New Approach Warns Self-Driving Cars Fast

Artificial Intelligence recognizes potentially critical traffic situations seven seconds in advance

From:  Technical University of Munich (TUM)

March 30, 2021 -- A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has developed a new early warning system for vehicles that uses artificial intelligence to learn from thousands of real traffic situations. A study of the system was carried out in cooperation with the BMW Group. The results show that, if used in today's self-driving vehicles, it can warn seven seconds in advance against potentially critical situations that the cars cannot handle alone -- with over 85% accuracy.

To make self-driving cars safe in the future, development efforts often rely on sophisticated models aimed at giving cars the ability to analyze the behavior of all traffic participants. But what happens if the models are not yet capable of handling some complex or unforeseen situations?

A team working with Prof. Eckehard Steinbach, who holds the Chair of Media Technology and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MSRM) at TUM, is taking a new approach. Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), their system can learn from past situations where self-driving test vehicles were pushed to their limits in real-world road traffic. Those are situations where a human driver takes over -- either because the car signals the need for intervention or because the driver decides to intervene for safety reasons.

Pattern recognition through RNN

The technology uses sensors and cameras to capture surrounding conditions and records status data for the vehicle such as the steering wheel angle, road conditions, weather, visibility and speed. The AI system, based on a recurrent neural network (RNN), learns to recognize patterns with the data. If the system spots a pattern in a new driving situation that the control system was unable to handle in the past, the driver will be warned in advance of a possible critical situation.

"To make vehicles more autonomous, many existing methods study what the cars now understand about traffic and then try to improve the models used by them. The big advantage of our technology: we completely ignore what the car thinks. Instead we limit ourselves to the data based on what actually happens and look for patterns," says Steinbach. "In this way, the AI discovers potentially critical situations that models may not be capable of recognizing, or have yet to discover. Our system therefore offers a safety function that knows when and where the cars have weaknesses."

Warnings up to seven seconds in advance

The team of researchers tested the technology with the BMW Group and its autonomous development vehicles on public roads and analyzed around 2500 situations where the driver had to intervene. The study showed that the AI is already capable of predicting potentially critical situations with better than 85 percent accuracy -- up to seven seconds before they occur.

Collecting data with no extra effort

For the technology to function, large quantities of data are needed. After all, the AI can only recognize and predict experiences at the limits of the system if the situations were seen before. With the large number of development vehicles on the road, the data was practically generated by itself, says Christopher Kuhn, one of the authors of the study: "Every time a potentially critical situation comes up on a test drive, we end up with a new training example." The central storage of the data makes it possible for every vehicle to learn from all of the data recorded across the entire fleet.

          https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210330121234.htm

Derivatives Can Cause Financial Panic

Introduction by the Blog Author

 This is how a huge financial crash is likely to happen: banks acting as "counterparties" (which means they guarantee -- underwrite -- derivative contracts) as the contracts, which are really just bets, toboggan to worthlessness.  The banks can wind up terrifying each other!  Worldwide, the "notational value" of derivatives (the amounts stated in the contracts) is estimated to total 2.4 quadrillion dollars.  That is 2,400 trillion dollars, or 70 times the gross domestic product of the entire world.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 

 Archegos Implosion is a Sign of Massive Stock Market Leverage that Stays Hidden until it Blows Up and Hits the Banks

by Wolf Richter • Mar 29, 2021 • 104 Comments

Banks, as prime brokers and counterparties to the hedge fund, are eating multi-billion-dollar losses as they try to get out of these secretive stock derivative positions..

Archegos Implosion is a Sign of Massive Stock Market Leverage that Stays Hidden until it Blows Up and Hits the Banks

Photosynthesis May Be as Old as Life

Researchers find that the earliest bacteria had the tools to perform a crucial step in photosynthesis

By Hayley Dunning, Imperial College London

The finding also challenges expectations for how life might have evolved on other planets. The evolution of photosynthesis that produces oxygen is thought to be the key factor in the eventual emergence of complex life. This was thought to take several billion years to evolve, but if in fact the earliest life could do it, then other planets may have evolved complex life much earlier than previously thought.

The research team, led by scientists from Imperial College London, traced the evolution of key proteins needed for photosynthesis back to possibly the origin of bacterial life on Earth. Their results are published and freely accessible in BBA – Bioenergetics.

Lead researcher Dr Tanai Cardona, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: “We had previously shown that the biological system for performing oxygen-production, known as Photosystem II, was extremely old, but until now we hadn’t been able to place it on the timeline of life’s history.

"Now, we know that Photosystem II shows patterns of evolution that are usually only attributed to the oldest known enzymes, which were crucial for life itself to evolve.”

Early oxygen production

Photosynthesis, which converts sunlight into energy, can come in two forms: one that produces oxygen, and one that doesn’t. The oxygen-producing form is usually assumed to have evolved later, particularly with the emergence of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, around 2.5 billion years ago.

While some research has suggested pockets of oxygen-producing (oxygenic) photosynthesis may have been around before this, it was still considered to be an innovation that took at least a couple of billion years to evolve on Earth.

The new research finds that enzymes capable of performing the key process in oxygenic photosynthesis – splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen – could actually have been present in some of the earliest bacteria. The earliest evidence for life on Earth is over 3.4 billion years old and some studies have suggested that the earliest life could well be older than 4.0 billion years old.

Like the evolution of the eye, the first version of oxygenic photosynthesis may have been very simple and inefficient; as the earliest eyes sensed only light, the earliest photosynthesis may have been very inefficient and slow.

