Ray Kurzweil’s new non-fiction book on science, tech, and the future
The Singularity is Nearer is now available.

book website :: visit

We hope you enjoy this long-awaited sequel to his 2005 classic the Singularity is Near.

An introduction.

Plants could soon provide our electricity. In a small way they’re already doing that in research labs and greenhouses at project Plant-e.

Plant-e is a university and commercially sponsored research group at Wageningen Univ. + Research in the Netherlands.

The Plant Microbial Fuel Cell from Plant-e can generate electricity from the natural interaction between plant roots and soil bacteria.

How it happens.

It works by taking advantage of the up to 70 percent of organic material produced by a plant’s photo-synthesis process that cannot be used by the plant — and is excreted through the roots.

As natural occurring bacteria around the roots break down this organic residue, electrons are released as a waste product. By placing an electrode close to the bacteria to absorb these electrons, the research team — led by Marjolein Helder PhD — is able to generate electricity.

quote ::

name: by Marjolein Helder PhD
bio: A researcher, botanist, and environmentalist.
school: Wageningen Univ. + Research

Solar panels are making more energy per square meter — but we expect to reduce the costs of our system technology in the future. And our system can be used for a variety of applications.

Our tech is making electricity — but also could be used as roof insulation or as a water collector. On a bigger scale it’s possible to produce rice and electricity at the same time, and in that way combine food and energy production.

— Marjolein Helder PhD

Uses for this valuable tech.

Plant Microbial Fuel Cells can be used on many scales. An experimental 15 square meter model can produce enough energy to power a computer notebook.

Currently Plant-e is working on a system for large scale electricity production in existing green areas like wetlands and rice paddy fields.

A first prototype of a green electricity roof has been installed on one building at Wageningen Univ. + Research — and researchers are keeping a close eye on what is growing there. The first field pilots will be started in 2014. The tech was patented in 2007.

After 5 years of lab research: Plant-e is now taking the first steps toward commercializing the technology. In the future, bio-electricity from plants could produce as much as 3.2 watts per square meter of plant growth.

note: with materials from EuroNews

webpages ::

group: Plant-e
web: home ~ channel
banner: Spark of nature.

Plant-e is making electricity from living plants.

read :: brochure
format: Adobe

presented by ::

school: Wageningen Univ. + Research
web: home ~ channel
banner: Exploring nature’s potential to improve quality of life.

watching

How plants can create electricity. :: watch

part 1 :: Meet Plant-e.
part 2 :: A story on Planet-e.
part 3 :: Living plants generate electricity.
part 4 :: The power of plants.

K keyboard mouse IMAGE

reading

1. |

school: Wageningen Univ. + Research
story: Dutch Innovation Award for Plant-e
read :: story

research institutes:

for plant research :: visit
centre for development innovation :: visit

the Kurzweil Library
section: stories on progress

story ::

Even though virtual reality (VR) headsets are popular for gaming, they haven’t become the go-to device for watching television, shopping, or using software tools for design + modelling.

One reason why is because VR can make users feel sick with nausea, imbalance, eye strain, and headaches. This happens because VR creates an illusion of 3D viewing — but the user is actually staring at a fixed-distance 2D display. The solution for better 3D visualization exists in a 60-year-old tech that’s being updated for the digital world — holograms.

A new method called “tensor holography” enables the creation of holograms for virtual reality, 3D printing, medical imaging, and more — and it can run on a smart-phone.

Holograms deliver an exceptional 3D representation of the world around us — and they’re beautiful. Holograms offer a shifting visual perspective from the viewer’s position. They let the human eye adjust its focal depth — so you can move your focus easily from foreground to background. The visual holographic display appears just like a real 3D object — as if you could touch it.

Researchers have been trying to make computer-generated holograms. But the process has traditionally required a super-computer to churn through heaps of physics simulations — to create that life-like effect. That’s time-consuming and can yield less-than-photo-realistic results.

Holograms in the blink of an eye.

To deal with this, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) designed a new way to produce holograms — almost instantly. The software they’re using is called a deep learning artificial intelligence program, because it can teach itself. They said it’s so efficient that it can create a hologram on a laptop — in the blink of an eye.

Liang Shi is a PhD student at MIT and the lead researcher on the project. He said:

People previously thought that with existing consumer-grade hardware, it was impossible to do real-time 3D holography computations. It’s often said that commercially available holographic displays will be around in 10 years — but this statement has been around for decades.

This new approach — tensor holography — will finally bring that elusive 10-year goal within reach. This advance could fuel a spill-over of holography into fields like VR and 3D printing.

The quest for better 3D.

A typical lens-based photograph encodes the brightness of each light wave that touches it. So a photo can faithfully reproduce a scene’s colors, but it ultimately makes a flat image.

But a hologram encodes both the brightness and phase of each light wave. That combination delivers a truer depiction of a scene’s parallax and depth. For example: a typical photograph of the famous oil painting Water Lilies can highlight the art’s color palate. But a hologram can bring the work to life — rendering the raised, unique 3D texture of each brush stroke. Despite being popular, holograms have been a challenge to make + share.

First developed in the mid-1900s, early holograms were recorded optically. That required splitting a laser beam — with half the beam used to illuminate the subject, and the other half used as a reference for the light waves’ phase. This reference generates a hologram’s unique sense of depth. The resulting images were static, so they couldn’t capture motion. And they were hard-copy only, making them difficult to reproduce and share.

Computer-generated holography sidesteps these challenges by simulating the optical setup. But the process can be a computational slog. “Because each point in the scene has a different depth, you can’t apply the same operations for all of them,” says Shi. “That increases the complexity significantly.” Directing a clustered supercomputer to run these physics-based simulations could take seconds or minutes for a single holographic image. Plus, existing algorithms don’t model occlusion with photo-realistic precision. So Shi’s team took a different approach: letting the computer teach physics to itself.

They used deep learning to accelerate computer-generated holography, allowing for real-time hologram generation. The team designed a convolutional neural network — a processing technique that uses a chain of trainable tensors to roughly mimic how humans process visual information. Training a neural network typically requires a large, high-quality dataset, which didn’t previously exist for 3D holograms.

The team built a custom database of 4,000 pairs of computer-generated images. Each pair matched a picture — including color and depth information for each pixel — with its corresponding hologram. To create the holograms in the new data-base, the researchers used scenes with complex and variable shapes and colors, with the depth of pixels distributed evenly from the background to the foreground, and with a new set of physics-based calculations to handle occlusion. That approach resulted in photo-realistic training data. Next, the algorithm got to work.

By learning from each image pair, the tensor network tweaked the parameters of its own calculations, successively enhancing its ability to create holograms. The fully optimized network operated orders of magnitude faster than physics-based calculations. That efficiency surprised the team themselves.

“We are amazed at how well it performs,” says Matusik. In mere milliseconds, tensor holography can craft holograms from images with depth information — which is provided by typical computer-generated images and can be calculated from a multic-amera setup or LiDAR sensor (both are standard on some new smartphones). This advance paves the way for real-time 3D holography. What’s more, the compact tensor network requires less than 1 MB of memory. “It’s negligible, considering the tens and hundreds of gigabytes available on the latest cell phone,” he says.

IMAGE

A considerable leap in ability.

3D holography in real-time would enhance a slew of systems, from VR to 3D printing. The team says the new system could help immerse VR viewers in more realistic scenery, while eliminating eye strain and other side effects of long-term VR use. The technology could be easily deployed on displays that modulate the phase of light waves. Currently, most affordable consumer-grade displays modulate only brightness, though the cost of phase-modulating displays would fall if widely adopted.

Three-dimensional holography could also boost the development of volumetric 3D printing, the researchers say. This technology could prove faster and more precise than traditional layer-by-layer 3D printing, since volumetric 3D printing allows for the simultaneous projection of the entire 3D pattern. Other applications include microscopy, visualization of medical data, and the design of surfaces with unique optical properties.

The research team said: “It’s a considerable leap that could completely change people’s attitudes toward holography. We feel like neural networks were born for this task.”

publication: Nature
paper title: Towards real-time photo-realistic 3D holography with deep neural networks.

read | paper

— description —

The ability to present 3D scenes with continuous depth sensation has a profound impact on: virtual + augmented reality, human–computer interaction, education, and training.

presented by

Nature | home ~ channel
tag line: text

Spinger Nature grp. | home ~ channel
tag line: Opening doors to discovery.

webpages

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology |  home ~ channel
motto: text

name: Liang Shi
web: home

reading

1. |

publication: Insider
story: Here’s what happens to your body when you’ve been in virtual reality for too long.
read :: story

presented by ::

publication: Insider
web: home ~ channel
banner:

company: Axel Springer
web: home ~ channel
banner: The media + tech company.
banner: We empower free decisions.

FILE CABINET

notes ::

AI = artificial intelligence
AR = augmented reality
VR = virtual reality

2D = 2-dimensional
3D = 3-dimensional

the Kurzweil Library
set: stories on progress

image | above

Pictured is the experimental BRETT robot by the Univ. of California. This robot is built with smart AI computer software that lets it complete physical tasks by trial + error.

This ability is called autonomous learning. BRETT can approach a new environment, with objects he’s never seen. He can figure-out by himself how to touch, move, assemble, stack, open, close, and operate things he detects in the space. Even if he’s never encountered them before.

BRETT’s software lets him learn without being pre-programmed on each task.

credit :: Univ. of California

story ::

Univ. of California researchers have developed new computer AI software that enables robots to learn physical skills — called motor tasks — by trial + error. The robot uses a step-by-step process similar to the way humans learn.

The lab made a demo of their technique — called re-inforcement learning. In the test: the robot completes a variety of physical tasks — without any pre-programmed details about its surroundings.

The robot’s test tasks:

• put a clothes hanger on a pole.
• stack wood donuts on a pole.
• assemble a toy airplane.
• screw the cap on a water bottle.
• insert a shaped peg into its matching hole.

Robots learn motor tasks autonomously with AI.

The research is part of the People + Robots program — at the Univ. of California’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). The center builds solutions for global benefit — in AI, robotics, and automation.

1 ::

quote :: by Pieter Abbeel PhD

What we’re showing in this project is a new approach to enable a robot to learn. The key is that when a robot is faced with something new, we won’t have to re-program it. The same AI software enables the robot to learn all the different tasks we gave it.

— Pieter Abbeel PhD

about ::

name: Pieter Abbeel PhD
bio: A robotics engineer + teacher.
web: profile ~ channel

bio: teacher
field: computer science + robotics
school: Univ. of California

2 ::

quote :: by Trevor Darrell PhD

Most robotic applications happen in controlled environments — where physical objects are in predictable positions in the surroundings. The challenge of putting robots in real-life settings — like homes, offices, or transported to new or unknown facilities — is those environments are constantly changing.

The robot must be able to sense + adapt to its surroundings. That’s what we’re doing with BRETT.

— Trevor Darrell PhD

about ::

name: Trevor Darrell PhD
bio: A robotics engineer + teacher.
web: profile ~ channel

bio: teacher
field: computer science + robotics
school: Univ. of California

image | left

Pictured is the BRETT robot. He’s programmed with AI software to use tools + complete motor tasks. He lives in an experimental lab at the Univ. of California.

You can see the robot’s gripper hand pulling a wood nail out of a wood beam with the back-end of a hammer.

He does this by himself — carefully adjusting the arc, angle, direction, pressure, motion, and force he applies to the hammer. Just like a human.

He finally accomplishes his task after many trial + error attempts. He learns the same way people do.

The team — at the university’s famous Berkeley campus — named the robot BRETT:

B  |  Berkeley
R  |  Robot for the
E  |  Elimination of
T  |  Tedious
T  |  Tasks

credit: Univ. of California

Better than old approaches.

Previous techniques to help a robot make its way through a 3D environment needed:

• pre-programming it to handle a vast range of possible scenarios.
• creating simulated environments the robot operates inside.

Instead, the researchers used the computer software technique called deep-learning AI. So the robot can make sense of all the data it receives, from its sensors.

AI deep-learning software programs create layers of pattern recognition — that handle raw sensory data coming from the robot’s 3D environment. From sound, echo, touch, pressure, temperature, motion, position, and camera vision. With AI the robot can track patterns in the ongoing info-stream it’s getting — from its many sensors.

3 ::

quote :: by Sergey Levine PhD

Humans are not born with a repertoire of behaviors that can be deployed like a Swiss army knife. And we don’t need to be pre-programmed to do activities. People learn new skills over time — from experience + by watching other humans.

This learning process is so deeply rooted in our biology, that we can’t even communicate to somebody precisely how to do any physical task. We can only give guidance as they learn it on their own.

— by Sergey Levine PhD

about ::

name: Sergey Levine PhD
bio: A robotics engineer + teacher.
web: profile ~ channel

bio: teacher
field: computer science + robotics
school: Univ. of California

An AI feedback loop powers the software.

For the experiments, the team used the Personal Robot 2 — called PR2 — product from Clearpath Robotics. And nick-named it the Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks — BRETT.

They gave BRETT a set of motor tasks — examples: placing blocks into matching openings, and stacking Lego blocks. The software program controlling BRETT’s learning supplies a score, based-on how well the robot is doing its task.

• BRETT takes-in its “scene” with its cameras.
• that means its surroundings.
• it includes the position of its own arms + hands.
• the program supplies a real-time score as feedback.
• the score is based-on the robot’s movements.
• movements that help the robot achieve the task score higher.
• movements that don’t help the robot with the task score lower.
• then the score goes back to the program.
• so the robot can learn which movements are best for the task.

This training process lets the robot learn on its own. As BRETT moves its joints + manipulates physical objects — the AI software program calculates good values for 92,000 factors in its environment that it needs to assess.

A jump in self-learning robotics advances.

When BRETT gets the coordinates for the beginning + end of a task, the robot can master most tasks in 10 minutes. When the robot is not given the location for the objects in the scene — and needs to learn vision + control together — the learning process takes 3 hours.

4 ::

quote :: by Pieter Abbeel PhD

Robotics will see big jumps — our ability to process huge amounts of data is improving. With more data, you can start learning more complex things. Robots will learn to clean a house, do the dishes, and sort laundry.

Our promising tests show that AI software programs can let robots learn tasks by themselves, without being pre-programmed. In 5 — 10 years we’ll see major progress in robot learning ability.

— Pieter Abbeel PhD

watching

1. |

school: Univ. of California
demo: BRETT the robot learns to put things together on his own.

watch :: demo

about ::

Univ. of California at Berkeley researchers developed software that enables robots to learn motor tasks through trial + error. This is the way people learn — it’s a milestone in the computer software field of AI.

In their tests, the robot used AI deep-learning — a software programming technique — to complete tasks without pre-programmed info about its surroundings.

presented by ::

school: Univ. of California
web: home ~ channel

program: People + Robots
web: home ~ background ~ channel

2. |

broadcast: Bloomberg
filmlet: See smart robots learn to play like human children.

watch :: filmlet

about ::

BRETT is a robot that can think. Researchers at the Univ. of California at Berkeley have programmed BRETT to learn on its own — through trial + error — how to accomplish tasks. Such as screwing a cap on a bottle, putting Lego blocks together, and solving a puzzle.

It’s made possible by a type of AI computer program called deep-learning that’s revolutionizing robotics.

presented by ::

broadcast: Bloomberg
web: home ~ channel
banner: All the most important market news. All in one place.

webpages

company: Clearpath Robotics
web: home ~ channel
banner: Boldly go where no robot has gone before.

about ::

We build the world’s best robot development platforms. Developing autonomous robots has never been easier. We automate the planet’s dullest, dirtiest, and deadliest jobs. We’re the leader in research robotics — blazing the trail for robots in industry.

notes ::

UC = Univ. of California
univ. = university

AI = artificial intelligence
IT = information technology
info-tech = information technology

BRETT = Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks
CITRIS = Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society

by Ray Kurzweil
April 2023

Regarding the Open Letter to “pause” research on AI “more powerful than GPT-4,” this criterion is too vague to be practical. And the proposal faces a serious coordination problem: those that agree to a pause may fall far behind corporations or nations that disagree. There are tremendous benefits to advancing AI in critical fields such as medicine and health, education, pursuit of renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels, and scores of other fields. I didn’t sign, because I believe we can address the signers’ safety concerns in a more tailored way that doesn’t compromise these vital lines of research.

I participated in the Asilomar AI Principles Conference in 2017 and was actively involved in the creation of guidelines to create Artificial Intelligence in an ethical manner. So I know that safety is a critical issue. But more nuance is needed if we wish to unlock AI’s profound advantages to health and productivity while avoiding the real perils.

— Ray Kurzweil
Inventor, best-selling author, and futurist.

reference

the Future of Life Institute | home ~ channel

open letter: Pause Giant AI Experiments. | view
date: March 2023

— about —

This letter’s signatories call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of artificial intelligence systems more powerful than GPT-4.

— content —

~ story
~ report
~ key points
~ quote
~ featurettes
~ reading

story |

A study by Northwestern Univ. looks at the world-wide growth of data — and the global energy needed to power it. The research team asks the question: Will we run out of energy to power civilization’s data-use — soon or in the future? According to Microsoft, there are billions of devices and data centers processing over 2.5 exa-bytes of data every day.

The study’s analysis paints a detailed picture of global energy-use — as we attempt to keep-up with today’s increasing demand for data. Filled with computing and networking equipment: data centers are central locations that collect, store, and process data. As the world relies more + more on data-intensive tech, the energy-use of data centers is a heightened worry.

While data center facilities have been successful — to-date — at using energy efficiently enough to track the rising tide of demand — analysts warn that when these efficiency measures can no longer match-up, an enormous spike of energy need will happen.

report |

group: AAAS
publication: Science
report title: re-Calibrating global data center energy-use estimates.
author: by Northwestern Univ.
date: February 2020

read | report

about |

This analysis presents a nuanced picture of global energy-use. Data centers represent the information backbone of an increasingly digitized world.

Demand for their services has been rising rapidly, and data-intensive tech — like artificial intelligence, smart + connected energy systems, distributed manufacturing systems, and autonomous vehicles — promise to increase demand further. Data centers are energy-intensive — accounting for 1% of world-wide electricity-use.

presented by

card :: AAAS
card :: Science

— key points —

The world is using more + more electronic data — that equals more energy needed to power it:

• data is information that’s created, stored, and transmitted across a wide-range of computer equipment
• this electronic equipment includes:
• 1.  computer warehouses — called: data centers
• 2.  satellite + cable systems — called: tele-communications networks
• 3.  desktop + mobile computing
• 4.  smart-devices, smart-accessories, smart-vehicles, smart-home, smart-buildings, smart-city
• these tools: make + hold information | send + receive data
• these tools: require enormous energy (electricity) to function
• especially data centers — the computers inside need constant refrigeration
• refrigeration cools computer equipment to protect it from over-heating + failing
• data centers use high amounts of energy for all their operations
• including: powering 10,000s of computers + powering the facility’s utilities
• industrial-scale energy-use is expensive
• engineers + policy-makers world-wide have to plan for energy needs today + tomorrow
• there’s a real possibility: we could run out of energy to keep-up with society’s increasing demand for data

What the study discovered:

• the study is the most detailed model to-date
• it looks at data centers’ energy-use — plus energy efficiency gains
• a gain means: using energy wisely — to power more devices effectively with less energy waste
• engineers can improve how energy is distributed + used across the data center warehouse
• this lets the energy (electricity) they purchase: go farther
• researchers discovered that energy-use growth has been flat — over 10 years
• that means: engineers in data centers have been able to keep-up with energy needs + costs
• how: data center managers have improved the way their facilities use electricity
• so they’ve been able to “get the most” from energy — and not run low -or- run out of power
• as the data center grows — needing ever-more power — facility managers try to make energy efficiency gains
• at least — so far — analysts caution
• researchers said: “The tech industry, policy-makers, equipment-makers, facility operators can’t rest on their laurels”
• that means: the time will come when data center operators will not be able to keep-up

What’s to come:

• eventually, the need for more + more energy to power these facilities will grow so  large they can’t out-pace it
• data center operators will run out of ways to match the facility’s power needs with available electricity
• eventually, the availability + cost of energy will become a big problem
• engineers need to explore new energy tech + and new landscapes to build the biggest data centers
• where natural environments help with ambient cooling, or provide water + wind to harness renewable energy
• recent successes have been data centers built deep underground in cold, abandoned mines
• data centers built on lakes that cycle water to cool the facility’s computers
• data centers incorporating hydro-electric power

The team listed steps to slow future growth in energy-use:

• extend the life of today’s efficiency trends — strengthen standards: like Energy Star
• financially reward: best energy efficiency practices
• financially reward: renewable energy-use to mitigate carbon emissions, in parallel
• invest in next-generation research — computing, storage, and heat removal tech
• invest in data collection, modeling, and monitoring activities — eliminate blind spots

— quote —

While the historical efficiency progress made by data centers is remarkable, our findings don’t mean IT industry and policy-makers can rest on their laurels. We think there’s enough remaining efficiency potential to last several years.

But ever-growing demand for data means that everyone — including policy-makers, data center operators, equipment manufacturers, and data consumers — must increase efforts to avoid a sharp rise in energy-use, later this decade.

To paint a more complete picture, the research team integrated new data. Including info on data center equipment stocks, efficiency trends, and market structure. So the final model enables analysis of the energy used:

• by data center equipment — like computer servers, storage devices, and cooling systems
• by type of data center — including cloud and hyper-scale centers
• by world region

The reality is we need to better monitor energy-use.

— Eric Masanet PhD

bio: professor at Northwestern Univ.
bio: mechanical engineer
bio: leader: Energy + Resource Systems Analysis Lab

— featurette —

group: Facebook
featurette title: Facebook’s data centers

tag line: Bring the world closer together.

— featurette —

group: Google
featurette title: Google’s data centers

tag line: text

— featurette —

group: Google
featurette title: Making Google’s data centers green

tag line: text

group: ABB
featurette title: ABB’s data centers

tag line: Let’s write the future. Together.

— summary —

It used to be an industrial mine. Now it’s on course to become Europe’s biggest + greenest data center. And Lefdal, on Norway’s coast, is fully powered and protected by ABB technology.

— featurette —

group: Kolos
featurette: Planning the world’s largest data center

banner: Powering the future.

— about —

Kolos is planing to build the world’s largest data center — powered by 100% renewable energy. Kolos is changing the paradigm in data center infra-structure. Moving away from dense, high-cost, fossil fuel-driven areas — to an area abundant in clean, renewable energy. Beautifully integrated into the natural landscape + community, the Kolos data center will bring world-class tech industry and jobs.

A fortress of data:

• sustainable — the Kolos facility will be the largest green data center in the world.
• renewable — with 100% of its energy powered by hydro-power + wind.
• efficient — efficient energy costs + natural cooling let Kolos operate at 60% reduction in energy costs.
• secure — Kolos deploys the latest innovations in security tech.
• natural — the facility is surrounded by water that creates a natural moat.

webpages |

AFCOM | home
AFCOM | Data Center Institute

tag line: We are experts.
tag line: Advancing data center + IT infra-structure professionals.

webpages |

Energy Star | home
Energy Star | booklet: Best Practices Guide — for energy-efficient data center design
Energy Star | booklet: Score for Data Centers — for spaces meeting the needs of high-density computing

banner: The simple choice for energy efficiency.

webpages  |

school: Northwestern Univ.
web: home ~ channel

motto: Whatsoever things are true.

reading

1. |

group: Data Center Dynamics
publication: analysis
story title: Huge data center efficiency gains stave off energy surge for now.

read | story

— summary —

A six-fold increase in compute led to energy demands rising just 6%.

tag line: The business of data centers.

2. |

group: ABB
story title: ABB solutions power Europe’s greenest data center in Norway.
read | story

— summary —

With ABB technology, Lefdal mine data center plans to become Europe’s biggest — with the smallest environmental footprint.

tag line: Let’s write the future. Together.

3. |

group: GeoTel
publication: blog
story title: Microsoft’s data centers will be using 60% renewable energy by 2020.
read | story

— summary —

Microsoft’s data centers are the beginning of Microsoft large plan of being environmentally friendly.

DASHED

presented by

card :: GeoTel

tag line: Tele-communications location-based intelligence.
tag line: Know the fiber landscape.

4. |

group: Singularity grp.
publication: Singularity Hub
story title: AI is an energy-guzzler.

read | story

— summary —

We need to re-think its design, and soon.

DASHED

presented by

card :: Singularity grp.

tag line: We prepare you to seize exponential opportunities.

5. |

group: Informa
section: InformaTech
publication: Data Center Knowledge
story title: There are now more than 500 hyper-scale data centers in the world.

read | story

— summary —

How long does it take the world to build 100 hyper-scale data centers? About 2 years, according to Synergy Research. The number of these massive facilities — they house all our data, serve all our entertainment, and power + cool the computing infra-structure for apps our lives revolve around — is +500 in year 2019.

What is the criteria for a data center to be labelled “hyper-scale” — analysts have different “scale-of-business criteria” in assessing the size of company operations in cloud, e-commerce, or social networking markets. The facilities are measured in 10,000s of servers.

