Data Science newsletter – March 4, 2019

Newsletter features journalism, research papers, events, tools/software, and jobs for March 4, 2019

GROUP CURATION: N/A

 
 
Data Science News



A prescription for Madagascar’s broken health system: data and a focus on details

Science, Leslie Roberts


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With an eclectic group of partners and donors, including two Harvard-trained astrophysicists and a global tuberculosis expert, [Matt] Bonds co-founded a nongovernmental organization (NGO), PIVOT. Its goal is to devise and test an affordable and effective health care system that could ultimately be scaled up to cover all of Madagascar and, perhaps, be adapted for other countries.

Like Sachs and Farmer, Bonds and his colleagues at Boston-based PIVOT are convinced that the single interventions that capture most international dollars, such as bed nets for malaria or targeted HIV/AIDS programs, although essential, are simply not enough. In a place as broken as Madagascar, you must tackle the whole messy health system with all its moving parts. And that means sweating the small stuff along with the big—ensuring there are trained surgeons and essential medicines, but also such quotidian things as gas for the ambulances and a paycheck for the pharmacist.


NIH letters asking about undisclosed foreign ties rattle U.S. universities

Science, Jeffrey Mervis


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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recently sent letters to dozens of major U.S. research universities asking them to provide information about specific faculty members with NIH funding who are believed to have links to foreign governments that the Bethesda, Maryland–based institute did not know about.

Universities are scrambling to respond to the unprecedented queries, which appear to be NIH’s response to demands from members of Congress and national security officials that federal agencies do a better job of monitoring any foreign interactions fostered by U.S. government funding. The goal is to prevent the theft of intellectual property and the transfer of technologies that could threaten U.S. security. But some academic administrators worry the exercise could cast a chill over all types of international scientific collaborations.


The data brokers quietly buying and selling your personal information

Fast Company, Steven Melendez and Alex Pasternack


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It’s no secret that your personal data is routinely bought and sold by dozens, possibly hundreds, of companies. What’s less known is who those companies are, and what exactly they do.

Thanks to a new Vermont law requiring companies that buy and sell third-party personal data to register with the Secretary of State, we’ve been able to assemble a list of 121 data brokers operating in the U.S. It’s a rare, rough glimpse into a bustling economy that operates largely in the shadows, and often with few rules.

Even Vermont’s first-of-its-kind law, which went into effect last month, doesn’t require data brokers to disclose who’s in their databases, what data they collect, or who buys it. Nor does it require brokers to give consumers access to their own data or opt out of data collection. Brokers are, however required to provide some information about their opt-out systems under the law–assuming they provide one.


DataX effort jumpstarts demonstration data science project at Princeton

Princeton University, Office of Communications


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Princeton University researchers will push the limits of data science by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning across the research spectrum in an interdisciplinary pilot project made possible through a major gift from Schmidt Futures.


‘You can track everything’: the parents who digitise their babies’ lives

The Guardian, Richard Godwin


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Socks that record heart rate and cots that mimic the womb might promise parents peace of mind – but is the data given to tech firms a fair exchange?


Microsoft Excel will now let you snap a picture of a spreadsheet and import it

The Verge, Tom Warren


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Microsoft is adding a very useful feature to its Excel mobile apps for iOS and Android. It allows Excel users to take a photo of a printed data table and convert it into a fully editable table in the app. This feature is rolling out initially in the Android Excel app, before making its way to iOS soon. Microsoft is using artificial intelligence to implement this feature, with image recognition so that Excel users don’t have to manually input hardcopy data. The feature will be available to Microsoft 365 users.


‘This is not a threat’: Facebook denies it would have pulled investment from Europe and Canada if demands were not met

Business Insider, Jim Edwards


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Facebook has denied that it threatened to withdraw an investment in a data centre in Canada if it did not receive the legal reassurances it wanted. “This is not a threat,” the company told Business Insider.

COO Sheryl Sandberg told the European Union and Canada that if they pursued legal measures the company disagreed with then Facebook would consider other “options” for investment and growth, according to sealed documents leaked from a lawsuit.


UW Gates Center is a higher-ed success story

The Seattle Times, Editorial Board


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First, it’s a testament to the generosity of business leaders who gave about two-thirds of the $110 million cost of the Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering. Microsoft President Brad Smith recruited more than a dozen families in the tech industry to contribute a large share to name the building in honor of the Gateses.

It’s tremendous to see those who benefited the most from the UW’s outstanding computer-science program ensure that it keeps growing and creating more opportunity for others to succeed.

Second, the building represents the Legislature’s balancing act as it continues overhauling and enlarging its entire education system, while trying to also address growing social-service, environmental and transportation needs. There’s always a need for more, but Washingtonians should be proud that the state is finding ways to steadily increase everything from early learning through esoteric graduate research programs, such as labs at the new UW building exploring ways to use DNA to store digital information.


Researcher releases facial recognition software to identify Civil War soldiers

Virginia Tech, Explore


from

Kurt Luther, Virginia Tech assistant professor of computer science, has developed a free software platform that uses crowdsourcing to significantly increase the ability of algorithms to identify faces in photos.

Through the software platform, called Photo Sleuth, Luther seeks to uncover the mysteries of the nearly 4 million photographs of Civil War-era images that may exist in the historical record.

Luther will present his research surrounding the Photo Sleuth platform on March 19 at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Intelligent User Interfaces conference in Los Angeles, California. He will also demonstrate Photo Sleuth at the grand opening of the expanded American Civil War Museum, in Richmond, Virginia, on May 4, 2019.


