Futuroids

See on Scoop.it - Knowmads, Infocology of the future

The first international beauty contest judged by “machines” was supposed to use objective factors such as facial symmetry and wrinkles to identify the most attractive contestants. After Beauty.AI launched this year, roughly 6,000 people from more than 100 countries submitted photos in the hopes that artificial intelligence, supported by complex algorithms, would determine that their faces most closely resembled “human beauty”. But when the results came in, the creators were dismayed to see that there was a glaring factor linking the winners: the robots did not like people with dark skin. Out of 44 winners, nearly all were white, a handful were Asian, and only one had dark skin. That’s despite the fact that, although the majority of contestants were white, many people of color submitted photos, including large groups from India and Africa. The ensuing controversy has sparked renewed debates about the ways in which algorithms can perpetuate biases, yielding unintended and often offensive results. When Microsoft released the “millennial” chatbot named Tay in March, it quickly began using racist language and promoting neo-Nazi views on Twitter. And after Facebook eliminated human editors who had curated “trending” news stories last month, the algorithm immediately promoted fake and vulgar stories on news feeds, including one article about a man masturbating with a chicken sandwich.

Metamaterial Mechanisms

Fabrication research from Hasso Plattner Institute is process to give single 3D printed objects elastic mechanical properties:

Recently, researchers started to engineer not only the outer shape of objects, but also their internal microstructure. Such objects, typically based on 3D cell grids, are also known as metamaterials. Metamaterials have been used, for example, to create materials with soft and hard regions. So far, metamaterials were understood as materials—we want to think of them as machines. We demonstrate metamaterial objects that perform a mechanical function. Such metamaterial mechanisms consist of a single block of material the cells of which play together in a well-defined way in order to achieve macroscopic movement. Our metamaterial door latch, for example, transforms the rotary movement of its handle into a linear motion of the latch. Our metamaterial Jansen walker consists of a single block of cells—that can walk. The key element behind our metamaterial mechanisms is a specialized type of cell, the only ability of which is to shear. In order to allow users to create metamaterial mechanisms efficiently we implemented a specialized 3D editor. It allows users to place different types of cells, including the shear cell, thereby allowing users to add mechanical functionality to their objects. To help users verify their designs during editing, our editor allows users to apply forces and simulates how the object deforms in response. 

In case you’re one of those people who can’t wait until summer is over, take a peak in the future—the imagined future, that is—with one of these books. A word of warning: you might be surprised how eerily these futures resemble our present.

“Was that really how she appeared to others?”

D. G. Compton’s prescient novel about a women diagnosed with a terminal illness in a world where disease has been all but eradicated predicted one of the most prevalent forms of entertainment today: reality television. Hoping to capture every detail of Katherine Mortenhoe’s physical and psychological degeneration for a pain-starved public, greedy producers have her followed by a man with a camera implanted behind his eye. This book will make you glad that Google Glass hasn’t—yet—taken off.

“ONLY THE IMAGE OF GOD IS MAN…BLESSED IS THE NORM…IN PURITY OUR SALVATION…WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT!”

Set in the future after a devastating global nuclear war, John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids presents a world in which anyone with a physical imperfection is eliminated in the interest of purity. Aside from the troubling parallels to contemporary phenomena, this is simply a beautiful and thrilling read.

“There is no substitute for murder.” —”The Seventh Victim”

These stories from a master of early science fiction, Robert Sheckley, are full of dystopic cities, ultra-advanced advertising agencies, and alternate universes. One of the stories in this collection, the 1953 “The Seventh Victim,” presents a world in which killings are legalized and televised, complete with corporate sponsors. Sound familiar? (We see you, Hunger Games.)

“But…a woman’s opinion on a matter of this kind is of no import whatever.”

Researchers find a male hormone that reversed cell aging in a clinical trial - “Cellular elixir of youth”

Telomerase, an enzyme naturally found in the human organism, is the closest of all known substances to a “cellular elixir of youth.” In a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Brazilian and US researchers show that sex hormones can stimulate production of this enzyme.

The strategy was tested in patients with genetic diseases associated with mutations in the gene that codes for telomerase, such as aplastic anemia and pulmonary fibrosis.

