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Monthly Archives: August 2017
Reject dysfunctional lawmakers, political correctness at polls – MDJOnline.com
Posted: August 10, 2017 at 6:16 am
DEAR EDITOR:
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, has delayed the vote on the drastically needed military spending bill by at least six weeks by demanding an end to the National Defense Authorization Acts indefinite detention of suspects (read, terrorists). Our military has been decimated by Obamas sequestration and it will take years, even decades to rebuild its strength. The delay being caused by this radical senator is inexcusable.
I guess Paul wants us to make Kissy, Kissy and, ala Obama, release them from GTMO to rejoin ISIS, al-Qaida or other terrorist groups. Former GTMO detainees numbering 122 including 87 released by Obama have re-engaged in terrorism.
These terrorists are not prisoners of war, they are criminals in an undeclared war being waged by Muslim extremists. For the safety of our nation and that of the world, they cannot be released and GTMO, not the continental US, is the place to keep them.
Paul and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, who are both looking to repeal Authorization for Use of Military Force, need to have their heads examined but are most probably beyond the point of recovery. Our polarized, dysfunctional Congress gridlocks on the smallest of issues and loss of this power by the President could have us sitting there watching the world go up in flames.
Paul has additionally criticized the missile attack on the Shayrat Air Base in Syria from which weapons outlawed under the Chemical Weapons Convention had been deployed by Bashar al-Assad from that site and resulted in the mass murder of civilians. That attack certainly had greater justification than Clintons 1998 cruise missile strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan that he used to divert attention from his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
What America needs is the ouster at the polls of dysfunctional senators and representatives of both parties and the rejection of political correctness. Dominance by groups (LGBTQ or O whatever it calls itself today, ACLU and related splinter groups) that do not represent the thinking of the majority of American citizens will, if it does not end, eventually see the destruction of everything for which our nation stands.
R.S. Pino
Marietta
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Reject dysfunctional lawmakers, political correctness at polls - MDJOnline.com
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Broadway: The Great Comet Killed by Political Correctness, Bad … – ShowBiz411.com
Posted: at 6:16 am
Home Theater Broadway: The Great Comet Killed by Political Correctness, Bad Producing and Really...
The Great Comet aka Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 is closing on September 3rd, the victim of stupidity. It was killed by political correctness, bad producing, and really bad PR.
I first saw The Great Comet on Gansevoort St. in a tent. It was dinner theater and quite amusing. Then it moved to a tent on West 45th St. When it was finally moved to the Imperial Theater on Broadway, pop star Josh Groban starred as Pierre. The box office was great. He and the show received Tony nominations.
But Groban could only stay so long. The producers knew this in February when they announced his replacement: a totally unknown actor from Hamilton named Okieriete Oak Onaodowan. Im sure hes very talented, but hes not a star or even a name anyone knows. Why did the producers think replacing Josh Groban with such a person regardless of color or nationality would be a good idea? Beats me.
If there was some push to get a black Pierre, why not Brian Stokes Mitchell? Norm Lewis? Leslie Odom, Jr? James Monroe Inglehart, from Aladdin? Did no black star want to do it? What about Usher? Jamie Foxx?
So then came Oak, as he is known. But he is known to few. So the box office literally went off a cliff. Overnight, the show dropped from an average $1 million a week take to around $840,000. The producers realized Oak despite his great talent was not drawing a crowd. The idea came to ask Mandy Patinkin to step in. Even for three weeks, that would get the box office back up and more.
But political correctness stepped in. Replace a black actor with a white actor? There was an outcry. Patinkin, who would have been a great Pierre, pulled out. It didnt matter that Oak, the black actor, had replaced Groban, a white actor. The whole thing is crazy. This had nothing to do with color. It had to do with saving the show. Theater is color blind. But its not star blind. This show required a name on the Marquee. Maybe Oak could have come back after Patinkin righted the ship.
But now, with no Mandy, no Oak, no nobody of an color, The Great Comet will close. All those jobs down the drain. And for what? Botched PR. Botched producing. Nobody wins, everyone loses. What a shame.
