FDA and NIH Let Clinical Trial Sponsors Keep Results Secret and Break the Law
January 14th, 2020Shocker.
Via: Science:
Many scientists who conduct clinical trials, and their sponsors or funders, have downplayed concerns about late or missing results in ClinicalTrials.gov. Researchers, doctors, and patients can instead learn about trial outcomes from peer-reviewed publications, they say. But thousands of trials are never published, particularly when they find treatments ineffective, history has shown.
Computer-Designed Organisms
January 14th, 2020Via: GitHub:
Thus, we here present a method that designs completely biological machines from the ground up: computers automatically design new machines in simulation, and the best designs are then built by combining together different biological tissues. This suggests others may use this approach to design a variety of living machines to safely deliver drugs inside the human body, help with environmental remediation, or further broaden our understanding of the diverse forms and functions life may adopt.
Walmart Expands Its Robotic Workforce to 650 Additional Stores
January 13th, 2020Via: Business Insider:
Walmart is moving forward with automation in more stores nationwide.
The superstore is adding shelf-stocking robots to 650 stores by the summer, the retailer confirmed to Business Insider. The robots are designed by the San Francisco-based Bossa Nova Robotics Inc. and made to scan items on shelves to assist with price accuracy and restocking. The robots are already present in 350 stores.
The six-foot-tall devices contain 15 cameras each, which scan aisles and shelves and send alerts to employees in real time.
‘Disastrous Mistake’: Iran Acknowledges Shooting Down Ukrainian Airliner
January 12th, 2020Via: Reuters:
Iran said on Saturday its military had shot down a Ukrainian plane killing all 176 aboard in a “disastrous mistake”, saying air defenses were fired in error while on alert after Iranian missile strikes on U.S. targets in Iraq.
Iran had denied for days after Wednesday’s crash that it had brought down the airliner, although a top Revolutionary Guards commander said on Saturday that he told authorities about the unintentional missile strike the day it happened.
Surveillance Plane Joins Intensifying Hunt For Mystery Drones Over Colorado And Nebraska
January 11th, 2020Via: The Drive:
The War Zone was among the first to report back in late December 2019 that eyewitnesses throughout northeastern Colorado had begun seeing formations of large drones flying at night in complex grid-like patterns over rural areas and farmland. Since then, the sightings have multiplied and the drones have begun appearing in neighboring Nebraska, as well. What was at first a curiosity has become a concern, especially after local law enforcement agencies, the FAA, DEA, the U.S. Army, and the Air Force all stated to have no knowledge of the drone activity. It seemed that something far more covert or possibly illegal might be occurring. Just this week, the FAA officially launched a task force to identify the operator of the drones, which includes Colorado’s most sophisticated surveillance aircraft, and has begun searching for some sort of command truck or van that may be controlling or at least monitoring the mysterious nighttime drone activity.
Chinese Deepfake A.I. App
January 11th, 2020Hilariously, this runs on phones.
In other news, I noticed that AMD just announced their 64-core Ryzen Threadripper CPU (the 3990X). Cost: $3,990.
In other words, don’t believe your eyes, when it comes to digital sources. (Or ears.)
Via: Sheila Allen:
U.S. Alcohol Related Deaths Doubled Over 20 Years
January 10th, 2020Via: NPR:
More Americans are ordering more rounds, and that’s leading to more funerals, according to a new study on alcohol-related deaths.
Looking at data from the National Center for Health Statistics, researchers estimate deaths from alcohol-related problems have more than doubled over the past nearly 20 years.
Death certificates spanning 2017 indicate nearly 73,000 people died in the U.S because of liver disease and other alcohol-related illnesses. That is up from just under 36,000 deaths in 1999.
Some of the greatest increases were found among women and people who were middle-aged and older.
The study comes from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which is part of the NIH. It was published on Wednesday in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Overall, researchers found men died at a higher rate than women. But when analyzing annual increases in deaths, the largest increase was among white women.
Surveillance Video from Jeffrey Epstein’s First Apparent Suicide Attempt ‘No Longer Exists’
January 10th, 2020Via: NBC:
The surveillance video taken from outside Jeffrey Epstein’s jail cell on the day of his first apparent suicide attempt has been permanently deleted, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Epstein, the disgraced financier who was facing federal sex-trafficking charges, was found semiconscious in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, or MCC, in New York around 1:27 a.m. on July 23.
But that video is now gone because MCC officials mistakenly saved video from a different floor of the federal detention facility, prosecutors said in a court filing.
The MCC “inadvertently preserved video from the wrong tier within the MCC and as a result, video from outside the defendant’s cell on July 22-23, 2019 no longer exists,” the court papers say.
The Case Against Reality – Prof. Donald Hoffman on Conscious Agent Theory
January 9th, 2020Book: The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes by Donald D. Hoffman
Via: Zubin Damania:
American Dystopia: San Francisco in Decline
January 7th, 2020Via: Fox:
