Does watching the work of fictional forensic investigators on TV influence viewers? There is a belief that this is the case and that the consequences of people watching shows such as the American crime drama television series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” are filtering through into real life, a phenomenon that has been called the CSI effect. In the worst case, it is feared, potential criminals will learn how to better conceal a crime from these shows. In addition, concerns have been expressed that members of U.S. juries may now have excessive expectations regarding the evidence and as a result are more likely to acquit the accused. A team of psychologists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz working under Professor Heiko Hecht have now sounded the all-clear—at least in one respect. In an experimental study, the German researchers have been able to find no evidence of a correlation between watching forensic science TV shows and the ability to get away with committing a crime. This is the first study to look at the question of whether criminals could profit from viewing dramas of this sort.
Ohio has long been home to heavyweights in banking and insurance.
Think Cleveland-based KeyBank, Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Bank and Huntington Bancshares here in Columbus, and insurers such as local giant Nationwide and Progressive, based near Cleveland.
Now, bets are being placed on tiny startup companies by a new nonprofit that is driven to help the state keep its edge in the banking and insurance sectors at a time of rapid change in the financial-services industry that threatens to upend everything from banking to real-estate closings.
Notch, a technology consulting company founded in Richmond in 2014 that specialized in data engineering and machine learning, has been acquired by Capital One Financial Corp.
The small company has left its office in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom and moved its 16-person staff to Capital One’s West Creek office campus in Goochland County.
TheHill; Erik Brynjolfsson, Daniel Rock, and Chad Syverson
from
The Congressional Budget Office reduced its 10-year forecast for average annual labor productivity growth from 1.8 percent in 2016 to 1.5 percent in 2017. Although modest, that drop implies GDP will be considerably smaller 10 years from now than it would be in a more optimistic scenario — a difference equivalent to almost $600 billion in 2017.
When we studied the topic in depth, however, we drew a surprising and significant conclusion: There is no inherent inconsistency between forward-looking technological optimism and backward-looking disappointment. Both can simultaneously exist.
Buried deep in a note towards the end of a recent bulletin published by the British government’s statistical agency was a startling revelation. On average, people in the UK are now projected to live shorter lives than previously thought.
In their projections, published in October 2017, statisticians at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated that by 2041, life expectancy for women would be 86.2 years and 83.4 years for men. In both cases, that’s almost a whole year less than had been projected just two years earlier. And the statisticians said life expectancy would only continue to creep upwards in future.
As a result, and looking further ahead, a further one million earlier deaths are now projected to happen across the UK in the next 40 years by 2058. This number was not highlighted in the report. But it jumped out at us when we analysed the tables of projections published alongside it.
If we were able to read the tiny, microscopic signs of our immune systems, we could catch and treat diseases like ovarian or pancreatic cancer before they become deadly. An early screening tool like that could save millions of lives a year — and Microsoft is working to make it a reality.
The tech giant announced Thursday that it is partnering with Seattle biotech company Adaptive Biotechnologies on a years-long project to build a universal blood test that can screen for dozens or even hundreds of diseases at a time, all by decoding the information in your immune system.
In his short but impactful post, Zuckerberg notes that when he started doing personal challenges in 2009, Facebook did not have “a sustainable business model,” so his first pledge was to wear a tie all year, so as to focus himself on finding that model.
He sure as hell did find that model: data-driven audience-based advertising, but more on that in a minute. In his post, Zuckerberg notes that 2018 feels “a lot like that first year,” adding “Facebook has a lot of work to do — whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent….My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues.”
It’s no surprise that tech companies are eager to stay abreast of AI developments. When they are not luring AI talents with huge compensation packages, they are on the lookout for AI startups suitable for acquisition. According to a CBInsight report, over 250 private companies using AI algorithms across different verticals have been acquired since 2012, with 37 acquisitions taking place in Q1’17 alone.
University Data Science News
Jean Twenge of UC-San Diego, writing for Backchannel, summarizes a big cultural shift explored earlier by danah boyd: teenagers are spending less time with each other face to face, more time in screen-mediated activities like texting and Netflix-bingeing. Should we be alarmed? boyd’s argument boils down to ‘the kids are alright’, though she was writing at a time when parents were worried their kids would run into creeps and cyberbullying. Twenge’s recent book, iGen, takes a different angle, raising concerns about the impacts on teens’ psychological development if they spend more time exposed to glossy simulacra of perfect lives on Instagram, in carefully edited text, and in scripted media – including performances of anguish and dark feelings – rather than interacting with each other and olders, face-to-face, in real-time. Skip down to company data science news to see how Facebook is reacting to these new concerns about addicted youngers.