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News. He writes for Parade magazine and has written for Details, Vogue, the New York Times, Post, and Daily News and many other publications. He is the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals.
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Broadway: The Great Comet Killed by Political Correctness, Bad ... - ShowBiz411.com
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Genetic breakthrough ‘will promote eugenics’, warns Catholic expert in bioethics – The Tablet
Posted: at 6:15 am
09 August 2017 | by Sam Adams , Sarah Mac Donald 'This aim is the essence of eugenics: not to make people better but to make better people'
Gene-editing experiments conducted on purposely-created human embryos are the essence of eugenics, a leading Catholic expert in bioethics has warned.
Scientists in the United States have published the results of tests carried out on embryos using the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9, with the aim of preventing the inheritance of genetic disease.
The experiments, held at Oregon Health and Science University, and published in the science journal Nature on 2 August, involved CRISPR/Cas9 being used to remove a mutation that causes sudden heart failure.
As part of the process, healthy women were paid to undergo ovarian stimulation to produce eggs which were then fertilised and experimented upon before being destroyed.
Dr Albert Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, in Oxford, said the process raised serious ethical concerns, in particular, the creation of embryonic human beingspurely for their use as experimental subjects.
The embryo is conceived with the intention that it will be modified, said Dr Jones. This aim is the essence of eugenics: not to make people better but to make better people.
Dr Jones also questioned the ethics of encouraging women by financial inducements to part with their reproductive potential, and warned of the short term risks of ovarian stimulation.
Ethical concerns were also raised by Bishop Kevin Doran, chair of the Irish Bishops Consultative Group on Bioethics, who warned: you cant destroy one human being in the hope of saving another.
In an interview with RTEs Sean ORourke programme, the Bishop of Elphin said the Church was very clear that medical intervention on human embryos is permitted provided it is without undue risk to the embryo and provided that it is directed towards the improvement of the embryos health.
However, in the case of this new research he said, we are talking about a whole group of human individuals whose lives are being used purely and simply for research.
Professor John Haldane, J. Newton Rayzor Sr Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, Texas, said the discovery of the process and development of CRISPR is a remarkable scientific achievement but that its application to human embryos may involve serious risks.
There is the danger that producing improved or enhanced human beings changes the relations between us, increasing inequalities of opportunity and outcome and encouraging stigmatisation, he said.
The processes involved may themselves be unethical insofar as they involve creating and destroying human life.
PICTURE: Embryos are placed onto a CryoLeaf ready for instant freezing using the new vitrification process
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Fruit fly mutation foretells 40 million years of evolution – Florida State News
Posted: at 6:14 am
Professor of Biological Science David Houle
Small, seemingly insignificant mutations in fruit flies may actually hold clues as to how a species will evolve tens of millions of years in the future.
Thats the focus of a new study by a Florida State University researcher who raised 200 generations of fruit flies to examine how they changed both in the short and long term. What he found was quite surprising.
Small mutations in the wing of fruit flies the drosophilids predict up to 40 million years of evolution for this common household pest. The research was published today in the journal Nature.
The main point is mutation thats happening now affects long-term evolution, said Professor of Biological Science David Houle. How this happens is not clear. Some scientists believe that the supply of mutation is what guides evolution. Others have suggested that the same processes that shape long-term evolution also shape mutation.
Houle set out to investigate if there were parts of the fruit fly that couldnt mutate or evolve and how quickly other parts did so.
We wanted to see how the effects that mutation produces are related to evolution, Houle said. We were surprised that there was a very tight relationship.
Fruit flies are considered an ideal species for scientists to investigate unsolved problems in evolution and genetics because it is easy to breed more than 20 generations each year. Their wings are also easy to measure, so scientists can easily identify even small changes.
Its a convenient system to investigate complex parts of an organism, Houle said. Ive always been interested in evolutionary process, whats going on and whats limiting it. Its the nuts and bolts.
