How Poverty Changes Kids’ Brains
December 16th, 2015Via: Nautilus:
When children grow up in poverty, their brains can take a different shape. That’s one of the stark and uncomfortable findings from the lab of Kimberly Noble, a pediatrician and cognitive neuroscientist at Teachers College, Columbia University. Noble has used MRI scans to study the brains of children and found that kids in different socioeconomic strata show differences in brain structure—which can correspond to variations in brain function. Nautilus spoke with her about how the stress of poverty may change the developing brain, how those anatomical differences may translate to different outcomes in school and life, and what lessons policymakers should take from her research.
Guy Builds Self Driving Car in His Garage with Commodity Computer Gear and Linux
December 16th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
Hotz’s approach isn’t simply a low-cost knockoff of existing autonomous vehicle technology. He says he’s come up with discoveries—most of which he refuses to disclose in detail—that improve how the AI software interprets data coming in from the cameras. “We’ve figured out how to phrase the driving problem in ways compatible with deep learning,” Hotz says. Instead of the hundreds of thousands of lines of code found in other self-driving vehicles, Hotz’s software is based on about 2,000 lines.
The major advance he will discuss is the edge that deep-learning techniques provide in autonomous technology. He says the usual practice has been to manually code rules that handle specific situations. There’s code that helps cars follow other vehicles on the highway, and more code to deal with a deer that leaps into the road. Hotz’s car has no such built-in rules. It learns what drivers typically do in various situations and then tries to mimic and perfect that behavior. If his Acura cruises by a bicyclist, for example, it gives the biker some extra room, because it’s seen Hotz do that in the past. His system has a more general-purpose kind of intelligence than a long series of if/then rules. As Hotz puts it in developer parlance, “?‘If’ statements kill.” They’re unreliable and imprecise in a real world full of vagaries and nuance. It’s better to teach the computer to be like a human, who constantly processes all kinds of visual clues and uses experience, to deal with the unexpected rather than teach it a hard-and-fast policy.
In the coming weeks, Hotz intends to start driving for Uber so he can rack up a lot of training miles for the car. He aims to have a world-class autonomous vehicle in five months, something he can show off for Musk. He’s heard that Teslas struggle when going across the Golden Gate Bridge because of the poor lane markings. So he plans to film a video of the Acura outperfoming a Tesla across the bridge, and then follow that up by passing the final test on I-405 in Los Angeles where Musk lives. Hotz’s YouTube videos get millions of views, and he fully expects Musk will get the message. “I’m a big Elon fan, but I wish he didn’t jerk me around for three months,” he says. “He can buy the technology for double.” (Says Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes: “We wish him well.”)
There’s really no telling how effective Hotz’s software and self-learning technology ultimately will be. His self-funded experiment could end with Hotz humbly going back to knock on Google’s door for a job. “Yeah, of course there will be skepticism,” he says. “This is part of a great adventure. All I can say is, ‘Watch.’?”
Why Force Awakens Can’t Hope to Match the Box-Office Power of the Original
December 16th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
What’s stronger than the Force? Inflation.
The Onion on Ergonomics: Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back
December 16th, 2015Ahhyep. Worked for me.
Via: The Onion:
In an effort to help working individuals improve their fitness and well-being, experts at the Mayo Clinic issued a new set of health guidelines Thursday recommending that Americans stand up at their desk, leave their office, and never return. “Many Americans spend a minimum of eight hours per day sitting in an office, but we observed significant physical and mental health benefits in subjects after just one instance of standing up, walking out the door, and never coming back to their place of work again,” said researcher Claudine Sparks, who explained that those who implemented the practice in their lives reported an improvement in mood and reduced stress that lasted for the remainder of the day, and which appeared to persist even into subsequent weeks.
…
Sparks added that Americans could maximize positive effects by using their lunch break to walk until nothing looks familiar anymore and your old life is a distant memory.
Research Credit: Eileen
Smog Choked Chinese Buy Cans of Canadian “Fresh Mountain Air” for $28 Each
December 15th, 2015Maybe it’s time someone wrote the Twelve End Days of Christmas.