On Earth, it took more than a billion years for bacteria to perfect the process leading to the evolution of cyanobacteria, and two billion years more for animals and plants to conquer the land. However, that oxygen production was present at all so early on means in other environments, such as on other planets, the transition to complex life could have taken much less time.

Measuring molecular clocks

The team made their discovery by tracing the ‘molecular clock’ of key photosynthesis proteins responsible for splitting water. This method estimates the rate of evolution of proteins by looking at the time between known evolutionary moments, such as the emergence of different groups of cyanobacteria or land plants, which carry a version of these proteins today. The calculated rate of evolution is then extended back in time, to see when the proteins first evolved.

They compared the evolution rate of these photosynthesis proteins to that of other key proteins in the evolution of life, including those that form energy storage molecules in the body and those that translate DNA sequences into RNA, which is thought to have originated before the ancestor of all cellular life on Earth. They also compared the rate to events known to have occurred more recently, when life was already varied and cyanobacteria had appeared.

The photosynthesis proteins showed nearly identical patterns of evolution to the oldest enzymes, stretching far back in time, suggesting they evolved in a similar way.

First author of the study Thomas Oliver, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: “We used a technique called Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction to predict the protein sequences of ancestral photosynthetic proteins.

"These sequences give us information about how the ancestral Photosystem II would have worked and we were able to show that many of the key components required for oxygen evolution in Photosystem II can be traced to the earliest stages in the evolution of the enzyme.”

Directing evolution

Knowing how these key photosynthesis proteins evolve is not only relevant for the search for life on other planets, but could also help researchers find strategies to use photosynthesis in new ways through synthetic biology.

Dr Cardona, who is leading such a project as part of his UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, said: “Now we have a good sense of how photosynthesis proteins evolve, adapting to a changing world, we can use ‘directed evolution’ to learn how to change them to produce new kinds of chemistry.

"We could develop photosystems that could carry out complex new green and sustainable chemical reactions entirely powered by light.”

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/217553/photosynthesis-could-life-itself/

Seafloor Iron Vital to Food Chain

Eroded seabed rocks are providing an essential source of nutrition for drifting marine organisms at the base of the food chain, according to new research.

From: The University of Leeds

March 22, 2021 -- The findings, led by the University of Leeds, show that iron -- an essential nutrient for microscopic marine algae, or phytoplankton -- is being released from sediments on the deep ocean floor.

The research shows that contrary to the expectation that oxygen in the deep-sea prevents actually encourage the release of iron from sediments into the ocean.

Published today (22 March) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the research could influence future approaches to studying the ocean carbon cycle and managing the marine environment, which must consider effects of seafloor processes on marine ecology.

Report lead author is Dr Will Homoky, a University Academic Fellow at Leeds' School of Earth and Environment.

He said: "Our findings reveal that the shallow surface of the deep seafloor provides an important source of iron -- a scarce micronutrient -- for the ocean.

"We show that the degradation of rock minerals with organic matter and oxygen is a recipe to produce tiny rust particles, which are small enough to be dissolved and carried in seawater. "These tiny rust particles and their chemical signatures explain how iron found in large parts of the ocean interior could have come from deep ocean sediments, in a manner which was once thought to be practically impossible."

The nanometre sized iron particles -- known as colloids -- could provide an important source of nutrition for phytoplankton, which provide the primary food source for a wide range of sea creatures, affecting global food chains.

The phytoplankton are also important amid rising worldwide pollution levels, as they help the ocean remove about one quarter of carbon dioxide emitted annually to the atmosphere.

The research team, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), also included scientists from the universities of Southampton, Liverpool, Oxford, South Florida and Southern California -- a collaboration formed through the international GEOTRACES programme.

The findings will help shape further study of the processes that regulate the occurrence of iron in the world's oceans and the role they play in moderating marine life and atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Dr Homoky said: "Our findings here are significant, because they mark a turning point in the way we view iron supply from sediments and its potential to reach marine life that paves a new way of thinking about the seafloor.

"Our discovered production of iron colloids is different to other forms of iron supplied to the ocean, and will help us design a new generation of ocean models to re-evaluate marine life and climate connections to the seafloor -- where large uncertainty currently exists.

"This could help us to better understand how iron in the ocean has contributed to past productivity and climatic variations and inform our approaches to marine conservation and management."

The research team analysed tiny and precise variations within the fluid content of sediment samples collected from the South Atlantic Ocean at water depths ranging from 60m down to 5km.

They aimed to understand how the chemical -- or isotope -- signatures of nano-sized iron in the sediment fluids had been formed, and what this tells us about iron supply processes to the ocean.

Report co-author Dr Tim Conway is Assistant Professor at University of South Florida.

He explained: "We can now measure tiny but important variations in the chemical make-up of seawater that were beyond our reach a decade ago.

"Here we have characterised an isotope signature belonging to the iron colloids produced in deep ocean sediments that we can use to trace their journey in the ocean.

"Our continuing goal is to learn how far this iron travels and how much of it nourishes our marine food webs around the globe."

          https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210322175033.htm

Humans Have Largest Ape Brains

A new study is the first to identify how human brains grow much larger, with three times as many neurons, compared with chimpanzee and gorilla brains.

From:  UK Research and Innovation

March 24, 2021 -- The study, led by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, identified a key molecular switch that can make ape brain organoids grow more like human organoids, and vice versa.

The study, published in the journal Cell, compared 'brain organoids' -- 3D tissues grown from stem cells which model early brain development -- that were grown from human, gorilla and chimpanzee stem cells.

Similar to actual brains, the human brain organoids grew a lot larger than the organoids from other apes.