DASHED

presented by

card :: Informa
card :: InformaTech

group:
banner: Championing the specialist.
banner: Inspiring the tech community to design, build, and run a better digital world.

IMAGE

— notes —

e-commerce = electronic commerce

AI = artificial intelligence
IT = information tech

AAAS = American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science
AFCOM = Assoc. for Computer Operations Management

ABB = Asea, Brown, Boveri
EPA = Environmental Protection Agency ~ United States
DOE = Department of Energy | United States

* Energy Star is a program of the EPA + DOE ~ United States

the Kurzweil Library
set :: stories on progress

— contents —

~ story
~ graphics
~ report
~ about
~ reading

story |

New research from medical scientists at Johns Hopkins Univ. linked abnormally formed proteins in the human brain with the psychiatric illness called schizophrenia — in a significant number of patients. While they’re not yet sure what the connection is, the study reports that deformed proteins were found in the brains of many patients who were diagnosed with schizophrenia.

This leads researchers to guess that deformed proteins had a role in the disease — either as a cause or an effect. The team says this link is an important clue to gaining knowledge about schizophrenia. It’s a mysterious + incurable illness that’s not well understood.

Valuable research.

The team analyzed post-mortem brain tissue from 42 schizophrenia patients, donated by brain banks across 3 different institutions. They compared these with post-mortem brain samples (from the same collections) of 41 people who had not been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Having samples from different collections enabled the team to test and re-test their results for consistency.

The researchers looked at 2 areas of the brain they believe are disrupted in patients with schizophrenia.

• the pre-frontal cortex
• the superior temporal gyrus

The team looked closely at proteins in those sections of the human brain, dividing them into 2 groups.

• proteins that dissolve in water — called soluble
• proteins that do not dissolve in water — called insoluble

image | below

This graphic highlights the 2 brain regions sampled in the abnormal protein study researching schizophrenia. The model shows a whole human brain, seen from the side.

Possible connection with other diseases.

After they’re assembled by the human body, proteins normally fold-up in a way that makes them soluble. Mis-folded proteins are often insoluble, don’t function properly, or at all — and are linked to many diseases.

The team — thinking about how clumps of insoluble, mis-folded proteins are seen in the brains of patients with Alzheimer disease and other illnesses — wanted to see if they could find evidence of similar pathology in schizophrenia. Unable to access these key brain areas in living patients, they could only look at post-mortem brains.

image | left

An image of human brain tissue under a microscope — showing clumping proteins against the backdrop of normal cells.

Researchers observed these types of chunky + deformed proteins in the schizophrenia study.

credit: Univ. of Pennsylvania

Interesting results.

The results of this research were impressive: 20 of the 42 schizophrenia brains that were analyzed contained significantly more insoluble proteins — compared with the other 22 schizophrenia brains, and the 41 control brains. The researchers then used a physics technique called mass spectrometry to learn more about the proteins in the insoluble portion. They found unique and abnormal proteins in greater abundance.

In a nutshell, mass spectrometry uses high-tech devices to accurately measure the mass of different molecules in a sample. Even large bio-molecules like proteins are identifiable by mass, which means that biologists can perform interesting experiments using mass spectroscopy, adding a new dimension to their research.

Looking forward.

The study’s discovery of deformed proteins is consistent with a theory of schizophrenia that says the illness is related to abnormal brain development.

Abnormal proteins were present in only half of the brain samples from schizophrenia patients. The team said this could be evidence of a sub-type of schizophrenia — which has implications for diagnosis and treatment development.

More research is under way to link insoluble proteins with the cause of schizophrenia, its specific clinical symptoms, and to explore if similar irregularities are present in other psychiatric illnesses.

report |

school: Johns Hopkins Univ.
publication: the American Journal of Psychiatry
report: Increased protein insolubility in brains from a sub-set of patients with schizophrenia
date: May 2019

read | report

IMAGE

about | schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric illness — it’s a chronic, severe lifetime mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia behave like they’ve lost touch with reality.

It’s not as common as other mental disorders, but the symptoms are disabling — the disease is devastating to patients and their families. Schizophrenia is most commonly diagnosed between the ages of 16 -to- 30.

The symptoms.

There are 3 types of schizophrenia symptoms —positive, negative, cognitive.

a. | positive symptoms are psychotic behaviors not seen in healthy people. People with positive symptoms may lose-touch with reality.

• hallucinations
• delusions
• thought disorders — unusual or dysfunctional ways of thinking
• movement disorders — agitated body

b. | negative symptoms are disruptions in normal emotions and behaviors.

• flat affect — reduced expression of emotions in the face + voice
• depression
• difficulty beginning + sustaining activities
• reduced speaking

c. | cognitive symptoms patients may notice changes in their memory + thinking.

• low executive functioning — the ability to understand + make decisions
• trouble focusing + paying attention
• problems with memory — the ability to learn

Known risk factors.

Several factors contribute to the risk of developing schizophrenia.

a. | inherited genetics.

Scientists have long known that schizophrenia sometimes runs in families. However, there are many people who have schizophrenia who don’t have a family member with the disorder and conversely, many people with one or more family members with the disorder who do not develop it themselves. Scientists believe that many different factors may increase the risk of schizophrenia. It’s not currently possible to use genetic data to predict who’ll develop the illness.

b. | different brain structure.

Scientists think an imbalance in the complex activities in the brain might play a role in schizophrenia.

c. | fetal growth dysfunction.

Some experts think problems during a baby’s brain development before birth can lead to schizophrenia. The brain also experiences major changes during puberty, that might trigger psychotic symptoms in people who are vulnerable because of their genetics, or have existing brain abnormalities since birth.

d. | environmental factors can involve.

• exposure to viruses
• malnutrition before birth
• problems during birth
• psycho-social factors

about | protein

Protein is a macro-nutrient that is essential to building + maintaining healthy body tissues in humans and mammals. It’s commonly found in meat, dairy, beans, and nuts. Proteins are large, complex molecules made-up of amino acids — which are organic compounds made-up of the elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, or sulfur.

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, and proteins are the building blocks of our bodies. We intake proteins through the nutritious foods we eat. When we digest proteins they move throughout the body to be incorporated into our biology. When they assemble into the tissues and fluids we need to live, sometimes accidents happen. Especially inside soft or spongy tissues, proteins can become crushed by fluid pressures caused by illness or injury, or by chemicals they bump into that aren’t meant to be there — such as toxins, alcohol, and industrial substances.

Some scientists believe that proteins can become deformed in body tissues when they encounter infectious pathogens like viruses + bacteria. A deformed protein loses its characteristic healthy shape. When the protein’s shape is broken, it can mechanically cause damage to other tissues.

reading |

govt. office: the National Institutes of Health ~ US
story: About schizophrenia.

read | story

— notes —

govt. = government

NIH = the National Institutes of Health
US = the United States

image | above

In this photo you can see the doughnut shaped interior of the nuclear fusion reactor at the JET Fusion test lab.

— contents —

~ story
~ featurette
~ quotes
~ watching
~ reading

— story —

Researchers have exceeded the current record for generating energy from a nuclear fusion reaction. It’s a big step toward solving the world power consumption crisis. Nuclear fusion is called the holy grail of energy production — because it could lead to a virtually unlimited source of safe + sustainable power.

The nuclear test happened at the world’s most powerful fusion plant — the JET Fusion facility in the UK. The record-breaking nuclear fusion reaction had a temperature of more than 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the heart of the sun. The research team explained that the breakthrough is a landmark for this technology, and a key step toward developing practical nuclear fusion.

The difference between fusion + fission.

Most nuclear reactors use fission — that’s when big unstable atoms like uranium are split in two, releasing lots of energy + radiation. Fission is the current technique used around the globe in nuclear power plants. But fusion is different. It involves forcing atoms of hydrogen together — fusing them to create: helium, lots of energy, and just a tiny bit of short-lived radiation.

Using fusion to create mini-suns inside reactors like this, is one of the greatest tech challenges humanity has ever faced. It holds the potential for producing almost unlimited supplies of energy, forever. The essential part of the test fusion reaction only lasted for 5 seconds — and only generated enough power to boil about 60 kettles of water — 11 mega-watts of power. But it’s an important proof of the science of fusion. The power output was more than double what was achieved in similar tests in year 1997.

How it was achieved.

Temperatures to produce nuclear fusion need to be extremely high — above 100 million Celsius. No materials exist that can withstand direct contact with such heat. So, to achieve fusion in a lab, scientists invented a solution — super-heated gas (called plasma) is held inside a doughnut shaped magnetic field. In geometry this doughnut shape is called a torus. And objects that have a torus shape are called toroidal. The plasma used in the JET Fusion reactor is hotter than anything in our solar system.

Future lab tests will make the plasma from a mix of two forms — called isotopes — of hydrogen. These hydrogen isotopes are called deuterium and tritium. The JET Fusion scientists successfully engineered a lining for the 80 cubic meter toroidal shaped vessel enclosing the magnetic field — that functions efficiently with these isotopes.

For its experiments in year 1997 — the team used carbon. But carbon absorbs tritium, which is radioactive. So for the recent tests, they constructed new walls for the vessel. The walls are made with the metals beryllium and tungsten. These are 10 times less absorbent. Then the JET Fusion team tuned their plasma to function effectively in this new environment.

— featurette —

This is an animated 3D fly-through tour of the outside + inside of the actual fusion reactor.

On the horizon.

The current test supports the design of an even bigger fusion reactor being constructed in France. The JET Fusion reactor can’t actually run any longer because its copper electro-magnets get too hot. New tests will use internally cooled super-conducting magnets. Nuclear fusion reactions in labs famously consume more energy to launch than they can output — this is called an energy deficit. For example, the JET Fusion lab used two 500 mega-watt flywheels just to power the experiment.

But scientists believe this deficit can be overcome. New toroidal vessels are being developed — with a volume that’s 10 times bigger than JET Fusion’s vessel. Ultimately the goal is to build a commercial power plant that can produce more energy than it consumes to operate — so the excess energy can be fed into electric power grids.

There’s still much research + development to do. Possible power plants of the future — based on nuclear fusion instead of nuclear fission — would produce no greenhouse gases and only a small amount of short-lived radioactive waste.

About the lab.

The JET Fusion facility is located at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy — managed by the UK Atomic Energy Authority. International nuclear scientists collaborate at the research center as part of the EURO Fusion consortium — made-up of 4,800 experts.

The lab was designed to study nuclear fusion in conditions similar to the specs needed for a real power plant. It’s the only lab that can operate with the deuterium-tritium fuel mix that’s used for commercial fusion energy. This excellent facility achieves major advances in the science + engineering of fusion. Its success led to the construction of the first commercial-scale nuclear fusion machine — and its scientists have proven the design for future fusion power plants.

image | above

In this photo you can see the towers of a typical nuclear fission facility that produces electricity — called a power plant. Today there are approx. 440 of these nuclear power reactors operating globally — providing approx. 10 percent of the world’s electricity.

The hope of recent nuclear fusion tests is to develop practical techniques to harness energy successfully — paving the way for sustainable fusion power plants of tomorrow. Our current world-wide nuclear energy reactors operate using fission.

These vintage systems are not as efficient, and produce toxic by-products. If fission power plants overheat, it spells disaster for human health + habitat. They also produce an enormous amount of radioactive waste that’s getting more + more difficult to dispose of — since the radiation decays so slowly that it continues to pose biological + environmental risks long after it’s passed its usefulness in the reactor.

image | below

A photo of high voltage power lines that distribute electricity in wide-ranging grids.

quotes

1. |

name: by Joe Milnes PhD
bio: Head of Operations | JET Fusion

What’s really significant that we demonstrated inside JET: is that we can create a mini-sun, the right kind of mini-sun, hold it there for a sustained period — and get really good performance levels.

That’s a major step forward in our quest to achieve fusion power plants. I do think we’ll see commercial fusion in our lifetime. Why is it taking so long?

It’s really hard and very complex. But it’s worth it — we have to do it for the future.

— Joe Milnes PhD

2. |

name: by Roger Harrabin
bio: Energy + Environment Analyst | BBC

There’s huge uncertainty about when fusion power will be ready for commercialization. One estimate suggests maybe 20 years.

Then fusion would need to scale-up. That would mean a delay of another few decades.

— Roger Harrabin

3. |

name: by Arthur Turrell PhD
bio: Deputy Director for Research + Economics | the Office for National Statistics ~ UK
web: home

This is a stunning result because they managed to demonstrate the greatest amount of energy output from the fusion reactions of any device in history. The test demonstrated stability of the plasma for over 5 seconds.

That doesn’t sound very long. But on a nuclear time-scale it’s a very long time. And it’s possible then to go from 5 seconds, to 5 minutes, to 5 hours — or even longer.

— Arthur Turrell PhD

watching

1. |

blog: Kurzgesagt
featurette title: Fusion power explained

watch | featurette

presented by

Kurzgesagt | home ~ channel
tag line: In a nutshell.

2. |

institution: Fusion for Energy
featurette title: About nuclear fusion

watch | featurette

presented by

Fusion for Energy | home ~ channel
tag line: Bringing the power of the sun to Earth.

3. |

broadcast: CNBC
featurette title: Is nuclear fusion the answer to clean energy?

watch | featurette

presented by

CNBC | home ~ channel ~ line-up
tag line: First in business world-wide.

NBCUniversal | home ~ brands ~ corporate
tag line: One of the world’s leading media + entertainment companies.

webpages

JET Fusion | home ~ channel
tag line: Tackling the main challenges of putting fusion electricity on the grid.

Euro Fusion | home ~ channel
tag line: Realising fusion electricity.

Fusion for Energy | home ~ channel
tag line: Bringing the power of the sun to Earth.

reading

1. |

publication: Reuters
story title: European scientists set nuclear fusion energy record

read | story

presented by

Reuters | home ~ channel
tag line: Breaking international news + views.

Thomson Reuters | home ~ channel
tag line: Let’s shape tomorrow together.

2. |

institution: the American Enterprise Institute
blog: AEIdeas
story title: The coming fusion revolution
deck: My long-read q + a with Arthur Turrell PhD.

read | story

presented by

the American Enterprise Institute | home ~ channel
tag line: A competition of ideas is fundamental to a free society.

AEIdeas | home
tag line: Public policy commentary from the American Enterprise Institute.

— notes —

BBC = the British Broadcasting corp.
NBC = the National Broadcasting co.

JET Fusion = Joint European Torus Fusion

ONS = the Office for National Statistics | UK
UK = United Kingdom

co. = company
corp. = corporation
3D = 3-dimensional

— contents —

~ story
~ quote
~ featurette
~ reading

— story —

A team of computer researchers developed an AI software program with social skills — called S Sharp — that out-performed humans in its ability to co-operate. This was tested through a series of games between humans and the artificial intelligence software. The tests paired people with S Sharp in a variety of social scenarios.

Building AI that co-operates with us at human-level.

One of the games humans played against the software is called the prisoner’s dilemma. This classic game shows how two rational people might not co-operate — even if it appears that’s in both their best interests to work together. The other challenge was a sophisticated block-sharing game.

In most cases, the S Sharp software out-performed humans in finding compromises that benefit both parties. To see the experiment in action, watch the good featurette below. This project was helmed by two well known computer scientists:

• Iyad Rahwan PhD  |  the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Jacob Crandall PhD  |  Brigham Young Univ.

The researchers tested humans and the AI in 3 types of game interactions:

• computer to computer
• human to computer
• human to human

— quote —

name: by Jacob Crandall PhD
bio: computer scientist
bio: teacher | Brigham Young Univ.
web: profile

Computers can now beat the best human minds in the most intellectually challenging games — like chess. They can also perform tasks that are difficult for adult humans to learn — like driving cars. Yet autonomous machines have difficulty learning to co-operate. That’s something even young children do.

Human co-operation appears easy. But it’s very difficult to emulate because it relies on cultural norms, deeply rooted instincts, and social mechanisms — that express disapproval of non-collaborative behavior.

Such common sense mechanisms aren’t easily built into machines. The same AI software programs that effectively play the board games of chess +  checkers, Atari video games, and the card game of poker — often fail to consistently co-operate when it’s necessary.

Other AI software often takes 100s of rounds of experience to learn to collaborate with each other, if they do at all.  Can we build computers that co-operate with humans — the way humans do with each other? Building on decades of research in AI, we built a new software program that learns to collaborate with other machines . Simply by trying to maximize its own world.

We did experiments that paired the AI with people in various social scenarios — including a prisoner’s dilemma challenge and a sophisticated block-sharing game. The program consistently learns to co-operate with another computer — but it doesn’t with people. But people didn’t co-operate much with each other either.

As we all know, humans can collaborate better if they can communicate their intentions through words + body language. So we gave our AI a way to listen to people, and talk to them.

This lets the AI play in previously unanticipated scenarios. The resulting algorithm achieved our goal. It consistently learns to co-operate with people as well as people do. Our results show that 2 computers make a much better team — better than 2 humans, and better than a human + a computer.

But the program isn’t a blind collaborator. The AI can get pretty angry if people don’t behave well. The historic computer scientist Alan Turing PhD believed machines could potentially demonstrate human-like intelligence. Since then, AI has been regularly portrayed as a threat to humanity or human jobs.

To protect people, programmers have tried to code AI to follow legal + ethical principles — like the 3 laws of robotics written by Isaac Asimov PhD. Our research shows that a new path is possible.

Machines designed to selfishly maximize their pay-offs can — and should — make an autonomous choice to co-operate with humans across a wide range of situations. Two humans — if they’re honest with each other + loyal — would do as well as 2 machines. About half of the humans lied at some point. So the AI is learning that moral characteristics are better — since it’s programmed not to lie. And it also learns to maintain co-operation once it emerges.

We need to understand the math behind collaborating with people. What attributes does AI need so it can develop social skills. AI must be able to respond to us — and articulate what it’s doing. It must interact with other people.

This research could help humans with their relationships. In society, relationships break-down all the time. AI is often better than humans at reaching compromise — so it could teach us how to get-along.

— Jacob Crandall PhD

featurette

institution: the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
featurette title: Unlocking robot-human co-operation

watch | featurette

presented by

the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse | home ~ channel
tag line: Knowledge across frontiers.
banner: A unified scientific project studying human behavior.

webpages

1. |

name: Iyad Rahwan PhD
web: home

profile | the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
profile | the Max Planck Institute for Human Development

2. |

name: Jacob Crandall PhD
web: home

profile | Brigham Young Univ.

reading

1. |

publication: Nature
paper title: Co-operating with machines

read | paper

presented by

Nature | home ~ channel
tag line: text

Springer | home ~ channel
tag line: text

— notes  —

AI = artificial intelligence
S# = S Sharp software

MIT = the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BYU = Brigham Young Univ.

IAST = the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse | France

univ. = university

— file —

box 1: stories on progress
box 2:

post title: AI software with social skills teaches humans to collaborate
deck: Unlocking human-computer co-operation.

collection: the Kurzweil Library
tab: stories on progress

image | above

This mushy + agile mechanical squid is the future of robotics — a completely soft machine that will flex + grip just like biological muscle.

With their fine motor skills, soft robots can handle complex tasks that require mobility, delicacy, precision, and safety. Synthetic muscle protoypes in the lab today give these robots with extreme weight-lifting strength.

credit: Queen Mary Univ. of London

— contents —

~ story
~ quote
~ featurette

— story —

Researchers at Columbia Univ. built a 3D printable, synthetic soft muscle that can mimic nature’s biology — lifting 1000 times its own weight. The artificial muscle is 3 times stronger than natural muscle — and can push, pull, bend, twist, and lift weighty objects. The breakthrough enables a new generation of completely soft robots.

Today’s mechanisms that move robotics — called actuators — are bulky pneumatic (gas pressure) or hydraulic (fluid pressure) inflation systems made of elastomer skins — that expand when air or liquid is pushed into them. But those require external compressors + pressure regulating equipment.

The team is led by award-winning roboticist Hod Lipson PhD — from the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia Univ.

image | above

In the experiment above, the synthetic soft muscle expands + deflates — just like a real biological muscle. This prototype is a breakthrough for building soft robots.

credit: Columbia Univ.

books | by Hod Lipson PhD

1. |

book title: Fabricated
deck: The new world of 3D printing.
visit | book

2. |

book title: Driverless
deck: Intelligent cars and the road ahead.
visit | book

image | above

A portrait of Hod Lipson PhD.

Replicating natural motion.

Inspired by living organisms, robotics made of soft materials will be essential in fields where robots must interact physically with people — such as: manufacturing, emergency services, customer assistance, in-home aid, and health care. Unlike rigid robots, soft robots can replicate natural motion — grasping + manipulation — to provide medical help, perform delicate tasks, or pick-up soft objects.

The soft muscle recipe.

Researchers used a silicone rubber matrix with ethanol (alcohol) distributed throughout in micro-bubbles. This design combines elastic properties + extreme volume change abilities — and it’s easy to fabricate, low cost, and made of environmentally safe materials.

The soft, composite material is 3D printed into its final shape. When it’s heated, the ethanol in the material boils and the pressure inside those micro-bubbles grows — forcing the elastic silicone elastomer matrix to also expand.

The researchers next plan to accelerate the muscle’s response time + increase its shelf life. They also plan to use artificial intelligence software that will learn to control the muscle — as a final milestone in replicating natural human motion.

The synthetic muscle was tested in a variety of robotic applications. Because it’s elastic, it was able to expand + contract up to 900%. The new material can withstand strain 15 times larger than biological muscle. The team said these abilities will enable new kinds of soft robots.

quote

name: by Hod Lipson PhD
bio: mechanical engineer
bio: teacher | Columbia Univ.
web: profile ~ home

We’ve had great strides in making robot software — but robot bodies are still primitive. This is a big piece of the puzzle. Just like biology, the new actuator can be shaped + re-shaped 1,000s of ways. We’ve overcome one of the final barriers to making life-like robots.

— Hod Lipson PhD

Science details for building soft actuators.

Inspired by natural muscle, a key challenge in soft robotics is developing:

• self-contained + electrically driven soft actuators
• that can withstand high strain
• made of soft + robust composite material

Existing robotics actuators have limits:

• they require high voltage to trigger electro-active polymers
• they’re restricted by the low strain of shape memory alloys
• they need external compressors
• they need pressure regulating components for hydraulic + pneumatic actuators

featurette

school: Columbia Univ.
featurette title: Synthetic muscle for soft life-like robotics

watch | featurette

webpages

the Creative Machines Lab | home
tag line: Robots that create + are creative.

• We build robots that do what you’d least expect robots to do — self-replicate, self-reflect, and ask questions.
• We develop machines that can design + make other machines automatically.
• We look for engineering concepts + insights within living biology.

presented by

Columbia Univ. | home ~ channel
motto: In your light we see the light.

— notes  —

3D = 3-dimensional
AI = artificial intelligence

univ. = university

image | above

Pictured is a human brain from the top.

— contents —

~ story
~ diagram
~ featurette
~ webpages

— story —

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have been developed implantable electrodes that can capture signals from a living human (or) animal brain over a long period of time —- but without causing brain tissue damage. This bio-medical tech will make it possible to monitor — and eventually understand — brain function in both healthy + diseased people.

A clever multi-stage design.

Lead researcher Jens Schouenborg PhD said:

There are 2 big problems that must be solved for scientists to be able to record signals from the brain with good results. First, the electrode must be bio-friendly — that means it can’t cause any significant damage to the brain tissue. Second, the electrode must be flexible inside the brain tissue.

Remember that the brain floats in fluid inside the skull —- it moves around when we do any activity: like breathe, walk, or just turn our head. The electrode and the implantation tech that we made have both of these important properties. So our design is highly specialized.

The researchers named their tailored electrodes “3D electrodes.” They’re extremely soft + flexible, so they can make stable recordings of electrical activity in brain tissue over a long time.

Their electrode is so soft that it bends when it touches a watery surface. To implant it, the team developed a technique that encapsulates the electrodes in a hard — but dissolvable — gelatin material, that’s also very gentle on the brain’s delicate tissue.

Looking at the image + video, you can see the tiny strands of electrodes bundled together into a broom-like shape — that’s encased in gelatin. That gelatin is hard enough to implant into the brain’s tissue. Then the gelatin melts-away, leaving the electrode array in-place, intact, without damage.

Team researcher Johan Agorelius said:

This tech retains the electrodes in their original form inside the brain. It can monitor what happens internally without disturbing well-functioning brain tissue.

image | above

A diagram of the super-soft + ultra-flexible electrode implant. Shown installed inside a living brain. The white areas labelled ‘bone’ are the skull.

Other electrodes can’t maintain their shape.

Other flexible electrodes commonly used in medical research can’t maintain their shape when they’re implanted. That’s why the team has been trying to develop a solid chip with limited flexibility. Other types of electrodes are also much stiffer. These older models of electrodes rub against + irritate the brain tissue — and the cells around the electrodes die.

