Mexican Cuisine Expert Diana Kennedy Died

Diana Kennedy MBE (née Southwood; 3 March 1923 – 24 July 2022) was a British food writer. A primary English-language authority on Mexican cuisine, Kennedy was known for her nine books on the subject, including The Cuisines of Mexico, which changed how Americans view Mexican cuisine.

Her cookbooks are based on her fifty years of travelling in Mexico, interviewing and learning from several types of cooks from virtually every region of the nation.

Her documentation of native edible plants has been digitized by National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity. Due to her style of work, Kennedy was called a "culinary anthropologist" and self-identified as an "ethno-gastronomer".  Kennedy received numerous awards for her work, including the Order of the Aztec Eagle from the Mexican government, and was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

Her Life

Kennedy was born Diana Southwood in Loughton, Essex, in the southeast of England, on 3 March 1923.  Her father was a salesman, and her mother was a schoolteacher who loved nature and wanted to live quietly in the countryside.

Kennedy did not attend university because of World War II and instead, at age 19, joined the Women's Timber Corps: a civilian organisation that took over forestry duties from men who had gone off to fight.  Kennedy did not like cutting down trees, so she was assigned to measuring tree trunks instead.

In 1953, Kennedy emigrated to Canada, where she lived for three years while doing a number of jobs, including running a film library and selling Wedgewood china.

On a last-minute decision, Kennedy decided to visit Haiti in 1957. There she met Paul P. Kennedy, a correspondent for The New York Times in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.  The two moved to Mexico in 1957, and there they married some time later, remaining together until his death from cancer in 1967, aged 62.  Kennedy had no children, but two stepdaughters from Paul's first marriage.

In Mexico, Kennedy became enamoured of the food, and dedicated her subsequent career to its preservation and promotion.  However, she still maintained her British accent and took tea each day.  When she was not teaching, she was either writing or working in the kitchen on recipes.  She was noted for her brusque, no-nonsense demeanor, having pulled out tape recorders when police have tried to get bribes from her on her Mexican travels.

She visited every state in Mexico, and used diverse forms of transportation, from buses, to donkeys to her Nissan pickup truck with no power steering (and a shovel to dig it out of the mud).  She travelled to any isolated areas of Mexico to visit markets and cooks to ask about cooking ingredients and methods.  In the 1970s, she decided to build her house near Zitácuaro Michoacán, in an area with orchards.  The land allowed her to grow many of her own ingredients.  While she was not technophobic, she was against electronic forms of cookbooks, believing in the need to make notes over printed recipes.

Kennedy died at her home on 24 July 2022, at the age of 99.

First exposure to Mexican cuisine

During her first years in Mexico City with her husband in the late 1950s, she learned quickly that the best food in Mexico was not in fancy restaurants but rather in markets, traditional family restaurants called "fondas" and in homes.  In addition, she was impressed with what she saw in local, traditional markets.  She also came to appreciate that recipes varied from region to region, travelling with her husband when he was on assignment, and he would collect recipes when she could not accompany him.  In Mexico City, she asked her friends about cooking these dishes, and was referred to their maids. These maids then encouraged her to visit their villages, which she subsequently continued to do.  Kennedy also began researching documentation on Mexican cuisine, and credited the work of Josefina Velázquez de León for her having been a pioneer, who had done similar work collecting recipes by visiting church groups.  Kennedy's focus became the food that was not documented, such as that found in villages, markets and homes, eventually to preserve native ingredients and traditional recipes being lost as Mexicans move from rural areas to urban centers.

Kennedy began to share what she learned informally among expats and her husband's colleagues when they came to Mexico. This included taking women on tours of traditional markets, including the stands with animal heads, which shocked Americans.  When New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne was in town, she tried to give him a book of Mexican recipes, but he refused it, saying "I'll only read a Mexican cookbook once you have written one".'  At the time, Kennedy thought this was a crazy idea.

Cooking classes and cookbook writing

At the end of 1965, Kennedy and her husband moved to New York City, where he died the following year from cancer.  In 1969, Kennedy began to teach classes in Mexican cooking in her apartment in the Upper West Side, with the encouragement of Craig Claiborne.  This was the beginning of a decades-long teaching career, which began as her own venture, then in collaboration with other institutions such as the Peter Kump Cooking School in New York, as well as offering Mexican cooking "boot camps" at her home in Michoacán. Her classes focused on the most traditional cooking techniques and ingredients. For example, while most Mexican cooks now use pre-ground corn or corn flour, she insisted on teaching students how to soak kernels with lime overnight, remove the skins and grind with lard to make corn dough (masa).  She had the most success with this since the 1970s, when cooking schools grew in popularity.

The work with the cooking classes led to her first cookbook.  From her time in Mexico City to her time in New York City, she had been supported in her work with Mexican cooking by Claiborne.  She did not have experience writing, but after Fran McCullough, poetry editor at Harper and Row at the time, took one of her classes, she offered to help Kennedy put the book together and eventually collaborated on Kennedy's first five books.  To complete the first one, Kennedy decided to return to Mexico to do further research.  This research, she believed, was what separated her from other cookbook writers in that she took the time and effort to explore Mexico and do field research on how the cuisine varies.  Her inexperience led to rewriting the book several times but the result was The Cuisines of Mexico, published in 1972. This book became a best-seller and is still one of the most authoritative single volumes on Mexican cooking.  It began to change Americans' understanding of Mexican food, expanding it beyond Tex-Mex into the various regional cuisines and dishes, and is the basis of establishing authentic food in the U.S.  The 1986 revision of the book is still in print.

