Antisemitism
Artist behind 'beware of Jews' sign apologises for causing offence theguardian
Franck Allais, a freelance photographer, said the contentious sign was part of an artistic project, which includes depictions of a woman pulling a shopping trolley, a man pushing his wheelchair and a cat.
Allais said he intended the project to be a comment on identity and that the sign in Stamford Hill, one of the largest Hasidic communities in Europe, was not an antisemitic statement. He said he was left shaken by the offence he had caused.
I posted the original story of this 'antisemetic' act yesterday on the previous blog, but appears that I (as well as several others) jumped to conclusions about the intent. I appologize for my part in passing the original story around.
South China Sea
China begins new work on disputed South China Sea island reuters
Regional military attaches and experts believe the work shows China's determination to build up its network of reefs and islets, even if it is seeking to avoid a fresh confrontation with the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Looks like the Philippines may start building in the South China Sea as well businessinsider
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the navy to put up "structures" to assert sovereignty over a stretch of water east of the country, where Manila has reported a Chinese survey ship was casing the area last year.
AI
Google’s DeepMind has a plan for protecting private health data—from itself qz
DeepMind’s proposed solution is to create an indelible data log that can’t be tampered with. It would show when a piece of data was used, and for what purpose. Importantly, DeepMind itself wouldn’t be able to modify logs to use the data nefariously. The solution bears resemblance to the “distributed ledger technologies” or “private blockchains” that the financial world has been trying to create in recent years. While loathe to call it “blockchain”—DeepMind prefers the term “verifiable append-only ledger” to describe its health data system—it is interested in one property that the technology can confer upon its users: trust.
This Company Uses Machine Learning to Find Owners of Recalled Cars entrepreneur
Recall Masters recallmasters, which employs 20 people and even a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., collects data from more than 50 different sources, then utilizes machine learning to analyze it. The startup can then determine if a vehicle qualifies for a recall and who its current owner is -- even if it has been resold multiple times -- by poring over billions of transactions, according to Miller. He dubs the process "digital forensics."
Brain
Brain is 10 times more active than previously measured, UCLA researchers find newsroom.ucla.edu t
The research focused on the structure and function of dendrites, which are components of neurons, the nerve cells in the brain. Neurons are large, tree-like structures made up of a body, the soma, with numerous branches called dendrites extending outward. Somas generate brief electrical pulses called “spikes” in order to connect and communicate with each other. Scientists had generally believed that the somatic spikes activate the dendrites, which passively send currents to other neurons’ somas, but this had never been directly tested before. This process is the basis for how memories are formed and stored. ... But the UCLA ucla.edu team discovered that dendrites are not just passive conduits.
“We found that dendrites are hybrids that do both analog and digital computations, which are therefore fundamentally different from purely digital computers, but somewhat similar to quantum computers that are analog,” said Mehta, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, of neurology and of neurobiology. “A fundamental belief in neuroscience has been that neurons are digital devices. They either generate a spike or not. These results show that the dendrites do not behave purely like a digital device. Dendrites do generate digital, all-or-none spikes, but they also show large analog fluctuations that are not all or none. This is a major departure from what neuroscientists have believed for about 60 years.”
Google Algorithms Now Target Offensive, Upsetting, Inaccurate & Hateful Results seroundtable
...overall, ever since the elections, Google, Facebook and others have been under fire to do something about facts and hate and more. They released fact checking schema for news stories. They supposedly banned AdSense publishers. They removed certain classes of hate and inaccurate results from the search results. And they tweaked the top stories algorithm to show more accurate and authoritative results.
Space
NASA plans to make a telescope out of the Sun engadget
However, there are some technical challenges with this plan. As the JPL team explained during a presentation to NASA's recent Planetary Science Vision 2050 workshop in DC, the observational instruments would need to be stationed 550 AU away from the Sun in order to focus its light accurately. 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth so 550 AU is smack dab in the middle of interstellar space. For reference, Voyager 1 is currently only 137 AU from Earth and it's taken 40 years for the plucky little spacecraft to get there.
...the magnification will be an order of magnitude better than what we can currently achieve. Rather than image a couple of pixels, we'd be able to capture 1000 x 1000 pixel images -- enough to see a 10km square of a planet's surface -- from 100 light years away. The Hubble can't even manage that when looking at Mars.
Research
U.S. Army testing ‘Third Arm’ to hold your weapon, boost lethality defensenews
While the demo included an M4 carbine, the arm is capable of supporting bigger firepower, up to around 20 pounds, said Dan Baechle, the mechanical engineer leading the project. He specifically mentioned the squad automatic weapon as another option. It could also be used to carry a breaching saw or a shield, Baechle said. Important: The arm is not going to fire the weapon for you, you need your own arms to stabilize and aim, but it's going to reduce the weight you carry.
Abortion
Kansas Supreme Court to hear most important pro-life case ever nationalrighttolifenews.org
This momentous case began in June of 2015, when abortion interests sued SB 95, the newly-enacted Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. This first-in-the nation ban—which other states have enacted and others are now seeking to pass—would prohibit the barbaric method of tearing apart fully-formed unborn children, piece by piece, while they are still alive inside their mother.
Society
Texas Senate Approves Controversial Bathroom Bill After Five-Hour Debate time
On Wednesday, the Texas Senate passed a bill that would require people to use restrooms and other facilities that match the gender on their birth certificate. The vote, 21 to 10 largely along party lines, came after a contentious five-hour debate on Tuesday in which opponents of the bill argued that the measure will hurt transgender people and supporters argued that it is necessary for privacy and safety.
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