July 29, 2015
Photograph by Tuan Guitare, National Geographic Your Shot
Terraced rice fields are seen from above in Lao Cai Province in northern Vietnam. Rice is one of the country’s key exports.
quinta-feira, 30 de julho de 2015
AI Researchers Warn Against “Arms Race”
| Tue, 07/28/2015 - 6:00pm Greg Watry, Digital Reporter
Image: Shutterstock Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak are among the many signatories of a letter warning against the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and weapons, something the Future of Life Institute sees as feasible within years. “If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: Autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow,” the organization said in an open letter. The Future of Life Institute is a volunteer-run research and outreach organization, which is currently focused on the potential risks of human-level AI. “Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc,” continues the letter. While the letter doesn’t dismiss the idea of AI on the battlefield, the organization believes it could be integrated to make the battlefield safer, especially for civilians. The letter has collected over 1,000 signatures, and was presented at the International Joint Conferences of Artificial Intelligence, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Musk previously called AI “our biggest existential threat,” and there was a need for “regulatory oversight,” according to the The Guardian. In early 2015, Musk donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute for a global research program aimed at keeping AI beneficial to humanity. The money was disseminated by the Future of Life Institute via a grant application process. Thirty-seven teams were selected and will use around $7 million of the donation. Projects and studies include a Carnegie-Mellon Univ. project aimed at making AI systems explain their decisions to humans, a Stanford Univ. study on how to keep economic impacts of AI beneficial and projects at Univ. of California, Berkeley and Oxford Univ. on developing techniques for AI systems to learn what humans prefer based on behavior observation. In an interview with BBC News, Hawking warned full AI could be the end of the human race. “It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate,” he told BBC. “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete.” Wozniak, however, has a different view of AI on the whole. At the Freescale Technology Forum 2015, Wozniak said it would be hundreds of years before AI replaces humanity, and it may turn out to be a good thing. “They’ll be so smart by then that they’ll know they have to keep nature, and humans are part of nature,” he said at the forum, according to TechRepublic. According to the article, a scenario where AI takes over the world would be contingent on everything being controlled by computers, as is being explored with the “Internet of Things.” Already, Carnegie Mellon Univ. is turning its campus into a living laboratory for Google-funded Internet of Things research. Anind K. Dey, the lead investigator of the project and director of the university’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, says in an interview with R&D Magazine, the goal by the end of the month is to have two or three spaces on campus outfitted with sensors. According to the university, the sensors will help create smart environments. One example is Snap2It, a system that connects users to a printer or projector by taking a picture of it on a smartphone. • CONFERENCE AGENDA ANNOUNCED: The highly-anticipated educational tracks for the 2015 R&D 100 Awards & Technology Conference feature 28 sessions, plus keynote speakers Dean Kamen and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason. Learn more.
|
quarta-feira, 29 de julho de 2015
Study reports few errors when applied to patients with chronic kidney disease
It can be difficult for patients with complex chronic diseases to take medications appropriately, but a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN) finds that tailored mobile health technologies can help ensure the safety of their care.To determine whether user-friendly mobile technologies might help keep patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) on track with their medications, Clarissa Jonas Diamantidis, MD, MHS, of the Duke University School of Medicine, and her colleagues at the University of Maryland School of Medicine evaluated the home-based usability of a mobile health medication inquiry system (MIS) that they designed as a patient-centered medication safeguard. The MIS application responds to study medications with 3 potential responses: "not safe in chronic kidney disease," "use with caution, speak with your healthcare provider," and "safe in chronic kidney disease." The investigators randomized 20 patients with CKD to a text-based MIS platform or a personal digital assistant (PDA)-based MIS platform. Participants were then mailed 3 randomly selected sample prescription pill bottles and asked to input the medication into the MIS and record the system responses to determine their appropriateness in CKD. "General usability of the MIS application was high, regardless of platform type, with only a 5% error rate," said Dr. Diamantidis. Two errors occurred in the text-based group and 1 in the PDA-based group. "The majority of participants found the application easy to use and helpful in avoiding the use of harmful medications, and they would recommend the application to others." Despite general proficiency with the mobile health MIS application, the study uncovered variable electronic health literacy among patients. When participants were administered the eHealth Literacy Scale, which evaluates individuals' perceived abilities to effectively apply electronic health information to health problems, the majority of participants felt the Internet was a useful source of health information, but only about half felt they knew where to find helpful health resources on the Internet. Even fewer reported being able to tell high quality from low quality Internet-based health information. In an accompanying editorial, Bryan Becker, MD, of the University of Chicago, noted that harnessing mobile technology to better treat CKD is logical. "What Diamantidis and colleagues have done is extend that treatment platform beyond traditional care settings into the home," he wrote. "They have used a tool to create a small but very important first step in achieving patient engagement and patient satisfaction in self-care." Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by American Society of Nephrology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal References:
|
Falls causing injury were more than twice as likely in older men taking a particular group of commonly used medicines
