Daily Archives: July 26, 2017

When Matt Hooper shows up in Amity Island to help out with its shark situation in Jaws, Mayor Vaughn questions the oceanographer's intent as a ploy to get his name in National Geographic. Though Jaws lore states Hooper did eventually get on the cover of the prestigious magazine, he is still outfinned by shark biologist Dr. Greg Skomal and photojournalist Brian Skerry.

Two big fish in the shark world, the guys have been friends for more than two decades but approach their shared love of the 400-million-year-old creatures in different ways.

A National Geographic Photography Fellow (with his work being included in the magazine's 50 Greatest Photos of All Time), Skerry has hunted sharks for the best shots. He snapped photos of the great white breaching the water in epic fashion for a bite to eat but also shoots to highlight the evolutionary beauty of sharks, especially of their fins. Skerry has a new book of photos, simply titled Shark, and a special titled Mission Critical: Sharks Under Attack as part of National Geographics wildlife SharkFest programming block on the Nat Geo WILD channel, which kicked off Sunday and continues through this week.

Meanwhile, Skomal has been in the field since 1983 and tagged more than 108 Atlantic great white sharks since 2009. Skomal is a senior fisheries biologist with Massachusetts Marine Fisheries since 1987 and currently heads up the Massachusetts Shark Research Program (MSRP).

Together, Skomal and Skerry are part of a public relations campaign to improve the public's understanding of sharks and convince the mainstream of their importance to the planet in maintaining a balanced marine ecosystem. They each contribute to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy in Chatham, Mass., on Cape Cod that educates through interactive exhibits of the large residents (probably a couple dozen, at the least) who swim in the waters off Cape Cod as preferred feeding grounds. The Conservancy is also behind the Sharktivity smartphone app that allows users to track tagged great whites in global waters.

Skerry and Skomal joined me at the Conservancy to talk about their efforts as well as how popular culture such as Jaws influenced them ... and helped create a problem. They also discuss how modern entertainment can be both helpful and damaging for the perception of sharks in real life.

And yeah, because we're SYFY, we totally talked to these shark nerds about the relevance of Sharknado. And, spoiler, they dig it.

Within the first few minutes of talking with each of you, you brought up Jaws. How did that movie lure you into the science of sharks and the photography of them?

Brian Skerry: I can only say that when Jaws came out, I was 14 or 15 years old. I was always interested in the ocean, so it didn't take much to entice me. I went on opening night, in the fifth row in Worcester, Massachusetts. I just loved it. It was bigger than life, and these guys became heroes of mine. Hooper was a cool, smart, irreverent scientist studying sharks.

Greg Skomal: It was a great inspirational film for me for all the same reasons. I was fascinated by sharks as a young kid, and grew up on Long Island Sound, where it wasn't the most pristine body of water. So everything I knew was coming from books and Cousteau. And the movie Jaws. I am often quoted as saying guys like us got pushed into the water instead of scared away from it.

And yet it demonized sharks.

Skerry: Even though it demonized sharks, we weren't thinking back then. We didn't know what we know today. It inspired a generation of researchers. It certainly inspired me. If I had been better at math, I probably would have been a scientist. I wanted to be Matt Hooper but ultimately became Quint!

Skomal: There was a documentary a few years ago called How Jaws Changed the World and how it inspired a lot of scientists, engineers, photographers, and filmmakers.

Jaws author Peter Benchley said he couldn't write the shark as a villain today but would instead be the victim because of man's decimation of the shark population. He seemed to express some regret for Jaws and its impact of shark populations.

Skerry: He never apologized for it. He shouldn't have. Also, he made a fortune! I got to be friends with him late in his life and he talked about knowing what he knew later in life, he couldn't have written Jaws. He spent much of his late life working for the conservation of sharks. So I think we've all had this evolution.

Skomal: Peter was too hard on himself. If you look at where shark populations went in the '70s and '80s -- they crashed and it really correlates with the development of the Mursaline-Pelagic longline of fisheries, which had nothing to do with Jaws. Because of the growing market for shark fins and the movement of fishermen from traditional ground fish fisheries, sharks became a target group of species that the National Fisheries Service promoted as an underutilized resource ... so a lot of fisherman geared up and went into it. It was a massive expansion of commercial fisheries.

