Group items tagged

"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

"How the 'emotional contagion' of memes makes them the internet's moral conscience By Allie Volpe Aug 27, 2018, 11:30am EDT Illustration by Alex Castro & Keegan Larwin SHARE Newly single, Jason Donahoe was perusing Tinder for the first time since it started integrating users' Instagram feeds. Suddenly, he had an idea: follow the Instagram accounts of some of the women he'd been interested in but didn't match with on the dating service. A few days later, he considered taking it a step further and direct messaging one of the women on Instagram. After all, the new interface of the dating app seemed to encourage users to explore other areas of potential matches' online lives, so why not take the initiative to reach out? Before he had a chance, however, he came across the profile of another woman whose Tinder photo spread featured a meme with Parks and Recreation character Jean-Ralphio Saperstein (Ben Schwartz) leaning into the face of Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) with the caption: hey I saw you on Tinder but we didn't match so I found your Instagram you're so beautiful you don't need to wear all that makeup ahah I bet you get a lot of creepy dm's but I'm not like all those other guys message me back beautiful btw what's your snap "I was like, 'Oh shit, wow,'" Donahoe says. Seeing his potential jerk move laid out so plainly as a neatly generalized joke, he saw it in a new light. "I knew a) to be aware of that, and b) to cut that shit out … It prompted self-reflection on my part." THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MEMES STRIKE A CULTURAL CHORD AND CAN GUIDE AND EVEN INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR Donahoe says memes have resonated with him particularly when they depict a "worse, extreme version" of himself. For Donahoe, the most successful memes are more than just jokes. They "strike a societal, cultural chord" and can be a potent cocktail for self-reflection as tools that can guide and even influence behavior. In the months leading up to the 2016 US

Though it may not be common knowledge, AI systems are currently being used in a wide variety of commercial applications, including article selection on news and social media sites, which movies get made,and maps that appear on our phones-AI systems have become trusted tools by big business. But their use has not always been without controversy. In recent years, researchers have found that AI apps used to approve mortgage and other loan applications are biased, for example, in favor of white males. This, researchers found, was because the dataset used to train the system mostly comprised white male profiles. In this new effort, the researchers wondered if the same might be true for AI systems used to assist doctors in diagnosing patients.

Ehre, a member of the UNC Marsico Lung Institute and the UNC Children's Research Institute, captured these images to illustrate how intense the SARS-CoV-2 infection of the airways can be in very graphic and easily understood images. Her lab conducted this research in collaboration with the labs of Ralph Baric, Ph.D., the William R. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health, who holds a joint faculty appointment at the UNC Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Richard Boucher, MD, the James C. Moeser Eminent Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Director of the Marsico Lung Institute at the UNC School of Medicine Covid-19

team of researchers from the NYU Abu Dhabi's (NYUAD) Smart Materials Lab (SML) led by Professor of Chemistry Panče Naumov has conducted a thorough review of the scientific literature surrounding the natural production of light, called bioluminescence, and developed conclusions that will help others in the field direct their research to uncover the mysteries behind this fascinating natural phenomenon.

Until now, research into regime shifts has focused on critical environmental thresholds, or "tipping points," in external conditions-eg when crossing a certain temperature threshold triggers a sudden shift to desertification. But the new model by Catalina Chaparro-Pedraza and SFI External Professor André de Roos, both at the University of Amsterdam, reveals how a small change in the external environment, with little immediate impact, can induce slow evolutionary changes in the species that inhabit the system. After what the researchers call a "considerable delay," wherein species slowly evolve a new trait or behavior over generations, the regime shift manifests as a delayed reaction.

"Class Warfare "Towards a History of the Professional: On the Class Composition of the Research University" [Viewpoint Magazine]. From 2013, but it still looks interesting. By arrogating more power to the top layers of academic administrative elite, some in the academic profession saw the possibility of imbricating themselves into the same social class as capitalists, rather than simply serving them. Federal, state, and local laws changed to make students into consumers; courts ruled that public, non-profit universities could patent and own intellectual property; a new type of capital, venture capital, was developed to accelerate the transmission of research into products; and a sub-class of faculty, the adjunct, was formulated to teach the dregs of the expanding university system - those composing the massive undergraduate base, forced into higher education as a college degree became a de facto requirement for admission into any of the professions, and many other occupations. Graduate students and adjuncts took on the bulk of the teaching, freeing star faculty from the responsibility of lecturing to dullards for whom their words would be proverbial pearls before swine."

In December, Antarctica lost its status as the last continent free of COVID-19 when 36 people at the Chilean Bernardo O'Higgins research station tested positive. The station's isolation from other bases and fewer researchers in the continent means the outbreak is now likely contained.

BY NOW THERE'S little doubt about hydroxychloroquine: It doesn't work for treating Covid-19. But there's a bigger, more important lesson hidden in the story of its failure-a rarely-mentioned, but altogether crucial, error baked into the early research. The scientists who ran the first, promising laboratory experiments on the drug had used the wrong kind of cells: Instead of testing its effects on human lung cells, they relied on a supply of mass-produced, standardized cells made from a monkey's kidney. In the end, that poor decision made their findings more or less irrelevant to human health. Worse, it's possible that further research into novel Covid-19 cures will end up being compromised by the same mistake.

a paper recently published in Nature Sustainability, Grassini and Cassman propose a four-pronged prioritization framework for funders to use as they distribute research dollars to agricultural scientists pursuing the goal of sustainable intensification. That term refers to increasing yields of major food crops on existing farmland to avoid converting rainforests and wetlands for crop production, and doing so without negative effects on biodiversity, water and soil.

While scientists still don't fully understand the diverse nature of RNA molecules, it is believed that the proteins binding to them, called RNA-binding proteins, are associated with many types of disease formation. Research led by biomedical scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has led to a novel detection method, called CARPID, to identify binding proteins of specific RNAs in living cells. It is expected that the innovation can be applied in various types of cell research, from identifying biomarkers of cancer diagnosis to detecting potential drug targets for treating viral diseases.

Silicon is the second-most abundant element in Earth's crust and it plays a vital role in plant life, both on land and in the sea. Silicon is used by plants in tissue building, which helps to ward off herbivorous animals. In the ocean, phytoplankton consume enormous amounts of silicon; they get a constant supply courtesy of rivers and streams. And silicon winds up in rivers and streams due to erosion of silicon-containing rocks. Land plants also use silicon. They get it from the soil. In this new effort, the researchers began by noting that the terrestrial biogeochemical cycling of silicon (how it moves from plants back to the soil and then into plants again) is poorly understood. To gain a better understanding of how it works, they ventured to a part of Western Australia that, unlike other parts of the world, has not been impacted by Pleistocene glaciations. The soil there gave the researchers a look at the silicon cycle going back 2 million years.

The researchers investigated food consumption of the Huaca Prieta and Paredones peoples, two neighboring groups who lived less than half a mile apart. Participating were Tiffiny Tung, associate professor of anthropology, Larisa DeSantis, associate professor of biological sciences and earth and environmental sciences and Tom Dillehay, senior research professor and University Distinguished Professor of anthropology and religion and culture emeritus and Rebeca Webb Wilson University Chair Emeritus.