Dr Madeline Lancaster, from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, who led the study, said: "This provides some of the first insight into what is different about the developing human brain that sets us apart from our closest living relatives, the other great apes. The most striking difference between us and other apes is just how incredibly big our brains are."

During the early stages of brain development, neurons are made by stem cells called neural progenitors. These progenitor cells initially have a cylindrical shape that makes it easy for them to split into identical daughter cells with the same shape.

The more times the neural progenitor cells multiply at this stage, the more neurons there will be later.

As the cells mature and slow their multiplication, they elongate, forming a shape like a stretched ice-cream cone.

Previously, research in mice had shown that their neural progenitor cells mature into a conical shape and slow their multiplication within hours.

Now, brain organoids have allowed researchers to uncover how this development happens in humans, gorillas and chimpanzees.

They found that in gorillas and chimpanzees this transition takes a long time, occurring over approximately five days.

Human progenitors were even more delayed in this transition, taking around seven days. The human progenitor cells maintained their cylinder-like shape for longer than other apes and during this time they split more frequently, producing more cells.

This difference in the speed of transition from neural progenitors to neurons means that the human cells have more time to multiply. This could be largely responsible for the approximately three-fold greater number of neurons in human brains compared with gorilla or chimpanzee brains.

Dr Lancaster said: "We have found that a delayed change in the shape of cells in the early brain is enough to change the course of development, helping determine the numbers of neurons that are made.

"It's remarkable that a relatively simple evolutionary change in cell shape could have major consequences in brain evolution. I feel like we've really learnt something fundamental about the questions I've been interested in for as long as I can remember -- what makes us human."

To uncover the genetic mechanism driving these differences, the researchers compared gene expression -- which genes are turned on and off -- in the human brain organoids versus the other apes.

They identified differences in a gene called 'ZEB2', which was turned on sooner in gorilla brain organoids than in the human organoids.

To test the effects of the gene in gorilla progenitor cells, they delayed the effects of ZEB2. This slowed the maturation of the progenitor cells, making the gorilla brain organoids develop more similarly to human -- slower and larger.

Conversely, turning on the ZEB2 gene sooner in human progenitor cells promoted premature transition in human organoids, so that they developed more like ape organoids.

The researchers note that organoids are a model and, like all models, do not to fully replicate real brains, especially mature brain function. But for fundamental questions about our evolution, these brain tissues in a dish provide an unprecedented view into key stages of brain development that would be impossible to study otherwise.

Dr Lancaster was part of the team that created the first brain organoids in 2013.

              https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210324113502.htm

Do We Love Smarter Dogs More?

From: The Behavior Education Network

By Suzanne-Dan

In recent weeks there have been several news pieces in the popular press addressing the intelligence of dogs.  The great thing about both is that they presented the science of comparative intelligence and dog cognition very, very well.

One was an article in the New York Times “To Rate How Smart Dogs Are, Humans Learn New Tricks” by Jan Hoffman.  The second was a segment on NBCs “The Today Show” inspired by the Times article.  As both pointed out, dog owners seem to be almost obsessed with how smart their dogs are, giving their dogs “intelligence tests”, reading books such as Stanley Coren’s “How Dogs Think” and “The Intelligence of Dogs,” and even participating in research projects aimed at better understanding the cognitive abilities of dogs.

There has been a surge in interest among behavioral scientists in the cognitive processes of dogs as well. Research labs devoted to the study of dogs have popped up all over the world in the last 20 years.  Older research such as the classic studies of J.P. Scott and John Fuller, “Genetics and Social Behavior of the Dog,” have been reintroduced to a new generation of dog lovers and researchers.  The recent research isn’t just concerned with intelligence, but the broader area of how dogs think, feel and perceive the world.  The phrase cognition covers them all.

Why all this interest among scientists and dog lovers in the psychological processes of dogs?  It’s probably a combination of 1) cultural changes with people treating their dogs more like members of the family and not just backyard pets, and 2) new research revealing that the behavior and psychology of dogs are more complex and more like people than we ever thought.

Hoffman interviewed a number of canine behavioral researchers for her Times article. They pointed out several common misconceptions about animal intelligence and dog behavior. First, intelligence is a slippery term with a variety of meanings to different audiences.

Intelligence isn’t just a single trait with humans having a large dose of it and other animals having lesser amounts. Even in reference to people, experts recognize there are different kinds of intelligence.

Most dog owners think of intelligence as related to trainability or obedience, but researchers investigate a variety of abilities including problem solving and communication.  The second misconception is that differences among species, among breeds of dogs and among individual dogs are not that important.  As trainer Andrea Arden said during the Today Show, there is significant variability in behavior within breeds and even within litters. For most of us, the intelligence of our dog isn’t going to affect how good a companion she is.

As Dr. Clive Wynne, a psychologist from Arizona State University said, intelligence is over-rated. What people really want from their dogs is affection.   The exceptions, of course are for working dogs such as livestock herding dogs or explosives detection dogs. But even here the dogs are not tested for general intelligence, they’re screened with aptitude tests that directly relate to the jobs they are going to do.

Another important point, often misunderstood by the public, was illustrated on the Today Show.  This was a really funny segment in which the show’s hosts put their dogs through three different tasks:

1. Following their pet parents’ gestures to get a hidden food treat
2. Throwing off a towel placed on their head, or
3. Opening a puzzle toy to get a treat

One of the dogs solved his task very quickly, but the other two did not.  However, the point is that these differences in performance may have nothing to do with intelligence.  Careful observation of the dogs shows that all three were very distracted by all that was going on in the studio, and that the hosts were plying their pets with treats before testing.  Both factors were likely to interfere with good performance.  Performance is not a reliable measure of intelligence.  More factors than just intelligence influence the performance of a learned task – ask anyone who has tried to speak, act, sing or play music in front of an audience.

