Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA Invest in Element AI – Investopedia

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Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) and Intel Corp. (INTC) all participated in a round of fund raising for Element AI, the Canadian artificial intelligence startup, as the technology powerhouses go after the burgeoning market.

According to media reports, Microsoft made the investment via its venture capital arm Microsoft Ventures, while Intel did it via Intel Capital. The startup that developed a platform to help companies of all sizes build AI into their businesses, raised $102 million. The Series A round of funding was led by Data Collective, a San Francisco VC firm. Microsoft is a previous investor in Element AI, which splashed onto the scene just a mere eight months ago.

Element AI told ZDNet that it will use the funding to hire more employees, to invest in big AI projects and to acquire startups in the space. "Artificial Intelligence is a 'must have' capability for global companies," said CEO Jean-Franois Gagn in a statement. "Without it, they are competitively impaired if not at grave risk of being obsoleted in place."

For the Redmond, Wash., software giant, Element AI marks yet another instance where it recently backed a company focused on this new technology. In May it co-led a $7.6 million VC round of funding for Bonsai, the Berkeley, Calif.-based AI startup, and invested in Agolo, a New York City-based AI startup. Bonsais AI technology is designed to help manufacturing, retail, logistic and similar markets incorporate AI into their businesses. Agolo provides AI systems to some of the worlds biggest media companies to summarize their news on Facebook and via Amazons Alexa, voice-activated personal assistant. (See also: Sports Betting: The Next Big Thing for Artificial Intelligence.)

But its not just Microsoft that is setting its sights on the market. Chipmaker NVIDIA is also becoming a force, which has prompted Citigroup to predict the stock could hit $300 a share. In a recent research note, Citi analyst Atif Malik said the company is in the early stages of transitioning from a maker of PC graphics chips to a leader in AI, which could drive future growth.

"Element AI will benefit by continuing to leverage NVIDIA's high performance GPUs and software at large scale to solve some of the world's most challenging issues," Jeff Herbst, VP of business development at NVIDIA, said in a statement to ZDNet about its participation in the round of fundraising. Meanwhile Intel recently announced it is forming a separate AI business unit that will be led by former Nervana CEO Naveen Rao. (See also: Intel Forms New Unit to Zero in on AI.)

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Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA Invest in Element AI - Investopedia

Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture Market Worth $4.0 Billion by 2026 – Exclusive Report by MarketsandMarkets – PRNewswire

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CHICAGO, April 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture Marketby Technology (Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Predictive Analytics), Offering (Software, Hardware, AI-as-a-Service, and Services), Application, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture Marketis estimated to be USD 1.0 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach USD 4.0 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 25.5% between 2020 and 2026. The market growth is driven by the increasing implementation of data generation through sensors and aerial images for crops, increasing crop productivity through deep-learning technology, and government support for the adoption of modern agricultural techniques.

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By application, drone analytics segment projected to register highest CAGR during forecast period

The market for drone analytics is expected to grow at the highest rate due to its extensive use for diagnosing and mapping to evaluate crop health and to make real-time decisions. Favorable government mandates for the use of drones in agriculture are also expected to fuel the growth of the drone analytics market. Increasing awareness among farm owners regarding the advantages associated with AI technology is expected to further fuel the growth of the AI in agriculture market.

By technology, computer vision segment to register highest CAGR during forecast period

The increasing use of computer vision technology for agriculture applications, such as plant image recognition and continuous plant health monitoring and analysis, is one of the major factors contributing to the growth of the computer vision segment. The other factors include higher adoption of robots and drones in agriculture farms and increasing demand for improved crop yield due to the rising population. Computer vision allows farmers and agribusinesses alike to make better decisions in real-time.

Browsein-depth TOC on"Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture Market"81 Tables 40 Figures 152 Pages

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AI in agriculture market in APAC projected to register highest CAGR from 2020 to 2026

The AI in agriculture market in Asia Pacific is expected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period. The wide-scale adoption of AI technologies in agriculture farms is the key factor supporting the growth of the market in this region. AI is increasingly applied in the agriculture sector in developing countries, such as India and China. The increasing adoption of deep learning and computer vision algorithm for agriculture applications is also expected to fuel the growth of the AI in agriculture market in the Asia Pacific region.

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) (US), Deere & Company (John Deere) (US), Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) (US), Farmers Edge Inc. (Farmers Edge) (Canada), The Climate Corporation (Climate Corp.) (US), ec2ce (ec2ce) (Spain), Descartes Labs, Inc. (Descartes Labs) (US), AgEagle Aerial Systems (AgEagle) (US), and aWhere Inc. (aWhere) (US) are the prominent players in the AI in agriculture market.

Related Reports:

Artificial Intelligence Marketby Offering (Hardware, Software, Services), Technology (Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Context-Aware Computing, Computer Vision), End-User Industry, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025

Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing Marketby Offering (Hardware, Software, and Services), Technology (Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Context-Aware Computing, and NLP), Application, Industry, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025

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Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledge Store" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

Contact:Mr. Sanjay GuptaMarketsandMarkets INC.630 Dundee RoadSuite 430Northbrook, IL 60062USA: +1-888-600-6441Email: [emailprotected]Visit Our Web Site: https://www.marketsandmarkets.comResearch Insight : https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/ai-in-agriculture-market.aspContent Source : https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/ai-in-agriculture.asp

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Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture Market Worth $4.0 Billion by 2026 - Exclusive Report by MarketsandMarkets - PRNewswire

Meet the AI that can write – Axios

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A new general language machine learning model is pushing the boundaries of what AI can do.

Why it matters: OpenAI's GPT-3 system can reasonably make sense of and write human language. It's still a long way from genuine artificial intelligence, but it may be looked back on as the iPhone of AI, opening the door to countless commercial applications both benign and potentially dangerous.

Driving the news: After announcing GPT-3 in a paper in May, OpenAI recently began offering a select group of people access to the system's API to help the nonprofit explore the AI's full capabilities.

How it works: GPT-3 works the same way as predecessors like OpenAI's GPT-2 and Google's BERT analyzing huge swathes of the written internet and using that information to predict which words tend to follow after each other.

Details: As early testers begin posting about their experiments, what stands out is both GPT-3's range and the eerily human-like quality of some of its responses.

Yes, but: Give it more than a few paragraphs of text prompts and GPT-3 will quickly lose the thread of an argument sometimes with unintentionally hilarious results, as Kevin Lacker showed when he gave GPT-3 the Turing Test.

The big picture: Just because GPT-3 lacks real human intelligence doesn't mean that it lacks any intelligence at all, or that it can't be used to produce remarkable applications.

Of note: OpenAI has already begun partnering with commercial companies on GPT-3, including Replika and Reddit, though pricing is still undecided.

The catch: As OpenAI itself noted in the introductory paper, "internet-trained models have internet-scale biases." A model trained on the internet like GPT-3 will share the biases of the internet, including stereotypes around gender, race and religion.

The bottom line: Humans who assemble letters for a living aren't out of a job yet. But we may look back upon GPT-3 as the moment when AI began seeping into everything we do.

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Meet the AI that can write - Axios

2020 And The Dawn Of AI Learning At The Edge – Forbes

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With countless predictions about whats in store for artificial intelligence in 2020, Im eager to see what will come true and what will fall by the wayside. I think that one of the more paradigm-changing predictions will be moving AIs learning ability to the edge.

Under the hood of AIs generic name, a variety of approaches are hidden, spanning from huge models that crunch data on a distributed cloud infrastructure to tiny, edge-friendly AI that analyze and mine data on small processors.

From my academic research at Boston University to cofounding Neurala, I have always been keenly aware of the difference between these two types of AIlets call them "heavy" and "light" AI. Heavy AI requires hefty compute substrates to run, while light AI can do what heavy AI is capable of but on smaller compute power.

The introduction of commodity processors such as GPUsand later their portabilityhas made it technically and economically viable to bring AI/deep learning/DNN/neural network algorithms to the edge in a multitude of industries.

Bandwidth, latency, cost and just plain logic dictate the era of edge AI and will help make our next technology jump a reality. But before we can do so, it is important to understand the technologys nuances, because making AI algorithms run on the small compute edge has a few. In fact, there are at least two processes at play: inference, or "predictions" generated by an edge (e.g., I see a normal frame vs. one with a possible defect), and edge learningnamely, using the acquired information to change, improve, correct and refine the edge AI. This is a small, often overlooked difference with huge implications.

Living At The Edge

I first realized this difference between inference/predictions and edge learning while working with NASA back in 2010. My colleagues and I implemented a small brain emulation to control a Mars Rover-like device with AI that needed to be capable of running and learning at the edge.

For NASA, it was important that a robot be capable of learning "new things" completely independently of any compute power available on Earth. A data bottleneck, latency and a plethora of other issues meant they needed to explore different breeds of AI than what had been developed at that time. They needed algorithms that had the ability to digest and learnnamely, adapt the behavior of AI and the available datawithout requiring huge amounts of compute power, data and time.

Unfortunately, traditional deep neural network (DNN) models were just not up to par, so we went on to build our own AI that would meet these requirements. Dubbed "lifelong deep neural network" (Lifelong-DNN), this new approach to DNNs had the ability to learn throughout its lifetime (versus traditional DNNs that can only learn once, before deployment).

Learn At The Edge Or Die

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to the implementation of AI today is its inflexibility and lack of adaptability. AI algorithms can be trained on huge amounts of data, when available, and can be fairly robust if all data is captured for their training beforehand. But unfortunately, this is not how the world works.

We humans are so adaptable because our brains have figured out that lifelong learning (learning every day) is key, and we cant rely solely on the data we are born with. Thats why we do not stop learning after our first birthday: We continuously adapt to changing environments and scenarios we encounter throughout our lives and learn from them. As humans, we do not discard data, we use it constantly to fine-tune our own AI.

Humans are a primary example of edge learning-enabled machines. In fact, if human brains acted in the same way as a DNN, our knowledge would be restricted to our college years. We would go about our 9-to-5s and daily routines only to wake up the next morning without having learned anything new.

The Learning-Enabled, AI-Powered Edge

Traditional DNNs are the dominant paradigm in todays AI, with fixed models that need to be trained before deployment. But novel approaches such as Lifelong-DNN would enable AI-powered compute edges not only to understand the data coming to them but also adapt and learn.

So, if you too would like to harness the power of the edge, here is my advice. First off, you need to abandon the mindset (and restriction) that AI can only be trained before deployment. From there, a new need arises: a way for users to interact with the edge and add knowledge. This implies the need to visualize newly collected data and for the user to be able to select which ones to add. This can be done either manually by a user or automatically.

For instance, in a manufacturing scenario, a quality control specialist may reject a product coming out of a machine and, by doing so, provide AI a new clue that the product or the part of it that was just built has to be considered faulty. So, updating your AI training protocols to allow for the integration of continual training workflows, where AI is updated based on new clues, is a must for organizations and individuals looking to leverage this new breed of AI.

AI that learns at the edge is a paradigm-shifting technology that will finally empower AI to truly serve its purpose: shifting intelligence to the compute edge where it is needed, at speeds, latency and costs that make it affordable for every device.

Going forward, learning-enabled edges will survive natural selection in an increasingly competitive AI ecosystem. May the fittest AI survive!

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2020 And The Dawn Of AI Learning At The Edge - Forbes

These students figured out their tests were graded by AI and the easy way to cheat – The Verge

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On Monday, Dana Simmons came downstairs to find her 12-year-old son, Lazare, in tears. Hed completed the first assignment for his seventh-grade history class on Edgenuity, an online platform for virtual learning. Hed received a 50 out of 100. That wasnt on a practice test it was his real grade.

He was like, Im gonna have to get a 100 on all the rest of this to make up for this, said Simmons in a phone interview with The Verge. He was totally dejected.

At first, Simmons tried to console her son. I was like well, you know, some teachers grade really harshly at the beginning, said Simmons, who is a history professor herself. Then, Lazare clarified that hed received his grade less than a second after submitting his answers. A teacher couldnt have read his response in that time, Simmons knew her son was being graded by an algorithm.

Simmons watched Lazare complete more assignments. She looked at the correct answers, which Edgenuity revealed at the end. She surmised that Edgenuitys AI was scanning for specific keywords that it expected to see in students answers. And she decided to game it.

Now, for every short-answer question, Lazare writes two long sentences followed by a disjointed list of keywords anything that seems relevant to the question. The questions are things like... What was the advantage of Constantinoples location for the power of the Byzantine empire, Simmons says. So you go through, okay, what are the possible keywords that are associated with this? Wealth, caravan, ship, India, China, Middle East, he just threw all of those words in.

I wanted to game it because I felt like it was an easy way to get a good grade, Lazare told The Verge. He usually digs the keywords out of the article or video the question is based on.

Apparently, that word salad is enough to get a perfect grade on any short-answer question in an Edgenuity test.

Edgenuity didnt respond to repeated requests for comment, but the companys online help center suggests this may be by design. According to the website, answers to certain questions receive 0% if they include no keywords, and 100% if they include at least one. Other questions earn a certain percentage based on the number of keywords included.

As COVID-19 has driven schools around the US to move teaching to online or hybrid models, many are outsourcing some instruction and grading to virtual education platforms. Edgenuity offers over 300 online classes for middle and high school students ranging across subjects from math to social studies, AP classes to electives. Theyre made up of instructional videos and virtual assignments as well as tests and exams. Edgenuity provides the lessons and grades the assignments. Lazares actual math and history classes are currently held via the platform his district, the Los Angeles Unified School District, is entirely online due to the pandemic. (The district declined to comment for this story).