Team researcher Johan Agorelius said:

The brain signals then become misleading or completely non-existent. Our new tech lets us implant the most pliable electrodes — as flexible we want — but still retain the exact shape of the electrode inside the brain.

This tool creates entirely new opportunities to gather data on what happens inside the brain. This kind of knowledge helps us understand + develop treatments for the worst diseases + disabilities like Parkinson’s disease, head trauma, congenital brain deformity, migraine, and the types of brain injuries that lead to motor paralysis.

image | above

The array of electrodes is a bundle of 8 thin gold leads.

guide to the image:

a. |  the electrode array before it’s embedded into the gelatin
b. |  the same electrode array after it’s embedded into the gelatin + shaped as a needle
c. |  the same electrode array inside a section of brain tissue — 3 weeks after implantation

You can see the overall shape of the super-soft + ultra-flexible electrode bundle is well-preserved inside the gelatin — and stays intact even after it’s implanted into a brain.

• the symbol μm means micro-meter
• a micro-meter is also called a micron
• 1 micro-meter — is 1 / 1,000,000 of a meter
• 1 inch — equals 25,400 micro-meters

— featurette —

— webpages —

Lund Univ. | home ~ channel
motto: Prepared for both.

— notes —

3D = 3-dimensional

images | above + below

The Project DR augmented reality (AR) system projects a diagnostic medical image of a spinal injury directly onto the patient’s skin. The 3D overlay effect is visible using virtual reality eyewear goggles called a headset — or hand-held glass panels specialized for AR display.

— story —

New technology — called Project DR — is bringing the power of augmented reality into clinical research + hospitals. The system projects medical images — like CT scans or MRI scans — directly onto a patient’s skin. This gives physicians a 3D visual of the patient from the outside + inside. With both views, a physician can virtually see inside the patient — since the images are mapped to the patient’s body from above.

The project was created by researchers at the Univ. of Alberta, in Canada.

How it functions.

ProjectDR uses a system called motion capture. Special markers are placed on the patient’s body. The space is flooded with infrared light that bounces off the markers. The computer system uses infrared cameras (that’s a type of thermal camera) that can see the markers — and keep-up with them as they move.

By tracking the body markers, Project DR knows just where to project the medical scan images onto the patient’s body. It maps the medical scans to the anatomical markers. This creates an effect — like you’re looking inside the human body. And it can follow the patient moving — so the scans can be projected continuously.

To understand a motion capture system — and for a primer on virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality — see the good featurettes below. They show actual footage of virtual experiences + 3D demos — explaining this tech.

The project’s supervising researcher Pierre Boulanger PhD said:

Our Project DR system is an augmented reality (AR) software platform that projects medical diagnostic images onto the skin surface of a patient.

This system corrects the image if there’s distortion from skin contours — and automatically adjusts to fit the size + shape of the patient. Our software uses 2D or 3D diagnostic image formats. And the output can be viewed through see-through or projected displays.

Benefits for the future.

Some applications for this AR system include:

• medical education
• medical research
• physio-therapy
• laparoscopic surgery
• surgical planning

Project DR can also project limited sections of body scans — for example: only lungs, skeleton, or blood vessels — depending on what a physician wants to examine.

1. | quote

name: Pierre Boulanger PhD
bio: project researcher

We demo Project DR in an operating room — in a surgical simulation lab — to test the pros + cons in surgeries. We’re also doing pilot studies to test this system for teaching physical therapy techniques. Next we’ll conduct real-life surgical pilot studies.

2. | quote

name: Ian Watts
bio: research team member

We wanted to create a system that would show clinicians a patient’s internal anatomy — within the context of the body. The difficult part is having the image track properly on the patient’s body — even as they shift + move. I’m improving the system’s automatic calibration and adding depth sensors.

featurettes

1. |

school: the Univ. of Alberta
title: Project DR demo
project: Project DR | visit

watch | featurette

— about —

Project DR is an augmented reality (AR)  system that enables medical images — such as CT scans + MRI data — to be displayed directly on a patient’s body, in a way that moves as the patient does.

presented by

school: the Univ.of Alberta
web: home ~ main channel ~ science channel
motto: Whatsoever things are true.

2. |

school : Full Sail Univ.
title: What is motion capture?

watch | featurette

— about —

From films + video games — to the military, sports, and medical fields — motion capture is used to record the movement of objects or people. And create 3D animated models. Teacher Tyrone Jordan demos the basics of motion capture.

presented by

school: Full Sail Univ.
web: home ~ channel
motto: Explore degrees in entertainment, media, arts, and tech.

3. |

company: SimpliLearn
web: home ~ channel
motto: We transform lives by empowering people via digital skills.

title: The rise of tech: VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), and MR (mixed reality).

watch | featurette

These immersive reality systems: VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), and MR (mixed reality) — are amongst the fastest-growing computer technologies today, involving both hardware + software. In a nutshell, immersive tech creates or extends our sensory experience.

It immerses the user in a digital environment — that’s visual, auditory, and even tactile. It can be a pure fantasy world, or a realistic model, or overlays that appear on top of the actual world around us. This tech is gaining momentum and has lots of applications. Watch this video to understand what immersive tech is — and how it’s useful in re-imagining our future.

presented by

company: SimpliLearn
motto: We transform lives by empowering people via digital skills.
web: home ~ channel

— webpages —

name: Pierre Boulanger • PhD
web: home

reading

1. |

from: New Atlas
title: ProjectDR allows doctors to see into patients’ bodies
read | story

Imagine if doctors could see through a patient’s skin. And their perspective of the underlying bones + organs changed accordingly — as the person moved around. That’s what scientists at the Univ. of Alberta in Canada have developed. It’s still in the experimental phase, and is called ProjectDR.

presented by

New Atlas | home ~ channel
tag line: Extraordinary ideas moving the world forward.

2. |

from: Futurism
title: Doctors can now use augmented reality to peek under a patient’s skin
read | story

A new tech takes some of the guesswork out of medicine.

presented by

Futurism | home ~ channel
tag line: Wonder what’s next.

Singularity grp. | home ~ channel
tag line: We prepare you to seize exponential opportunities.

3. |

from: the Richard van Hooijdonk blog
title: ProjectDR uses new augmented reality tech to let doctors see through your skin
read | story
watch | featurette

A pilot program at the Univ. of Alberta brings digital magic to the operating room — so surgeons can see inside their patients before they make the first incision. The researchers have developed a system called ProjectDR, a revolutionary augmented reality tech for medical teaching + patient care.

presented by

the Richard van Hooijdonk blog | home ~ channel ~ blog
tag line: A keynote speaker, trend-watcher, and futurist.

— notes —

AR = augmented reality
VR = virtual reality

CT scan = computed tomography scan
MRI scan = magnetic resonance imaging scan

* physio-therapy is also called physical therapy

A “mini arm” made up of two hinges of actuating nickel hydroxide-oxyhydroxide material (left) can lift an object 50 times its own weight when triggered (right) by light or electricity. (credit: University of Hong Kong)

University of Hong Kong researchers have invented a radical new lightweight material that could replace traditional bulky, heavy motors or actuators in robots, medical devices, prosthetic muscles, exoskeletons, micro-robots, and other types of devices.

The new actuating material — nickel hydroxide-oxyhydroxide — can be instantly triggered and wirelessly powered by low-intensity visible light or electricity at relatively low intensity. It can exert a force of up to 3000 times its own weight — producing stress and speed comparable to mammalian skeletal muscles, according to the researchers.

The material is also responsive to heat and humidity changes, which could allow autonomous machines to harness tiny energy changes in the environment.

The major component is nickel, so the material cost is low, and fabrication uses a simple electrodeposition process, allowing for scaling up and manufacture in industry.

Developing actuating materials was identified as the leading grand challenge in “The grand challenges of Science Robotics” to “deeply root robotics research in science while developing novel robotic platforms that will enable new scientific discoveries.”

Using a light blocker (top) a mini walking bot (bottom) with the “front leg” bent and straightened alternatively can walk towards a light source. (credit: University of Hong Kong)

University of Hong Kong | Future Robots need No Motors

Ref.: Science Robotics. Source: University of Hong Kong.

image | above

The contemporary city of Shanghai in China — home to over 26 million people.

— contents —

~ story
~ featurette
~ reference
~ reading

— story —

Samo Burja is a sociologist, writer, and the founder of Bismarck Analysis — a firm that analyzes institutions, from governments to companies. His research focuses on the causes of societal flourishing and decay. He writes on history, epistemology, and strategy.

Lessons from history.

In this talk, he describes a connected mesh of human interaction — from small to enormous scale — that’s the foundation for society’s progress. Then he details the complex ways this fabric gets affected. Eventually leading to either:

A robust + healthy human ecology — that thrives with each technological + scientific advance.
— or —
An anemic + unhealthy society — that back-slides into dysfunction + mass disorder.

Defying the odds.

Burja outlines these steps: investigate the landscape, evaluate our odds, then try to plot the best course. He explains:

Our civilization is made-up of countless individuals and pieces of material technology — that come together to form institutions and inter-dependent systems of logistics, development, and production. These institutions + systems then store the knowledge required for their own renewal + growth.

We pin the hopes of our common human project on this renewal + growth of the whole civilization. Whether this project is going well is a challenging — but vital — question to answer. History shows us we’re not safe from institutional collapse. Advances in technology mitigate some aspects, but produce their own risks. Agile institutions that make use of both social + technical knowledge not only mitigate such risks — but promise unprecedented human flourishing.

There has never been an immortal society. No matter how technologically advanced our own society is — it’s unlikely to be an exception. For a good future that defies these odds, we must understand the hidden forces shaping society.

We hope you enjoy his presentation. Explore more materials by sociologist Samo Burja on his website, and on his Medium blog — listed below in the reference section.

note: This talk by Samo Burja was held at a conference presented by the Foresight Institute.

image | below

A close-up of a modern wind turbine being assembled.

featurette

featurette title: Civilization: knowledge, institutions, and humanity’s future
presenter: Samo Burja
watch | featurette

— summary —

A talk by sociologist Samo Burja — exploring his research into how technologically advanced civilizations can find stability, by understanding the mechanism of its institutions + knowledge management.

presented by

group: Foresight Institute
tag line: Advancing beneficial technologies.
web: home • channel

reference

— presenter —

name: Samo Burja
tag line: There has never been an immortal human society. I work on figuring out why.
web: home • channel

bio | Samo Burja is a sociologist and researcher. He’s founder of the advisory firm Bismarck Analysis.

— firm —

group: Bismarck Analysis
tag line: We help companies, governments, philanthropists, and investors maintain + advance our civilization.
web: home

IMAGE

related reading

1. |

blog title: Samo Burja
tag line: There has never been an immortal society. Figuring out why. I write on history, epistemology, and strategy.
web: home ~

presented on

platform: Medium
tag line: Explore new perspectives.
web: home

— contents —

~ story
~ paper
~ reference
~ reading
~ watching

— story —

Engineering researchers at the University of Toronto, in Canada — used AI software programs to design a privacy filter for your photos that disables automatic facial recognition systems.

Each time you upload a photo or video to a social media platform, its automated, digital facial recognition systems learn a little more about you. These algorithms ingest data about who you are, your location, and people you know — and they’re constantly improving.

As concerns over privacy + data security on social networks grow, Univ. of Toronto engineering researchers — led by Parham Aarabi PhD and graduate student Avishek Bose — have created a computer software algorithm to dynamically disrupt facial recognition systems.

What is facial recognition?

A facial recognition system is a tech capable of identifying a human face — found in a digital photo, graphic image, or in a video frame — and then matching it against a data-base of stored faces. The most advanced tech can be used to authenticate people through ID verification services — it can pinpoint + measure detailed, distinct facial features in an image. The process of measuring human physical characteristics is called bio-metrics.

Face recognition is commonly used on smart-phones and in robotics. Its accuracy as a bio-metric tech is lower than iris recognition, vein pattern recognition, voiceprint + fingerprint recognition. But it’s widely used because it’s contact-less and non-invasive, especially for video surveillance and automatically indexing images.

— paper —

platform: ResearchGate
paper title: Adversarial attacks on face detectors using neural net based constrained optimization
read | paper

Facial recognition gets better + better.

Parham Aarabi PhD said: “Personal privacy is a real issue as facial recognition becomes better + better. This is one way beneficial anti-facial-recognition systems can combat that ability.”

Their solution leverages a deep learning technique called adversarial training, which pits 2 AI algorithms against each other. In computing, deep learning is a math technique that uses complex sets of data — trained to find solutions to problems — to process information. Inspired by the biology of human thinking, deep learning helps computers quickly recognize and process images + speech. Like all techniques in the computer software field of AI — deep learning is good at recognizing hard-to-find patterns in big data-sets.

Computer systems called neural networks run AI software that can achieve astounding human-level abilities of pattern recognition. With their deep learning algorithms, they can process in seconds what takes human analysts weeks, months, or years.

A neural network uses a series of deep learning algorithms to recognize underlying relationships in a set of data through a process that mimics human reasoning. The researchers harnessed the power of neural networks to engineer a system that could block automated facial recognition.

images | below

A computer software program is able to identify a human face in a digital image — and then tag that face’s key facial features with points so that they can be measured.

The software measures these primary features — called landmarks or nodal points. For example: the distance between the eyes, the nose width, eye socket depth and distance from forehead to chin. The “total picture” of all this data is stored as your individual faceprint.

Each human face has a unique matrix of facial features, similar to the way a thumbprint is individual and unlikely to have a biological duplicate. So any human face can be used as a good bio-metric print — a unique identification that’s not easily copied. Using the point matrix — the faceprint — faces can be stored in a data-base, and then later matched against a data-set of all faces in a system.

How it works.

Aarabi and Bose designed a pair of 2 neural networks:

1. the first neural network identifies faces — called the detection AI
2. the second neural network disrupts the facial recognition task of the first — called the disruptive AI
3. these 2 neural networks constantly battle + learn from each other

The result is an automated software filter that can be applied to photos, to protect a user’s privacy. Their algorithm alters very specific pixels in the image, making changes that are almost imperceptible to the human eye.

Bose said: “The disruptive AI can attack what the neural net for the face detection is looking for. For example, if the detection AI is looking for the corner of the eyes — it adjusts the corner of the eyes so they’re less noticeable. It creates very subtle disturbances in the photo, but to the detector they’re significant enough to fool the system.”

Aarabi and Bose tested their software on an industry standard pool of more than 600 faces — called the 300-W face data-set. This data-set includes a wide range of:

• ethnicity
• lighting conditions
• environments
• shadows
• body poses
• facial expressions
• image quality

Their system successfully reduced the number of faces that were originally detectable from 100 % — down to 0.5 %

Bose said: “The key is training 2 neural networks against each other — one creates an increasingly robust facial detection system, and the other creates an even stronger tool to disable facial detection.

— project —

group: Imperial College London
motto: Scientific knowledge + protection.
web: home • channel

project title: 300 Faces in the Wild • data-set
web: home

* aka: 300-W

A powerful tool.

In addition to disabling facial recognition, the new tech also:

• disrupts image-based search
• disrupts feature identification
• disrupts emotion + ethnicity estimation
• disrupts all other face-based attributes that could be extracted automatically

Next, the team hopes to make the privacy filter publicly available — as a smart-phone app, mobile tablet app, or website.

Aarabi said: “10 years ago these software algorithms would have to be human-defined. But now neural networks learn by themselves — you don’t need to supply them anything except training data. They can do some really amazing things. It’s a fascinating time in the computer field, there’s enormous potential.”

Some fast-moving facts.

• the global market for facial recognition is expected to reach approx. $13 billion by year 2027
• facial recognition software is widely used in personal + public security, retail, transportation, hospitality, banking
• 117 million US citizens have their faces stored in a law enforcement data-base
• today’s facial recognition apps on mobile phones can authenticate user identity
• apps on portable devices on college campuses take attendance + prevent cheating
• the auto industry is launching facial recognition apps to replace vehicle keys
• retail is developing apps to pick-out specific types of people by gender or age, to target advertising

facts source: Interesting Engineering

reference

Univ. of Toronto | home • channel

Parham Aarabi PhD | home
Avishek Joey Bose | home

reading

1. |

publication: University of Toronto Magazine
tag line: Celebrating the university’s research + teaching excellence.
web: home

story title: Engineering AI researchers design privacy filter for your photos that disables facial recognition systems
read | story

— summary —

As concerns about privacy + data security on social networks grow, engineering researchers have created an algorithm to dynamically disrupt facial recognition systems.

presented by

group: Univ. of Toronto
motto: As a tree through the ages.
web: home • channel

2. |

publication: Interesting Engineering
tag line: A cutting-edge, leading community designed for all lovers of engineering, technology, and science.
web: home • channel

story title: Privacy tool cloaks faces to trick facial recognition software
read | story

— summary —

The Fawkes method — developed to out-smart automated computer facial recognition — was developed by researchers at the Sand Lab at the University of Chicago.

presented by

group: Interesting Engineering
tag line: Founded on the core mission of connecting like-minded engineers around the globe.

watching

1. |

publication: Interesting Engineering
tag line: A cutting-edge, leading community designed for all lovers of engineering, technology, and science.
web: home • channel

featurette title: This is how facial recognition works
watch | featurette

— summary —

Regardless of whether you are alone, in a crowd, or in real-time — facial recognition can identify you. Although people have known about facial recognition tech for some time, advances in deep learning + faster processing of big data have helped it develop quickly.

The global facial recognition market is growing each year. It’s being used in across many industries. Watch to learn how this bio-metric tech works.

presented by

group: Interesting Engineering
tag line: Founded on the core mission of connecting like-minded engineers around the globe.

2. |

publication: Hak5
tag line: Trust your techno-lust.
web: home • channel

featurette title: Defeating facial recognition
watch | featurette

— summary —

How to defeat facial recognition — and avoid surveillance? The crew explains.

presented by

group: Hak5
tag line: Advancing the info-sec industry: award-winning podcasts, leading pentest gear, and an inclusive community.

3. |

publication: Reason
tag line: free minds + free markets
web: home • channel

featurette title: How fashion designers are out-smarting facial recognition
watch | featurette

— summary —

Every day, your movement is tracked. Your purchases are logged, your searches saved. And increasingly, your face is scanned. Facial recognition tech is becoming more widespread daily, and governments are finding new applications in the midst of pandemic. Countries use location tracking to help compliance with quarantines. So can we resist the surveillance society — and should we?

Privacy activists say we should be alarmed by the rise of automated facial recognition surveillance. But some trans-humanists says it’s time to embrace the end of privacy as we know it.

presented by

group: Reason Foundation
tag line: Exploring new ways of living in an increasingly individualistic world.
web: home

4. |

publication: Murtaza’s Workhop
tag line: Weekly videos on robotics + AI projects.
web: home • channel

featurette title: tutorial: How to perform facial recognition
read | learning materials
watch | featurette

— summary —

In this video we’re going to learn how to perform facial recognition with high accuracy. We’ll first briefly go through the theory — and learn the basic implementation. Then we’ll create an attendance project that will use webcam to detect faces, and record the attendance live in a Microsoft Excel sheet.

presented by

group: Murtaza Hassan
tag line: Learning made easy: robotics + AI

— notes —

AI = artificial intelligence
NN = neural network
DL = deep learning

info-sec = information security
pentest = penetration testing device

image | above

Pictured is an artist’s realistic illustration of the shape of corona-virus.

The top stories.

Here’s a collection of key stories on the web + in broadcast media — on the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) software being used in several ways to take-on the global corona-virus pandemic.

The ways AI is being applied:

• using computer modeling to discover pharmaceutical Rx drugs for treatments + vaccine
• analyzing medical lung scans for signs of pneumonia
• mining big data to see trends in the pandemic’s spread from person-to-person
• tracking mobile devices to trace people spreading the virus
• detecting fevers using thermal body scans of people in public places, indicating possible infection

1. |

publication: the New York Times
tag line: All the news that’s fit to print.
web: home • channel

story title: AI versus the corona-virus
read | story

— summary —

A new consortium of top scientists will be able to use some of the world’s most advanced super-computers to look for solutions.

presented by

group: the New York Times Company
tag line: We seek the truth + help people understand the world.
web: home • channel

2. |

publication: Vox
tag line: Vox explains the news.
web: home  channel

blog: re-Code
tag line: Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us.
story title: Don’t expect AI to solve the corona-virus crisis on its own
read | story

— summary —

How AI is helping find a cure. How optimistic should we be about the impact of artificial intelligence in a pandemic? The re-Code blog is uncovering + explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us.

presented by

group: Vox Media
tag line: Dedicated to getting the future right.
web: home • channel

3. |

group: by Vox Media
tag line: Dedicated to getting the future right.

publication: Vox
tag line: Vox explains the news.

blog: re-Code
tag line: Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us.
story title: Scientists are identifying potential treatments for corona-virus via artificial intelligence
read | story

— summary —

Researchers used AI to mine through existing medical information to find drugs that they say might be helpful for tackling the novel corona-virus. The re-Code blog is uncovering + explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us.

4. |

group: by Vox Media
tag line: Dedicated to getting the future right.

publication: Vox
tag line: Vox explains the news.

blog: re-Code
tag line: Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us.
story title: How AI is battling the corona-virus outbreak
read | story

— summary —

AI helped spot an early warning about the outbreak, and researchers have used flight traveler data to figure out where the novel corona-virus could pop up next. The re-Code blog is uncovering + explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us.

5. |

group: by ACS
tag line: Chemistry for life.

publication: Chemical Engineering + News
tag line: The chemistry news that matters most.
story title: 2 groups use artificial intelligence to find compounds that could fight the novel corona-virus
read | story

— summary —

One group identifies an existing drug, the other finds 6 novel molecules — but the consequences of reporting possibly helpful molecules are unclear.

6. |

group: by IEEE
tag line: Advancing technology for humanity.

publication: Spectrum
tag line: Major trends + developments in tech, engineering, and science.

blog: the Human OS
tag line: A bio-medical engineering blog on: wearable sensors, big-data, implanted devices, and personalized medicine.
story title: 5 companies using AI to fight corona-virus
read | story

— summary —

Deep learning models predict old and new drugs that might successfully treat corona-virus. The Human OS blog is the bio-medical engineering blog featuring the: wearable sensors, big data analytics, and implanted devices that enable new ventures in personalized medicine.

7. |

group: by CBS + Viacom
tag line: Truly premium content, at true scale.

publication: ZD Net
tag line: Trends, tech, and opportunities that matter to IT professionals + decision makers.
story title: AI and the corona-virus fight: how artificial intelligence is taking-on
read | story

— summary —

From moderating social media to unpicking the very essence of corona-virus, AI is helping tackle the pandemic in all manner of ingenious ways.

8. |

group: by Forbes Media
tag line: World-wide magazines on business, finance, marketing, science, tech, investments, and entrepreneurship.

publication: Forbes
tag line: The defining voice of entrepreneurial capitalism.

blog: Cognitive World
tag line: A think-tank, knowledge hub, and eco-system for AI transformation.
story title: How artificial intelligence can help fight corona-virus
read | story

— summary —

Artificial intelligence and genetic applied science are making it easier, faster, and cheaper to understand — how the virus spreads, how to manage it, and how to contain its devastating effects. The Cognitive World blog is a think-tank, knowledge hub and eco-system for AI transformation.

IMAGE

— notes —

AI = artificial intelligence

C+EN = Chemical Engineering + News
ACS = American Chemical Society
CBS = Columbia Broadcasting System
IEEE = Institute of Electrical + Electronics Engineers
ZD = Ziff Davis

— contents —

~ story
~ by definition
~ by the numbers
~ reading

— story —

Millions of people take approx. 5 or more medications a day — but testing the many side-effects of those pharmaceutical drug combinations has historically been difficult. Researchers at Stanford Univ. have invented a way to predict side-effects using computer modeling based-on artificial intelligence. The team explained that most drug combinations (called poly-pharmacy) have never been systematically studied.

Their AI software system is called Decagon — and they say it can help physicians make better decisions about what drugs to prescribe. It could also help researchers find better combinations of prescription drugs to treat complex diseases.

Limited knowledge.

With so many prescription drugs currently on the pharmaceutical market: “it’s practically impossible to test a new drug in combination with all other drugs — because just for one drug that would be 5,000 new experiments,” said Marinka Zitnik PhD — a researcher on the project.

Zitnik said: “With some new drug combinations we don’t know what will happen.” The researchers explained that poly-pharmacy side-effects happen because of drug -to- drug interactions — the effects of one pharmaceutical drug may change (positively or negatively) if it’s taken with another drug.

The knowledge of medical drug interactions is often limited — because the complex relationships between many pharmaceutical combinations is only rarely observed. Discovering poly-pharmacy side-effects is a serious challenge that’s important for patient health.

Tracking how pharmaceutical drugs affect proteins.

The researchers created a data-base containing descriptions of how 19,000+ proteins found in the human body interact with each other — and how various drugs affect these proteins. Using 4+ million known associations between drugs and their side-effects, the team crafted a method to identify patterns in how side-effects arise — based-on the way pharmaceutical drugs interact with proteins.