The take home lessons from these two news pieces about canine intelligence and performance are that intelligence isn’t just simple or one dimensional.  It can be defined differently, even by experts, and it is not so easily measured.

In reality, differences in intelligence mean very little to most pet parents, and friendliness and affection are far more important.  In fact some trainers like to say that less intelligent dogs are easier to live with and have fewer behavior problems because they aren’t smart enough to think of ways to get into trouble.  And finally, because performance of a trained task is influenced by facts such as physical ability, fear, and more, it shouldn’t be taken as the best or only measure of intelligence.

If you want to read the Times article or watch the Today Show segments, go to the following links.

Click HERE for the NY Times article

Today Show – How Smart Is Your Dog – Click HERE

Link for the above article:  https://behavioreducationnetwork.com/do-we-love-smarter-dogs-more/

The War on Merit

The opening battle of the great 21^st century American civil war [the manifesto is found in the comment far below by Francisco]

By Asra Q. Nomani, vice president of strategy and investigations at Parents Defending Education.

March 24, 2021 -- New York City’s gifted and talented students are in the crosshairs of woke activists who seek to impose “racial justice” in the city’s school system, not by improving education but by destroying opportunities for the city’s most advanced learners. And we can’t let them win.

A consortium of activists, including celebrity lawyer Ben Crump, has filed an 81-page lawsuit against the State of New York, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, and other state and city education officials, demanding the elimination of merit-based admissions to the city’s Gifted and Talented programs. The lawsuit argues the city’s gifted program and its specialized schools, including Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science, perpetuate an illegal “racial hierarchy,” “racism,” and “segregation” because black and Hispanic students qualify for them at a lower rate than white and Asian students.

The proposed remedy – eliminating gifted and talent programs and schools and punishing smart kids – will not fix the systemic academic problems in New York City elementary and middle schools that are the root cause for this “racial hierarchy.” Instead, it will promote another discrimination: against advanced learners. The legal activists demand discrimination against students whose academic performance ranks in the top 1.5 percent of their peers, and they disparage these students as having “in-the-know” parents. It is common sense that we will accomplish nothing as a society and surely do much harm if we embrace a conception of “fairness” that involves attacking and delegitimizing excellence as a form of “racism.”

That’s why a new organization, Parents Defending Education, filed a motion today to intervene on behalf of New York City parents whose children attend gifted and talented schools.

Attacks on gifted education programs have been a front in the national culture war that has heated up over the past year. “Social justice” advocates promote a concept of “equity” that any deviation in racial outcomes – such as gifted enrollments – can only be explained by racism. From New York to Seattle, these activists are working to dilute the most advanced and rigorous coursework with concepts from the ideology of critical race theory, including curriculum infused with discussions on “white privilege,” “systemic racism,” “structural inequity,” and “white supremacy.”

At the heart of this war on merit is a thinly-veiled attack on Asian-American students, many from immigrant families. The lawsuit filed last week in New York included frequent references to “certain Asian students,” who social justice activists nationwide say are “overrepresented” in gifted and talented programs, despite all of the alleged “racism” of their admissions process against minorities.

Sadly, these anti-Asian undertones have become typical.

Last month, the San Francisco Unified School District voted to replace the merit admissions process to a gifted and talented school, Lowell High School, with a lottery, attempting to dismantle the school’s mostly Asian-American student population.

Earlier this month, in northern Virginia, parents from a grassroots group called Coalition for TJ stood in front of the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., after their lawyers filed a lawsuit accusing local officials of anti-Asian bias for removing the merit-based, race-blind admissions process to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. (As the parent of a student at the school, I was honored to stand with them.) This public school is rated by U.S. News and World Report as the No. 1 high school in America. One dad’s sign, written in English and Chinese, read, “Targeting Asian families is Neither Equity Nor Inclusiveness.”

And in Boston, a local parents’ organization is going to court next month in yet another lawsuit, filed late last month, against local public school officials, alleging that they made admission to the city’s gifted high schools biased, using “zip code quotas” to reduce the number of white and Asian students.

Like the early 20th century's racist social engineers who imposed quotas limiting the enrollment of Jewish-American students at America’s top universities, today’s “racial justice” activists target gifted students. This time, many of the victims are Asian-American. This time, the excuse for racism is embarrassment at how Asian-American academic advancement undermines the woke narrative that America’s “systemic racism” precludes minorities from success. 

Winning the legal battles in New York City and elsewhere is critical in defending an American Dream where we provide opportunities to America’s brightest students. These students deserve educational challenges that help them develop into leaders and innovators – and our country desperately needs them for us to advance as a nation. The solution is not to cry “racism” and destroy programs for advanced learners but to improve schools for all students.

Comments

Hominid

We can't have competition because it creates winners and losers - we don't want any hurt feelings. We can't have inequality because we have to pretend all people are equal (and, we don't want any hurt feelings). The lowest common denominator must be the norm so no has hurt feelings.

coelacanth10

Here's some truth. Merit is the ONLY thing that matters in education and most of life. To do well, one must work very hard and sacrifice for future rewards. The USA is one of the least racist countries on the face of the earth, and is renown as the mixing pot of cultures, each of which has things to offer American citizens. Critical race theory is a bizarre and hateful personal philosophy, based upon neomarxism with inherent destructive tendencies that ultimately are anarchistic, and is doomed to fail in this country and any other. It has nothing to offer us as Americans. We should reject it completely as well as any organizations such as Blantifa which embrace it.

