Thursday, August 19, 2021

Friday Thinking 20 Aug 2021

Friday Thinking is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.

Many thanks to those who enjoy this.
In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -
for life of skillful means .
Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.
Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.

The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - 
computational ecology - 
may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. 

To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference.  

‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’

“I'm not failing - I'm Learning"
Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon


Content

Quotes:

Complexity, Human Alignment and the Evolution of AI

Beyond Neoliberal Trade

Think Big, Act Small: Elinor Ostrom's Radical Vision for Community Power


Articles:

Introduction to MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) Part 1 (of 2)

Think Big, Act Small: Elinor Ostrom's Radical Vision for Community Power

Apple's Plan to "Think Different" About Encryption Opens a Backdoor to Your Private Life

Meet the trillions of viruses that make up your virome

How gut microbes could drive brain disorders

Planting forests may cool the planet more than thought

Computer Scientists Discover Limits of Major Research Algorithm

‘Tortured phrases’ give away fabricated research papers

Engineers make critical advance in quantum computer design

Codex, an AI system that translates natural language to programming code

#micropoem




Less than 1% of the world’s population is involved in software development. This is unfortunate because the ideas of managing complexity are the same problems of human governance yet we are ignorant of most of these ideas.

This lack of understanding of software is also pervasive in other scientific fields. Most science is performed using concepts that existed before the invention of the computer. Many are unaware that our immersion with computers generates entirely new universal ideas.

Humanity is involved in many difficult complex governance problems (i.e. climate change, pandemic) where most people involved in these fields are unaware of the concepts and tools invented by software developers to tackle complexity.

Human civilization is critically dependent on humans to express complex ideas. Unfortunately, too many of us have never learned these newer vocabularies. When we are exposed to them, we interpret the expressions of the experts in the wrong ways.




The experience of India shows how consequential these agreements can be. In 1972 the nation banned product patents in pharmaceuticals. At the time, medicine prices in the country were among the highest in the world, but critics of the ban warned that the country would lose access to imported medicines. In the decades that followed, however, India established a vast indigenous generics manufacturing industry and reverse engineered most state-of-the-art medicines developed elsewhere. Prices in the country dropped to among the lowest in the world, and by the turn of the century, Indian generic companies had become the largest supplier of affordable essential medicines outside the western world and the largest global supplier of generic medicines. Doctors Without Borders dubbed the country the “pharmacy of the developing world.”

The success of this industry was not predictable from standard narratives of export-oriented growth. This was not a case of low wage led industrialization; India did not have a comparative advantage in the labor, knowhow or raw material required for drug production. Instead, a combination of industrial policy, including early public investment, learning by doing as Indian pharmaceutical companies gained technical and technological expertise, a fortuitously large pool of scientists, and critically, no IP restrictions on the adoption of foreign technology combined to allow the country to become a low-cost producer. In theory, countries specialize in the things they are best at making. In reality, what countries are good at depends on what they make—or are allowed to.

Beyond Neoliberal Trade




three important, overlapping arguments from across Ostrom’s scholarship to form a case for decentralisation and enhanced community power:

The commons: Communities can manage their own resources.
Beyond markets and states, there is a third model where communities establish their own systems without the need for regulation or privatisation. These communities can be found all over the world and are demonstrably capable of managing common resources and assets in a more sustainable and productive way than comparable state or market systems.

Self-governance: Democracy is more meaningful at a local level.
Legitimacy and social trust can only flourish when people have a reasonable expectation of influence over the things that affect their lives. Mobilised communities will tend to benefit from having decision making power and control over resources to develop local services and facilities.

Polycentricity: In complex social and environmental systems there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.
What is needed is a dynamic system that permits experimentation, and which can tolerate the existence of diverse and layered institutions of different kinds. The alternative – where top-down, monolithic systems dominate – diminishes resilience. Rather, it centralises risks and quashes creative, adaptive solutions to problems.

Three Core Conditions of Community Power

Locality: Systems should be designed for specific places.

