Data Science newsletter – January 28, 2021

Newsletter features journalism, research papers and tools/software for January 28, 2021

GROUP CURATION: N/A

 

Interesting chart: * Cases are probably declining faster than at any point in the pandemic.

Twitter, Nate Silver


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* We’re now vaccinating more people (1st doses) than there are new infections.
* However, caseloads are still VERY high (higher than at any point pre-November).


Physicists submit avalanche of ideas to ‘Snowmass’ process

symmetry magazine, Ali Sundermier


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Every several years, the US particle physics community works together to identify the most exciting questions for the field and map out the tools and resources they’ll need to address them. The “Snowmass” process, named after its original venue and organized by the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society, consists of a series of meetings and workshops. It guides the P5, a subpanel of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel that produces a final set of recommendations presented to US funding agencies.

In the current process, the conveners who organize the meetings and workshops represent 10 “frontiers” of physics, dubbed: energy, neutrino, rare processes & precision, cosmic, theory, accelerator, instrumentation, computation, underground facilities, and community engagement.


Real-world Lab ‘Robotic Artificial Intelligence’ to be established at KIT

EurekAlert! Science News, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)


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Artificial intelligence, AI for short, is subject of imagination, films, and stories, but it also is reality. Superhuman capacity of AI is obvious in games as well as in image and language processing, in autonomous driving, in digital language assistants, and chatbots. In research, humanoid, or human-like, robots fascinate people, as they give abstract methods of AI a physical appearance that can be experienced. The real-world lab “Robotic Artificial Intelligence” at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is aimed at making AI tangible in a variety of experiments and different real environments, including childcare centers, schools, museums, libraries, and hospitals. The lab will be funded by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts with EUR 800,000.


When Looking at Species Declines, Nuances and Long-term Data Are Important

University of Connecticut, UConn Today


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The scientific process is an iterative and collaborative journey. Research is published, others can weigh in on results, and hypotheses can be corroborated, refuted, or further refined and tested. Though it may seem like second guessing or even become contentious in some cases, this often overlooked aspect of the scientific method makes science better by continuing to challenge scientific assertions, thereby expanding and deepening our understanding.

An example of this process has been published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a collaboration between researchers from UConn, Louisiana State University, and the University of Puerto Rico. This new paper is a follow-up to an earlier response published in the same journal in 2018 that told of a collapsing food web and insect declines that were taking place in Puerto Rico, specifically as a result of global warming.


Level up: Video games inspire new ‘living textbook’ for computational sciences

University of Michigan, Michigan News


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A new way of delivering course materials in the computational sciences aims to elevate the study experience from consuming static text and media to a conversation between the learner and the material.

Called Mynerva, the cloud-based interactive textbook platform developed at the University of Michigan enables instructors to build their materials into video game-like journeys that unfold as the learner progresses.

“Our vision is an interactive computational textbook platform designed to stimulate deeper conversations between students and the material they are attempting to master,” said Raj Nadakuditi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan who sees this as the future of writing computational textbooks. “We also want to enable a dynamic, experiential conversation with the learner, where the material is revealed as the student progresses and is ready for it.”


The city of the future: Smart and social

Innovation Origins, Petra Wiesmayer


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The Volkswagen Foundation has now announced a funding initiative on the topic of “Artificial Intelligence – Its Impact on Tomorrow’s Society” and awarded eight interdisciplinary projects.

One of these projects is scheduled to run for four years and will be supervised by scientists from the University of Mannheim in cooperation with the Stuttgart Media University and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). It is being funded with a total of €1.5 million, of which around one million euros will go to the University of Mannheim.

The head of the interdisciplinary project is Prof. Heiner Stuckenschmidt, holder of the Chair of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Together with his colleagues – Prof. Frauke Kreuter, sociologist and co-director of the Mannheim Data Science Center, who will take over the Chair of Statistics and Data Science at the LMU on April 1, and Prof. Kai Eckert from the Media University – he will investigate the opportunities and risks of using intelligent systems in traffic planning in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region.


Harvard calls off course amid petition campaign

Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschik


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Under pressure from students, Harvard University canceled a course that was to have been offered this semester on a controversial policing technique used in Springfield, Mass.