She later published eight other volumes on Mexican cooking, a number of which have been translated into Spanish. Her initial influence is the work of Josefina Velázquez de León, but she credited much of her writing style to the work of English cookbook author Elizabeth David.  Kennedy did not consider herself a writer, but rather as someone who documented what she saw in about fifty years of travelling Mexico, including remote areas, to talk to cooks of all kinds.  She financed her own book research and travels, often sleeping in her old Nissan truck.  She preferred the food of central and southern Mexico, which is more complex and varied.  She registered a wide variety of edible plants, and included more exotic recipes such as those using brains, iguanas, insects and even whole animals such as oxen.  She regularly interviewed and cooked with a variety of cooks, but especially those from rural areas, cooking for family and friends. She even apprenticed in a bakery in Mexico City to learn the all-male trade.  Her preference for traditional home cooking means that her books revolve around foods made with corn dough and even has an entire book dedicated to tortillas.  Her insistence on field research distinguishes her books for the stories they tell related to food and her travels.  It also led to unconventional formats.  Her book on Oaxaca is not divided by types of dishes but rather the eleven regions of the state.

Her work made her one of the foremost authorities on Mexican cuisine, not only in authentic ingredients and techniques, but the loss and disuse of various ingredients as Mexico shifts from a primarily rural to primarily urban society. One loss is the use of local and regional produce.  "As far as I can see," said Kennedy, "I write oral history that is disappearing with climate change, agribusiness, and loss of cultivated lands. In the past people had a sense of taste and a sense of where they came from. They were conscious of what they were eating and what they consumed and about not wasting. In the introduction of Oaxaca al Gusto, Kennedy wrote ... "Trying to record the ethnic foods as well as the more sophisticated recipes of the urban centers presented an enormous challenge and responsibility … I am sure that if I had known what it would entail to travel almost constantly through the year, and often uncomfortably, to research, record, photograph and then cook and eat over three hundred recipes, I might never have had the courage to start the project in the first place..."

In addition to travelling in Mexico, Kennedy's work required frequent travel abroad, especially to the United States, where she gave classes and spoke about Mexican cuisine.  She starred in a 26-part television series on Mexican cooking for The Learning Channel.  She was an influence in the development of Mexican cooking in the United States and on chefs such as Rick Bayless. She taught Paula Wolfert, who recommended her to her editor.  Chefs in Texas and New Mexico who came to prominence in the mid-1980s credit her work as a base for their Southwestern U.S. cuisine.  However, Kennedy dismissed most chefs doing Mexican food during her time because they had not done the travelling and research that she had and innovated rather than preserved original methods.  She criticized chefs who waste food and who encourage the unnecessary use of plastic, foil, and other items that only get thrown in the trash.  She also did not like culinary writers who do not live in Mexico, but question her authority because of her ethnicity.  Some of her conflicts received significant press, citing her throwing chef Rick Bayless out of her car for being "brash" and her criticisms of Maricel Presilla^.  She was careful to credit the people who have shared their understanding of Mexican regional foods with her, including, for example, anthropologist and restauranteur Raquel Torres Cerdán.

Her influence was not limited to the United States as her work was very well received in Mexico. She received numerous awards in this country including the Order of the Aztec Eagle, which is the highest honour awarded to foreigners in the country. The National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) has digitized her research including a vast collection of recipes, drawings and notes both on cooking and native edible plants, resulting in a section of their website dedicated to her.

Quinta Diana/Diana Kennedy Center

Kennedy permanently returned to Mexico in 1976, initially living in Mexico City.  In 1980, she moved to eastern Michoacán, about three hours west of the capital, after a friend introduced her to the area.  There she bought property which she initially called "Quinta Diana" near the small village of San Francisco Coatepec de Morelos (colloquially known as San Pancho), in the municipality of Zitácuaro.

Her homestead was on a forested hill at the end of a long dirt road, only accessed by pickup or four-wheel drive.  However, this did not stop a steady stream of visitors from arriving at her cobblestone driveway.

Quinta Diana is an ecologically minded establishment. She stated in the book My Mexico in 1998 that she wanted a house built of local materials and live a lifestyle similar to that of her neighbors.  The nearly three hectares is almost off the grid, and centers on her adobe home.  This home was built by local architect Armando Cuevas, and centers around a large boulder, almost the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, which Kennedy decided not to remove from the site.  Around the boulder is an atrium of the open living room, and from it, stairways lead to various parts of the house.  In her home she tested recipes according to the seasons, and what is growing on her property.  Her cooking spaces consist of an outdoor space with wood-fired grills and adobe beehive-shaped ovens, and an indoor kitchen, which she called her "laboratory".  Her indoor kitchen centers on a long, cement counter, which is covered in blue and white tiles, with inlaid gas burners.  This kitchen is filled with various ingredients and implements including burnished copper and clay pots on the walls, herbs and vegetables in wicker baskets, various varieties of dried chili peppers, and her own condiments, including a pineapple vinegar similar to balsamic.  For her table, she has authentic Talavera pottery from Puebla, and near the kitchen window, there are binoculars and a bird book.

Her bedroom is upstairs, which opens to her study, filled with books and papers about, and with windows on three sides to look out over the gardens towards the mountains.

