Keeping Track of the Development of Robots Rights

By observing humans, robots learn to perform complex tasks, such as setting a table
Mar 2020, phys.org

I know it's in quotes but they use the word belief in this article:

"Planning with Uncertain Specifications" (PUnS) system gives robots the humanlike planning ability to simultaneously weigh many ambiguous—and potentially contradictory—requirements to reach an end goal. In doing so, the system always chooses the most likely action to take, based on a "belief" about some probable specifications for the task it is supposed to perform.

Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering

The right dose of geoengineering could reduce climate change risks, study says
Mar 2020, phys.org

Don't act like you didn't know.

Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is the idea that adding a layer of aerosol particles to the upper atmosphere can reduce climate changes caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. 

Previous research shows that solar geoengineering could be achieved using commercially available aircraft technologies to deliver the particles at a cost of a few billion dollars per year and would reduce global average temperatures. However, the question remains whether this approach could reduce important climate hazards at a regional level. 

Results from a new study by UCL and Harvard researchers suggest that even a crude method like injecting sulphur dioxide in the stratosphere could reduce many important climate hazards without making any region obviously worse off. 

"However, if instead only half the warming is offset, then we find that stratospheric aerosol geoengineering could still reduce climate change overall but would only exacerbate change over 1.3% of the land area."

Notes:
'Halving warming with stratospheric aerosol geoengineering moderates policy-relevant climate hazards' , Environmental Research Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab76de

Keeping Track of the Development of Robots Rights

By observing humans, robots learn to perform complex tasks, such as setting a table
Mar 2020, phys.org

I know it's in quotes but they use the word belief in this article:

"Planning with Uncertain Specifications" (PUnS) system gives robots the humanlike planning ability to simultaneously weigh many ambiguous—and potentially contradictory—requirements to reach an end goal. In doing so, the system always chooses the most likely action to take, based on a "belief" about some probable specifications for the task it is supposed to perform.

Sending Mixed Signals

Deep-learning system detects human presence by harvesting RF signals
Feb 2020, phys.org

The presence of humans in a room or in other indoor environments can alter the propagation of RF signals in several ways. By pre-processing RF channel measurements, the researchers were able to create 'images' summarizing the signals, which could in turn be analyzed to detect the presence of humans in a given environment. 

They then trained a CNN on a large amount of data containing both magnitude and phase information, two key properties of RF signals. Over time, the deep learning algorithm learned to distinguish when an environment is populated by humans and when it is free from them by analyzing what is known as channel state information (CSI). 

"Exploiting the ubiquity of ambient RF signals such as WiFi, Bluetooth or cellular signals for situational awareness information provides added value to existing RF infrastructure," Chen said. "Occupancy detection, for example, is an application where RF sensing can be a low-cost and infrastructure-free alternative or complement to existing approaches."

When Biology Takes a Back Seat

Powerful antibiotic discovered using machine learning for first time
Feb 2020, The Guardian

The drug works in a different way to existing antibacterials and is the first of its kind to be found by setting AI loose on vast digital libraries of pharmaceutical compounds.
“In terms of antibiotic discovery, this is absolutely a first,” said Regina Barzilay, a senior researcher on the project and specialist in machine learning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

“I think this is one of the more powerful antibiotics that has been discovered to date,” added James Collins, a bioengineer on the team at MIT. “It has remarkable activity against a broad range of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.” 

To find new antibiotics, the researchers first trained a “deep learning” algorithm to identify the sorts of molecules that kill bacteria. To do this, they fed the program information on the atomic and molecular features of nearly 2,500 drugs and natural compounds, and how well or not the substance blocked the growth of the bug E coli.
Once the algorithm had learned what molecular features made for good antibiotics, the scientists set it working on a library of more than 6,000 compounds under investigation for treating various human diseases. Rather than looking for any potential antimicrobials, the algorithm focused on compounds that looked effective but unlike existing antibiotics. This boosted the chances that the drugs would work in radical new ways that bugs had yet to develop resistance to. 

Jonathan Stokes, the first author of the study, said it took a matter of hours for the algorithm to assess the compounds and come up with some promising antibiotics. One, which the researchers named “halicin” after Hal, the astronaut-bothering AI in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, looked particularly potent.

Reprogramming of immune system cures child with often-fatal fungal infection
June 2020, phys.org

"Immune modulation isn't currently part of the strategy with any of these severe infections," said Dr. Manish Butte, the report's senior author, who holds the E. Richard Stiehm Endowed Chair in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Our case suggests that rather than hoping to get the upper hand with more and more antibiotics or antifungals, we can have some success by combining these established approaches with the new idea of programming the patient's immune response to better fight the infection."

Synthetic red blood cells mimic natural ones, and have new abilities
June 2020, phys.org

Bioengineers have made synthetic red blood cells that have all the same abilities of natural blood cells, and even a few more.

On a sidenote, I'm also thinking about the Impossible burger that uses synthetically produced hemoglobin. And on a supersidenote, that had me wondering what's worse, humans eating animals, or humans trying to avoid eating animals so they re-engineer a bacteria's genetic code so that it can make blood, and then take that blood and add it to a plant, so that we can eat plants that taste like meat. Like, bacteria didn't even bleed before we got involved, and now that they do, doesn't that mean we should stop eating them too?