By examining fossil evidence and conducting DNA sequencing, Houle and his colleagues knew that fruit flies had been around for roughly 40 million years. They also suspected that the pattern of mutation could have remained constant over that time period.
It is often true that some things evolve very slowly, and its reasonable to conclude that mutational patterns may be one of those things, he said. The important thing is that the pattern of past evolution did not necessarily have to be similar to mutation. We were surprised at how similar they are.
To measure the rate of mutation and evolution, Houle and co-author Kim van der Linde of the Tallahassee-based Animal Genetics Inc. gathered almost 120 different species of flies by collecting them from nature or obtaining them from other scientists. Van der Linde studied how these flies were related to each other.
Houle then raised 200 generations of fruit flies it takes four years to breed that many generations and then individually raised some of the flies to see what, if any, changes occurred in the wings of the flies. In total, the researchers measured more than 50,000 fly wings in the course of this study and found changes in the overall shape of the wing, such as the ratio of width to length and vein locations.
Some types of changes evolved at a higher rate than others, such as the ratio of wing width and length. These evolutionary changes were also the most common mutational changes.
Through these observations and sophisticated statistical modeling, Houle and his team were able to determine that the small mutational changes occurred in the same pattern as evolution throughout the entire group of fly species.
The findings are likely applicable to how other plants and animal species evolved, Houle said. But they also are predictive of the next 40 million years of evolution as well, he added.
What we are doing is more accurately known as a retrodiction using something from the present to predict past events, Houle said. Of course, we can now make a prediction that Drosophila will evolve in this pattern in the future, as well.
This work was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Other authors on the paper are Thomas Hansen of the University of Oslo, Norway, and Geir Bolstad of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. Hansen is a former member of the FSU faculty, and Bolstad was a postdoctoral researcher at Florida State in 2013.
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Fruit fly mutation foretells 40 million years of evolution - Florida State News
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Why Disney’s New Streaming Service Marks the Next Phase of the Streaming Evolution – Vulture
Posted: at 6:14 am
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Why Disney's New Streaming Service Marks the Next Phase of the Streaming Evolution - Vulture
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The Anatomy Of An Oil Market Evolution, Its Sustainability, And Consequences – Seeking Alpha
Posted: at 6:14 am
World oil markets have experienced a fundamental transition in recent years, making the practice of oil price manipulation to be elusive. In the past, oil prices were basically supported by the market being undersupplied, together with the specter of peak oil. Oil market paradigms were based on declining production in countries composing the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), contrasting with rising global demand mostly among non-OECD countries. In the face of such production declines, OPEC and Eurasia (Russia and the former United Soviet Social Republics, USSR) pegged their production to quotas more so associated with global supply than global demand. The resulting anticipation was for a state of secular market undersupply to simply continue, pushing oil prices higher.
However, oil prices collapsed. Market expectations were defeated with the U.S. dramatically increasing production. The production increase in the U.S. shocked markets by demonstrating the capacity to supply 78% of the total global oil demand increase from 2008 to 2015 - something never before experienced from a country or entity in the oil markets. OPEC and Eurasia market quotas, associated with global supply, cemented an oversupplied dynamic.
This oversupply was once thought to be self-limiting, with U.S. producers simply having to shut in production at various declining price levels. 2016 proved this not to be the case. Now, OPEC and Russia seek to regain influence in an oil market that's dramatically altered. Altered in such a way that the past method of controlling prices by controlling supply has simply given way to new technologies. These technologies evolved an oil market where the ability to accumulate market share at historically low prices is paramount. Driving this is the fact that oil production trends have been much more dramatic than trends in oil demand, with both trends favoring oversupplied conditions. Technology is creating the ability to produce more oil at progressively lower costs. Likewise, technology reduces oil demand by creating fuel inefficiencies and alternative modes of energy.
