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Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) Sees RCI Nearing Key … – Melville Review

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Shares of Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) are nearing some key technical levels as the Rank Correlation indicator has trending higher over the past few sessions, nearing potential overbought territory. Crossing the 80 mark would suggestthat a chance of a reversal is increasing.

The Rank Correlation Index (RCI) is based on an analysis algorithm by Charles Spearman. It uses a combination of price change data and time change data to identify potential changes in market sentiment, thereby exposing turning points. Zero crossings are seen as buy and sell signals, with tops and bottoms yielding overbought and oversold information.

Investors also might be looking to track the ATR or Average True Range of the stock. Currently, Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) has a 14-day ATR of 0.00. The Average True Range is an investor tool used to measure stock volatility. The ATR is not used to figure out price direction, just to measure volatility. The ATR is an indicator developed by J. Welles Wilder. Wilder has developed multiple indicators that are still quite popular in todays investing landscape. The general interpretation of the ATR is the higher the ATR value, the higher the volatility.

The Williams Percent Range or Williams %R is another technical indicator worth checking out. Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) currently has a 14 day Williams %R of -150.00. The Williams %R fluctuates between 0 and -100 measuring whether a security is overbought or oversold. The Williams %R is similar to the Stochastic Oscillator except it is plotted upside-down. Levels above -20 may indicate the stock may be considered is overbought. If the indicator travels under -80, this may signal that the stock is oversold. Chart analysts may also use the indicator to project possible price reversals and to define trends.

The Average Directional Index or ADX is technical analysis indicator used to discern if a market is trending or not trending. The ADX alone measures trend strength but not direction. Using the ADX with the Plus Directional Indicator (+DI) and Minus Directional Indicator (-DI) may help determine the direction of the trend as well as the overall momentum. Many traders will use the ADX alongside other indicators in order to help spot proper trading entry/exit points. Currently, the 14-day ADX for Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) is 38.92. Generally speaking, an ADX value from 0-25 would indicate an absent or weak trend. A value of 25-50 would indicate a strong trend. A value of 50-75 would signal a very strong trend, and a value of 75-100 would indicate an extremely strong trend.

Traders may be leaning on technical stock analysis to help with investing decisions. Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) currently has a 14-day Commodity Channel Index (CCI) of -75.59. Despite the name, CCI can be used on other investment tools such as stocks. The CCI was designed to typically stay within the reading of -100 to +100. Traders may use the indicator to determine stock trends or to identify overbought/oversold conditions. A CCI reading above +100 would imply that the stock is overbought and possibly ready for a correction. On the other hand, a reading of -100 would imply that the stock is oversold and possibly set for a rally.

Traders are paying renewed attention to shares of Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V). The current 14-day RSI is presently sitting at 32.99, the 7-day is 33.42, and the 3-day is 31.69. The RSI, or Relative Strength Index is a popular oscillating indicator among traders and investors. The RSI operates in a range-bound area with values between 0 and 100. When the RSI line moves up, the stock may be experiencing strength. The opposite is the case when the RSI line is heading lower. Different time periods may be used when using the RSI indicator. The RSI may be more volatile using a shorter period of time. Many traders keep an eye on the 30 and 70 marks on the RSI scale. A move above 70 is widely considered to show the stock as overbought, and a move below 30 would indicate that the stock may be oversold. Traders may use these levels to help identify stock price reversals.

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Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) Sees RCI Nearing Key ... - Melville Review

New technologies to diagnose and treat neurological diseases – Medical Xpress

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

August 21, 2017 The partnership between NNI and NTU Singapore will see the development of innovative technologies to better diagnose and treat patients with neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease and brain injuries. Credit: NTU Singapore

The National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) are collaborating to develop innovative technologies to better diagnose and treat patients with neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease and brain injuries.

These include developing an artificial intelligence system that can accurately identify types of traumatic brain injuries from computed tomography (CT) scans.

Another project involves coming up with a computing algorithm for more precise identification of tissues during brain surgeries. It aims to restore the neurological functions of patients suffering from various conditions such as Parkinson's disease.

Over the next three years, the collaboration will also foster closer working relations between medical practitioners and engineers through annual fellowships and student attachment programmes.

Managed by NTU's Institute for Health Technologies (HealthTech NTU), the one-year fellowship programme will see up to two neurosurgical residents at NNI work full-time with NTU professors on campus. Each resident will receive S$100,000 to complete and commercialise their projects.

A student attachment programme that spans a few weeks will also be introduced, allowing NTU engineering students to work alongside neurosurgeons at NNI.

Aimed at grooming multidisciplinary scientists, students will get to widen their engineering knowledge into medical practice. They will gain first-hand exposure to various aspects of clinical medicine by interacting with neurosurgeons in the course of their work.

Associate Professor Ng Wai Hoe, Medical Director of the National Neuroscience Institute, said, "Innovation occurs at intersections of disciplines, knowledge and expertise. Doctors have a deep understanding of clinical needs from their everyday interactions with patients. Our unique collaboration brings these medical needs to engineering laboratories - an environment where imagination is encouraged in the form of technological advances and capabilities.

"The rapidly ageing population will lead to a significant rise in neurological diseases globally. By harnessing the power of the human brain, neurotechnology can provide solutions to revolutionise the treatment of brain disorders. This partnership has great potential to be an innovation launchpad for Neurotechnology."

Professor Lam Khin Yong, NTU's Chief of Staff and Vice President for Research, said, "This collaboration creates a unique multidisciplinary research environment by integrating healthcare with both medical and engineering expertise from NTU's Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and College of Engineering.

"This will not only nurture next-generation doctors armed with a multidisciplinary skillset to meet Singapore's healthcare needs, but also enhance medical technologies to diagnose and treat neurological conditions more effectively."

HealthTech NTU develops and translates new technologies to solve health problems and improve the quality of life. It tackles healthcare challenges with innovative solutions, cutting-edge technologies, and expert interdisciplinary teams.

Explore further: Academia, industry collaborate on solutions to neural disease, injury

A team approach is vital to the successful diagnosis and treatment of complex neurological infections related to placement of devices in the brain, or as a result of neurosurgery or head trauma. This is among the recommendations ...

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New technologies to diagnose and treat neurological diseases - Medical Xpress

The Childfree Life

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

The Female Assumption A Mothers Story: Freeing Women From The View That Motherhood Is A Mandate

I have been looking forward to reading this book by Melanie Holmes. It is an important idea, that on the surface, may not seem that earth shaking. TCFL is a site for the childfree and it is with that perspective I approached this book.

The Female Assumption, has an important message for the children who are being raised with only half of the options available to live a full and happy life. Melanie has put into words that raising children to realize that they have many options is the key to living a full and meaningful life.

She is raising her daughter to develop into her own person free of pressure to conform to a role that she may not choose for herself. Melanie discusses motherhood from a more realistic perspective and does not leave out the hard parts.

This is an excellent book to open up conversations between a parent and child. It is well written and does a good job presenting the childfree decision. It is a change to hear a parent accept that a child may make different choices. Melanie does not know if her daughter will choose to be a parent. I can say that her daughter is fortunate to have a mother who can express what it was like for her to parent children, but also to present that there are women who make other choices and lead fulfilling lives.

I recommend this book for parents, grandparents, and teenagers. Childfree readers will find this book well written and perhaps a good book for their own parents. As someone who is older; the mantra of grand-kids is ever present. What about those couples who are not sure about wanting children? It is for these couples; I am so glad Melanie wrote this book.

A wonderful CD by a member of our TCFL community. I want to let Jennifer know how much I appreciate her artistry in this CD. The music is impressionistic and a joy to listen to. I do not listen to a lot of instrumental music on CD but do enjoy attending live performances. This recording gave me the feeling I was sitting in a recital hall listening to Jennifers concert. Jennifer, your compositions for the piano really moved me. I will be listening to this CD not only for meditation and quiet reflection but also as an inspiration. I noted on the jacket that you have both a visual and hearing impairment. So glad that you did not let these impairments keep you from expressing your gift.

Jennifers album is available at both CD baby and Amazon. I recommend this CD to those who enjoy listening to the piano. Amazon has samples available to listen to.

We are fortunate at TCFL to have members with talents in a variety of the arts. I am so glad that Jennifer posted this information a while back. It has taken me a while to get around to writing a review of sorts. I want to add that I enjoyed listening to this music while cooking. A nice pairing of beautiful music and culinary creation.

I also recommend another of her CDs titled Child in the Garden.