Of course, short-answer questions arent the only factor that impacts Edgenuity grades Lazares classes require other formats, including multiple-choice questions and single-word inputs. A developer familiar with the platform estimated that short answers make up less than five percent of Edgenuitys course content, and many of the eight students The Verge spoke to for this story confirmed that such tasks were a minority of their work. Still, the tactic has certainly impacted Lazares class performance hes now getting 100s on every assignment.

Lazare isnt the only one gaming the system. More than 20,000 schools currently use the platform, according to the companys website, including 20 of the countrys 25 largest school districts, and two students from different high schools to Lazare told me they found a similar way to cheat. They often copy the text of their questions and paste it into the answer field, assuming its likely to contain the relevant keywords. One told me they used the trick all throughout last semester and received full credit pretty much every time.

Another high school student, who used Edgenuity a few years ago, said he would sometimes try submitting batches of words related to the questions only when I was completely clueless. The method worked more often than not. (We granted anonymity to some students who admitted to cheating, so they wouldnt get in trouble.)

One student, who told me he wouldnt have passed his Algebra 2 class without the exploit, said hes been able to find lists of the exact keywords or sample answers that his short-answer questions are looking for he says you can find them online nine times out of ten. Rather than listing out the terms he finds, though, he tried to work three into each of his answers. (Any good cheater doesnt aim for a perfect score, he explained.)

Austin Paradiso, who has graduated but used Edgenuity for a number of classes during high school, was also averse to word salads but did use the keyword approach a handful of times. It worked 100 percent of the time. I always tried to make the answer at least semi-coherent because it seemed a bit cheap to just toss a bunch of keywords into the input field, Paradiso said. But if I was a bit lazier, I easily could have just written a random string of words pertinent to the question prompt and gotten 100 percent.

Teachers do have the ability to review any content students submit, and can override Edgenuitys assigned grades the Algebra 2 student says hes heard of some students getting caught keyword-mashing. But most of the students I spoke to, and Simmons, said theyve never seen a teacher change a grade that Edgenuity assigned to them. If the teachers were looking at the responses, they didnt care, one student said.

The transition to Edgenuity has been rickety for some schools parents in Williamson County, Tennessee are revolting against their districts use of the platform, claiming countless technological hiccups have impacted their childrens grades. A district in Steamboat Springs, Colorado had its enrollment period disrupted when Edgenuity was overwhelmed with students trying to register.

Simmons, for her part, is happy that Lazare has learned how to game an educational algorithm its certainly a useful skill. But she also admits that his better grades dont reflect a better understanding of his course material, and she worries that exploits like this could exacerbate inequalities between students. Hes getting an A+ because his parents have graduate degrees and have an interest in tech, she said. Otherwise he would still be getting Fs. What does that tell you about... the digital divide in this online learning environment?

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These students figured out their tests were graded by AI and the easy way to cheat - The Verge

For AI startups, more funding is often not the answer – VentureBeat

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One of the hottest areas for VC investment at the moment is AI/machine learning that includes artificial intelligence algorithms, related machine learning systems, neural networks, and back-end processing to produce insightful and self-learning applications. As Nvidias CEO recently said:

Software may be eating the world, but AI is going to eat software

VC investment in AI has risen from $3.2 billion in 2014 to $9.5 billion for the first five months of 2017 annualized, with the number of funding rounds nearly doubling since 2015 to over 1,200 on an annualized basis so far this year. No wonder Frost & Sullivan calls AI the hottest investment trend of 2017:

Above: Source: Pitchbook

Investors piling into a space aim for multiple exits worth hundreds of millions of dollars. However, the pattern of AI exits is the opposite. Most successfully-exited AI companies sell for below $50 million after raising only a small amount of money. This works well for founders and small angel backers but not for VCs looking for exits well over $100 million.

Of 70 AI M&A deals since 2012, 75 percent sold below $50 million. These deals are often acqui-hires companies acquired for talent not business performance. The number of $200 million+ deals barely registers.

Above: Source: Pitchbook

The typical journey goes like this: A small team comes together around 1-2 individuals, they forge real advances on key use cases (voice recognition, visual/video tracking, fraud detection, retail consumer behavior, etc.), sign a handful of prominent customers, raise less than $10 million (often less than $5 million), then attract the attention of a major buyer looking to solve that problem set. These kinds of AI companies are often valued as an amount paid per engineer rather than on performance (revenue, growth, profits); the average price per employee is around $2.5 million:

Above: Source: Pitchbook

The other issue for VCs is that AI companies dont generally need to raise much money, even if they are valued far above $100 million. Argo, valued at $1 billion for a majority stake by Ford, was 20 people when bought. Our research from PitchBook shows the 10 most valuable AI M&A targets raised on average only $15-25 million; there was only room for 1-2 VC investors in each deal:

Sure there are larger AI companies still growing, such as Palantir, valued at $10 billion having raised over $500 million. But a few isolated cases of $1 billion+ unicorns created using significant VC money is hardly fertile ground for 1,200 VC investment rounds. The reality is, AI just isnt as rich a segment for VCs as investment activity suggests.

Once several VCs invest, an AI company can no longer entertain a $50-100 million M&A offer and must scale its team and product suite to ramp to a much higher valuation years further out; otherwise VCs cannot get the return they require. Heres why we think this is counterproductive:

For many AI founders, the best approach is raising little money, demonstrating they can solve hard problems, and waiting for the M&A phone to ring.

For VCs the best approach is often to look elsewhere.

Victor Basta is founder of Magister Advisors, a specialist bank focused on M&A exits and larger financing rounds.

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For AI startups, more funding is often not the answer - VentureBeat

behold.ai and Wellbeing Software collaborate on national solution for rapid COVID-19 diagnosis using AI analysis of chest X-rays – GlobeNewswire

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behold.ai and Wellbeing Software collaborate onnational solution for rapid COVID-19 diagnosis using AI analysis of chest X-rays

Companies working to fast-track programme for UK-wide rollout

LONDON, UK, March 31, 2020 Two British companies at the leading edge of medical imaging technology are working together on a plan to fast-track the diagnosis of COVID-19 in NHS hospitals using artificial intelligence analysis of chest X-rays.

behold.ai has developed the artificial intelligence-based red dot algorithm which can identify within 30 seconds abnormalities in chest X-rays. Wellbeing Software operates Cris, the UKs most widely used Radiology Information System (RIS), which is installed in over 700 locations.

A national roll-out combining these two technologies would enable a large number of hospitals to quickly process the significant volume of X-rays, currently being used as the key diagnostic test for triage of COVID-19 patients, thereby speeding up diagnosis and easing pressure on the NHS at this critical time. This solution will also find significant utility in dealing with the backlog of cases that continue to mount, such as suspected cancer patients.

Simon Rasalingham, Chairman and CEO of behold.ai, said:

behold.ai and Wellbeing are a great fit in terms of expertise and technology. We are able to prioritise abnormal chest X-rays with greater than 90% accuracy and a 30-second turnaround. If that were translated into a busy hospitals coping with COVID-19, the benefits to healthcare systems are potentially enormous.

Chris Yeowart, Director at Wellbeing Software, said:

Our technology provides the integration between the algorithm and the hospitals radiology systems and working processes, addressing the technical challenges to clearing the way for accelerated national rollout. It is clear from talking to radiology departments that chest X-rays have become one of the primary diagnostic tools for COVID-19 in this country.

https://www.behold.ai

https://www.wellbeingsoftware.com/

Ends

For further information, please contact:Consilium Strategic Communications Tel: +44(0)20 3709 5700 beholdai@consilium-comms.com

About behold.ai and radiology

behold.ai provides artificial intelligence, through its red dot cognitive computing platform, to radiology departments. This technology augments the expertise of radiologists to enable them to report with greater clinical accuracy, faster and more safely than they could before. This revolutionary combination helps to deliver greater performance in radiology reporting at a fraction of the price of outsourced reporting.

Radiology departments play an essential role in the diagnostic process; however, a consequence of fewer radiologists and a growing demand for images has left services stretched beyond capacity across many trusts, resulting in reporting delays - in some cases impacting cancer diagnosis. These service issues have been highlighted by the Care Quality Commission and the Royal College of Radiologists.

Our solution seamlessly integrates into local trust workflows augmenting clinical practice and delivering state-of-the-art, safe, Artificial Intelligence.

The behold.ai algorithm has been developed using more than 30,000 example images, all of which have been reviewed and reported by highly experienced consultant radiology clinicians in order to shape accurate decision making. The red dot prioritisation platform is capable of sorting images into normal and abnormal categories in less than 30 seconds post image acquisition.

About behold.ai and quality

Apart from its FDA clearance,behold.aiis also CE approved and is gaining further approval for a CE mark Class IIa certification.

In June 2019 the Company was awarded ISO 13485 QMS certification for an AI medical device the gold standard of quality certification.

About Wellbeing Software

Wellbeing Software is a leading healthcare technology provider with a presence in more than 75% of NHS organisations. The company has combined its extensive UK resources and unparalleled experience in its specialist divisions radiology, maternity, data management and electronic health records - to form Wellbeing Software, uniting their core businesses to enable customers to build on existing investments in IT as a way of delivering connected healthcare records and better patient care. Wellbeings ability to connect its specialist systems with other third-party software enables healthcare organisations to achieve key objectives, such as paperless working and the creation of complete electronic health records. Through their established footprint, specialist knowledge and significant development resources, the company is building the foundations for connectivity within NHS organisations and beyond.

Wellbeing media contact : Jenni Livesley, Context Public Relations, wellbeing@contextpr.co.uk

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behold.ai and Wellbeing Software collaborate on national solution for rapid COVID-19 diagnosis using AI analysis of chest X-rays - GlobeNewswire

Teenage team develops AI system to screen for diabetic retinopathy – MobiHealthNews

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Kavya Kopparapu might be considered something of a whiz kid. After all, she had yet to enter her senior year of high school when she started Eyeagnosis, a smartphone app and 3D-printed lens that allows patients to be screened for diabetic retinopathy with a quick photo, avoiding the time and expense of a typical diagnostic procedure. In June 2016, Kopparapus grandfather had recently been diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes that damages retinal blood vessels and can eventually cause blindness. He caught the symptoms in time to receive treatment, but it was close. A little too close for Kopparapus comfort. According to the IEEE Spectrum, Kopparapu, her 15-year-old brother Neeyanth and her classmate Justin Zhang trained an artificial intelligence system to scan photos of eyes and detect, and diagnose, signs of diabetic retinopathy. She unveiled the technology at the OReilly Artificial Intelligence conference in New York City in July. After diving into internet-based research and emailing opthamologists, biochemists, epidemiologists, neuroscientists and the like, she and her team worked on the diagnostic AI using a machine-learning architecture called a convolutional neural network. CNNs, as theyre called, parse through vast data sets -- like photos -- to look for patterns of similarity, and to date have shown an aptitude for classifying images. The network itself was the ResNet-50, developed by Microsoft. But to train it to make retinal diagnoses, Kopparapu had to feed it images from the National Institute of Healths EyeGene database, which essentially taught the architecture how to spot signs of retinal degeneration. One hospital has already tested the technology, fitting a 3D-printed lens onto a smartphone and training the phones flash to illuminate the retinas of five different patients. Tested against opthalmologists, the system went five for five on diagnoses. Kopparapus invention still needs lots of tests and additional data to prove its efficacy before it sees widespread clinical adoption, but so far, its off to a pretty good start. Eyeagnosis is operating in a space that's recently become interesting to some very large companies. Last fall, a team of Google researchers published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that Google's deep learning algorithm, trained on a large data set of fundus images, can detect diabetic retinopathy with better than 90 percent accuracy. That algorithm was then tested on 9,963 deidentified images retrospectively obtained from EyePACS in the United States, as well as three eye hospitals in India. A second, publicly available research data set of 1,748 was also used. The accuracy was determined by comparing its diagnoses to those done by a panel of at least seven U.S. board-certified ophthalmologists. The two data sets had 97.5 percent and 96.1 percent sensitivity, and 93.4 percent and 93.9 percent specificity respectively.

And Google isnt the only player in that space. IBM has a technology utilizing a mix of deep learning, convolutional neural networks and visual analytics technology based on 35,000 images accessed via EyePACs; in research conducted earlier this year, the technology learned to identify lesions and other markers of damage to the retinas blood vessels, collectively assessing the presence and severity of disease. In just 20 seconds, the method was successful in classifying diabetic retinopathy severity with 86 percent accuracy, suggesting doctors and clinicians could use the technology to have a better idea of how the disease progresses as well as identify effective treatment methods.

Lower-tech options are also taking a stab at improving access to screenings. Using a mix of in-office visits, telemedicine and web-based screening software, the Los Angeles Department of Health Services has been able to greatly expand the number of patients in its safety net hospital who got screenings and referrals. In an article published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers describe how the two-year collaboration using Safety Net Connects eConsult platform resulted in more screenings, shorter wait times and fewer in-person specialty care visits. By deploying Safety Net Connects eConsult system to a group of 21,222 patients, the wait times for screens decreased by almost 90 percent, and overall screening rates for diabetic retinopathy increased 16 percent. The digital program also eliminated the need for 14,000 visits to specialty care professionals

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Teenage team develops AI system to screen for diabetic retinopathy - MobiHealthNews

Ford creates a new dedicated Robotics and AI Research team … – TechCrunch

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Fords recent executive shuffle was bound to lead to reorganization throughout the company, but the addition of a new Robotics and AI Research team operating under Fords Research and Advanced Engineering department seems like it was inevitable either way, given the industrys trajectory.