Hominid

The concept of the "melting pot" is emotionally appealing and seems plausible (the folks just have to have the "right" attitude). But, like so many other fanciful, emotionally appealing notions, it doesn't work out in reality.   Sapiens is a biological creature, a product of genetic evolution, and, as such, will behave in accordance with the biological principles of competition for survival and propagation of his particular genes. Genetically dissimilar peoples (tribes, if you will) inevitably will compete with another for evolutionary success. The specific justifications - from personality trait differences to ideological-cultural differences - are but the immediate rationalizations for this underlying biological confrontation.

daniel155

Rather than trying to improve education for everyone, the filers of these lawsuits want to bring all students down to the lowest level.

Hominid

That's because "improving education for everyone" is a fools errand. People differ greatly over a broad range in their educability due to their genomes. Genetically unintelligent and unmotivated children are not very educable and benefit little if at all from education.

mrbadhabits

The easiest way to determine if mastery of a subject is less important than social concerns is to ask yourself if you're happy having a doctor who barely graduated from med school perform your brain surgery.

pearson231

There are no Asians on college basketball teams. Obviously, this is a racist sport so basketball needs to either be eliminated, or a lottery system used to choose players for the teams.

Larkenson

Our schools teach White students that they are immoral and contemptible if they don’t support the White Genocide that’s being carried out by massive third-world immigration and FORCED assimilation i.e diversity in EVERY White country and ONLY White countries.  Their teachers never tell them, “White self-hatred is SICK!!!“  Those teachers claim to be anti-racist. What they are is anti-White.  Anti-racist is a code word for anti-White.

daniel155

False flag.

Flight Ops

All students and Dropouts shall be given Participation Trophies and enrolled in means-tested Guaranteed Income Programs for life. /sarc

Hominid

Consider the alternative.   Is a society based on humanist ideology with all its emotion-based, nonrealistic notions going to allow people suffer and die?   We're reluctant to even execute vicious murderers and we keep trying to "rehab" chronic drug abusers as though they accidentally came into contact with a curable disease. We continue to chant the false notions that all men are equal, equally deserving of a dignified life, and are responsible for one another's well-being.

futbolfan

1 day ago

The leftist insanity about race is going to touch off a race war.

Francisco d'Anconio

I am afraid Asra doesn't understand the point when she says" It is common sense that we will accomplish nothing as a society and surely do much harm if we embrace a conception of “fairness” that involves attacking and delegitimizing excellence as a form of “racism.” The excellence of which she speaks is actually white excellence of white subjects that were created for white students. That is why so many Asians, Indians, and whites do so well in school. They are doing well because they simply focus on mastering their knowledge of the subject and maintaining the discipline to complete the coursework in a timely manner. Obviously this is racist. There is no way you could possibly expect any black person to perform at the same level if you just focus on "learning". We need to instead ignore learning the subject matter and focus on the real lesson, and that is oppression. Sure, it is easy to reward students for competence in their areas of study, but I say let's hear the students stories of oppression. I guess we need to decide whether this country wants people in jobs that are competent, or do we want people who have lived their truths?

futbolfan

Ha Ha. Leftists are sick and you know it. They won't like your post.

sestamibi

Yes, one needs to recognize sarcasm.

Hominid

YOU evidently don't. The post was NOT sarcasm - it was an accurate statement of reality.

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/03/24/the_war_on_merit_110552.html

Breakthrough for ’Massless’ Energy Storage

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have produced a structural battery that performs ten times better than all previous versions. It contains carbon fibre that serves simultaneously as an electrode, conductor, and load-bearing material. Their latest research breakthrough paves the way for essentially ’massless’ energy storage in vehicles and other technology.

From: Chalmers University of Technology

March 22, 2021 -- The batteries in today's electric cars constitute a large part of the vehicles' weight, without fulfilling any load-bearing function. A structural battery, on the other hand, is one that works as both a power source and as part of the structure – for example, in a car body. This is termed ‘massless’ energy storage, because in essence the battery’s weight vanishes when it becomes part of the load-bearing structure. Calculations show that this type of multifunctional battery could greatly reduce the weight of an electric vehicle.

The development of structural batteries at Chalmers University of Technology has proceeded through many years of research, including previous discoveries involving certain types of carbon fibre. In addition to being stiff and strong, they also have a good ability to store electrical energy chemically. This work was named by Physics World as one of 2018’s ten biggest scientific breakthroughs.

The first attempt to make a structural battery was made as early as 2007, but it has so far proven difficult to manufacture batteries with both good electrical and mechanical properties.

But now the development has taken a real step forward, with researchers from Chalmers, in collaboration with KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, presenting a structural battery with properties that far exceed anything yet seen, in terms of electrical energy storage, stiffness and strength. Its multifunctional performance is ten times higher than previous structural battery prototypes.

The battery has an energy density of 24 Wh/kg, meaning approximately 20 percent capacity compared to comparable lithium-ion batteries currently available. But since the weight of the vehicles can be greatly reduced, less energy will be required to drive an electric car, for example, and lower energy density also results in increased safety. And with a stiffness of 25 GPa, the structural battery can really compete with many other commonly used construction materials.

“Previous attempts to make structural batteries have resulted in cells with either good mechanical properties, or good electrical properties. But here, using carbon fibre, we have succeeded in designing a structural battery with both competitive energy storage capacity and rigidity,” explains Leif Asp, Professor at Chalmers and leader of the project.