Kennedy grew much of her own food organically. She had a greenhouse to grow various edible plants, such as herbs and even coffee.  The gardens include grapefruit, apricot and fig trees, chayote vines from Veracruz, and a section dedicated to the corn she used for masa. Manure is the fertilizer. All the water used on the property is from tanks that collect wastewater, with a patch of land serving as a filter for wastewater.  Much of the energy is solar.

Since 1980, money from her books and speaking engagements have funded the property and its operations.  However, Kennedy established the Diana Kennedy Foundation to have tax-free status with the Mexican government, and to work on projects focusing on the environment as well as food.  Her interest in the environment was related to food in the sense that when the environment is destroyed, foods disappear.  It also had roots in her mother's love for nature and experience with scarcity in wartime England.  She argued against the use of genetically modified seeds, excessive use of packaging and use of bleach for white linens in hotels and restaurants. The Foundation is also geared toward preservation, not only of Mexico's food heritage, but of Quinta Diana, with its immense collection of Mexican cookbooks, other publications and pottery, along with the gardens.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Kennedy

 

Barking Makes Hunting Easier for Chimpanzees

Similar to humans, chimpanzees use communication to coordinate their cooperative behavior -- such as during hunting. When chimpanzees produce a specific vocalization, known as the 'hunting bark', they recruit more group members to the hunt and capture their prey more effectively, researchers have now shown.

From:  University of Zurich

July 29, 2022 -- Chimpanzees don't only forage for fruit, from time to time they also seek out opportunities to acquire protein-rich meat. To catch their agile monkey prey in the canopy, chimpanzees are better off having companions hunting alongside them. Scientists have found for the first time that communication is key to recruiting group members to join the hunt.

Hunting barks make the chase more effective

By studying more than 300 hunting events recorded over the last 25 years at the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Uganda, researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) and Tufts University in Boston have discovered that by making bark vocalizations, the wild apes catalyze group hunting, rendering this form of cooperative behavior more effective. "Chimps who produce hunting barks provide information to those nearby about their motivation to hunt, and this information may persuade reluctant individuals to join, boosting the overall chances of success," says Joseph Mine, PhD student at the Department of Comparative Language Science of UZH, who led the study.

Hunting monkeys as a group in dense tropical rainforest where visibility is restricted can be challenging. Vocal communication allows more efficient group work. "Strikingly, following the production of hunting barks, we observed more hunters joining, greater speed in beginning the chase, and a shorter time to make the first capture," says study co-last author Zarin Machanda from Tufts University, who heads up the Kanyawara Chimpanzee Project.

Although hunts are more effective following a bark, more research is needed to find out why the barks have this effect. "At the moment it is still unclear if these barks are given intentionally to coordinate the precise actions of the group, or whether these barks simply advertise an individual's decision to hunt, which in turn, increases the likelihood of others joining them and with more hunters they are more effective," adds UZH professor Simon Townsend, who helped lead the study.

Co-evolution of communication and cooperation

The evolutionary biologists considered a wide array of other factors that may affect the outcome of a hunt, including the presence of skilled hunters as well as potential distractions, but the occurrence of hunting barks retained a key role. "Communication plays a key role in coordinating complex acts of cooperation in humans, and this is the first indication that vocal communication might also facilitate group cooperation in our closest living relatives," says Townsend.

It is widely accepted that communication and cooperation are tightly linked and co-evolved in humans. Over time, as one became more complex, so did the other, generating a feedback cycle which ultimately led to language and the uniquely complex forms of cooperation modern humans engage in.

Evolutionary roots at least 7 million years old

However, it was unknown how far back into humans' evolutionary past this relationship between group cooperation and communication can be traced. Joseph Mine concludes: "Our results indicate that the relationship between vocal communication and group-level cooperation is ancient. This link seems to have been in place for at least 7 million years, since our last common ancestor with chimpanzees."

          https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220729173225.htm

 

 

Tony Dow Passes Away

Anthony Lee Dow (April 13, 1945 – July 27, 2022) was an American actor, film producer, director and sculptor. He portrayed Wally Cleaver in the iconic television sitcom Leave It to Beaver from 1957 to 1963. From 1983 to 1989, Dow reprised his role as Wally in a television movie and in The New Leave It to Beaver.

Early Life

Dow was born in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.  In his youth, he trained as a swimmer and was a Junior Olympics diving champion.

Career

With a little stage acting and two television pilots as his only acting experience, Dow's career began when he went on an open casting call and landed the role of Wally Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver.  With the exception of the television pilot, for the show's entire run, from 1957 to 1963, he played the older son of June (played by Barbara Billingsley) and Ward (played by Hugh Beaumont) Cleaver, and the older brother of protagonist Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver (played by Jerry Mathers).

                                                  Tony Dow in 1961

After Leave it to Beaver, Dow appeared on other television shows, including My Three Sons, Dr. Kildare, The Greatest Show on Earth, Never Too Young, and on five episodes of Mr. Novak in three different roles. From 1965 to 1968, he served in the U.S. National Guard, interrupting his acting career. On his return to acting, he guest-starred on the television series Adam-12, Love, American Style, Knight Rider, Square Pegs, The Mod Squad, The Hardy Boys and Emergency!

During the 1970s, Dow continued acting while working in the construction industry, and studying journalism and filmmaking.  In 1977, he parodied his role as Wally from Leave it to Beaver in The Kentucky Fried Movie, with Jerry Zucker playing Beaver.

