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Artificial data give the same results as real data — without compromising privacy
http://news.mit.edu/2017/artificial-data-give-same-results-as-real-data-0303
"“Once we model an entire database, we can sample and recreate a synthetic version of the data that very much looks like the original database, statistically speaking,” says Veeramachaneni. “If the original database has some missing values and some noise in it, we also embed that noise in the synthetic version… In a way, we are using machine learning to enable machine learning.”
SRI Report Independently Verifies Brillouin LENR Reactions (report included)
https://www.lenr-forum.com/attachment/4676-sri-technical-report-kopia-pdf/
Brillouin’s LENR technology includes a proprietary method of electrical stimulation of nickel metal conductors using its Q-Pulse™ control system. The process stimulates the system to produce LENR reactions, which generate excess heat. Other than the heat output, there are no (zero) toxic or CO2 bi-product emissions of any kind.
Wow, thanks. I don't see anything at LW 2.0, so nice to be able to read articles again.
"Destroyed Worlds" --Cause Star's Strange Dimming (VIDEO)
"A team of U.S. astronomers studying the star RZ Piscium has found evidence suggesting its strange, unpredictable dimming episodes may be caused by vast orbiting clouds of gas and dust, the remains of one or more destroyed planets."
73% of developers who don't use AI plan to learn how in 2018
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/73-of-developers-who-dont-use-ai-plan-to-learn-how-in-2018/
https://assets.digitalocean.com/currents-report/DigitalOcean-Currents-Q4-2017.pdf
Courtroom science primers launched today
https://royalsociety.org/news/2017/11/royal-society-launches-courtroom-science-primers
Wrong number fone tones, to get spam callers and robo callers will auto hang up
http://yourhomenow.com/sit.html
https://www.3amsystems.com/World_Tone_Database?q=,Special_information_tone
What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
https://theconversation.com/what-if-consciousness-is-not-what-drives-the-human-mind-86785
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01924/full
"We suggest that our personal awareness does not create, cause or choose our beliefs, feelings or perceptions. Instead, the contents of consciousness are generated “behind the scenes” by fast, efficient, non-conscious systems in our brains. All this happens without any interference from our personal awareness, which sits passively in the passenger seat while these processes occur. "
SAGE: A Test to Detect Signs of Alzheimer's and Dementia
https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/brain-spine-neuro/memory-disorders/sage#SAGETest
"The Self-Administered Gerocognitive Exam (SAGE) is designed to detect early signs of cognitive, memory or thinking impairments. It evaluates your thinking abilities and helps physicians to know how well your brain is working."
"Here Bostrom and I discuss applications of his book across any number of fields — from history to philosophy to public policy to practices of everyday life (both now and in millennia to come)."
Brain wiring differences in people and crows vs. primates
http://www.goethe-university-frankfurt.de/69331994/036
there are volunteer openings. They just launched a cubesatt to ISS, so they want to be considered a space-faring nation by the UN.
Vacancies in the Civics Division
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BydyXO59FB2GdngwSVI2azc2aG8/view
Hibernating ground squirrels provide clues to new stroke treatments.
" A treatment to help brain cells survive a stroke-induced lack of oxygen and glucose could dramatically improve patient outcomes, but no such neuroprotective agents for stroke patients exist."
"ebselen - was found to both boost SUMOylation in rat cells and keep them alive in the absence of oxygen and glucose."
http://www.sciencecodex.com/hibernating-ground-squirrels-provide-clues-new-stroke-treatments-617126
This is also important for space travel to the Belt and beyond. There is some research on-going on hibernation for humans.
and this, reverses brain trauma injury in mice.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171117195341.htm
Ask HN: How can I use my web development skills for space exploration/tech?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15725849
Hate to just post up HN, but there are some good employment ideas in this post. You can also go out to the Mojave Space Port if you have mech skills.
and how to do low budget Sci-Fi right
The Drift
Pulse - 1988
A movie "loosely" based on the 84 story by John Varley called " Press Enter []". X Files also did a take-off on it, but all i remember was a "defense" satellite targeting a hide out trailer. I believe both of those were based on an un-freindly AI, but the Pulse movie was just a bit o' evil in the lines.
Some fabulous macro photog of electronic components overheating,and the play out of circuit boards to city streets is reminiscent of Tron.
An exemplary display of how important music and audio are to make suspenseful and tense tableau. Acting just adequate, and decent S.E. of elect discharge don't date it to bad.
Press Enter [] , Hugo and Nebula for Novella story, originally in Asimov's SF mag.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41040
Pulse - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095924/
Pulse - Utube- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g231VBvcZ5s
3d app that brings galleries into your living room
The app, called ArtPassport, also provides detailed information about individual artists and their works for newcomers to the art world. They’ve provided virtual tours of recent exhibitions including Haroon Mirza and Jake and Dinos Chapman at the Frieze art fair in London this year."
The Effect of Cold Showering on Health and Work: A Randomized Controlled Trial
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025014/
Looks like it makes you feel tougher, but didn't affect illness days.
Wonder if this is the same folks that did the sauna protects from alzheimers and heart failure....
