This should be possible through a reduced workforce, more efficient production and the incorporation of advanced manufacturing techniques. ArianeGroup and its subsidiary marketing company, Arianespace, hope this will keep the European offering competitive in the face of the American challenge.
Well, I guess we will see if SpaceX make good on their much-vaunted 90% cost reduction through reusability.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42623300
After a couple of early-career failures, the Ariane 5 has become a super-reliable vehicle. Its most recent outing in December was the 82nd straight successful flight. However, the vehicle is now considered too expensive for the way the launcher market is developing. And this need for change is emphasised by the rising prominence of the American SpaceX company which is able to recover and re-fly rockets, gaining further price advantage on top of the more modern production methods it uses.
The Ariane 6, although not designed for reusability in the first instance, will nonetheless have a considerably cheaper ticket price than the Ariane 5. This should be possible through a reduced workforce, more efficient production and the incorporation of advanced manufacturing techniques. ArianeGroup and its subsidiary marketing company, Arianespace, hope this will keep the European offering competitive in the face of the American challenge.
Well, I guess we will see if SpaceX make good on their much-vaunted 90% cost reduction through reusability.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42623300
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