Using data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), scientists from Trinity College Dublin, St James's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland and three UK Universities have discovered a significant link between serious falls causing injury in older men and a particular group of commonly used medicines. The findings are published today by the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.Many medicines which are commonly prescribed for older people for bladder problems, depression, psychosis, insomnia, and respiratory problems, have anti-cholinergic effects. The medications affect the brain by blocking a key chemical called acetylcholine which is involved in passing messages between nerve cells. This can lead to side effects including blurred vision, increased heart rate, sedation and confusion. Previous studies have shown an impact on cognitive function and mortality from taking multiple anti-cholinergic medicines. In this important new study, the researchers led by Dr Kathryn Richardson who carried out the research at the Department of Gerontology in Trinity and at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia, examined whether the use of such medicines increased the risk of subsequent serious falls (which caused injury) in people aged over 65 years in Ireland. Using the TILDA data which recorded the medications the participants were taking and the number and type of falls they had experienced, the team found that falls resulting in injury were more than twice as likely in men taking medicines with potent anti-cholinergic activity. The effect remained even after accounting for differences in health and other risk factors for falls. A greater use of such medicines increased the risk for these men further. There was no such association for women, however. Speaking about the significance of these findings for prescribing practices in older people, lead author Dr Kathryn Richardson, a former PhD student at Trinity, who is now a Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia said: "Our findings indicate the importance for doctors, pharmacists and healthcare professionals to regularly review the appropriateness of medications taken by their older patients. It is however, important that people don't stop taking any medications before speaking with their GP. It is not fully clear why the same link was not found in women and further research is needed to explore this and the reasons behind the findings in men." Dr Richardson continued: "Experiencing a fall can have a devastating impact on older people's lives and is a major contributor to care home admission and hospitalisation, so it is vitally important for us to find ways to reduce the risk of falls or their severity." Senior author and Principal Investigator of TILDA Professor Rose Anne Kenny said: "Falls are one of the leading causes of loss of independence as people get older and the principal reason given for admission into nursing home care in Europe. If early risk factors are identified and modified, falls can be prevented. This paper highlights important new risk factors for falls." Dr Chris Fox, Clinical Reader/Honorary Consultant Psychogeriatrician at the University of East Anglia said: "With the rising levels of frailty in older people we must develop strategies to maintain health and avoid prescribing medicines which could cause a deterioration- such an approach could be simply implemented using tools available" Dr Ian Maidment, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy at Aston University said: "After a fall, an older person may never regain the same quality of life. This research helps us to understand how medication is linked to falls. It is vital that doctors, nurses and pharmacists review medication if someone has suffered a recent fall." Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Trinity College Dublin. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference:
|
Slowness as organization principle in the brain
 Prof Laurenz Wiskott investigates slowness as organisation principle for the brain. Credit: © RUBIN, photo: Gorczany The brain is so complex that its structure cannot be completely determined by genetics. Neuroscientists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) attempt to figure out which mechanisms nerve cells use to organize themselves. They have suggested that slowness may be the decisive factor. The Ruhr-Universität's science magazine RUBIN reports: http://rubin.rub.de/en/slowness-rather-genetics Cells extract features that vary slowly Prof Dr Laurenz Wiskott from the RUB Neural Computation Institute has been continuously developing the slowness principle since 1998. It states that the brain extracts features from the input signals that change only slowly in the course of time. Based on those slowly varying features, the organization structures of the nerve cells form. Laurenz Wiskott has created an algorithm, with which he can test the slowness principle in computer simulations. It is called Slow Feature Analysis. Slowness principle can, for example, explain the formation of place cells The input fed into the algorithm consists of video sequences. It searches for functions that extract features from the images which change as slowly as possible. After the simulation is completed, the analysis renders a set of different functions. Each corresponds with one cell with specific features. Thus, the Slow Feature Analysis generates nerve cells that have been described in numerous experiments. The researchers can thus, for example, explain the formation of place cells, i.e. nerve cells that fire only if an individual is in a certain location within a setting. They were found in experiments in the hippocampus of rats, a brain structure that, among other things, is responsible for spatial navigation. With the Slow Feature Analysis, RUB PhD student Fabian Schönfeld has recently reproduced the results of six additional physiological experiments. Facial recognition through Slow Feature Analysis Wiskott's team is researching into other areas as well, where the slowness principle could prove useful. The researchers have trained their algorithm to estimate, for example, the age of individuals based on a photo, with a precision of plus/minus 3.7 years. Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
|
terça-feira, 28 de julho de 2015
Microspectrophotometer
| Fri, 04/03/2015 - 6:47pm CRAIC Technologies
Craic Technologies' 20/30 XL is designed to work with large-scale samples, such as 300-mm wafers, to measure thin film thickness as well as the Raman spectra of microscopic sampling areas. The 20/30 XL also offers UV microscopy, a full spectroscopy suite as well as either manual or automated operation. Because of the flexible instrument design, the is no upper limit to the sample size which makes this instrument perfect for everything from quality control of the largest flat panel displays to film thickness of 300-mm wafers. Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy or ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry (UV-Vis or UV/Vis) refers to absorption spectroscopy or reflectance spectroscopy in the ultraviolet-visible spectral region. This means it uses light in the visible and adjacent (near-UV and near-infrared [NIR]) ranges. The absorption or reflectance in the visible range directly affects the perceived color of the chemicals involved. In this region of the electromagnetic spectrum, molecules undergo electronic transitions. This technique is complementary to fluorescence spectroscopy, in that fluorescence deals with transitions from the excited state to the ground state, while absorption measures transitions from the ground state to the excited state.