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The Childfree Life

OPINION: The rally against political correctness is not an excuse for ad hominems – N.C. State University Technician Online

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

On my first day of Principles of Sociology, the instructor asked each student to discuss the social issue about which they were most impassioned. Among answers concerning the racial strife in America and giving support to marginalized communities, one stood out. One peer was worried about what they perceived to be an overly politically correct, or PC, campus climate at NC State.

This would have been understandable, except the student was not concerned about an inability to express their opinion, but rather the way in which they felt they should be able to express them. In shorter terms, they did not wish to end political correctness, but do away with basic manners and civility.

The term politically correct has taken on various meanings, often suited to fit the narrative of the user. Some use it literally, as in right versus wrong political action. Others use it to justify or silence ideas they deem socially or culturally unfavorable. The negative effects of the latter on college campuses has been widely discussed over the last several years, with many fearing that it creates an echo chamber of liberal ideas, with little tolerance toward opposition.

Some universities have even gone as far as to issue warnings against this type of overly PC campus culture, like the University of Chicago, which issued an open letter to the Class of 2020 emphasizing their commitment to an open discourse on campus, while denouncing the idea of safe spaces and trigger warnings.

In the last few years, the term politically correct, which in its newest meaning should refer to avoiding language or behavior that any particular group of people might feel is unkind or offensive, has been demonized. Those who are tired of it have used their distaste for it to justify the breakdown of civility not only on college campuses but throughout the country. For example, in response to a peaceful die-in that occurred on campus last year, students made several derogatory comments pertaining to the movement and its participants. They may not have agreed with the beliefs of those who were protesting, but none offered any constructive criticism, instead relying on stereotypes and ad hominem arguments to bully their opposition.

The terms change of meaning can largely be attributed to President Donald Trump, who in many of his tirades against the PC culture, has justified his vicious bullying of women, minorities and several other groups by labeling it as a counter to political correctness. There is a difference between having the ability to voice your unpopular opinions and using speech to personally attack or degrade someone. Insulting individuals does nothing to further constructive conversations and can even deflect from the situation at hand. While you can choose not to be PC and go against campus norms, it is important to do so in a way that is civil, by at least respecting those you do not agree with.

We must always employ tact.

Aristotle noted that humans are unique in their ability to rationalize and use intellectual virtue, which allows us to contemplate and reason logically. Without this, humans would be unable to control basic impulses. Impulses that may compel you to say or do whatever comes to your mind, even if the action is considered impolite or uncivil.

Todays modern rally against political correctness is nothing more than a rally against intellectual virtue. Rather than create a logical argument to justify ones beliefs, we are seeing people give into brash impulses that only add fuel to a growing fire. To have an open and productive discourse on our campus, it is important to note that your disdain for political correctness does not justify personally attacking or degrading an individual.

For those who think it does, I would suggest you look to improve your argument.

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OPINION: The rally against political correctness is not an excuse for ad hominems - N.C. State University Technician Online

This Might Be the Most Ridiculous Example of Political Correctness in History (Thanks, ESPN) – National Review

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Honestly, this is the dumbest time to be alive. Earlier this afternoon Outkick the Coverages Clay Travis tweeted that ESPN had removed an Asian announcer from an upcoming University of Virginia football game because get this his name is Robert Lee:

Surely not, youre thinking. No one is this politically correct, right? Even though Clays a sharp guy, his sources cant be right, can they? Well, maybe so. Clay next reported that ESPN responded with a statement. Our own Charlie Cooke reproduced it below:

Then it broke out everywhere, with multiple sports reporters claiming ESPN sent them the same thing. For example:

There you have it, sports fans. Its entirely possible that the nations premieresports channel not Oberlin College, not Evergreen State, not Yale has reached peak political correctness. A real person had his assignment changed because he shares the same name as a former Confederate general. Parents, if your last namesare Grant, Meade, or Sherman, might I suggest Ulysses, George, or Bill as boys names? Theyll have an inside track at ESPN.

I would say that you have to laugh or youll cry, but thats not right. ESPN is beclowning itself. Laughter is the only good response.

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This Might Be the Most Ridiculous Example of Political Correctness in History (Thanks, ESPN) - National Review

Cloning of debit, credit cards: Key accused held, search on for 4 … – The Indian Express

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Written by Chandan Haygunde , Sushant Kulkarni | Pune | Published:August 17, 2017 8:08 am Officials of the Cyber Crime Cell with the arrested accused.

THE Cyber Crime Cell of the Pune City Police has arrested a Nigerian man who is allegedly the key accused in a racket to clone debit and credit cards. Police have identified the accused as Eremhen Smart (33), a resident of Supragiri College area in Bengaluru. Police have also arrested his alleged aide Irshad Sattar Solanki (28), a resident of Bandrekar Wadi in Jogeshwari, Mumbai.

Last month, police had arrested three Nigerian men identified as Ogbehase Fortune, Bashar Dakin Gari Usman and Ifeanyi Mike Bbaeze while investigating a case registered with the Khadki police station, in which Rs 67,000 was withdrawn from a persons bank account without his knowledge. While some money was withdrawn from an ATM, the rest of the money was transferred to another bank account.

A team led by Inspector Manish Zende of the Cyber Crime Cell zeroed in on a person seen in the camera footage from the ATM kiosk. Police also got details of the account to which the money was transferred, and it was revealed that the account had been used to withdraw cash from other ATM kiosks.

Following leads obtained during the investigation, police arrested Nigerian national Fortune from Pimple Gurav, and his alleged aides Usman and Mbaeze. Police also recovered eight cell phones, 20 debit cards and eight blocked cards that had been cloned, Internet dongles, pen drives and a laptop from the trio.

Soon, police launched a search for the key accused Smart who was found to be changing his locations frequently. On August 10, police laid a trap and arrested Smart in Bengaluru. They recovered four cell phones, two laptops and Rs 1.65 lakh in cash from him.

On August 14, police arrested Smarts aide Irshad Solanki, who allegedly helped him withdraw money from ATMs and arranged bank accounts, in which the money was transferred using cloned debit and credit cards.

A court has remanded the duo to police custody till August 17 for further investigation.

We are now searching for four more persons, all Nigerian nationals, involved in this racket. We are also looking for a Mumbai-based person who helped the accused commit the crimes, said Deputy Commissioner of Police, Cyber Crime Cell, Sudhir Hiremath, during a press conference on Wednesday.

Hiremath said that the same gang of Nigerians had committed 11 crimes in Bengaluru and four in Pune. The four cases in Pune are registered at police stations in Khadki, Chinchwad and Hinjewadi

The investigation revealed that Smart ordered ATM card readers and debit card writer machines online and used them to clone the debit and credit cards.

Police said the accused used skimmer, an electronic device that steals the information or identity of the card. Skimmers are mounted in front of the slot in ATM machines where the card is inserted. So, while the user thinks he is inserting the card in the slot, the card is also passing through the skimmer and details of the debit or credit card is being stolen.

The accused then used pinhole or spy cameras installed in ATMs to learn the customers PIN number, said police, adding that at times, they also stood behind the customer when the PIN was being typed. The stolen information is then written on other cards and the card is cloned. The customer gets to know of the fraud only when the money is withdrawn, said police. However, police have not recovered any skimmer from Smart and the other accused arrested in the case. Police suspect that the accused have destroyed the skimmers.

The investigation has revealed that the gang had obtained information about several debit and credit cards in Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru, parts of Tamil Nadu and Goa, said police. The accused allegedly made cloned cards and used it to withdraw and transfer money to different bank accounts. Key accused is a science graduate

DCP Hiremath said Smart, the key accused, is a Computer Science graduate who had come to India on a medical visa in 2014. He extended his visa later, but it expired in 2016. He was arrested by Bengaluru police in January, but was released on bail. According to police, Smart enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, and he also used to send some money to Nigeria through middlemen.

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Cloning of debit, credit cards: Key accused held, search on for 4 ... - The Indian Express

Physicists measure complementary properties using quantum clones – Phys.Org

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

August 16, 2017 by Lisa Zyga feature Schematic of the experimental setup, in which complementary properties x and y are jointly measured. Credit: Thekkadath et al. 2017 American Physical Society

(Phys.org)In quantum mechanics, it's impossible to precisely and simultaneously measure the complementary properties (such as the position and momentum) of a quantum state. Now in a new study, physicists have cloned quantum states and demonstrated that, because the clones are entangled, it's possible to precisely and simultaneously measure the complementary properties of the clones. These measurements, in turn, reveal the state of the input quantum system.

The ability to determine the complementary properties of quantum states in this way not only has implications for understanding fundamental quantum physics, but also has potential applications for quantum computing, quantum cryptography, and other technologies.