Fords VP of Research and Engineering and CTO Dr. Ken Washington revealed the new research group via a Medium post, in which he discusses the huge potential impact of AI and robotics over the next decade. The team will work with Argo AI, the startup that Ford took a majority stake in earlier this year via a large investment, as well as on other partnership and acquisition/investment opportunities. Itll help with work on drones, personal mobility platforms (last-mile, scooter-style transport), automation and aerial robotics.

Washington also discussed how in the future well see at least two separate fleets of self-driving vehicles on the road operated by Ford: one led by Fords own team pursuing advanced research and another led by Argo AI focused on development and testing of the virtual driver system Ford intends to bring to production in time for its 2021 deployment of a ride-hailing fleet.

Focusing on AI and robotics research is not novel to Ford among automakers; Honda has long had a program in place to develop its robotics capability, and has frequently demonstrated its Asimo humanoid robot. Toyota also runs the Toyota Research Institute, an entire subsidiary devoted to long-term research and development of robotics and AI, through its own work and partnerships with leading academic institutions.

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Ford creates a new dedicated Robotics and AI Research team ... - TechCrunch

Huawei sees AI, not death, in smartphone future – ZDNet

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There are still improvements to be made in smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI) will play a critical role in driving further innovation in this space.

There remained significant differences today in terms of the functions offered in a $200- and $1,000-priced smartphone, said Bruce Lee, Huawei's global vice president of handsets business. He dismissed suggestions that innovation in the handset market had plateaued, with little separating low-end and high-end devices, and that manufacturers should move their focus elsewhere.

Speaking to ZDNet in an interview Friday, Lee said Huawei continued to focused its R&D efforts on introducing more functionalities and improving existing capabilities, such as camera, battery life and processing speed. It also needed to ensure its handsets could support faster internet connection, especially when 5G networks become available, he added.

Earlier this year, Pacific Crest's analyst for emerging technologies Ben Wilson opined in a research report, titled "There Is No 'Next Smartphone'", that the smartphone revolution was a "singular event in compute platform history" that was unlikely to repeat. Others also debated the "death of the smartphone" and impact of wearables.

While he acknowledged there was tremendous growth potential in wearables and smart devices, Lee said these still were challenged by the same issues faced in the smartphone market. He pointed to existing limitations in compute performance and battery life.

This further indicated that, far from "dying", there was still some ways to go in terms of smartphone innovation and development, he noted, adding that the industry must continue to invest in these key areas--of improving battery life and compute performance--to enhance user experience.

In this aspect, he said Huawei believed AI would play an important role in the future of handsets and would facilitate many critical developments in smartphones.

In its 2016 annual report, the Chinese manufacturer described an era of "+Intelligence" in which all devices, people, and processes would be supported by AI. "Building intelligence into our devices, networks, and industries will open up new worlds," it said, adding that it would impact the role of smartphones in future.

Huawei believed phones would be able to think contextually and engage humans in dialogue to understand their needs. The devices then could deliver the information and services humans required and would evolve into personal assistants to provide expertise and personalised services.

"AI will disrupt the user experience, but before it can do so, we will need a quantum leap in the functionality of our smart devices, chipsets, and cloud services," it said. "Artificial intelligence will place heavy demands on computing performance, energy efficiency, and device-cloud synergy. Meeting these demands and creating a better intelligent experience will take a synthesis of capabilities across both chipsets and the cloud."

Lee said Huawei had invested heavily in building a development team focused on AI, which included both hardware and software.

"We hope to use AI in our phones to have more learning capabilities...[so], together with big data, we will be able to understand consumer habits and better incorporate voice and image capabilities into the phone," he said. "This will enable the phone to become smarter and offer increased efficiencies for consumers."

Lee also underscored the need to embed this intelligence on the device itself, rather than push data into the cloud to be analysed.

Because machine learning and AI algorithms required significant amount of compute power, much of these processes were carried out in the cloud, and not on the local device, he explained. This, however, was not efficient, he said, stressing the need for more AI capabilities to be supported on the smartphone itself in order to reduce latency.

"We can then have faster responses because we don't need to upload data from the device into the cloud, do the computing, and send it back into the device," he noted. "And when we do the computing on the local device, we can also safeguard user privacy since we don't need to upload data into the server."

In terms of handset performance, Huawei had a stellar start to the year, bypassing Oppo in the first quarter to claim pole position in China's smartphone market. It shipped 20.8 million units, which was up 25.5 percent from the year before, and held a 20 percent market share.

Worldwide, it placed third behind Samsung and Apple, with a 9 percent market share for the first quarter 2017. The Chinese vendor shipped 34.18 million units, compared to Samsung's 78.67 million and Apple's 51.9 million.

Lee attributed the growth to its high-end P and Mate product lines. He further revealed that the company's future growth strategy would see more investment towards its high-end smartphone products.

In addition, Huawei would be looking to increase its market share outside its domestic market. Noting that China contributed about 60 percent of its smartphone business, he said the vendor was targeting for its overseas revenue to outweigh that of its home market.

While Europe currently was its biggest region outside of China, he added that the rest of Asia-Pacific would play a pivotal role in its future growth due to Huawei's geographical advantage in this region. Due to its heritage, it also had a better understanding of Asian consumers so the region should offer higher growth potential, he said.

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Huawei sees AI, not death, in smartphone future - ZDNet

Which are the Key Industries that Depend on the Artificial Intelligence – CIOReview

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There are many industries that heavily rely on artificial intelligence so that they can work more efficiently.

FREMONT, CA:There is no end to research about how artificial intelligence can be improved and implemented in everyday lives. Several multi-million companies are continuously trying to apply new technologies to ensure that they will be the foundation of human evolution. However, there are still some positive and negative points to it, and people are divided about the idea of making a robotized world.

Despite such differences among human beings, some forms of AI are highly used in industries. Here are some of the industries that heavily depend on the technology of artificial intelligence.

Online Gambling Sites

The online casino industry is heavily dependent on artificial intelligence. Furthermore, online gambling sites would not have existed if they did not have the technology of AI. The online casinos will utilize artificial intelligence so that they can impose fair-play, and every result of the games is random. The technology also helps to secure the sites and ensure that the information of the players remains hidden.

Healthcare

In the last few years, AI and healthcare have formed a strong bond among them. The doctors get assistance from artificial intelligence as it offers better diagnostics and detects medical issues in every human being that, too, within no time. Healthcare wants to utilize technology because it reduces the time taken to examine a patient and also provides reliable and effective results.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector needs robots, and artificial intelligence can help the industry to build the process, which can be more reliable than humans. AI has been playing a significant role in the industry as it takes care of every minute detail in the making process to make it more efficient.

Advertising

In the case of an advertisement, the marketing industry can transform itself into the online world due to which applying AI has become significant in this sector. AI is used for identifying the preference of the consumers by analyzing the cookie history while advertising on social media and other online platforms. Online advertisement has become much more accessible and effective with AI than it was ever before with the traditional marketing devices.

See also:Top Artificial Intelligence Companies

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Which are the Key Industries that Depend on the Artificial Intelligence - CIOReview

How To Flunk Those Cognitive Deficiency Tests And What This Means Too For AI Self-Driving Cars – Forbes

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Cognitive deficiency tests, AI, and self-driving cars.

Seems like the news recently has been filled with revelations about the taking of cognitive deficiency tests.

This is especially being widely noted by some prominent politicians that appear to be attempting to vouch for having mental clarity upon reaching an age in life whereby cognitive decline often surfaces.

Such tests are more aptly referred to as cognitive assessment tests rather than deficiency oriented tests, though the notion generally being that if a score earned is less than what might be expected, the potential conclusion is that the person has had a decline in their mental prowess.

Oftentimes also referred to as cognitive impairment detection exams, the person seeking to find out how they are mentally doing is administered a test consisting of various questions and asked to answer the questions. The administrator of the test then grades the answers as to correctness and fluidity, producing a score to indicate how the person overall performed.

The score is then compared to the scores of others that have taken the test, trying to gauge how the cognitive capacity of the person is rated or ranked in light of some larger population of test-takers.

Also, if a person takes the test over time, perhaps say once per year, their prior scores are compared to their most recent score, attempting to measure whether there is a difference emerging as they age.

There are some crucial rules-of-thumb about all of this cognitive test-taking.

For example, if the person takes the same test word-for-word, repeatedly over time, this raises questions about the nature of the test versus the nature of the cognitive abilities of the person taking the test. In essence, you can potentially do better on the test simply because youve seen the same questions before and likely also had been previously told what the considered correct answers are.

One argument to be made is that this is somewhat assessing your ability to remember having previously taken the test, but thats not usually the spirit of what such cognitive tests are supposed to be about. The idea is to assess overall cognition, and not merely be focused on whether you perchance can recall the specific questions of a specific test previously taken.

Another facet of this kind of cognitive test-taking consists of being formally administered the test, rather than taking the test entirely on your own.

Though there are plenty of available cognitive tests that you can download and take in private, some would say that this is not at all the same as taking a test under the guiding hands and watch of someone certified or otherwise authorized to administer such tests.

A key basis for claiming that the test needs to be formally administered is to ensure that the person taking the test is not undermining the test or flouting the testing process. If the test taker were to ask a friend for help, this obviously defeats the purpose of the test, which is supposed to focus on your solitary cognition and not be a collective semblance of cognition. Likewise, these tests are usually timed, and a person on their own might be tempted to exceed the normally allotted time, plus the person might be tempted to look-up answers, use a calculator, etc.

Perhaps the most important reason to have a duly authorized and trained administrator involves attempting to holistically evaluate the results of the cognition test.

Experts in cognitive test-taking are quick to emphasize that a robust approach to the matter consists of not just the numeric score that a test taker achieves, but also how they are overall able to interact with a fully qualified and trained cognitive-test administrator.

Unlike taking a secured SAT or ACT test that you might have had to painstakingly sit through for college entrance purposes, a cognitive assessment test is typically intended to assess in both a written way and in a broader manner how the person interacts and cognitively presents themselves.

Imagine for example that someone aces the written test, yet meanwhile, they are unable to carry on a lucid conversation with the administrator, and similarly, they mentally stumble on why they are taking the test or otherwise have apparent cognitive difficulties surrounding the test-taking process. Those facets outside of the test itself should be counted, some would vehemently assert, and thus would be unlikely to be valued if a person merely took the test on their own.

Despite all of the foregoing and the holistic nuances that Ive mentioned, admittedly, most of the time all that people want to know is what was their darned score on that vexing cognitive test.

You might be wondering whether there is one standardized and universal cognitive test that is used for these purposes.

No, there is not just one per se.

Instead, there are a bewildering and veritable plethora of such cognition tests.

It seems like each day there is some new version that gets announced to the world. In some cases, the cognitive test being proffered has been carefully prepared and analyzed for its validity. Unfortunately, in other cases, the cognitive test is a gimmick and being fronted as a moneymaker, whereby those pushing the test are aiming to get people to believe in it and hoping to generate gobs of revenue by how many take the test and charge them fees accordingly.

Please do not fall for the fly-by-night cognitive tests.

Sadly, sometimes a known celebrity or other highly visible person gets associated with a cognitive test promotion and adds a veneer of authenticity to something that does not deserve any bona fide reputational stamp-of-approval.

Some cognitive tests have lasted the test of time and are considered the dominant or at least well-regarded for their cognitive assessing capacity and validity.

On a related note, if a cognitive test takes a long time to complete, lets say hours of completion time, the odds are that it is not going to be overall well-received and considered onerous for testing purposes. As such, the popular cognitive tests tend to be the ones that take a relatively short period to undertake, such as an hour or less, and in many cases even just 15 minutes or less (these are usually depicted as screening tests rather than full-blown cognitive assessment tests).

Some decry that only requiring a few minutes to take a cognitive test is rife with problems and seems like a fast-food kind of approach to tackling a very complex topic of measuring someones cognition. Those in this camp shudder when these quickie tests are used by people that then go around touting how well they scored.

The counter-argument is that these short-version cognitive tests are reasonable and amount to using a dipstick to gauge how much gasoline there is in the tank of your car. The viewpoint is that it only takes a little bit of measurement to generally know how someone is mentally faring. Once an overall gauge is taken, you can always do a follow-up with a more in-depth cognitive test.

Given all of the preceding discussion, it might be handy to briefly take a look at a well-known cognitive test that has been around since the mid-1990s and continues to actively be in use today, including having been the test that reportedly President Trump took in 2018 (according to news reports).

The Famous MoCA Cognitive Test

That test is the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test.

Some mistakenly get confused by the name of the test and think that it is maybe just a test for Canadians since it refers to Montreal in the naming, but the test is globally utilized and was named for being initially developed by researchers in Montreal, Quebec.

Generally, the MoCA is one-page in size (see example here), which is handily succinct for doing this kind of testing, and the person taking the test is given 10 minutes to answer the questions. There is some leeway often allowed in the testing time allotted, and also some latitude related to having the person first become oriented to the test and its instructions.

Nonetheless, the person taking the test should not be provided say double the time or anything of that magnitude. The reason why the test should be taken in a prescribed amount of time is that the aspect of time is considered related to cognitive acuity.