The technique is known as C3, or Counter Criminal Continuum Policing. It involves citizens working with police to bring down crime, and it has been credited with significantly reducing crime in Springfield. But its creation was in the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, and that is one reason that the technique is controversial.

For some, this history reinforces criticisms that American policing, especially in communities of color, has become overly militarized and violent. Those criticisms became particularly resonant in the wake of nationwide protests last summer after the police killings of George Floyd and other unarmed Black citizens and the racial reckoning that followed.


UF offers powerful new NVIDIA supercomputer to students and researchers across State University System

University of Florida, News


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University of Florida’s new supercomputer — the fastest artificial intelligence supercomputer in higher education — will soon be available for students and faculty across the State University System, UF Provost Joe Glover announced today.

The computer will give faculty and students from across the State unparalleled computing power in artificial intelligence (AI) to apply across many areas to improve lives, bolster industry, and create economic growth across the state. The supercomputer — known as HiPerGator AI — is based on an NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD of 140 DGX A100 systems and NVIDIA Mellanox HDR InfiniBand networking. The system is the result of a donation from UF Alumnus Chris Malachowsky and NVIDIA, the leading AI computing company he co-founded. It pairs with the third incarnation of UF’s general purpose supercomputer HiPerGator 3.0.


Berkeley’s data science leader dedicated to advancing diversity in computing

University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley News


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[Jennifer] Chayes, associate provost of the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) and dean of the School of Information at Berkeley, discussed her vision for the future of CDSS at a virtual Campus Conversations event on Wednesday.

“More and more of our public systems — (our) criminal justice system, our health system, our education system, our social welfare system — [are] being mediated by computing. … As [data science] becomes the fabric of our society, [we need to ensure) that it is a fabric that will serve its purpose properly,” Chayes said. “We need women, we need Black people, we need Latinx and Indigenous people building this fabric, because they will understand in ways different from the majority how [data] may be used.”

Chayes left her position as a technical fellow at Microsoft Research to lead CDSS in January 2020. Part of what drew her to Berkeley was the sheer scale of the data science research happening on campus, coupled with the wide variety of fields data scientists were working in — from climate change and sustainability to biomedicine and public health to human rights.


A Universal Port for the Brain

Carnegie Mellon University, News


from

Maysam Chamanzar of Carnegie Mellon University and Azadeh Yazdan of the University of Washington have received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grant to create a dura smart port that will allow direct access to the brain using optical and electrical stimulation, as well as recording. Chamanzar, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering, describes the smart dura implant as a “universal port into the brain.”

The device represents the successor to current artificial dura, small ports that replace the connective tissue (dura) surrounding the brain, providing access to the organ. Artificial dura may be removed for short periods of time to place electrodes that allow for stimulation and recording, though not without risk for infection or the regrowth of dura tissue, potentially obstructing the port. To prevent this, the team’s smart dura will utilize a biocompatible material with both optical and electrical recording and stimulation capabilities permanently integrated into the port itself. This would minimize the risk of dura growing back, as well as any need for regular exposure of the brain tissue beneath.


Getting on a Pipeline’s Nerves – Pitt Professor Receives ARPA-E Grant to “Innervate” Pipelines

University of Pittsburgh, Swanson Engineering


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Research led by Paul Ohodnicki, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh, recently received $1 million in funding to utilize Pitt-developed optical fiber sensor technology as the “nerves” of critical infrastructure, such as natural gas pipelines, to mimic the principle of a nervous system.

The Ohodnicki Lab will collaborate with Pitt’s Kevin Chen, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Jung-Kun Lee, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, as well as researchers Kayte Denslow and Glenn Grant from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The group received $1 million from Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) REPAIR (Rapid Encapsulation of Pipelines Avoiding Intensive Replacement), a program of the U.S. Department of Energy.


Delaware State University joins Apple’s Propel Center

Delaware Business Now


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Delaware State University announced a partnership with Propel Center, a new global campus headquartered in Atlanta that will support learning and development for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) nationwide.

Del State will collaborate with Propel Center and the entire HBCU community to bring leadership and career development programming to its students.


