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Bill Fulkerson

Anatomy of an AI System - 1 views

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 14 Sep 18 - No Cached
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    "With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay
Bill Fulkerson

Model suggests it could take decades for planet to start cooling after emissions are re... - 0 views

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    As the planet continues to heat up due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, scientists continue to try to predict how the planet will respond. In this new effort, the researchers wondered what might happen if the people of the world finally saw the light and made serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Steve Bosserman

Citizen science efforts should be scaled up - SciDev.Net - 0 views

  • For instance, research institutions may work with local communities to help monitor biodiversity on habitats and species that the volunteers care about such as forests, species they hunt for food, economic or cultural reasons; the locals often have good knowledge of the diversity where they live. Global apps, such as iNaturalist or eBird, for urban groups, park managers and tourists can be promoted to help capture photographic records and species in certain locations.
Steve Bosserman

The future is mixed-race and that's a good thing for humanity | Aeon Essays - 0 views

  • If the history of life on Earth can teach us anything, it is this: as conditions change, species either adapt or become extinct. In our time of considerable environmental change, humanity should consider its options. No species, even the almighty Homo sapiens, can stop evolution completely. But we can choose to limit our capacity for ongoing biological adaptation in an effort to remain ever the same by keeping populations isolated. Of course, such decisions are not made by humanity as a whole but by individuals and governments. Nationalism and xenophobia, on the rise in the US and Europe, threaten to decrease genetic exchange between populations, stifling our ability to continue evolving and adapting.Alternatively, we can embrace immigration and globalisation in an effort to position ourselves for a brighter future.
Steve Bosserman

Paying for Health Care With Trees: A Win-Win for Orangutans and Communities - 0 views

  • Today, the clinic not only provides high-quality health care that is affordable to all, but actively rewards communities that reduce logging, or stop altogether, with further reductions on the cost of treatment. Forest guardians, recruited in every village, encourage others in their community to reduce logging. The guardians also monitor illegal activity and reforestation efforts, and offer training in organic farming techniques.
  • Today, the clinic not only provides high-quality health care that is affordable to all, but actively rewards communities that reduce logging, or stop altogether, with further reductions on the cost of treatment. Forest guardians, recruited in every village, encourage others in their community to reduce logging. The guardians also monitor illegal activity and reforestation efforts, and offer training in organic farming techniques.
Bill Fulkerson

Should I Major in the Humanities? - The Atlantic - 0 views

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    "Right now, the biggest impediment to thinking about the future of the humanities is that, thanks to this entrenched narrative of decline-because we've been crying wolf for so long-we already think we know what's going on. The usual suspects-student debt, postmodern relativism, vanishing jobs-are once again being trotted out. But the data suggest something far more interesting may be at work. The plunge seems not to reflect a sudden decline of interest in the humanities, or any sharp drop in the actual career prospects of humanities majors. Instead, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, students seem to have shifted their view of what they should be studying-in a largely misguided effort to enhance their chances on the job market. And something essential is being lost in the process."
Bill Fulkerson

Human ancestry correlates with language and reveals that race is not an objective genom... - 0 views

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    "It is now possible to trace the migratory paths of anatomically modern humans using genetic data. Early research pointed to a sub-Saharan African origin for modern humans by around 200,000-150,000 years ago1, and analyses of autosomal markers2 and Y DNA haplogroups3, 4 suggest the earliest structuring of the human population occurred approximately 140,000 years ago5,6,7,8. Initial efforts to characterize the movement of early humans in relation to ancestry grouped populations according to five geographical regions: Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe/the Middle East/Central Asia/South Asia, East Asia, Oceania, and the Americas9. Subsequent analyses allowed for refinement of the genetic history of global ancestries, revealing regional structure through the identification of 710, 1411, and 19 ancestries2."
Bill Fulkerson

Alarming COVID variants show vital role of genomic surveillance - 0 views

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    Efforts to track SARS-CoV-2 sequences have helped identify worrying variants - but researchers are blind to emerging mutations in some regions.
Bill Fulkerson

Feared microbes' hospital hangouts are revealed : Research Highlights - 0 views

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    A sweeping effort to map a hospital's microorganisms has found that infectious pathogens hide in a place that's all about cleaning: the sink. Niranjan Nagarajan at the Genome Institute of Singapore and his colleagues sampled bacteria from bed rails, sinks and other sites in a Singapore hospital. Microbes that tend to grow in slimy 'biofilms' and cause hospital-acquired infections were prevalent on sink traps and faucet aerators, whereas skin-dwelling bacteria were abundant on objects, such as door knobs and bed rails, that are often touched. Frequently touched sites harboured multidrug-resistant microbes such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which might persist in the hospital environment for more than eight years, the team suggested.
Bill Fulkerson

Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems | Nature - 0 views

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    Land use change-for example, the conversion of natural habitats to agricultural or urban ecosystems-is widely recognized to influence the risk and emergence of zoonotic disease in humans1,2. However, whether such changes in risk are underpinned by predictable ecological changes remains unclear. It has been suggested that habitat disturbance might cause predictable changes in the local diversity and taxonomic composition of potential reservoir hosts, owing to systematic, trait-mediated differences in species resilience to human pressures3,4. Here we analyse 6,801 ecological assemblages and 376 host species worldwide, controlling for research effort, and show that land use has global and systematic effects on local zoonotic host communities. Known wildlife hosts of human-shared pathogens and parasites overall comprise a greater proportion of local species richness (18-72% higher) and total abundance (21-144% higher) in sites under substantial human use (secondary, agricultural and urban ecosystems) compared with nearby undisturbed habitats. The magnitude of this effect varies taxonomically and is strongest for rodent, bat and passerine bird zoonotic host species, which may be one factor that underpins the global importance of these taxa as zoonotic reservoirs. We further show that mammal species that harbour more pathogens overall (either human-shared or non-human-shared) are more likely to occur in human-managed ecosystems, suggesting that these trends may be mediated by ecological or life-history traits that influence both host status and tolerance to human disturbance5,6. Our results suggest that global changes in the mode and the intensity of land use are creating expanding hazardous interfaces between people, livestock and wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease.
Bill Fulkerson

Research could save years of breeding for new Miscanthus hybrids - 0 views

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    Breeders have been working to develop new Miscanthus hybrids for years, but the clonal crop's sterility, complex genome, and long time to maturity make conventional breeding difficult. In a new study, University of Illinois researchers mine the crop's vast genomic potential in an effort to speed up the breeding process and maximize its most desirable traits.
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