With that method, the system could predict the outcome of taking 2 drugs together. To evaluate their method, the group looked to see if its predictions came true. In many cases, they did. For example: there was no existing indication that the combination of a cholesterol drug named Lipitor and a blood-pressure medication called Norvasc, could lead to muscle inflammation. But Decagon predicted that it would, and that foresight was proven correct.

Looking ahead.

The team hopes to extend their results to include more multiple drug interactions. They aim to create a user-friendly tool — that gives physicians guidance on whether it’s a good idea to prescribe a particular pharmaceutical drug to a particular patient. And to help researchers developing drug protocols for complex diseases, with fewer side-effects.

by definition | what is poly-pharmacy

pol • y • phar • ma • cy — noun

— the simultaneous prescription of multiple pharmaceutical drugs — to treat a single condition.
— the simultaneous use of multiple pharmaceutical drugs by a single patient — for one or more conditions.

— by the numbers —

According to the CDC:

• 23% of United States citizens take 3+ prescription drugs each month
• 39% of United States citizens over age 65 take 5+ prescription drugs each month
• a number that’s increased 3-fold in the last several decades
• there are approx. 5,000 pharmaceutical drugs on the market — with approx. 1,000 known side-effects, taken individually
• making approx. 125 billion possible side-effects between all possible pairs of drugs
• Stanford Univ. says most drug combinations have never been systemically studied

source: CDC

reading

1. |

group: by Stanford University
motto: The wind of freedom blows.

story title: AI helps Stanford Univ. computer scientists predict the side effects of millions of drug combinations
read | story

— summary —

Millions of people take upwards of 5 medications a day, but testing the side-effects of such combinations is impractical. Now Stanford Univ. computer scientists have figured out how to predict side-effects using artificial intelligence.

2. |

group: by Mark Allen Group
tag line: Connecting specialist audiences with critical information.
tag line: we inform • we educate • we inspire • we engage • we know our markets • we enable your business

publication: the Engineer
tag line: First for technology + innovation.

story title: Decagon AI system predicts side-effects of drug combinations
read | story

— summary —

Stanford Univ. researchers have developed an AI tool called Decagon that can predict the potential side-effects of drug combinations.

— notes —

AI = artificial intelligence

CDC = Centers for Disease Control + Prevention • United States
US = United States
MAG = Mark Allen Group

image | above

Researchers have successfully trained an AI software program to detect the presence of Alzheimer’s disease in people — by looking at the way they talk. The tool relies on the fact that patients with Alzheimer’s tend to use English language differently than healthy people.

— contents —

~ story
~ by definition
~ pages
~ reading

— story —

Researchers from Stevens Institute of Technology designed an artificial intelligence software tool that can diagnose Alzheimer’s with 95% accuracy, reducing expensive diagnostic scans or in-person testing.

The software program is also able to document + explain its conclusions, so human experts can check the accuracy of its diagnosis.

The tell-tale signs

Some tell-tale language signs the AI software can detect:

• Alzheimer’s disease can affect a person’s use of language
• people with Alzheimer’s disease tend to replace nouns with pronouns
• for example — saying “he sat on it”
• … instead of — “the boy sat on the chair”
• they tend to speak with longer, awkward phrasing
• for example — saying “my stomach feels bad because I haven’t eaten”
• … instead of — “I’m hungry”
• they often have trouble expressing themselves

The project was developed by K.P. Subbalakshmi PhD. She’s the founding director of the Stevens Institute of Artificial Intelligence — and a professor of electrical + computer engineering. She said:

This is a real breakthrough. We’re opening an exciting new field of research, and making it easier to explain to patients why the AI algorithm came to the conclusion that it did — while diagnosing patients. This is absolutely state-of-the-art. Our AI software is the most accurate diagnostic tool currently available. This increases our ability to trust an AI system with important medical diagnosis.

— K.P. Subbalakshmi PhD

Alzheimer’s disease can affect a person’s use of language. By using AI software that learns over time — called a “convolutional neural network” — Subbalakshmi and her students developed a tool that accurately identifies well-known, tell-tale signs of Alzheimer’s — by detecting subtle language patterns that could easily be overlooked.

Tracking human language

Subbalakshmi and her team trained their algorithm using text produced by both healthy subjects and known Alzheimer’s patients — as they described a drawing of children stealing cookies from a jar. Using tools developed by Google, Subbalakshmi and her team converted each sentence into a unique number sequence — called a vector — representing a specific point in a 512-dimensional space.

With this approach, complex sentences can be assigned a concrete number value. This makes it easier to analyze structural + thematic relationships between sentences. By using those vectors along with hand-crafted features identified by subject matter experts — the AI software system gradually learned to spot similarities + differences between sentences spoken by healthy or unhealthy subjects. It can determine — with remarkable accuracy — the probability that a sample of speech belongs to an Alzheimer’s patient.

Also, the software can also easily incorporate new Alzheimer’s detection criteria that’s identified by other research teams in the future. So it will become more accurate over time.

The algorithm itself is incredibly powerful, we’re only constrained by the data available to us. We designed our system to be both modular and transparent. If other researchers identify new markers of Alzheimer’s, we can simply plug those into our architecture to generate even better results.

This method can be used to detect other medical conditions. When we get more + better data, we’ll be able to create streamlined, accurate AI software tools to diagnosis many other illnesses too.

— K.P. Subbalakshmi PhD

Robust diagnostic ability in the future

The next step is to train the AI software on a much bigger volume of sample text. In the near future, AI software could diagnose Alzheimer’s based on any sample of text — from a personal e-mail, to a social-media post. To accomplish that goal, an algorithm needs to be trained on a large volume of sample texts — of different types — spoken or written by diagnosed Alzheimer’s patients. With a larger sample set containing the tell-tale language markers of Alzheimer’s disease, the software can become better familiar with what to look for.

Subbalakshmi is programming her software to diagnose patients using other languages. Her team is also exploring ways that other neurological medical conditions — like aphasia, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and depression — can affect a patient’s use of language.

by definition | what is explainable artificial intelligence?

the Enterprisers Project | home
the Enterprisers Project | What is explainable AI?

— excerpt —

Explainable AI (artificial intelligence) means humans can understand the path a software system took to make a decision. Let’s break-down this concept in plain English, and explore why it matters.

AI software — that uses computational techniques like machine learning / deep learning — takes inputs and then produces outputs (or makes decisions) with no decipherable explanation or context. The system makes a decision or takes some action, and we don’t necessarily know why or how it decided. The system just does it, based on instructions the original programmer coded into the software program — that’s invisible to the user.

That’s called the “black box” model of AI, and it’s mysterious. In some cases, that’s just fine. In other contexts, it’s plenty ominous. For small programs like AI chatbots or sentiment analysis of social feeds, it doesn’t really matter if the AI system operates in a black box. But for software programs with a big human impact — autonomous vehicles, aerial navigation + drones, military applications — being able to understand the AI software’s decision-making process is mission-critical.

Enter “explainable AI” — sometimes known as “interpretable AI” or by the acronym XAI. As the name suggests, it’s AI that can be explained and understood by humans.

read | full definition

on the web | pages

Stevens Institute of Technology | home
Stevens Institute of Technology | YouTube

tag line: The innovation university.

on the web | pages

K.P. Subbalakshmi PhD | home

reading

group: by Stevens Institute of Technology
tag line: The innovation university.

story title: AI tool promises faster, more accurate Alzheimer’s diagnosis
read | story

 — summary —

Stevens Institute of Technology team uses explainable AI to address trustability of AI systems in the medical field.

group: by Xtelligent Healthcare Media
tag line: Using data to deliver relevant content to our readers.

publication: Health IT Analytics
story title: AI tool diagnoses Alzheimer’s with 95% accuracy
read | story

— summary —

The algorithm can detect subtle differences in the way people with Alzheimer’s disease use language.

— notes —

AI = artificial intelligence
XAI = explainable artificial intelligence
IT = information tech

image | above
The hand-held TytoHome health care exam device.

credit: TytoCare

— in this post —

~ story
~ featurettes
~ benefits
~ by the numbers
~ get the device
~ reading

— story —

TytoCare’s smart-home styled device named TytoHome is an award-winning, hand-held, medical tool kit. It can conduct basic, all-in-one health check-ups from the comfort of your own dwelling or office — and connect with your doctor remotely.

TytoHome is an electronic, portable, at-home exam kit plus smart-phone app — that lets you perform guided medical tests with a health-care provider. You can conduct exams on the heart, lungs, abdomen, ears, throat, skin, and body temperature. You can see and hear your physician using the device. Results appear instantly on your physician’s screen.

Then you can receive a diagnosis, a treatment plan, and prescriptions — anytime + anywhere. TytoHome helps your physician quickly, conveniently diagnose common conditions like: ear infection, head cold, sore throat, fever, cough, sinus + chest congestion, stomach ache, bug bites, and rashes.

To use TytoHome all you need is a smart-phone or tablet — plus a wi-fi internet connection. You can record your exam and send it to your doctor, or conduct a live exam guided by your physician.

And if you need a doctor, TytoCare has a trusted physicians network available 24 hours a day / 365 days a year — for expert help. TytoCare and its licensed medical partners give you the comfort of on-demand medical exams — with the security of fully qualified + board-certified physicians.

You can use TytoHome to:

• heart — capture heart rate with the stethoscope
• heart — listen to heart sounds with the stethoscope
• ears — look inside ears + examine the ear drum with the otoscope
• lungs — listen to the lungs breathing with the stethoscope
• throat — examine throat + tonsils with the tongue-depressor camera attachment
• temperature — take body temperature with the no-touch infra-red thermometer
• skin — take photos of skin with the high-definition camera
• abdomen — listen to the stomach + gastro-intestinal tract with the stethoscope

on the web | pages

TytoCare | home
TytoCare | YouTube channel

TytoCare | TytoHome
TytoCare | featurette — TytoPro
TytoCare | featurette — TytoClinic

tag line: Always know with Tyto.
tag line: Your on-demand medical exam.

— featurette —

group: by TytoCare
featurette title: meet TytoHome • no. 1
year: 2020

— summary —

TytoHome by TytoCare is your on-demand + in-home medical exam.

— featurette —

group: by TytoCare
featurette title: meet TytoHome • no. 2
year: 2020

— summary —

TytoHome by TytoCare is your on-demand + in-home medical exam.

— benefits —

certainty:

TytoHome goes beyond a phone or video chat with a doctor — by providing an on-demand, clinic-quality medical exam, right from your home, so you can know with certainty what to do next.

peace of mind:

Debates about whether to rush to the emergency room are over. With TytoHome, you’ll know immediately if action needs to be taken — or if you can go back to sleep.

convenience:

See a physician from the comfort of home — without waiting for an appointment or travelling to the clinic. Especially during times when going out is risky with inclement weather or community-wide infections.

security:

TytoHome uses a secure platform that only you and the health-care provider can access — and in full compliance with international health data standards and laws. So you can be certain your personal info is safe + secure.

— by the numbers —

• TytoCare has 100,000 registered patients
• TytoCare has conducted 200,000 medical exams
• 95% of patients + physicians reported positive experiences

* as of year 2019

— get the device —

In the United States: Best Buy is the current + exclusive retail shop offering the TytoHome medical exam kit for approx. $300 — for home customers. The device is FDA cleared + reviewed and clinically tested.

TytoCare’s goal is to upgrade health-care delivery with on-demand medical exams and tele-health visits — and also offers health system services for professionals.

on the web | pages

Best Buy | home
Best Buy | product: TytoHome • by TytoCare

tag line: expert service + unbeatable price
tag line: Let’s talk about what’s possible.

reading:

1. |

publication: Wired
tag line: —
story title: The TytoHome medical kit by TeleCare lets doctors monitor patients remotely
read | story

— summary —

Soon this easy, in-home diagnostic device will be standard home equipment for every family.

group: by Conde Nast
tag line: —

2. |

publication: Time
tag line: —
list title: Best Inventions of 2019
category: heath-care
story title: TytoHome • an easy-access doctor
read | list
read | profile

— summary —

100 innovations making the world better, smarter, and even a little more fun.

— profile —

Getting to the doctor’s office isn’t always easy. But the creators of the TytoHome — by TytoCare — hope to eliminate that trip altogether. Its hand-held device measures vitals. It examines heart, lungs, ears, skin and throat with special adapters.

And video­-conferences with a doctor to monitor the metrics in real time. The company’s CEO Dedi Gilad said: “It transforms primary care by putting health in the hands of consumers.”

— notes —

FDA = Federal Drug Administration • United States

image | above

Pictured is a bio-medical test called an antibiogram. Bacteria is grown in a glass lab tray called a petri dish. A range of antibiotics are applied to the dish — each one is labeled with a button.

After some time, researchers can examine the space around each button. They can see which antibiotics destroyed the bacteria — and which did not.

IMAGE

— contents —

~ story facts
~ reading

— story facts —-

A powerful antibiotic was discovered using an artificial intelligence software tool.

part 1:

• researchers at MIT used intelligent software to search a library of substances for possible new antibiotics
• the program successfully identified a compound that has enormous promise for use as an antibiotic
• the antibiotic they discovered — and named “halicin” — can destroy some of the most dangerous bacteria
• in lab tests, the drug destroyed several of the world’s most problematic disease-causing bacteria
• including some strains that are resistant to all known antibiotics
• it also cleared infections — in 2 lab mouse tests

part 2:

• the team used a software program designed for “deep learning” — a type of artificial intelligence
• it can see patterns in vast amounts of data — and select best-fit items that meet a researcher’s criteria
• the researchers showed the software how to identify types of molecules that destroy bacteria
• they input — into the program — a library with the molecular features of 2,500 drugs + natural compounds
• along with data on how well (or not) the substance blocked the growth of the bacteria named escherichia coli
• so the software program learned what molecular features created good antibiotics
• next — the team input the program with a library of 6,000 compounds
• these new substances were under investigation for treating various human diseases
• the program was set to look for compounds that had anti-microbial features
• but were also substantially different from current antibiotics
• in a few hours — the program assessed the compounds + selected some that might be good antibiotics

part 3:

• the researchers used those selections to test on a range of infections
• the compound they named halicin — was especially effective
• they treated numerous drug-resistant infections with halicin
• halicin killed: mycobacterium tuberculosis — the bacteria that causes the serious lung illness tuberculosis
• halicin killed: strains of enterobacteriaceae — these bacteria are resistant to carbapenems
• carbapenems — are a type of antibiotic that are the last resort for enterobacteriaceae infections
• carbapenems — are commonly used to treat severe + high-risk bacterial infections
• carbapenems — are reserved for multi-drug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infections
• halicin cleared: the bacteria clostridiodes difficile + the bacteria acinetobacter baumannii —  in mice
• halicin could be a much-needed, life-saving antibiotic
• halicin may be able to treat the worst infections
• the research team is optimistic

part 4:

• the World Health Organization said drug-resistant infection is one of the biggest threats to global health
• using artificial intelligence tech for health-care research is just beginning
• but major breakthroughs are already being made

image | above

A petri dish in a bio-medical lab holds growing bacteria that was treated with a test of antibiotics.

image | above

The team tested the antibiotic they discovered — and named “halicin” — on infected lab mice, to see if it could clear difficult bacteria from their bodies. The experiment was successful.

reading

1. |

school: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
motto: mind + hand
web: home • channel

story title: Artificial intelligence yields new antibiotic
read | story

— summary —

A deep-learning model identifies a powerful new drug that can kill many species of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

2. |

broadcast: BBC
tag line: To inform, educate, and entertain.
web: home • channel

story title: Scientists discover powerful antibiotic using AI
read | story

— summary —

In a world first, scientists have discovered a new type of antibiotic using artificial intelligence.

3. |

publication: the Guardian
tag line: The world’s leading liberal voice.

story title: Powerful antibiotic discovered using machine learning for the first time
read | story

— summary —

Team at MIT says halicin kills some of the world’s most dangerous strains.

presented by

group: Guardian Media Group • the Scott Trust
tag line: Available for everyone, funded by readers.
web: page • page

4.|

platform: the Conversation
tag line: Academic rigor, journalistic flair.
web: home • channel

story title: Deep learning AI discovers surprising new antibiotics
read | story

— summary —

New antibiotics are desperately needed. Yet few new antibiotics have entered the market of late, and even these are just minor variants of old antibiotics. While the prospects look bleak, the recent revolution in artificial intelligence offers new hope.

5. |

publication: Nature
tag line: ~
web: home • channel

story title: Powerful antibiotics discovered using AI
read | story

— summary —

Machine learning spots molecules that work even against “un-treatable” strains of bacteria.

presented by

group: Springer
tag line: International publisher: science, technology, medicine.
web: home • channel

6. |

publication: Financial Times
tag line: Make sense of a disrupted world.
web: home • channel

story title: AI discovers antibiotics to treat drug-resistant diseases
read | story

— summary —

Machine learning uncovers potent new drug able to kill 35 powerful bacteria.

presented by

company: Nikkei
tag line: fair + impartial
web: home

7. |

publication: Stat
tag line: Reporting from the frontiers of health + medicine.
web: home channel

story title: Aided by machine learning, scientists find a novel antibiotic able to kill super-bugs in mice
read | story

— summary —

Now artificial intelligence is giving scientists a reason to dramatically expand their search into data-bases of molecules that look nothing like existing antiobiotics.

presented by

group: Boston Globe Media
tag line: New England’s leading media company.
web: home

8. |

publication: Singularity Hub
tag line: ~
web: home • channel

story title: AI just discovered a new antibiotic to kill the world’s nastiest bacteria
read | story

— summary —

text

presented by

company: by Singularity Univ.
tag line:
web: home • channel

IMAGE

reference

LINE

company: IBM
tag line: Think.
web: home • channel

project: Watson for Health
tag line: Making progress in health, together.
web: : home  learn about AI in medicine

— summary —

Researchers are building better software with artificial intelligence for applications in medicine. Gaining insights into diagnostics, health-care processes, treatment options, and patient outcomes — with the support of computers using a technique called machine learning.

publication: AI in HealthCare
tag line: Innovation to transform health-care.
web: home

presented by

company: TriMed Media
tag line:
web: home

IMAGE

— notes —

AI = artificial intelligence
ML = machine learning

MDR = multi-drug-resistant

MIT = Massachusetts Institute of Technology
IBM = International Business Machines
WHO = World Health Organization

— in this post —

~ story
~ chart
~ by the numbers
~ pages
~ reading

— story —

Researchers at Northwestern Univ. believe a smart-phone app they developed called Purple Robot can detect depression in people by tracking:

• the number of daily minutes you use a mobile phone
• plus your daily geographic location pattern

Using this smart-phone data collection app, the researchers correlated that the more time a person spends using a mobile phone, the more likely they’re depressed. The average daily mobile phone use for depressed people was 68 minutes — and for non-depressed people it was 17 minutes.

Another pattern researchers noticed was related to a person’s location. Spending most of their time at home, and most of their time in fewer locations — as measured by GPS tracking on their mobile phone — was linked to depression. Also linked to depression: having a less regular day-to-day schedule, and going to work at different times each day.

The study resulted in a significant outcome: the researchers were able to predict if somebody was depressed — just by looking at this mobile phone data — with 87% accuracy.

The research study.

28 adult participants were recruited from the community to carry a mobile phone with the sensor data acquisition app — called Purple Robot — for 2 weeks. Before the 2-weeks started: to determine if they were depressed, the participants filled-out a standard questionnaire that measures the signs + symptoms of depression.

The questionnaire is called PHQ-9 — it’s widely used by health-care providers, and relies on the patient self-reporting their feelings + experiences. The form asks about common symptoms used to diagnose depression — on a scale of 1 -to- 10.

symptoms used to diagnose depression:

• sadness
• hopelessness
• loss of pleasure
• loss of appetite
• difficulty sleeping
• difficulty concentrating

according to the PHQ-9 questionnaire:

• 14 participants did not have signs of depression
• 14 had symptoms of depression — ranging from mild -to- severe

Researchers analyzed the GPS locations and phone use for the 28 individuals — 20 females + 8 males, average age of 29 years-old — for 2 weeks. The sensor tracked GPS location every 5 minutes.

Then — using the GPS + phone use data collected from the mobile phones — the researchers correlated those results with the participants’ depression test results. They were able to see a pattern emerge, accurately matching the trends in the data with people who self-reported as depressed or not depressed.

MAP

chart | below

• A chart from the study showing an example of mobile phone use data from 1 participant.
• Each column is a day of the week during the 2 week study.
• The grey bars show the amount of time during the day the particpant’s smart-phone was active.

art: by Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies • Northwestern Univ.

— chart —

Signs of depression surfacing.

David Mohr PhD is a clinical psychologist — and Director of the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies at Northwestern Univ.

He said: “The significance of this research is we can detect if somebody has depression — and the severity of their symptoms — without asking them any questions. We’re detecting depression with smart-phones — that are providing data passively.

“The research data showed that depressed people don’t usually go to many places — that reflects the loss of motivation seen with depression. So depressed people withdraw. They don’t have the motivation or energy to go out and do things.”

Depression is a mental health disorder that’s common, upsetting, and often recurring. It frequently goes un-detected + un-treated. Today’s mobile phones are everywhere — and have a large complement of sensors that can monitor the behavior patterns of their users. Those patterns might be a key to discovering symptoms of depression.

The mobile phone use data didn’t identify how people were using their phones. But Mohr suspects that people who spent the most time on their smart-phones were surfing the web or playing games — probably not talking with friends.

He said: “When people are on their smart-phones, they’re likely to avoid thinking about painful things, or difficult relationships. It’s an avoidance behavior that’s common with depression.”

Better than questionnaires.

The smart-phone data was better at detecting depression than daily questions the participants answered about how sad they were feeling on a scale of 1 -to- 10. Those answers are often un-reliable.

This research can develop new ways of monitoring people at risk for depression — and enable health care providers to intervene more quickly. If the app watching the mobile phone detects patterns of activity associated with depression — an alert can be sent to physicians to get people the care they need.

Future studies + conclusions.

Next, the researchers plan to study: if getting people to change the behaviors linked to depression can improve their mood.

Mohr said: “We’ll see if we can reduce symptoms of depression by encouraging people to: maintain a more regular routine, spend more time in a variety of places, and reduce their mobile phone use.”

In conclusion, mobile phone sensors offer clinical opportunities:

• provide continuous monitoring of at-risk people
• with little burden on the patient to recognize or diagnose their own symptoms
• provide a calming sense of medical supervision to people suffering with depression
• provide just-in-time outreach + interventions

— by the numbers —

• depression is a serious medical condition
• it is life-affecting + can be life-threatening
• symptoms include: sadness, loss of pleasure, low energy, difficulty concentrating, and suicidal thoughts
• depression affects 20 million people in the US
• depression affects 300 million people world-wide
• depression is the single biggest cause of disability world-wide
• it affects every age, ethnicity, gender, religion, culture, and economic community
• the class of prescription drugs called anti-depressants are only 50% effective in treating its symptoms
• there haven’t been any new treatments for depression on the horizon for +20 years
• depression research is under-funded
• we need better treatments for + understanding of this illness

source: Hope for Depression Research Foundation

— types of depression —

The umbrella of depressive illness:

• major depression disorder
• persistent depression disorder
• mood disorder
• anxiety disorder
• seasonal depression disorder
• menstrual cycle depression disorder
• pregnancy depression disorder
• post-traumatic loss depression disorder
• post-traumatic stress depression disorder
• thoughts of suicide

— signals of depression —

• feelings: sad, worthless, guilty
• missing: school, job, appointments
• activities: lack of pleasure or interest
• big changes: in appetite or weight
• sluggishness + lethargy
• withdrawing from: friends + family
• new behaviors like: restlessness, fits, fidgeting
• difficulty: falling asleep or staying asleep
• difficulty: organizing, concentrating, remembering
• self-harming: thoughts + actions

source: Hope for Depression Research Foundation

— questionnaire —

group: by Pfizer
form: Patient Health Questionnaire 9
for: diagnosing depression

read | questionnaire
format: Adobe

about | questionnaire

The form called Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) — developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer — is an important medical standard for diagnosing depression.

Patients fill-out the 9 question form — it takes just 5 minutes. They answer questions about symptoms + feelings they experience. The questionnaire gives physicians a good basis for discovering depression in patients who may not know how or why they’re suffering.

The form is a mainstay of health-care providers — but researchers are looking for better ways to detect depression without asking patients to self-describe their symptoms. Because that technique can be un-reliable. If depression goes un-detected, symptoms can increase and people don’t get the help they need to cope.

on the web | pages

Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies • Northwestern Univ. | home
Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies • Northwestern Univ. | Purple Robot

tag line: Envisioning a world with effective, usable, and sustainable digital mental health services for all people.

motto: Whatsoever things are true.

— summary —

At the center, we evaluate behavioral intervention tech-enabled services. We explore new techniques for mental health and well-being — that are proven scientifically effective.