Super light electric bikes and consumer electronics could soon be a reality

The new battery has a negative electrode made of carbon fibre, and a positive electrode made of a lithium iron phosphate-coated aluminium foil. They are separated by a fibreglass fabric, in an electrolyte matrix. Despite their success in creating a structural battery ten times better than all previous ones, the researchers did not choose the materials to try and break records – rather, they wanted to investigate and understand the effects of material architecture and separator thickness.

Now, a new project, financed by the Swedish National Space Agency, is underway, where the performance of the structural battery will be increased yet further. The aluminium foil will be replaced with carbon fibre as a load-bearing material in the positive electrode, providing both increased stiffness and energy density. The fibreglass separator will be replaced with an ultra-thin variant, which will give a much greater effect – as well as faster charging cycles. The new project is expected to be completed within two years.

Leif Asp, who is leading this project too, estimates that such a battery could reach an energy density of 75 Wh/kg and a stiffness of 75 GPa. This would make the battery about as strong as aluminium, but with a comparatively much lower weight.

“The next generation structural battery has fantastic potential. If you look at consumer technology, it could be quite possible within a few years to manufacture smartphones, laptops or electric bicycles that weigh half as much as today and are much more compact”, says Leif Asp.

And in the longer term, it is absolutely conceivable that electric cars, electric planes and satellites will be designed with and powered by structural batteries.

“We are really only limited by our imaginations here. We have received a lot of attention from many different types of companies in connection with the publication of our scientific articles in the field. There is understandably a great amount of interest in these lightweight, multifunctional materials,” says Leif Asp.

Read the article in the scientific journal Advanced Energy & Sustainability Research:

A Structural Battery and its Multifunctional Performance

https://news.cision.com/chalmers/r/big-breakthrough-for--massless--energy-storage,c3309393

Carbon Capture and Sequestration Has Failed

Credibility of incentives (a function of policy and politics) is a key, researchers say

From: University of California San Diego

March 22, 2021 -- There are 12 essential attributes that explain why commercial carbon capture and sequestration projects succeed or fail in the U.S., University of California San Diego researchers say in a recent study published in Environmental Research Letters.

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has become increasingly important in addressing climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies greatly on the technology to reach zero carbon at low cost. Additionally, it is among the few low-carbon technologies in President Joseph R. Biden’s proposed $400 billion clean energy plan that earns bipartisan support. 

In the last two decades, private industry and government have invested tens of billions of dollars to capture CO2 from dozens of industrial and power plant sources. Despite the extensive support, these projects have largely failed. In fact, 80 percent of projects that seek to commercialize carbon capture and sequestration technology have ended in failure. 

“Instead of relying on case studies, we decided that we needed to develop new methods to systematically explain the variation in project outcome of why do so many projects fail,” said  lead author Ahmed Y. Abdulla, research fellow with UC San Diego’s Deep Decarbonization Initiative and assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Carleton University. “Knowing which features of CCS projects have been most responsible for past successes and failures allows developers to not only avoid past mistakes, but also identify clusters of existing, near-term CCS projects that are more likely to succeed.”

He added, “By considering the largest sample of U.S. CCS projects ever studied, and with extensive support from people who managed these projects in the past, we essentially created a checklist of attributes that matter and gauged the extent to which each does.”

Credibility of incentives and revenues is key

The researchers found that the credibility of revenues and incentives—functions of policy and politics—are among the most important attributes, along with capital cost and technological readiness, which have been studied extensively in the past.

“Policy design is essential to help commercialize the industry because CCS projects require a huge amount of capital up front,” the authors, comprised of an international team of researchers, note. 

The authors point to existing credible policies that act as incentives, such as the 2018 expansion of the 45Q tax credit. It provides companies with a guaranteed revenue stream if they sequester CO2 in deep geologic repositories.

The only major incentive companies have had thus far to recoup their investments in carbon capture is by selling the CO2 to oil and gas companies, who then inject it into oil fields to enhance the rate of extraction—a process referred to as enhanced oil recovery.

The 45Q tax credit also incentivizes enhanced oil recovery, but at a lower price per CO2 unit, compared to dedicated geologic CO2 storage.   

Beyond selling to oil and gas companies, CO2 is not exactly a valuable commodity, so few viable business cases exist to sustain a CCS industry on the scale that is necessary or envisioned to stabilize the climate.

“If designed explicitly to address credibility, public policy could have a huge impact on the success of projects,” said David Victor, co-lead of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative and professor of industrial innovation at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.

Results with expert advice from project managers with real-world experience

While technological readiness has been studied extensively and is essential to reducing the cost and risk of CCS, the researchers looked beyond the engineering and engineering economics to determine why CCS continues to be such a risky investment. Over the course of two years, the researchers analyzed publicly available records of 39 U.S. projects and sought expertise from CCS project managers with extensive, real-world experience. 

They identified 12 possible determinants of project outcomes, which are technological readiness, credibility of incentives, financial credibility, cost, regulatory challenges, burden of CO2 removal, industrial stakeholder opposition, public opposition, population proximity, employment impact, plant location, and the host state’s appetite for fossil infrastructure development.

To evaluate the relative influence of the 12 factors in explaining project outcomes, the researchers built two statistical models and complemented their empirical analysis with a model derived through expert assessment.

The experts only underscored the importance of credibility of revenues and incentives; the vast majority of successful projects arranged in advance to sell their captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. They secured unconditional incentives upfront, boosting perceptions that they were resting on secure financial footing.