From 1983 to 1989, Dow reprised his role as Wally Cleaver in a reunion television movie and a subsequent sequel series, The New Leave It to Beaver, for which Dow wrote an episode in 1986.  In 1987, he was honored by the Young Artist Foundation with its Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award for his role as Wally Cleaver.

In 1989, Dow made his debut as a director with an episode of The New Lassie. It was followed by episodes of Get a Life, Harry and the Hendersons, Coach, Babylon 5, Crusade and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  Dow served as the visual effects supervisor for Babylon 5. In 1996, he provided visual effects for the FOX television movie Doctor Who.

Dow also co-produced The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space in 1995, and It Came from Outer Space II in 1996.

In addition to acting, directing, producing and writing, Dow was also a sculptor, creating abstract bronze sculptures. He said about his work: "The figures are abstract and not meant to represent reality, but rather the truth of the interactions as I see and feel them. I find the wood in the hills of Topanga Canyon and each piece evolves from my subconscious. I produce limited editions of nine bronzes using the lost wax process from molds of the original burl sculpture."

In December 2008, Dow was chosen as one of three sculptors to show at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts exhibition, located in the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, France. He represented the United States delegation, which was composed of artists from the Karen Lynne Gallery. His abstract shown at the Parisian shopping mall was titled "Unarmed Warrior", a bronze figure of a woman holding a shield.

Personal Life

Dow married Carol Marlow in June 1969 and their marriage ended in 1978.  They had one child, born in 1973. In June 1980, Dow married Lauren Shulkind.

In the 1990s, Dow revealed that he had suffered from clinical depression.  He subsequently starred in self-help videos chronicling this battle, including the 1998 Beating the Blues.  Dow was also hospitalized with pneumonia in 2021.

Death

In May 2022, Dow was diagnosed with liver cancer.  On July 26, 2022, after a premature report of Dow's   death, his family announced that he was at his home in Topanga, California.  However, it was reported that he was in his "last hours" and under hospice care.  Dow died the following day, July 27, at the age of 77.

             https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Dow

  

New Hardware Offers Faster Computation for Artificial Intelligence, with Much Less Energy

Engineers working on 'analog deep learning' have found a way to propel protons through solids at unprecedented speeds

From:  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

July 28, 2022 -- Researchers have created protonic programmable resistors -- the building blocks of analog deep learning systems -- that can process data 1 million times faster than the synapses in the human brain. These ultrafast, low-energy resistors could enable analog deep learning systems that can train new and more powerful neural networks rapidly, which could then be used for novel applications in areas like self-driving cars, fraud detection, and health care.

As scientists push the boundaries of machine learning, the amount of time, energy, and money required to train increasingly complex neural network models is skyrocketing. A new area of artificial intelligence called analog deep learning promises faster computation with a fraction of the energy usage.

Programmable resistors are the key building blocks in analog deep learning, just like transistors are the core elements for digital processors. By repeating arrays of programmable resistors in complex layers, researchers can create a network of analog artificial "neurons" and "synapses" that execute computations just like a digital neural network. This network can then be trained to achieve complex AI tasks like image recognition and natural language processing.

A multidisciplinary team of MIT researchers set out to push the speed limits of a type of human-made analog synapse that they had previously developed. They utilized a practical inorganic material in the fabrication process that enables their devices to run 1 million times faster than previous versions, which is also about 1 million times faster than the synapses in the human brain.

Moreover, this inorganic material also makes the resistor extremely energy-efficient. Unlike materials used in the earlier version of their device, the new material is compatible with silicon fabrication techniques. This change has enabled fabricating devices at the nanometer scale and could pave the way for integration into commercial computing hardware for deep-learning applications.

"With that key insight, and the very powerful nanofabrication techniques we have at MIT.nano, we have been able to put these pieces together and demonstrate that these devices are intrinsically very fast and operate with reasonable voltages," says senior author Jesús A. del Alamo, the Donner Professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). "This work has really put these devices at a point where they now look really promising for future applications."

"The working mechanism of the device is electrochemical insertion of the smallest ion, the proton, into an insulating oxide to modulate its electronic conductivity. Because we are working with very thin devices, we could accelerate the motion of this ion by using a strong electric field, and push these ionic devices to the nanosecond operation regime," explains senior author Bilge Yildiz, the Breene M. Kerr Professor in the departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering.

"The action potential in biological cells rises and falls with a timescale of milliseconds, since the voltage difference of about 0.1 volt is constrained by the stability of water," says senior author Ju Li, the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and professor of materials science and engineering, "Here we apply up to 10 volts across a special solid glass film of nanoscale thickness that conducts protons, without permanently damaging it. And the stronger the field, the faster the ionic devices."

These programmable resistors vastly increase the speed at which a neural network is trained, while drastically reducing the cost and energy to perform that training. This could help scientists develop deep learning models much more quickly, which could then be applied in uses like self-driving cars, fraud detection, or medical image analysis.

"Once you have an analog processor, you will no longer be training networks everyone else is working on. You will be training networks with unprecedented complexities that no one else can afford to, and therefore vastly outperform them all. In other words, this is not a faster car, this is a spacecraft," adds lead author and MIT postdoc Murat Onen.

Co-authors include Frances M. Ross, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; postdocs Nicolas Emond and Baoming Wang; and Difei Zhang, an EECS graduate student. The research is published today in Science.

Accelerating deep learning

Analog deep learning is faster and more energy-efficient than its digital counterpart for two main reasons. "First, computation is performed in memory, so enormous loads of data are not transferred back and forth from memory to a processor." Analog processors also conduct operations in parallel. If the matrix size expands, an analog processor doesn't need more time to complete new operations because all computation occurs simultaneously.