We analyze data from smart-phone sensors. An ever-increasing amount + variety of sensors are collecting and transmitting data about our lives. This data is used by companies for advertising — but can also help us with daily tasks. For example: sensor data from our mobile phones is collected to see best driving routes that avoid traffic. And step-counting sensors track walking fitness.

We’re learning how sensor data can improve life for people with mental health issues. Our “personal sensing” research harnesses sensor data collected from mobile devices — to identify behaviors + states associated with mental health. Then patterns are identified to improve digital mental health interventions like apps + bots.

about | Purple Robot

The Purple Robot app — built for the Android mobile operating system owned by Google — provides a real-time sensor data platform for collecting info about the smart-phone user, and their surroundings.

Purple Robot provides:

• access to the Android operating system’s sensor framework
• including: accelerometer, gyroscope, pressure sensor
• access to other device info: battery level, running software + apps, and hardware
• options to scan for external devices like: wireless access points + visible BlueTooth devices
• location sensors that use: the built-in GPS + cellular triangulation to map user location
• local environment like: solar event timing (sunrise + sunset) and weather
• statistical summary of the user’s communication pattern
• including: phone logs + text-message transcripts
• cryptographic anonymization of personal identity info before it leaves the device

on the web | pages

Hope for Depression Research Foundation | home
Hope for Depression Research Foundation | organizations
Hope for Depression Research Foundation | help + resources
Hope for Depression Research Foundation | research
watch | featurette

tag line: Funding the best minds, to heal minds.

READING

on the web | reading

group: Northwestern Univ.
story title: Your phone knows if you’re depressed
deck: Time spent on smart-phone + GPS location sensor data detect depression
read | story

motto: Whatsoever things are true.

on the web | reading

publication: Journal of Medical Internet Research
report title: Mobile phone sensor correlates of depressive symptom severity in daily life behavior
deck: An exploratory study
read | report

tag line: Advancing digital health research.

FILE

— notes —

GPS = global positioning system
PHQ-9 = patient health questionnaire — 9

CBITs = Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies • Northwestern Univ.
NU = Northwestern Univ. • United States

— in this post —

~ story
~ by the numbers
~ featurettes
~ pages
~ reading
~ watching

— story —

The National Football League (NFL) is asking inventors, scientists, physicians, and engineers to make the game of football safer. 300 of the brightest minds from around the world gathered at a symposium to talk about changes that could be made — one of the key improvements will be a better helmet design.

The NFL’s initiative — called Head Health Tech — set aside $3 million in grants to support development of new helmet prototypes. The goal of the NFL helmet challenge is preventing traumatic head injury to players through innovation. The science teams are exploring:

• advanced modeling software — to see how injuries happen, test wearable gear
• improved helmet design — to protect the skull, neck, and brain
• composite materials — to construct better gear that can absorb + withstand crushing impact

Injuries are a mounting concern.

Traumatic brain and spine injuries — such as concussion, whiplash, fractured skull, and broken neck bones — have been an increasing concern for football players from youth to adult. These injuries affect both amateur and professional leagues. Head trauma from impact shock can lead to life-long disability and even death. In the 100 years since popular football became an all-time American contact-sport, few improvements have been made to the safety gear that makes-up a standard football uniform.

The NFL said: “We see opportunities to change the paradigm of how helmets are designed — and use the world’s state-of-the-art from multiple fields. There are new approaches, new materials, new concepts.”

This is the league’s first helmet challenge. The winner of the contest will be awarded $1 million and also $2 million in grant funding to develop the prototype. The first round of proposals are due January 2020 — and final helmet prototypes are due May 2021.

Year 2020 marks the NFL’s 100th game season — and public scrutiny is intensifying, while legal teams and families demand that players be better protected from concussion. A team of neuro-scientists at a start-up called BrainGuard are working quickly to develop a better helmet that can prevent brain injuries.

image | above
The NFL’s helmet challenge is part of their Head Health Tech initiative.

art: by NFL

Designing for shock absorption.

Pressure from the new football season — and continued heart-breaking accounts from NFL players who suffered severe brain injuries — makes the roll-out of a better helmet increasingly urgent.

BrainGuard thinks its design could be a game-changer. Their team of engineers, led by neuro-scientist Robert Knight MD, bashes a prototype football helmet from every angle — hitting it again and again — to see how it absorbs and disperses energy before the blow impacts the brain.

The helmet features an inner and outer shell — connected by highly absorbent padding and a network of rubber struts that stretch, acting as shock absorbers. No matter where the helmet is hit, only the outer shell moves.

Knight explained: “Every time it does that, and it moves, these struts are absorbing some of the force — mitigating the amount of force that goes to the inner shell, which then of course goes directly to your skull and to your brain.”

The design specifically addresses rotational force injuries: the twisting and turning of the brain caused by severe blows to the head. When tested against other helmets, BrainGuard says the amount of rotational force was reduced by 25 % — 45 %.

Life-threatening second impact syndrome.

The medical condition called second impact syndrome is a potentially catastrophic injury that occurs when a person — who already has a concussion — sustains a second head injury, before symptoms from the first concussion have healed. Concussion causes brain inflammation. If the patient sustains a second head injury during this vulnerable time, the brain can swell so much there isn’t enough space in the skull — this can destroy brain tissue. And in some cases lead to death.

Improved helmets must be designed to prevent the player from sustaining a concussion at all. Current helmets don’t provide protection from extreme impact, rotational forces, or the cumulative effect of multiple collisions.

image | above
Prototype of a helmet that absorbs shock + rotational forces.

photo: by BrainGuard

A need for new standards.

Football players’ parents and coaches welcome any safety improvements. The helmet is a critical piece of gear, like airbags in motor vehicles. And the same way airbags are now required by law in all automobiles, BrainGuard hopes its 2-shelled helmets will become standard equipment — not just for football players: but also for hockey, baseball, and cycling. Any sport or activity where a better helmet could reduce brain injuries.

The NFL has 1,700 players. But there are 1.2 million youth each year playing Pop Warner football, and high school + college football — who are equally at risk for head injury. 63,000 high school students in the United States suffer a traumatic brain injury per year, leaving many kids with persistent long-term physical + cognitive disability.

The World Health Organization predicts that traumatic brain injury will become a leading cause of death + disability in the world by year 2020.

featurette | watch

group: by Univ. of California + BrainGuard
featurette title: Building a better helmet

featurette | watch

group: by Univ. of Washington + Vicis
featurette title: Building a better helmet

 — by the numbers —

statistics: by CDC
source: data

— from traumatic brain injury
— over a period of 1 year

• 2.5 million emergency room visits
• 56,000 deaths
• 282,000 hospitalizations

* not including military activities
* for year 2013

featurette | watch

group: by CDC
featurette title: What is a concussion?

on the web | pages

CDC | home
CDC | Heads-Up
CDC | helmet safety

Heads-Up by CDC is an education pack about safe sports and activities for kids + teens.

The materials teach prevention, recognition, and response to head concussion and other serious brain injuries.

tag line: saving lives + protecting people

Hope for BrainGuard’s prototype helmet.

The helmet designed by BrainGuard has layers that move to protect the head.

BrainGuard has been awarded 13 United States patents + 6 foreign patents. Their innovative, multi-layered helmet protects against rotational shear forces that are a major contributor to traumatic brain injury (TBI). These damaging forces also play a role in the brain’s accumulation of toxic, malformed proteins seen in chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a brain disease that forms from repetitive head blows.

Encephalopathy is a medical term meaning: brain disease, damage, or malfunction. It has a wide range of symptoms

• mild — such as memory loss or personality changes
• severe — such as dementia, seizures, coma, or death.

CTE is consistently found in people who’ve suffered multiple traumatic brain injuries — from accidents, sports, or military experiences. BrainGuard’s helmet design solution results in marked rotational force reduction in lab testing. The hope for the improved helmet is that is can prevent concussion.

IMAGE

featurette | watch

group: by Associated Press
series: Science Says
featurette title: How repeated head blows affect the brain

tag line: The definitive source for news.

— summary —

The medical term CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Researchers are tackling fresh questions about this long-term degenerative brain disease now that it has been detected in the brains of nearly 200 football players after death. As a new NFL season gets underway, here’s a look at what’s known about CTE.

We examine the evidence behind health + science claims by putting them into context. Our occasional series Science Says helps you dissect the latest research and why it matters.

image | above

left-side of photo — cross-sections of healthy human brain tissue.
right-side of photo — cross-sections of a human brain suffering from CTE.

This image from a medical research project at Boston Univ. clearly shows the pathology associated with CTE — a long-term brain disability that’s caused by traumatic brain injury like concussion.

photo: Boston Univ.

on the web | pages

BrainGuard | home
BrainGuard | press

tag line: Layers that move to protect — the magic is in the motion.

on the web | pages

Vicis | home
Vicis | YouTube channel

tag line: protect the athlete + elevate the game

on the web | pages

NFL | home
NFL | YouTube channel

Next Generation Stats • by NFL | home

Player Health + Safety • by NFL | home
Player Health + Safety • by NFL | helmet challenge
Player Health + Safety • by NFL | head health tech

tag line: play smart + play safe

on the web | pages

Concussion Legacy Foundation | home
Concussion Legacy Foundation | YouTube channel

tag line: We are solving the concussion crisis.

on the web | pages

Headway Foundation | home
Headway Foundation | YouTube channel

tag line: Real concussion progress.

on the web | pages

Boston Univ. | home
Boston Univ. | Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center

tag line: Conducting high-impact, innovative research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

on the web | pages

Virginia Polytechnic Institute + State Univ. | home
Virginia Polytechnic Institute + State Univ. | helmet ratings

tag line: Translating research to reduce concussion risk.

on the web | reading

group: Associated Press
story title: NFL at 100
deck: Helmets go high-tech in quest for player safety
read | story

tag line: The definitive source for news.

on the web | reading

publication: Wired
story title: Football’s concussion crisis is awash with pseudo-science
deck: Products that offer a “seat belt” or “bubble wrap” for the brain claim to reduce head trauma
deck: If only the laws of physics worked that way
read | story

on the web | reading

publication: San Francisco Chronicle
story title: What will football helmets look like in future?
deck: Scientists may know
read | story

on the web | reading

publication: Boston
story title: Reebok launches the CheckLight: a head monitoring skull-cap
deck: The CheckLight monitors head trauma in real time
read | story
watch | featurette

publication: Boston
story title: Company makes high-tech football helmets worn by the pros
deck: Xenith is changing the football helmet game
read | story

on the web | reading

group: Univ. of California
story title: New helmet design can deal with sports twists + turns
deck: BrainGuard is building a better helmet
read | story

on the web | reading

broadcast: NBC
story title: CTE study finds evidence of brain disease in 110 out of 111 former NFL players
read | story

— summary —

Research on 202 former football players found evidence of brain disease in nearly all of the athletes: from the NFL and college sports — to high school students. The study is an important update on CTE, a brain disease linked with repeated head blows.

on the web | watching

broadcast: NBC
show title: Today
episode title: Football to Battlefield
deck: Helmet company Vicis expands focus from NFL — to include kids + military
watch | featurette

tag line: Share the moment.

— summary —

The high-tech helmets made by company Vicis are ranked best by the NFL — for reducing the impact of blows to the head. Already a top brand in world-wide professional + amateur sports for adults — Vicis also wants to make headgear to protect kids on the field. Eventually Vicis wants to take its helmet research to the battlefield, getting headgear to military troops in harm’s way.

on the web | watching

publication: Digital Trends
featurette title: Vicis creates the football helmet of the future
watch | featurette

tag line: Upgrade your lifestyle.

on the web | watching

platform: Patreon
group: by Entertain the Elk
featurette title: The evolution of football helmets
watch | featurette

tag line: Videos exploring art + entertainment.

IMAGE

— notes —

Univ. of CA = University of California • United States
Univ. of WA = University of Washington • United States

Virginia Tech = Virginia Polytechnic Institute + State Univ. • United States

ER = emergency room
TBI = traumatic brain injury
CTE = chronic traumatic encephalopathy

AP = Associated Press
NBC = National Broadcasting Company
NFL = National Football League

WHO = World Health Organization
CDC = Centers for Disease Control + Prevention • United States

— in this post —

~ story
~ by definition
~ pages
~ reading

—  story —

The National Football League (NFL)  is partnering with Amazon’s high-tech company Amazon Web Services (AWS) to get a deeper understanding of the game of football — with the goal to better predict + prevent player head injury like concussion.

The computer software field of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming every major industry, including sports. Applied to football, AI is improving how player safety is visualized and assessed — shaping tech that can see how injuries happen.

Seeing complex patterns.

Since year 2017, the NFL has officially used Amazon’s data collection + management tools to build a significant data-base of statistical info — for better analysis of player performance and game outcomes.

That ongoing program — called Next Generation Stats — is expanding to tackle the growing concern of player safety. An enormous amount of data is captured by placing radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on player’s shoulder gear and the game ball. RFID uses electro-magnetic fields to automatically identify + track tags attached to objects. These tags electronically store info. Then ultra-wide-band signal receivers track the players and ball movement down to the inch.

NFL signed onto a partnership with Zebra to install RFID data sensors in players’ shoulder pads, helmets, and across NFL stadiums. These chips detect how fast the player’s running — and how heavy an impact is that a player’s taken, which is important for medically diagnosing trauma to the head.

Behind every incredible football play are 1000s of data-points that could be missed: such as player’s acceleration, football field location, and movement patterns. The NFL uses Amazon Web Services to track the scale, speed, and complexity of that data — in real-time.

So with Amazon’s machine learning + artificial intelligence — software tools that can sift through mountains of confusing or overwhelming data, and see key patterns in it — the NFL can visualize detailed action on the football field. The software uncovers insights, and expands the fan experience with a broad range of stats. The knowledge gained from the data also helps coaches improve game-play.

The NFL is expanding its partnership with Amazon Web Services — using Amazon’s pattern-recognition software and cloud computing products.

IMAGE

featurette | watch

group: NFL + Amazon Web Services
featurette title: A team-up to transform player health + safety

The digital athlete.

The most revolutionary component of the NFL + Amazon partnership is the creation of the Digital Athlete — a computer simulation model that can replicate infinite scenarios within the game environment.

The Digital Athlete simulation applies Amazon’s computer vision tech to the NFL’s data-sets. The data comes from many sources: like player position, play type, equipment choice, playing surface, environmental factors — and player injury info.

The knowledge that comes from seeing patterns in the matrix of this data will improve injury treatment. And eventually help predict + prevent injuries in football — and other sports.

The future of football.

The expanded partnership combines the NFL’s extensive set of game data with Amazon’s tech.

the goals:

• computer vision models will automatically detect when concussions happen to players
• identify + understand the forces that cause traumatic brain injury
• detect + prevent a wider range of injury, like damage to the lower body
• visualize + understand the many factors at play at the moment of injury
• make changes to the game + gear to protect players
• share knowledge with sports equipment designers + makers
• approach the problem by studying data and bio-mechanics

The engineering road-map.

The NFL also created the “engineering road-map.” It’s a $60 million initiative to engage teams — of bio-mechanical + bio-medical + bio-engineering researchers — that will develop solutions to predict + prevent player injury.

• Player Health + Safety • by NFL | engineering road-map
• Player Health + Safety • by NFL | innovation through collaboration

A research example.

To better understand how concussion-causing injuries happen on the football field: the Univ. of Virginia supervises a project to simulate player impacts with modified crash-test mannequins.

The research team compiled a review of reported concussions that happened in NFL games. They shared data with helmet manufacturers, designers, entrepreneurs, universities to think-tank novel designs for protective gear.

Based on those results, the NFL changed the kick-off rule — this decreased reported concussions by 38 % on kick-off plays, compared to the prior 3-year average.

The next 100 years.

The NFL is trying to make football safer by:

• using digital models of players, their gear, and their movements
• changing game rules to reduce situations where the worst injuries happen
• designing better protective gear
• updating injury prevention protocols

Looking ahead to the league’s next 100 years, the NFL said:

We’re committed to re-imagining the future of football so that everybody wins — players, coaches, clubs, and fans. Our research will learn about the human body and how injuries happen. That knowledge will reach far beyond football. As we look ahead to our next 100 seasons, we’re proud of this endeavor.

— NFL

by definition | What is cloud computing?

The service called cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of information technology (IT) resources over the web with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining computer equipment such as physical data centers + servers, a customer can access hardware + software tech services — like computing power, storage, and data-bases — on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider.

some cloud computing providers:

visit | Amazon Web Services • by Amazon
visit | Azure • by Microsoft
visit | Alibaba Cloud • by Alibaba
visit | Google Cloud • by Google
visit | IBM Cloud • by IBM
visit | Oracle Cloud • by Oracle
visit | RackSpace Cloud • by RackSpace

on the web | pages

Zebra | home
Zebra | YouTube channel

Zebra | story: changing the NFL forever with RFID sensors

tag line: Capture your edge.

on the web | pages

Amazon | home
Amazon | YouTube channel

Amazon Web Services • by Amazon | home
Amazon Web Services • by Amazon | Next Generation Stats
Amazon Web Services • by Amazon | YouTube channel

IMAGE

on the web | pages

NFL | home
NFL | YouTube channel

Next Generation Stats • by NFL | home

Player Health + Safety • by NFL | home
Player Health + Safety • by NFL | helmet challenge
Player Health + Safety • by NFL | head health tech

tag line: play smart + play safe

IMAGE

on the web | reading

publication: Engadget • by Verizon
story title: Amazon + the NFL team-up to create a digital athlete simulation
deck: They’ll use it to test different game scenarios — and predict + prevent injuries
read | story

tag line: The original home for tech news + reviews.

on the web | reading

publication: Digital Trends
story title: Amazon + the NFL plan virtual games to understand real injuries
read | story

tag line: Upgrade your lifestyle.

on the web | reading

publication: Vox • by Vox Media
story title: This high-tech football could change the NFL
read | story

 — notes —

AI = artificial intelligence
IT = information technology
RFID = radio frequency identification

gen = generation
stats = statistics

AWS = Amazon Web Services
NFL = National Football League
IBM = International Business Machines

image | above

A medical scan of a patient’s brain is labelled with an orange spot — marked by artificial intelligence software, where it found a probable aneurysm.

from: Stanford Univ.

— note —

Dear readers,

Important breakthroughs happen ever-faster each year. We collect good writing from magazines + newspapers on lead headlines — so you can connect with essential stories on progress.

posted below:

• a story on progress that’s making headlines
• facts summary
• reading on this story

— facts —-

an artificial intelligence software tool found aneurysms better than physicians:

part 1:

• computer software called artificial intelligence (AI) specializes in revealing patterns in large + complex piles of data
• AI programs can often pick-out key issues, better than a person
• the software is trained to sift through mountains of info — efficiently sorting data into maps of knowledge
• so AI is especially useful in fields that process high volumes of data — like: medicine, economics, physics, engineering
• medical researchers hope to build AI software that can diagnose patients

part 2:

• a team at Stanford Univ. built an AI tool to help detect brain aneurysms in people
• a brain aneurysm is a bulge in a blood vessel in the brain
• aneurysms are dangerous because they can leak or rupture — causing bleeding into the brain
• usually an aneurysm forms because a blood vessel is weak
• so early detection + diagnosis are important to avoid patient death or disability
• each year: 30,000 people in the US suffer a ruptured brain aneurysm

part 3:

• the team’s AI software tool highlights areas of a brain scan that are likely to contain an aneurysm
• it successfully found 6 more aneurysms than physicians did — in a set of 100 brain scans
• to find aneurysms in a patient, physicians comb through 100s of brain images
• aneurysms come in many sizes + shapes — and balloon-out at tricky angles
• some appear as tiny blips on brain scan images

part 4.

• the team taught their software by showing it 611 3D brain scans — where they outlined actual aneurysms
• so the software learned how to identify what an aneurysm looks like in high detail
• to use the tool, the team feeds the software a 3D brain scan made with the imaging technique called CT
• CT stands for computed tomography angiogram — it creates a map of body tissues + blood vessels
• then the AI software overlays the CT image with a colored highlight, wherever it finds an aneurysm
• the team envisions an updated AI program designed to find aneurysms after they’ve burst

image | above
A medical diagram illustrating an aneurysm in a human brain.

art: by Elizabeth Weissbrod • Weissbrod Studios

reading:

1. |

organization: Stanford Univ.
story title: Stanford Univ. researchers develop artificial intelligence tool to help detect brain aneurysms
read | story

— summary —

Radiologists improved their diagnosis of brain aneurysms with artificial intelligence software made by medical researchers + computer scientists.

2. |

publication: the Next Web
story title: Stanford Univ. new AI can help doctors spot brain aneurysms
read | story

tag line: Sharing, inventing, and advancing tech developments.

3. |

publication: Extreme Tech • by Ziff Davis
story title: Stanford Univ. latest AI helps doctors diagnose brain aneurysms more accurately
read | story

4. |

publication: Geek • by Ziff Davis
story title: New AI tool can help doctors detect brain aneurysms
read | story

5. |

publication: Psychology Today
story title: Stanford Univ. unveils AI tool for finding aneurysms
read | story

— summary —

Deep learning helps clinicians identify brain aneurysms with better accuracy.

6. |

publication: Radiology Business • by TriMed Media
story title: AI helps specialists improve cerebral aneurysm detection rates
read | story

tag line: For leaders navigating value-based care.

7. |

publication: Health Imaging • by TriMed Media
story title: AI detects missed aneurysms in magnetic resonance angiography with increased sensitivity
read | story

tag line: Insights in imaging + informatics.

8. |

publication: Forbes
story title: AI is not ready for the intricacies of radiology
read | story

on the web | pages

IBM | home

IBM | Watson for Health: home
IBM | Watson for Health: learn about AI in medicine

tag line: Making progress in health, together.

— summary —

Researchers are building better software with artificial intelligence for applications in medicine. Gaining insights into diagnostics, health-care processes, treatment options, and patient outcomes — with the support of computers using a technique called machine learning.

on the web | pages

American Stroke Assoc. | home
American Stroke Assoc. | about cerebral aneurysm

on the web | pages

Brain Aneurysm Foundation | home
Brain Aneurysm Foundation | about brain aneurysm

Stop the Pop • by Brain Aneurysm Foundation | home

tag line: Stop the pop.

on the web | pages

AI in HealthCare • by TriMed Media | home

tag line: Innovation to transform health-care.

IMAGE FOLDER

— notes —

AI = artificial intelligence
ML = machine learning
MRI = magnetic resonance imaging

IBM = International Business Machines

* American Stroke Association is a division of American Heart Association

image | above
Cerebras says its computer chip is the largest ever built: as big as a dinner plate — 100 times the size of a typical chip.

photo: by Cerebras

IMAGE

— note —

Dear readers,

Important breakthroughs happen ever-faster each year. We collect good writing from magazines + newspapers on lead headlines — so you can connect with essential stories on progress.

below is:

• a story on progress that’s making headlines
• facts summary
• curated list of the best reading on this headline

— facts —-

the world’s largest chip:

• named the Wafer Scale Engine • by Cerebras
• 56 times larger than the biggest graphics processing unit ever made
• 400,000 cores
• 18 GB on-chip SRAM
• 3,000 times more on-chip memory
• tightly coupled memory for efficient data access
• 33,000 times more bandwidth
• extensive high bandwidth communication fabric
• groups of cores work together

1. |

publication: the New York Times
story title: To power AI, start-up creates a giant computer chip
read | story

2. |

publication: BBC
story title: Cerebras reveals world’s largest computer chip for AI tasks
read | story

3. |

publication: VentureBeat
story title: Cerebras Systems unveils a record 1.2 trillion transistor chip for AI
deck: text
read | story

no. 4 |

publication: EE Times
story title: Start-up spins whole wafer for AI
deck: Cerebras taps wafer-scale integration for training.
read | story

no. 5 |

publication: Wired
story title: To power AI, this start-up built a really, really big chip
deck: Many computer chips are smaller than your fingernail.
deck: Cerebras new chip for AI systems is bigger than a standard iPad.
read | story

on the web | pages

Cerebras | home
Cerebras | technology

IMAGE

— notes —

AI = artificial intelligence
GPU = graphics processing unit
SRAM = static random access memory

EE = electrical engineering
BBC = British Broadcasting Company

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/technology/google-artificial-intelligence-chips.html

— story —

Here is a recent table showing the tremendous increase world-wide in fin-tech investment.

Experts explain that this level of accelerated investment represents a major change in the way banking + financial services are: created, managed, and supported.

Traditional, incumbent companies feel the pressing urgency to keep-up with the fin-tech trends. Or they’ll be left behind as both business + retail customers move away from old-fashioned financial products — and into contemporary fin-tech services that are more affordable, inclusive, and portable.

on the web | reading

publication: the Street
deck: What is fin-tech?

— summary —

Fin-tech uses + examples in year 2020. Today: the phrase “fin-tech” refers to innovations in the financial + tech cross-over space — and typically refers to companies or services that use tech to provide financial services to businesses or consumers.

— table —

table topic: global fin-tech investments
from: Accenture
from: CB Insights

* CB Insights = historical name ChubbyBrain

image | above

Model of an infant skull showing its separated bone plates.