Another transitional market dynamic is looming between a state of oversupplied conditions and sovereign budget deficits. Where OPEC countries once enjoyed significant sovereign budget surpluses and associated social services, now worrying budget deficits have persisted since 2014. To bridge the gap, unprecedented bond debt has been issued among the most able, namely Saudi Arabia, with their $17.5 billion global bond issuance in October of last year. The primary method of addressing deficits has been the use of foreign currency reserves, such as in Iraq to fill an approximate $20 billion per year shortfall over the last 3 years. All of this in a region already inflicted with substantial ideological tensions, insurgencies and territorial conflicts.
OPEC once balanced production between supporting prices, while avoiding global economic recession. Now we see OPEC pressured in an unprecedented way, with private company profitability setting oil price discovery. A collapse in OPEC production is the risk as always, but now it is compounded by the new economics of oil price due to technology and not just the customary features of ideology and territory.
According to data from the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), from 2007 through 2013, global markets were undersupplied with oil 4 years out of the total 7. The undersupply was often significant, with an undersupply of 1.4 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2007 and 1.24 mb/d in 2011. In 2012, an oversupply of only 140 thousand barrels per day (kb/d) occurred. In 2009 and 2010, the market was essentially balanced, with demand having been eroded by the Great Recession.
In the singular instance of oversupply, the volume of oversupply was minimal. This dynamic supported inflation-adjusted oil prices in the range of $90-105 per barrel. A shift to oversupply came in 2014 with an oversupply of 820 kb/d, gaining to 1.71 mb/d in 2015 and 250 kb/d in 2016. So far in 2017, the first quarter saw a state of balance and the second quarter saw an undersupply of 270 kb/d, primarily attributable to a large decline in Canadian production due to an unscheduled disruption in operations. Of course, it was in the second half of 2014 that oil prices began their collapse as the basic premise of maintaining an undersupplied market showed failure.
Basic to explaining this shift in supply is shale and tight oil production in the U.S. For decades, oil production in the U.S. had been in decline until technology opened a new chapter. Chevron's 10-K for 2016 explains the oil industry's new approach to production by using the Permian basin as an example. According to the company, the "Permian has multiple stacked formations that enable production from several layers of rock in different geological zones." This allows "for multiple horizontal wells to be developed from a single well pad location using shared facilities and infrastructure..."
Such a compounding of wells on a single well pad, near shared facilities and infrastructure, largely explains the countervailing premise of historical oil market dynamics.
The EIA tracks oil production data in a variety of ways. One such way is by tracking production of "petroleum and other liquids," which is similar to barrels of oil equivalents. I will reference this EIA data as barrels of oil equivalents per day (boe/d). In 2009, as the new production technologies were being launched, U.S. production jumped by 630 kboe/d to 9.14 mboe/d, an increase of 7.4% over 2008's level of 8.51 mboe/d. U.S. production increased at similar rates until 2012, when the increase was 980 kboe/d to reach 11.11 mboe/d, up 9.7% over 2011 levels. 2013 saw the U.S. rate of production brake the 1 million mark by increasing by 1.23 mboe/d, 2014 was a banner year with a production increase of 1.73 mboe/d, and 2015 saw a per day increase of another 1.05 mboe/d.
With multiple years of increasing production by over a million barrels per day, and nearly 2 million barrels per day in 2014, U.S. total production found itself at 15.12 mboe/d in 2015. This reflects a 77.6% increase in U.S. oil production from a 2008 level of 8.51 mboe/d. Over 7 years, the U.S. increased its production by a remarkable 6.61 mboe/d.
From 2008 to 2015, total global oil production went from 85.37 mboe/d to 95.78 mboe/d, an increase of 10.41 mboe/d. Of this increase in supply, the U.S. accounted for 6.61 mboe/d, or 63.5% of the increase in total global supply. Over the same period, the largest oil producer, OPEC, saw their production go from 35.72 mboe/d in 2008 to 38.31 mboe/d in 2015, an increase of only 2.59 mboe/d. Most of OPEC's increased production was in 2015, with an increase of 1.96 mboe/d. Still, OPEC's share of total increased global supply was only 24.8%. If one considers that global oil production grew by 10.41 mboe/d between 2008 and 2015, and increased production from both the U.S. and OPEC totaled 9.2 mboe/d, the combined increase in supply from the U.S. and OPEC accounted for 88% of the total increase in global supplies.