Systems – including the way that resources are managed, rules are designed, and decisions are made – should be originated within, and appropriate for, the particular places where they operate. Ostrom’s evidence shows this makes it more likely that people will collaborate and cooperate with each other, and that overall outcomes can be improved this way.

Autonomy: The rights of communities to create and run local systems must be respected. Communities will have few incentives to come together without a basic expectation that their decisions and participation will have meaning and impact, and will that their decisions will be respected by external parties.

Diversity: Each community is different – and will take different approaches. Context-driven, autonomous communities will experiment with different systems. Taking different approaches in different places means people have a range of opportunities to get involved, enriching civil society. This diversity should be promoted, as it may reveal strong new approaches.

Think Big, Act Small: Elinor Ostrom's Radical Vision for Community Power





This is an excellent 5 min introduction of Modern Monetary Theory - the necessary economic paradigm if we are going to meet the challenges of climate change, aging infrastructure and the need for modern infrastructure as well as a social infrastructure that enable all people to flourish.
A MUST view.

Introduction to MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) Part 1 (of 2)

Modern monetary theory, or MMT for short, is a superior framework for understanding how our monetary system functions today. It has been developed since the 1990s by Professor Bill Mitchell, alongside American academics like Professor Randall Wray, Professor Stephanie Kelton, and investment banker and fund manager Warren Mosler. MMT builds on the ideas of a previous generation of economists, such as Hyman Minsky, Wynne Godley and Abba Lerner.

Thanks to Dr. Steven Hail, Prof. Bill Mitchell, Warren Mosler, Patricia Pino & Christian Reily (at The MMT Podcast) for providing the inspiration and feedback for this video.

Part 2 is here



This is a positive signal of the future - one where we can enable a more participatory democracy to care for our social, economic, political and our ecological commons.
This report draws out Ostrom’s insights for the UK in the context of a growing crisis in the relationship between people and institutions. It adapts and contextualises her work into a new set of practical lessons for ‘self-governance’ – where communities take control over the things that matter to them – and connects these with contemporary examples of community-powered projects in the UK.

Think Big, Act Small: Elinor Ostrom's Radical Vision for Community Power

Elinor Ostrom humanised the study of economics and politics. She discovered what is possible, and the problems that can be solved, when we trust each other. Her work inspires optimism, but she was also a realist, basing her findings on decades of tireless work in the real world. This quietly revolutionary research led her to become the first woman to win a Nobel prize in economics. She demonstrated that people’s motivation and ability to cooperate, participate, and sustainably control their own resources are far greater than is usually assumed.

Ostrom’s work offers grounds for ambitiously re-imagining the relationship between people and institutions. It should inform and inspire policy debate about community power, devolution, public service reform, and organisational transformation.

This report draws out Ostrom’s insights for the UK in the context of a growing crisis in the relationship between people and institutions. It adapts and contextualises her work into a new set of practical lessons for ‘self-governance’ – where communities take control over the things that matter to them – and connects these with contemporary examples of community-powered projects in the UK.


A sign of the current state of privacy.
When Apple releases these “client-side scanning” functionalities, users of iCloud Photos, child users of iMessage, and anyone who talks to a minor through iMessage will have to carefully consider their privacy and security priorities in light of the changes, and possibly be unable to safely use what until this development is one of the preeminent encrypted messengers.

Apple's Plan to "Think Different" About Encryption Opens a Backdoor to Your Private Life

Apple has announced impending changes to its operating systems that include new “protections for children” features in iCloud and iMessage. If you’ve spent any time following the Crypto Wars, you know what this means: Apple is planning to build a backdoor into its data storage system and its messaging system.

Child exploitation is a serious problem, and Apple isn't the first tech company to bend its privacy-protective stance in an attempt to combat it. But that choice will come at a high price for overall user privacy. Apple can explain at length how its technical implementation will preserve privacy and security in its proposed backdoor, but at the end of the day, even a thoroughly documented, carefully thought-out, and narrowly-scoped backdoor is still a backdoor.