The key element of MIT's new analog processor technology is known as a protonic programmable resistor. These resistors, which are measured in nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter), are arranged in an array, like a chess board.

In the human brain, learning happens due to the strengthening and weakening of connections between neurons, called synapses. Deep neural networks have long adopted this strategy, where the network weights are programmed through training algorithms. In the case of this new processor, increasing and decreasing the electrical conductance of protonic resistors enables analog machine learning.

The conductance is controlled by the movement of protons. To increase the conductance, more protons are pushed into a channel in the resistor, while to decrease conductance protons are taken out. This is accomplished using an electrolyte (similar to that of a battery) that conducts protons but blocks electrons.

To develop a super-fast and highly energy efficient programmable protonic resistor, the researchers looked to different materials for the electrolyte. While other devices used organic compounds, Onen focused on inorganic phosphosilicate glass (PSG).

PSG is basically silicon dioxide, which is the powdery desiccant material found in tiny bags that come in the box with new furniture to remove moisture. It is also the most well-known oxide used in silicon processing. To make PSG, a tiny bit of phosphorus is added to the silicon to give it special characteristics for proton conduction.

Onen hypothesized that an optimized PSG could have a high proton conductivity at room temperature without the need for water, which would make it an ideal solid electrolyte for this application. He was right.

Surprising speed

PSG enables ultrafast proton movement because it contains a multitude of nanometer-sized pores whose surfaces provide paths for proton diffusion. It can also withstand very strong, pulsed electric fields. This is critical, Onen explains, because applying more voltage to the device enables protons to move at blinding speeds.

"The speed certainly was surprising. Normally, we would not apply such extreme fields across devices, in order to not turn them into ash. But instead, protons ended up shuttling at immense speeds across the device stack, specifically a million times faster compared to what we had before. And this movement doesn't damage anything, thanks to the small size and low mass of protons. It is almost like teleporting," he says.

"The nanosecond timescale means we are close to the ballistic or even quantum tunneling regime for the proton, under such an extreme field," adds Li.

Because the protons don't damage the material, the resistor can run for millions of cycles without breaking down. This new electrolyte enabled a programmable protonic resistor that is a million times faster than their previous device and can operate effectively at room temperature, which is important for incorporating it into computing hardware.

Thanks to the insulating properties of PSG, almost no electric current passes through the material as protons move. This makes the device extremely energy efficient, Onen adds.

Now that they have demonstrated the effectiveness of these programmable resistors, the researchers plan to reengineer them for high-volume manufacturing, says del Alamo. Then they can study the properties of resistor arrays and scale them up so they can be embedded into systems.

At the same time, they plan to study the materials to remove bottlenecks that limit the voltage that is required to efficiently transfer the protons to, through, and from the electrolyte.

"Another exciting direction that these ionic devices can enable is energy efficient hardware to emulate the neural circuits and synaptic plasticity rules that are deduced in neuroscience, beyond analog deep neural networks," adds Yildiz.

"The collaboration that we have is going to be essential to innovate in the future. The path forward is still going to be very challenging, but at the same time it is very exciting," del Alamo says.

This research is funded, in part, by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.

           https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220728142923.htm

  

Bacteria Can Remove Plastic Pollution From Lakes

A study of 29 European lakes has found that some naturally-occurring lake bacteria grow faster and more efficiently on the remains of plastic bags than on natural matter like leaves and twigs.

From:  University of Cambridge

July 26, 2022 -- The bacteria break down the carbon compounds in plastic to use as food for their growth.

The scientists say that enriching waters with particular species of bacteria could be a natural way to remove plastic pollution from the environment.

The effect is pronounced: the rate of bacterial growth more than doubled when plastic pollution raised the overall carbon level in lake water by just 4%.

The results suggest that the plastic pollution in lakes is ‘priming’ the bacteria for rapid growth –  the bacteria are not only breaking down the plastic but are then more able to break down other natural carbon compounds in the lake.

Lake bacteria were found to favour plastic-derived carbon compounds over natural ones. The researchers think this is because the carbon compounds from plastics are easier for the bacteria to break down and use as food.

The scientists caution that this does not condone ongoing plastic pollution. Some of the compounds within plastics can have toxic effects on the environment, particularly at high concentrations.

The findings are published today in the journal Nature Communications.

“It’s almost like the plastic pollution is getting the bacteria’s appetite going. The bacteria use the plastic as food first, because it’s easy to break down, and then they’re more able to break down some of the more difficult food – the natural organic matter in the lake,” said Dr Andrew Tanentzap in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, senior author of the paper.

He added: “This suggests that plastic pollution is stimulating the whole food web in lakes, because more bacteria means more food for the bigger organisms like ducks and fish.”

The effect varied depending on the diversity of bacterial species present in the lake water – lakes with more different species were better at breaking down plastic pollution.

A study published by the authors last year found that European lakes are potential hotspots of microplastic pollution.

When plastics break down they release simple carbon compounds. The researchers found that these are chemically distinct to the carbon compounds released as organic matter like leaves and twigs break down.

The carbon compounds from plastics were shown to be derived from additives unique to plastic products, including adhesives and softeners.

The new study also found that bacteria removed more plastic pollution in lakes that had fewer unique natural carbon compounds. This is because the bacteria in the lake water had fewer other food sources.