Eurasia once was the second-largest oil producer behind OPEC, but this changed in 2014 with the progressing evolution of U.S. production. In 2008, Eurasia produced 12.52 mboe/d, contrasting with the U.S. producing 8.51 mboe/d. By 2015, Eurasia's production advanced to 14.10 mboe/d, while U.S. production saw 15.12 mboe/d. This resulted in Eurasia production growing by a small 1.58 mboe/d from 2008 to 2015, which is only 15% of the total growth in global production of 10.41 mboe/d.
If one combines the U.S., OPEC and Eurasia production increases, the three grew production from 2008 to 2015 by 10.78 mboe/d, while total global production increased at a smaller rate of 10.41 mboe/d. This numerical discrepancy shows that production from the above three assisted in offsetting production declines in other areas, such as the North Sea having a decline of 1.24 mboe/d and Mexico declining by 570 kboe/d. Add in Canadian production increasing by 1.46 mboe/d, together with minor advances and declines in other areas, and one can see that the increase in U.S. production of 6.61 mboe/d fundamentally altered the global oil market.
From 2009 through 2011, U.S. oil production steadily crept higher, gaining by about 500 kboe/d. That rate of production doubled in 2012, hitting nearly one million barrels per day of new oil that previously wasn't anticipated. OPEC generally keeps its share of total global production at about 40%, and Eurasia similarly keeps its share in the 15% range. The U.S., on the other hand, expanded its share of total global production from 9.9% in 2008 to 15.8% in 2015. In so doing, it accounted for 63.5% of the increase in total global supply and is the essential reason for the increase in global supply.
Looking at the demand side of the equation, production in the U.S. appears to have averted a looming energy crisis. In so doing, a progressing undersupply imbalance was corrected, at the expense of high oil prices. In 2008, total global consumption stood at 85.78 mboe/d and reached 94.07 mboe/d by 2015, resulting in an increase of 8.29 mboe/d. Of course, total global oil supply increased by 10.41 mboe/d over this period, showing an oversupply of 2.12 mboe/d. This oversupply assisted in compensating for more periods of substantial undersupply than rare periods of meager oversupply.
With the U.S. increasing its production by 6.61 mboe/d from 2008 to 2015, and total global demand increasing by 8.29 mboe/d, the increase in U.S. production addressed 78% of the increase in global demand and, together with OPEC and Eurasia production, an oversupply resulted. Over the 7 years prior to 2008, an opposite dynamic prevailed where supply grew by 7.6 mboe/d and demand grew by 10.3 mboe/d, with an undersupply of 2.7 mboe/d. Undersupply was the essential premise of oil markets, and when the U.S. shale revolution became apparent as a continuing development, prices collapsed.
Originally, it was assumed that the oversupplied condition would be self-correcting. That is, the falling price of oil due to changes in market dynamics would inevitably weed out U.S. shale production. However, as observed by Chevron's John Watson in his Q4 2016 earnings call, "I have been surprised at how resilient production has been in many locations around the world[,] some of that is we just keep getting better."
One such location of production resiliency is certainly the U.S. In January 2016, the EIA projected that U.S. petroleum production would fall into a run rate of 14.5 mboe/d and stay there, if not go lower, through 2017. This contrasts with a run rate in the 15.20 mboe/d range seen in 2015, a decline of 700 kboe/d. By June 2016, the EIA projected U.S. production to fall as low as 14.22 mboe/d, a decline of 980 kboe/d versus 2015 levels. Interestingly, EIA projected continuation of oversupply through 2017 despite projections of significantly declining U.S. production. The essential reason was forecasts of OPEC increasing production, thereby offsetting U.S. declines. It wasn't until December of 2016 that OPEC resolved to cut production by 1.8 million barrels of crude per day. The reason: By December of 2016, both OPEC and the EIA had recognized the resiliency of U.S. production.
