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In the 21st Century curiosity will SKILL the cat.
Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.
Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.
Techne = Knowledge-as-Know-How :: Technology = Embodied Know-How
In the 21st century - the planet is the little school house in the galaxy.
Citizenship is the battlefield of the 21st Century
“Be careful what you ‘insta-google-tweet-face’”
Woody Harrelson - Triple 9
Content
Quotes:
Articles:
As we struggle under multiple forms of debt—medical debt and student debt, housing debt and debt from the criminal punishment system—the idea that debt can be a form of power may seem counterintuitive. But we need only look to words typically attributed to the oil tycoon John Paul Getty for a radically different perspective. “If you owe the bank $100,” he is reported to have quipped, “the bank owns you. But if you owe the bank $100 million, you own the bank.” The starting point for debtors’ unions is to ask, what would happen if we saw the staggering $14.15 trillion in household debt today as a source of collective leverage, rather than as an aggregate of individual liabilities? Millions of debtors, isolated, are owned by the banks. But, as Getty shows us, if you’re part of a collective that owes $14.15 trillion, you all own the banks—along with the federal, state, and municipal governments that have themselves become predatory lenders in the age of neoliberalism.
Debtors of the World, Unite!
The rules of the game are easy: Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, and paper beats rock. No player has an advantage, and the chances of winning are equal regardless of what item they pick. When two people play, there’s always a clear victor. Add in more players, however, and the game becomes more complex, with the success of different strategies often cyclically rising and falling.
Biologists studying rock-paper-scissors have modeled how the game plays out with scores or even hundreds of species. They have also investigated how it changes when the species interact in various landscapes, and when the species differ in their mobility and competitiveness. What they have found is that over time, rock-paper-scissors may enable many species to coexist in the same area by cycling in and out of dominance.
Scientists are still determining the true importance of the game to living systems, but their discoveries have implications that could affect evolutionary theory, our understanding of ecological dynamics, biotechnology, and conservation policy. “It’s a universal game, which is pretty darn neat,” Sinervo said. “Rock-paper-scissors covers the entire biological universe.”
Biodiversity May Thrive Through Games of Rock-Paper-Scissors
Superman and his contemporaries launched a fascination with technological superism that continues today. Here were individuals whose bodies and their capacities were somehow warped through being exposed to technology (the Flash); augmented by technology (Batman); or transported from one environment to another by technology (Superman). There is an underlying narrative in all their stories that treats technology as a source of powers that would traditionally have been described as divine. But, like Prometheus’ theft of fire from the gods, this has often been seen as a double-edged desire, seductive yet dangerous for humans.
Superheroes were invented during an era of eugenic speculation, when dreams of Übermenschen – machine-men, aerialists and space-bound conquistadors – tantalised philosophers and beguiled fascists. But, in recent years, the superhero has returned to peak popularity in franchises such as X-Men, The Avengers and a run of Batman movies. What does our ongoing infatuation with technology’s transformational impact on individual bodies tell us about the modern world? The question is complicated, since the imagined capacity of technology to transfigure and augment our bodies – to turn us into superhumans – is not only a feature of popular fiction. Increasingly, it is a key feature of technological futures currently being generated. Google Glass might have been a flop, but it is a sign of things to come.
Supermensch
The change we require will have to begin on the ground, as it did in the Reformation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt caught the spirit of this when he was asked by an activist to champion a particular change. He replied: “I agree with you. I want to do it. Now go out and make me do it.” The message is clear: reforming established institutions may be the last step in reformation. The first ones have to be taken on the ground.
Consolidation for Reformation
This misplaced reductionism arose from the availability of spectacular research tools (eg, the Human Genome Project, functional magnetic resonance imaging, molecular biology and machine learning) combined with the naive belief that brain biology could eventually explain all aspects of mental functioning. The results have been a grand intellectual adventure, but a colossal clinical flop. We have acquired a fantastic window into gene and brain functioning, but little to help clinical practice.
The more we learn about genetics and the brain, the more impossibly complicated both reveal themselves to be. We have picked no low-hanging fruit after three decades and $50 billion because there simply is no low-hanging fruit to pick. The human brain has around 86 billion neurons, each communicating with thousands of others via hundreds of chemical modulators, leading to trillions of potential connections. No wonder it reveals its secrets only very gradually and in piecemeal fashion.