In other words, if the person is given more time than others have previously gotten, presumably they can cognitively devote more mental cycles or effort and might do better on the test accordingly.

A timed test is not just about your cognition per se, but also about how fast you think and whether your thinking processes are as fluid as others that have taken the test.

If it took someone an hour and they got a top score, while someone else got a top score in ten minutes, we would be hard-pressed to compare their results. You might liken this to playing timed chess, whereby the longer you have, the more chess moves you can potentially mentally foresee, which is fine in some circumstances, but when trying to make for a balanced playing field, you put a timer on how long each player has to make their move.

That being said, the time allotted for a given test should not be so short as to shortchange the cognitive opportunities, which would once again presumably hamper the measurement of cognition. A chess player that has to say just two seconds to make a move will likely randomly take a shot rather than try to devote mental energy to the task.

In theory, the amount of time provided should be the classic Goldilocks amount, just enough time to allow for a sufficient dollop of mental effort, and not so much time that it inadvertently extends the cognition and perhaps enables a lesser cognitive capacity to use time as a crutch to imbue itself (assuming thats not what the test is attempting to measure).

I am about to explain specific details of the MoCA cognitive test, so if you want to someday take the test, please know that I am about to spoil your freshness (this is a spoiler alert).

The test attempts to cover a lot of cognitive ground, doing so by providing a variety of cognition tasks, including the use of numbers, the use of words, the use of sentences, the use of the alphabet, the use of visual cognitive capabilities such as interpreting images and composing writing, and so on.

Thats worth mentioning because a cognitive test that only covered say counting and involved the addition of numbers would be solely focused on your arithmetic cognition. We know that humans have a fuller range of cognitive abilities. As such, a well-balanced cognitive test tries to hit upon a slew of what are considered cognitive dimensions.

Notably, this can be hard to pack into one short test, and raises some criticisms by those that argue it is dubious to have someone undertake a single question on numbers and a single question on words, and so on, and then attempt to generalize overall about their cognition within each respective entire dimension of cognitive facets.

Lets try out a numbers and arithmetic related question.

Are you ready?

You are to start counting from 100 down to 0 and do so by subtracting 7 each time rather than by one.

Okay, your first answer should be 93, and then your next would be 86, and then 79, and so on.

You cannot use a pencil and paper, nor can you use a calculator. This is supposed to be off the top of your head. Using your fingers or toes is also considered taboo.

How did you do?

Try this next one.

Remember these words: Face, Velvet, Church, Daisy, Red.

I want you to look away from these words and say them aloud, without reading them from the page.

In about five minutes, without looking at the page to refresh your memory, try to once again speak aloud what the words were.

What do those cognitive tests signify?

The counting backward is usually a tough one for most people as they do not normally count in that direction. This forces your mind to slow down and think directly about the numbers and the doing of arithmetics in your head (this is also partially why the same kind of quiz is used for DUI roadway sobriety assessment). If I had asked you to count by sevens starting at zero and counting upward, you would likely do so with much greater ease, and the effort would be less cognitively taxing on you.

For the word memorization, this is an assessment of your short-term memory capacity. It is only five words versus if I had asked you to remember ten words or fifty words. Some people will try to memorize the five words by imagining an image in their minds of each word, while others might string together the words into making a short story that will allow them to recall the words.

Either way, this is an attempt to exercise your cognition around several facets, involving short-term memory, the ability to follow and abide by instructions, a semblance of encoding words in your mind, and has other mental leveraging cerebral components.

Some of the questions on these cognitive tests are considered controversial.

In the case of MoCA, there is typically a clock drawing task that some cognitive test experts have heartburn about.

You are asked to draw a clock and indicate the time on the clock as being a stated time such as perhaps 10 minutes past 7. In theory, you would draw a circle or something similar, you would write the numbers of 1 to 12 around the oval to represent each hour, and you would then sketch a short line pointing from the center toward the 7, and a longer mark pointing from the center to the 2 position (since the marks for minutes are normally representative of five minutes each).

Why is this controversial as a cognitive test question?

One concern is that in todays world, we tend to use digital clocks that display numerically the time and are less likely to use the conventional circular-shaped clock to represent time anymore.

If a person taking the cognitive test is unfamiliar with oval clocks, does it seem appropriate that they would lose several cognition points for poorly accomplishing this task?

This brings up a larger scope qualm about cognitive tests, namely, how can we separate knowledge versus the act of cognition.

I might not know what a conventional clock is and yet have superb cognitive skills. The test is unfairly ascribing knowledge of something in particular to the act of cognition, and so it is falsely measuring one thing that is not necessarily the facet that is being presumably assessed.

Suppose I asked you a question about baseball, such as please go ahead and name the bases or what the various player positions are called. If perchance you know about baseball, you can answer the question, while otherwise, you are going to fail that question.

Do the baseball question and your corresponding answer offer any reasonable semblance of your cognitive capabilities?

In any case, the MoCa cognitive test is usually scored based on a top score of 30, for which the scale typically used is this:

Score 26-30: No cognitive impairment detected

Score 18-25: Mild cognitive impairment

Score 10-17: Moderate cognitive impairment

Score00-09: Severe cognitive impairment

Research studies tend to indicate that people with demonstrative Alzheimers tend to score around 16, ending up in the moderate cognitive impairment category. Presumably, a person with no noticeable cognitive impairment, at least per this specific cognitive test, would score at 26 or higher.

Is it possible to achieve a score in the top tier, the score of 26 or above (suggesting that one does not possess any cognitive impairment), and yet still nonetheless have some form of cognitive deficiency?

Yes, certainly so, since this kind of cognitive test is merely a tiny snapshot or sliver and does not cover an entire battery or gamut of cognition, plus as mentioned earlier there is the possibility of being a priori familiar with the test and/or actively prepare beforehand for the test which can substantively boost performance.

Is it possible to score in the mild, moderate, or severe categories of cognitive impairment and somehow not truly be suffering from cognitive impairment?

Yes, certainly so, since a person might be overly stressed and anxious in taking the test, thus perform poorly due to the situation at hand, or could find the given set of tasks unrelated to their cognition prowess such as perhaps someone that is otherwise ingeniously inventive and cognitively sharp, but find themselves mentally cowed when doing simple arithmetic or memorizing seemingly nonsense words.

All told, it is best to be cautious in interpreting the results of such cognitive tests (and, once again, reinforces the need for a more holistic approach to cognitive assessments).

AI And Cognitive Tests

Another popular topic in the news and one that is seemingly unrelated to this cognitive testing matter is the emergence of AI (hold that thought, for a moment, well get back to it).

You are likely numbed by the multitude of AI systems that seem to keep being developed and released into and affecting our everyday lives, including the rise of facial recognition, the advent of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the case of AI systems such as Alexa and Siri, etc.

On top of that drumbeat, there are the touted wonders of AI, entailing a lot of (rather wild) speculation about where AI is headed and whether AI will eclipse human intelligence, possibly even deciding to take over our planet and choosing to enslave or wipe out humanity (for such theories, see my analysis at this link here).

Why bring up AI, especially if it presumably has nothing to do with cognitive tests and cognitive testing?

Well, for the simple fact that AI does have to do with cognitive testing, very much so.

The presumed goal for AI is to achieve the equivalent of human intelligence, as might somehow be embodied in a machine. We do not yet know what the machine will be, though likely to consist of computers, but the specification does not dictate what it must be, and thus if you could construct a machine via Legos and duct tape that exhibited human intelligence, more power to you.

In brief, we want to craft artificial cognitive capabilities, which are the presumed crux of human intelligence.

Logically, since thats what we are attempting to accomplish, it stands to reason that we would expect AI to be able to readily pass a human-focused cognitive test since doing so would illustrate that the AI has arrived at similar cognitive capacities.

I dont want to burst anyones bubble, but there is no AI today that can do any proper semblance of common-sense reasoning, and we are a long way away from having sentient AI.

Bottom-line: AI today would essentially flunk the MoCA cognitive test and any others of similar complexity too.

Some might try to argue and claim that AI and computers can countdown from 100, and can memorize words, and do the other stated tasks, but this is a misleading assertion. Those are tasks undertaken by an AI system that has been constructed for and contrived to perform those specific tasks, and inarguably is a far cry from understanding or comprehending the test in a manner akin to human capacities and misleadingly anthropomorphize the matter (for more details, see my analysis at this link here).

There is not yet any kind of truly generalizable AI, which some are now calling Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

As added clarification, there is a famous test in the AI field known as the Turing Test (see my explanation at this link here). No AI of today and nor in the foreseeable near future could pass a fully ranging Turing Test, and in some respects, being able to pass a cognitive test like those of MoCA is a variant of a Turing Test (in an extremely narrow way).

AI Cognition And Self-Driving Cars

Another related topic entails the advent of AI-based true self-driving cars.

We are heading toward the use of self-driving cars that involve AI autonomously driving the vehicle, doing so without any human driver at the wheel.

Some wonder whether the AI of today, lacking any kind of common-sense reasoning and nor any inkling of sentience, will be sufficient for driving cars on our public roadways. Critics argue that we are going to have AI substituting for human drivers and yet the AI is insufficiently robust to do so (see more on this contention at my analysis here).

Others insist that the driving task does not require the full range of human cognitive capabilities and thus the AI will do just fine in commanding self-driving cars.

Do you believe that the AI driving you to the grocery store needs to be able to first pass a cognitive test and showcase that it can adequately draw a clock and indicate the time of day?

For now, all we can say is that time will tell.

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How To Flunk Those Cognitive Deficiency Tests And What This Means Too For AI Self-Driving Cars - Forbes

AI artist conjures up convincing fake worlds from memories – New Scientist

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Out of this world

Stanford University and Intel

By Matt Reynolds

Take a look at the above image of a German street. At a glance it could be a blurry dashcam photo, or a snap thats gone through one of those apps that turns photos into paintings.

But you wont find this street anywhere on Google Maps. Thats because it was generated by an imaginative neural network, stitching together its memories of real streets it was trained on.

Nothing in the image actually exists, says Qifeng Chen at Stanford University, California, and Intel. Instead, his AI works from rough layouts that tell it what should be in each part of the image. The centre of the image might be labelled road while other sections are labelled trees or cars its painting by numbers for an AI artist.

Chen says the technique could eventually create game worlds that truly resemble the real world. Using deep learning to render video games could be the future, he says. He has already experimented with using the algorithm to replace the game world in Grand Theft Auto V.

Noah Snavely at Cornell University, New York, is impressed. Generating realistic-looking artificial scenes is a tricky problem, he says, and even the best existing approaches cant do it. Chens system creates the largest and most detailed examples of their kind he has seen.

Snavely says that the technology could allow people to describe a world, and then have an AI build it in virtual reality. Itd be great if you could conjure up a photorealistic scene just by describing it aloud, he says.

Chens system starts by processing a photo of a real street it hasnt seen before, but that has been labelled so the AI knows which bits are supposed to be cars, people, roads and so on. The AI then uses this layout as a guide to generate a completely new image.

The AI was trained on 3000 images of German streets, so when it comes across part of the photolabelled car it draws on its existing knowledge to generate a car there in its own creation. We want the network to memorise what its seen in the data, Chen says.

Intel researchers will present the work at this years International Conference on Computer Vision, which takes place in Venice, Italy, in late October.

The algorithm was also trained and tested on a smaller database of photos of domestic interiors, but Snavely says that to realise its potential it needs a data set that captures the true diversity of the world. Thats easier said than done, however, as each component in the training images needs to be labelled by hand, and creating a data set with that level of detail is extremely labour-intensive.

Chen says his system still has a long way to go before it can build truly photorealistic worlds. The images it produces right now have a blurry, dreamlike quality, as the network isnt able to fill in all the details we expect in photos. He is already working on a larger version of the system that he hopes will be much more capable.

But when it comes to building worlds in virtual reality, that dreamlike nature might not be such a bad thing, says Snavely. Were used to seeing super-slick and realistic worlds on film and in video games, but theres not quite that level of expectation when it comes to VR. You dont need total photorealism, he says.

Reference: arxiv.org/abs/1707.09405

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AI artist conjures up convincing fake worlds from memories - New Scientist

New MI5 head promises to focus on China and harness AI – The Guardian

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MI5s deputy head will take the top job at the spy agency next month promising a sharper focus on China and to work more closely with the private sector in harnessing artificial intelligence in tackling hostile state and terrorist activity.

Ken McCallum, a career MI5 officer, has been the agencys deputy director general since April 2017 and was seen by insiders as the heir apparent at an organisation that prides itself on internal appointments to its leading position.

The Glaswegian is the youngest ever boss of MI5, although the organisation will only say he is in his 40s and replaces Sir Andrew Parker, who had been due to step down in April after seven years as the director general in charge of the the UKs domestic security service.

His appointment was announced by the home secretary, Priti Patel, on Monday.

MI5s purpose is hugely motivating, McCallum said. Our people with our partners strive to keep the country safe, and they always want to go the extra mile. Having devoted my working life to that team effort, it is a huge privilege now to be asked to lead it as director general.

Insiders said that McCallum wanted to be clearer about the threat posed by China particularly in terms of industrial espionage and cyberwarfare in the belief that the level of spying by Bejiing in the UK was not appreciated more widely.

But the agency recognises that its concerns about China, which predate the coronavirus crisis by many months, also need to be set against the fact that the vast country also remains an important economic partner for the UK.