Duke School of Medicine has inked an agreement to be an academic partner to precision medicine firm Datavant that works on clinical trial data. It’s unclear exactly who gets what in this deal, but presumably both data and dollars were exchanged. Expect more academic partnerships with for-profit companies in all things data science, especially precision medicine and autonomous driving.
University of Michigan has cornered the academic research market for autonomous vehicles in large part by drawing on partnerships with and geographic proximity to Detroit’s car making heavyweights. There is already an autonomous trolley navigating public streets thanks to UMich startup May Mobility. They raised their seed round faster than any previous UMich startup.
In Pittsburgh, another other leading US city when it comes to autonomous driving, an Argo car was hit when a human-driven car ran a red light. Two people in the autonomous car were hospitalized.
Iowa State University has a wearable temporary “plant tattoo” for corn stalks! The graphene-based sensors are taped to plants and provide information about water movement in the plant, allowing much more accurate watering schedules. So important as water is becoming more scarce.
Also at University of Washington-Seattle a new AR/VR research lab opened with equal weight funding from Facebook, Google, and Huawei. I have to say, UW is a leader in the field when it comes to corporate partnerships. They put the support to good use, driving important innovations in research and teaching.
University of Houston researchers are using data science to predict the next Deep Horizon-style oil spill. I’m glad this research is happening at a disinterested third party, but I’m wondering how researchers can ensure that a large corporate actor takes the necessary steps to prevent such an accident? Better predictive insight will surely help, but there are deep sociotechnical questions here about how organizations intersect around these data science insights. Meanwhile oil companies are using machine learning to find more places to drill.
In 2013, Diana Borland and 129 of her colleagues filed into an auditorium at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Borland had worked there for the past 13 years as a medical transcriptionist, typing up doctors’ audio recordings into written reports. The hospital occasionally held meetings in the auditorium, so it seemed like any other morning.
The news she heard came as a shock: A UPMC representative stood in front of the group and told them their jobs were being outsourced to a contractor in Massachusetts. The representative told them it wouldn’t be a big change, since the contractor, Nuance Communications, would rehire them all for the exact same position and the same hourly pay. There would just be a different name on their paychecks.
Borland soon learned that this wasn’t quite true. Nuance would pay her the same hourly rate—but for only the first three months. After that, she’d be paid according to her production, 6 cents for each line she transcribed. If she and her co-workers passed up the new offer, they couldn’t collect unemployment insurance, so Borland took the deal. But after the three-month transition period, her pay fell off a cliff. As a UPMC employee, she had earned $19 per hour, enough to support a solidly middle-class life. Her first paycheck at the per-line rate worked out to just $6.36 per hour—below the minimum wage.
While the Big Three automakers are still in the research and development phase, University of Michigan startup May Mobility already has tested its bright green-and-white driverless shuttles on public streets in downtown Detroit, and has ambitious plans for growth.
The company recently licensed five autonomous driving-related technologies from U-M that will help build out a fleet of autonomous public transit vehicles planned for business districts, corporate and college campuses, medical facilities and other communities across the country.
May Mobility has already attracted $11.6 million in funding from private donors, along with local and Silicon Valley venture capital funds such as Maven, Tandem Capital and Trucks Venture Capital.
Two new studies released Thursday in Scienced and Science Robotics showcase new moving robotic parts, called actuators, that are advancing soft robots, making them more adaptable, flexible and strong.
With the help of these new designs and other work being done by scientists in the field, soft robotics could benefit many sectors, including industrial and medical industries.
Avian influenza (H7N9). MERS coronavirus. Ebola. Hepatitis E. Yellow Fever. Lassa. Zika. When you consider the viral infectious diseases that emerged and reemerged around the world in 2017 alone, what many of them have in common is that they originated in animals and spilled over into humans after a series of mutations that enable the pathogens to jump species.
The U.S. Department of Defense has a vested interest in outmaneuvering infectious disease. Military service members are called upon to operate virtually anywhere in the world, often on short notice, and the locations to which they deploy frequently lack the robust public health infrastructure to identify and contain the spread of new viral infectious diseases. At the same time, numerous trends including increased interactions between human, animal, and insect populations due to globalization, densification of livestock production, and rising human encroachment into animal habitats have increased the threat of novel pathogens in regions where troops, humanitarian workers, and peacekeepers tend to deploy.