The physicists, Guillame S. Thekkadath and coauthors at the University of Ottawa, Ontario, have published a paper on determining complementary properties of quantum clones in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

As the physicists explain, in the classical world it's possible to simultaneously measure a system's complementary states with exact precision, and doing so reveals the system's state. But as Heisenberg theoretically proposed in 1927 when he was beginning to develop his famous uncertainty principle, any measurement made on a quantum system induces a disturbance on that system.

This disturbance is largest when measuring complementary properties. For instance, measuring the position of a particle will disturb its momentum, changing its quantum state. These joint measurements have intrigued physicists ever since the time of Heisenberg.

As a way around the difficulty of performing joint measurements, physicists have recently investigated the possibility of making a copy of a quantum system, and then independently measuring one property on each copy of the system. Since the measurements are performed separately, they would not be expected to disturb each other, yet they would still reveal information about the original quantum system because the copies share the same properties as the original.

This strategy immediately encounters another quantum restriction: due to the no-cloning theorem, it's impossible to make a perfect copy of a quantum state. So instead, the physicists in the new study investigated the closest quantum analog to copying, which is optimal cloning. The parts of the clones' states that share the exact same properties as those of the input state are called "twins."

Whereas theoretical perfect copies of a quantum state are uncorrelated, the twins are entangled. The physicists showed that, as a consequence of this entanglement, independently measuring the complementary properties on each twin is equivalent to simultaneously measuring the complementary properties of the input state. This leads to the main result of the new study: that simultaneously measuring the complementary properties of twins gives the state (technically, the wave function) of the original quantum system.

"In quantum mechanics, measurements disturb the state of the system being measured," Thekkadath told Phys.org. "This is a hurdle physicists face when trying to characterize quantum systems such as single photons. In the past, physicists successfully used very gentle measurements (known as weak measurements) to circumvent this disturbance.

"As such, our work is not the first to determine complementary properties of a quantum system. However, we've shown that a different strategy can be used. It is based on a rather nave idea. Suppose we want to measure the position and momentum of a particle. Knowing that these measurements will disturb the particle's state, can we first copy the particle, and measure position on one copy and momentum on the other? This was our initial motivation. But it turns out that copying alone is not enough. The measured copies must also be entangled for this strategy to work.

"This is what we showed experimentally. Instead of determining the position and momentum of a particle, we determined complementary polarization properties of single photons. You would intuitively expect this strategy to fail due to the no-cloning theorem. However, we showed that is not the case, and this is the greatest significance of our result: measuring complementary properties of the twins directly reveals the quantum state of the copied system."

As the physicists explain, one of the most important aspects of the demonstration is working around the limitations of the no-cloning theorem.

"In our daily lives, information is often copied, such as when we photocopy a document, or when DNA is replicated in our bodies," Thekkadath explained. "However, at a quantum level, information cannot be copied without introducing some noise or imperfections. We know this because of a mathematical result known as the no-cloning theorem. This has not stopped physicists from trying. They developed strategies, known as optimal cloning, that minimize the amount of noise introduced by the copying process. In our work, we go one step further. We showed that it is possible to eliminate this noise from our measurements on the copies using a clever trick that was theoretically proposed by Holger Hofmann in 2012. Our results do not violate the no-cloning theorem since we never physically produce perfect copies: we only replicate the measurement results one would get with perfect copies."

In their experiments, the physicists demonstrated the new method using photonic twins, but they expect that the ability to make precise, simultaneous measurements of complementary properties on twins can also be implemented with quantum computers. This could lead to many practical applications, such as providing an efficient method to directly measure high-dimensional quantum states, which are used in quantum computing and quantum cryptography.

"Determining the state of a system is an important task in physics," Thekkadath said. "Once a state is determined, everything about that system is known. This knowledge can then be used to, for example, predict measurement outcomes and verify that an experiment is working as intended. This verification is especially important when complicated states are produced, such as the ones needed in quantum computers or quantum cryptography.

"Typically, quantum states are determined tomographically, much like how the brain is imaged in a CAT scan. This approach has the limitation that the state is always globally reconstructed. In contrast, our method determines the value of quantum states at any desired point, providing a more efficient and direct method than conventional methods for state determination.

"We experimentally demonstrated our method using single photons. But, our strategy is also applicable in a variety of other systems. For instance, it can be implemented in a quantum computer by using only a single quantum logic gate. We anticipate that our method could be used to efficiently characterize complicated quantum states inside a quantum computer."

Explore further: Blind quantum computing for everyone

More information: G. S. Thekkadath, R. Y. Saaltink, L. Giner, and J. S. Lundeen. "Determining Complementary Properties with Quantum Clones." Physical Review Letters. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.050405, Also at arXiv:1701.04095 [quant-ph]

2017 Phys.org

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-So semantics is determining the limits of knowledge now? This is akin to the silly notion that sentience is needed to collapse the waveform.

"Once a state is determined, everything about that system is known."

-So everything CAN be known about something, which says that there are no limits to what we can know, which says that kant was indeed farting in the wind.

Too bad noumenon passed on before he was able to experience this greatest of disappointments.

Does this buy us any thing as far as entropic uncertainty relations? Nounmenon is sort of dead, but just because we can isolate transactable phenomenalism of sensory somatic integration, its projection still lags the immersiveness of the now. It depends on how you define "Itself." You cannot undermine the illusion of vantage, or non-hermitian difference for any measure. You do not state another's dependence. Yet as soon as we interact, we can talk about the correlates of one another's time dependence, no matter how obvious. We can steer experiments close to trivial initial conditions, but we have yet to expand them all for equivalence. Interpretation open. It remains existential, with near misses. Thekkadath, is being misquoted here. Entanglement is the most that can be known. We cannot measure states, but we can choose to agree, for all intensive purposes, determinable difference for a given effective theory. If it all shared in/distinguishables, what would we have to talk about?

There are fancier ways of sending barely detectable light, specific to location, that don't require encryption, but could theoretically be unfolded, if you knew exactly when to expect them and where they were going.

-Yeah youre the guy who likes to post while stoned out of his gourd arent you? Prose poems are not rational discourse FYI-

Isn't this a sort of catastrophic development? My understanding was that the uncertainty principle is not the expression of experimental difficulties but rather an actual limitation on the total amount of information in a quantum system.

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Physicists measure complementary properties using quantum clones - Phys.Org

The evolution of cell phones – WBAY

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

DE PERE, Wis. (WBAY) - As we reported last week, it's been 30 years since Cellcom first launched cellular phone service in Northeast Wisconsin. And how the technology has changed over three decades!

When Rob Riordan helped launch Cellcom in 1987, cell phones on the market weren't like anything we use today. They were big and bulky, like carrying a lunchbox full of rocks with a phone receiver on top.

And they were expensive. "A briefcase, this and an extra battery was $4,000. Within a year of that, it was for a thousand bucks," Riordan said.

It wasn't until the early 1990's that phones started to get smaller -- from the size of World War II-era walkie-talkies to a handheld phone that shaped the future.

"Then we got the brick phone, which was the one you'd see on some of the old TV shows and stuff like that, but the StarTAC is the one that kind of took off because it was small enough you could carry it and move with that one," Riordan recalls.

By the early 2000's, small, flip-top phones were the rage. And thanks to new technology, we had a new way to communicate.

"The Blackberry was probably one of the biggest breakthrough phones," Riordan said. "You could text with it, you could write emails with it."

Phones were getting smarter, but not that smart -- until 10 years ago when Apple launched the first iPhone.

"What was interesting is we were pushing the industry -- the LGs of the world, the Samsungs of the world that were out there and the Motorolas -- saying we need a smarter phone. Some of the bigger operators of the world were coming back, no, no we don't need that, Apple came along and said we don't care what you need, this is what we're making. And the big guys said we don't want that, and Apple said tough, this is the phone. They made it, and all of a sudden it went like crazy."

That craze hasn't slowed. Smartphones passed so-called "feature phones" in U.S. usage in 2012, and an estimated 83% of mobile phone users in the U.S. own a smartphone today, according to Statistica.

Today, just about everyone has a cell phone, and Riordan has witnessed the advances every step of the way.

Asked if this makes him a hip grandpa, Riordan answered, "You know it's funny, my grandkids show me a little bit sometimes, too. I tried to stay ahead of it, but it's changing so quickly."

"Crazy, crazy stuff, and it's not stopping."