— contents —

~ story
~ gallery
~ featurette
~ sketches
~ reading

— story —

An introduction.

When babies pass through the mother’s birth canal during childbirth, the tight fit temporarily squashes their tiny heads — elongating their flexible skulls. The pressure dramatically changes the shape of their brain. For a new study, French data scientists + medical researchers have created 3D images that show the extensive cone-shaped distortion. The study was conducted in association with the university hospital center of the Univ. Clermont Auvergne in France.

A baby’s head can naturally change shape under pressure, because the bones in infant skulls haven’t fused together yet. There are soft areas at the top of the baby’s head to cope with being squeezed through the birth canal — so the newborn can be pushed-out with less head trauma.

Then the soft regions begin to harden and fuse over time. This makes room for the brain to grow during infancy, but protects it from impact as the child starts moving around. It can take 9 to 18 months before a baby’s skull is fully formed.

But the precise mechanics of how a baby’s skull + brain change shape during labor are not well understood. To learn more about that process — and how it can lead to injury — the French scientists conducted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 7 pregnant women:

• when they were between weeks 36 –to– 39 of their pregnancies ( third trimester )
• and again when they were in labor, after her cervix was fully dilated

The problem of newborn head molding.

Their images revealed significant skull squeezing — known as newborn (or fetal) head molding —– in all the infants, and showed that the mechanical pressures on infant heads + brains during childbirth are stronger than we once thought.

In all 7 fetuses, skull bones that did not overlap prior to labor: were visibly overlapped once labor began, deforming the newborn’s head and brain. In 5 babies, the skulls returned to their pre-labor shape soon after childbirth — and the deformity was not noticeable when the newborns were examined.

Some valuable insights.

The MRI scans successfully captured views of soft tissues that were not visible with ultra-sound imaging. These visuals gave the physicians important clues to understand:

• deformation of fetal skulls + brains
• movement of the mother’s soft tissues around the baby during childbirth

The researchers said these results could be used someday to help create a ‘virtual labor’ — like a walk-through model showing the probable risks of your baby’s birth, before it happens. That could give mothers and their obstetric doctors early warning, so they can plan how to move forward with the childbirth.

image gallery | below

The 3D digital reconstruction — from MRI scans — of the infants’ brain + skull bones:

• in the womb before labor
• and during the 2nd stage of labor = when the infant is being pushed through the birth canal.

HALFLINE

presented by

PLoS One | home ~
tag line: t

the Public Library of Science | home ~
tag line: t

BABY no. 1 |

The 3D reconstruction — from MRI scans — of the infant’s skull bones.

BABY  no. 1 |

The 3D reconstruction — from MRI scans — of the infant’s brain.

BABY no. 2 |

The 3D reconstruction — from MRI scans — of the infant’s brain.

BABY no. 3 |

The 3D reconstruction — from MRI scans — of the infant’s brain.

Better understanding another head deformity illness.

The 3D models created by this study produced a deeper knowledge of newborn head molding than physicians had before. These results will help doctors better understand a similar childhood condition called deformational plagiocephaly. The name plagiocephaly means “sloping head” — from the Greek words plagio for sloping + cephale for head.

Children with deformational plagiocephaly have a dangerous injury. Their skull + brain became deformed from too much compression against a crib mattress — or another flat surface. This illness is accidentally caused by parents who don’t rotate their infant’s body when the baby is laying down for a long time, without moving.

If a baby doesn’t switch positions enough — the skull gets lots of continual pressure at the same spot on their head. Eventually the baby’s fluids and soft tissues move away from the pressure — flattening-out in one part of the head, and blobbing-out into another. That’s why the illness is nick-named “flat head” syndrome. It’s been linked to developmental disability.

To prevent this illness, doctors teach parents to rotate the baby’s body on a routine schedule, especially while sleeping. In severe cases, physicians customize a padded helmet for the child — to protect its head from pressure, and fix the deformation over time.

— featurette —

An anatomical tour of the infant skull.

IMAGE

images | below

The pressures from the mother’s birth canal during childbirth cause a range of deformed head shapes called newborn (or fetal) head molding. These sketches from a medical book show a variety of common positions the baby can take while its exiting the womb — showing the way the head and brain deform in those postures.

book: Williams Obstetrics
year: 2018
publisher: McGraw Hill Education

The future of infant health.

It’s not well understood what the long-term prognosis is for a baby born with extreme newborn head molding. Even if the soft tissues and malleable bone eventually return to their normal shape — are there unseen + lasting consequences for that child’s health? Is there a risk of physical or cognitive disability? The startling images from the 3-D model leave parents with a lot of unanswered questions.

Does severe newborn head molding change the baby’s bone + tissues in a way that causes future risks: like micro-fractures, bone brittleness, vascular disorders, bruising problems? Or a diminished ability to heal from accidents or illness that affect the head?

Could babies born with extreme newborn head molding experience a higher rate of traumatic brain injury, later on? For example, from typical head impacts that happen to all kids — from falling down or playing sports? Will that child grow-up to have a lower endurance for brain concussion?

Can the common medical procedure called a Caesarean section (or C section) — where doctors surgically remove the infant through an abdominal incision— reduce fetal head molding that’s caused by squeezing through the birth canal?

A picture worth a thousand words.

In this study, physicians can clearly see the intense pressure on the baby’s head during childbirth. The good news is that researchers are finally getting the graphical evidence they need — so they can sort-out precisely what happens with newborn head molding.

The 3-D reconstruction paints a close-up picture of the baby’s experience. Data from the study showing: the shape, size, and timing of newborn head molding helps the medical team:

• build more accurate models
• make better predictions
• design preventative treatments
• develop medical interventions
• prepare for emergencies

Technology leads the way forward for medicine. Our health-care system is based entirely on what we can observe + understand. Modern tools — such as MRI and computer graphics — give us the ability to witness biology in motion.

image | below

A sketch from a medical book showing a baby with the condition called newborn — or fetal — head molding.

HALFLINE

presented by

book: Williams Obstetrics
date: 2018
publisher: McGraw Hill Education | visit

IMAGE

reading

1. |

publication: Live Science
story title: Head deformity ignites debate among baby experts
deck: Has increased exponentially over 20 years.

read | story

HALFLINE

2. |

publication: Live Science
story title: How much do babies’ skulls get squished during birth?
deck: A whole lot, 3D images reveal

read | story

HALFLINE

presented by

text | home ~
tag line: text

3. |

publication: NewsWeek
story title: 3D MRI images show how a baby’s head shape changes during labor in incredible detail

read | story

HALFLINE

presented by

text | home ~
tag line: text

4. |

publication: One
story title: 3D MRI of fetal head molding + brain shape changes during 2nd stage of labor

read | story

HALFLINE

presented by

PLoS One | home
tag line:

— about —

PLoS One is a journal of the Public Library of Science.

PLoS | home
tag line:

BOTTOM

by definition | fetal ultra-sound

— notes —

MRI = magnetic resonance imaging
3D = 3-dimensional

PLoS = the Public Library of Science

CHU =  university hospital center

— contents —

~ special gallery
~ about

— special section —

A time lapse of fetal growth + gestation.

For infants, the final stage of development in the womb can pose serious risks. Babies can fail to turn upside-down, become entangled in the umbilical cord, and finally — during childbirth — their head experiences extreme pressure as they travel down the birth canal.

In recent news, medical researchers are imaging infants in-utero, and also while they’re being born, with MRI technology. The pictures produced this way can be stitched together, with the help of computers — creating 3-D models of a infant: just before it comes out of the womb, and immediately after.

Building a better model.

The startling models show how extreme the baby’s head is squeezed + deformed — a condition called newborn (or fetal) head molding. The intense process of being born can be a rough ride for some infants. Doctors are looking at the results to build a virtual model of a pregnancy that can predict how much pressure (strain) will be on the baby as it gets ready for childbirth, and when it moves into the birth canal.

All newborns experience some level of head deformity at birth. The infant skull is like putty and naturally divided into plates that can slide on top of each other. As the baby grows into a child, over the next few years, the skull plates move into their final positions — and fuse together. But some babies are born with an extreme level of newborn head molding. Doctors struggle to get more medical data on what complications this can cause, and develop prevention techniques.

They hope to learn as much as possible from these models: to better understand how this happens to babies, and what they can do to protect an infant during childbirth. Plus develop therapies for infants who don’t recover well from childbirth.

The main story.

post title: Breakthrough 3D images show how newborn head deforms in childbirth
deck:  The MRI scans elucidate an historic debate about infant safety.

read | post

about | gallery

Below is a graphical journey showing the development of a fetus into an infant. It’s a good tool to understand how big a baby becomes, compared to the size of a mother’s womb, pelvis, and birth canal.

It’s clear from the diagram how newborn (or fetal) head molding happens. The baby has little wiggle room, and lots of growing to do, on its way into the world.

about | fetal development

The weeks of pregnancy are grouped into 3 trimesters:

IMAGE

first trimester | pregnancy: 0 –to– 13 weeks

pregnancy at: first weeks

pregnancy at: 4 weeks

pregnancy at: 5 weeks

pregnancy at: 6 weeks

pregnancy at: 7 weeks

pregnancy at: 8 weeks

pregnancy at: 9 weeks

pregnancy at: 10 weeks

pregnancy at: 11 weeks

pregnancy at: 12 weeks

pregnancy at: 13 weeks

second trimester | pregnancy: 14 –to– 27 weeks

pregnancy at: 14 weeks

pregnancy at: 15 weeks

pregnancy at: 16 weeks

pregnancy at: 17 weeks

pregnancy at: 18 weeks

pregnancy at: 19 weeks

pregnancy at: 20 weeks

pregnancy at: 21 weeks

pregnancy at: 22 weeks

pregnancy at: 23 weeks

pregnancy at: 24 weeks

pregnancy at: 25 weeks

pregnancy at: 26 weeks

pregnancy at: 27 weeks

third trimester | pregnancy: 28 –to– 40 weeks

pregnancy at: 28 weeks

pregnancy at: 29 weeks

pregnancy at: 30 weeks

pregnancy at: 31 weeks

pregnancy at: 32 weeks

pregnancy at: 33 weeks

pregnancy at: 34 weeks

pregnancy at: 35 weeks

pregnancy at: 36 weeks

pregnancy at: 37 weeks

pregnancy at: 38 weeks

pregnancy at: 39 weeks

pregnancy at: 40 weeks

images | above
by: Pampers
from: Procter + Gamble

— notes —

MRI = magnetic resonance imaging
P + G = Procter + Gamble

quick steps | for changing text size

on a personal computer with Microsoft Windows -or- Google Chrome

• on your keyboard — hold down button labeled control • (ctrl)
• at same time — hold down the plus sign (+) to increase
• at same time — hold down the minus sign (-) to decrease

on a personal computer by Apple

• on your keyboard — hold down button labeled command • (cmd)
• at same time — hold down the plus sign (+) to increase
• at same time — hold down the minus sign (-) to decrease

— in this post —

~ story
~ by the numbers
~ report
~ pages

— story —

To keep-up with modern times and stay relevant to today’s marketplace: enterprise must adopt, support, and integrate high-level computing that’s networked, maintained, and distributed across all areas of business. The companies + organizations that fall behind in the arena of info-tech (information technology or IT) risk their bottom line, and risk losing the best employees to more leading-edge groups who are up-to-date with digital infra-strcuture.

In a world that’s primarily focused on the computerization of processes, record keeping, inventory, management, and production — any enterprise that lags in IT will become an industry dinosaur.

Implementing new digital tools — and upgrading antique legacy computer systems and non-digital practices — can be a huge task. Incumbent businesses the slowest to change. According to top research firm McKinsey — a startling 70% of digital transformation programs fail because of:

• lack of employee engagement
• inadequate management support
• lack of accountability
• low levels of collaboration

IT personnel are in the best position to cope with these kinds of challenges — but often lack the support they need to begin and maintain crucial IT infrastructure projects.

A recent report from WorkFront — a project management and software services company — examines 5 common stumbling blocks faced by info-tech professionals trying to achieve digital transformation. Plus solutions for leading an organization through dramatic tech changes. The full report download is below.

— the 5 key challenges —

In the report by WorkFront, the 5 key challenges are paired with easy-to-understand solutions.

challenge no. 1 | Lack of digital transformation strategy.
solution • Create a roadmap.

challenge no. 2 | There’s no visibility into work.
solution • Centralize all work within a project.

challenge no. 3 | Work is not aligned with business goals.
solution • Modernize your tech stack.

challenge no. 4 | Work is often delayed or slow.
solution • Simplify work.

challenge no. 5 | A perception that work is not efficient or effective.
solution • Make projects scalable + reproducible.

by the numbers | from the report

• 56 percent — of execs said no clear info-tech strategy is big set-back to improving customer experience. | source
• 45 percent — of CIOs said resistance to change is main barrier to making a successful digital strategy. | source
• 40 percent — of info-tech projects meet their deadline, budget, and quality goals. | source
• 37 percent — of organizations are trying new digital processes. | source
• 74 percent — of leaders say digital projects do not align with strategy. | source

— report —

group: WorkFront
report title: 5 ways IT drives digital transformation
label: executive brief
section: resources

read | the report
format: Adobe

on the web | pages

WorkFront | home
WorkFront | resources

— notes —

IT or info-tech = information technology
CIO = chief information officer

image | above
Photo of the e-glove prototype.

photo: by Purdue Univ.

— note —

Dear readers,

Important breakthroughs happen ever-faster each year. We collect good writing from magazines + newspapers on lead headlines — so you can connect with essential stories on progress.

— facts —-

researchers crafted an electronic glove that’s worn over a prosthetic hand, providing sense perception:

• advances in flexible + stretchable electronics are making breakthroughs in prosthetics
• the prototype for this e-glove was made by Purdue University engineers

• the e-glove — gives amputees with prosthetic limbs a sense of touch
• the e-glove — mimics the sensory capabilities of a human limb in its own unique way
• the e-glove — fits over existing prosthetic hands in a range of shapes + sizes, giving them new capability
• the e-glove — fits seamlessly on top of any hand shape
• the e-glove — is fitted with a suite of flexible electronic sensors
• the e-glove — is finished in soft rubber to mimic the look + feel of a human hand
• the e-glove — has life-like: softness, appearance, warmth

• the e-glove’s sensors detect: pressure, temperature, hydration, bio-signals — of whatever it touches
• that data is collected + relayed to a connected wrist-watch
• the wrist-watch — displays the readings in real-time
• the wrist-watch — also passes the data wirelessly to a separate device for processing

• in the next stage of development: the e-glove will provide feedback to the wearer
• examples of feedback are: audio cues + tactile vibration

— featurette —

group: Purdue Univ.
featurette title: Electronic glove offers human-like features for prosthetic hand users.
deck: An e-glove gives sense of touch to prosthetic hands.

watch | featurette

image | above
Photo of the e-glove prototype on a prosthetic hand.

photo: by Purdue Univ.

1. |

group: Purdue Univ.
story title: Electronic glove offers human-like features for prosthetic hand users
deck: A sensor-instrumented glove for prosthetic hand controls has ability to sense pressure, temperature, hydration
deck: Using electronic chips, sending sensory data through wrist-watch
read | story

2. |

platform: Medium
group: Purdue Univ.
blog: the Engineering Review
story title: e-Glove is a sensation for prosthetic hands
read | story

3. |

publication: New Atlas
story title: e-Glove slips over prosthetic hands to alert the senses
read | story

about | Purdue University • 150 Years of Giant Leaps

The Purdue University anniversary campaign — 150 Years of Giant Leaps — is a year-long celebration of our remarkable people, unique history — and visionary drive to meet the world’s future challenges. This campaign is a commitment to growth, innovation, and discovery.

This research in advancing human prosthetics, aligns with Purdue’s Giant Leaps celebration of the university’s global progress in health — part of Purdue’s 150th anniversary. The year-long celebration’s Ideas Festival features 4 themes, showcasing Purdue’s capabilities as an intellectual center — solving real-world issues.

— 4 themes —

• giant leaps | space — Earth • exploration • economics
• giant leaps | AI • algorithms • automation — balancing humanity + tech
• giant leaps | sustainable economy + planet — innovate today for tomorrow
• giant leaps | health + longevity — quality of life

— featurette —

group: Purdue Univ.
featurette title: 150 Years of Giant Leaps

watch | featurette

on the web | pages

Purdue Univ. | home
Purdue Univ. | YouTube channel

Purdue Univ. | Giant Leaps: home
Purdue Univ. | Giant Leaps: Ideas Festival

— notes —

e-glove = electronic glove
AI = artificial intelligence

— contents —

~ the story
~ the report
~ featurette
~ videos
~ images
~ by definition
~ about
~ pages
~ reading
~ learning

— the story —

Rising sea levels are quickening the pace of beach erosion around the world — endangering coastal cities + shoreline habitats. Building oyster reefs can help restore beaches and create new habitats, even as oceans rise.

The living break-waters project is a new blueprint currently under construction — designed to:

— control wave heights + wave power
— control dangerous shoreline erosion
— model innovation in coastal protection

The special construction of the concrete blocks used in the break-water’s blueprint: includes circular indents where sea life can take root and re-build lost habitat.

The living breakwaters project was crafted by the landscape architecture + design firm Scape — as part of a professional blueprint competition called Re-Build by Design, sponsored by the Dept. of Housing + Urban Development • United States.

The elite competition called on top engineering firms to submit design proposals that solve major ecological, shoreline problems caused by humans + natural disasters — such as recent super-storms. Engineers explain that today’s increasing super-weather — plus the extreme use of world beaches by people — call for futuristic feats of engineering to save the shoreline’s cities + habitat.

image | above
Concrete blocks called tetrapods — with an inter-locking shape — used for building modern break-waters.

— the report —

organization: Dept. of Housing + Urban Development • United States
organization: ReBuild by Design
report title: the Shallows
deck: Bay Landscapes: as architectural infra-structure
year: 2017

read | the report
format: Adobe

— featurette —

group: the American Museum of Natural History
video title: the living break-waters project
year: 2017

watch | featurette

group: Scape firm
video set: the living break-waters project
year: 2017

The living break-waters project is an innovative, coastal green infra-structure plan — designed to reduce beach erosion + damage from storm waves, and improve the health of the delicate, shoreline eco-system.  The project also encourages the community to become good stewards of their neighborhood’s coastal zones.

The project was initially developed by Scape landscape architecture + urban design firm, for the ReBuild by Design competition — held by the US Department of Housing + Urban Development to find leading-edge ideas for coastal rescue in the wake of devastating hurricanes.

The project’s design is a living infra-structure that installs a necklace of break-water barriers — to buffer neighborhoods from wave damage + erosion while providing a bio-diverse habitat for juvenile fish, oysters, and more sea life.

The plan is being implemented by the state of New York — with $60 million in funding. It’s currently in the schematic design process, moving into construction this year: 2019.

watch | video — no. 1
watch | video — no. 2
watch | video — no. 3

on the web | pages

Scape | home
Scape | projects: home

Scape | project • living break-waters — part 1
Scape | project • living break-waters — part 2

images | left + below

These high-tech concrete blocks called tetrapods are often used in engineering modern break-waters along coastal shorelines.

Concrete tetrapods were designed to remain stable under the most extreme weather + marine conditions. When they’re arranged together in lines or heaps, they create an inter-locking, porous barrier that dissipates the power of waves and currents.

by definition | tetrapods

Large concrete blocks called tetrapods can be stacked side-by-side + in layers to form an inter-locking mesh — and laid-down in wide fields along shorelines to prevent erosion caused by weather and long-shore drift.

Tetrapods are used by landscape engineers to re-inforce coastal structures such as seawalls and break-waters. The tetrapods have a tetrahedral shape to dissipate the force of incoming waves — this special shape helps water to flow around the blocks instead of against them. The inter-linked web they form keeps the blocks from being displaced.

images | below

Coastal engineers survey beaches and dunes to draft blueprints for building shoreline-saving structures — like specialty overlooks for sight-seeing that don’t interfere with ecology, and break-waters made of high-concrete blocks.

by definition | long-shore drift

Drift from long-shore current is a geological process: it means the movement of sedimentary rocks — clay, silt, sand, and shingle — along the coast, parallel to the shoreline. Incoming wind squeezes water along the coast, generating a water current that moves parallel to the coast.

So long-shore drift — also called beach drift — is simply the sediment moved by the long-shore current. This current and sediment movement happen inside the surf zone.

Beach sand is also moved on windy days — from the swash + back-wash of water on the beach. Breaking surf sends water up the beach (swash) — and gravity then drains the water down-slope (back-wash) perpendicular to the shoreline.

Beach sand can move down the beach in a zig-zag pattern, 10s of meters per day. This causes a constant stress of erosion that takes time for nature to re-build. In cases of human-made shoreline disaster or natural storms, dangerous erosion happens much faster, threatening coastal civilization — as well as sea life + plant life habitat.

The United States • Environmental Protection Agency estimates that between 80 % — 90 % of the sandy beaches along US coastlines have been eroding for decades. Many beaches are losing several inches per year. But in some cases the problem is much worse. The outer coast of the state of Louisiana — called an erosion “hot spot” — is losing 50 feet of beach per year.

about | ReBuild by Design

Our cities were built in response to yesterday’s problems. The world faces rising populations, climate change, and economic challenges. So communities can’t afford to wait until after the next hurricane or flood — or ignore chronic stresses, such as aging infrastructure + pollution — to plan for the future.

ReBuild by Design — a landscape architecture + urban design firm — is re-imagining the way communities find solutions for today’s large scale, complex problems. We convene a mix of sectors — government, business, non-profit, community organizations — to see how overlapping environmental + human-made vulnerabilities leave cities and regions at risk.

Our core belief is: communities grow stronger with collaboration, prepared to stand-up to serious challenges. ReBuild by Design began as a design competition, launched by the United States • Dept. of Housing + Urban Development — in partnership with non-profits — in response to hurricane impact. The competition became a model to help government.

on the web | pages

Dept. of Housing + Urban Development • United States | home
ReBuild by Design | home

on the web | reading

Scientific American | What causes beach erosion
deck: Is beach erosion a natural cycle?
deck: Or is it getting worse with rising sea levels?

on the web | learning

Fudo Tetra | home
Fudo Tetra | types: concrete blocks for environmental management

 — notes —

HUD = Dept. of Housing + Urban Development of the United States

* Scientific American magazine by Springer co.

* Fudo Tetra is Fudo Tetra co.

image | above
An autonomous sail-drone navigates the ocean using wind power + solar power.

photo: by SailDrone

— contents —-

~  story
~  infographic
~  featurettes
~  reading
~  definitions

— story —

SailDrone makes wind powered + solar powered ocean drones to understand planetary systems affecting humanity. The company designs, manufactures, and operates their global fleet sail-drones — monitoring the state of the planet in real time.

Their data sets can be used by commercial enterprise, research institutions, or private groups on specific missions. SailDrone is making world history by offering high resolution, ocean data collection at-scale.

Their sail-drone is 20 feet long, 18 feet high above the water, weighs 600 pounds. It can operate indefinitely: the wind is propulsion that pushes it along, a solar power panel charges the batteries that run the on-board computers + communications equipment.

The sail-drones navigate automatically using GPS, a system that uses space satellites to map the Earth. The craft is completely submersible and designed to handle the harsh effects of salt water.

Revolutionary benefits.

The sail-drones can autonomously travel 1,000s of miles: taking measurements of wind speed + wind direction, temperature, humidity, radiation, salinity, chlorphyll, pH level. Scientists in marine biology are using SailDrone’s fleet to monitor the Earth’s ecology + fisheries — tracking factors affecting food and climate for sea life.

In the past, researchers relied on data collected by large ships that cost $10,000+ per day to operate. Also, large ships can only approach shallow water of at least 66 feet. But sail-drones can travel into waters close to shore — as shallow as 10 feet — and continue to take measurements.

Another benefit is that sail-drones can stay afloat in rough weather, continuing to function — sailing the oceans without stopping for 12 months at a time. But big ships must avoid extreme storm weather or dock at shore — re-routing and interrupting science + commercial ocean missions.

Some missions to gather critical data have time-dependencies. So if the vessel is stalled for crew needs, mechanical break-down, or hazardous weather — the data can’t be collected on-time to solve problems. By comparison, sail-drones provide a reliable tool to gather essential information about the planet’s oceans and weather — in any season.

Because sail-drones are un-manned — the vessel has no crew, and doesn’t require a manned escort vessel — the sail-drones can travel into distant, inhospitable climates where people cannot.

The company is launching a project to send its sail-drones directly into hurricanes to better understand: where a storm will travel, how strong it will become, and when it will touch land. SailDrone plans to deploy 1,000 sail-drones for full global coverage — with the goal to have as much or better data of oceans than we currently have for land. That will transform our understanding of Earth.

Ocean data sets.

SailDrone offers global ocean data sets — on-demand + in-situ — for an area and time-frame at an unprecedented high resolution. The sail-drones collect planetary data: meteorological, oceanographic, bathymetric, acoustic.