The results will help to prioritise lakes where pollution control is most urgent. If a lake has a lot of plastic pollution, but low bacterial diversity and a lot of different natural organic compounds, then its ecosystem will be more vulnerable to damage.

“Unfortunately, plastics will pollute our environment for decades. On the positive side, our study helps to identify microbes that could be harnessed to help break down plastic waste and better manage environmental pollution," said Professor David Aldridge in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, who was involved in the study.

The study involved sampling 29 lakes across Scandinavia between August and September 2019. To assess a range of conditions, these lakes differed in latitude, depth, area, average surface temperature and diversity of dissolved carbon-based molecules.

The scientists cut up plastic bags from four major UK shopping chains, and shook these in water until their carbon compounds were released.

At each lake, glass bottles were filled with lake water. A small amount of the ‘plastic water’ was added to half of these, to represent the amount of carbon leached from plastics into the environment, and the same amount of distilled water was added to the others. After 72 hours in the dark, bacterial activity was measured in each of the bottles.

The study measured bacterial growth - by increase in mass, and the efficiency of bacterial growth - by the amount of carbon-dioxide released in the process of growing.

In the water with plastic-derived carbon compounds, the bacteria had doubled in mass very efficiently. Around 50% of this carbon was incorporated into the bacteria in 72 hours.

"Our study shows that when carrier bags enter lakes and rivers they can have dramatic and unexpected impacts on the entire ecosystem. Hopefully our results will encourage people to be even more careful about how they dispose of plastic waste," said Eleanor Sheridan in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, first author of the study who undertook the work as part of a final-year undergraduate project.

The research was funded by the European Research Council.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/natural-clean-up-bacteria-can-remove-plastic-pollution-from-lakes

  

Ambitious Career Aspirations: A Balancing Act Between Success and Disappointment

Higher aspirations lead to higher achievements. At least, that is true in the context of educational and occupational aspirations, as shown by a new study co-authored by economist Dr. Reto Odermatt of the University of Basel [in Switzerland]. Unrealistically high aspirations as a teenager, however, can have a negative effect on well-being as an adult.

From:  University of Basel

July 26, 2022 -- Over the last few years, social mobility between the generations has become an important topic in political discourse worldwide. Many possible factors that hinder children in moving further up the social ladder than their parents have already been investigated, such as financial resources, the educational system and genetics. Dr. Reto Odermatt (University of Basel) and Prof. Dr. Warn Lekfuangfu (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) conducted a study to investigate the relevance of career aspirations in social mobility and later life satisfaction. The results have now been published in the journal European Economic Review.

Educational and occupational aspirations are important predictors of career success

The basis for the study is a dataset that follows the lives of over 17,000 people in the UK who were all born in the same week in 1958, and continues to collect data to this day. Among other things, the dataset gathers together information on each individual's childhood environment, the professional and financial backgrounds of their parents, the participant's abilities, their aspirations in their youth, their occupation and their well-being as an adult.

The authors of the study therefore know not only participants' youthful career aspirations but also their circumstances and occupations later in life. "This database is unique. We don't have anything like it available in Switzerland. And, although the UK has its own idiosyncrasies, when this data is analyzed, the fundamental findings can also be applied to Switzerland," says Odermatt.

The authors are using this database to investigate how the aspirations of children and young people affect their later life. How far did they get in their education? What was their actual labor market outcome, i.e. what was the job with the highest prestige that they held during their working life? They determined that the educational and career aspirations held by participants as teenagers were, along with cognitive skills, among the most important predictors overall for their later success in their education and careers. This indicates that ambitious career goals motivate people to invest more in their future career success.

Social inequality already discernible in career aspirations

The opposite is also the case: unambitious career aspirations can be an important explanation for limited social mobility. The study showed that young people whose parents were less well educated did indeed have less ambitious career goals. "This cannot be explained solely by the differences in family income or in participants' abilities. It is more the case that inequality seems to begin early on, with their very aspirations," reasons Odermatt. So, although social inequality would be less pronounced if young people were to achieve their dreams, it would not disappear.

Parental aspirations concerning their children's school and career performance have a particularly great effect on how far a child aims to go. Less ambitious career goals therefore form part of the explanation for limited social mobility. "We didn't expect parents' aspirations for their children to have such a strong influence," says the economist.

The flip side of "dreaming big"

As well as the potentially positive impact of "dreaming big," however, ambitious goals can also lead to disappointments. The data show that there is a negative impact on life satisfaction in early adulthood if people achieve less than they aspired to when they were younger. These negative effects subside in their later working lives, however. If they then actually achieve more than what they aspired to, then there is a positive correlation with well-being, which has a greater effect than at a younger age. "The fact that we were able to show how teenage aspirations affect life satisfaction much later in life is one of the strengths of the study," says Odermatt.

The findings relating to the relevance of aspirations for success in both school and working life offer an opportunity to reduce social inequality. Political measures designed to raise expectations, especially among disadvantaged children, could have a considerable influence on their chances for social advancement.

"That means we shouldn't leave it entirely to parents to influence children's career aspirations; schools can intervene here," Odermatt points out. Teaching staff could actively make teenagers aware of careers that suit their abilities. This could encourage them to look beyond their own horizons. After all, as the economist says, a person's view of the world is often strongly defined by their surroundings.

Nevertheless, the results of the study suggest that such measures could be a double-edged sword: ambitious career goals may be motivating, but they can also lead to disappointment. This makes it a key concern not simply to maximize young people's dreams, but to optimize them, says the academic.

