Data Science newsletter – January 8, 2020

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A major U.S. oil and gas producer whose business model is premised on denying the urgency of global temperature rise was forced last month to acknowledge reality. In a move that reverberated across the financial world, Chevron, a funder of campaigns disputing the need for aggressive climate change policies, announced that up to $11 billion worth of its fossil fuel projects are effectively worthless.

The United States government will begin collecting the DNA of detained immigrants through pilot programs this week, according to a privacy impact assessment that was published today by the Department of Homeland Security. The Trump administration’s plans to collect genetic samples from people detained by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was first reported in October.

CPB and ICE don’t currently have systems or operating procedures in place for this large-scale collection of genetic material, but they will start to implement the policy through small pilot programs. CBP will initially collect DNA only in its Detroit, Michigan sector and at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry in Texas before scaling up to every sector and port of entry within three years. ICE’s pilot program will begin in one of its regions only, but the assessment did not identify which one.

China produces huge amounts of online data — and little of it is protected. That has led to a thriving market for stolen personal information, from national identification numbers to home addresses.

Some of it is used for state surveillance, while much of it is used for private extortion and fraud.

But increasing public concerns about privacy and surveillance have spurred a nascent movement to secure people’s data. Lone advocates are pushing to hold people accountable for selling stolen personal info. Hackers and bloggers have been posting DIY fixes online to teach others how to encrypt communications or evade surveillance. [audio, 4:07]

CTA hosted its annual “Trends to Watch” session Monday morning before CES officially kicks off Tuesday.

The theme of the talk was that we’re moving from one “IoT” — Internet of Things — to a new “IoT”: Intelligence of Things.

“This new IoT bears testimony to the fact that artificial intelligence is permating every facet of our commerce and our culture,” said Steve Koenig, vice president of market research at CTA, who gave the presentation here in Las Vegas.

MIT’s School of Engineering and Takeda Pharmaceuticals Company Limited today announced the MIT-Takeda Program to fuel the development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to benefit human health and drug development. Centered within the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health (J-Clinic), the new program will leverage the combined expertise of both organizations, and is supported by Takeda’s three-year investment (with the potential for a two-year extension).

This new collaboration will provide MIT with extraordinary access to pharmaceutical infrastructure and expertise, and will help to focus work on challenges with lasting, practical impact. A new educational program offered through J-Clinic will provide Takeda with the ability to learn from and engage with some of MIT’s sharpest and most curious minds, and offer insight into the advances that will help shape the health care industry of tomorrow.

SoftBank Vision Fund has walked away from investing in several startups, months after submitting term sheets worth hundreds of millions of dollars and promising that closing delays were only temporary, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: This is highly unusual behavior, even for the idiosyncratic SoftBank, and threatens its ability to invest in highly sought-after companies. SoftBank, which has invested record amounts into startups over the past few years, confirmed that it has “regret” over these situations.

Two companies, Astranis and GapSat, plan to launch GEO smallsats in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Both companies acknowledge that there will always be a place for those hulking, minibus-size satellites. But they say there are plenty of business opportunities for a smaller, lighter, more flexible version—opportunities that the newly popular low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations aren’t well suited for.

Market forces have made GEO smallsats desirable; technological advances have made them feasible. The most important innovations are in software-defined radio and in rocket launching and propulsion.

Drab and predictable as these conferences are, they are integral to science. They are the primary venue for scientists to present new research to peers and colleagues, get early feedback, learn about new research tools and techniques, and birth new ideas through serendipitous conversations. Evidence suggests that presented research is more likely to be cited in published studies. These meetings also provide a venue to build connections and find potential collaborators and, for graduate students, potential advisors.

But are they inclusive? Apart from one-way flow of information, the costs associated with attending conferences can exclude many scientists from participating. While grants and scholarships often make it possible for scientists to pay for the travel costs, many have to spend the money first before they can be reimbursed. For many graduate students, international students, and early-career scientists, coming up with these funds upfront can be challenging.

And what about the dry format? Does the predominant stream of posters and lectures still benefit science? Why the deluge of printed posters when we are battling climate change? Why an onslaught of 10-minute presentations and only a few slots for a robust discussion? All these questions beg for scientific inquiry.

It may be only January, but the 2020 Indiana State Fair already has its queen.

Claudia Duncan, Miss Vanderburgh County, was crowned Miss Indiana State Fair 2020 on Sunday at the Indiana Farmers Coliseum.

Currently a student at Purdue University studying data science, Duncan was a valedictorian of Mater Dei High School in Evansville. She was a 10-year member of 4-H and now serves as a project superintendent.

With a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), David Schmale, a professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Shane Ross, a professor in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering in the College of Engineering, aim to provide the tools for the next generation of scientists that will tackle big data sciences challenges. Both Schmale and Ross are affiliated faculty members of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute at Virginia Tech.

Schmale and Ross plan to launch an NSF Harnessing the Data Revolution: Data Science Corps (HDR DSC) program at Virginia Tech, which offers opportunities to underserved biology and engineering undergraduate students — students who are able to bring their own perspectives to the field of data science.

The Southside school wants to grow its College of Business by building a three-story building at 459-461 Webster St., on the site of a 44-space parking lot and three Lehigh administrative buildings. The new addition will sit across from the Rauch Business Center.

The new high-tech building will give young businesses a place to grow and students a chance to dive into the world of big data in a new data analytics lab. The proposed 18,500-square-foot building will grow Lehigh’s financial services lab and expand the business communications center.

Dr. Lara Jehi has been named Cleveland Clinic’s chief research information officer, a newly created position in which she will oversee a “robust research informatics environment” to advance biomedical research throughout the system, according to a news release.

Jehi will work closely with information technology, research, finance and other departments to optimize digital infrastructure to support research activities and the acceleration of new treatments, according to the release.

Canadian drug development company Deep Genomics has got off a $40 million series B round as it looks to double down on its rare genetic disease and artificial intelligence work.

Deep Genomics is one of an increasing number of biotech and drug development companies delving into AI to help better understand and create new drug targets, specifically those that have been deemed “undruggable,” as well as to design new drugs and animal models.

This approach, the company explained, results in “remarkable clarity and speed,” as, according to its figures, 70% of research projects have led to therapeutic leads, and programs have been taken from target discovery to drug candidate in less than a year.

The Rady School of Management at the University of California San Diego has launched a FlexWeekend Master of Science in Business Analytics (FlexWeekend MSBA) degree program.

The FlexWeekend MSBA program is designed for working professionals who are increasingly asked to deliver business recommendations and make decisions using data and analytics. The MSBA curriculum is designed to ensure that all graduates will have the skill to apply statistics and machine learning to solve real-world business problems.

Davos has been a public platform for activists to speak truth to power and a private space for activists to meet the forces that oppose them. But since the anti-globalization movement it has become a space that was unable to communicate with the new wave of social movements while, at the same time, these movements – most significantly, the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street – established themselves as a new kind of stakeholder.

This inability to speak to each other became obvious at the Annual Meeting in 2012 when Occupy Davos set up a protest camp. In response, the World Economic Forum organized a public forum that was open to the public and included a member of Occupy along with a participant at Davos. The event was a debacle. Later, Schwab would voice his frustration:

“The problem is sometimes if you look at ‘Occupy Davos’ or ‘Occupy Wall Street’ or whatever it is, it’s a movement but who are really the significant representatives?”