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The evolution of cell phones - WBAY

Microbes May Rig Their DNA to Speed Up Evolution – WIRED

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

In 1944, a Columbia University doctoral student in genetics named Evelyn Witkin made a fortuitous mistake. During her first experiment in a laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, in New York, she accidentally irradiated millions of E. coli with a lethal dose of ultraviolet light. When she returned the following day to check on the samples, they were all deadexcept for one, in which four bacterial cells had survived and continued to grow. Somehow, those cells were resistant to UV radiation. To Witkin, it seemed like a remarkably lucky coincidence that any cells in the culture had emerged with precisely the mutation they needed to surviveso much so that she questioned whether it was a coincidence at all.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

For the next two decades, Witkin sought to understand how and why these mutants had emerged. Her research led her to what is now known as the SOS response, a DNA repair mechanism that bacteria employ when their genomes are damaged, during which dozens of genes become active and the rate of mutation goes up. Those extra mutations are more often detrimental than beneficial, but they enable adaptations, such as the development of resistance to UV or antibiotics.

The question that has tormented some evolutionary biologists ever since is whether nature favored this arrangement. Is the upsurge in mutations merely a secondary consequence of a repair process inherently prone to error? Or, as some researchers claim, is the increase in the mutation rate itself an evolved adaptation, one that helps bacteria evolve advantageous traits more quickly in stressful environments?

The scientific challenge has not just been to demonstrate convincingly that harsh environments cause nonrandom mutations. It has also been to find a plausible mechanism consistent with the rest of molecular biology that could make lucky mutations more likely. Waves of studies in bacteria and more complex organisms have sought those answers for decades.

The latest and perhaps best answerfor explaining some kinds of mutations, anywayhas emerged from studies of yeast, as reported in June in PLOS Biology . A team led by Jonathan Houseley, a specialist in molecular biology and genetics at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, proposed a mechanism that drives more mutation specifically in regions of the yeast genome where it could be most adaptive.

Its a totally new way that the environment can have an impact on the genome to allow adaptation in response to need. It is one of the most directed processes weve seen yet, said Philip Hastings, professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, who was not involved in the Houseley groups experiments. Other scientists contacted for this story also praised the work, though most cautioned that much about the controversial idea was still speculative and needed more support.

Rather than asking very broad questions like are mutations always random? I wanted to take a more mechanistic approach, Houseley said. He and his colleagues directed their attention to a specific kind of mutation called copy number variation. DNA often contains multiple copies of extended sequences of base pairs or even whole genes. The exact number can vary among individuals because, when cells are duplicating their DNA before cell division, certain mistakes can insert or delete copies of gene sequences. In humans, for instance, 5 to 10 percent of the genome shows copy number variation from person to personand some of these variations have been linked to cancer, diabetes, autism and a host of genetic disorders. Houseley suspected that in at least some cases, this variation in the number of gene copies might be a response to stresses or hazards in the environment.

Jonathan Houseley leads a team that studies genome change at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. Based on their studies of yeast, they recently proposed a mechanism that would increase the odds for adaptive mutations in genes that are actively responding to environmental challenges.

Jon Houseley/QUANTA MAGAZINE

In 2015, Houseley and his colleagues described a mechanism by which yeast cells seemed to be driving extra copy number variation in genes associated with ribosomes, the parts of a cell that synthesize proteins. However, they did not prove that this increase was a purposefully adaptive response to a change or constraint in the cellular environment. Nevertheless, to them it seemed that the yeast was making more copies of the ribosomal genes when nutrients were abundant and the demand for making protein might be higher.

Houseley therefore decided to test whether similar mechanisms might act on genes more directly activated by hazardous changes in the environment. In their 2017 paper, he and his team focused on CUP1 , a gene that helps yeast resist the toxic effects of environmental copper. They found that when yeast was exposed to copper, the variation in the number of copies of CUP1 in the cells increased. On average, most cells had fewer copies of the gene, but the yeast cells that gained more copiesabout 10 percent of the total population became more resistant to copper and flourished. The small number of cells that did the right thing, Houseley said, were at such an advantage that they were able to outcompete everything else.

But that change did not in itself mean much: If the environmental copper was causing mutations, then the change in CUP1 copy number variation might have been no more than a meaningless consequence of the higher mutation rate. To rule out that possibility, the researchers cleverly re-engineered the CUP1 gene so that it would respond to a harmless, nonmutagenic sugar, galactose, instead of copper. When these altered yeast cells were exposed to galactose, the variation in their number of copies of the gene changed, too.

The cells seemed to be directing greater variation to the exact place in their genome where it would be useful. After more work, the researchers identified elements of the biological mechanism behind this phenomenon. It was already known that when cells replicate their DNA, the replication mechanism sometimes stalls. Usually the mechanism can restart and pick up where it left off. When it cant, the cell can go back to the beginning of the replication process, but in doing so, it sometimes accidentally deletes a gene sequence or makes extra copies of it. That is what causes normal copy number variation. But Houseley and his team made the case that a combination of factors makes these copying errors especially likely to hit genes that are actively responding to environmental stresses, which means that they are more likely to show copy number variation.

The key point is that these effects center on genes responding to the environment, and that they could give natural selection extra opportunities to fine-tune which levels of gene expression might be optimal against certain challenges. The results seem to present experimental evidence that a challenging environment could galvanize cells into controlling those genetic changes that would best improve their fitness. They may also seem reminiscent of the outmoded, pre-Darwinian ideas of the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who believed that organisms evolved by passing their environmentally acquired characteristics along to their offspring. Houseley maintains, however, that this similarity is only superficial.

What we have defined is a mechanism that has arisen entirely through Darwinian selection of random mutations to give a process that stimulates nonrandom mutations at useful sites, Houseley said. It is not Lamarckian adaptation. It just achieves some of the same ends without the problems involved with Lamarckian adaptation.

Ever since 1943, when the microbiologist Salvador Luria and the biophysicist Max Delbrck showed with Nobel prize-winning experiments that mutations in E. coli occur randomly, observations like the bacterial SOS response have made some biologists wonder whether there might be important loopholes to that rule. For example, in a controversial paper published in Nature in 1988, John Cairns of Harvard and his team found that when they placed bacteria that could not digest the milk sugar lactose in an environment where that sugar was the sole food source, the cells soon evolved the ability to convert the lactose into energy. Cairns argued that this result showed that cells had mechanisms to make certain mutations preferentially when they would be beneficial.

Budding yeast (S. cerevisiae) grow as colonies on this agar plate. If certain recent research is correct, a mechanism that helps to repair DNA damage in these cells may also promote more adaptive mutations, which could help the cells to evolve more quickly under harsh circumstances.

Jon Houseley/QUANTA MAGAZINE

Experimental support for that specific idea eventually proved lacking, but some biologists were inspired to become proponents of a broader theory that has come to be known as adaptive mutation. They believe that even if cells cant direct the precise mutation needed in a certain environment, they can adapt by elevating their mutation rate to promote genetic change.

The work of the Houseley team seems to bolster the case for that position. In the yeast mechanism theres not selection for a mechanism that actually says, This is the gene I should mutate to solve the problem, said Patricia Foster, a biologist at Indiana University. It shows that evolution can get speeded up.

Hastings at Baylor agreed, and praised the fact that Houseleys mechanism explains why the extra mutations dont happen throughout the genome. You need to be transcribing a gene for it to happen, he said.

Adaptive mutation theory, however, finds little acceptance among most biologists, and many of them view the original experiments by Cairns and the new ones by Houseley skeptically. They argue that even if higher mutation rates yield adaptations to environmental stress, proving that the higher mutation rates are themselves an adaptation to stress remains difficult to demonstrate convincingly. The interpretation is intuitively attractive, said John Roth, a geneticist and microbiologist at the University of California, Davis, but I dont think its right. I dont believe any of these examples of stress-induced mutagenesis are correct. There may be some other non-obvious explanation for the phenomenon.

Carrie Arnold

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Ariel Bleicher

Shrinking Bat Genomes Spark a New Model of Evolution

Emily Singer

Does Evolution Evolve Under Pressure?

I think [Houseleys work] is beautiful and relevant to the adaptive mutation debate, said Paul Sniegowski, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania. But in the end, it still represents a hypothesis. To validate it more certainly, he added, theyd have to test it in the way an evolutionary biologist wouldby creating a theoretical model and determining whether this adaptive mutability could evolve within a reasonable period, and then by challenging populations of organisms in the lab to evolve a mechanism like this.

Notwithstanding the doubters, Houseley and his team are persevering with their research to understand its relevance to cancer and other biomedical problems. The emergence of chemotherapy-resistant cancers is commonplace and forms a major barrier to curing the disease, Houseley said. He thinks that chemotherapy drugs and other stresses on tumors may encourage malignant cells to mutate further, including mutations for resistance to the drugs. If that resistance is facilitated by the kind of mechanism he explored in his work on yeast, it could very well present a new drug target. Cancer patients might be treated both with normal courses of chemotherapy and with agents that would inhibit the biochemical modifications that make resistance mutations possible.