What is the computational power of the universe?
" Jordan does not imagine what we could learn if humanity somehow converted the entire cosmos into a vast computing device, he asks, now that the universe has undergone billions of years of change in accordance with the laws of nature, can we use what we see through our telescopes to gain insights into difficult computational problems? "
https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.103512
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-11/nios-wit111517.php
Seems to me at 3.4, the first stage is to bring down all competing nations electric grids, thereby slowing trade, transportation, and hampering retaliation. Think of non-lethal mines. The side effects would be instantaneous, and lethal. And the military could easily see it as a defensible and deniable action.
this would be trivial to anything hooked into the net, and has access to SCADA coding and grid diagrams.
It would also behoove the local "friendly" AI , to interupt communications in it's home base, to keep outside influences from retaliating against it's base. So you would likely get a comms blackout , except when the AI wanted to communicate it's orders. It would also make sense to set up new frequency hopping algo's on existing lines where that would be possible (i.e. not old POTS lines?)
Grilled Cheese Academy
A cooking site that i wish i had found years ago. Sponsored by Wisconsin , and has a big prize for annual winners.
http://www.grilledcheeseacademy.com/recipe
Bachelor heaven !
Sage - Administrative AI , and ethical coding statement. PDF
Kiss your car goodbye,
"Everyone will have five years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap or trade it on a module."
NK3 by Michael Tolkin
a SF tale of a bioengineered weapon that destroys reasoning and memories, rendering humanity unable to do science or maintain tech.
Arctic Methane Release - interview w Sharkova.
Top russian researcher in the game.
Should Women Give Up the Power that Comes With Being Objectified?
http://ricemedia.co/should-women-give-up-the-power-that-comes-with-being-objectified/
Notepad and scheduling app, tiddlywiki
Eocene thermal spike, CO2 was only 1000ppm
Burial-induced oxygen-isotope re-equilibration of fossil foraminifera explains ocean paleotemperature paradoxes
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01225-9
This may mean most climate models are at the low end of speed of warming increase
GSA meeting- Journey Into The Chicxulub Crater
http://astrobiology.com/2017/10/moment-of-impact-a-journey-into-the-chicxulub-crater.html
Session Link: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2017AM/webprogram/Session43180.html
Hurricane Maria Damage Assessment - PR NWS - drone footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFCwFZtaQHE&feature=youtu.be
and the US weather service is losing personell
Outer Planets Assessment Group - meeting Sept 2017 presentations
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/meetings/sep2017/presentations/
Allen Stern update on New Horizons interesting.
America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It’s Huge
https://www.thenation.com/article/america-has-a-monopoly-problem-and-its-huge/?print=1
"This increase in market power helps explain simultaneously the slowdown in productivity growth, the sluggishness of the economy, and the growth of inequality—in short, the poor performance of the American economy"
autonomous
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28209634-autonomous
wonderful descriptions of environments, interesting ideas on bio-printing and big pharma, with IP having its own intl police force.
confirmation of a disappearing star, search for failed supernovae
http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/bhsanssupernova.cfm
"The researchers used new observations made with HST, shown above, which shows that N6946-BH1 is no longer there in the visible spectrum, but a faint signal in the near-infrared is present.
Based on the data and models, the scientists believe the data points toward the formation of a black hole, with the thermal emission being created by accretion material entering the black hole."
Maybe tape a note on ceiling with " I A D" on it to remind yourself as you drift off again.
"The MILD technique works on what we call 'prospective memory' - that is, your ability to remember to do things in the future. By repeating a phrase that you will remember you're dreaming, it forms an intention in your mind that you will, in fact, remember that you are dreaming, leading to a lucid dream,"
reality testing - which involves checking your environment several times a day to see whether or not you're dreaming.
wake back to bed - waking up after five hours, staying awake for a short period, then going back to sleep in order to enter a REM sleep period, in which dreams are more likely to occur.
MILD (mnemonic induction of lucid dreams) - which involves waking up after five hours of sleep and then developing the intention to remember that you are dreaming before returning to sleep, by repeating the phrase: "The next time I'm dreaming, I will remember that I'm dreaming." You also imagine yourself in a lucid dream.
Suicide molecules kill any cancer cell (in mice)
"Peter found that a large number of these small RNAs derived from certain genes did not, as expected, only suppress the gene they were designed against. They also killed all cancer cells. His team discovered these special sequences are distributed throughout the human genome, embedded in multiple genes as shown in the study in Cell Cycle.
When converted to siRNAs, these sequences all act as highly trained super assassins. They kill the cells by simultaneously eliminating the genes required for cell survival. By taking out these survivor genes, the assassin molecule activates multiple death cell pathways in parallel."