Ambitious career aspirations: A balancing act between success and disappointment -- ScienceDaily

  

A Third COVID-19 Booster Is Important

A Third COVID-19 Booster Is Important

Twenty different COVID-19 variants were effectively identified and neutralised after a third booster, according to the new study for which the University of Surrey provided the crucial antigenic map of variants of concern.

From:  University of Surrey

July 25, 2022 -- While the study's results suggested that immunity decreases 20 weeks after vaccination, a third booster (of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, in the case of this study) helped the immune system to identify and neutralise the 20 different variants.

The antigenic map allowed the team to identify and measure how each variant impacted the immune system.

Dr Daniel Horton, co-author of the study and Reader in Veterinary Virology at the University of Surrey, said:

"The emergence of this disease and its disruptive and deadly impact on our day-to-day lives demonstrates how crucial it is for the scientific community to work together to identify and characterise infectious diseases quickly.

"The University of Surrey's contribution to this study through the mapping of the various variants is itself part of a landmark €90 million collaborative effort to tackle zoonotic diseases in Europe, reflecting our focus on understanding the inextricable links between the health of animals, humans and, indeed, the planet we all share."

The Pirbright Institute led this collaborative study with scientists from the University of Surrey, Imperial College in London and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to understand the immune response of individuals aged 70-89 who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

This vaccine works by triggering the immune system to create Y-shaped proteins, known as antibodies, that can stick to the spike proteins which are found on the surface of the coronavirus. If a person is infected with SARS-CoV-2, the antibodies bind the spike proteins preventing the virus from attaching to and entering the human cell, therefore helping to protect from severe disease. Antibodies also act as a beacon to alert the immune system to help fight the infection.

Dr Dalan Bailey, Head of the Viral Glycoproteins group at Pirbright, said:

"Understanding how the levels of neutralising antibodies relate to a well-defined immune response will be an important step in understanding how the immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2 and could also help in the management of Covid-19.

"This information could help us to understand whether the risk of breakthrough infections, hospitalisation and death is increased by waning immunity or new variants. Research comparing immune responses to different SARS-CoV-2 variants and understanding the role of different mutations is vital in the management of the Covid-19 pandemic and in predicting the outcome of new variants."

The research was published in Nature Microbiology.

         https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220725105556.htm

 

2022 Monkeypox Outbreak

An ongoing outbreak of monkeypox, a viral disease, was confirmed in May 2022, beginning with a cluster of cases found in the United Kingdom.  The first confirmed case was traced to an individual with travel links to Nigeria (where the disease is endemic) and was detected on 6 May 2022.  The outbreak marked the first time monkeypox has spread widely outside Central and West Africa.  From 18 May onwards, cases were reported from an increasing number of countries and regions, predominantly in Europe but also in North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.  As of 23 July, there have been a total of 17,186 confirmed cases.  On 23 July, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), raising the status of the outbreak to a global health emergency.

Monkeypox is a viral infection that manifests a week or two after exposure with fever and other non-specific symptoms, and then produces a rash with blisters that can last for a couple of weeks before usually clearing up.  In infections before the current outbreak, 1–3 percent of people with known infections have died (without treatment). Cases in children are more likely to be severe, and health authorities emphasized that anyone can catch the disease, particularly if they have close contact with a symptomatic person.  As of 23 July 2022, 98% of cases outside endemic regions in Africa have occurred in the community of men who have sex with men, especially those who have multiple sex partners.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has emphasized the importance of reducing stigma in communicating about the demographic aspects of monkeypox.

Background

Monkeypox is an infectious viral disease that can occur in humans and some animals.  Symptoms include fever, swollen lymph nodes, and a rash that forms blisters and then crusts over.  The time from exposure to onset of symptoms ranges from five to twenty-one days.  The duration of symptoms is typically two to four weeks.  There may be mild symptoms, and it may occur without any symptoms being known.  The classic presentation of fever and muscle pains, followed by swollen glands, with lesions all at the same stage, has not been found to be common to all outbreaks.  Cases may be severe, especially in children, pregnant women or people with suppressed immune systems.

The disease is caused by the monkeypox virus, a zoonotic virus in the genus Orthopoxvirus. The variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox, is also in this genus.  Of the two types in humans, the West African type causes a less severe disease than the Central African (Congo basin) type.  It may spread from infected animals by handling infected meat or via bites or scratches.  Human-to-human transmission can occur through exposure to infected body fluids or contaminated objects, by small droplets, and possibly through the airborne route.  People can spread the virus from the onset of symptoms until all the lesions have scabbed and fallen off; with some evidence of spread for more than a week after lesions have crusted.  Diagnosis can be confirmed by testing a lesion for the virus's DNA.

There is no known cure.  A study in 1988 found that the smallpox vaccine was around 85% protective in preventing infection in close contacts and in lessening the severity of the disease.  A newer smallpox and monkeypox vaccine based on modified vaccinia Ankara has been approved, but with limited availability.  Other measures include regular hand washing and avoiding sick people and other animals.  Antiviral drugs, cidofovir and tecovirimat, vaccinia immune globulin and the smallpox vaccine may be used during outbreaks.  The illness is usually mild and most of those infected will recover within a few weeks without treatment.  Estimates of the risk of death vary from 1% to 10%, although very few deaths as a consequence of monkeypox have been recorded since 2017.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_monkeypox_outbreak

 

The Best Semiconductor of Them All?