We are actively working on that, Houseley said, but its still in the early days.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine , an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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Microbes May Rig Their DNA to Speed Up Evolution - WIRED

Shailene Woodley on Her Emmy Nomination and Feminist Evolution … – New York Times

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Tell us about your character Jane.

When we meet her in Big Little Lies, we meet a girl whos trying to live in an adult world, whos coping with the extreme suppression of anger and sadness while also trying to deliver a life full of possibility and positivity and wonder to her young child. And I think thats why she was able to bond with so many of the women from Monterey, because although they didnt have similar personalities, Jane saw that they, too, were coping with some sort of deep grief despite the facade of white fences.

There are more than 1000 suggestions for what to stream over on Watching, The New York Timess TV and movie recommendation site.

Those women were played by real powerhouses. What was that like?

It was wonderful. Reese, Nicole and Laura would discuss with Zo [Kravitz] and me how times have changed since they were teenage actors, and reflect on the progress that has been made in Hollywood. I still think theres a long way to go when it comes to depicting females in films. But being on a set where we had the camaraderie and compassion and support of so many women and not just the actors, but our crew and producers was an unparalleled experience.

Youve spoken about the need for empathy toward the shows male characters, even the abusive husband played by Alexander Skarsgard.

A bully generally is not bullying just to bully. Theyre bullying out of pain and internal conflict and brokenness. Obviously there is no complacency on my end for any act of violence. But its worth looking at why we have so many rapes and acts of sexual violence. Many young men and women feel out of control or that they dont have support for the traumas theyre experiencing, and I think paying attention to that and providing support would create a world where we have less acts of violence.

Female friendships are important to you. And yet in the past youve said that youre not a feminist.

I would today consider myself a feminist. If females start working through the false narrative of jealousy and insecurity fed through a patriarchal society, then not only will we have more women feeling confident in themselves and supportive of one another, but we will start introducing a type of matriarchy, which is what this world needs. We need more softness and more silence and more pause through the chaos.

Youre an environmental activist. Have you considered running for political office?

There was a point last year when I was working for Bernie Sanders where I thought, Huh, maybe Ill run for Congress in a couple years. And you know what? Im not going to rule it out. Who knows? Life is big, and Im young.

Do you have a favorite Emmy nominee this year?

Im rooting for Feud, and Im all on the Susan Sarandon train, just because shes brilliant and brought so much to that show.

A version of this article appears in print on August 22, 2017, on Page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: Life Is Big, And Im Young.

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Shailene Woodley on Her Emmy Nomination and Feminist Evolution ... - New York Times

Evolution of Sexting Tests School Leaders, Students – Education Week (subscription)

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Philadelphia

For Jane Griffin, the principal at Louisiana's Winnfield High, the moment came when one of her students found a staff member's smartphone lying on a desk, picked it up, and took a picture of his own genitals.

For Shafta Collazo, an assistant principal at Delaware's Woodbridge Middle School, it came when a student got mad at his girlfriend and decided to "airdrop" compromising digital photos of her to dozens of other children using a file-transfer service for Mac devices.

And for Assistant Principal Deirdra Chandler, the realization that responding to youth "sexting" is now a part of the job, even for leaders of K-5 schools, came after one of her young students at South Carolina's Erwin Elementary School sent out sexual imagery of another student to his friends.

"It's scary," said Chandler, one of nearly 100 concerned school leaders who packed into a conference room here last month, during the annual conference of the nation's principals, to discuss the dangers of sexting.

This fraught new reality for U.S. schools is regularly in the headlines, and principals at the conference said they're overwhelmed by the developmental, legal, and technological aspects of a phenomenon that's moving faster than their ability to keep up.

"It feels like I'm standing in front of a freight train going at full speed," said Jay Hepperle, an assistant principal at North Dakota's Dickinson High School, where he says he deals with as many as two sexting-related incidents a week.

The term "sexting" generally refers to sending or receiving sexually explicit or suggestive images, videos, or messages via a mobile device or the internet.

Such activity is nothing new: Education Week has covered the dilemmas that youth sexting poses for schools going back almost a decade.

Nor is sexting limited to students. Educators at a number of schools have landed in trouble for taking and sharing sexual imagery.

But it's hard to find solid recent data on the prevalence of the practice nationwide.

Back in 2009, the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life project found that 4 percent of cellphone-owning teenagers had sent sexually explicit or suggestive photos of themselves to someone else via a text message, and 15 percent said they had received such a message. Subsequent smaller-scale studies have typically found higher rates.

For many principals on the ground, though, the problem feels like it's accelerating at an alarming rate. The dynamics around sexting have changed, they say, thanks to the rising ubiquity of smartphones, and the advent of new social-media platforms and apps such as Snapchat and Kik.

That means new worries about children's safety and potential landmines for school leaders themselves.

Addressing the principals at the conference, Kansas State University's Robert F. Hachiya issued a blunt warning for those charged with investigating and responding to sexting-related incidents.

"If you arrive in court," Hachiya told the group, "you are going to get Monday-morning-quarterbacked to death."

There's the immediate worry of protecting children. Student victims may need supports, such as counseling.

Sexting may also be considered bullying, harassment, or abuse. If that's the case, said Hachiya, an assistant professor of educational leadership, principals are likely obligated under federal laws, such as Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, to respond to an incident. In some situations, they may also be considered mandatory reporters, with a legal responsibility to report potential abuse to law-enforcement authorities.

There's also considerable pressure to move quickly on investigations, Hachiya said. But things can get dicey quickly.

Often, the original taking and sharing of sexual images is consensual. But in a world where nearly every child seems to have access to a smartphone, multiple platforms through which to distribute digital content, crises can spread quickly, Hachiya said.

Seizures and searches are often parts of the effort to contain such situations. When it comes to going through students' phones and social-media accounts, though, principals can quickly put themselves in a legal gray area, Hachiya said.

A variety of court cases have yielded no clear guidelines that cover the full variety of situations schools may face.

Then there's the thorniest problem of all: laws related to pornography and child pornography.

In some states, when a youth takes, shares, or receives sexual images of another minor, he or she can face charges involving the production, distribution, or possession of child porn.

By taking what may seem like common-sense steps to preserve evidence, Hachiya said, school administrators can run into similar jeopardy.

Among the potentially problematic administrative actions he described: a principal who confiscates and holds a device containing sexual images, forwards or saves such images to his or her own files or accounts, or even shows sexted images to a fellow administrator as part of trying to figure out an appropriate response.

For principals such as Jemi Carlone, who said she faced "five pretty serious incidents" last school year at Louisiana's Belle Chasse High, it makes for a treacherous landscape.

In one case, Carlone said, students at her school had shared sexually explicit images via the ephemeral-messaging app Snapchat. School administrators knew they needed to gather evidence for an eventual expulsion hearing. But they didn't want to take a photo or video of the images before they disappeared, because they didn't want to risk being in possession of child pornography themselves.

"I won't touch their phones at all," Carlone concluded. "We lock [the devices] up, wait for the police to come, and say, 'OK, it's on you all now.' "

Immediately involving law enforcement is a smart step, Hachiya said. Don't forward, copy, share, archive, or otherwise possess any sexually explicit or suggestive images, he advised. And don't overlook the importance of preventionan approach that some states are investing in, through laws promoting the teaching of "digital citizenship."

The reality, principals at the session said, is that there's no standard playbook for managing sexting situations, which often leaves principals in the unenviable position of figuring it out as they go.

"To know that doing what we think is right in the moment to protect kids could cost us everything," Collazo said, "is a very scary place to be."

Vol. 37, Issue 01, Page 12

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Evolution of Sexting Tests School Leaders, Students - Education Week (subscription)

American lit, conservative thought and Trump – St. Augustine Record

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Bob Fliegel

St. Augustine

Remember Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau? Although most of us English majors met those two in American Lit 101, I hadnt given them much thought in the intervening 50-plus years. Until, that is, I had the following epiphany: They represent two pillars of modern American conservative thought.

Consider the thesis of what is arguably Emersons most famous work, his 1841 essay on Self-Reliance. Surely self-reliance is an admirable trait. How could it not be? Shouldnt we all be expected to strive, to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, to be self-made, to eschew the government dole?

Of course, the reality is that not everyone thrives under capitalism. Many falter and fail for any number of reasons. Some are unable to overcome physical or mental shortcomings, while others may see themselves as economically victimized by forces beyond their control. Still others are inept or just plain lazy.