Skerry: And to that point, part of the demand for shark-fin soup was a growing middle class in places like China. As the middle class grew, they wanted to do what the emperor did and they started eating shark-fin soup.

Why are sharks such great movie monsters?

Skomal: Hey, if you look at statistics, they do occasionally bite and kill people! So, it's one of those monsters living in an environment foreign to us. Even when we get in the water, you take precautions. Imagine a monster living in a place you don't normally go.

Skerry: Benchley talked about that. He inadvertently tapped into this primal fear humans have of being eaten by a wild animal, especially in this place that's an alien environment. A human being is going to be terrified of getting eaten by a bear or lion, but we see cute pictures of grizzlies with their cubs and we make stuffed animal and want to hug them. But a great white shark is still enigmatic.

Brian, you mentioned if there was a 20-foot-long truck-sized predator on land, we'd know everything about it. So, even though the research is growing, the mystery of this thing underwater contributes to our primal fear?

Skerry: Absolutely. The work Greg has been doing the last few years in the Cape is the first ever. There is almost no data on Atlantic white sharks. How can it be, in the 21st century, the largest predatory fish in the ocean that's inspired myth and tales, we know almost nothing about? We don't know where they come from, where they go, where they have their pups, where they're mating. The work here is the first steps in the process.

Greg, if I could give you the answer to one scientific mystery about white sharks, what would it be?

Skomal: A segment of our shark population -- once they get to be about three, three and a half meters long migrates out to the Mid-Atlantic as far out as the Eastern Atlantic. It follows the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and dives down to depths as great as 3,000 feet every day through a very broad temperature range. None of us know what they're doing! We want to know what they're doing. Everybody is trying to figure out what these big migrations mean for these sharks we think of as being more coastal.

Is the conversation about sharks within popular culture and great whites a good thing?

Skerry: I think the conversation is a good thing. But where it gets off the rails is when popular culture takes a turn into bad fiction. If your intent is to scare people, and demonize a population of animal, I don't necessarily think that's a good thing. I want to demystify sharks, but don't want to portray them as house pets. They're not kittens. There are dive operators out there that will tell you that you can hug a shark. That's absurd. They are predators, and having a clear understanding of what they are is fine.

Programming like SharkFest is a good thing. But having a documentary called "Great White Serial Killer" or whatever is not good. So many sharks are being killed each year, and it's unnecessary. We don't have an appreciation for their value to the planet. As long as we see them as pests, it's a short stretch to eradicate them.

Skomal: We live in a very different time than when we saw Jaws. My science gets out there through social media. Scientists now have more direct contact with people. But sharks are always going to be exploited. I don't know if it's to demonize, but it's all about making money. I don't mind a show that's obviously entertainment and so unrealistic people look at it as almost comical. I don't like documentaries that portray sharks as demons. I am old-fashioned when it comes to a good natural history documentary, which means factual.

Where is the line between harmless entertainment and problematic demonization?

Skomal: There's Sharknado on one end, which I think of as entertainment. And you have a National Geographic article, or published paper, at the other end of the spectrum. Then the lines blur with the mockumentary. You're coming across as telling the truth, and you're not. You're demonizing an animal. Discovery has been guilty of that. Megalodon is a very good example. People walked away from that show and thought, "That's real."

Skerry: I had an exhibit at the Smithsonian. Right next to my exhibit was a true megalodon jaws. There was a 12-year-old boy looking at it who asked if I'd ever seen one. I said, "No, they're extinct." And he says, "No, they're not." I get into this conversation with a 12-year-old kid convinced I was an idiot because I didn't know megalodon were still out there swimming in the ocean! That doesn't serve us well. It's really about truth. We live in a world where "fake news" has exploded, and people trying to change our point of view through manipulation. We need sources of truth in the world we can go to as a beacon. That's what National Geographic is trying to do by remaining a scientific, truthful organization.

Since you brought up Sharknado, what are your thoughts about it in relation to shark education?

Skomal: I've seen two of them. It's Saturday morning stuff with my kids. I actually had The Weather Channel call me out and do a funny interview when the first one came out. They asked, "Is it possible this could happen?" No! But I enjoy it. It is entertainment. I don't look at them critically. Sharks flying around, eating people, and people cutting themselves out of sharks is so absurd, it's entertaining. It engages people. Maybe there is a 6-year old who types into Google, "Can sharks fly?" and learns something.