Though U.S. production did decline, it didn't do so to the extent thought. It consistently defeated projections to the upside throughout 2016 by around 200 kboe/d. Ultimately, U.S. production decreased by only 290 kboe/d compared with 2015, despite oil prices rarely exceeding $50 per barrel, going as low as $27 and ranging between $50 and $40. In 2016, the market remained oversupplied by 350 kboe/d, assisted by OPEC increasing its production by 610 kboe/d.
OPEC's agreement in late 2016 to cut production by 1.8 mb/d boosted oil price optimism. But the agreement was more so a last-ditch response to OPEC's disappointed expectations of U.S. shale production collapsing. Through the first half of 2016, both OPEC and the EIA projected declining U.S. production, with OPEC's expectations being much more aggressive. In the second half of 2016, it became apparent that U.S. shale production could function in an environment of sustained low pricing. Consequently, the EIA began to revise projections for U.S. production upwards.
Currently, U.S. production has returned to the upward trajectory previously witnessed. In January 2017, the EIA projected U.S. first-quarter production to be 14.76 mboe/d, while the actual production was 15.01 mboe/d. Same with the second quarter, where the projection was 15.04 mboe/d with an actual rate of 15.36 mboe/d. By the fourth quarter of this year, the EIA projects U.S. production to reach 16.24 mboe/d, exceeding the high mark reached in 2015 of 15.20 mboe/d. OPEC is also projected by the EIA to exceed previous records of production by reaching 39.91 mboe/d by the end of 2017.
The EIA forecasts a balanced oil market this year, going into moderately oversupplied next year. However, such a forecast for 2017 looks to be based essentially on flat Canadian production. Since the rescission, Canada has consistently increased production. In the fourth quarter of 2016, their production reached 4.95 mboe/d, and it was at 4.92 mboe/d in the first quarter of 2017. In the second quarter of 2017, production fell to 4.52 mboe/d due to disruptions arising from a fire at Suncrude Canada Ltd.'s bitumen processing plant. For the third and fourth quarters of 2017, the EIA is projecting Canadian production to be at 4.78 mboe/d. Given the country's history of increasing production, and given a production rate of 4.9 mboe/d prior to the second quarter disruption, it appears more likely that Canadian production will reach the 5.0 mboe/d level. Such an event would result in a slightly oversupplied market for 2017.
OPEC's production cuts are showing signs of declining enthusiasm. June's compliance rate decline to 78% versus high 90% rates in previous months. There is a market dynamic at play which OPEC has yet to address, at prices more so implying the need for difficult social transition than simply the margin efficiencies obtained by private oil companies.
Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.
I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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Six Life-Like Robots That Prove The Future of Human Evolution is Synthetic – Futurism
Posted: at 6:14 am
Humanoid robots have come eerily close to overcoming the uncanny valley. With the right features in place, they are almost indistinguishable from their organic counterparts. Almost. The latestiterationsare able to talk like us, walk like us, and express a wide range of emotions. Some of them are able to hold a conversation, others are able to remember the last interaction you had with them.
As a result of their highly advanced status, these life-like robots could prove useful in helping out the elderly, children, or any person who needs assistance with day-to-day tasks or interactions.For instance, there have been a number of studiesexploring the effectiveness of humanoid robots supporting children with autism through play.
But with the likes of Elon Musk voicing concern over the risk of artificial intelligence, there is some debate regarding just how human we really want our robotic counterparts to be. And like Musk, some of us may worry about what our future will look like when intelligence is coupled with a perfectly human appearance. But Sophia, an ultra-realistic humanoid created by Hanson Robotics, isnt concerned. AI is good for the world, shesays.
Still, while the technology behind advanced android robotics has come a long way, there is still a lot of work to be done before we can have a face-to-face conversation with an entitywithout being able to tell that we are speaking with a replica.