Enter social Darwinism. In that view, the survival of the fittest extends beyond Darwins theories of natural selection to a similar premise of socio-economic survival. Some of us will succeed.

Some of us will not. Theres a putative fairness to this being allowed to play out without government intercession. Why should the less able be given a leg up? Is a level playing field an inalienable right? Are unequal outcomes always prima facie evidence of unequal opportunity?

Add Thoreaus essay Civil Disobedience of 1849, in which he endorsed the Jeffersonian notion that government is best which governs least, and you have the conservatives rejection of a.) government intrusion and overreach and b.) assistance programs they regard as only fostering continued dependence on government largesse.

Ronald Reagans compassion for the truly needy notwithstanding, conservatives have remained skeptical about that truly part. Although they extol the virtues of voluntary assistance to the disadvantaged, they certainly dont feel the same way about involuntary taxation to help those who cant fend for themselves. In fact, many believe program abuses have become so numerous as to warrant throwing that truly needy baby out with the bath water of welfare cheats.

President Trump does not appear to exemplify either of these two major conservative tenets. More precisely, his transactional approach to governance does not seem to be at all grounded in the thinking of their historical advocates.

The odds of his being even minimally conversant about the contributions of a Thoreau, an Emerson, or a conservative progenitor like Edmund Burke, are low indeed. No doubt his supporters would call that contention elitist. So be it. They would, of course, be wrong.

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American lit, conservative thought and Trump - St. Augustine Record

Digital transformation: It’s not a destination – Econsultancy (blog)

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Here we are, in the second half of 2017 and 'digital transformation', as an industry term and practice, is mainstream.

Virtually, all digital agencies and consultancies are offering services and solutions, of various flavours, under this digital transformation umbrella. Most now recognise that it's much more than just a technological and business transformation; it also encompasses many human aspects including mindset, behaviours, beliefs and culture.

It's a fast growing industry, which the innovators and early adopters have been involved in for some time; in fact, for a good number of years.

Question: Has anyone transformed yet?Has anyone actually reached that light at the end of the tunnel?

It's an interesting term 'digital transformation'. It implies a changing of states, from one to another, which is misleading. The light at the end of the tunnel is perceived to be the point where the journey ends and you've finally reached that destination you've been striving for; free to bask in the glorious sunshine.

If you view the tunnel through this one dimensional lens, and believe there is a destination to reach, don't put a timescale on it. Because, apologies for being the bearer of bad news, you won't get there, you never will.

Technology will continue to advance, rapidly, and behaviour will also change, you will always be playing 'catch up'. There is no destination. Instead, you should move your focus away from the destination and to the pace of your transformation.

If I may, I'd like to propose you look at transformation in another way. Let's look at it sideways on. Take yourself out of the tunnel and view it from a disassociated persepective.It looks very different. That light at the end of the tunnel is not the sunshine. Yes, it's still something we should still be striving for, but rather than it representing a static end point, we should view it as a moving target, one we should try and keep pace with. You see, the light is actually the 'tail-light of technology' and all that it drives.

To stretch the metaphor even further, it's the vehicle that's creating the transformation tunnel, and over the years we've done our best to keep it in sight and help the organisations we work for, or work with, navigate towards and through the zeitgeist of the day, and whatever label becomes the defacto term to give it.

Transformation is a continuous thing, it's a constant evolution, the rate of which is getting faster, day by day. Therefore, to be successful is about your ability to rapidly evolve. To adapt to the rapidly changing environment your business is operating within, how this environment is changing, and what you need to do survive and ideally, thrive. It's 'digital Darwinism'.

Standing still is not an option. Inertia is your worst enemy. The Boardroom that pontificates and procrastinates is doing a lot of harm. The competition, the ones who operate in an Agile way, happily testing, learning, building and iterating as they go, are the ones who are succeeding. They are able to move through the tunnel at pace, picking up speed, keeping that light bright and in sight, overtaking their competition and seeing them disappear behind them.

They have recognised there can be no excuses for standing still. Whether it's the perception that legacy IT systems and architecture are too big and expensive to change; or there aren't the right skill sets on board; key staff retention is poor or there's a lack of vison and leadership; there is always a starting point. Each situation will be different, but think big, start small and scale fast....as fast as you can.

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Digital transformation: It's not a destination - Econsultancy (blog)

5 Passive Cooling Alternatives Using Robotics and Smart Materials – ArchDaily

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

5 Passive Cooling Alternatives Using Robotics and Smart Materials

The IAAC (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) has developed a series of advanced materials and systems for air conditioning and passive ventilation, allowing homes to reduce interior temperatures up to 5 degrees lower while saving the electricity consumption caused by the traditional air-conditioning. The systems are made from long-lifespan materials, which lower the costs of maintenance in the long-term and can be used as low-cost alternative building technologies.

The projects highlightedare the Breathing Skin, Hydroceramics, Hydromembrane, Morphluid and Soft Robotics - all developed by students of the IAAC's Digital Matter Intelligent Constructions (conducted by Areti Markopoulou). The passive air-conditioning of spaces is investigated using a combination of new materials that mimic organic processes, adaptive structures and Robotics that help regulate temperature and create sustainable micro climates.

Facades and light structures like Hydroceramics, Breathing Skin or Hydromembrane have been developed by the IAAC during recent years. By creating a series of systems that act like a second skin in buildings, IAAC transforms a buildings thermoregulation to imitate the human body -transpiring water to regulate the temperature.

Hydroceramics is a faade system made of clay and hydrogel panels capable of cooling building interiors up to 5 degrees. Hydrogel capsules have the capacity to absorb up to 500 times their own weight in water to create a construction system that "breathes" through evaporation and perspiration.

Unlike Hydroceramics, parallel inventions Hydromembrane and Breathing Skin are based on compounds made with fine membranes and intelligent fabrics for buildings that act as a second "respiratory" skin for constructions capable of self-regulating the humidity and climate of indoor and outdoor spaces.

Each system uses materials that have a high capacity of water absorption, which is later released by evaporation - creating a cooling effect in warm environments. As an example, Breathing Skin absorbs up to 300 times its volume in water in a relatively short period of time thanks to the presence of superabsorbent polymer called sodium polyacrylate.

IAAC has also designed more alternatives that focus on structures and applied robotics in the new bioclimatic architecture. Morphluid or Soft Robotics (SORO) are created as passive shading systems using "live roofs" that regulate the amount of light and heat entering the spaces.

Soft Robotics is a lightweight and sensitive robotic shading device that attempts to create microclimate by controlling sunlight, ventilation and temperature to humidify the atmosphere. This robotic prototype adopts different sizes and shapes as the artificial "sunflowers" that project shade the moment its integrated liquid element is evaporated by the heat of the sun.

Morphluid is also based on the transition of liquids as an activator that modulates the roof and adjusts the environment by means of shading. Morphluid integrates two water tanks into a movable structure (a roof, a window) that tilts when the water in one of the tanks evaporates, allowing shade to continuously project and refresh the environment.

The IAAC academic director and project manager, Areti Markopoulou, highlights "the potential of advanced systems and materials to help us have the most pleasant temperature in our homes through more sustainable buildings that breathe and behave the living things and interact with their environment." Markopoulou Also highlighted the importance of this innovation to energy saving, since "passive air-conditioning materials and systems are based on principles of physics such as evaporation to cool spaces."

To learn more about eachproject, check out the gallery below:

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5 Passive Cooling Alternatives Using Robotics and Smart Materials - ArchDaily

African countries are importing robots and young people’s jobs are at risk – KPAX-TV

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

By Torera Idowu CNN

(CNN) -- Although still in its infancy, with under 60,000 imports a year, the robotics industry in Africa is developing rapidly.

In some parts of the continent, robots are mining, controlling traffic and even fighting deadly diseases.

Five years ago, The African Robotics Network launched a '10 dollar robot' challenge to encourage students to produce their own robots. There are also over 20 African organizations encouraging participation in robotics.

While this might offer the continent more affordable production costs, it has far-reaching consequences for Africa's 1.2 billion people.

'Half of Africa's jobs at risk'

A policy brief by the United Nations conference on trade and development reveals that robots will take away two-thirds of jobs in developing countries.

"The increased use of robots in developed countries risks eroding the traditional labor cost advantage of developing countries," it states.

A 2016 study which stems from World Bank research, states that more than half of jobs in parts of Africa are at risk of automation with Ethiopia leading the highest proportion globally at 85%.

This rapid reduction of industrial activity is what economist Dani Rodrik refers to as "premature", in his report stating that the window for industrialization opportunities is closing much faster.