The authors conclude models in the study—especially when augmented with the structured elicitation of expert judgment—can likely improve representations of CCS deployment across energy systems. 

“Assessments like ours empower both developers and policymakers,” the authors write. “With data to identify near-term CCS projects that are more likely to succeed, these projects will become the seeds from which a new CCS industry sprouts.”

https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/why-commercialization-of-carbon-capture-and-sequestration-has-failed-and-how-it-can-work

How Tech Controls Us

Roger’s book (Zucked by Roger McNamee) shows you how technology is adapting.

And he makes the case for why we have to adapt with it.

I’ll explain.

Tech is in our psyche. And the more we use it, the easier it can use us.

We think our relationships with tech are fair and mutual. We think “Oh, it’s mutual, it’s faithful.” It’s not. Tech is cheating on you with credit card companies and anyone else who wants to collect your data.

It’s cheating on you with:

• Apps (the ones that collect your data when you log into through Facebook)
• Companies that want to sell you stuff
• Groups that want to influence you politically, socially, economically, etc.

Data used to be a means for advertisers to target you. But it’s more than that now. “In the old days, advertising was about gathering data to better match products and services to the people who use them. [For] Facebook and Google, that’s not what this is about at all. They’re getting it so they can basically manipulate your attention. And ultimately manipulate your behavior to their ends.”

They didn’t invent this. Slot machines, propaganda, magic… These systems already existed.

Tech just adopted it. To get you to pay attention to them. And then the bad actors get you to deviate from your normal behavior.

Roger called this “brain hacking.”

They feed you more of what you already like. And make you more and more addicted.

Roger said, “We’re all addicted. I like to ask people, ‘When do you first check your phone in the morning? Before you pee or while you pee?’ It’s one of these times for most people. Once you're addicted, if somebody wants to use those tools to do harm, they can do that.”

So I had Roger break down the manipulation process.

It came down to these 5 steps:

1. CREATION

First, they (whoever wants to manipulate you) forms a Facebook group that seems totally authentic and legitimate.

2. DECEPTION

But it’s actually being led by a troll (someone with an agenda). The troll fills the group with bots who make up 1-2% of the group’s total population. You could be in a group like this now. (The more controversial the group, the more likely this is… Which leads to #3.)

3. EMOTIONAL REPETITION

Together, the bots and the troll establish a theme. Usually something controversial. Like gun control or immigration. After the theme is set, they decide what content to post. You start getting notifications. The frequency of those notifications and posts become addictive. You’ll check all the time. And the more you check, the more your mind will feel the signal “OK, this topic is important.” Making you more and more emotionally attached. Which leads to step 4.

4. MANIPULATION, ADDICTION, AND MULTIPLICATION

Most people join a Facebook group for a good reason… curiosity, discussion, connection, whatever. There’s an element of innocence. And human nature. The trolls and bad actors know this. “What happens is the group shares stuff that reinforces the perspective and they share it multiple times a day. And after a period or months, your position hardens and becomes more extreme.” Plus the AI of the newsfeed algorithm will reflect the groups you’re in. Giving you less and less of a chance to think freely.

5. GROWTH

Steps 1-4 ripple out. They use Facebook ads to attract people into the group. And the message spreads.

UNLESS!

Unless you make a conscious effort to not be manipulated. I do this by:

• Noticing addiction (How often do I check my phone?)
• Making changes (When do I want to NOT use my phone?)
• Take inventory of my notification (Which ones am I obsessed with? Is there a certain topic that’s stealing energy from me? Can I opt out?)
• Recognize the fact that “bad actors”, “hackers”, “trolls” all exist online (Sometimes I get hate or see hate online. And it hurts. It’s painful. But I have to consider “maybe this person isn’t real.”)

We have to stop thinking we’re 100% safe online.

“We need a new vocabulary. We need to think about these problems differently,” Roger said. “The business of FB and Google is not ‘advertising’ as we knew it in the past. And thinking about it [the old] way gets in the way. The privacy violations are a new kind of privacy violations. So you have to be open to that. Everything about it is different…”

Thirteen years ago, Roger McNamee and Mark Zuckerberg met. Roger told him, “Don’t sell Facebook… If you still believe in your vision, don’t sell.”

Facebook was different. They had a plan to eliminate online anonymity. And do good.

The other social media networks (MySpace, Friendster, Six Degrees, etc.) had too many trolls. They didn’t require you to authenticate your identity. Anybody could make up an identity online. And be totally anonymous. Which leads to more and more bad actors.

So Roger said, “Follow your vision.”

And that’s what he wants everybody to do. Don’t just follow Zuckerberg’s vision or Tim Cook or whoever.

Figure it out for yourself. What’s your tech vision? Your privacy vision? Your addiction vs. non-addiction vision?

Who do you want to control you?

Mark’s vision has changed.

So why hasn’t ours? Bad actors have multiplied. Throw in human trust and naivety. And it’s a recipe for what? I don’t think there’s a word for it.

Privacy isn’t dead. There’s just less and less of it. So how much more are you willing to give up?

Roger hopes none…

“I haven’t’ stopped using Facebook,” he said. “I’ve changed the way I use it… by a lot. My point here is we have to use our attention differently if we want to be safe going forward.”

     By James Altucher (Investment teacher, former Hedge Fund Manager and Wall Streeter)

17 Unsettling Medicare Facts

From:  Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom

1. Medicare is essentially compulsory. People who refuse to join Medicare Part A are not allowed to receive their earned Social Security benefits. Brian Hall, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius, et al, was filed October 9, 2008 and appealed in July 2011. On June 30, 2011, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint and 12 GOP colleagues introduced the Retirement Freedom Act to decouple Medicare from Social Security.
    
