Data Science newsletter – October 23, 2020

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An Australian think tank is proposing that the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation create a publicly-funded social network to compete with corporate giants like Facebook and Google. This proposal is being made in the event that those companies retaliate against the Australian people over recent laws that protect local news outlets.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian equivalent of the BBC, is primarily funded by direct grants from the Australian government. This is in contrast to the Americans “public” broadcasting station PBS, which is funded through multiple methods such as member station dues, pledge drives, private donations and nonprofits, or the UK’s BBC, which is mainly funded through an annual television license fee. The Australian think tank’s proposal responds to a new Australian law that requires digital platforms to pay for news content, according to The Guardian. Facebook is fighting the law by threatening to stop Australians from sharing news if it is implemented, while Google (which also owns YouTube) has been publicly campaigning against the statute.

From monitoring the spread of #COVID19 to evaluating progress, statistics have played a vital role. Yet, out of a total of 122 NSOs, more than half indicated that more assistance is greatly needed for financial, technical, training & infrastructure.

Mayor Tim Kabat was already on edge as thousands of students returned to La Crosse, Wis., to resume classes this fall at the city’s three colleges. When he saw young people packing downtown bars and restaurants in September, crowded closely and often unmasked, the longtime mayor’s worry turned to dread.

Now, more than a month later, La Crosse has endured a devastating spike in coronavirus cases — a wildfire of infection that first appeared predominantly in the student-age population, spread throughout the community and ultimately ravaged elderly residents who had previously managed to avoid the worst of the pandemic.

For most of 2020, La Crosse’s nursing homes had lost no one to covid-19. In recent weeks, the county has recorded 19 deaths, most of them in long-term care facilities. Everyone who died was over 60. Fifteen of the victims were 80 or older. The spike offers a vivid illustration of the perils of pushing a herd-immunity strategy, as infections among younger people can fuel broader community outbreaks that ultimately kill some of the most vulnerable residents.

A preliminary study has found evidence of a link between COVID-19 cases at colleges and eventual outbreaks at nearby nursing homes, adding to mounting research showing the direct impact that community spread can have on vulnerable populations.

Researchers tracked two specific strains of the novel coronavirus as they spread through the town of La Crosse, Wisc., the home of a University of Wisconsin campus among other institutions.

“Although the majority of cases were among college-age individuals, from a total of 111 genomes sequenced we identified rapid transmission of the virus into more vulnerable populations,” the researchers concluded in the study, which is still awaiting formal peer review. “Eight sampled genomes represented two independent transmission events into two skilled nursing facilities, resulting in two fatalities.”

Once the testing site closes each day, Rita Coppola-Wallace, Williams’s executive director of planning, design and construction, gathers the bounty—up to 1,100 test tubes—and loads them into a waiting car. The samples are whisked off to Cambridge, Mass., 150 miles away, and processed alongside tens of thousands of others overnight at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a biomedical and genomics research center.

A primary reason many colleges in Massachusetts, New York, Maine and Vermont have experienced few coronavirus outbreaks this fall has been frequent, widespread testing. At 108 colleges and universities, that testing is being done within a carefully orchestrated system run by the Broad Institute.

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday launched a national artificial intelligence strategy aimed at making it a global leader in the field as it seeks to diversify its oil-based economy.

The National Strategy for Data and Artificial Intelligence (NSDAI) will seek to attract $20 billion in foreign and local investments by 2030, a NSDAI statement said.

On Tuesday, MEPs adopted proposals on how the EU can best regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI) in order to boost innovation, ethical standards and trust in technology.

The European Parliament is among the first institutions to put forward recommendations on what AI rules should include with regards to ethics, liability and intellectual property rights. These recommendations will pave the way for the EU to become a global leader in the development of AI. The Commission legislative proposal is expected early next year.

The largest Arctic science expedition in history came to a close yesterday, as the German research vessel Polarstern sailed into the port at Bremerhaven, Germany.

The Polarstern spent the past year drifting across the Arctic Ocean, frozen into the sea ice at the top of the world. As it floated across the central Arctic, scientists on board collected myriad data on the Arctic climate system—its clouds, atmosphere, ocean physics, and biology, to name a few.

Spearheaded by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and known as the MOSAiC Expedition—short for Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate—the mission involved collaborations from hundreds of scientists at research institutions around the world.

South Korea, China, and Singapore have successfully used digital contact tracing to control the spread of COVID-19, often putting public interest above individuals’ right to privacy. Despite initial enthusiasm for this approach in the USA, Israel, and Europe, privacy concerns and technical issues inhibited uptake of digital contact tracing, and recent attempts to stem the first wave of SARS-COV-2 infections failed.

The Lancet Digital Health has published the first study reporting an assessment of the UK’s Test and Trace contact tracing pilot programme on the Isle of Wight in May, 2020. Michelle Kendall and colleagues, who advised the UK Government on the design of the contact tracing programme, present modelling analyses that indicate significant decreases in COVID-19 incidence and R immediately after the launch of the Test and Trace programme. The Isle of Wight went from having one of the highest Rs in the UK (R=1·3) before the programme was launched on May 5, to one of the lowest (R=0·5) on June 14. The results indicate that Test and Trace interventions could have a positive impact in suppressing the UK COVID-19 epidemic. However, the study does not present causal evidence, and the data from cases traced by the contact tracing mobile app were not available, so the authors could not evaluate the effects of individual aspects of the Test and Trace programme.