A new DARPA program called Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats, or PREEMPT, seeks to support military readiness by going after new viral infectious diseases at the source, animal reservoirs—the species in which a pathogen lives, multiplies, and potentially evolves into a strain that can threaten humans. PREEMPT aims to advance understanding of viruses and their interaction with animals, insects, and humans, and deliver new, proactive interventions to reduce the risk from emerging and reemerging pathogens.
Redlands Daily Facts, The Press-Enterprise, Fielding Buck
from
Open data holds the promise of making city governments run more smoothly for citizens and businesses. But with the promises come challenges, according to Esri’s new urban analytics chief.
Amen Ra Mashariki should know.
He comes to the Redlands tech company from New York City mayor’s office, where among the “operational challenges” he faced was creating a complete list of buildings with cooling towers, which were found to be the source of a 2015 Legionnaires disease outbreak.
He said that task taught him that data and analytics need to be matched with the expertise of experienced city workers on the ground, in this case, the New York City Fire Department and its knowledge of building regulations.
The Internet Association, a trade group representing tech giants like Google and Facebook, announced Friday that it will be joining a growing list of net neutrality supporters who plan to sue the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to stop its repeal of the consumer protections.
“The final version of Chairman [Ajit] Pai’s rule, as expected, dismantles popular net neutrality protections for consumers,” Michael Beckerman, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “This rule defies the will of a bipartisan majority of Americans and fails to preserve a free and open internet.”
University of Southern California, Steven Max Patterson
from
Los Angeles, CA “Participants at the Creating Reality Hackathon, sponsored by USC, will be inspired to create original VR|AR work by meeting new people and becoming exposed to new ideas. The hackathon will take place during March 12 – March 15, 2018. To learn more or apply to participate in the hackathon, please visit the Creating Reality Hackathon website.”
University of Washington, Department of Biostatistics
from
Seattle, WA July 9-25. “The Summer Institute in Statistics and Modeling in Infectious Diseases (SISMID) is designed to introduce infectious disease researchers to modern methods of statistical analysis and mathematical modeling and to introduce statisticians and mathematical modelers to the statistical and dynamic problems posed by modern infectious disease data.” [registration opens February 1]
“The data consist of three years of weather forecasts for 113 cities in the United States harvested from the National Weather Service website. Historical data that do not necessarily match the location of the forecasts are also provided, and contestants are allowed to use additional weather data in their analyses.” Deadline for entries is February 1.
“The University of Washington eScience Institute, in collaboration with the Cascadia Urban Analytics Cooperative, is excited to announce the 2018 Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) summer program. The program brings together data and domain scientists to work on focused, collaborative projects that are designed to impact public policy for societal benefit.” Deadline to apply is February 12.
“Emacs is a text editor that has almost all the functionality of an operating system. A collection of enhancements and configuration settings are available bundled under the name of scimax. Being an Emacs user myself, I was surprised I’d never heard of it before now.”
“I have given ten talks in leading SEO events in 2017. What I have observed is although people find the exposed projects very interesting and useful, the cost of the tools API access prevent them from taking advantage of the solutions completely. But if you are a developer, you can use homemade and costless solutions for analyzing the SEO data of your website. Now, there are hundreds of Open Source Big Data tools out there. All of them promising to save you time, money and help you uncover never-before-seen business insights.”
“SciCrunch is a data sharing and display platform. Anyone can create a custom portal where they can select searchable subsets of hundreds of data sources, brand their web pages and create their community. SciCrunch will push data updates automatically to all portals on a weekly basis. User communities can also add their own data to SciCrunch, however this is not currently a free service.”
This is a high level post about algorithms (especially mathematical, scientific, and data analysis algorithms) which I hope can help people who are not researchers or numerical software developers better understand how to choose and evaluate algorithms. When scientists and programmers think about efficiency of algorithms, they tend to think about high level ideas like temporary arrays, choice of language, and parallelism. Or they tend to think about low level ideas like pointer indirection, cache efficiency, and SIMD vectorization.
“Autocrypt is a set of guidelines for developers to achieve convenient end-to-end-encryption of e-mails. It specifies how e-mail programs negotiate encryption capabilities by piggypacking on regular e-mails.”