DARPA: Bridging the Bio-Electronic Divide
January 20th, 2016Via: U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency:
A new DARPA program aims to develop an implantable neural interface able to provide unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world. The interface would serve as a translator, converting between the electrochemical language used by neurons in the brain and the ones and zeros that constitute the language of information technology. The goal is to achieve this communications link in a biocompatible device no larger than one cubic centimeter in size, roughly the volume of two nickels stacked back to back.
The program, Neural Engineering System Design (NESD), stands to dramatically enhance research capabilities in neurotechnology and provide a foundation for new therapies.
“Today’s best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem,” said Phillip Alvelda, the NESD program manager. “Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics.”
Among the program’s potential applications are devices that could compensate for deficits in sight or hearing by feeding digital auditory or visual information into the brain at a resolution and experiential quality far higher than is possible with current technology.
Neural interfaces currently approved for human use squeeze a tremendous amount of information through just 100 channels, with each channel aggregating signals from tens of thousands of neurons at a time. The result is noisy and imprecise. In contrast, the NESD program aims to develop systems that can communicate clearly and individually with any of up to one million neurons in a given region of the brain.
Neurosurgeon Claims Successful Head Transplant on Monkey
January 20th, 2016Via: Independent:
The scientist who claims to be about to carry out the first human head transplant says that he has successfully done the procedure on a monkey.
Maverick neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has tested the procedure in experiments on monkeys and human cadavers, he told New Scientist.
Dr Canavero says that the success shows that his plan to transplant a human’s head onto a donor body is in place. He says that the procedure will be ready before the end of 2017 and could eventually become a way of treating complete paralysis.
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The newly-revealed success is likely to be an attempt to help generate funds for the ultimate aim of giving a head transplant to Valery Spriridonov, the Russian patient who has been chosen to be the first to undergo the procedure. Dr Canavero has said that he will need a huge amount of money to fund the team of surgeons and scientists involved, and that he intends to ask Mark Zuckerberg to help fund it.
IBM Watson Head Mike Rhodin On The Future Of Artificial Intelligence
January 20th, 2016Did you ever read, The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson?
Do you remember Nell’s copy of the Primer?
But to call it a book does not really do it justice — it is really a massively parallel computer in which each page can dynamically rearrange itself to tell a story.
Check this out, from the piece below about IBM’s Watson AI:
A company called Elemental Path has built and branded a product called CogniToys. They are shipping a dinosaur that is connected to Watson. It allows children to talk to their toys, but have a knowledge base on the back end that not only can answer them, but can adapt to their age and make sure the answers are age appropriate, and also use the information in that dialogue to start to track the progress of the child developmentally. That is just a great ecosystem example of using the technology for engagement.
Mmm hmm.
Via: Forbes:
The key breakthrough was that we were able to feed the system natural language text: reference material, the internet, Wikipedia, web pages. In essence, we taught the system to read. The process of building a system initially is about figuring out what domain your application is going to be part of. Curating, in many ways figuring out what the information sources that are important within your profession or within that domain are, and then ingesting that information into the system or having the system read it all.
The second step in that is to create a level of ground truth around training the system. Think of this in the analogy of when you are in school. The first thing a teacher will have you do is read a book. The next thing they will do is ask you questions about the book so they can figure out whether you understood it. Watson operates much the same way: it reads the information that you have decided is pertinent to your application, and then you train or test it based on asking questions and checking the answers and creating a level of grounding underlying truth. Then you continue to update the system with more information, and that ground truth continues to evolve and learn with machine learning algorithms over time. The idea is, simply put, you read a lot of information, you make sure you understand it, and then you start to become more “expert” at that information. The basis of the system is that you read it, you train it, and then you continue to learn through use– much like we do. It is mirroring the human learning process.
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You see the early stages of what I think is going to be the third technological revolution getting started here. I think of this as the information revolution. This is something that is going to be with us for decades, and we are maybe in year three of something that is going to last for forty to fifty years.
Not The Onion: Lamb Chop Weight Enforcers Want Warrantless Access to Australians’ Metadata
January 20th, 2016Via: Guardian:
If you are in the business of selling lamb chops, make sure you are weighing them properly: the National Measurement Institute wants warrantless access to Australians’ metadata to help them hunt down supermarkets skimping on portions.
The NMI is one of 61 agencies that has applied to the attorney general, George Brandis, to be classed as a “criminal law-enforcement agency” in order to gain warrantless access to telecommunications data.
The government’s mandatory data retention laws, introduced last year, increased the already vast array of personal phone and internet data of Australians that would be accessible to government agencies, and all without a warrant.