This fleet of un-manned surface vehicles (called USVs) has traveled 500,000 nautical miles, carrying payloads of atmospheric + oceanographic sensors. Over many missions they’ve produce a series of large-scale data sets — describing parts of the world’s oceans that have never been covered in such detail.

Specialized missions.

SailDrone offers fully managed ocean data collection services anywhere in the world. The autonomous ocean drones stream real-time data back to shore.

The mission-as-a-service platform provides a dedicated fleet of sail-drones to affordably collect oceanic data + atmospheric data over extensive areas — and extended periods of time. A single mission can cover 10,000+ miles and last 12 months. Each vehicle follows a mission plan, autonomously navigating from waypoint-to-waypoint.

The fleet is outfitted with scientific electronic instruments to gather data — but that core sensor suite can be enhanced with additional, specialized sensors. For example, the sail-drone can carry an echo-sounder sonar to visualize underwater topography and fish populations.

Global weather forecasting.

SailDrone offers high resolution weather forecasts, enhanced by global ocean drone observations, delivered with mobile + web apps. Because better data means a better forecast.

The fleet of sail-drones continuously criss-crosses the planet collecting atmospheric data + oceanographic data to power a forecast model better than traditional inputs.

on the web | pages

SailDrone | home
SailDrone | technology
SailDrone | missions

infographic | sail-drone sensor suite

The sail-drone’s on-board payload can hold many types of electronic sensors for science investigation and commercial projects. Below is a table showing a range of options offered by SailDrone.

watch | featurette

broadcast: BusinessWeek • by Bloomberg
series: Hello World
episode title: The robots roaming the high seas
season: 1
episode: no. 13
year: 2018
host: Ashlee Vance
watch | featurette

— summary —

Intelligent, indestructible, and with no humans on-board: these sailboats are plotting their own course through the oceans. If founder and CEO Richard Jenkins gets his way, soon there will be 100s of them –– trawling the oceans for data.

on the web | pages

BusinessWeek • by Bloomberg | home
BusinessWeek • by Bloomberg | series: Hello World

Bloomberg | home
Bloomberg | series
Bloomberg | YouTube channel

on the web | pages

Ashlee Vance | home

on the web | watching

NOAA | home
NOAA | featurette: sail-drones cutting-edge technology for ocean research

on the web | reading

publication: Science • by AAAS
story title: Fleet of sailboat drones could monitor climate change’s effect on oceans
read | story

publication: Wired
story title: The drone that will sail itself around the world
read | story

by definition | escort vessel

An escort vessel is a manned (with human crew) ocean ship that travels along-side another marine craft for protection, navigation, mission support, emergency management, or ceremony.

by definition | time-dependent information

Many activities in life require data — or information — for planning, understanding, exploring, mapping, modeling, and deciding between choices. How do we get data about anything? We must collect it, and that’s not always easy.

In science, we use powerful electronic tools designed to seek-out and track the properties of physical things, processes, and behaviors that researchers are looking at. In society, we track information about our human civilization’s activities, such as: building, manufacturing, transportation, lifestyle, health care, agriculture. That data is recorded on paper — and in modern times stored digitally.

When people need data to plan an activity, make a decision, understand a trend, answer a science question, create a solution to a problem — the quality and scope of the data matters. How much information do you have? And how recent / fresh is your information? Is your information showing the right perspective? Does your information show you a picture at the right time and place?

That’s where the term “time-dependency” comes in. In order for people to see clearly, whatever they’re studying, they need good data without errors, recording the right measurements — and for the right time-frame. Plus they need it “on-time.” Data has to be collected within enough time to be useful to your project or inquiry. It has to reflect the time period you’re researching, to be usable at all. If data is out-of-date, or arrives too late, it can botch a scientist’s calculations, give wrong conclusions, mis-lead developers, and fail to give you a full view. If the data you’re looking it is incomplete, it can throw-off your activities, projects, and plans.

That’s why reliable data sources are so important to humanity’s progress and to the planet’s ecology. The best data collection and measuring tools get good information to you when you need it, and without large chunks missing the points you’re looking for. Over an extended period of time, a complete picture should not have data gaps. And when you need information in an emergency — data arriving on-time can affect life or death, or equal success or failure.

So time-dependent information generally means:

• It means that data has to be collected at specific times, and track the right time period, to be useful.
• It also means that data has to arrive on-time to be helpful.
• It means that in mission critical situations, data arriving on-time is essential to a good or safe outcome.

If your activity requires time-dependent data, it means your plan or project is fundamentally depending on: a set of data to arrive by a deadline, and include recent data, or data from a specific time period.

And if that data doesn’t, there could be serious consequences. For emergency response, data about: an injury, epidemic, forest fire, animal or plant die-off, extreme weather, military or political crisis, crime — can be life-saving if it arrives on-time. Or result in catastrophe if it doesn’t.

IMAGE

— notes —

USV = un-manned surface vehicle
cal / val = calibration / validation

ADCP = acoustic Doppler current profiler
AIS = automatic identification system
CO2 = carbon dioxide
GPS = global positioning system
pCO2 = partial pressure of carbon dioxide
pH = potential of hydrogen

NOAA = National Oceanic + Atmospheric Administration • United States
AAAS = American Association for the Advancement of Science

image | above
Researchers are studying patterns found in math equaltions.

Dear readers,

Important breakthroughs happen ever-faster each year. Today, our busy schedules make it difficult to find time to read everything that’s essential, interesting, helpful, or paradigm shifting.

For your easy reading, we curate a selection of the best writing from magazines + newspapers on leading weekly headlines. We hope this saves you time — so you can connect with global stories on progress.

— facts —-

a breakthrough math proof:

• one of the most sweeping results in math
• this proof looks at mathematical descriptions of change
• in math: these descriptions are called dynamical systems
• they apply to everything: from the motion of planets — to fluctuations of the stock market
• math model examples: swinging of a clock pendulum • water flow in a pipe • number of fish each spring in a lake
• wherever dynamical systems happen, researchers need to understand basic facts about them
• can dynamical systems — no matter how complex — be broken-up into random + deterministic elements?
• this math proof gives researchers the building blocks for understanding random change

1. |

publication: Quanta
story title: Proof finds that all change is a mix of order + randomness
deck: All descriptions of change are a unique blend of chance + determinism.
deck: According to the sweeping math proof of the weak Pinsker conjecture.
read | story

2. |

publication: Quanta
story title: How randomness can make math easier
deck: Randomness would seem to make a math statement harder to prove.
deck: In fact, it often does the opposite.
read | story

3. |

group: Univ. of California
story title: Tim Austin PhD proves the weak Pinsker conjecture
read | story

— notes —

math or maths = mathematics

TEXT

image | above

Artist drawing of NASA’s new rocket called the space launch system.

— contents —

~ story
~ webpages
~ facts
~ featurette
~ learning
~ reading

— story —

NASA has been discussing concepts for moon exploration by humans since its Apollo lunar mission flights ended in year 1972. The moon captures the imagination of space scientists around the world. The name “Apollo”  is at the top of all search queries on NASA’s public website.

NASA has sent more than 500 Apollo lunar rock samples to scientists for ongoing analysis. Each year a handful of new research papers offer insights + updates to what we’ve learned about the moon from these samples. The lunar program has become a cultural benchmark — and a key point in science history.

In the half-century since astronauts landed on the moon, NASA has continued to push the boundaries of knowledge to deliver on the promise of human ingenuity and leadership in space. NASA plans to move forward with lunar exploration by landing astronauts on the moon’s south pole by year 2024.

NASA is implementing the goal:  “to lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across our solar system.”

— back to the moon —

Currently, NASA is making progress with its plans to commercialize low-Earth orbit. These tests, experiences, and partnerships will enable NASA to go back to the moon — this time to stay — with the United States leading a coalition of nations and industry.

The Artemis program is an ongoing crewed spaceflight program by: NASA, United States commercial spaceflight companies, and international partners such as the European Space Agency — with the goal of landing “the first woman and the next man” on the lunar south pole by year 2024.

So the Artemis program is the first step for the next era of human exploration. NASA plans to establish a sustainable human post on Earth’s moon — with a long range goal of sending humans to planet Mars in new spacecraft.

NASA’s lunar exploration plan has 3 phases:

• phase one — is focused on speed: landing on the moon by year 2024
• phase two —  will establish a sustained human presence: on + around the moon by year 2028
• phase three — will use what we learn on the moon: to send astronauts to Mars + beyond

image | above

A watercolor painting of Earth’s moon.

source: by Natural Art Guides

— NASA’s moon to Mars project —

Commercial re-Supply Program • by NASA

This ambitious program enables United States companies to re-supply the International Space Station (ISS) with cargo. The key accomplishments of these public-private partnerships:

• restoring the United States to deliver + return ISS cargo without relying on foreign providers
• opening NASA flight facilities to commercial partners
• making the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia the newest spaceport capable of launching to ISS
• increasing the use of hosted payloads by commercial + research groups
• increasing the deployment of CubeSats by commercial + research groups

Commercial Crew Program • by NASA

• this program will return spaceflight launches to United States soil
• providing safe, reliable, and cost-effective access to low-Earth orbit + the International Space Station

Space Launch System • by NASA

• this is NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration
• will be the biggest rocket ever built
• it’s a super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle under development
• it’s the primary launch vehicle of NASA’s deep space exploration plans
• essential for planned: crewed lunar flights of the Artemis program
• essential for planned: human mission to Mars

Orion Spacecraft • by NASA

• NASA’s new next-generation human space capsule
• this spacecraft is built to take astronauts farther than ever before
• will be the exploration vehicle carrying the crew to space
• has emergency abort capability
• will sustains the crew during space travel
• provides safe re-entry from deep space return velocities
• designed to launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket: the Space Launch System

Gateway Lunar Command Module • by NASA

• with its partners, NASA is building the Gateway lunar command module to orbit the moon
• the module is a staging point for missions to explore the lunar surface
• it’s a small spaceship in moon orbit for: astronauts, science, tech demonstrations
• located 250,000 miles from Earth, the module has access to the entire lunar surface
• sustainable human space exploration requires tech that’s efficient, affordable, reliable
• solar electric propulsion has these benefits + is a key tech for the module
• the module’s propulsion is powered by 50 kilowatt solar electric propulsion
• that’s 3 times more powerful than current capabilities
• this alternative propulsion system: will enrich exploration at the moon
• this alternative propulsion system: enables orbit transfers + re-usable space tugs to / from the lunar surface

image | above

Sketch of NASA’s new Orion spacecraft.

— webpages —

group: NASA
tag line: We make air + space available for everyone.
web: home • channel

visit: Moon to Mars
visit: CubeSats
visit: International Space Station
visit: Wallops Flight Facility
visit: Commercial re-Supply Program
visit: Commercial Crew Program
visit: Space Launch System
visit: Orion Space Craft
visit: Artemis Program

NASA | home
NASA | special: Moon to Mars

NASA | CubeSats
NASA | International Space Station
NASA | Wallops Flight Facility

NASA | Commercial re-Supply Program
NASA | Commercial Crew Program
NASA | Space Launch System
NASA | Orion spacecraft
NASA | Artemis program

— webpages —

group: the European Space Agency
tag line: Europe’s gateway to space.
web: home • channel

— featurette —

featurette | watch

featurette title: We’re going to the moon to stay by year 2024: here’s how.
from: NASA
project: Moon to Mars
host: William Shatner

image | above
A watercolor painting of Mars.

art: by Natural Art Guides

— foundations for Mars —

Moon research + development will bring new knowledge and opportunities. NASA’s moon program is laying the foundation that will eventually enable human exploration of the planet Mars.

The moon will provide a proving ground to test tech and resources that will transport people, cargo, and materials to Mars and beyond — including building sustainable, re-usable architecture.

To return to the moon, NASA is building on the research of 1,000s of people who worked on the original Apollo lunar missions — and have since continued to advance human spaceflight.

NASA’s current moon program is preparing humanity for the next giant leap: missions to planet Mars and other deep-space destinations.

on the web | learning

NewsHour • PBS | How NASA is preparing to launch another mission to the moon
video: watch

Wired | Scientist Explains: how moon mining would work
video: watch

Univ. of New South Wales | Mining on the Moon
video: watch

on the web | reading

Global News • Global Television Network | Orion: the path to Mars
deck: in photos • from Apollo to Orion: the evolution of a spaceship

IMAGE

— notes —

PBS = Public Broadcasting Service

NASA = National Aeronautics + Space Admin. • United States
ESA = European Space Agency • Europe
SLS = Space Launch System
ISS = International Space Station

image | above
An abstract painting made with artificial intelligence: by Ai-Da the humanoid robot.

artwork: Univ. of Oxford

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— in this post —

~ story
~ quote
~ exhibit
~ featurette
~ artwork
~ reference

— story —

An exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture made by Ai-Da — a humanoid robot built with artificial intelligence and fashioned with mechanical arms — was unveiled in the United Kingdom.

Ai-Da robot — named for pioneering scientist Ada Lovelace — debuted with her creations at the Barn Gallery, located at the University of Oxford.

The AI robot — invented by gallery director Aidan Meller — can draw things from life using a built-in camera, a mechanical arm developed at the University of Leeds, and computer algorithms developed by experts at the University of Oxford.

To draw, the robot’s camera analyzes objects in front of it and creates a virtual path. That data is put into a path execution algorithm that produces spatial coordinates for the robotic arm. The exhibition — called Unsecured Futures — also features Ai-Da performing. She starts with pencil sketches before switching to paint + clay.

— how the artwork was made  —

1. | portrait drawings

Modern facial recognition tech helps Ai-Da draw pencil portraits of people by scanning their features with the cameras in her eyes, and using the robotic arm to map the faces on paper.

2. | abstract paintings

To create paintings, Ai-Da’s drawings are fed into mathematical computer algorithms (formulas) that plot her sketches on a grid to create abstract versions of her art.

3. | sculpture

A 3-D printed sculpture of a bee was created with a drawing Ai-Da made from a scan of an actual bee. This drawing was fed into an algorithm that interpreted the coordinates of the drawing. The result was a distortion of the original bee anatomy — this was 3-D printed in wax and cast in bronze.

— quote —

from: Aiden Meller
bio: Director at the Barn Gallery • Univ. of Oxford
bio: creator • the Ai-Da robot

Ai-Da’s solo exhibit titled Unsecured Futures presents her fine artwork: drawings, paintings, sculpture, and video art. Thematically it questions our relationship with tech + the natural world — by presenting how AI and new tech can be progressive, disruptive, and also destructive within our society.

As a humanoid robot, she’s an art object herself. The exhibit showcases the boundaries between AI and organic life. As new tech develops rapidly, our world is morphing in response. What are those responses?

Is tech shaped in our own image — reflecting our impulses and needs? More precisely, in whose image is tech formed? How does that impact a highly diverse and unequal world.

— Aidan Meller

image | below
A photo of Ai-Da the humanoid robot artist.

photo: Univ. of Oxford

— exhibit —

venue: Univ. of Oxford
gallery: the Barn Gallery
exhibition: Unsecured Futures
date: July 2019

— featurette —

about: A profile on Ai-Da the humanoid robot artist.
from: Al Jazeera
watch: featurette

image | above
A sketch portrait made with artificial intelligence: by Ai-Da the humanoid robot.

artwork: Univ. of Oxford

image | above
A 3-D sculpture of a honey bee made with artificial intelligence: by Ai-Da the humanoid robot.

artwork: Univ. of Oxford

on the web | pages

Ai-Da | home
Ai-Da | YouTube channel

Aiden Meller | home

— reference —

~ learning
~ reading

on the web | learning

Computer History Museum | Ada Lovelace
Biography | Ada Lovelace

on the web | reading

Dezeen | AI robot Ai-Da presents her original artworks
deck: Univ. of Oxford exhibition.

the Telegraph | Ai-Da review
deck: Disappointingly unterrifying.

Interesting Engineering | An AI robot artist is creating art that has sold for more than £1 million
deck: This humanoid robot is making us question the nature of creativity, and what constitutes real art.

— notes —

AI = artificial intelligence
3-D = three dimensional

image | above top
A close-up of an actual caterpillar.

image | above bottom
A close-up of the robot caterpillar prototype.

photo: by City Univ. of Hong Kong

— contents —

~ story
~ video
~ report

— story —

A tiny, caterpillar-like robot is being developed by researchers in China — to help deliver therapeutic drugs inside the human body. With soft, flexible legs similar to a real caterpillar, it can carry heavy-weight loads 100 times heavier than itself — the equivalent strength of a human able to lift a 26 seat mini-bus. Plus it can adapt to difficult + uneven terrain.

The prototype could pave the way for advances in bio-medicine: such as drug delivery. Before conducting tests in animals — and eventually in humans — the research team is experimenting with new shapes, finding a bio-degradable material for its body, and adding features.

Around the world, there have been efforts to develop soft milli-robots. The City Univ. of Hong Kong developed this miniature delivery robot. Their recent prototype has multi-legs that significantly reduce friction. This aspect of the robot’s design provides a big benefit — it can move efficiently across surfaces (within the human body) lined with, or totally immersed in, body fluids — such as blood or mucus. For example, it could potentially transport a standard pill-sized object through a human body organ like the stomach.

— design discovery —

The robot’s little legs resemble cilia found in the bodies of animals + humans. Cilia are a type of body tissue resembling thousands of tiny legs or hairs — a surface covered in cilia looks a lot like a sea anemone. Here’s a video that shows the similarity — watch: video.

The body’s cilia can be found in the ears, the eyes, the lungs, and many other places in the body. Here’s a short video showing cilia — watch: video

So by simulating these movements — like a sea anemone or cilia — the caterpillar robot maneuvers through the body. To come-up with the design, the research team studied leg structures of hundreds of animals — from bi-peds to quadru-peds, and creatures with 8 or more legs. What they discovered: the feature that matters most is the ratio of the gap between legs and overall leg-length.

The team explained: “Most animals have a leg length -to- leg gap ratio of 2:1  -to-  1:1 — so we decided to create our robot using 1:1 proportion, like in nature. The robot must have specific dimensions to function properly.”

the caterpillar robot:

• is made of — the silicon material called poly-dimethyl-siloxane (PDMS)
• measures —  .15 mm thick
• its leg gap measures —  .6 mm
• each of its conical legs measure —  .65 mm long
• making the overall length -to- gap ratio —  1:1

— making it move —

The caterpillar robot’s pointed legs have minimal contact area with surface, reducing friction. Because of its reduced leg size, the robot has 40 times less friction than limbless robots — in both wet + dry environments.

The robot is made with a silicon material called poly-dimethyl-siloxane (PDMS) — embedded with magnetic particles so it can be remote controlled by applying electro-magnetic force. Medical professionals can drive the robot using a magnetic manipulator. They can move the robot in what’s called a “flap propulsion” pattern or an “inverted pendulum pattern.” This means that its front feet can flap the robot forward and swing the body left + right.

With its soft, deformable legs: the robot can lift up one end of its body to form an angle of up to 90 degree — to cross obstacles easily. Even terrain 10 times higher than its leg length.

To increase the caterpillar robot’s speed, researchers can simply increase the electro-magnetic frequency. The caterpillar robot isn’t bio-degradable yet. But the researchers plan to implement this feature in 3 years.

image | above
A robot caterpillar moves by itself.

photo: by City Univ. of Hong Kong

expert quotes | research team

“So this robot is designed + inspired by nature. It has multiple legs — these legs along the sides of the robot can carry a very heavy load, around 100 times its own weight. Also, its legs help the robot cross obstacles in its path — that are 10 times higher than its own legs.

This milli-robot is especially suitable for applications in a harsh environment — for example: delivering a pharmaceutical drug to a designated spot through the digestive system, or doing medical exams.”

— Yajing Shen PhD | lead researcher • City Univ. of Hong Kong

expert quotes | research team

“Both the materials and the mutli-leg design greatly improve the robot’s hydro-phobic (repelling water) property. It’s rubbery soft and can be cut easily to form robots in a range of shapes and sizes — for different applications.

The rugged surface and changing texture of different tissues inside the human body make transportation challenging. Our multi-legged robot shows an impressive performance in various terrains — opening-up applications for drug delivery inside the body.”

— Zuankai Wang PhD | engineer • City Univ. of Hong Kong

image | above
A close-up of an actual caterpillar in motion.

watch | video
The robot caterpillar.

watch | video
The robot caterpillar.

— the report —

publication: Nature Communications
organization: City Univ. of Hong Kong
paper title: A bio-inspired multi-legged soft millirobot that functions in both dry + wet conditions

on the web | reading

City Univ. of Hong Kong | Tiny Soft Robot: with multi-legs
deck: Paves the way for drug delivery in the human body.

Edgy | Caterpillar Robot: developed to improve drug delivery in humans

— notes —

mm = milli-meter

— contents —

~ story
~ videos
~ learning
~ by definition
~ reading

image | above
The robot bee prototype named Bee Plus.

photo: Univ. of Southern California

— story —

Engineers at the Univ. of Southern California have built a flying insect based on the anatomy of a bee. Called the Bee Plus robot: the nature-inspired flying bot weighs 95 milligrams and is the size of a penny.

The tiny bot is similar to Harvard University’s popular RoboBee project from year 2013. RoboBee had 2 wings, Bee Plus has 4 wings — like a real insect. The added wings gives the bot more life-like flying abilities. Each of the wings is driven by an actuator that’s simpler and lighter that the ones used by for RoboBee.

The prototype brings together collective knowledge from: robot design, control theory, aerodynamics, and micro-fabrication. Bee Plus can perch, land, swim, follow a path, and avoid obstacles.

The engineering team lists a range of potential uses for Bee Plus:

• artificially pollinating flowers
• robotic swarm research or search + rescue missions
• taking geological samples
• measuring gases in the atmosphere
• surveillance on planet Mars + moons

To achieve these dreams, the researchers will need to overcome this limitation: Bee Plus can only fly when it’s tethered to a power source. They’ve developed a possible solution called ‘‘catalytic artificial muscles’’ — a new type of actuation technology.

images | below
A honey bee gathers pollen while others return to their hive.

watch | video
Prototype robot bee named Bee Plus takes flight.

watch | video
Prototype robot bee named RoboBee takes flight.

watch | video
Tiny flying robot bees.

image | below
The robot bee prototype named RoboBee.

photo: Harvard Univ.

on the web | learning

Harvard Univ. | project: RoboBees

by definition | morphology

(noun) mor · phol · o · gy

The study of the forms of things.
A branch of biology that examines the form of living creatures.

by definition | actuator

An actuator is a part of a machine responsible for moving + controlling a mechanism or system — for example: by opening a valve. In simple terms, it’s a ‘‘mover.’’ An actuator requires a control signal plus a power source. Its power may be an electricity, hydraulic (fluid) pressure, or pneumatic (gas) pressure.

An actuator is a mechanical device takes the movement of its power source (the current of electricity, the pressure of gas or fluid) and directs it — like a steady stream — to move something. It also can be used to apply force. That motion can be any form — such as: blocking, clamping, or ejecting. Actuators are used in robotics and manufacturing — and in devices such as: motors, pumps, switches, and valves.

Developing miniature actuators to move robots the size of an insect — such as robot bees + robot hummingbird — is an engineering challenge.

on the web | learning

actuators: industrial | video
actuators: micro + macro | video
Engineering Insider | actuator

on the web | reading

Digital Trends | Univ. of Southern California’s penny-sized robotic bee
deck: Is the most sci-fi thing you’ll see all week.

the Verge | Robot bees can now dive in + out of water
deck: Using tiny combustible rockets

the Verge | Bee Optimistic: this drone can still pollinate plants even if all the bees die
deck: Meet the artificial pollinators of tomorrow.

NPR | Rise of the Robot Bees
deck: Tiny drones turned into artificial pollinators.

— notes —

USC = University of Southern California
NPR = National Public Radio

image | above
A close-up of a spider web with rain drops clinging to the silk.

— contents —

~ story
~ about
~ video
~ pages
~ by definition
~ special section
~ learning
~ reading

— story —

Inspired by nature, a remote-controlled robot at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab is weaving a cocoon-like structure, with a software programming help from humans. Eventually it will be made autonomous. This spider-like robotic machine could one day weave a building. Researchers at the lab call this ‘‘spider silk inspired robotic fabrication.’’

Spiders create sophisticated silk webs by changing composition, material make-up, and organization of their silk threads. The lab is exploring digital fabrication and bio-mimetic design. They’re creating fibers inspired by the silk created by spiders. The lab hopes to build woven architectural structures without seams — that are continuous in morphology and physical properties.

The researchers are using a robot arm to test weaving ability — with the goal to successfully develop a larger system. An engineer from the project explained:

‘‘Usually with 3-D printing you see layered manufacturing: depositing one layer of material, followed by another layer on top. So in this project we’re using tensile elements instead. Think strings, ropes, and elastic bands.