Wageningen University Research (WUR) has developed a machine for rapid plant phenotyping that is capturing the plants’ observable characteristics. This machine (called the MARVIN3D) uses multiple cameras to capture each plant from multiple angles and additionally creates an 3D-model of the plant.

It is used to select – in an early stage – which seedlings will grow into successful plants. With the challenge of feeding a growing population with less resources such as land and water, early selection of the best plants helps to focus effort and resources on those plants that are bound to be successful.

The need was evident during the Army’s six-week experiment testing out a portfolio of prototypes from its tactical network to launching small unmanned aerial vehicles. Having researchers and scientists alongside military operators during the large-scale experiment cemented a need to put coders and data-focused talent on the battlefield.

“We are in this enlightenment process about what is the intersection of our equipment modernization lines of effort with modernizing the talent base that the Army is going to demand for the future,” said Kate Kelley, Army Future Command’s director of Human Capital.

Defense technology experts have floated the idea of creating military academies to develop tech talent. While the Army hasn’t fully embraced that idea, Futures Command is standing up a software factory that’s focused on local talent around its headquarters in Austin, Texas.

Biases undermine efficiency and productivity. If we see a value in putting the best students in the best schools, the inherent bias in Ofqual’s algorithm undermines that purpose. Similarly, a biased recruiting algorithm undermines a firm’s ability to attract the best talent, and a biased credit rating algorithm undermines the ability to make smart credit decisions.

Just as the costs of bias are substantial, the benefits of eliminating bias can be just as significant. In fact, one econometric study at Stanford University found that at least “25% of growth in U.S. GDP between 1960 and 2010 can be attributed to greater gender and racial balance in the workplace,” and that the figure could be as high as 40%.

As the holidays approach, one important question is what impact sending college students home for Thanksgiving will have on their home communities.

The Public Health Response Team at Texas A&M University, which the three of us serve on, has been documenting COVID-19 trends in Texas for the past six months and forecasting disease spread and the impacts on hospitals. With new cases ticking upward, we have been concerned about what the holidays will bring.

The University of Miami’s Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC) has joined FABRIC, the advanced U.S. cyberinfrastructure network funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), as a scientific partner. A three-year research award to UM was included in a $3 million NSF grant that will expand FABRIC to four leading scientific institutions in Asia and Europe, and support international research that benefits from real-time sharing of large-scale datasets.

“We look forward to collaborating with our colleagues at Brazil’s Center for Weather Forecast and Climatic Studies (CPTEC) to improve our weather and climate models and predictions,” said Ben Kirtman, IDSC deputy director.

The number of coronavirus cases on campuses changes every day. As of Wednesday, NBC 5 Investigates and Telemundo Investiga found that the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus in Madison had the sixth highest number of coronavirus cases reported of any campus in the U.S. – at 3,174 since the fall semester began.

Most of the universities that have amassed more cases than UW Madison – including Clemson University (ranking first with 3,997 cases), the University of Georgia (ranking second with 3,437 cases), and the University of Florida (ranking fourth with 3,269 cases) – started their classes two and even three weeks earlier than UW Madison – meaning that UW has amassed its high number of positive coronavirus cases in far less time.

Currently, the university is preparing students for the Thanksgiving holiday, warning of potential needs for quarantine, and is adding precautions for the start of Badgers football. Last week, the university announced only essential personnel would be allowed in stadiums and urged fans to avoid gatherings.

Online October 29, starting at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time. “As colleges prepare for the spring semester, The Chronicle has assembled a panel of senior administrators and health professionals to discuss the path forward for reopening — and remaining open — safely.” [registration required]

In physical networks links are physical objects that cannot cross each other, like neurons in the brain or the vessels of vascular system. Such networks are not fully described by their adjacency matrix — the three dimensional layout also affect the system’s structure. 2/9

But how do we distinguish two physical networks with identical wiring but different geometrical layouts? The answer is *network isotopy*, representing different network layouts that can be transformed into each other without link-crossings. 3/9

Explore all the economic data from different providers (national and international statistical institutes, central banks, etc.), for free, following the link db.nomics.world.

You can also retrieve all the economic data through the rdbnomics
package here. This blog post describes the different ways to do so.

Simulation Cards join ongoing efforts to bring transparency to historically black-box systems. Over the past year, Google launched Model Cards, which sprang from a Google AI whitepaper published in October 2018. Model Cards specify model architectures and provide insight into factors that help ensure optimal performance for given use cases. The idea of Model Cards emerged following Microsoft’s work on “datasheets for data sets,” or datasheets intended to foster trust and accountability through documenting datasets’ creation, composition, intended uses, maintenance, and other properties. Two years ago, IBM proposed its own form of model documentation in voluntary factsheets called “Supplier’s Declaration of Conformity” (DoC) to be completed and published by companies developing and providing AI.