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29702
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-10/nu-smk101917.php
Peace Processes and Durable Returns
" What the Balkans can teach other states in conflict
Research at the University of Kent into how areas like the Balkans have developed ways to address the challenges of their past -- including ethnic cleansing -- offers a toolkit for others facing similar conflict"
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unhcr.org%2F47e912ae2.pdf
Chaos reigns even in simple electronics
"Chaotic behavior is so complex that to this day there are no methods to effectively design electronic circuits of this type." Even in electronic circuits containing only one or two transistors, chaos is ubiquitous! The predictable and always the same reactions of electronic devices that we all use on an everyday basis do not reflect the nature of electronics but the efforts of designers"
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-10/thni-cre101917.php
http://press.ifj.edu.pl/en/news/2017/10/18/
Of particular interest was one of the found oscillators, which generated voltage spikes resembling stimuli typical for neurons. The similarity of impulses was striking here, but not complete.
"Our artificial neuron analogue proved to be much faster than its biological counterpart: pulses were produced thousands of times more often! If it were not for the lack of criticality and multi-fractality, the speed of operation of this circuit would justify talking about an electronic super-neuron. Perhaps such a circuit exists, only we have not found it yet. At the moment, we have to be satisfied with our 'almost super-neuron'," comments Dr. Minati, with a smile.
Physically active white men at high risk for plaque buildup in arteries
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-10/uoia-paw101617.php
"When these findings were stratified by race and gender, they found that white men were at the highest risk-they were 86 percent more likely to have CAC. There was no higher odds of CAC for black participants who exercised at this level, and while there was a similar trend for white women it was not statistically significant."
"High levels of exercise over time may cause stress on the arteries leading to higher CAC," said Rana, "however this plaque buildup may well be of the more stable kind, and thus less likely to rupture and causes heart attack, which was not evaluated in this study."
Glucosamine dampens the brain hyperexcitability seen in seizures or epilepsy
Since neural excitability in the hippocampus is a key feature of seizures and epilepsy, they hypothesized that acutely increasing protein O-GlcNAcylation might dampen the pathological hyperexcitability associated with these brain disorders.
NIST cautions of using bayes for weighting in legal forensics
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-10/nios-nuc101217.php
"Bayesian theory does not support using an expert's opinion, even when expressed numerically, as a universal weight of evidence. Among different ways of presenting information, it has not been shown that LR is most appropriate."
Universal Basic Income and the Threat of Tyranny
http://quillette.com/2017/10/09/universal-basic-income-threat-tyranny/
"The World Bank gives us a list of countries ordered by what percentage of their merchandise exports comes from fuels. At 50% or more we find, in this order: Iraq, Angola, Algeria, Brunei, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Oman, Norway, Colombia, Bolivia and Bahrain. Can we notice a trend? How many of these countries provide a good set of political rights for their citizens?"
" A country that generates its wealth from its citizens has no choice but to keep those citizens happy, at least to some degree; a country that generates its wealth from oil wells, only needs to keep a handful of mercenaries happy as they guard the access to those wells."
Machine Learning for Investors: A Primer
https://alphaarchitect.com/2017/09/27/machine-learning-investors-primer/
"We’ll review the following items in this piece:
How machine learning differs from statistical methods and why it’s a big deal
The key concepts
A couple of nuts-and-bolts examples to give a flavor of how it solves problems
Code to jumpstart your own mad science experiments
A roadmap to learn more about it.
Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia
"Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet."
There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia
and this on ads and graphics
https://www.creativereview.co.uk/north-korea-graphic-design-book-phaidon/
Lung Collapses Are A Surprisingly Common Esports Injury
https://compete.kotaku.com/lung-collapses-are-a-surprisingly-common-esports-injury-1795731971
"Over the last seven years, at least six high-profile esports players have been struck with a debilitating and serious medical condition called spontaneous pneumothorax—a collapsed lung. Some had to withdraw from matches. A couple kept playing, even though it probably wasn’t a great idea. Why is this, of all injuries, common in esports?
Machs Effect interstellar propellentless propulsion mission proposal at NASA NIAC
Next Steps • Publish – – One or more papers on results of our current laboratory scale test program – Additional peer-reviewed papers on theory are in preparation – Paper on IMES-1 design and Concept of Operations (CONOPS) • Upgrade test facilities and increase thrust – –Increase data rate and number of channels –Improve torsion balance – Increase thrust ~10x • Design an on-orbit test of the MEGA drive – – Our planned on-orbit test using a microsatellite (or CubeSat) is presently at TRL ~ 2 – We favor a rotational test, spinning a microsatellite up (and down) by opposing drives. This removes atmospheric drag as a major error source.
are they going to post up the presentations and posters?
What I Hate About Dating Women vs What I Hate About Dating Men
"There is also something a little bit socially darwinian about the whole thing. The overriding assumption with guys I date seems to be that the most valuable thing I have to contribute to my children is my DNA. My life experience and wisdom? Worthless. I mean, maybe that’s too harsh — many men do care about personality — but only after I’ve made the DNA cut. And, it’s worth mentioning, I think many men care about intelligence more than looks, so they’re not “superficial” exactly, but they view intelligence as an inheritable trait and they like me because they think my kids will get that trait from me. My primary bartering chip with men is what I was born with."
"This article was triggered by the contemporary experiences of the authors. We were tired of hearing economists talk about how necessary growth and productivity are for well-being. We don’t believe in this story any more."