The Planet’s Fisheries Are In Even Worse Shape Than We Thought
January 20th, 2016Via: Huffington Post:
The world’s oceans have been overfished far more than reported, according to a new study.
The report, published in the journal Nature Communications, reanalyzed worldwide catch data and compared it to information that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations uses. Researchers found that from 1950 to 2010, up to 30 percent more fish — more than 35 billion tons a year — were caught than reported to the agency.
Much of this unreported seafood stems from small-scale fisherman, illegal operations and millions of tons of bycatch, or fish accidentally caught and then discarded.
In the same time period, global catch rates have fallen nearly three times faster than estimated as the industry struggles to find healthy populations to fish.
“You have a situation where we have long ceased to live off the interest,” said Daniel Pauly, a professor at the University of British Columbia. “We now live off the capital.”
Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server Contained Information of Special Access Programs
January 20th, 2016Via: NBC:
Emails from Hillary Clinton’s home server contained information classified at levels higher than previously known, including a level meant to protect some of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence, according to a document obtained by NBC News.
In a letter to lawmakers, the intelligence community’s internal watchdog says some of Clinton’s emails contained information classified Top Secret/Special Access Program, a secrecy designation that includes some of the most closely held U.S. intelligence matters.
Two American intelligence officials tell NBC News these are not the same two emails from Clinton’s server that have long been reported as containing information deemed Top Secret.
Delhi: The Sleep Mafia
January 18th, 2016Via: New York Times:
When midnight approaches in Old Delhi and a thick, freezing fog settles over the city, the quilt-wallah Farukh Khan sits on his corner, watching the market for his services come to life.
They shuffle up one by one, men desperate for sleep. The bicycle rickshaw pullers, peeling one of his 20-rupee, or 30-cent, quilts off a pile, fold their bodies into strange angles on the four-foot seats of their vehicles. The day laborers curl their bodies on the frigid sidewalk, sometimes spooned against other men for warmth.
Those who cannot afford to pay Mr. Khan build fires, out of plastic if necessary, and crouch over them, waiting for the night to be over.
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The story of privatized sleep follows a familiar pattern in this city: After decades of uncontrolled growth, the city government’s inability to provide services like health care, water, transportation and security has given rise to thriving private industries, efficient enough to fulfill the needs of those who can pay.
But shelter, given Delhi’s extremes of heat and cold, is often a matter of survival. The police report collecting more than 3,000 unidentifiable bodies from the streets every year, typically men whose health broke down after years living outdoors. Winter presents especially brutal choices to homeless laborers, who have no place to protect blankets from thieves in the daytime hours. Some try to hide them in the tops of trees.
Big Banks Brace for Oil Loans to Implode
January 18th, 2016Via: CNN:
Big banks are cringing as crude oil is crumbling.
Firms on Wall Street helped bankroll America’s energy boom, financing very expensive drilling projects that ended up flooding the world with oil.
Now that the oil glut has caused prices to crash below $30 a barrel, turmoil is rippling through the energy industry and souring many of those loans. Dozens of oil companies have gone bankrupt and the ones that haven’t are feeling enough financial stress to slash spending and cut tens of thousands of jobs.
Three of America’s biggest banks warned last week that oil prices will continue to create headaches on Wall Street — especially if doomsday scenarios of $20 or even $10 oil play out.
Mistake? Refiner Bids -50 Cents Per Barrel for Low Grade Oil
January 18th, 2016Via: Bloomberg:
Oil is so plentiful and cheap in the U.S. that at least one buyer says it would pay almost nothing to take a certain type of low-quality crude.
Flint Hills Resources LLC, the refining arm of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch’s industrial empire, said it offered to pay $1.50 a barrel Friday for North Dakota Sour, a high-sulfur grade of crude, according to a corrected list of prices posted on its website Monday. It had previously posted a price of -$0.50.
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“Telling producers that they have to pay you to take away their oil certainly gives the producers a whole bunch of incentive to shut in their wells,” Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston, said of the price that was posted as negative until Flint Hills revised it on Monday.
Jake Reint, a Flint Hills spokesman, said the price was fixed on the website after the firm incorrectly posted it as negative. The prices reported by Flint Hills Resources and rivals such as Plains All American Pipeline LP are used as benchmarks, setting reference prices for dozens of different crudes produced in the U.S.
Rise of the Robots Will Eliminate More Than 5 Million Jobs
January 18th, 2016Via: Bloomberg:
Over five million jobs will be lost by 2020 as a result of developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics and other technological change, according to World Economic Forum research.