MI5 is expected to continue to support the decision to allow Huawei to supply 5G mobile phone equipment, even if highlighting other threats from China could provide further ammunition to Bejings critics on the Conservative backbenches, who are threatening to try to block the Chinese companys involvement.

McCallum also hopes to work more closely with technology companies to try to better exploit advances in technology at a time when the agency also remains concerned about the rise of hard-to-crack end-to-end encryption.

The spy agency believes it no longer has the internal capability to develop what it needs in fields such as artificial intelligence and data analysis, while McCallum will continue to demand that spy agencies have lawful access to secure messaging services.

At one point, around a decade ago, McCallum was responsible for MI5s cyber activities, when the subject was less fashionable in intelligence circles. It was a period that helped shape his interest in China and working with the technology industry.

As deputy director general, McCallum was responsible for the agencys operational work during a period when there were terrorist attacks in Manchester and London, and for MI5s response to the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal by Russia.

McCallum has 25 years experience within MI5, spending the first 10 years of his career working on Northern Ireland, focusing on terrorism and the development of the peace process around the time of the 1998 Good Friday agreement.

He was asked to take charge of counter-terror investigations and risk management relating to the London 2012 Olympics, before being promoted to become director general, strategy in 2015, responsible for MI5s relationships with its sister intelligence agencies GCHQ and MI6.

McCallum will become the 18th director general of MI5 since its foundation in 1909, although its leaders have only been publicly avowed since 1993. Modern agency chiefs serve fixed periods of office, preventing them from becoming entrenched at the top of the agencies they run.

Parker, 57, had his term extended despite a difficult period in 2017 when the UK was hit by a spate of terrorist attacks; after the attack at London Bridge, the agency admitted that the ringleader, Khuram Butt, had been on its radar but the signs that the Islamist terrorist was planning the attack that killed eight with two associates were missed.

Fresh concerns also emerged this winter when Usman Khan, a man convicted of terror offences and released on licence, killed two in an attack also near London Bridge, prompting an emergency tightening of terror sentencing amid concerns that people were continuing to be radicalised in prison.

But the military defeat of Islamic State in Syria and the death of its leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi has given some cautious grounds for optimism. The terror threat was reduced from severe to substantial last November.

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New MI5 head promises to focus on China and harness AI - The Guardian

LogMeIn acquires chatbot and AI startup Nanorep for up to $50M – TechCrunch

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LogMeIn, the company that provides authentication and other connectivity solutions for those who connect remotely to networks and services, has made another acquisition to expand the products it offers to customers, specifically in its new Bold360 CRM platform, launched in June. The company has picked up Nanorep, a startup out of Israel that develops chatbots and other AI-based tools to help people navigate self-service apps.

LogMeIn is paying $45 million plus up to $5 million more in earn-outs based on performance and employees staying put over the next two years.

Nanorep had raised just under $7 million from investors that included Titanium out of Russia (which had also backed Cloudyn, recently acquired by Microsoft), Oryzn Capital and OurCrowd.

The startup already had around 500 large customers, including big names like FedEx, ToysRUs and Vodafone. In essence, its platform helps anticipate what customers are trying to do when theyre on a website say in a technical support or search situation and reduces the number of steps needed to get there. It looks like all of Nanoreps existing business will continue as its tech also gets integrated into Bold360.

LogMeIns launch of Bold360 earlier this year was intended to help the company expand the range of services that it offered to customers, beyond authentication and IT management within an organisation, and into more cloud-based services where the business interfaces with its customers.

However, the CRM space is already very crowded, and so its no surprise to see that LogMeIn has made an acquisition to add more features to the service to help set it apart from the pack.

With Nanorep, its also tapping into the recent enthusiasm and interest in AI and building intelligent services that mimic human behaviours, specifically in CRM.

Artificial intelligence is changing the way we interact with our favorite brands and will play a critical role in the future of customer engagement, said Bill Wagner, CEO, LogMeIn, in a statement. With Nanorep, we gain proven technology and AI expertise that expands our Bold360 offering, accelerates our customer engagement vision and provides a natural path for us to leverage these emerging technologies across our entire portfolio. We believe in the ability of technology to unlock the potential of the modern workforce and with the addition of Nanorep we are going to be able to deliver solutions that will help our customers achieve the next generation of humanized and personalized customer service.

Although LogMeIn has acquired Nanobot to help raise its game in CRM, on another level this is also an important move just to keep up.

Gartner predicts that conversational agents which you can interpret as a more fancy way of saying chatbots will account for 30 percent of all customer service interactions by 2022, up from just three percent today.

There are many others that are also active in this same area, includingSalesforce with its Einstein AI, Gong, which provides real-time processing and teaching to live agents; and Hubspot, which just made an acquisition of its own, of Kemvi.

What Nanorep is tapping into that is interesting is the fact that the vast range of businesses in the world are not tech-centric, and so they will be less capable of building AI solutions like chatbots themselves, nor will they want to spend an arm and a leg to get them: like all software, AI is gradually moving into the realm of being off-the-shelf, and LogMeIn is hoping to be a part of that trend.

This is publicly traded LogMeIns seventh acquisition, and its first since acquiring password manager LastPass in 2015 for $110 million.

Link:

LogMeIn acquires chatbot and AI startup Nanorep for up to $50M - TechCrunch

This $200 AI Will End Tennis Club Screaming Matches – Bloomberg

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Visit just about any tennis club on a Saturday, and youre likely to witness otherwise sensible adults losing their minds over line calls. Players suffer complete meltdowns as they hurl insults. Parents morph into brooding teenagers. Friends become enemies. Postmatch beers can undo some of the damage, but the shame and resentment linger for days.

More civilized times may lie ahead. French inventor Grgoire Gentil has designed a $200 GoPro-size device that can be fastened to any net post and detect whether balls are in or out with surprising accuracy. Its called, reasonably enough, the In/Out. I was born in Paris and raised on clay, Gentil says. On clay, the ball leaves a mark, and he recalls many arguments over a blemish on the court. It was the starting point of this, I would say.

Gentil, 44, now lives in Palo Alto and built the In/Out in his living room lab. The device monitors both sides of a tennis court using a pair of cameras similar to those found in smartphones. After attaching the In/Out to the net with a plastic strap, a player pushes a button on its screen, and it scans the court to find the lines using open-source artificial intelligence software. AI also helps the device track the balls flight, pace, and spin. This would not have been possible five years ago, Gentil says.

The In/Outs dual cameras map the lines of a tennis court, and the device beeps to signal missed shots.

Source: In/Out

In a test at Stanford, Gentil and I played for an hour, and the In/Out beeped whenever one of his shots sailed long or wide. (I dont remember missing any.) On close calls, we rushed over to watch a video replay on the In/Out screen. At hours end, Gentil whipped out a tablet and connected to the In/Out app, which showed where all our shots had landed and provided some other stats.

Although equipment like the In/Out has been around for years, Gentils is the only one that costs about as little as a decent racket. Top tournaments, including the Grand Slams, use Hawk-Eye, a Sony Corp.-owned system of superaccurate cameras that customers say costs $60,000 or more to set up on each court. Given the price, its typically reserved for show courts. Sony didnt respond to requests for comment.

PlaySight Interactive Ltd., a startup in Israel, makes a six-camera system thats less accurate than Hawk-Eye but costs a mere $10,000 per court, plus a monthly fee to collect data that can be reviewed online or in an app. PlaySights setup also includes a large screen that lets players see line calls and ball speed without interrupting the game. The company has sold its gear mostly to tennis clubs and universities.

Its screen can show video replays.

Source: In/Out

Chris Edwards heads the product testing work done by retailer Tennis Warehouse and has tried all three tracking systems. The In/Out doesnt bring the same depth of insight as PlaySight, he says. But as far as a portable, cheap device goes, the In/Out has the potential to be the best by far. I havent seen anything else like this.

Over the past decade, Gentil has made a dozen products. He sold a software company to Cisco Systems Inc., designed an augmented-reality motorcycle helmet, and built a hand-size drone that can follow a person around. He spent two years developing the In/Out, tuning the software, even 3D-printing a plastic tennis ball-shaped case for it. Its been a tumultuous process, Gentil says. You get an algorithm working on the tennis court one day and think you will sell hundreds of thousands of units, and the day after, nothing is working.

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Gentil acknowledges his machines limits. The In/Out has a 20-millimeter margin of error, compared with about 3mm for the Hawk-Eye, and can get confused during doubles matches if the extra players block its line of sight. Gentil says he hopes to improve the devices accuracy and recommends that two In/Outs be used for doubles. As for the possibility that Sony or PlaySight might sue him over the concept of his invention, hes filed some patents himself, he says. If Hawk-Eye is coming after me tomorrow morning, they are going against innovation and against the tennis community. I think I might have the tennis community with me.

The bottom line: Gentils $200 line-calling AI isnt as accurate as rival products, but unlike them, its affordable enough for mass adoption.

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This $200 AI Will End Tennis Club Screaming Matches - Bloomberg

Welcome to the land that no country wants

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Bir Tawil is the last truly unclaimed land on earth: a tiny sliver of Africa ruled by no state, inhabited by no permanent residents and governed by no laws. To get there, you have two choices.

The first is to fly to the Sudanese capital Khartoum, charter a jeep, and follow the Shendi road hundreds of miles up to Abu Hamed, a settlement that dates back to the ancient kingdom of Kush. Today it serves as the regions final permanent human outpost before the vast Nubian desert, twice the size of mainland Britain and almost completely barren, begins unfolding to the north.

There are some artisanal gold miners in the desert, conjuring specks of hope out of the ground, a few armed gangs, which often prey upon the prospectors, and a small number of military units who carry out patrols in the area and attempt, with limited success, to keep the peace. You need to drive past all of them, out to the point where the occasional scattered shrub or palm tree has long since disappeared and given way to a seemingly endless, flat horizon of sand and rock out to the point where there are no longer any landmarks by which to measure the passing of your journey.

Out here, dry winds often blow in from the Arabian peninsula, whipping up sheets of dust that plunge visibility down to near-zero. After a day like this, then a night, and then another day, you will finally cross into Bir Tawil, an 800-square-mile cartographical oddity nestled within the border that separates Egypt and Sudan. Both nations have renounced any claim to it, and no other government has any jurisdiction over it.

The second option is to approach from Egypt, setting off from the countrys southernmost city of Aswan, down through the arid expanse that lies between Lake Nasser to the west and the Red Sea to the east. Much of it has been declared a restricted zone by the Egyptian army, and no one can get near the border without first obtaining their permission.

In June 2014, a 38-year-old farmer from Virginia named Jeremiah Heaton did exactly that. After obtaining the necessary paperwork from the Egyptian military authorities, he started out on a treacherous 14-hour expedition through remote canyons and jagged mountains, eventually wending his way into the no mans land of Bir Tawil and triumphantly planting a flag.

Heatons six-year-old daughter, Emily, had once asked her father if she could ever be a real princess; after discovering the existence of Bir Tawil on the internet, his birthday present to her that year was to trek there and turn her wish into a reality. So be it proclaimed, Heaton wrote on his Facebook page, that Bir Tawil shall be forever known as the Kingdom of North Sudan. The Kingdom is established as a sovereign monarchy with myself as the head of state; with Emily becoming an actual princess.

Heatons social media posts were picked up by a local paper in Virginia, the Bristol Herald-Courier, and quickly became the stuff of feel-good clickbait around the world. CNN, Time, Newsweek and hundreds of other global media outlets pounced on the story. Heaton responded by launching a global crowdfunding appeal aimed at securing $250,000 in an effort at getting his new state up and running.

Heaton knew his actions would provoke awe, mirth and confusion, and that many would question his sanity. But what he was not prepared for was an angry backlash by observers who regarded him not as a devoted father or a heroic pioneer but rather as a 21st-century imperialist. After all, the portrayal of land as unclaimed or undeveloped was central to centuries of ruthless conquest. The same callous, dehumanising logic that has been used to legitimise European colonialism not just in Africa but in the Americas, Australia, and elsewhere is on full display here, noted one commentator. Are white people still allowed to do this kind of stuff? asked another.

Any new idea thats this big and bold always meets with some sort of ridicule, or is questioned in terms of its legitimacy, Heaton told me last year over the telephone. In his version of the story, Heatons conquest of Bir Tawil was not about colonialism, but rather familial love and ambitious dreams: apart from making Emily royalty, he hopes to turn his newly founded nation which lies within one of the most inhospitable regions on the planet and contains no fixed population, no coastline, no surface water and no arable soil into a cutting-edge agriculture and technology research hub that will ultimately benefit all humanity.

After all, Heaton reasoned, no country wanted this forgotten corner of the world, and no individual before him had ever laid claim to it. What harm was to be caused by some wellintentioned, starry-eyed eccentric completing such a challenge, and why should it not be him?

There were two problems with Heatons argument. First, territories and borders can be delicate and volatile things, and tampering with them is rarely without unforeseen consequences. As Heaton learned from the public response to his self-declared kingdom, there is no neutral or harmless way to claim a state, no matter how far away from anywhere else it appears to be. Second, Heaton was not the first well-intentioned, starry-eyed eccentric to travel all the way to Bir Tawil and plant a flag. Someone else got there first, and that someone was me.

Like all great adventure stories, this one began with lukewarm beer and the internet. It was the summer of 2010, and the days in Cairo where I was living and working as a journalist were long and hot. My friend Omars balcony provided a shaded refuge filled with wicker chairs and reliably stable wireless broadband. It was up there, midway through a muggy evenings web pottering, that we first encountered Bir Tawil.