Graduate students explore the ethics of artificial intelligence

Princeton University, Office of Communications


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As artificial intelligence advances, the questions surrounding its use have become increasingly complex. To introduce students to the challenges the technology could present and to prepare them to engage in and lead conversations about its ethical use, the Graduate School this year is offering a Professional Learning Development Cohort titled “Ethics of AI.”


Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

The New York Times, Cade Metz


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When a news article revealed that Clarifai was working with the Pentagon and some employees questioned the ethics of building artificial intelligence that analyzed video captured by drones, the company said the project would save the lives of civilians and soldiers.

“Clarifai’s mission is to accelerate the progress of humanity with continually improving A.I.,” read a blog post from Matt Zeiler, the company’s founder and chief executive, and a prominent A.I. researcher. Later, in a news media interview, Mr. Zeiler announced a new management position that would ensure all company projects were ethically sound.

As activists, researchers, and journalists voice concerns over the rise of artificial intelligence, warning against biased, deceptive and malicious applications, the companies building this technology are responding. From tech giants like Google and Microsoft to scrappy A.I. start-ups, many are creating corporate principles meant to ensure their systems are designed and deployed in an ethical way. Some set up ethics officers or review boards to oversee these principles.


Addressing the promises and challenges of AI

MIT News


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A three-day celebration event this week for the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing put focus on the Institute’s new role in helping society navigate a promising yet challenging future for artificial intelligence (AI), as it seeps into nearly all aspects of society.

On Thursday, the final day of the event, a series of talks and panel discussions by researchers and industry experts conveyed enthusiasm for AI-enabled advances in many global sectors, but emphasized concerns — on topics such as data privacy, job automation, and personal and social issues — that accompany the computing revolution.

Kicking off the day’s events, MIT President Rafael Reif said the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing will train students in an interdisciplinary approach to AI. It will also train them to take a step back and weigh potential downsides of AI, which is poised to disrupt “every sector of our society.”


In Tech Race With China, U.S. Universities May Lose a Vital Edge

Bloomberg Economics, Susan Decker and Alexandre Tanzi


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The U.S. is still out in front of global rivals when it comes to innovation, but American universities –- where new ideas often percolate –- have reason to look over their shoulder.

That’s especially true for technologies like 5G phone networks and artificial intelligence. They’re exactly the fields where President Donald Trump recently insisted the U.S. has to lead — and also the ones where Asia, especially China, has caught up.

Universities from China, Korea and Taiwan get more patents than their U.S. peers in wireless communications, according to research firm GreyB Services. In AI, 17 of the top 20 universities and public research organizations are in China, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences topping the list, says the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva. Overall, American universities still dominate the patent rankings, led by the University of California and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


Springer Nature Syndicates Content to ResearchGate

The Scholarly Kitchen, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe


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Ever since Springer Nature and ResearchGate announced their cooperative agreement this past April, many have wondered what exactly the “sharing of articles on the scholarly collaboration platform in a way that protects the rights of authors and publishers” might look like.

Today, we get our first glimpse. Springer Nature and ResearchGate have announced that “full-text articles published in select Nature journals since November 2017 will be rolled out to researchers’ ResearchGate profiles starting now and completed by March 7, making it easier to read or download research on or off campus from that moment on.” I had a chance to speak yesterday with Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing Officer at Springer Nature, and Ijad Madisch, CEO of ResearchGate, about this project.

 
Deadlines



Complex Systems perspectives on Algorithmic Bias An ICWSM Full-Day Workshop – June 11th, 2019

Munich, Germany June 11. “Through a mix of presentations of accepted abstracts, presentations from keynote speakers, and panel discussions, this workshop will bring to the forefront empirical, theoretical, and simulation-based research that helps to clarify this interplay using a complex systems perspective.” Deadline for submissions is April 1.
 
Tools & Resources



Do More Machine Learning & AI (Without More Data Scientists)

Dataiku, Lynn Heidmann


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In data science projects, the derivation of business value follows something akin to the Pareto Principle, where the vast majority of the business value is generated from the final few steps: the operationalization of that project. This is especially true of applications such as real-time pricing, instant approval of loan applications, or real-time fraud detection, to name a few.

All of this to say that if the process of operationalization is difficult and time-consuming, it will be extremely difficult to accelerate data efforts, no matter how many data scientists you hire. Provide data scientists with the right tools to get out of the sandbox and into production easily – and keep in mind that this might also involve the IT team, so make sure they have all the right tools as well.


Binning Columns in Remote Tables with dplyr and rquery

Roz King


from

In some recent work, I needed to bin columns in a dplyr remote table. The new dplyr::ntile function was not an option because the database I needed this to work on (MySQL) doesn’t support window functions (at least, not until recently), and there was a use case for user-defined cut points rather than quantile-based cuts, so I needed to roll my own solution.


Yes, I’m A Scientist on Twitter. Stop Judging Me.

PLOS SciComm, Bill Sullivan


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Scientists have been surprisingly slow to embrace Twitter and other forms of social media. Even today, a certain stigma remains attached to academics who use these tools. Some view social media activity as a frivolous use of one’s time—a distraction that has little to no value at work. Regardless of your personal feelings towards social media, it is not fair to judge others who have made these tools an integral part of their research program and career development.

Here’s why. Twitter has a great deal to offer a scientist. For many, Twitter is simply the best way to monitor breaking science news or newly published articles. You cannot fault someone for using a 21st century method to stay informed. In fact, Twitter may be helping scientists to be more efficient. Using the search engine and hashtags, scientists on Twitter can quickly isolate the signal from the noise, pulling out the tweets that are most relevant to their discipline.

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