Researchers with the University of São Paulo developed and evaluated a machine vision algorithm to assess pain levels in horses.
The study team employed an automatic computational classifier based on the Horse Grimace Scale which was trained through a machine learning method.
The use of the Horse Grimace Scale, first described in 2014, is traditionally dependent on a trained human observer, who may not necessarily have the time availability to evaluate the animal for long periods.
An executive with the video social media platform TikTok refused to be cornered by U.S. senators on questions about biometric identification of its subscribers during a hearing Tuesday.
Michael Beckerman, head of TikTok’s public policy unit, offered non-answers and equivocations about face- and voiceprints and the like, according to TechCrunch.
ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, this summer changed the platform’s privacy policy to say it reserves the right to collect those and other biometrics.
Beckerman reportedly told senators that outsiders looking at social media have said TikTok collects less subscriber data than its competitors, implying that fewer identifiers collected means greater privacy for people.
The 11-story, $1.5 billion building with 1.68 million square feet of space would house 4,536 undergraduates. It’s meant to address a severe shortage of residential space at the school that has drawn threats of lawsuits.
Munger, the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, is interested in architecture as well as investing. Warren Buffett’s long-time business partner is donating millions to help foot the bill for the building — on the condition he plays a big role in designing it.
The proposed building features groups of eight single bedrooms organized into suites. The bedrooms don’t have windows but common areas do and there are lots of them.
GetCalFresh.org, our digital enrollment assistant that helps people apply for CalFresh food assistance (California’s name for SNAP), is a lens into the effects of the pandemic. As the economy shut down in spring 2020, our service helped over 200,000 households apply for food assistance in April alone, compared to 40,000 households two months prior in February. By August, GetCalFresh.org was still helping 100,000 households every month. Over the past year, thousands of applicants have shared their experiences with us. Here are their stories.
TL;DR: According to 5.5 years of data from 2.3 million players and 450 million games, most beginners will improve their rating by 100 lichess rating points in 3-6 months. Most “experienced” chess players in the 1400-1800 rating range will take 3-4 years to improve their rating by 100 lichess rating points. There’s no strong evidence that playing more games makes you improve quicker.
Carl Malamud has just released “The General Index” – a full-text-searchable index of 100,000,000 scientific articles.
The catalog contains 355 billion words, and returns five-word snippets (firmly within fair use’s boundaries) and citations in response to queries. It’s publicly available for all to mine and search.
It’s the latest in a series of breathtaking open knowledge efforts from Malamud, who was a frequent collaborator of [Aaron Swartz’s].
It’s a shame that these publishers would rather spend money on lawyers than on fostering and improving access to books. What is worse, the publishers want the Archive to defend CDL with one arm tied behind its back. They’ve claimed CDL hurts their bottom line, but are doing their level best to limit investigation into that supposed harm. For example, the publishers spoke often about CDL with a powerful industry trade association, which presumably included discussions of any such harm, but they are refusing to share those communications based on claims of privilege that just don’t pass the smell test. Meanwhile, members of Congress recently launched an investigation into e-book licensing practices that may shed light on the digital book ecosystem, and the onerous restrictions that impede libraries’ ability to serve their patrons.
Within that context, the Archive has made careful efforts to ensure its uses are lawful. The CDL program is sheltered by copyright’s fair use doctrine, buttressed by traditional library protections. Specifically, the project serves the public interest in preservation, access, and research—all classic fair use purposes.
It’s imperative that newsrooms at media behemoths and niche publications alike adopt policies that strike a balance—between rapidly communicating valuable information and disseminating well-founded scientific insights—by appropriately contextualizing and vetting findings reported in preprints. At The Scientist, we have done just this, and our policies regarding preprints are posted on the Editorial Policies page of www.the-scientist.com. Please head there to review the specifics, and feel free to share your thoughts and comments on our social media channels. In my opinion, preprints and the servers that host them do still harbor a promise and utility that may help when the next global health emergency comes knocking. The scientific community, the public, the press, and the political sphere must adjust our views and treatment of these first drafts of science so that we avoid the pitfalls and reap the benefits of a more direct communication of research findings.
In 2018, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) won a US$50-million ruling against the publisher OMICS for deceptive business practices. The FTC’s investigation found that OMICS accepted and published nearly 69,000 articles in academic disciplines with little or no peer review. The judgement against the infamous publisher, located in Hyderabad, India, proved difficult to enforce. But the ensuing stigma still carries a penalty. In the two years after the FTC filed its complaint, the articles OMICS published under its imprint fell by 40%. After all, a publisher with no reputation is preferable to a publisher with a bad one.
Predatory publishers take publication fees without performing advertised services such as archiving, indexing or quality control. They often use outright deception, such as fake editorial boards or impact factors, to appear legitimate. Researchers might submit work to these outlets naively or cynically; even unread or sloppy articles are rewarded by some universities’ tenure, hiring and promotion decisions. Often, these unvetted articles attract little attention. However, because they sometimes get harvested by non-selective academic search engines such as Google Scholar, they could be found — and read — as part of the scientific corpus.
Skidmore College officials have promised to reform the way they handle reports of sexual violence after approximately 300 students walked out of class in protest following a student’s claim that she was forced to leave campus for posting about her assault online.
Last year we evolved the look of Google Maps with enhanced depictions of natural features across the map. At the same time, this style became the default map for users of Cloud-based maps styling on Google Maps Platform. To make sure your map experiences reflect the Google Maps of today, we’re rolling out the same map style across our API and SDK versions starting in November. This will become the default map across all supported surfaces by May 2022.
The US Copyright Office is expanding a legal shield for fixing digital devices, including cars and medical devices. This morning, the office submitted new exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bars breaking software copy protection. The resulting rules include a revamped section on device repair, reflecting renewed government pressure around “right to repair” issues.
The Register of Copyrights recommends Section 1201 “anti-circumvention” exemptions every three years, a process that has offered legal protections for everything from unlocking cellphones to ripping DVD clips for classroom use. In addition to renewing these and several other exemptions, this latest rulemaking adopts repair-related proposals from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, iFixit, and other organizations. The Librarian of Congress adopted the recommendations in a final rule that will take effect tomorrow.
The exemptions replace an itemized list of repairable devices with broad protections for any consumer devices that rely on software to function, as well as land and sea vehicles and medical devices that aren’t consumer-focused.
Online November 9, starting at 1 p.m. Eastern. “What becomes of humanities majors after they finish the degree? How might colleges and universities assist them in the transition? Join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Humanities Center for a conversation about these issues that will feature the perspectives of both academia and industry.” [registration required]
“help local, state, and international public health agencies solve complex #PublicHealth informatics challenges using #DataScience.” Deadline to apply is December 1.
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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.
Whether you’re just starting to build a web scraper from scratch and wondering what you’re doing wrong because your solution isn’t working, or you’ve already been working with crawlers for a while and are stuck on a page that gives you an error saying you’re a bot, you can’t go any further, keep reading.
Despite some effort from the community and great initiatives, women are still under-represented in machine learning. The aim of this directory of Women in Machine Learning is to help you identify women researchers or practitioners for conferences, symposia or collaborations.