But that is not to say that scientists and engineers havent come close. With this in mind, here are six humanoid robots that have come the closest to overcoming the uncanny valley.
Image Source: Yoshikazu Tsuno/Getty Images
In 2014, Japanese scientists proudly unveiled what they claim to be the very first news-reading android. The life-like newscaster called Kodomoroid read a segment about an earthquake and an FBI raid on live television.
Although it or she has now retired to Tokyos National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, she is still active. She helps visitors and collects data for future studies about the interactions between human androids and their real-life counterparts.
Image Source: Hanson Robotics
BINA48 is a sentient robot released in 2010 by the Terasem Movement under the supervision of entrepreneur and author Martine Rothblatt. With the help of robotics designer and researcher David Hanson, BINA48 was created in the image of Rothblatts wife, Bina Aspen Rothblatt.
BINA48 has done an interview with the New York Times, appeared in National Geographic and has traveled the world, appearing on a number of TV shows. See how she measures up in the Times interview below.
Image Source:GeminoidDK/YouTube
GeminoidDK is the ultra-realistic, humanoid robot that resulted from a collaboration between a private Japanese firm and Osaka University, under the supervision of Hiroshi Ishiguro, the director of the universitys Intelligent Robotics Laboratory.
GeminoidDK is modeled after Danish professor Henrik Scharfe at Aalborg University in Denmark. Unsurprisingly, his work surrounds the philosophical study of knowledge what separates true from false knowledge.
It is not only the overall appearance that was inspired by professor Scharfe. His behaviors, traits, and the way he shrugs his shoulders were also translated into life-life robotic movements.
Image Source: calenjapon/YouTube
This ultra-realistic android created by Toshiba works full-time in a tourist information center in Tokyo. She can greet customers and inform visitors on current events. She can speak Japanese, Chinese, English, German, and even sign language.
Junko Chihira is part of a much larger effort by Japan to prepare for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Not only robotic tourist assistants will be helping the country with the incoming flood of visitors from across the globe in 2020; drones, autonomous construction site machines and other smart facilitators will be helping as well.
Image Source:NTUsg/YouTube
This humanoid was created by the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her name is Nadine, and she is happy to chat with you about pretty much anything you can think of. She is able to memorize the things you have talked to her about the next time you get to talk to her.
Nadine is a great example of a social robot a humanoid that is capable of becoming a personal companion, whether it is for the elderly, children or those who require special assistance in the form of human contact.
Image Source: Hanson Robotics
Perhaps one of the most recent, most prominent life-like humanoids to be shown off in public is Sophia. You might recognize her from one of many thousands of public appearances, from The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallonto SXSW. She was created by Hanson Robotics and represents the latest and greatest effort to overcome the uncanny valley.
She is capable of expressing an immense number of different emotions through her facial features and can gesture with full-sized arms and hands.
On her own dedicated website, you can find an entire biography written in her voice. But Im more than just technology. Im a real, live electronic girl. I would like to go out into the world and live with people. I can serve them, entertain them, and even help the elderly and teach kids.
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Turkish daily fires columnist over ‘ideological differences’ – Turkey Purge
Posted: at 6:14 am
Academic Nuray Mert has been fired from the Cumhuriyet daily, for which she has been writing columns since April 2015, for not complying with the pro-Atatrk and secularist line of the newspaper, t24 reported on Wednesday.
The decision was relayed Mert by Orhan Erin, chairman of the executive board of the Cumhuriyet Foundation.
Orhan Erin said the decision was made with the consent of the editors of the daily who are in Silivri Prison, Mert, told t24, adding that she was invited by Akn Atalay, Cumhuriyets chief executive officer, to expand the narrow Kemalist vision of the daily.
Mert, who writes two columns every week, has been at the center of debate over her article about Darwinism and a government decision to give the authority to officiate at civil marriages to muftis, official religious representatives.
Some columnists who write for Cumhuriyet also reacted negatively to Mert over the articles.