...Unfortunately, we don’t live in a rational world. Drug companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year influencing politicians, marketing misleadingly to doctors, and pushing pharmaceutical treatments on the public. They successfully sold the fake marketing jingle that all emotional symptoms are due to a ‘chemical imbalance’ in the brain and therefore all require a pill solution. The result: 20 per cent of US citizens use psychotropic drugs, most of which are no more than expensive placebos, all of which can produce harmful side-effects.
The lure of ‘cool’ brain research is stifling psychotherapy
This is a great signal of the power of collective intelligence and of the potential for the future of work with a guaranteed basic income.
Scientists Use Online Game to Research COVID-19 Treatment
The creativity of citizen scientists could help researchers design proteins that may be able to fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
… calling on citizen scientists to play a free online game called Foldit, in which they help design and identify proteins that may be able to bind to and neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that it uses to invade host cells. The scientists hope that players’ creations will yield insights that will allow them to create an effective antiviral therapy for COVID-19. Other researchers are asking citizens for help in a more passive way. The Scientist spoke with Brian Koepnick, who works on Foldit at the University of Washington Institute for Protein Design, about this project.
This article signals emerging approaches to understanding change - how change can happen in complex systems including boundary conditions and constraints for attractors and phase transitions.
"Instead of looking for a straightforward relationship between environmental tipping points and ecosystemic collapse, our work brings evolution into the picture," Chaparro-Pedraza explains. "Even though the outcome is the same, we think it's critically important to map out different paths that lead to regime shifts so we can predict and eventually prevent them."
Rethinking 'tipping points' in ecosystems and beyond
When a grassland becomes a desert, or a clearwater lake shifts to turbid, the consequences can be devastating for the species that inhabit them. These abrupt environmental changes, known as regime shifts, are the subject of new research in Nature Ecology & Evolution which shows how small environmental changes trigger slow evolutionary processes that eventually precipitate collapse.
Until now, research into regime shifts has focused on critical environmental thresholds, or "tipping points," in external conditions—eg when crossing a certain temperature threshold triggers a sudden shift to desertification. But the new model by Catalina Chaparro-Pedraza and SFI External Professor André de Roos, both at the University of Amsterdam, reveals how a small change in the external environment, with little immediate impact, can induce slow evolutionary changes in the species that inhabit the system. After what the researchers call a "considerable delay," wherein species slowly evolve a new trait or behavior over generations, the regime shift manifests as a delayed reaction.
This is a good signal of the future of retail. Amazon is revolutionizing warehousing and logistics with AI and automation. Look for this innovation in a store near you.
Amazon launches business selling automated checkout to retailers
Amazon.com Inc on Monday is set to announce a new business line selling the technology behind its cashier-less convenience stores to other retailers, the company told Reuters.
The world’s biggest web retailer said it has “several” signed deals with customers it would not name. A new website Monday will invite others to inquire about the service, dubbed Just Walk Out technology by Amazon.
The highly anticipated business reflects Amazon’s strategy of building out internal capabilities - such as warehouses to help with package delivery and cloud technology to support its website - and then turning those into lucrative services it offers others.
This is a weak but potentially very important signal for the future of physics and more.
Scientists shed light on mystery of dark matter
Scientists have identified a sub-atomic particle that could have formed the "dark matter" in the Universe during the Big Bang.
Up to 80% of the Universe could be dark matter, but despite many decades of study, its physical origin has remained an enigma. While it cannot be seen directly, scientists know it exists because of its interaction via gravity with visible matter like stars and planets. Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect or emit light.
Now, nuclear physicists at the University of York are putting forward a new candidate for the mysterious matter—a particle they recently discovered called the d-star hexaquark.
The particle is composed of six quarks—the fundamental particles that usually combine in trios to make up protons and neutrons. Importantly, the six quarks in a d-star result in a boson particle, which means that when many d-stars are present they can combine together in very different ways to the protons and neutrons.
Another important signal of the emerging brain-computer interface - and also of new computational paradigms.