There are two main features that the company is planning to install in every Apple device. One is a scanning feature that will scan all photos as they get uploaded into iCloud Photos to see if they match a photo in the database of known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) maintained by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The other feature scans all iMessage images sent or received by child accounts—that is, accounts designated as owned by a minor—for sexually explicit material, and if the child is young enough, notifies the parent when these images are sent or received. This feature can be turned on or off by parents.


This is a good signal about something that has the whole globe aware and concerned. 

Meet the trillions of viruses that make up your virome

If you think you don’t have viruses, think again.
It may be hard to fathom, but the human body is occupied by large collections of microorganisms, commonly referred to as our microbiome, that have evolved with us since the early days of man. Scientists have only recently begun to quantify the microbiome, and discovered it is inhabited by at least 38 trillion bacteria. More intriguing, perhaps, is that bacteria are not the most abundant microbes that live in and on our bodies. That award goes to viruses.

It has been estimated that there are over 380 trillion viruses inhabiting us, a community collectively known as the human virome. But these viruses are not the dangerous ones you commonly hear about, like those that cause the flu or the common cold, or more sinister infections like Ebola or dengue. Many of these viruses infect the bacteria that live inside you and are known as bacteriophages, or phages for short. The human body is a breeding ground for phages, and despite their abundance, we have very little insight into what all they or any of the other viruses in the body are doing.

And a nice account of some recent progress on our bacterial ecologies - this is worth the read.

How gut microbes could drive brain disorders

Scientists are starting to work out how the gut microbiome can affect brain health. That might lead to better and easier treatments for brain diseases.


An important signal especially in the context of the massive forest fires of the last decade. It also signal the complex relationship that have to be understood in any natural phenomena.
"The main thing is that nobody has known whether planting trees at midlatitudes is good or bad because of the albedo problem," "We show that if one considers that clouds tend to form more frequently over forested areas, then planting trees over large areas is advantageous and should be done for climate purposes."

Planting forests may cool the planet more than thought

Planting trees and replenishing forests are among the simplest and most appealing natural climate solutions, but the impact of trees on atmospheric temperature is more complex than meets the eye.

One question among scientists is whether reforesting midlatitude locations such as North America or Europe could in fact make the planet hotter. Forests absorb large amounts of solar radiation as a result of having a low albedo, which is the measure of a surface's ability to reflect sunlight. In the tropics, low albedo is offset by the higher uptake of carbon dioxide by the dense, year-round vegetation. But in temperate climates, the concern is that the sun's trapped heat could counteract any cooling effect forests would provide by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

But a new study from Princeton University researchers found that these concerns may be overlooking a crucial component—clouds. They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the denser cloud formations associated with forested areas means that reforestation would likely be more effective at cooling Earth's atmosphere than previously thought.


This is a sort of Godel type signal of some fundamental knowability in some aspects of mathematical and logical calculus-reasoning.
“There is a kind of worst-case hardness to it that is worth knowing about,” said Paul Goldberg of the University of Oxford, co-author of the work along with John Fearnley and Rahul Savani of the University of Liverpool and Alexandros Hollender of Oxford. The result received a Best Paper Award in June at the annual Symposium on Theory of Computing.

Computer Scientists Discover Limits of Major Research Algorithm

The most widely used technique for finding the largest or smallest values of a math function turns out to be a fundamentally difficult computational problem.
Many aspects of modern applied research rely on a crucial algorithm called gradient descent. This is a procedure generally used for finding the largest or smallest values of a particular mathematical function — a process known as optimizing the function. It can be used to calculate anything from the most profitable way to manufacture a product to the best way to assign shifts to workers.

Yet despite this widespread usefulness, researchers have never fully understood which situations the algorithm struggles with most. Now, new work explains it, establishing that gradient descent, at heart, tackles a fundamentally difficult computational problem. The new result places limits on the type of performance researchers can expect from the technique in particular applications.