The rise of robots in Africa

With Northern and Sub-Saharan African unemployment rates still at 29.3% and 10.8% respectively, the continent might not be maximizing its labor force to do the jobs currently being taken over by robots.

In Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, robots are already a part of everyday life. Eight foot tall, solar-powered 'robocops' have been brought in to direct traffic. These robots have eliminated the need for human traffic wardens as they can detect pedestrians and are designed to withstand all weather conditions.

In Tanzania and Uganda, drones with sensors have replaced the need for some farmers because of their ability to detect stress in plants, ten days before humans can.

In South Africa, robots in the gold mining industry are a welcome solution to the associated risk involved in these jobs. Robots now replace humans to assess the depth of some of the country's gold mines.

The situation in Botswana closely mirrors that of South Africa. Robots are now employed to mine diamonds at depths that are unsafe for humans.

In the wake of the 2014 Ebola crisis, Liberia took full advantage of the 5x5 foot robot, TRU-D to beat the deadly virus. TRU-D had the ability to disinfect rooms where Ebola patients were treated, a feat too risky for humans.

Rwanda, a country where there is one doctor to every 16,046 people, plans to be the world's first drone port to deliver medical and emergency supplies to its rural areas.

It is hard to predict the impact of the increase in robots on the continent, while it could maximize productivity on a much larger scale, it may also take away jobs; as stated in a brief from a United Nations conference on trade and development states: "Disruptive technologies always bring a mix of benefits and risks."

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African countries are importing robots and young people's jobs are at risk - KPAX-TV

Robotics injects new life into Japan’s aging agricultural workforce – Kyodo News Plus

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Collaboration between farmers and robots may prove vital to allowing Japan's aging agricultural workforce to continue producing for crops while ensuring wisdom learned from years on the land is not lost.

Not only will the use of robotics in agriculture reduce manual labor, it is hoped it will enable aging farmers to stay on the land longer and to more efficiently get the most out of their hard won experience.

While automated farming machinery, mostly working in straight lines, is already available on the market, it requires high accuracy positioning information to do the job.

Thus far, the machinery has used a combination of Global Positioning System information supplemented with corrective data sent from ground-based stations.

Depending on the lay of the land, however, farming machinery occasionally strays up to 10 meters from its plotted path due to GPS systems not always providing completely accurate information.

On June 1, Japan put its second quasi-zenith satellite, Michibiki No. 2, into orbit to enhance the precision of GPS in the country. Two more navigation satellites are also planned to be launched by the end of 2017 to provide accurate, round-the-clock GPS data.

The quasi-zenith system ensures one of the planned four satellites will be above Japan at any one time, unlike in the 32-satellite U.S.-owned GPS system in which satellites orbit on various paths around the earth, with a minimum of four required to be in view for the receiver to compute its location.

When the four Japanese satellites are operating, the margin of error is expected to be narrowed to as little as several centimeters.

The agricultural ministry, meanwhile, adopted a set of guidelines in March for use of autonomous farming machinery, such as banning self-driving units on roads and allowing only operators to enter farmland where autonomous machines are working.

The guidelines prompted leading farm equipment manufacturer Kubota Corp. to start selling advanced self-driving tractors on a trial basis on June 1.

While the guidelines cover the use of self-driving machinery under on-site supervision of humans, a team of researchers at the Graduate School of Agriculture of Hokkaido University is developing a tractor that can be controlled remotely.

The team is working on a robotized system that automatically observes the surrounding environment, recognizes abnormal obstacles and avoids them or halts operation if necessary.

During a recent trial, a team member maneuvered a prototype tractor via a tablet computer. Equipped with technology allowing positioning information to be used as well as various sensors and other devices, the tractor automatically stopped when it recognized the presence of an obstacle.

Professor and team leader Noboru Noguchi said a planned tractor, capable of autonomously cultivating, leveling ground and puddling rice paddies at night will become available "within a few years."

If machines can analyze weather and soil data, it will make it possible to predict disease and pest infestations and crop yields per 50 square meter field, thus enabling refined farming operations such as focused distribution of fertilizers where they are most needed, according to experts in the field.

The use of such detailed data, therefore, helps avoid wasteful use of fertilizers and agricultural chemicals, improves the efficiency of farming operations, enhances the safety of agricultural products and contributes to the protection of the environment.

Beginning this autumn, the university team will conduct verification tests on a fully unmanned tractor in a 950-hectare area of land in Hokkaido, taking into consideration actual restrictions such as the use of radio waves and the road traffic law.

To put agricultural robots to work, it is important for people concerned, including researchers, engineers and farmers to allow a process of "trial and error" to play out, Noguchi said.

Certainly, agricultural robots cannot take over all farming operations.

Shigeru Someya, a large-scale rice grower in Kashiwa, near Tokyo, said while advances in agricultural equipment have made farming operations more efficient, it has led to a situation where rice paddies tend to be no longer properly managed.

"I know that rice grows (best) while hearing human footsteps," Someya said. "Visits (to rice paddies) are indispensable."

The accumulation of huge volumes of data, and the use of artificial intelligence to analyze and learn, plus the introduction of farming robots in combination with the wisdom of farmers like Someya should prove profitable for all.

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Robotics injects new life into Japan's aging agricultural workforce - Kyodo News Plus

Georgia Tech builds first-of-its-kind ‘Robotarium’ to advance robotics research (Video) – Atlanta Business Chronicle

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Atlanta Business Chronicle

Georgia Tech builds first-of-its-kind 'Robotarium' to advance robotics research (Video)
Atlanta Business Chronicle
Georgia Tech has built a Robotarium the first of its kind at a research university to accelerate robotics research. The 725-square-foot Robotarium is a remotely accessible swarm robotics lab populated with almost 100 wheeled ground robots and ...

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Georgia Tech builds first-of-its-kind 'Robotarium' to advance robotics research (Video) - Atlanta Business Chronicle

MIT’s Robogami lets you build custom 3D-printable robots from standard, folding parts – TechCrunch

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

Flat-pack furniture made IKEA a global powerhouse, and the same principles may help create a new generation of robots. Interactive Robogami is a project from MIT that lets users create ambulatory robots from a library of pieces that fold and fit together like origami.

The goal is to make the process of designing robots accessible, said Adriana Schulz, a PhD student at MIT who co-led the project. The actuators, the materials, the code, things like that require a lot of knowledge. Our system encapsulates that expert knowledge, so the user can focus on conceptual design.

Robogami lets users combine a library of intercompatible parts with primitives that can be printed like puzzle pieces and then folded and locked into shape. The flat-printed style reduces both print time and material cost by more than half.

It has a user-friendly GUI that has more in common with a game or 3D doodle app than a CAD or other design environment. You drag the pieces where you want them, arrange the type and placement of the feet or wheels and add any other features you think might be useful (or cool-looking). Then you can work out how and when those parts will move, what direction and so on.

Meanwhile, the app is doing all kinds of calculations in the background.

One of the key things is that you can design geometry and motion at the same time. Normally thats two different processes, but here you can change one and see how it affects the other, said Schulz.

The ordering of the how the legs move, the speed, these are all parametric structures, she said. How they interact is systematized and you dont have to worry about, for example, synchronizing motor torques or timing a foots touchdown its being calculated internally. The software maps these components into a full fabrication plan, from the mesh that goes to the 3D printer to the motors and code, the user doesnt have to worry its very end to end.

For instance, if you decide to move the front legs back toward the center, the software calculates how that might affect when and how fast they move, or whether their motion would interfere with another piece. It watches for things like wobbliness, changes in orientation and center of gravity.

It might sound a little like babys first robot kit, but its clearly a versatile tool. Robogami users of varying levels of familiarity with CAD and engineering tools took part in a handful of tests. We were really surprised by the diversity of models people made, Schulz told me. It took about 15-30 minutes to design a robot, a few hours to print it, then 30-90 minutes to assemble it.

The tool isnt aimed at any population in particular, Schulz told me (other than anybody), but I thought this would make for an amazing couple of weeks in a high school or college engineering course, perhaps even earlier. Design your own little bots, print them overnight, assemble them to understand how the motors and chassis fit together, then race them or have them navigate obstacles.

Right now Robogami is just the subject of the researchers paper, now published in the International Journal of Robotics Research. But Schulz said the goal was to move beyond mere locomotion and into other tasks. Empowering people to design complex things is difficult! But I think it would be exciting to create tools that lower design barriers for casual users.

These tools enable new approaches to teaching computational thinking and creating, said Daniela Rus, director of MITs CSAIL and collaborator on the research, in a news release. Students can not only learn by coding and making their own robots, but by bringing to life conceptual ideas about what their robots can actually do.