“We are very excited with this new development,” says Themis Prodromakis, corresponding author of the study. “On one side it sets the basis for a novel scenario that was never encountered during natural evolution, where biological and artificial neurons are linked together and communicate across global networks; laying the foundations for the Internet of Neuro-electronics. On the other hand, it brings new prospects to neuroprosthetic technologies, paving the way towards research into replacing dysfunctional parts of the brain with AI chips.
Biological and artificial neurons connect and communicate online
Researchers in Europe and the UK have managed to connect biological and artificial neurons together – and allow them to communicate long distances through the internet. The biological neurons were grown in one country, sent signals through an artificial synapse located in another to electronic neurons in a third country.
As advanced as supercomputers get, the human brain still utterly leaves them in the dust. It’s made up of neurons that communicate with each other through pulses of electrical signals, passed across tiny gaps known as synapses. These neurons can both process and store information, unlike computers that require separate types of memory for each task.
Artificial versions of neurons and synapses have shown to be far more powerful than traditional computer chip designs, but they’re still in the experimental stage. And now, a team of researchers has taken the next step and connected the artificial and biological versions between three different countries.
Biological rat neurons were grown in a lab in Italy, at the University of Padova. Meanwhile, artificial neurons were made on silicon chips in Switzerland, at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. And these two different technologies communicated through artificial synapses, known as “memristors,” operated at the University of Southampton in the UK.
One more significant step in the progress toward understanding life and the domestication of DNA.
"As expected, the blueprint for the brain is shared among mammals, but the new map also reveals interesting differences between human, pig and mouse brains," says Mathias Uhlén, Professor at the Department of Protein Science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Visiting professor at the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet and Director of the Human Protein Atlas effort.
"Another interesting finding is that the different cell types of the brain share specialised proteins with peripheral organs. For example, astrocytes, the cells that 'filter' the extracellular environment in the brain share a lot of transporters and metabolic enzymes with cells in the liver that filter the blood."
Researchers publish digital atlas of all human brain proteins
An international team of scientists led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has launched a comprehensive overview of all proteins expressed in the brain, published today in the journal Science. The open-access database offers medical researchers an unprecedented resource to deepen their understanding of neurobiology and develop new, more effective therapies and diagnostics targeting psychiatric and neurological diseases.
The brain is the most complex organ, both in structure and function. The new Brain Atlas resource is based on the analysis of nearly 1,900 brain samples covering 27 brain regions, combining data from the human brain with corresponding information from the brains of the pig and mouse. It is the latest database released by the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) program which is based at the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) in Sweden, a joint research centre aligned with KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm University and Uppsala University. The project is a collaboration with the BGI research centre in Shenzhen and Qingdao in China and Aarhus University in Denmark.
For selected genes/proteins, the Brain Atlas also contains microscopic images showing the protein distribution in human brain samples and detailed, zoomable maps of protein distribution in the mouse brain.
The Human Protein Atlas started in 2003 with the aim to map all of the human proteins in cells, tissues and organs (the proteome). All the data in the knowledge resource is open access allowing scientists both in academia and industry to freely use the data for the exploration of the human proteome.
A good signal of the future of biological research becoming enhanced with AI.
Computational predictions of protein structures associated with COVID-19
The scientific community has galvanised in response to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, building on decades of basic research characterising this virus family. Labs at the forefront of the outbreak response shared genomes of the virus in open access databases, which enabled researchers to rapidly develop tests for this novel pathogen. Other labs have shared experimentally-determined and computationally-predicted structures of some of the viral proteins, and still others have shared epidemiological data. We hope to contribute to the scientific effort using the latest version of our AlphaFold system by releasing structure predictions of several under-studied proteins associated with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. We emphasise that these structure predictions have not been experimentally verified, but hope they may contribute to the scientific community’s interrogation of how the virus functions, and serve as a hypothesis generation platform for future experimental work in developing therapeutics. We’re indebted to the work of many other labs: this work wouldn’t be possible without the efforts of researchers across the globe who have responded to the COVID-19 outbreak with incredible agility.
Knowing a protein’s structure provides an important resource for understanding how it functions, but experiments to determine the structure can take months or longer, and some prove to be intractable. For this reason, researchers have been developing computational methods to predict protein structure from the amino acid sequence.