2. Medicare patients cannot pay cash for care. A 1997 law (Balanced Budget Act, section 4507) forbids private contracts between patients and doctors. With few exceptions, Medicare recipients cannot pay cash for a Medicare-covered service that Medicare denies until the doctor has opted out of Medicare. Most physicians cannot afford to opt out, so the law essentially prohibits private contracting between elderly patients and their doctors. Obamacare cut $500 billion from Medicare and enacted two administrative panels that are expected to advance rationing: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
    
3. Initial refusal to enroll in Medicare Part B leads to costly penalties. Seniors are automatically enrolled in Medicare Part B. Those who refuse and later change their minds will pay a premium for the rest of their lives that is 10 percent higher for EACH year they were not enrolled.
    
4. Citizens do not have a right to their Medicare contributions (payroll taxes). There is no binding contract between the government and citizens for future payment of Medicare benefits. Congress can alter or eliminate Medicare benefits at their discretion.
    
5. Medicare comes in four parts. Medicare Part A (hospitalization insurance) is funded through payroll taxes. Obamacare increased the payroll tax for individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000. In 2006, Medicare Part B (supplemental medical insurance for physician services, diagnostic tests, and other services) was funded approximately 76 percent by federal income taxes and 21 percent by Medicare recipients. Under Medicare Part C, the Medicare Advantage HMO managed care plan, insurers receive approximately $800 per month per Medicare enrollee. Medicare Part D allows senior citizens to receive subsidized drug coverage.
    
6. Medicare dependency is growing. In 2003, there were 40 million Medicare recipients. In 2010, there were 47.5 million recipients. In 2011, the first of 77 million baby boomers began entering Medicare.
    
7. Medicare faces insufficient funding. In 1965, 4.6 workers/taxpayers supported each Medicare recipient. In 2003, around 4 workers supported each recipient. In 2010, there were less than three workers per retiree. In 2030, only 2.3 workers/taxpayer are estimated per Medicare recipient. Medicare is expected to grow from 3.6% to 6.2% of GDP.
    
8. Medicare is heading toward bankruptcy. According to the Medicare Trustees 2011 report, Medicare will be insolvent by 2024-five years earlier than estimated in 2010. Each new Medicare beneficiary is expected to cost $7,700 per year and "the total cost of the program to expand to $929 billion in 2010-an 80% increase over 10 years." (American Health Line blog, 12/30/2010)
    
9. Medicare is not health insurance. Medicare does not pay for hospitalization longer than 150 days, and there is no cap on out-of-pocket expenses. "Medigap" insurance is often purchased to protect against huge medical bills not covered by Medicare.
    
10. Medicare does not cover the cost of long-term care and nursing home care - unless it is related to a hospitalization or other urgent medical care.
     
11. Medicare pays only about half of all health care costs of seniors. In 1997, 39,840 seniors paid an average of $22,124, either in out of pocket costs or through supplemental insurance.
     
12. Medicare frequently denies payment. In 2001, 3.7 million appeals were filed for denial of payment by Medicare Part B. Despite a 2000 law requiring swift processing of appeals, a 2003 report by the General Accounting Office found significant delays in appeals processing.
     
13. Medicare has not significantly decreased out of pocket payments for seniors. In 2000, a study by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) found seniors paying an average of $2,510 per year-about 19 percent of their income-on out-of-pocket costs. This does not include home care or nursing home care. In 1964, a year before Medicare passed, seniors were paying 20 percent of their income on health care.
     
14. Medicare wastes taxpayer money. Almost $107 billion in improper payments were paid between 1997 and 2003. In 2002, $13.3 billion was lost to improper payment. In 2010, $47.9 billion was improperly paid (HealthLeaders, 7/29/11). CCHF calculates the 2010 loss at $131 million per day.
     
15. Doctors, hospitals and others who accept Medicare patients are at enormous risk. There are over 130,000 pages of Medicare regulations that must be meticulously followed. In 1996, Congress made health care fraud a federal crime-a felony. Even minor billing errors can be considered fraud and extrapolated across the practice. Obamacare increased fines per violation from $10,000 to $50,000.
     
16. Medicare threatens patient privacy. The federal government requires home health agencies to regularly send private data on Medicare recipients. This is called the Outcomes Assessment Information System (OASIS). Obamacare requires extensive reporting by doctors and hospital on patient treatments and outcomes. And, doctors and hospitals that make inadvertent errors in billing can be forced to hand over the patient’s entire medical record for investigation of fraud.
     
17. Medicare dollars used beyond patient care. Medicare dollars fund medical education, and a research institute (PCORI) created under Obamacare, leaving fewer dollars for treating the tsunami of Medicare recipients. In 2008, Medicare paid $9.0 billion to train doctors.

Information taken liberally from Medicare's Midlife Crisis (Sue Blevins, Institute for Health Freedom, published by Cato Institute); GAO REPORT: "Medicare Appeals: Disparity between Requirements and Responsible Agencies' Capabilities" (September 2003); The Medicare Program as a Capstone to the Great Society-Recent Revelations in the LBJ White House Tapes (Larry DeWitt, May 2003); Kaiser Family Foundation documents; testimony to Congress (House Budget Committee) from the Office of Inspector General (July 9, 2003); Americans for Tax Reform; the 2010 Affordable Care Act; "Economic Report of the President" (St. Louis Federal Reserve, 2007), and other sources.

Updated: August 1, 2011

                           https://www.cchfreedom.org/cchf.php/308