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MIT's Robogami lets you build custom 3D-printable robots from standard, folding parts - TechCrunch

Bricklaying Robots And Exoskeletons Are the Future of the Construction Industry – Motherboard

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

One of the most staid and digitally conservative industries is on the verge of a robotic makeover.

The global construction space isn't known for ushering new tech into their workforce, but a painful labour shortage, calls for increased worker safety and more low-cost housing, and the need to catch up to other tech-savvy sectors is giving upstarts in robotics and exoskeletons their big moment.

Even so, there's concern that automation could put some workers out of a job. According to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, each additional robot in the American economy lowers employment by 5.6 workers, and every robot that is added to the workforce per 1,000 human workers causes wages to drop by as much as 0.25 to 0.5 percent.

The construction industry isn't immune to this phenomenon, but robots and humans may increasingly work hand-in-hand in industrial sectors, according to Brian Turmail, senior executive director of public affairs at the Associated General Contractors of America. This is especially true when the construction industry en masse uses exoskeleton vests, which aim to assist workers with heavy loads and thus reduce their risk of injury.

But some robots may do the majority of back-breaking work for construction workers that repeat the same routine for hours.

The Hadrian X is a bricklaying robot courtesy Australia's Fastbrick Robotics, which uses its 30-metre metal arm to lay bricks at a rate of 1,000 bricks per hour, compared to a human worker's average of 1,000 a day. Due for release in late 2017, Hadrian X can read a 3D CAD model of the house and then it follows those instructions precisely, working day and night.

Video: Fastbrick Robotics/YouTube

"[Automation] is a need now, not a want," Mike Pivac, president of Fastbrick Robotics, told reporters in 2016. "We have to do this. If we're going to satisfy the global need for low-cost housing over the next 30 years, as we add another 3 billion people to the planet, we see solutions like this as being very, very important."

New York-based Construction Robotics has also developed its take on a bricklaying robot. SAM can lay 3,000 bricks a day, and the company said it's about time this industry got a whiff of the change almost every other market has been seeing.

"The efficiency in construction sites has been very stagnant or declined in the last 20, 30 years whereas manufacturing efficiency has increased significantly and a lot of that is due to robotics and technologies," Scott Peters, President of Construction Robotics, told VICE News.

"The availability of robotics in the industry is pretty thin," according to Dan Kara, president of the robotics research division at ABI Research. "Sure, we've had automation on assembly lines since the '70s, but that's doing a fixed task over and over. In construction, you're not making 1 million refrigerators but moving around a lot, climbing on scaffolds, laying down palettes, and that's a challenge."

Amid fears of widespread automation, there are signs the industry might need non-human help. In June 2017, 154,000 open jobs were available in US construction, compared to 84,000 in May 2012 and a low of 41,000 in May 2009, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Robots don't "replace the need for workers," according to Brian Turmail, senior executive director of public affairs at the Associated General Contractors of America, who answered questions over email. "They change the skill set, mix, and possibly location (e.g., construction site or factory) of workers who are needed."

Without such technological advances, Turmail added, projects may fall short of the workers needed, which would risk delay home construction and drive up costs.

The mainstream construction players are taking notice: In July, construction equipment giant Caterpillar announced it will partner with Fastbrick by investing $2 million in the company and aiming to develop the framework for bringing the Hardian X to Caterpillar customers.

Robotics are also playing a role when it comes to the work actual humans are doing in the construction industry. Look at exoskeletons, which are next-gen arm slings or vests designed to offload the weight of heavy repetitive industrial work. Picture them as robotic armour for construction workers tasked with doing the same thing over and over, like tiling or heavy-duty drilling.

ABI Research predicts the global exoskeleton market will rise from 2,453 units shipped in 2015 to 107,736 units in 2025. Image: ABI Research

Some construction workers may never suffer a crippling injury, but their bodies can wear down after years of back-buckling work. Some firms, like California-based Ekso Bionics, are aiming to help the aging workforce. In September it will debut its new EksoVest, which can support loads of between five and 15lbs per arm.

The robotic exoskeleton market is poised to grow to $1.9 billion in 2025, compared to $97 million in 2016, says ABI Research's Dan Kara.

It will only be a matter of time before shiny metal arms join hand-in-hand with the hard hats dotting construction sites across the world.

Bricklaying Robots And Exoskeletons Are the Future of the Construction Industry - Motherboard

Robotics and automation: threats and opportunities – Livemint

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Danzig

iStock

The concept of robotics has been in existence for a long time, with Egyptians using automated water clocks to strike the hour bell and hydraulically operated statues that could gesture and speak in 400 BC. Subsequently, there have been many such instances of robotics in the history of mankind. The first modern-day Industrial Revolution dates back to 1800s and had manufacturing processes for metals, chemicals, textiles and mining; leading to an increase in productivity and output. Robots have evolved tremendously over the years and are now being widely used in various sectors such as defence, disaster management, search and rescue operations, and the entertainment industry in the form of electronically operated toys.

Automation is an extension of robotics and can be termed as the next phase of industrial revolution. The present industrial revolution seeks to disrupt the existing processes and enhance them with programmable logic. While it is easy to identify a repetitive process or task, it is equally difficult to program such a code that can make a machine carry out this activity on a perpetual basis.

As technology has improved over time, robots and automated systems have made inroads into organizations where tasks may have been dangerous, impossible or just plain mundane for humans.

Since the dawn of computer programming, automation, also known as robotics, was available in the form of click-and-type macros. These would repeat keyboard and mouse operations, mimicking a human.

With the advent of advanced analytics and data sciences, as in artificial intelligence, it is now possible to automate complex tasks that can act intelligently like humans. Analytics are now being used to identify or avoid risks; for example, identifying a suspect fraudulent transaction on a credit card based on the customers regular spending pattern or studying a customers spending pattern on an online retail store and recommending products.

Use of sensors in everyday objects such as lights, air conditioners and televisionswhich operate based on inputs like human gesture, speech or commandsis another example. Sensors are also being used to identify speeding cars or count the number of parking slots available in large parking spaces.

The latest application of robotics and automation can be seen in technologies such as autonomous or driverless cars, 3D printing and chat bots.

Data analytics forms the backbone of robotics and automation. Any task that can be programmed into a computer-readable code requires extensive amount of input data to be analysed and processed in real-time basis to provide enhancements.

For instance, real-time data analytics plays a pivotal role in allowing a driverless vehicle to self-navigate from one point to another, without human intervention. Sensors and cameras provide real-time input of distance between vehicles, traffic conditions, and natural obstacles such as stones and dividers; which are then processed at high speeds to allow the vehicle to navigate at an optimum speed. Global Positioning System (GPS) provides navigation and route information for the destination. All these processes and sensors work simultaneously, processing large data sets to redefine the driving experience.

Chat bots too require complex understanding to simulate human behaviour for efficient customer service. Data analytics can provide significant value to chat bot technology by leveraging large data sets that form the basics to simulate human behaviour. With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, bots can be designed to continuously learn and evolve their responses to customer queries. Chat bots can also be used in help desk management systems where these are capable of resolving queries accurately and at a faster pace compared to their human counterparts.

While automation technologies like driverless cars and chat bots may disrupt our lives in the future, each one of these could potentially create avenues and opportunities for individuals and businesses. Here are some examples:

The mass adoption of driverless cars could potentially have an adverse short-term impact in the form of job losses, but may also allow low-cost entry for small scale investors. These investors can set up a unit of driverless cabs and earn their livelihood without relying on third parties. Programming and data analytics for driverless cars would result in job creation in software engineering.

Chat bots could possibly reduce the need for customer service representatives but on the other hand, complex programming requirements and artificial intelligence would lead to more job creation for data science analytics and service delivery to customers.

Every industrial revolution that has occurred in the past has opened a wide variety of prospects for individuals as well as organizations.

Market sentiments suggest that the job market does not stay static but changes constantly with innovation in technologies. Many tasks undertaken (manually) by humans about 20-30 years ago are no longer relevant. Gone are the days wherein one would need to feed a huge stack of chip cards to a large computer system. Data entry has become more sophisticated and less manual. Similarly, todays jobs may not be that relevant 20-30 years in the future but there would be more and different opportunities. With the increased use of remote connectivity, video conference and digital presence; the job scenario is expected to drive the future of work. Manual tasks would become increasingly automated for business efficiencies and scale. This will be key for organizations that want to stay ahead of the curve and outpace rivals in a highly competitive world.

Amit Jaju, partner, forensic technology and discovery services,EY India

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Robotics and automation: threats and opportunities - Livemint

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