Normally we’d wait to publish this work until it had been peer-reviewed for an academic journal. However, given the potential seriousness and time-sensitivity of the situation, we’re releasing the predicted structures as we have them now, under an open license so that anyone can make use of them.
A good signal of progress in the domestication of DNA for the treatment of human disease.
“It’s an exciting time,” says Mark Pennesi, a specialist in inherited retinal diseases at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. Pennesi is collaborating with the pharmaceutical companies Editas Medicine of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Allergan of Dublin to conduct the trial, which has been named BRILLIANCE.
CRISPR treatment inserted directly into the body for first time
Experiment tests a gene-editing therapy for a hereditary blindness disorder.
A person with a genetic condition that causes blindness has become the first to receive a CRISPR–Cas9 gene therapy administered directly into their body.
The treatment is part of a landmark clinical trial to test the ability of CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing techniques to remove mutations that cause a rare condition called Leber’s congenital amaurosis 10 (LCA10). No treatment is currently available for the disease, which is a leading cause of blindness in childhood.
For the latest trial, the components of the gene-editing system – encoded in the genome of a virus — are injected directly into the eye, near photoreceptor cells. By contrast, previous CRISPR–Cas9 clinical trials have used the technique to edit the genomes of cells that have been removed from the body. The material is then infused back into the patient.
This is an early signal of ongoing progress in memory storage and use.
Introducing the light-operated hard drives of tomorrow
What do you get when you place a thin film of perovskite material used in solar cells on top of a magnetic substrate? More efficient hard drive technology. EPFL physicist László Forró and his team pave the way for the future of data storage.
Forró, along with his colleagues Bálint Náfrádi and Endre Horváth, succeeded at tuning one ferromagnet at room temperature with visible light, a proof of concept that establishes the foundations of a new generation of hard drives that will be physically smaller, faster, and cheaper, requiring less energy compared to today's commercial hard drives. The results are published in PNAS.
Nowadays, the demand for high capacity hard drives has increased more than ever. Computer users handle large files, databases, image or video files, using software, all of which require a large amount of memory in order to save and process the data as quickly as possible.
The EPFL scientists used a halide perovskite/oxide perovskite heterostructure in their new method for reversible, light-induced tuning of ferromagnetism at room temperature. Having a perovskite structure represents a novel class of light-absorbing materials.
This is another good signal for the emergence of autonomous robotics.
Google's robot learns to walk in real world
The field of robotics took one step forward—followed by another, then several more—when a robot called Rainbow Dash recently taught itself to walk. The four-legged machine only required a few hours to learn to walk backward and forward, and turn right and left while doing so.
Researchers from Google, UC Berkeley and the Georgia Institute of Technology published a paper on the ArXiv preprint server describing a statistical AI technique known as deep reinforcement learning they used to produce this accomplishment, which is significant for several reasons.
Most reinforcement learning deployments take place in computer-simulated environments. Rainbow Dash, however, used this technology to learn to walk in an actual physical environment.
Moreover, it was able to do so without a dedicated teaching mechanism, such as human instructors or labeled training data. Finally, Rainbow Dash succeeded in walking on multiple surfaces, including a soft foam mattress and a doormat with fairly notable recesses.
This is another good signal of the emerging transformation of energy geopolitics and transportation. The aesthetic simplicity of the chassis is a real selling point for me.
"We want to put everyone in an EV, and we have what it takes to do it," she said at a presentation for investors.
GM shows 13 electric vehicles as it tries to run with Tesla
General Motors, trying to refashion itself as a futuristic company with technology to compete against Tesla, rolled out plans Wednesday for 13 new electric vehicles during the next five years.
The company touted an exclusive new battery technology that could propel some of the vehicles as far as 400 miles (644 kilometers) on a single charge as it tries to capture electric vehicle enthusiasm that has brought wild growth to rival Tesla's share price.
At an event for investors, dealers and analysts at its sprawling technical center in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Michigan, GM executives said the new vehicles would be built using modular chassis and drive systems for manufacturing simplicity.
GM will be able to build trucks, cars, SUVs and even an autonomous shuttle based on the new systems, the company said. The global vehicles will include affordable transportation, work trucks, luxury SUVs and performance vehicles. CEO Mary Barra said GM will be able to build at a large scale, similar to its profitable full-size truck business.