Here is an interesting signal of the state of current technology applications of artificial intelligence - while trusting science is the best way to get reliable knowledge - trusting scientists is often not quite the same thing.

‘Tortured phrases’ give away fabricated research papers

Analysis reveals that strange turns of phrase may indicate foul play in science.
In April 2021, a series of strange phrases in journal articles piqued the interest of a group of computer scientists. The researchers could not understand why researchers would use the terms ‘counterfeit consciousness’, ‘profound neural organization’ and ‘colossal information’ in place of the more widely recognized terms ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘deep neural network’ and ‘big data’.

Further investigation revealed that these strange terms — which they dub “tortured phrases” — are probably the result of automated translation or software that attempts to disguise plagiarism. And they seem to be rife in computer-science papers.

Research-integrity sleuths say that Cabanac and his colleagues have uncovered a new type of fabricated research paper, and that their work, posted in a preprint on arXiv on 12 July, might expose only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the literature affected.

To get a sense of how many papers are affected, the researchers ran a search for several tortured phrases in journal articles indexed in the citation database Dimensions. They found more than 860 publications that included at least one of the phrases, 31 of which were published in a single journal: Microprocessors and Microsystems.


Progress in quantum computing continues - this signals a significant advance.

Engineers make critical advance in quantum computer design

Quantum engineers from UNSW Sydney have removed a major obstacle that has stood in the way of quantum computers becoming a reality. They discovered a new technique they say will be capable of controlling millions of spin qubits—the basic units of information in a silicon quantum processor.

Until now, quantum computer engineers and scientists have worked with a proof-of-concept model of quantum processors by demonstrating the control of only a handful of qubits.

But with their latest research, published today in Science Advances, the team have found what they consider "the missing jigsaw piece" in the quantum computer architecture that should enable the control of the millions of qubits needed for extraordinarily complex calculations.


In this decade we are nudged to enact a Star Trek like relationship to a ubiquitous presence of computational support - “Computer - make it so” is morphing into “OK Google - Cortana - Alexis - etc.” This signals a more profound relationship.

Codex, an AI system that translates natural language to programming code

Artificial intelligence research company OpenAI has announced the development of an AI system that translates natural language to programming code—called Codex, the system is being released as a free API, at least for the time being.

Codex is more of a next-step product for OpenAI, rather than something completely new. It builds on Copilot, a tool for use with Microsoft's GitHub code repository. With the earlier product, users would get suggestions similar to those seen in autocomplete in Google, except it would help finish lines of code. Codex has taken that concept a huge step forward by accepting sentences written in English and translating them into runnable code. As an example, a user could ask the system to create a web page with a certain name at the top and with four evenly sized panels below numbered one through four. Codex would then attempt to create the page by generating the code necessary for the creation of such a site in whatever language (JavaScript, Python, etc.) was deemed appropriate. The user could then send additional English commands to build the website piece by piece.



#micropoem



jeezuz -
 our interfaces -
with the digital habitus - 
are like the -
wall-o-rules in -
Animal Farm - 
or a slow acid trip -
where everyday habits -
of perceptions - 
change in ways that feel -
like we’re getting Alzheimer’s -


don’t know the motivation -
 what the search is for ? - 
to find or -
to get-away ? -
to be for healed - 
or escaping a shadow ? - 
life or -
unconsciousness - 
what's the matter -
in hand -

Thursday, August 12, 2021

Friday Thinking 13 Aug 2021

Friday Thinking is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.

Many thanks to those who enjoy this.
In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -
for life of skillful means .
Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.
Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.

The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - 
computational ecology - 
may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. 

To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference.  

‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’

“I'm not failing - I'm Learning"
Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon


Content

Quotes:

How particle detectors capture matter’s hidden, beautiful reality

In praise of possibility


Articles:

O (No!) Canada: Fast-Moving Proposal Creates Filtering, Blocking and Reporting Rules—and Speech Police to Enforce Them

Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free to all

Environmental impact of bottled water ‘up to 3,500 times greater than tap water’

Native Land Digital

THE USER EXPERIENCE OF DESIGN SYSTEMS

Centenarians have a distinct microbiome that may help support longevity

B.C. non-profit challenges Health Canada to end 50-year prohibition on magic mushrooms

A promising new treatment for COVID-19 infection

Colliding photons were spotted making matter. But are the photons ‘real’?

New material offers ecofriendly solution to converting waste heat into energy

Researchers find oxygen spike coincided with ancient global extinction

#micropoem




At every moment, subatomic particles stream in unfathomable numbers through your body. Each second, about 100 billion neutrinos from the sun pass through your thumbnail, and you’re bathed in a rain of muons, birthed in Earth’s atmosphere. Even humble bananas emit positrons, the electron’s antimatter counterpart. A whole universe of particles exists, and we are mostly oblivious, largely because these particles are invisible.

How particle detectors capture matter’s hidden, beautiful reality




Instead of focusing on comprehensive plans ‘compiled on the basis of “heroic” estimates’, Hirschman posited, less developed countries should focus on the hidden mechanisms – ‘hidden rationalities’ in his parlance – that were already at work, even though perhaps in ‘roundabout and unappreciated fashion’. Development depended not so much on discovering the optimal combinations of given resources and their correct use as on understanding the sequences, pressure mechanisms, and technological and investment linkages that activated processes of change. Crucial for Hirschman was understanding ‘how progress can at times meander strangely through many peripheral areas before it is able to dislodge backwardness from the central positions where it may be strongly entrenched’. The Strategy of Economic Development was devoted to the study of these economic mechanisms, with sophisticated discussions of investment sequences and complementarities, the pros and cons of prioritising social overhead capital or directly productive activities, the role of imports, and that of capital-intensive technology.

But underlying the entire discussion was a non-economic motif: development’s role in the safeguarding of democracy. Hirschman was deeply alive to the ‘grand tension’ that characterises societies undergoing processes of transformation and modernisation, and feared the consequences that frustrated hopes for development might trigger in the event that overly ambitious plans should ultimately fail. Indeed, failure might have worse consequences than ineffectiveness – it might produce violence and destruction. ‘Futility,’ he wrote, ‘can be abruptly replaced by brutality, by utter disregard for human suffering, for acquired rights, for lawful procedures, for traditional values, in short, for [what John Maynard Keynes in 1938 called] the “thin and precarious crust of civilisation”.’

It was this preoccupation that made Hirschman focus on the process of economic development instead of on specific resources, and on how this process can advance despite allegedly insurmountable obstacles and in the absence of apparently indispensable prerequisites. His major concern was to keep the mirage of development from suddenly turning into a nightmare.

In his youth, Hirschman had been a first-hand witness of how hopes of economic recovery could abruptly turn into the collapse of democratic polities.

it is clearly impossible to specify in advance the optimal doses of … various policies under different circumstances. The art of promoting economic development … consists, then, in acquiring a feeling for these doses

Acquiring a feeling for the potential results of policy decisions, as opposed to relying on standard recipes, implied valuing complexity over simplicity and uncertainty over predictability. 

In praise of possibility





This is an important signal for the future of the Internet - and maybe especially important because of the soon to be announced federal election in Canada.
Professor Michael Geist, who has been doing crucial work covering this and other bad internet proposals coming out of Canada, notes that the government has shown little interest in hearing what Canadians think of the plans.

O (No!) Canada: Fast-Moving Proposal Creates Filtering, Blocking and Reporting Rules—and Speech Police to Enforce Them

Policymakers around the world are contemplating a wide variety of proposals to address “harmful” online expression. Many of these proposals are dangerously misguided and will inevitably result in the censorship of all kinds of lawful and valuable expression. And one of the most dangerous proposals may be adopted in Canada. How bad is it? As Stanford’s Daphne Keller observes, “It's like a list of the worst ideas around the world.” She’s right.