Omar was an Egyptian-British filmmaker armed with a battery of finely tuned Werner Herzog impressions and a crisp black beard that I was secretly quite jealous of. The pair of us knew nothing beyond a single fact, gleaned from a blog devoted to arcane maps: barely 500 miles away from where we sat, there apparently existed a patch of land over which no country on earth asserted any sovereignty. Within five minutes I had booked the flights. Omar opened two more beers.

Places beyond the scope of everyday authority have always fired the imagination. They appear to offer us an escape when all you can see of somewhere is its outlines, it is easy to start fantasising about the void within. No mans lands are our El Dorados, says Noam Leshem, a Durham University geographer who recently travelled 6,000 miles through a series of so-called dead spaces, from the former frontlines of the Balkans war to the UN buffer zone in Cyprus, along with his colleague Alasdair Pinkerton of Royal Holloway. The pair intended to conclude their journey at Bir Tawil, but never made it. There is something alluring about a place beyond the control of the state, Leshem adds, and also something highly deceptive. In reality, nowhere is unplugged from the complex political and historical dynamics of the world around it, and as Omar and I were to discover no visitors can hope to short-circuit them.

Six months later, in January 2011, we touched down at Khartoum International airport with a pair of sleeping bags, five energy bars, and an embarrassingly small stock of knowledge about our final destination. To an extent, the ignorance was deliberate. For one thing, we planned to shoot a film about our travels, and Omar had persuaded me the secret to good film-making was to begin work utterly unprepared. Omar according to Omar was a cinematic auteur; the kind of maverick who could breeze into a desolate wasteland with no vehicle, no route, and no contacts and produce an award-winning documentary from the mayhem. One does not lumber an auteur, he explained, with printed itineraries, booked accommodation or emergency phone numbers. Mindful of my own aspirations to auteurism, this reasoning struck me as convincing.

There was something else, too, that made us refrain from proper planning. As the date of our departure for Sudan drew closer, Omar and I had taken to discussing our plans for Bir Tawil in increasingly grandiose terms. Deep down, I think, we both knew that the notion of claiming the territory and harnessing it for some grand ideological cause was preposterous. But what if it wasnt? What if our own little tabula rasa could be the start of something bigger, transforming a forgotten relic of colonial map-making into a progressive force that would defeat contemporary injustices across the world?

The mechanics of how this might actually work remained a little hazy. Yet just occasionally, at more contemplative junctures, it did occur to us that in the process of planting a flag in Bir Tawil as part of some ill-defined critique of arbitrary borders and imperial violence, there was a risk we could appear to the untrained eye very similar to the imperialists who had perpetrated such violence in the first place. It was a resemblance we were keen to avoid. Undertaking this journey in a state of deep ignorance, we told ourselves, would help mitigate pomposity. Without any basic knowledge, we would be forced to travel as humble innocents, relying solely on guidance from the communities we passed through.

As the two of us cleared customs, we broke into smiles and congratulated each other. The auteurs had landed, and what is more they had Important Things To Say about borders and states and sovereignty and empires. We set off in search of some local currency, and warmed to our theme. By the time we found an ATM, we were referring to Bir Tawil as so much more than a conceptual exposition. Under our benevolent stewardship, we assured each other, it could surely become some sort of launchpad for radical new ideas, a haven for subversives all over the planet.

It was at that point that the auteurs realised their bank cards did not work in Sudan, and that there were no international money transfer services they could use to wire themselves some cash.

This setback represented the first consequence of our failure to do any preparatory research. The nagging sense that our maverick approach to reaching Bir Tawil may not have been the wisest way forward gained momentum with consequence number two, which was that to solve the money problem we had to persuade a friend of a friend of a friend of an Egyptian business acquaintance to do an illicit currency trade for us on the outskirts of Khartoum. Consequence number three namely that, given our lack of knowledge about where we could and could not legally film in the capital, after a few days we inadvertently attracted the attention of an undercover state security agent while carrying around $2,000 worth of used Sudanese banknotes in an old rucksack, and were arrested transformed suspicion into certainty.

On the date Omar and I were incarcerated, millions of citizens in South Sudan were heading to the polls to decide between continued unity with the north or secession and a new, independent state of their own. We sat silently in a nondescript office block just off Gamaa Avenue the citys main diplomatic thoroughfare while a group of men in black suits and dark sunglasses scrolled through files on Omars video camera. Armed soldiers, unsmiling, stood guard at the door. Through the rooms single window, open but barred, the sound of nearby traffic could be heard. The images on the screen depicted me and Omar gadding about town on the days following our arrival; me and Omar unfurling huge rolls of yellowing paper at the governments survey department; me and Omar scrawling indecipherable patterns on sheets of paper in an effort to design the new Bir Tawili flag; me and Omar squabbling over fabric colours at the Omdurman market where we had gone to stitch together the aforementioned flag. With each new picture, a man who appeared to be the senior officer raised his eyes to meet ours, shook his head, and sighed.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, I pointed out to Omar how apposite it was that at the very moment in which votes were being cast in the south, possibly redrawing the regions borders for ever, we had been placed under lock and key in a military intelligence unit almost a thousand miles to the north for attempting to do the same. Omar, concerned about the fate of both his camera and the contents of the rucksack, declined to respond. I predicted that in the not too distant future, when we had made it to Bir Tawil, we would look back on this moment and laugh. Omar glared.

In the end, our captivity lasted under an hour. The senior officer concluded, perceptively, that, whatever we were attempting to do, we were far too incompetent to do it properly, or to cause too much trouble along the way. Upon our release, we set about obtaining a jeep that could take us to Bir Tawil. Every reputable travel agent we approached turned us down point-blank, citing the prevalence of bandit attacks in the desert. Thankfully, we were able to locate a disreputable travel agent, a large man with a taste for loud polo shirts who went by the name of Obai. Obai was actually not a travel agent at all, but rather a big-game hunter with a lucrative sideline in ambiguously licensed pick-up trucks. In exchange for most of our used banknotes, he offered to provide us with a jeep, a satellite phone, two tanks of water, and his nephew Gedo, who happened to be looking for work as a driver. In the absence of any alternative offers, we gratefully accepted.

Unlike Obai, who was a font of swashbuckling anecdotes and improbable tales of derring-do, Gedo turned out to be a more taciturn soul. He was a civil engineer who had previously done construction work on the colossal Merowe dam in northern Sudan, Africas largest hydropower project. On the day of our departure, he turned up wearing a baseball cap with Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics emblazoned across the front, and carrying a loaded gun. As we waved goodbye to Obai and began weaving our way through the capitals rush hour traffic, Omar and I set about explaining to Gedo the intricacies of our plan to transform Bir Tawil into an open-source state that would disrupt existing patterns of global power and privilege no mean feat, given that we didnt understand any of the intricacies ourselves. Gedo responded to this as he responded to everything: with a sage nod and a deliberate stroke of his stubble.

Im here to protect you, he told us solemnly, as we swung north on to the highway and left Khartoum behind us. Also, Ive never been on a holiday before, and this one sounds fun.

Bir Tawils unusual status wedged between the borders of two countries and yet claimed by neither is a byproduct of colonial machinations in north-east Africa, during an era of British control over Egypt and Egyptian influence on Sudan.

In 1899, government representatives from London and Cairo the latter nominally independent, but in reality the servants of a British protectorate put pen to paper on an agreement which established the shared dominion of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The treaty specified that, following 18 years of intense fighting between Egyptian and British forces on the one side and Mahdist rebels in Sudan on the other, Sudan would now become a British colony in all but name. Its northern border with Egypt was to run along the 22nd parallel, cutting a straight line through the Nubian desert right out to the ocean.

Three years later, however, another document was drawn up by the British. This one noted that a mountain named Bartazuga, just south of the 22nd parallel, was home to the nomadic Ababda tribe, which was considered to have stronger links with Egypt than Sudan. The document stipulated that henceforth this area should be administered by Egypt. Meanwhile, a much-larger triangle of land north of the 22nd parallel, named Halaib, abutting the Red Sea, was assigned to other tribes from the Beja people who are largely based in Sudan for grazing, and thus now came under Sudans jurisdiction. And that was that, for the next few decades at least. World wars came and went, regimes rose and fell, and those imaginary lines in the sand gathered dust in bureaucratic archives, of little concern to anyone on the ground.

Disputes only started in earnest when Sudan finally achieved independence in 1956. The new postcolonial government in Khartoum immediately declared that its national borders matched the tweaked boundaries stipulated in the second proclamation, making the Halaib triangle Sudanese. Egypt demurred, insisting that the latter document was concerned only with areas of temporary administrative jurisdiction and that sovereignty had been established in the earlier treaty. Under this logic, the real border stayed straight and the Halaib triangle remained Egyptian.

By the early 1990s, when a Canadian oil firm signalled its intention to begin exploration in Halaib and the prospect of substantial mineral wealth being found in the region gained momentum, the disagreement was no longer academic. Egypt sent military forces to reclaim Halaib from Sudan, and despite fierce protests from Khartoum which still considers Halaib to be Sudanese and even tried to organise voting there during the 2010 Sudanese general election it has remained under Cairos control ever since.

Our world is littered with contested borders. The geographers Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen refer to the dashed lines on atlases as the scars of history. Compared with other divisions between countries that seem so solid and timeless when scored on a map, these squiggles enclaves, misshapen lumps and odd protrusions are a reminder of how messy and malleable the process of drawing up borders has always been.

What makes this particular border conflict unique, though, is not the tussle over the Halaib triangle itself, but rather the impact it has had on the smaller patch of land just south of the 22nd parallel around Bartazuga mountain, the area known as Bir Tawil.

Egypt and Sudans rival claims on Halaib both rest on documents that appear to assign responsibility for Bir Tawil to the other country. As a result, neither wants to assert any sovereignty over Bir Tawil, for to do so would be to renounce their rights to the larger and more lucrative territory. On Egyptian maps, Bir Tawil is shown as belonging to Sudan. On Sudanese maps, it appears as part of Egypt. In practice, Bir Tawil is widely believed to have the legal status of terra nullius nobodys land and there is nothing else quite like it on the planet.

Omar and I were not, it must be acknowledged, the first to discover this anomaly. If the internet is to be believed, Bir Tawil has in fact been claimed many times over by keyboard emperors whose virtual principalities and warring microstates exist only online. The Kingdom of the State of Bir Tawil boasts a national anthem by the late British jazz musician Acker Bilk. The Emirate of Bir Tawil traces its claim over the territory to, among other sources, the Quran, the British monarchy, the 1933 Montevideo Convention and the 1856 US Guano Islands Act. There is a Grand Dukedom of Bir Tawil, an Empire of Bir Tawil, a United Arab Republic of Bir Tawil and a United Lunar Emirate of Bir Tawil. The last of these has a homepage featuring a citizen application form, several self-help mantras, and stock photos of people doing yoga in a park.

From our rarefied vantage point at the back of Obais Toyota Hilux, it was easy to look down with disdain upon these cyber-squatting chancers. None of them had ever actually set foot in Bir Tawil, rendering their claims to sovereignty worthless. Few had truly grappled with Bir Tawils complex backstory, or of the bloodshed it was built upon (tens of thousands of Sudanese fighters and civilians died as a result of the Egyptian and British military assaults that ended in the establishment of Sudans northern borders and thus, ultimately, the creation of Bir Tawil). Granted, Omar and I knew little of the backstory either, but at least we had actually got to Sudan and were making, by our own estimation, a decent fist of finding out. We ate our energy bars, listened attentively to tales of Gedos love life, and scanned the road for clues. The first arrived nearly 200 miles north-east of Khartoum, about a third of the way up towards Bir Tawil, when we came across a city of iron and fire oozing kerosene into the desert. This was Atbara: home of Sudans railway system, and the engine room of its modern-day creation story.

Until very recently, the long history of Sudan has not been one of a single country or people: many different tribes, religions and political factions have competed for power and resources, across territories and borders that bear no relation to those marking out the states limits today. A lack of rigid, recognisable boundaries was used to help justify Europes violent scramble to occupy and annex land throughout Africa in the 19th century. Often, the first step taken by western colonisers was to map and border the territory they were seizing. Charting of land was usually a prelude to military invasion and resource extraction; during the British conquest of Sudan, Atbara was crucial to both.

Sudans contemporary railway system began life as a battering ram for the British to attack Khartoum. Trains carried not only weapons and troops but everyday provisions too, specified by Winston Churchill as the letters, newspapers, sausages, jam, whisky, soda water, and cigarettes which enable the Briton to conquer the world without discomfort. Atbara was the site where key rail lines intersected, and its importance grew rapidly after Londons grip on Sudan had been formalised in the 1899 Anglo-Egyptian treaty.

Everything that mattered, from cotton to gum, came through here, as did all the rolling stock needed to move and export it, Mohamed Ederes, a local railway storekeeper, told us. He walked us through his warehouse, down corridors stacked high with box after box of metal train parts and past giant leather-bound catalogues stuffed with handwritten notes. From here, he declared proudly, you reached the world.

Atbaras colonial origins are still etched into its modern-day layout. One half of the town, originally the preserve of expatriates, is low-rise and leafy; on the other side of the tracks, where native workers were made to live, accommodation is denser and taller. But just as Atbara was a vehicle for colonialism, so too was it the place in which a distinct sense of Sudanese nationhood began to develop.