Skerry: It is not that different than Greg and I being inspired by Jaws. A lot of people said Jaws was bad for sharks, but at the end of the day, it inspired a generation of researchers. That is not a bad thing. If there is some kid out there who sees Sharknado and gets jazzed about sharks, maybe his entry to that world is through a weird portal but ultimately he or she becomes a great shark researcher, or storyteller about the ocean. I don't want to be quick to take a highbrow attitude about anything that isn't pure truth. As long as you know it's fake.

Continued here:

SharkFest to Sharknado: Nat Geo's experts on pop culture evolution ... - SYFY WIRE (blog)

We tend to speak about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in terms of the pinnacle of its potential evolution, and thats a problem.

This article I found showcases one current debate about the potential for AI doing evil. Elon Musk fires back at Mark Zuckerberg in debate about the future: His understanding of the subject is limited.

On Sunday afternoon, while smoking some meats in his back garden, Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, questioned why Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and OpenAI, was being so negative about AI.

What theyre debating is the future potential for AIs that can, for all practical purposes, duplicate and then go far beyond the capabilities of the human mind. And, in addition, possess the ability to interact with humans beings for good or evil.

Of course, AIs today are very limited. We discover those limitations when we realize that AI demos typically only address one or two specific tasks. Like playing chess. Or driving a car on the roadwaysin traffic.Our interactions with Siri provide confirmation every day of that AIs limits.

So whats the debate really about? I think those who worry, like Elon Mush, ponder two certain things.

Just as Apple has built a sophisticated web browser, called Safari, that serves us well and trued to protect us, theres no way to perfectly protect the user when dedicated minds, the hackers, try to subvert the good uses of Safari for financial gain or other purposes.

Moreover, even though Apple has, for example, joined the Partnership on AI consortium, theres no guarantee that the knowledge or ethics developed there will be constrained only for good purposes, all over the planet Earth.

So then the question boils down to the limits of human capabilities. I dont think anyone doubts that well get smart enough to build an entity like Star Treks Lt. Commander Data. See NASAs page on the science of Star Trek:

At a conference on cybernetics several years ago, the president of the association was asked what is the ultimate goal of his field of technology. He replied, Lieutenant Commander Data. Creating Star Treks Mr. Data would be a historic feat of cybernetics, and its very controversial in computer science whether it can be done.

So how long will this take? If it takes us another 100 years to build a Lt. Commander Data, unforeseen events, war, climate change, and cultural changes could prevent that kind of evolution from ever happening. On the other hand, if we develop AI technology too fast, without adequate controls, we could end up as we did with nuclear weapons. A lot of power that we struggle to keep under control.

In the end, I think both Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Musk have equally good points. In Mr. Zuckerbergs favor, AI technology will do a lot to help us out in the short term, limited in scope as it is. However, in the long run, Mr. Musk has a great point. Namely, our species hasnt been able to control its worst instincts on the current day internet.What will we have to do as a species to avoid the worst possible fate of massive AI evil inflicted on ourselves.

Thats what were in the process of finding out.

Read more here:

Will the Evolution of Artificial Intelligence Harm Humans? Depends - The Mac Observer

After being closed to the public for the past six months, the Natural History Museums Hintze Hall reopened on the 13 July 2017, featuring a grandblue whale skeleton as its central display. This event carried particular importance for OUPs Gabriel Jackson, who was commissioned to write a piece for the Gala opening ceremony.

The piece, This Paradise I give thee,is a short composition for 13 instruments and baritone solo which draws inspiration from the diversity of the natural world alongside the words of Charles Darwin and John Milton. With this piece Gabriel maps processes and theories of evolution onto music. The idea that evolution can be expressed through music poses some interesting questions; what happens when you consider this relationship from an alternative angle? How has music evolved with humans over time? In his chapter Music and Biocultural EvolutionIan Cross, Professor of Music and Science at the University of Cambridge, provides some interesting ideas.

Although most modern scholarship on music only stretches back to the 1100s or so, music is truly ancient. The earliest example of sophisticated musical instruments (in the form of pipes made of bone and horns) date to around 40,000 years ago. Whilst this may not sound that far back, this predates all examples of visual art.

These early instruments were found in Germany; however, much like today, musical production was not only centred in this part of the world. In fact, there is evidence of music having existed globally at this time, with music production being found in places as far-flung as the pre-Hispanic Americas and the Aboriginal people of precolonial Australia.