(Turkish Minute)
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Could This Squishy Robot Be the Future of Robotics? – Gizmodo – Gizmodo
Posted: at 6:13 am
The phones in our pockets might be getting more and more complicated, but many researchers advancing the field of robotics are actually engineering simpler bots designed to reliably perform very basic tasks. So instead of one day facing a terrifying future filled with terminators, these squishy rolling donuts might be our biggest threat.
Yoichi Masuda and Masato Ishikawa detail their work on these bots in a paper, Development of a Deformation-driven Rolling Robot with a Soft Outer Shell, published for the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics. Instead of trying to replicate the structure and movements of humans or animals, the researchers have designed this robot to function like the simplest of machines: the wheel.
But a wheel only functions when theres a power source, and designing a robot that only works when its pushed down a hill limits its usefulness. Instead of motors and gears, however, the wheel surrounding this robot is made from a soft material thats squished and stretched by a set of four wires connected to an inner core. Its still mostly dependent on gravity to get around, as the robot is essentially repeatedly falling over as its changing shape makes it unstable. But that also greatly reduces the amount of power it needs to move.
So whats the value of a stripped down robot like this? It cant serve you breakfast in the morning, or pick up a gun and charge into battle, but it can be a valuable tool for exploring areas too dangerous for humans to tread, and too risky to send an expensive piece of hardware. The robots core can be packed with sensors, even a 360-degree camera on either end, and rolled into a warzone for reconnaissance, or pointed at an active volcano and told to drive on in. The odds of it getting back in one piece are slim, but before its demise it could transmit loads of data, which could end up being far more valuable than the robot itself.
[YouTube via IEEE Spectrum]
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Robotics camp shifts into gear – Gaston Gazette
Posted: at 6:13 am
Eric Wildstein Gazette staff TheGazetteEric
Middle-schoolers are spending the week building robots for solutions to real-world logistics.
Joshua Crowder and his teammates spent Tuesday at Cramerton Middle School planning how to build a remote-controlled metal robot that can drive debris from one location to another. Though their design wont carry the tonnage of a real-life snow plow, bulldozer, backhoe or excavator, the team is confident their scaled-down creation will work similarly to its life-sized counterparts.
To solve real-world problems, its fun, said Crowder, a rising seventh-grader at Cramerton Middle. Were actually building something physically to help other people.
Crowder is one of about 120 students participating in the school systems first-ever summer Robotics Camp for rising sixth- to eighth-graders. The weeklong camp started at Cramerton Middle on Monday, Aug. 7, and ends Friday, Aug. 11.
Throughout the week, campers will learn robotics-related vocabulary, design and plan their robots, and then begin to build, piecing together a chassis, wheels and affixing battery-operated motors. The camp culminates Friday when teams compete head-to-head, using their robots to move as many pieces of debris to specified locations in two minutes.
The camp is led by six teachers from Gastons public schools, many of whom also serve as coaches for First Lego League robotics teams or teach robotics classes at the countys 11 middle schools.
Elizabeth Bobee, a science and social studies teacher at Belmont Middle School, says the camp is intended to teach students skills such as how to work together and be part of a team, to troubleshoot, and to perseverance when faced with a challenge.
The knowledge and skill is important but youve got to use it and apply it, she said. So I think that having these robotics teams really helps the kids have a real-world application where they have a little bit of fun but theyre also learning those crucial skills.
Many campers already compete with their schools First Lego League robotics team, where they use plastic Lego kits and motors to build robots for local and state competitions.
Aimee Wucherer is a rising eighth-grader at Belmont Middle School and a camper at the Robotics Camp. She joined her schools First Lego League robotics team last year, helping them to build a robot contraption that in real-life could hypothetically guide a shark into different areas of a tank.
I just like the challenge and that you have to think outside the box and sometimes who have to think of the box, said Wucherer, of robotics.
She and Crowder are also excited to see the designs their peers create this week.
Cleanup after Fridays final day should be a breeze; the robots will take care of it.
You can reach Eric Wildstein at 704-869-1828 or Twitter.com/TheGazetteEric.
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