These ideas include:
- broad “harmful content” categories that explicitly include speech that is legal but potentially upsetting or hurtful
- a hair-trigger 24-hour takedown requirement (far too short for reasonable consideration of context and nuance)
- an effective filtering requirement (the proposal says service providers must take reasonable measures which “may include” filters, but, in practice, compliance will require them)
- penalties of up to 3 percent of the providers' gross revenues or up to 10 million dollars, whichever is higher
- mandatory reporting of potentially harmful content (and the users who post it) to law enforcement and national security agencies
- website blocking (platforms deemed to have violated some of the proposal’s requirements too often might be blocked completely by Canadian ISPs)
onerous data-retention obligations

All of this is terrible, but perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the proposal is that it would create a new internet speech czar with broad powers to ensure compliance, and continuously redefine what compliance means.


Another signal in the growing call to free scientific publishing from the enclosure movement of for-profit privateering of science publications. Imagine if all the research publication related to the development of the Covid vaccine and other treatments had been only accessible behind ‘paywalls’. 

Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free to all

The United Kingdom currently has one of the highest rates of open-access publication in the world, with many researchers posting their research papers on websites that make them publicly available for free. But the country’s leading funding agency today announced a new policy that will push open access even further by mandating that all research it funds must be freely available for anyone to read upon publication.

The policy by the funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will expand on existing rules covering all research papers produced from its £8 billion in annual funding. About three-quarters of papers recently published from U.K. universities are open access, and UKRI’s current policy gives scholars two routes to comply: Pay journals for “gold” open access, which makes a paper free to read on the publisher’s website, or choose the “green” route, which allows them to deposit a near-final version of the paper on a public repository, after a waiting period of up to 1 year. Publishers have insisted that an embargo period is necessary to prevent the free papers from peeling away their subscribers.

But starting in April 2022, that yearlong delay will no longer be permitted: Researchers choosing green open access must deposit the paper immediately when it is published. And publishers won’t be able to hang on to the copyright for UKRI-funded papers: The agency will require that the research it funds—with some minor exceptions—be published with a Creative Commons Attribution license (known as CC-BY) that allows for free and liberal distribution of the work.


This should be a strong signal (full disclosure - bottled water has been one of my long standing irritations - if we spent the money we spend on the privatization of water into plastic bottles - on public infrastructure we could have the best tasting water everywhere - for way less money).

Environmental impact of bottled water ‘up to 3,500 times greater than tap water’

Researchers also find impact of bottled water on ecosystems is 1,400 times higher than that of tap water
The research is the first of its kind and examined the impact of bottled water in Barcelona, where it is becoming increasingly popular despite improvements to the quality of tap water in recent years.

Research led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) found that if the city’s population were all to drink bottled water, this would result in a 3,500 times higher cost of resource extraction than if they all drank tap water, at $83.9m (£60.3m)a year.

Researchers also found the impact of bottled water on ecosystems is 1,400 times higher than tap water.


This is a great signal - not only for the documenting of native lands - but of how the digital environment can make unmanageable quantities of information into accessible interactive visuals - that enable us to think new ways about the past, present and future.

Native Land Digital

Native Land Digital strives to create and foster conversations about the history of colonialism, Indigenous ways of knowing, and settler-Indigenous relations, through educational resources such as our map and Territory Acknowledgement Guide. We strive to go beyond old ways of talking about Indigenous people and to develop a platform where Indigenous communities can represent themselves and their histories on their own terms. In doing so, Native Land Digital creates spaces where non-Indigenous people can be invited and challenged to learn more about the lands they inhabit, the history of those lands, and how to actively be part of a better future going forward together.


One of the fundamental irritations of the digital environment is the enacting of a ‘Beta World’ - where everything is an early beta version - that will soon be changed again. It is important that we don’t confuse ‘beta’ with better. For the most part getting used to a beta world is not about products and interfaces actually getting better. So much of the beta world is more about designers learning a new programming language - than about designers making things simpler but with more affordances. 
This is a signal of some of these issues as they are working themselves out.