Post Script on Biomimicry

A self-cleaning surface that repels even the deadliest superbugs
Dec 2019, phys.org

Researchers develop new method to remove dust on solar panels
Dec 2019, phys.org

Taking a cue from the self-cleaning properties of the lotus leaf, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have shed new light on microscopic forces and mechanisms that can be optimized to remove dust from solar panels to maintain efficiency and light absorption. The new technique removed 98 percent of dust particles.
In a new study published in Langmuir, the researchers confirmed that modifying the surface properties of solar panels may greatly reduce the amount of dust remaining on the surface, and significantly increase the potential of solar energy harvesting applications in the desert.
Particle removal increased from 41 percent on hydrophilic smooth Si wafers to 98 percent on superhydrophobic Si-based nanotextured surfaces.
"We determined that the reason for the increased particle removal is not low friction between the droplets and the superhydrophobic surfaces," Heckenthaler says. "Rather, it is the increase in the forces that can detach particles from the surfaces. The experimental methods we used and the criterion for particle removal we derived can be implemented to engineer self-cleaning surfaces exhibiting different chemistries and/or textures."

-image source: I really hate it when websites don't credit their artwork (almost as much as I hate the threeway image clusterfu**ing olympics performed by Google-Getty-Pinterest triangle). This image came from the site at this link, but they list no artist credits.

Thank You Japan

Blowing bubbles - Soapy spheres pop pollen on fruit trees
June 2020, BBC News

Just when you think we are doomed by the insectapocalypse and mass bee death in particular, Japanese researchers have succeeded in fertilising pear trees using pollen carried on the thin film of a soap bubble.

Post Script
Once in a while I run an image search for something I think is totally random and will return equally random results, like "bumblebee porn". Well I'm here to remind you that anything-porn is not random. You can type [anything] porn and get a relevant result.

In this case, bumblebee is a transformer (although I don't recall this character from the originals circa early 1980's), and maybe he got a movie made recently, so he takes over the top results. And yes he's a robot, and yes robophilia is a thing. And on that note, I must recall the artist of sexy robot fame, Hajime Sorayama (also Japanese, thanks again).

-image source: David Prutchi, Ultraviolet Vision

Mostly Fake

My limited coronavirus postings, which have nothing to do with coronavirus but everything to do with fake this and fake that:

WHO says fake coronavirus claims causing 'infodemic'
Feb 2020, BBC News

WHO says false information "spreading faster than the virus itself"

I mean, come on, it's immaterial; the noosphere knows not the limits of physical reality let alone biological contagion etc.

Scared and especially sick people are especially vulnerable to misinformation. Desperation will make you believe anything.

What's so bad about fake information?

Sure taking a handful of vitamin C isn't going to kill you, but drinking a glass of bleach might (sorry I drafted this before the thing happened). You never know which miracle cure is coming out of the bag. But what's also detrimental is that fake cures give people a fake sense of security, which is dangerous because when you think you're safe, you behave differently. You go out to the store, you don't wash your hands, you name it. And that makes you more likely to get sick, and more likely the virus will spread to others.

Those who spread misinformation aren't deliberately trying to hurt anyone, not necessarily. In fact, they don't even care about the virus. They just want to divert traffic, they want to snag all the clicks they can, and spinning the most popular thing at the moment is the best way to do that. Donald Trump is President? Donald Trump is an Alien! Banning Plastic Bags? Plastic Bags are made of Magical Alien Tongues! Got Problems? Doctors Hate Him!

alt article:
Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Situation Report 13
Feb 2020, WHO

The 2019-nCoV outbreak and response has been accompanied by a massive ‘infodemic’ - an over-abundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.

Organization is working 24 hours a day to identify the most prevalent rumours that can potentially harm the public’s health, such as false prevention measures or cures. These myths are then refuted with evidence-based information. WHO is making public health information and advice on the 2019-nCoV, including myth busters, available on its social media channels and website.

Coronavirus - The seven types of people who start and spread viral misinformation
May 2020, BBC News

Great simple shortlist of the generators of fake news:

• The Joker - just kidding though
• The Scammer - everything can be commodified, including your gullability
• The Politician - also a business relationship
• Conspiracy Theorist - somewhere between entrepreneur, psychotic, teacher, preacher and scientist
• The Insider - likely a conspiracy theorist, and lying about their insider status
• Relatives - alarming things make people worry, and then they tell those they care about, including you
• Celebrities - they have huge platforms

Coronavirus - Far-right spreads Covid-19 'infodemic' on Facebook
May 2020, BBC News

It was "coordinated" now its "covert"; just keeping track:
The Epoch Times.com, a news site whose advertising was banned by Facebook, and which was accused of covert inauthentic activity by both Facebook and Twitter last year, received more than 48 million interactions

(Coronoavirus) Research links personality traits to toilet paper stockpiling
June 2020, phys.org

The most robust predictor of toilet paper stockpiling was the perceived threat posed by the pandemic; people who felt more threatened tended to stockpile more toilet paper. Partly, this effect was based on the personality factor of emotionality—people who generally tend to worry a lot and feel anxious are more likely to feel threatened and stockpile toilet paper.

The personality domain of conscientiousness—which includes traits of organization, diligence, perfectionism and prudence—was also a predictor of stockpiling (p = .048).

Other observations were that older people stockpiled more toilet paper than younger people and that Americans stockpiled more than Europeans.

The researchers pointed out that the variables studied explained only 12% of the variability in toilet paper stockpiling, which suggests that some psychological explanations and situational factors likely remain unaccounted for.

-image source: Nature

Post Script
Coronavirus - Already in Italy by December, waste water study finds
June 2020, BBC News

Municipal sewage screening - add big data to that and you've got a nice social monitoring system for drug use, hormone changes, diet phases, you name it. The data's been there the whole time.