As Sudans economy grew in the early 20th century, so did the railway industry, bringing thousands of migrant workers from disparate social and ethnic groups to the city. By the second world war, Atbara was famous not only for its carriage depots and loading sidings, but also for the nationalist literature and labour militancy of those who worked within them. Poets as well as workers leaders emerged out of the nascent trade union movement in the late 1940s, which held devastating strikes and helped shake the foundations of British rule. The same train lines that had once borne Churchills sausages and soda water were now deployed to deliver workers solidarity packages all over the country, during industrial action that ultimately brought the colonial economy to a halt. Within a decade, Sudan secured independence.

The next morning, as we drove on, Gedo grew quieter and the signs of human habitation became sparser. At Karima, a small town 150 miles further north, we came across a fleet of abandoned Nile steamers stranded on the river bank; below stairs there were metal plaques bearing the name of shipwrights from Portsmouth, Southampton and Glasgow, each companys handiwork now succumbing slowly to the elements. We clambered through cobwebbed cabins and across rotting sun decks, and then decided to scale the nearby Jebel Barkal Holy Mountain in Arabic where eagles tracked us warily from the sky. Omar maintained a running commentary on our progress, delivered as a flawless Herzog parody, and it proved so painful for all in earshot that the eagles began to dive-bomb us. We set off running, taking refuge among the mountains scattered ruins.

Jebel Barkal was once believed to be the home of Amun, king of gods and god of wind. Fragments of Amuns temple are still visible at the base of the cliffs. Over the past few millennia, Jebel Barkal has been the outermost limit of Egypts Pharaonic kingdoms, the centre of an autonomous Nubian region, and a vassal province of an empire headquartered thousands of miles away in Constantinople. In the modern era of defined borders and seemingly stable nation states, Bir Tawil seems an impossible anomaly. But standing over the jagged crevices of Jebel Barkal, looking out across a region that had been passed between so many different rulers, and formed part of so many different arrangements of power over land, our endpoint started to feel more familiar.

The following evening we camped at Abu Hamed, on the very edge of the desert. Beyond the ramshackle cafeterias that have sprung up to serve the artisanal gold-mining community sending shisha smoke and the noise of Egyptian soap operas spiralling up into the night Omar and I saw the outlines of large agricultural reclamation projects, silhouetted in the distance against a starry sky. Since 2008, when global food prices spiked, there has been a boom in what critics call land-grabbing: international investors and sovereign wealth funds snapping up leases on massive tracts of African territory in order to intensify the production of crops for export, and bringing such territory under the control of European, Asian and Gulf nations in the process. Arable land was the first to be targeted, but increasingly desert areas are also being fenced off and sold. Near Abu Hamed, Saudi Arabian companies have been greening the sand blanketing it in soil and water in an effort to make it fertile with worrying consequences for both the environment and local communities, some of whom have long asserted customary rights over the area.

It was not so long ago that the prophets of globalisation proclaimed the impending decline of the nation-state and the rise of a borderless world one modelled on the frictionless transactions of international finance, which pay no heed to state boundaries.

A resurgent populist nationalism and the refugee crisis that has stoked its flames has exposed such claims as premature, and investors depend more than ever on national governments to open up new terrains for speculation and accumulation, and to discipline citizens who dare to stand in the way. But there is no doubt that we now live in a world where the power of capital has profoundly disrupted old ideas about political authority inside national boundaries. All over the planet, the institutions that impact our lives most directly banks, buses, hospitals, schools, farms can now be sold off to the highest bidder and governed by the whims of a transnational financial elite. Where national borders once enclosed populations capable of practising collective sovereignty over their own resources, in the 21st century they look more and more like containers for an inventory of private assets, each waiting to be spliced, diced and traded around the world.

It was at Abu Hamed, while lying awake at night in a sleeping bag, nestled into a shallow depression in the sand, that I realised the closer we were getting to our destination, the more I understood what was so beguiling about it. Now that Bir Tawil was in sight, it had started to appear less like an aberration and more like a question: is there anything natural about how borders and power function in the world today?

In the end, there was no fanfare. On a hazy Tuesday afternoon, 40 hours since we left the road at Abu Hamed, 13 days since we touched down in Khartoum, and six months since the dotted lines of Bir Tawil first appeared before our eyes, Omar gave a shout from the back of the jeep. I checked our GPS coordinates on the satellite phone, and cross-referenced them with the map. Gedo, on being informed that we were now in Bir Tawil and outside of any countrys dominion, promptly took out his gun and fired off a volley of shots. We traipsed up a small hillock and wedged our somewhat forlorn flag into the rocks a yellow desert fox, set against a black circle and bordered by triangles of green and red then sat and gazed out at the horizon, tracing the rise and fall of distant mountains and following the curves of sunken valleys as they criss-crossed each other like veins through the sand. The sky and the ground both looked massive, and unending, and the warm stones around us crumbled in our hands. After a couple of hours, Gedo said that it was getting late, so we climbed back into the jeep and began the long journey home.

Well before our journey had ever begun, we had hoped albeit not particularly fervently that we could do something with it, something that mattered; that by striking out for a place this nebulous we could find a shortcut to social justice, two days drive from the nearest tap or telephone. In 800 square miles of desert, we thought that we could exploit the outlines of the bordered world in order to subvert it.

Jeremiah Heaton, beyond the kingdom for a princess schmaltz and the forthcoming Disney adaptation (he has sold film rights to his story for an undisclosed fee) seems albeit from an almost diametrically opposite philosophical outlook to be convinced of something similar. For him, the fantasy is a libertarian one, offering freedom not from the iniquities of capitalism but from the government interference that inhibits it. Just as we did, he wants to take advantage of a quirk in the system to defy it. When I spoke to Heaton, he told me with genuine enthusiasm that his country (not yet recognised by any other state or international body) would offer the worlds great innovators a place to develop their products unencumbered by taxes and regulation, a place where private enterprise faces no socially prescribed borders of its own. Big companies, he assured me, were scrambling to join his vision.

You would be surprised at the outreach that has occurred from the corporate level to me directly, Heaton insisted during our conversation. Its not been an issue of me having to go out and sell myself on this idea. A lot of these large corporations, they see market opportunities in what Im doing. He painted a picture of Bir Tawil one day playing host to daring scientific research, ground-breaking food-production facilities and alternative banking systems that work for the benefit of customers rather than CEOs. I asked him if he understood why some people found his plans, and the assumptions they rested on, highly dubious.

Theres that saying: if you were king for a day, what would you do differently? he replied. Think about that question yourself and apply it to your own country. Thats what Im doing, but on a much bigger scale. This is not colonialism; Im an individual, not a country, I havent taken land that belongs to any other country, and Im not extracting resources other than sunshine and sand. I am just one human being, trying to improve the condition of other human beings. I have the purest intentions in the world to make this planet a better place, and to try and criticise that just because Im a white person sitting on land in the middle of the Nubian desert He trailed off, and was silent for a moment. Well, he concluded, its really juvenile.

But if, by some miracle, Heaton ever did gain global recognition as the legitimate leader of an independent Bir Tawili state, would his pitch to corporations base yourself here to avoid paying taxes and escape the manacles of democratic oversight actually do anything to improve the condition of other human beings? Part of the allure of unclaimed spaces is their radical potential to offer a blank canvas but as Omar and I belatedly realised, nothing, and nowhere, starts from scratch. Any utopia founded on the basis of a concept terra nullius that has wreaked immense historical destruction, is built on rotten foundations.

In truth, no place is a dead zone, stopped in time and ripe for private capture least of all Bir Tawil, which translates as long well in Arabic and was clearly the site of considerable human activity in the past. Although it lacks any permanent dwellings today, this section of desert is still used by members of the Ababda and Bisharin tribes who carry goods, graze crops and make camp within the sands. (Not the least of our failures was that we did not manage to speak to any of the peoples who had passed through Bir Tawil before we arrived.) Their ties to the area may be based on traditional rather than written claims but Bir Tawil is not any more a no mans land than the territory once known as British East Africa, where terra nullius was repeatedly invoked in the early 20th century by both chartered companies and the British government that supported them to justify the appropriation of territory from indigenous people. I cannot admit that wandering tribes have a right to keep other and superior races out of large tracts, exclaimed the British commissioner, Sir Charles Eliot, at the time, merely because they have acquired the habit of straggling over far more land than they can utilise.

Bir Tawil is no terra nullius. But no mans lands or at least ambiguous spaces, where boundaries take odd turns and sovereignty gets scrambled are real and exist among us every day. Some endure at airports, and inside immigration detention centres, and in the pockets of economic deprivation where states have abandoned any responsibility for their citizens. Other no mans lands are carried around by refugees who are yet to be granted asylum, regardless of where they may be having fled failed states or countries which would deny them the rights of citizenship, they occupy a world of legal confusion at best, and outright exclusion at worst.

Perhaps that is why, as we switched off the camera and left Bir Tawil behind us, Omar and I felt a little let down. Or perhaps we shared a sense of anticlimax because we were faintly aware of something rumbling back home in Cairo, where millions of people were about to launch an epic fight against political and economic exclusion not by withdrawing to a no mans land but by confronting state authority head-on, in the streets. A week after our return to Egypt, the country erupted in revolution.

Borders are fluid things; they help define our identities, and yet so often we use our identities to push up against borders and redraw them. For now the boundaries that divide nation states remain, but their purpose is changing and the relationship they have to our own lives, and our own rights, is growing increasingly unstable. If Bir Tawil the preeminent ambiguous space is anything to those who live far from it, it is perhaps a reminder that no particular configuration of power and governance is immutable. As we drove silently, and semi-contentedly, back past the gold-foragers, and the ramshackle cafeteria, and the heavy machinery of the Saudi farm installations Gedo at the wheel, Omar asleep and me staring out at nothing I grasped what I had failed to grasp on that lazy night of beer drinking on Omars balcony. The last truly unclaimed land on earth is really an injunction: not for us to seek out the mythical territory where we can hide from the things that anger us, but to channel that anger instead towards reclaiming territory we already call our own.

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Welcome to the land that no country wants

Unitary Republic of Bir Tawil – MicroWiki

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Bir Tawil, officialy The Unitary Republic of Bir Tawil or The Unitary Republic of Bi'r Tawl, is a nation in between Egypt and Sudan. It was founded on 27 January 2022. The Unitary Republic of Bir Tawil is an unrecognized self-declared state. The Bir Tawil region was previously left unclaimed.The reason the Bi'r Tawl region is unclaimed is due to both Egypt and Sudan claiming the Hala'ib Triangle, and claiming the Bir Tawil Triangle would negate their claim on the 'more valuable' Hala'ib Triangle. Bir Tawil attempts to stay neutral on the Hala'ib triangle dispute.

The Unitary Republic of Bir Tawil is a republic with elections every three years. Every three years the citizens vote for a Minister and a Vice-Minister. Also, every three years the citizens vote for the council members. There are nine roles in the council specializing in certain fields.

The name Bir Tawil (Arabic: , Romanized: Br awl) means tall water well in English. The Unitary Republic area of the name, shows our form of republic, a unitary republic.

Bir Tawil declared independence on 27 January 2022, however, Bir Tawil formed its government on 26 January and wrote its constitution on 28 January. On 27 January NURP (National Unitary Republican Party) was founded and was elected as the major party in the ministerial vote. Then on 2/3/22 the DSPBT (Democratic Socialist Party of Bir Tawil) was approved and formed. Bir Tawil's second Councillor was voted in unanimously after the DSPBT's formation. On March 10, 2022 a civil war was started by the Tawilian United Front. The Tawilian United Front (War) was started due to the election for Chief Councillor, the DSPBT and the CDLP lost the election and formed a rogue political movement and started a revolution that slowly is gaining support. On March 12 2022 the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine. This brought the nation to shock. The Minister stated this has brought our nation to shock. The Russian Federation will pay for their actions in Ukraine. Our nation will not stand with this threat to democracy, Slava Ukraini! After this invasion, Bir Tawil issued special postage stamps to support Ukraine and Democracy.

Bir Tawil's Ministry consists of a Minister and Vice-Minister which act as executives. The Minister's Job is to keep the laws constitutional and purposeful. The Minister also tends to the economy and makes sure the civilians are happy, healthy and makes sure they are safe. The Vice-Minister's job is to advise the Minister and keep the Council in check. The council is formed with eight Councillors and one Chief Councillor. Each Councillor has a special area of politics to make sure its needs are attended too. There are nine roles in the council:

Bir Tawil is a disarmed nation without active armed forces; however, Bir Tawil does have a border protection. The Bureau of Border Protection is split into three subdivisions, the Bir Tawil Border Security makes sure the nation is safe and protected from foreign invaders or external terroristic-like threats. The Customs and Border Protection Agency makes sure that foreign threats do not enter the nation. The Bir Tawil Domestic Threats Agency makes sure there are not threats inside Bir Tawil's borders.

Bir Tawil has no relations with any other nation of any sorts but is a member of a faction started and run by itself, named IUDSS (International United Democratic Sovereign States). The IUDSS has an election for the leading states every year (assuming there is more than a single state in the IUDSS). To get into the IUDSS the state must be:

1. Democratic 2. Have More than a one major political party3. Fill out an application to join the IUDSS where more requirements are stated (applications are not available for anything other than in person handouts as of now)

Bir Tawil is a small area located in the Sahara Desert. Bir Tawil consists of mostly sand and sandstone. The highest point is known as Jabal Tawil. The area is not claimed by either Egypt or Sudan making it unclaimed or, in other words "terra nullius".