THE USER EXPERIENCE OF DESIGN SYSTEMS

On Google’s Material Design and the Templatization of Digital Products
For the last five years, I have also been teaching graduate classes at The Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, which is a two-year graduate program that accepts students from all over the world, and where they explore the creative use of technology. The program have students from pretty much every field, and teach them how to use programming, physical computing, and digital fabrication just to see what happens. One thing that we’re particularly proud of is that it’s a technology program where 60% of the students are women, and we do a lot of work trying to make technology accessible to people who wouldn’t normally be interested. Both the Processing and the Arduino foundation has roots at ITP.


Another signal of our relationships with our internal ecologies.

Centenarians have a distinct microbiome that may help support longevity

Intestinal microbes in people aged 100 or over produce unique bile acids that might help keep infections at bay.
Centenarians are less susceptible to age-related chronic diseases and more likely to survive infectious diseases. Now, a new study reveals that people who live to be 100 or older have a unique microbiome that may protect them from certain bacterial infections including those caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria. The findings, published in Nature, could help researchers develop new ways to treat chronic inflammation and bacterial disease.

A team of researchers including Yuko Sato, Koji Atarashi, Nobuoshi Hirose, and Kenya Honda at Keio University School of Medicine in Japan, and Damian Plichta and Ramnik Xavier at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, studied microbes found in fecal samples from 160 Japanese centenarians who had an average age of 107. They found that centenarians, compared to people aged 85 to 89 and those between 21 and 55, had higher levels of several bacterial species that produce molecules called secondary bile acids. Secondary bile acids are generated by microbes in the colon and are thought to help protect the intestines from pathogens and regulate the body’s immune responses.

The researchers next treated common infection-causing bacteria in the lab with the secondary bile acids that were elevated in the centenarians. One molecule, called isoalloLCA, strongly inhibited the growth of Clostridioides difficile, an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that causes severe diarrhea and gut inflammation. Feeding mice infected with C. difficile diets supplemented with isoalloLCA similarly suppressed levels of the pathogen. The team also found that isoalloLCA potently inhibited the growth of or killed many other gram positive pathogens, suggesting that isoalloLCA may help the body maintain the delicate equilibrium of microbial communities in a healthy gut.


Now that cannabis is finally legal to grow and use - this is another signal that  we need to enable research and legalize the use of other useful plant medicines.

B.C. non-profit challenges Health Canada to end 50-year prohibition on magic mushrooms

Proposal outlines licensing growers and sellers, quality control, security and packaging
A B.C.-based non-profit organization is challenging Health Canada to end a nearly 50-year prohibition against possessing so-called magic mushrooms and the potent psychedelics they produce.

TheraPsil, which advocates for the therapeutic use of the psychedelic compound psilocybin, spent months drafting proposed regulations for so-called magic mushrooms based on the same ones the federal government first created 20 years ago for medicinal cannabis.

TheraPsil CEO Spencer Hawkswell said his organization sent a 165-page proposal to Health Canada's director general Jennifer Saxe.

The document deals with managing every aspect of licensing growers and sellers, from who can be involved, where they can be located, quality control, security and packaging. There are also provisions in the draft for patients to register to grow their own, as well as a formula for calculating how much an individual can grow, based on the amount of mycelium, the branch-like organism that produces the mushroom as fruit.


An interesting signal of other plant medicines that are non-psychogenic.
The study, was recently published in the journal Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology.

A promising new treatment for COVID-19 infection

A flowering plant native to North Africa and Western Asia could be utilized in the future treatment of COVID-19 infection.
The seeds of the plant, Nigella sativa, have been used for centuries as a traditional remedy for multiple medical conditions, including inflammation and infections. Now, an Australian-first research review article has found it could be used to treat COVID-19.