It is generallyassumed that the creation of these very early physical instruments occurred significantly after the human capacity for musicality developed. As such, it is likely that other methods of music making that do not involve sound production from instruments, such as singing, date much, much further back than 40,000 years. According to Cross, this assertion provides good grounds for believing that music may have accompanied humans from the earliest signs of modern activity.

Of course, in order for these theories of music as a product of evolution to withstand scrutiny, Cross and other scientists have to rely upon a much more malleable notion of music than that which we often use today. According to the Oxford Dictionariesmusic is, Vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion. This definition is unlikely to fit with notions of pre-modern music, and, indeed, does not fit all music that is produced today. Some people, for example, may find it quite difficult to perceive a sense of form or harmony in a work such as this:

The notion that all music fits within the definition posed in the Oxford English Dictionarycould therefore be considered a little Western-classical centric; however, the fact that all music expresses emotion is an inescapable truth. Whilst the emotions felt are often specific to an individual, it is unlikely that one would listen to a piece and feel nothing at all.

In addition to expressing emotion, there are also a number of other persistent similarities to be found when establishing the traits of music across cultures. For example, music nearly always carries some form of complex sound event (such as structured rhythms, or pitch organisation) over an underlying regular pulse. This is true regardless of the genre of music that is being listened to. When considering the importance of time in a musical performance, and the transition of emotions, then, some suggestions begin to emerge regarding the reasons why music may have evolved with us.

Cross outlines that, through allowing people to create something together via a regular pulse or beat, musical sounds may have provided a means through which people could envisage that they were sharing each others experiences, thus fostering social bonds.

Similarly, musics capacity to transmit emotions that are felt by everyone, yet specific to an individual, may suggest that it was created as a way of understanding individual and group feelings, particularly in times of social uncertainty. Indeed, as Cross states, the ability to share emotions and intentionality is fundamental to our capacity for culture, the possession of which is assumed be a generic feature of modern humans.

Musics ability to create and maintain social relationships, alongside its direction and motivation of human attention, is likely to have been incredibly important to the survival of pre-modern humans. When taken outside of its more modern context of entertainment, it is indeed likely that music provided an imperative social tool throughout the history of human evolution, and represents just one of the many ways in which humans are different from other species.

Original chapter written by Ian Cross, Professor of Music and Science at Cambridge University. Chapter published in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, 2003. Extracts used by kind permission of Ian Cross.

Featured image credit:Stone wall with ancient musicians, by Repina Valeriya via Shutterstock.

Continued here:

Music and human evolution - OUPblog (blog)

Cumberland-based Numerex Corp, a provider of enterprise solutions enabling the Internet of Things, announced thatnxCONNECT, an LTE wireless backup solution, has received a 2017 IoT Evolution Product of the Year Award fromIoT Evolution magazineandIoT Evolution World, the leading magazine and website covering IoT technologies.

Purpose-built for MSOs and CSOs,nxCONNECT ensures the continuity of internet connectivity for small and medium businesses by using Numerexs network cellular service as a backup failover in the event of broadband service outages.nxCONNECT consists of a complete bundled offering which includes an intelligent router that instantly detects broadband signal loss and seamlessly reconnects to a powerful LTE link, so that mission-critical enterprise information continues to be transmitted and customers Cloud applications remain operational. nxCONNECT comes with a user-friendly online portal, along with inventory and fulfillment services, and an easy to use self-install kit which allows quick set up and installation for the end user.

The solutions selected for the IoT Evolution Product of Year Award reflect the diverse range of innovation driving the market today. It is my honor to congratulate Numerex for their innovative work and superior contribution to the rapidly evolving IoT industry, said Carl Ford, CEO ofCrossfire Media, a co-publisher of IoT Evolution.

We are honored that TMC has selectednxCONNECT as an innovative solution that earned Numerex the 2017 IoT Evolution Product of the Year Award, said Shu Gan, CMO of Numerex. As a new offering launched this year in our service portfolio,nxCONNECT leverages our powerful nxFAST Platform and the Numerex network to bring tangible benefits to our business customers.

The winners of the 2017 IoT Evolution Product of the Year Award will be published in the next issue ofIoT Evolution magazine.