Using machine learning to solve engineering challenges

Washington State University, WSU Insider


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To use electric power instead of fossil fuels to fly requires systems that are light, use a minimum amount of energy, make proper flying decisions, and are safe. Even a relatively simple UAV can have hundreds of thousands of design possibilities for its power system, only a few of which are the best for maximizing safety and efficiency.

A WSU research team recently developed and used a machine learning algorithm to find the five optimal designs out of about 250,000 possible designs for an electric power system for an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle by evaluating less than 0.05% of the designs. The work could mean time and cost savings for engineers who are seeking to solve complex engineering problems to maximize safety and sustainability.


OK, some thoughts on the @elastic announcement and their move away from #opensource and the @TheASF license. A thread… ok a #rant.

Twitter, Grant Ingersoll


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First these views are not those of the WMF, my employer, who happens to run a very large Elasticsearch cluster. Moreover, I competed with Elastic for a number of years as co-founder/CTO of @lucidworks
and am a #lucene and #solr committer, so yeah, I’m biased.

I have a huge amount of respect for what Shay and others at Elastic built. Right time, right place, right execution across the board, esp. in those early years. But this blog post (https://elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-AWS) is such typical corporate BS and so full of holes.


Okay, I’m happy attention is being drawn to preprocessing…but lots of research *has* been happening here, it just gets frequently discouraged/rejected

Twitter, Xanda Schofield


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I’ve been luckier than many in the space, and I’ve still run into stuff like “…this paper represents a lot of experiments and careful exposition for what is really a fairly limited conclusion. I would encourage the authors to take on bigger questions in their subsequent work.”


The Graphic Truth: COVID vaccines vs COVID cases

GZERO Media;Gabrielle Debinski , Gabriella Turrisi and Carlos Santamaria


from

Even as vaccines roll out around the world, COVID-19 is continuing to spread like wildfire in many places, dashing hopes of a return to normal life any time soon. Some countries, like Israel and the UK for instance, have been praised for their inoculation drives, while still recording a high number of new cases. It’s clear that while inoculations are cause for hope, the pace of rollouts cannot keep up with the fast-moving virus. Here’s a look at the countries that have vaccinated the largest percentages of their populations so far – and a snapshot of their daily COVID caseloads (7-day rolling average) in recent weeks.


Events



great looking webinar, and series!

Twitter, Academic Data Science Alliance


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“Next week: Open Educational Resources for COVID-19 modeling and data analysis in the classroom with attention to social justice. Feb 4th, 3-4pm EST
Learn more: https://bit.ly/3qQQTCE”


Deadlines



Challenge4ClimateAction

“This Challenge is open to students globally for free, and is about what you and your friends can do to create action locally, regionally and globally to help mitigate and adapt to our changing climate.” Deadline for team registration is February 1.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Assets  




The eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good program is now accepting applications for student fellows and project leads for the 2021 summer session. Fellows will work with academic researchers, data scientists and public stakeholder groups on data-intensive research projects that will leverage data science approaches to address societal challenges in areas such as public policy, environmental impacts and more. Student applications due 2/15 – learn more and apply here. DSSG is also soliciting project proposals from academic researchers, public agencies, nonprofit entities and industry who are looking for an opportunity to work closely with data science professionals and students on focused, collaborative projects to make better use of their data. Proposal submissions are due 2/22.

 


Tools & Resources



We often cite papers using arXiv info w/o noting that they are already PUBLISHED in confs like @aclmeeting and @iclr_conf . These incorrect bib entries are so annoying!

Twitter, Yuchen Lin


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We introduce Rebiber, a tool to fix them using @aclanthology
and @dblp_org
.


Awful AI

GitHub – daviddao


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Awful AI is a curated list to track current scary usages of AI – hoping to raise awareness to its misuses in society

Artificial intelligence in its current state is unfair, easily susceptible to attacks and notoriously difficult to control. Often, AI systems and predictions amplify existing systematic biases even when the data is balanced. Nevertheless, more and more concerning the uses of AI technology are appearing in the wild. This list aims to track all of them. We hope that Awful AI can be a platform to spur discussion for the development of possible preventive technology (to fight back!).


Careers


Full-time, non-tenured academic positions

Data to Knowledge open-rank teaching-track professor



Rice University, Brown School of Engineering; Houston, TX

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