"There is growing evidence from modeling studies that thymoquinone, an active ingredient of Nigella sativa, more commonly known as the fennel flower, can stick to the COVID- 19 virus spike protein and stop the virus from causing a lung infection.

"It may also block the 'cytokine' storm that affects seriously ill patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19," said Professor Kaneez Fatima Shad, lead author of a recently published comprehensive review article in Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology.

Thymoquinone has been extensively studied in laboratories, including animal studies. These studies have shown that thymoquinone can moderate our immune system in a good way, by preventing pro-inflammation chemicals such as interleukins from been released.

This gives thymoquinone a potential role as a treatment for allergic conditions such as asthma, eczema, arthritis conditions including rheumatoid and osteoarthritis and even possibly multiple sclerosis.


A small signal of the possibility of domesticating light to make matter - an alchemy of the future.

Colliding photons were spotted making matter. But are the photons ‘real’?

In a demonstration of Einstein’s E=mc2, collisions of light yielded electrons and positrons
Collide light with light, and poof, you get matter and antimatter. It sounds like a simple idea, but it turns out to be surprisingly hard to prove.

A team of physicists is now claiming the first direct observation of the long-sought Breit-Wheeler process, in which two particles of light, or photons, crash into one another and produce an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. But like a discussion from an introductory philosophy course, the detection’s significance hinges on the definition of the word “real.” Some physicists argue the photons don’t qualify as real, raising questions about the observation’s implications.

Predicted more than 80 years ago, the Breit-Wheeler process had never been directly observed, although scientists have seen related processes, such as light scattering off of light. New measurements from the STAR experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider match predictions for the elusive transformation, Brookhaven physicist Daniel Brandenburg and colleagues report in the July 30 Physical Review Letters.


A small signal of progress in transformation of heat into electricity.

New material offers ecofriendly solution to converting waste heat into energy

A team of scientists from Northwestern University and Seoul National University in Korea now has demonstrated a high-performing thermoelectric material in a practical form that can be used in device development. The material—purified tin selenide in polycrystalline form—outperforms the single-crystal form in converting heat to electricity, making it the most efficient thermoelectric system on record. The researchers were able to achieve the high conversion rate after identifying and removing an oxidation problem that had degraded performance in earlier studies.

The polycrystalline tin selenide could be developed for use in solid-state thermoelectric devices in a variety of industries, with potentially enormous energy savings. A key application target is capturing industrial waste heat—such as from power plants, the automobile industry and glass- and brick-making factories—and converting it to electricity. More than 65% of the energy produced globally from fossil fuels is lost as waste heat.

Details of the thermoelectric material and its record-high performance will be published Aug. 2 in the journal Nature Materials.


The fragility of our environment and the robustness of life.

Researchers find oxygen spike coincided with ancient global extinction

Two hundred fifty-two million years ago, much of life on planet Earth was dying.
In an event that marked the end of the Permian period, more than 96 percent of the planet's marine species and 70 percent of its terrestrial life suddenly went extinct. It was the largest extinction in Earth's history.

Now Florida State University researchers have found that the extinction coincided with a sudden spike and subsequent drop in the ocean's oxygen content. Their findings were published in Nature Geoscience.

"There's previous work that's been done that shows the environment becoming less oxygenated leading into the extinction event, but it has been hypothesized as a gradual change," said lead author and FSU graduate research assistant Sean Newby. "We were surprised to see this really rapid oxygenation event coinciding with the start of the extinction and then a return to reducing conditions."



#micropoem



mhm - 
anti-science panics - 
could it be founded -
on decades of -
corporate-marketing complexes -
 leveraging scientism -
to sell bad products -
that vamp-ire on -
decades of building -
institutional trust -
by gaslighting -
experiences of -
non-existent benefits -


Am I clear - 

the very people -
who claim that masks mandates -
threaten personal rights of freedom of choice -
want to mandate -
what women can do -
with their own bodies? -