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AndersenTawil syndrome – Wikipedia

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Rare autosomal dominant genetic disorder

Medical condition

AndersenTawil syndrome, also called Andersen syndrome and long QT syndrome 7, is a rare genetic disorder affecting several parts of the body. The three predominant features of AndersenTawil syndrome include disturbances of the electrical function of the heart characterised by an abnormality seen on an electrocardiogram (a long QT interval) and a tendency to abnormal heart rhythms, physical characteristics including low-set ears and a small lower jaw, and intermittent periods of muscle weakness known as hypokalaemic periodic paralysis.[1]

AndersenTawil syndrome is inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern. It is caused in most cases by a mutation in the KCNJ2 gene which encodes an ion channel that transports potassium out of cardiac muscle cells. The arrhythmias seen in the condition can be treated with flecainide or beta-blockers, but an implantable defibrillator may sometimes be required. Periodic paralysis can be treated with carbonic anhydrase inhibitors such as acetazolamide. The condition is very rare and is estimated to affect one person in every million. The three groups of features seen in this condition were first described in 1971 by Ellen Andersen, and significant contributions to its understanding were made by Rabi Tawil.

AndersenTawil Syndrome classically comprises three groups of features: abnormal electrical function of the heart, hypokalemic periodic paralysis, and characteristic physical features, although some of those affected will not exhibit all aspects of the condition.[2]

AndersenTawil syndrome affects the heart by prolonging the QT interval, a measure of how long it takes the heart to relax after each heart beat. This, as in other forms of long QT syndrome, can lead to abnormal heart rhythms such as ventricular ectopy or ventricular tachycardia causing palpitations.[2] The ventricular tachycardia seen in AndersenTawil syndrome often takes a form known as bidirectional ventricular tachycardia. The arrhythmias seen in association with the condition can cause sudden cardiac death, but the risk of this is lower than in other forms of long QT syndrome.[1]

The physical abnormalities associated with AndersenTawil syndrome typically affect the head, face, limbs and spine. Abnormalities of the head and face include an unusually small lower jaw (micrognathia), low-set ears, widely spaced eyes (hypertelorism), a broad forehead and nasal root, a high arched or cleft palate, and a long narrow head (scaphocephaly).[3] Abnormalities of the limbs and spine include an abnormal curvature of the fingers, particularly the fifth finger (clinodactyly), fused fingers or toes (syndactyly), short stature, and a curved spine (scoliosis).[3]

The third key feature of AndersenTawil syndrome is intermittent muscle weakness. This can last from seconds to minutes, but in some cases may last for days at a time. Weakness often occurs at times when the levels of potassium in the blood are lower than normal (hypokalaemia), and is referred to as hypokalaemic periodic paralysis. This weakness can however occur at times when potassium levels are normal, triggered by other factors including exercise, cold, or even menstruation.[3]

AndersenTawil syndrome is a genetic disorder which in the majority of cases is caused by mutations in the KCNJ2 gene. The condition is often inherited from a parent in an autosomal dominant manner, but may occur due to a new genetic mutation in the affected person.[3]

Two types of AndersenTawil syndrome have been described, distinguished by the genetic abnormality that is detected. Type 1 AndersenTawil, accounting for about 60% of cases, is caused by mutations in the KCNJ2 gene.[4] In type 2 AndersenTawil, accounting for about 40% of cases, a KCNJ2 mutation is not identified. Mutations in a related gene encoding a similar potassium ion channel, KCNJ5, have been identified in some of those with type 2 AndersenTawil, but in many cases a genetic mutation is not found.[1]

The protein made by the KCNJ2 gene forms an ion channel that transports potassium ions into muscle cells. This specific channel (the inward rectifier potassium channel Kir2.1) carries a potassium current known as IK1 which is responsible for setting the resting membrane potential of muscle cells and is therefore critical for maintaining the normal functions of skeletal and cardiac muscle.[3] Pathogenic mutations in the KCNJ2 gene alter the usual structure and function of potassium channels or prevent the channels from being inserted correctly into the cell membrane. Many mutations prevent a molecule called PIP2 from binding to the channels and effectively regulating their activity. These changes disrupt the flow of potassium ions, leading to the periodic paralysis and abnormal heart rhythms characteristic of AndersenTawil syndrome.[4]

AndersenTawil syndrome increases the risk of abnormal heart rhythms by disturbing the electrical signals that are used to coordinate individual heart cells. The genetic mutation disturbs an ion channel responsible for the flow of potassium, reducing the /K1 current. This prolongs of the cardiac action potential the characteristic pattern of voltage changes across the cell membrane that occur with each heart beat, and depolarises the resting membrane potential of cardiac and skeletal muscle cells.[3]

Cardiac and skeletal muscle cells, when relaxed, have fewer positively charged ions on the inner side of their cell membrane than on the outer side, referred to as their membranes being polarised.[5] The main ion current responsible for maintaining this polarity is /K1, and a decrease in this current leads to less polarity at rest, or a depolarised resting membrane potential. When these cells contract, positively charged ions such as sodium and calcium enter the cell through ion channels, depolarising or reversing this polarity. After a contraction has taken place, the cell restores its polarity (or repolarises) by allowing positively charged ions such as potassium to leave the cell, restoring the membrane to its relaxed, polarised state.[5] The genetic mutation found in those with AndersenTawil decreases the flow of potassium, slowing the rate of repolarisation which can be seen in individual cardiac muscle cells as a longer action potential and on the surface ECG as a prolonged QT interval.[3]

The prolonged action potentials can lead to arrhythmias through several potential mechanisms. The frequent ventricular ectopy and bidirectional VT typical of AndersenTawil syndrome are initiated by a triggering beat in the form of an afterdepolarisation. Early afterdepolarisations, occurring before the cell has fully repolarised, arise due to reactivation of calcium and sodium channels that would normally be inactivated until the next heartbeat is due.[6] Under the right conditions, reactivation of these currents can cause further depolarisation of the cell, facilitated by the sodium-calcium exchanger.[6] Early afterdepolarisations may occur as single events, but may occur repeatedly leading to multiple rapid activations of the cell.[6] Delayed afterdepolarisations, occurring after repolarisation has completed, arise from the spontaneous release of calcium from the intracellular calcium store known as the sarcoplasmic reticulum. This calcium release then leaves the cell through the sodium calcium exchanger in exchange for sodium, generating a net inward current and depolarising the cell membrane.[6] If this transient inward current is large enough, a premature action potential is triggered.

The muscle weakness seen in those with AndersenTawil syndrome arises from the depolarisation of the resting membrane potential caused by a decrease in /K1.[3] The depolarised resting membrane potential means that sodium channels which are responsible for initiating action potentials are unable to fully recover from inactivation, leading to a less excitable membrane and less forceful muscle contraction.[3]

The mechanisms underlying the skeletal abnormalities seen in AndersenTawil syndrome have not been fully explained. Possibilities include impaired function of osteoclasts, cells which regulate bone growth, or disruption of the bone morphogenetic protein signalling cascade.[3]

AndersenTawil syndrome is generally diagnosed based on symptoms, the findings on examination, and the results of an electrocardiogram.[3] Clinical diagnostic criteria have been proposed which suggest that a diagnosis can be made if two of the following four criteria are met: (1) periodic paralysis; (2) ventricular arrhythmias (frequent ventricular ectopic beats or ventricular tachycardia), a prolonged QT interval when corrected for rate, and/or a prominent U wave; (3) at least two of the following dysmorphic features: low-set ears, wide-set eyes, a small mandible, fifth-digit clinodactyly, and syndactyly; and (4) a family member with confirmed AndersenTawil syndrome.[3]

Genetic testing can be used to identify the specific mutation in an affected person, which if found can assist with screening family members.[3] Other investigations that may be helpful in making a diagnosis include ambulatory ECG monitoring to assess for arrhythmias, measurement of blood potassium levels at baseline and during periods of weakness, and measurement of thyroid function.[7]

The differential diagnosis for a prolonged QT interval includes other forms of long QT syndrome such as RomanoWard syndrome in which only the electrical activity of the heart is affected without involving any other organs; Jervell and Lange-Nielsen syndrome in which a prolonged QT interval is combined with congenital deafness; and Timothy syndrome in which a prolonged QT interval is combined with abnormalities in the structure of the heart, in addition to autism-spectrum disorder.[8] The frequent ventricular ectopy and bidirectional ventricular tachycardia seen in AndersenTawil syndrome can also occur in catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia.[2]

The intermittent weakness seen in AndersenTawil syndrome also occurs in other forms of periodic paralysis hypokalaemic periodic paralysis, hyperkalaemic periodic paralysis, and paramyotonia congenita.[7]

As a genetic condition, AndersenTawil syndrome cannot be cured. However, many of symptoms of AndersenTawil such as blackouts due to abnormal heart rhythms or periodic paralysis can be successfully treated with medication or implantable devices. The rarity of the condition means that many of these treatments are based on consensus opinion as there are too few patients to conduct adequately powered clinical trials.[3]

Medications should be avoided that further prolong the QT interval such as sotalol and amiodarone as these drugs can promote abnormal heart rhythms.[3] Lists of medications associated with prolongation of the QT interval can be found online.[9] Drugs which reduce blood levels of potassium such as diuretics like furosemide and bendroflumethiazide should also be avoided as these can worsen the tendency to periodic paralysis and arrhythmias.[3] Conversely, potassium-containing supplements to increase blood potassium levels may be helpful.[3] Very strenuous or competitive sport should be discouraged as these may increase the risk of arrhythmias, although gentle exercise should be encouraged.[8]

As in other forms of long QT syndrome which predispose those affected to dangerous heart rhythm disturbances, the risk of arrhythmias can be reduced by taking beta blockers such as propranolol that block the effects of adrenaline on the heart.[3] Other antiarrhythmic drugs such as flecainide and verapamil may also be helpful.[3] Those at highest risk of recurrent arrhythmias such as those who have already had a cardiac arrest may benefit from an implantable cardioverter defibrillator a small device implanted under the skin which can detect dangerous arrhythmias and automatically treat them with a small electric shock.[3]

Periodic paralysis may be improved by taking carbonic anhydrase inhibitors such as acetazolamide.[3]

AndersenTawil syndrome is very rare, and as of 2013 approximately 200 cases had been described in the medical literature.[3] The condition is estimated to affect one person in every 1,000,000.[3]

Although a description of the condition had probably been made by Klein in 1963,[3] AndersenTawil syndrome is named after Ellen Andersen who described the triad of symptoms in 1971,[10] and Rabi Tawil who made significant contributions to the understanding of the condition in 1994.[11][12]

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AndersenTawil syndrome - Wikipedia

Zendaya’s upcoming movies: All new her new projects – Bolavip

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Movies

Zendaya has demonstrated on several occasions how multifaceted she can be when it comes to acting. No role is too big for her. Judging by her upcoming projects, there is no doubt that her career will continue to rise.

By Ariadna Pinheiro

June 18, 2022 03:04PM EDT

June 18, 2022 03:04PM EDT

Zendaya's career has been on the rise for a few years now. She can be credited with great roles such as MJ from Spider-Man, Rue from Euphoria and Marie from Malcom &Marie. In each of her projects she has been able to make us forget about her previous characters to find a new drama.

Thanks to her role in Euphoria, the actress has been awarded an Emmy in 2020. Her theatrical taste comes from a young age, as she spent all day at her mother's job, who used to be the house manager for the California Shakespeare Theater in Orinda. Which implies that she has always been surrounded by art.

According to the actress' website, outside of acting, Zendaya is a prominent fashion icon. In spring 2019, shelaunched her first fashion collaboration with Tommy Hilfiger, titled Tommy X Zendaya.In 2021, she received the CFDA Fashion Icon Award, becoming the youngest recipient of this award in history.

Challengers

It is a romantic drama set in the world of professional tennis. Zendaya will play the role of Tashi, a player-turned-coach who helps her husband Art get closer to the level of a professional circuit tournament.

Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola has had his eye on Zendaya for quite some time. The acclaimed director's film will follow an architect who wants to build a future utopia where people do what they want, when they want and how they want.

Euphoria: Season 3

The acclaimed series has catapulted many actors in its cast to the top. As one of the most important projects in Zendaya's career, it will continue the story of Rue and her friends as they try to ignore life's temptations.Thanks to critics and audiences, Euphoria is HBO's second most watched series of all time.

Finest Kind

In addition to Zendaya, it will also star Jake Gyllenhaal and Ansel Elgort. The story tells how two siblings get dragged into the muck of a Boston crime syndicate. It is not yet clear which role the actress will play but it will most likely be one of the main ones. It will be directed by Brian Helgeland.

Be My Baby

The upcoming biopic will be about the late Ronnie Spector, former lead singer of The Ronettes. According to Deadline, Zendaya will step into Spector's shoes and the film will be released by studio A24 (In charge of The Lighthouse, The Witch, Mindsommar and so on).

Dune: Part Two

The award-winning first part of Dune was a hit. It was arguably one of Zendaya's best films, even if she only appears in Paul Atreides' dreams. In Villenueve's sequel, the actress could bring out her acting chops, because if the director is faithful to the book, her character Chani will be much more relevant this time around.

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Zendaya's upcoming movies: All new her new projects - Bolavip