See the article here:

Numerex receives IoT Evolution Product of the Year Award - MDJOnline.com

Racing.com is about to go through its first major evolution since the official launch of the joint venture between Seven West Media and Racing Victoria in August 2015.

After being granted the media rights for Thoroughbred Racing South Australia (TRSA) for seven years, Racing.com will broadcast South Australian racing for the first time from Morphettville on August 2, sitting alongside Victorian racing across all of its media platforms.

Andrew Catterall, Racing.com CEO, sees the addition of South Australian Racing as a major win for Racing.com.

"The shareholder agreement that governs the Racing.com joint venture between Seven West Media and Racing Victoria very clearly states that the acquisition of further racing content is in our mandate," Catterall said.

"Racing.com is the only dedicated 24/7 free-to-air sports channel in Australia and the addition of another 180 meetings to the existing base of 520 Victorian and 88 Hong Kong meetings really strengthens our offering of over 3000 hours of live race broadcasting per annum.

"Our channel is available free of charge to 95 per cent of homes, pubs and clubs and every mobile phone, not just in Victoria and SA, but also nationwide."

Catterall has questioned some recent media coverage querying whether Racing.com is doing the right thing for Victorian racing by adding additional coverage from other jurisdictions, including broadcasting five feature meetings of the Brisbane Racing Carnival and 10 meetings from New Zealand, along with winning the South Australian rights.

"The challenge for Victorian Racing is to make the channel more relevant to more people, more often," Catterall said.

"We want to attract punters from all states and territories to our freely available platform.

"Broadcasting South Australian racing is clearly an important outcome to attract South Australian viewers to our channel.

"As the premium product on the channel, Victorian racing clearly benefits from being more relevant to a larger audience.

"Since the launch of Racing.com, wagering on Victorian thoroughbred racing has grown by 18 per cent and has broken through the $6 billion per annum turnover mark for the first time for any state racing authority in Australia.

"This growth in turnover will lead to increased revenue for FY17 for Victorian Racing, for the benefit of all participants.

"Given this growth story, concerns that the coverage of Victorian racing is somehow diminished or that the argument that Racing.com should remain Victorian only are illogical."

Catterall also reinforced that the investment made by Racing.com to secure the South Australian thoroughbred rights from 2017 to 2024 was a well-considered strategic and commercial decision.

"It's a pity that some media commentators continue to publish false assumptions about the commercial deal between Racing.com and TRSA, and don't bother to ring us to fact check," Catterall said.

"The rights payment offered to TRSA covers both domestic and international rights for the period FY17 to FY24.

"Both the domestic and international offers were based on extensive analysis of our capacity to generate a direct return on the investment.

"Our shareholders, Seven West Media and RVL, hold us accountable to getting a return on the investment on behalf of the industry.

"We clearly paid the market price given that the Tabcorp-owned Sky Channel matched our offer through their last-rights option in the auction process.

"In the end, given comparable offers, the superior distribution benefits of Racing.com's free-to-air, Pay TV and streaming model were adjudged by TRSA to be the right option for the future."

Catterall also said that once the rights were secured, Racing.com immediately secured major agreements to recover the financial investment in rights payments, and de-risk the strategy for shareholders and the Victorian industry.

"We have already completed a sub-licensing deal with Sky Racing to guarantee that South Australian racing remains on the SKY 1 wall-to-wall service until 2024," Catterall explained.

"A deal has already been done to sub license the international rights to our partners at the Melbourne Racing Club, which goes through to 2024 as well.

"We have also completed sponsorship deals with our wagering partners until 2019.

"These core deals recover the bulk of the rights investment, and so now we turn our attention to securing as many streaming sub licenses to wagering operators as we can, and finding advertiser partners seeking to leverage SA racing within our nationwide broadcast.

"These streaming outcomes are really important for TRSA as South Australian racing generates around 50 per cent of its revenue, and the majority of all bets taken, from punters outside of South Australia, wagering through corporate bookmakers and interstate TABs that promote SA racing to the much larger national audience."

Catterall said that Racing.com is keeping TRSA updated through learnings from wagering operators on how they have been negatively impacted by the Point of Consumption tax implemented by the South Australian Government.

"This tax impacts on all bets made by South Australian residents," Catterall said.

"We will continually update TRSA on what impact this is having on how the corporate bookmakers promote South Australian racing both in SA and nationally."

Link:

SA coverage heralds Racing.com evolution - Racing.com