Researchers have found a material that can perform much better than silicon. The next step is finding practical and economic ways to make it.

By David L. Chandler at MIT News Office

July 21, 2022 -- Silicon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, and in its pure form the material has become the foundation of much of modern technology, from solar cells to computer chips. But silicon’s properties as a semiconductor are far from ideal.

For one thing, although silicon lets electrons whizz through its structure easily, it is much less accommodating to “holes” — electrons’ positively charged counterparts — and harnessing both is important for some kinds of chips. What’s more, silicon is not very good at conducting heat, which is why overheating issues and expensive cooling systems are common in computers.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT, the University of Houston, and other institutions has carried out experiments showing that a material known as cubic boron arsenide overcomes both of these limitations. It provides high mobility to both electrons and holes, and has excellent thermal conductivity. It is, the researchers say, the best semiconductor material ever found, and maybe the best possible one.

So far, cubic boron arsenide has only been made and tested in small, lab-scale batches that are not uniform. The researchers had to use special methods originally developed by former MIT postdoc Bai Song to test small regions within the material. More work will be needed to determine whether cubic boron arsenide can be made in a practical, economical form, much less replace the ubiquitous silicon. But even in the near future, the material could find some uses where its unique properties would make a significant difference, the researchers say.

The findings are reported today in the journal Science, in a paper by MIT postdoc Jungwoo Shin and MIT professor of mechanical engineering Gang Chen; Zhifeng Ren at the University of Houston; and 14 others at MIT, the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, and Boston College.

Earlier research, including work by David Broido, who is a co-author of the new paper, had theoretically predicted that the material would have high thermal conductivity; subsequent work proved that prediction experimentally. This latest work completes the analysis by confirming experimentally a prediction made by Chen’s group back in 2018: that cubic boron arsenide would also have very high mobility for both electrons and holes, “which makes this material really unique,” says Chen.

The earlier experiments showed that the thermal conductivity of cubic boron arsenide is almost 10 times greater than that of silicon. “So, that is very attractive just for heat dissipation,” Chen says. They also showed that the material has a very good bandgap, a property that gives it great potential as a semiconductor material.

Now, the new work fills in the picture, showing that, with its high mobility for both electrons and holes, boron arsenide has all the main qualities needed for an ideal semiconductor. “That’s important because of course in semiconductors we have both positive and negative charges equivalently. So, if you build a device, you want to have a material where both electrons and holes travel with less resistance,” Chen says.

Silicon has good electron mobility but poor hole mobility, and other materials such as gallium arsenide, widely used for lasers, similarly have good mobility for electrons but not for holes.

“Heat is now a major bottleneck for many electronics,” says Shin, the paper’s lead author. “Silicon carbide is replacing silicon for power electronics in major EV industries including Tesla, since it has three times higher thermal conductivity than silicon despite its lower electrical mobilities. Imagine what boron arsenides can achieve, with 10 times higher thermal conductivity and much higher mobility than silicon. It can be a gamechanger.”

Shin adds, “The critical milestone that makes this discovery possible is advances in ultrafast laser grating systems at MIT,” initially developed by Song. Without that technique, he says, it would not have been possible to demonstrate the material’s high mobility for electrons and holes.

The electronic properties of cubic boron arsenide were initially predicted based on quantum mechanical density function calculations made by Chen’s group, he says, and those predictions have now been validated through experiments conducted at MIT, using optical detection methods on samples made by Ren and members of the team at the University of Houston.

Not only is the material’s thermal conductivity the best of any semiconductor, the researchers say, it has the third-best thermal conductivity of any material — next to diamond and isotopically enriched cubic boron nitride. “And now, we predicted the electron and hole quantum mechanical behavior, also from first principles, and that is also proven to be true,” Chen says.

“This is impressive, because I actually don’t know of any other material, other than graphene, that has all these properties,” he says. “And this is a bulk material that has these properties.”

The challenge now, he says, is to figure out practical ways of making this material in usable quantities. The current methods of making it produce very nonuniform material, so the team had to find ways to test just small local patches of the material that were uniform enough to provide reliable data. While they have demonstrated the great potential of this material, “whether or where it’s going to actually be used, we do not know,” Chen says.

“Silicon is the workhorse of the entire industry,” says Chen. “So, OK, we’ve got a material that’s better, but is it actually going to offset the industry? We don’t know.” While the material appears to be almost an ideal semiconductor, “whether it can actually get into a device and replace some of the current market, I think that still has yet to be proven.”

And while the thermal and electrical properties have been shown to be excellent, there are many other properties of a material that have yet to be tested, such as its long-term stability, Chen says. “To make devices, there are many other factors that we don’t know yet.”

He adds, “This potentially could be really important, and people haven’t really even paid attention to this material.” Now that boron arsenide’s desirable properties have become more clear, suggesting the material is “in many ways the best semiconductor,” he says, “maybe there will be more attention paid to this material.”

For commercial uses, Shin says, “one grand challenge would be how to produce and purify cubic boron arsenide as effectively as silicon. … Silicon took decades to win the crown, having purity of over 99.99999999 percent, or ‘10 nines’ for mass production today.”

For it to become practical on the market, Chen says, “it really requires more people to develop different ways to make better materials and characterize them.” Whether the necessary funding for such development will be available remains to be seen, he says.

The research was supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, and used facilities of MIT’s MRSEC Shared Experimental Facilities, supported by the National Science Foundation.

        https://news.mit.edu/2022/best-semiconductor-them-all-0721