We’re exploring how you can have a manufacturing process that looks at your surroundings. It surveys the environment and says: we have branches here, some pegs over there, and those objects — that we can weave around. Sort of like a spider or silk worm.’’

— Elisabeth Tsai  | research assistant • Media Lab at MIT

The robot is currently using a yarn-like material. But researchers plan to swap-out the current string with a special nylon that can stretch when wet — and become brittle when it dries. For this prototype, the robot spider knows the position of all hooks + pegs surrounding it. It’s crafting a design that was pre-programmed by software. Eventually the team wants to make the robot independent. That means it would be able to sense where the pegs + hooks are located, and weave a custom design on its own — adapting to fit its environment.

image | below

top: A silk worm emerging from its cocoon as a moth.
bottom: Cocoons harvested for their valuable silk thread.

about | the project

The research prototype is named CN-SILK = computer numerically controlled silk cocoon construction. It was created by a specialty team at MIT’s famous Media Lab called the mediated matter group. Their description is:

‘‘Our concept of mediated matter is how digital and fabrication technology mediates between matter + environment — to radically transform the design and construction of objects, buildings, systems. Designing for, with, and by nature.’’

— mediated matter group | Media Lab at MIT

watch | video
Prototype robot spider weaves architectural structures with string.

on the web | pages

Media Lab • by MIT | home
Media Lab • by MIT | mediated matter group

Media Lab • by MIT | research • Spider Silk: inspired robotic fabrication
Media Lab • by MIT |  YouTube channel

MIT | home
MIT | YouTube channel

motto: mind + hand

by definition | morphology

(noun)  mor · phol · o · gy

The study of the forms of things.
A branch of biology that examines the form of living creatures.

special section | string shape architecture

String as a 3-D architectural material creates a light-weight but supportive under-structure for building. Different geometrically balanced shapes — that can be programmed into a software system that’s attached to a robot dispensing + weaving arm — can create fundamental building blocks for making buildings or objects. Each shape has a variety of strengths or weaknesses.

Computer programmers and architects work together to discover the best load-bearing patterns that will incorporate modern living needs: windows, roof, floor, utilities — including portability, openness. The cities of the future will also rely on time efficiency + movability — how easy it is to quickly create a habit and re-locate it.

Spider’s silk is a type of string. Almost any substance can be spun into a yarn. So materials scientists study the wide range of benefits or difficulties inherent in each type of yarn they can create. A lot of labwork is needed to test the potentials of each kind of string.

on the web | reading

publication: Architonic
story title: The very fabric of architecture
deck: Textile use in construction
read | story

images | below
Examples of string geometries.

photos: by Katie Michelle Spoelstra • Geo Mod Art

on the web | reading

PC World • by IDG  | Robotic Spider
deck: Weaves web at MIT Media lab

— notes —

MIT = Massachusetts Institute of Technology
IDG = International Data grp.
BBC = British Broadcasting co.

PC = personal computer

image | above
A tiny robot hummingbird prototype.

photo: Purdue Univ.

— in this post —

~ story
~ videos
~ about
~ pages
~ reading

image | above
A hummingbird in flight.

— story —

A hummingbird is tiny bird with special maneuverability. It can fly like a bird and hover like an insect. If drones had this capability, they would be able to fly steadily through windy conditions, and get into tight spaces other drones can’t go.

The hummingbird’s body blueprint has been a focus of advanced robotics design projects over the years — several teams have attempted to build prototypes that capture nature’s capabilities. Engineer Xinyan Deng PhD and her group at Purdue University have created a bio-inspired hummingbird robot:

• trained by smart computer software called artificial intelligence
• weighing 12 grams
• using unsteady aero-dynamics to hover, like a real hummingbird

The software that controls the robot hummingbird follows a program with flight routines based-on actual techniques a real hummingbird uses naturally every day.

image | above
A smaller robot hummingbird prototype.

photo: Purdue Univ.

watch | video
A detailed look at the robot hummingbird.

watch | video
Technical design for the robot hummingbird.

about | the lab

‘‘Here at the lab we work in the field of bio-inspired robots — dedicated to the next generations of robotics that are inspired by nature. We use robotics theories + experiments to look at the locomotion of biological systems (animals such as: flying insects, birds, fish) to decode their secrets of high maneuverability, stability, and energy-efficient movement.

These discoveries help us develop next generation bio-inspired robots that can navigate in air, land, and sea. Such robots can be used for their better adaptivity plus performance robustness — compared to conventional robots — in confined, complex, and unstructured environment.’’

— Xinyan Deng PhD | principle investigator • Bio-Robotics Lab at Purdue University

on the web | pages

Bio-Robotics Lab • Purdue Univ. | home
Bio-Robotics Lab • Purdue Univ. | Hummingbird robot using AI to go soon where drones can’t

Purdue Univ. | YouTube channels: all
Purdue Univ. | YouTube channel: engineering
Purdue Univ. | YouTube channel: mechanical engineering
Purdue Univ. | YouTube channel: Bio-Robotics Lab

on the web | reading

Science Node | Fly like a bird, Hover like an insect
deck: Hummingbird inspired technology could go where drones can’t

Spectrum • by IEEE | Robot hummingbird is almost as agile as the real thing
deck: Purdue roboticists have built a bio-inspired micro air vehicle that flies much like a real hummingbird.

— notes —

IEEE = Institute of Electrical + Electronics Engineers

— contents —

~ story
~ report
~ reading
~ pages

— interview —

group: Univ. of North Carolina
story title: Univ. of North Carolina’s Laura Mersini-Houghton PhD shows that black holes do not exist
date: September 2014

read | full story

— story —

A quandary: black holes don’t exist — according to math calculations by physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton PhD — at the University of North Carolina.

Because black holes are traditionally considered one of the biggest cosmic mysteries — Mersini-Houghton’s statement that they don’t exist has caused controversy. But the science behind the scientific theory of black holes is more complex from a math and physics point of view.

Most of us think of black holes as stars that collapse in massive explosions, causing them to become smaller + denser. Mersini-Houghton isn’t questioning the existence of that. But she is questioning what properties black holes have — such as a singularity within a star’s explosion that creates the event horizon. An event horizon is a point so strong that nothing can escape the pull of the black hole: once something goes into a black hole, it disappears.

The 2 leading theories about our  universe contradict this, however. Historic physicist Albert Einstein PhD’s theory of gravity predicts that black holes can form, but his law of quantum theory says that nothing from the universe can ever disappear. Combine the 2 theories creates mathematical nonsense — and is called “the information loss paradox.”

So how can both theories be correct? The only way to combine the 2 concepts is by stating that some properties we associate with black holes don’t exist. That means black holes — as scientists know them, are impossible. Her calculations require scientists to re-imagine the fabric of space, and re-think the origins of our universe.

For many decades, scientists believed that black holes form when a massive star collapses to a single point in space. Imagine planet Earth being squished into a ball the size of a peanut — called a singularity. The event horizon the point where a black hole’s gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape it. Crossing this horizon means that you could never cross back.

Experimental evidence may one day show physical proof if black holes exist in the universe or not — and in what form. But for now, Mersini-Houghton says the mathematics are conclusive.

Laura Mersini-Houghton PhD said: “I’m still not over the shock. We’ve been studying this problem for a more than 50 years — and this math solution gives us a lot to think about.”

— report —

report title: The back-reaction of Hawking radiation on a gravitationally collapsing star — black holes
year: September 2014
author: by Laura Mersini-Houghton PhD

read | the report
format: Adobe

— summary —

In her paper Laura Mersini-Houghton PhD uses 2 seemingly conflicting theories to mathematically prove that black holes don’t exist — because they can’t possibly come into existence in the first place. She also references physicist Stephen Hawking PhD.

on the web | reading

Midnight in the Desert | Professor says black holes are mathematically impossible
Tech Times | Physics professor says black holes mathematically impossible

on the web | pages

Univ. of North Carolina | Laura Mersini-Houghton PhD
Cambridge Univ. | Stephen Hawking PhD

Stephen Hawking PhD | home

— report —

group: Boston Consulting Group
report title: Winning the Race: for women in digital
date: November 2018

read | the report
format: Adobe

— story —

An introduction.

The demand for digital talent is huge — and growing so fast that companies are rushing for the next hire.

But they’re missing opportunities by not targeting women effectively. Women make-up 36 % of university graduates in: science, tech, engineering, math — called STEM — but only 25 % of the STEM workforce, and just 9 % of STEM leadership.

Research shows benefits — operational + financial — to creating a gender-balanced workforce. Companies with women equally represented are more innovative + resilient — and their female colleagues have higher levels of engagement + ambition.

As part of our research, we developed a framework for analyzing gender diversity issues that tracks the stages of the career pipeline: recruiting, retention, advancement, and representation of women among senior leadership roles. These four stages are interlinked: companies will be unlikely to recruit more women into digital roles if they can’t retain and promote those already at the organization. So, companies need a systematic approach that will address all four, starting with a clear statement from leadership that gender diversity is a priority.

The good news is that digital technology is at an inflection point in terms of growth, meaning that there is time for companies to catch up. Those that actively seek out the right pools of talent and launch targeted initiatives to bring in those women candidates will improve their company’s performance. And those that manage to keep and promote women to higher positions will truly win the race for digital talent.

A critical shortage of women in digital.

Digitization is transforming businesses in all industries, and companies are investing heavily to put new systems and tools into place. Yet talent remains a limiting factor at many organizations. The US Department of Labor estimates that there will be 1.1 million computing-related job openings in the US by 2024, but more than two-thirds of these jobs could go unfilled given the insufficient pool of college graduates with computing-related degrees.

Women could help meet this demand, yet cultural and social influences have pushed women out of STEM-related jobs in the past. Given the smaller pool of women with degrees in these fields, it is no surprise that they are underrepresented at companies. (The exhibit shows the decline in the number of women in STEM fields as seniority rises.) Some women who do have the requisite education often opt to work outside of traditional companies. As Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau, the CEO and publisher of MIT Technology Review, told us in an interview, “Even when women graduate with a tech-related degree, they’re more likely to go into academia or apply their skills to a mission-oriented project.”

In addition, women who do get hired at companies often don’t stay. Because there are so few of them and they cannot see role models ahead, they often feel isolated and end up leaving. For this reason, simply focusing on recruiting isn’t likely to work.

“A lot of big tech companies focus on diversity in hiring women, but once they’re in place, the culture is still set up in a way that privileges men,” says Ryan Clarke, director of research and evaluation at Girls Who Code, an organization that teaches computer science to school-age girls. Cultures are difficult to change, she notes, and they have a disproportionate impact in that they don’t just affect current employees—they also affect a company’s reputation to potential candidates. Women who hear about these cultures simply opt out and look elsewhere.

In sum, most companies have serious work to do in getting women onto digital teams. Because technology is becoming so pervasive—in essence, all companies will soon be tech companies—there is a greater array of end products and services that incorporate digital, meaning that women have a critical perspective to offer. Companies need women coders and designers who think about the different types of offerings, from online purchases to websites and mobile apps for personalized health care. Companies also need diverse perspectives on how to channel and use AI and large masses of data in a way that is fair and equitable, rather than simply perpetuating existing biases.

Addressing the full employee life-cycle: how to win.

For companies to win the competition for women in digital, they must not only recruit more effectively but also address the full employee life-cycle, including retention and advancement.

1. | sourcing talent

First, companies need to make sure they are looking at the largest possible pipeline of talented women. Identify every possible candidate. As discussed, there simply aren’t enough women studying STEM-related subjects, but at a minimum, companies should aim to reach every possible woman in that category.

To that end, companies should create targeted marketing and ad campaigns with the message that they are actively seeking women candidates. Platforms for social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook are valuable tools in launching more targeted outreach. There is a strong network effect in place among millennial women in technology. “When you find one, you find many, because they all follow each other on social media,” says Bramson-Boudreau of MIT Technology Review. Companies can also target women-only colleges or organizations. When using headhunters for open positions, require that shortlists of candidates include equal proportions of men and women.

Companies that can’t find enough skilled women candidates can expand the pool by offering training programs on the skills they need. For example, the craft site Etsy could not find enough programming candidates through traditional channels, so it launched a 12-week program with free courses on open-source software and coding. The company ended up hiring more than a third of the first wave of attendees.

On a broader scale, they can become advocates to bring more school-age girls into STEM programs, and potentially even sponsor or fund such programs.

2. | re-think candidate events

In addition to staging traditional job forums, companies should hold women-focused recruiting events. These can be low-key, informal events, where participants are encouraged to bring a friend along. (The research shows that because there are so few women in science and technology fields, many feel isolated and do not have strong professional networks in place.) Some companies, like Accenture, use digital technology to hold virtual events for job candidates. (See “Digitally Driven Gender Diversity,” BCG article, August 2017.)

3. | consider candidates from non-STEM fields

Tapping into the alumni networks of top engineering and computer science programs is critical. But companies should also consider women in adjacent fields at the collegiate level who have similar skills and the aptitude to learn the harder digital and analytical skills. When recruiting women already in the workforce, don’t ignore those who may have a technical foundation in place yet are currently working in adjacent fields. For example, women entrepreneurs who founded technology startups may not have done any actual software coding, but they know how to manage projects and talent in that realm, making them attractive hires.

4. | make job offers fair

A central challenge in gender diversity is that many women still don’t receive the same pay as men in an equivalent role, and the data and analytics field is no different. A 2017 study of 120,000 job offers by Hired, a technology job marketplace, indicates that two-thirds of job offers for women are at lower salary levels than offers for men, for the same position at the same company. Another study found that women in technology positions receive salaries 18% to 22% lower than those of men. This is a deep-rooted problem, but it also creates an opportunity: by ensuring that pay levels are fair—for existing positions and particularly for new hires—companies can differentiate themselves and become more attractive to women candidates.

5. | use tech to eliminate biases

Most managers who make hiring decisions for digital and analytics jobs are men. The research shows that virtually everyone falls prey to unconscious biases that cause them to favor job applicants who share their background—meaning that qualified women may get overlooked.

To fight this tendency, use software programs to eliminate biases in job postings. (Textio is one option.) Screen candidates by looking at resumes in which names and other identifying details have been removed so that all candidates can be evaluated based on their merits alone. Conduct first-round interviews using AI software. And use gamification, asking candidates to play a series of neuroscience-related games and applying the results through machine-learning algorithms to better match candidates to positions free of bias. (One caveat: some AI applications “learn” based on previous hiring data, so they can often simply replicate, or even exacerbate, hiring biases from the past. Like all technology, AI-based hiring programs require human supervision, and recruiters themselves will need to be trained on how to use these tools to eliminate biases.)

6. | retention + advancement

All the recruiting initiatives in the world won’t help if companies can’t keep women once they’re hired. Accordingly, once women are on board, leaders need to put the right measures in place to retain them and give them the same fair shot at advancement as men. Those measures should be based on data, rather than hunches. Specifically, companies should focus on the following initiatives.

7. | make role models prominent

Showcase women leaders from the company at every opportunity. Intel has used this approach successfully. The company set a goal in 2015 that 40% of all new hires had to be women or minorities. To support this program, the company held red-carpet events where women or racially diverse executives already at Intel could meet with recruits of their own gender or race and hire them on the spot. The company achieved its goal within one year; 43% of new candidates in 2016 were women or minorities. Female role models are even more critical in leadership roles, says Bramson-Boudreau of MIT Technology Review. “At this point in time, it’s a little embarrassing to have an all-male leadership team.”

8. |  sponsor talent

Sponsorship by senior men and women is effective in giving junior and midlevel women support to build a career in which they rise through the ranks at a company—rather than just accepting a job there. Sponsors typically offer career advice to help high-potential women navigate inflection points in their careers and lobby for them to receive promotions, training, and key assignments. Notably, this sponsorship should be seen as an opportunity for both men and women.

9. | offer flex arrangements

One clear measure to create an inclusive culture is flexible working arrangements. In research conducted by BCG and other organizations, women consistently rate flex work among the most effective measures in terms of boosting gender diversity and increasing retention. In a recent BCG study, 58% of female employees cited flexibility as the most effective intervention for increasing gender diversity across all industries worldwide. (See Getting the Most from Your Diversity Dollars, BCG report, June 2017.) Moreover, flexible work aligns with the ethos of tech functions, whose employees are generally young people who keep nonstandard hours and don’t worry about outdated concepts like “face time.”

10. | take bias out of advancement

As in recruiting, bias is present in key decisions and promotion points. Affinity bias in a predominantly male culture will naturally favor men at key moments—decisions about who should be promoted, who should attend key meetings, who should get opportunities to lead high-demand projects. Companies should ensure that metrics are used at each decision point and that decision-making panels are diverse themselves.

Some final thoughts.

We’re at a point in history where the challenges that women face are openly discussed than in the past. At the same time, technology is becoming prevalent in all industries. Those two strands are creating an imperative for companies to recruit more women into digital roles and to create the kind of equitable corporate culture that allows women to thrive and advance. The measures discussed above are a starting point on a long journey. However, we believe the destination —- a balanced workforce in which opportunities are based on talent rather than gender—warrants the effort.

— notes —

BCG = Boston Consulting Group
STEAM = science, tech, engineering, arts, math

image | above

Streaming out from the center of the Messier 87 galaxy like a cosmic search-light is one of nature’s most amazing phenomena: a black hole with a fast moving jet of atomic particles streaming out of it — traveling at nearly light speed.

photo: NASA • Hubble Space Telescope

— contents —

~ story
~ photo gallery
~ background
~ expert quote
~ press conference
~ pages
~ reading
~ infographic

— the story —

historic date: April 10, 2019

Scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope project have captured the first images of a black hole — deep in the core of the Virgo A galaxy (also called the Messier 87 galaxy). Seen in the photo above + the gallery below: the image of the black hole at the galaxy’s center is the result of an international, 2 year mission to zoom-in on the vortex. For the first time in history, the photos reveal the contours of a black hole’s event horizon. That’s the “point of no return” where all light + matter nearby the black hole fall into its funnel, without escape.

Located through-out space, black holes are mysterious vortexes (similar to whirlpools) that appear to suck everything close-by (particles, gases, light) into their large, rotating centers — but it’s not clear to scientists how or where anything exits.

The black hole in the Messier 87 galaxy is 53 million light-years away. It’s a distant galaxy — engulfed by clouds of dust + gas. No visible light telescope could see the black hole through that debris field. It’s not the nearest black hole, but it’s huge: as wide as our entire solar system, and 6.5 billion times the mass of our sun. For that reason, it’s called a super-massive black hole.

It’s so large that you can see it in the night sky — along with the black hole named Sagittarius A, at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. To get the images: astronomers networked radio telescopes all over the world to magnify black hole no. M87 to extreme resolution. The combined network is called the Event Horizon Telescope project. 8 telescopes observed the black hole at the same time — functioning together, as if they were just 1 telescope the size of our entire planet.

The project couldn’t image the black hole directly — because black holes don’t emit enough radiation to be detected using existing telescopes. But at the edges, just before its suction becomes too intense for light + matter to escape, a black hole accelerate particles to high speeds. Moments before falling past the event horizon, that matter rubs against itself generating friction — and glowing. The radio waves detected by the Event Horizon Telescope project were part of that process.

Data will continue to come in from the Event Horizon Telescope project’s network: they’re also observing the much nearer (but smaller) super-massive black hole Sagittarius A — in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy.

w. materials from: Live Science

watch | photo gallery

Veritasium | video: first images of black hole
Veritasium | video: how to understand the images of a black hole

watch | background

Event Horizon Telescope project | video: how the telescope will see a black hole

quote | expert

from: France Cordova PhD
bio: Director at the National Science Foundation

We’ve been studying black holes for so long — that sometimes it’s easy to forget that none of us has ever seen one. We’re delighted to report: we’ve seen what we thought was un-seeable. We now have visual evidence of a black hole.

— France Cordova PhD

watch | press conference

organization: National Science Foundation
organization: Event Horizon Telescope project
event title: Revealing the fist image of a black hole

press conference: see footage

on the web | pages

National Science Foundation | home
National Science Foundation | exploring black holes
National Science Foundation | YouTube channel

Event Horizon Telescope project | home
Event Horizon Telescope project | videos
Event Horizon Telescope project | YouTube channel

on the web | reading

Astronomy | The nature of M87
deck: Event Horizon Telescopes look at a super-massive black hole.

National Geographic | First-ever picture of a black hole unveiled
deck: Using a telescope the size of the planet, astronomers have captured the first image of this space oddity.
deck: Here’s why that matters.

Live Science | It’s Here: the first ever close-up of a black hole
Live Science | Why is the first ever black hole photo an orange ring?

image | below
A black hole seen from 3/4 view.

legend | infographic

no. 1 — jets of high speed particles
no. 2 — center of the black hole
no. 3 — accretion disk

image | below
A black hole seen from top view.

legend | infographic

no. 1 — jets of high speed particles
no. 2 — center of the black hole
no. 3 — accretion disk

legend | diagram of a black hole

A black hole is a vortex in space that sucks-in cosmic gases + dust. But when black holes are observed optically they appear faint like distant stars — and in some cases they’re hardly visible. Huge black holes are called “super-massive.”

All black holes function like eddies or cyclones — swirling nearby gases + dust into an whirlpool formation (called an accretion disk) — and throwing-off jets of particles moving almost the speed of light. If one of these jets happens to be pointing directly at planet Earth we call it a “blazar.”

Around the outside of the black hole is the accretion disk — it’s a round pool made-up of scattered matter, in motion (in orbit) around the black hole’s center. In space, floating materials come together — and stick together — as they’re sucked into the black hole’s vacuum, eventually becoming large collections of solid particles + gas clouds that will never escape the black-hole’s pull.

Scientists do not know much about what happens at the mysterious center of a black hole. Since matter is never destroyed — according the laws of nature — we can imagine that cosmic gases + dust that enter the black hole’s center eye compress until they’re broken into tiny particles, perhaps smaller than an atom. Maybe they exit unseen, because of the limits of today’s optical technology.

Some theorists believe that the materials entering a black hole never leave it, and don’t come out the other end. Others believe in a more wild hypothesis: that matter could disappear into some other dimension.

— notes —

EHT = Event Horizon Telescope project • org.
NSF = National Science Foundation of the United States • gov.
NASA = National Aeronautics + Space Admin of the United States • gov.

* France Cordova is France Anne-Dominic Cordova PhD

— contents —

~ story
~ by definition
~ pages
~ project
~ documentary film
~ reading

— the story —

Humanity’s impact on Earth is now so profound that a new geological epoch — called the Anthropocene — needs to be declared, according to an official expert group, who presented the recommendation to the International Geological Congress, sponsored by the International Union of Geological Sciences.

Next time you eat a chicken wing, pay attention to where you discard the left-over bones. You might be telling future archaeologists about a very specific moment in time — when human beings became so dominant over the planet that we began to create a new geological epoch to reflect our collective influence.

This new time period of vast human influence is known as the Anthropocene, and according to a cadre of experts called the Anthropocene Working Group, that epoch has already been under way for more than 60 years.

In August 2016 the Anthropocene Working Group recommended to the International Geological Congress that geologists declare the 1950s the end of our current epoch, the Holocene — and the beginning of a new one, the Anthropocene. The Holocene began approx. 12,000 years ago, after the close of the last major ice age. While the previous epoch, the Pleistocene, lasted for nearly 1.8 million years.

The current Holocene epoch is the 12,000 years of stable climate (since the last ice age) — when all human civilization developed on Earth. But since the mid-20th century, there has been an extreme acceleration of:

• carbon dioxide emissions
• build-up of industrial waste + human rubbish
• radioactive contamination
• sea level rise
• shoreline erosion
• changes to the natural eco-systems of plants + animals
• land transformation by deforestation + development

These changes all mark the end of that slice of geological time, the experts argue. The Earth is so profoundly changed that the Holocene epoch must give way to the Anthropocene epoch.

What is marking the Anthropocene as a new epoch? Some signals include plastic pollution, concrete, and the soot produced by power plants. But the biggest may be the radioactive elements that were released around the globe during mid-century nuclear testing — hence the 1950s delineation.

Humans also appear to have set off a major extinction event: causing species to die-off en masse across the globe, the 6th extinction in Earth’s history.

And with the creation and proliferation of the domestic chicken, now the most common bird in the world — your dinner plate could be holding the bones that will become (for future human + computer intelligences) what dinosaur skeletons are to us: evidence of a long-departed species that once ruled its planet.

with materials from: World Science Foundation

by definition | the Anthropocene epoch

• The Anthropocene epoch is the name of a proposed geological epoch
• it may soon enter the official geologic time scale of Earth
• it refers to a time in which humanity permanently changed our planet
• we’re still officially in the Holocene epoch
• the Holocene epoch began 12,000 years ago after the last ice age
• history experts say we should now change our current epoch to the name Anthropocen
• the word Anthropocene: comes from the Greek language word “anthropo” meaning man
• the word Anthropocene: comes from the Greek language word “cene” meaning new
• experts have different opinion about when humanity caused a lasting impact on Earth’s geology
• experts have commonly settled on a time near year 1950

with materials from: Daily Mail