Just imagine it… The Twelve Days of Christmas using Cryptogon headlines.
Via: Independent:
As China’s pollution problems continue, a Canadian company has cashed in on the crisis by selling bottles of fresh mountain air to people for up to $28 (£18.50) each.
Beijing was issued its first ever red alert in December over its hazardous pollution levels, causing the capital to shut down schools and construction for a period of time, while attempting to take a percentage of the city’s cars off the road and telling people to stay indoors.
Flint, Michigan: State of Emergency Declared Over High Levels of Lead in Children’s Blood
December 15th, 2015Via: Washington Post:
For months, worried parents in Flint, Mich., arrived at their pediatricians’ offices in droves. Holding a toddler by the hand or an infant in their arms, they all have the same question: Are their children being poisoned?
…
The Hurley Medical Center, in Flint, released a study in September that confirmed what many Flint parents had feared for over a year: The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled since the city switched from the Detroit water system to using the Flint River as its water source, in 2014.
The crisis reached a nadir Monday night, when Flint Mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency.
“The City of Flint has experienced a Manmade disaster,” Weaver said in a declaratory statement.
The mayor — elected after her predecessor, Dayne Walling, experienced fallout from his administration’s handling of the water problems — said in the statement that she was seeking support from the federal government to deal with the “irreversible” effects of lead exposure on the city’s children. Weaver thinks that these health consequences will lead to a greater need for special education and mental health services, as well as developments in the juvenile justice system.
All Schools in Los Angeles Unified School District Closed Due to Some Sort of Threat
December 15th, 2015Update: Hoax
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Via: ABC7:
All Los Angeles Unified School District schools are closed on Tuesday after a threat was made against multiple schools in the district, officials said.
LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said that the district received an electronic threat that mentioned backpacks and other objects. Cortines said the threat was broad and did not point out specific schools.
Cortines called this threat “rare” and said the decision to close all schools for the day was made out of an abundance of caution.
ISIS Twitter Accounts Run from British Government IP Addresses
December 15th, 2015Maybe honeypots. Maybe not.
In other news, ISIS Armed with U.S. Weapons.
Via: Russia Today:
At least three Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) supporters’ social media accounts are run from IP addresses linked to the British government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), a group of hackers has claimed.
The group of teenage computer experts, known as ‘VandaSec,’ have unearthed details of internet protocol (IP) addresses used by three jihadists to access Twitter accounts used to carry out online recruitment.
The addresses were thought to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection they linked back to the DWP’s London offices, according to the Daily Mirror.
“Don’t you think that’s strange?” one of the hackers asked the Daily Mirror.
“We traced these accounts back to London, the home of the British intelligence services,” they added.
This revelation has sparked speculation that someone inside the government is running IS-supporting accounts, or they were created by intelligence services to trap wannabe terrorists.
The High-Stakes Race to Rid the World of Human Drivers
December 14th, 2015Via: The Atlantic:
The race to bring driverless cars to the masses is only just beginning, but already it is a fight for the ages. The competition is fierce, secretive, and elite. It pits Apple against Google against Tesla against Uber: all titans of Silicon Valley, in many ways as enigmatic as they are revered.
As these technology giants zero in on the car industry, global automakers are being forced to dramatically rethink what it means to build a vehicle for the first time in a century. Aspects of this race evoke several pivotal moments in technological history: the construction of railroads, the dawn of electric light, the birth of the automobile, the beginning of aviation. There’s no precedent for what engineers are trying to build now, and no single blueprint for how to build it.
Antidepressants Taken During Pregnancy Increase Risk of Autism by 87 Percent
December 14th, 2015Via: ResearchGate:
Using antidepressants, especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), during the 2nd/3rd trimesters of pregnancy increases the risk of having a child with autism (87 percent increased risk of autism with any antidepressants; more than doubling the risk with SSRI use specifically) – this risk is above and beyond the risk associated with maternal depression alone (maternal depression was associated with a 20 percent increased risk of autism in our study). Given the mounting evidence showing increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcome with antidepressant use during pregnancy, our study shows that depression should be treated with other options (other than antidepressants) during this critical period.