Craic Technologies, www.microspectra.com
|
Spiritual Mandalas Made with Wool
Posted: 27 Jul 2015 01:00 PM PDT
Tissés en laine, les mandalas portant le nom de Ojos de Dios (The Eyes of God), est un art populaire et spirituel tirant son origine des peuples d’Amérique du Sud. Traditionnellement ils sont utilisés pour prier, célébrer la religion ou offerts en cadeau pour protéger les maisons. Jay Mohler crée les siens depuis une quarantaine d’années et les vendait, à l’époque aux touristes dans la région d’Albuquerque, au Nouveau Mexique. Aujourd’hui ils sont disponibles sur sa boutique Etsy.
Round of Testing Completed on Webb Telescope Flight Mirrors
This July 11, 2015 photograph captures one of the final, if not the final, James Webb Space Telescope flight primary mirror segments to be processed through NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Calibration, Integration and Alignment Facility (CIAF).
The mirror is seen here on the Configuration Measurement Machine (CMM), which is used for precision measurements of the backs of the mirrors. These precision measurements must be accurate to 0.1 microns or 1/400th the thickness of a human hair.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
Image Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
Last Updated: July 28, 2015
Editor: Sarah Loff
Abundant tiger population shrinks to just 100 in Bangladesh
| by Cat DiStasio, 07/28/15
In Bangladesh, a new census shows that tiger populations in the Sundarbans mangrove forest are more endangered than ever. The study, which used hidden cameras to track and record tigers, provides a more accurate update than previous surveys that used other methods. The year-long census, which ended this April, revealed only around 100 of the big cats remain in what was once home to the largest population of tigers on earth.
The Sundarbans mangrove forest is the world’s largest of its kind, spanning 3,900 square miles of which 60 percent lies inside the Bangladeshi border (the rest is in India). The mangrove forest has long been known as the home of the largest populations of the endangered cats on earth, but that may no longer be true as numbers dwindle. In 2004, the forest was believed to be home to 440 tigers, although researchers now suspect that figure was too high due to errors in methodology. The results of the most recent hidden camera census estimate as few as 100 of the majestic big cats remain in the wilds of the mangrove forest and, sadly, government wildlife experts say this new count is likely to be accurate. Related: Indian tiger population climbs by 30 percent thanks to conservation efforts Although tiger populations elsewhere have seen encouraging increases, Bangladesh does not have the same legal protections in place for the big cats. Wildlife conservationists are calling for the government to put an end to illegal poaching, which they attribute in part to the decline in population. Commercial development projects also pose a threat to the tigers’ habitat, and advocates believe those should be restricted. Without intervention, the number of tigers living in the mangrove forest will continue to drop. Via The Guardian
|
China Will Soon Leapfrog Traditional Leaders in Nuclear Power
| China generates only about 2 percent of its total electricity using nuclear power, but it is adding new reactors much faster than any other country. By Mike Orcutt on July 27, 2015 Why It MattersNuclear power will likely have to play a big contributing role toward helping countries reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.China is rapidly moving up the global nuclear power leaderboard. Since 2012, as the traditional leaders in nuclear energy production have remained stagnant or backed off of their reliance on nuclear in the wake of Fukushima, China has added 11 new reactors and over 11 gigawatts of nuclear generating capacity. By the end of this year, China is expected to pass Russia and South Korea and boast the fourth-largest nuclear generating capacity in the world, behind the United States, France, and Japan. By 2020 it will likely replace Japan in third place. This trend shows no signs of slowing, because China has huge ambitions for adding new reactors, including advanced reactor designs, in the coming decades (see “Nuclear Options”). The country plans to increase its capacity from 23 gigawatts currently to 58 gigawatts by 2020, at which point it is also aiming to have 30 additional gigawatts under construction, according to the World Nuclear Association. Right now, of the 64 reactors being built around the world, 24 are in China—15 more than in second-place Russia.
The Chinese government is banking on nuclear playing a significant role in helping it achieve its goals of having 15 percent of overall energy consumption come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2020, and 20 percent by 2030 (in 2012, 91 percent came from fossil fuels, according to the Energy Information Administration). Nuclear will also be very important, in addition to wind, solar, and hydropower, if China is to deliver on its promise that its annual emissions will level off no later than 2030 (See: “China Could Deliver on Its Carbon Promise Earlier than Expected”). source : MIT Technology Review.
|
Assinar:
Postagens (Atom)