With fewer parts than petroleum-powered vehicles, electric vehicles will be much cheaper and simpler to build, reducing manufacturing costs, GM said. The company plans 19 different battery and electric motor and transmission combinations, compared with 550 internal combustion powertrain combinations available today.
Another good signal of progress in solar energy performance and the transformation of energy geopolitics.
"The fact that we can do all this without modifying the silicon makes it a drop-in solution," says Hou. "Industry can apply this without having to make costly changes to their existing processes."
Light to electricity: New multi-material solar cells set new efficiency standard
Researchers from the University of Toronto Engineering and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have overcome a key obstacle in combining the emerging solar-harvesting technology of perovskites with the commercial gold standard—silicon solar cells. The result is a highly efficient and stable tandem solar cell, one of the best-performing reported to date.
"Today, silicon solar cells are more efficient and less costly than ever before," says Professor Ted Sargent, senior author on a new paper published in Science. "But there are limits to how efficient silicon can be on its own. We're focused on overcoming these limits using a tandem (two-layer) approach."
The tandem solar cells achieved an efficiency of 25.7 per cent, as certified by an independent, external laboratory, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy in Freiburg, Germany. This is among the highest efficiencies ever reported for this type of design. They were also stable, withstanding temperatures of up to 85 degrees Celsius for more than 400 hours without a significant loss of performance.
This is a great signal of the future of food.
The small Dutch town that wants to shape the future of your food
If an innovative solution to feeding the world’s growing population is to be found, it is likely to come from Wageningen, a quiet corner of Europe that is the nexus of global food science. But at what cost to the environment?
In the low-lying Gelderse Valley some 85km east of Amsterdam, a Dutch university is changing how humans eat.
There, a bright-eyed press officer with Willy Wonka flair is showing me the miracles of modern food science. One laboratory door swings open to reveal giant, fragrant basil leaves growing under multicoloured lights. In a greenhouse nearby, thousands of tomatoes are suspended mid-air like plump, levitating Buddhas. A few steps away, I shake hands with a world-famous banana scientist, who dreams of introducing Europeans to the many varieties of banana eaten across Asia, Africa and Latin America, and ending the tyranny of the common yellow Cavendish.
For miles in every direction, fields bulge with crops; in some, drones monitor soil fertility, in others, giant luminescent panels light up greenhouses at night. The press officer is accustomed to impressing visitors. “What do you think?” he asks at every turn.
The Netherlands is not a big place. You can drive across the whole country from the north to the south in under four hours. And yet it ranks consistently among the world’s top food exporting nations, in terms of gross value. The country’s surpluses are mind-boggling; how does the second largest exporter of tomatoes and onions also produce such outsize quantities of dairy and potatoes, and export more eggs than any nation on Earth? The mystery of how this tiny patch of northern Europe does it draws government delegations, multinational companies and agriculture students from around the world to marvel at the nucleus of the Dutch innovation juggernaut: Wageningen University.
This is a wonderful signal of new approaches to live theatre with audience participation and integrated technology. I encourage everyone who will be in Ottawa during the performance to join the action. The time is getting close so please register to attend.
As an extra bonus -the Friday night performances will be followed by a short panel discussions after the Friday night shows discussing the issues raised in the play, panellists including Tracey Lauriault (Professor of Critical Media Studies, Carleton U.), Murad Hemmadi (journalist for The Logic), and Anthony Scavarelli (Algonquin Professor and VR researcher).
Strata Inc.
Dates: March 6, 7, 13, and 14, at 8pm
Location: Rebel.com, 377 Dalhousie Street
Tickets available here:
Written by Megan Piercey Monafu
Sound design by Johnny Wideman
As a teen, Victoria was an infamous hacker. Now a young adult, she has created a powerful virtual reality platform and agreed to work for a giant corporation to bring that platform to a huge audience. As users plunge into, trip over, and run away from the new Internet reality of VR experiences, exploring online privacy, connection, security, and access, Victoria must choose: run the multinational responsible, or escape from her own invention.
Strata Inc. is based on real developments in VR as it intersects with marketing, the world of work, and new outlets for the imagination. Strata Inc. uses individual audience headphones, sound design, and mic’d actors to echo the transportational abilities of VR while creating an in-person communal audio experience.
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