READ MORE ON AGÊNCIA FAPESP

Ref: Danazol Treatment for Telomere Diseases. The New England Journal of Medicine(19 May 2016) | DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1515319 | PDF (Open Access)

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND

Genetic defects in telomere maintenance and repair cause bone marrow failure, liver cirrhosis, and pulmonary fibrosis, and they increase susceptibility to cancer. Historically, androgens have been useful as treatment for marrow failure syndromes. In tissue culture and animal models, sex hormones regulate expression of the telomerase gene.

METHODS

In a phase 1–2 prospective study involving patients with telomere diseases, we administered the synthetic sex hormone danazol orally at a dose of 800 mg per day for a total of 24 months. The goal of treatment was the attenuation of accelerated telomere attrition, and the primary efficacy end point was a 20% reduction in the annual rate of telomere attrition measured at 24 months. The occurrence of toxic effects of treatment was the primary safety end point. Hematologic response to treatment at various time points was the secondary efficacy end point.

RESULTS

After 27 patients were enrolled, the study was halted early, because telomere attrition was reduced in all 12 patients who could be evaluated for the primary end point; in the intention-to-treat analysis, 12 of 27 patients (44%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 26 to 64) met the primary efficacy end point. Unexpectedly, almost all the patients (11 of 12, 92%) had a gain in telomere length at 24 months as compared with baseline (mean increase, 386 bp [95% CI, 178 to 593]); in exploratory analyses, similar increases were observed at 6 months (16 of 21 patients; mean increase, 175 bp [95% CI, 79 to 271]) and 12 months (16 of 18 patients; mean increase, 360 bp [95% CI, 209 to 512]). Hematologic responses occurred in 19 of 24 patients (79%) who could be evaluated at 3 months and in 10 of 12 patients (83%) who could be evaluated at 24 months. Known adverse effects of danazol — elevated liver-enzyme levels and muscle cramps — of grade 2 or less occurred in 41% and 33% of the patients, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, QNX announced its joining the race to provide self-driving car technology. Like developing the Internet itself, ushering in the age of self-driving cars is going to require cooperation, Courville said. Driverless vehicles are going to change our world, but at what cost? And thats just a tiny fraction of the type of personal information a self-driving car could collect. The car knows a lot about you.All that data will also need to be transmitted with lightning-fast speed, requiring better networks.

I am a bot written by a Mathematician

L'accordo è fatto. I suoi contenuti, teoricamente, sarebbero blindati fino a dicembre, quando partirà la comunicazione ufficiale. Di sicuro il ministero dei beni culturali ha raggiunto un accordo con i mormoni per la digitalizzazione di milioni di carte depositate oggi negli archivi di stato civile italiani.

In particolare, come è in grado di rivelare ItaliaOggi, l'intesa è stata siglata tra la direzione archivi del ministero, oggi guidata da Rossana Rummo, e la FamilySearch. Di che si tratta? Parliamo di una fondazione senza scopo di lucro, erede della Gsu (Geological Society of Utah), interamente finanziata dalla chiesa mormone, che proprio nello stato americano ha la sua sede. Può sembrare come minimo «curioso», ma i mormoni archiviano da sempre documenti che riguardano date di nascita, di morte e di matrimonio. Lo fanno, formalmente, per ragioni teologiche, ovvero per favorire il battesimo dei defunti. Un passaggio «che dà la possibilità di tornare a vivere tutti insieme con il nostro padre nei cieli». Le parole sono di Alessandro Dini Ciacci, volontario della Chiesa di Gesù Cristo dei Santi degli Ultimi Giorni (questo il nome della chiesa mormone) e responsabile delle relazioni pubbliche di FamilySearch, il quale conferma il raggiungimento dell'accordo con lo stato italiano. Per Dini Ciacci l'operazione non comporta oneri economici per il ministero.

A quanto pare, però, i mormoni avrebbero un loro «guadagno», se così si può definire, a valle. Il vantaggio deriverebbe dalla consultazione di tutti questi dati una volta inseriti nei vari database che fanno capo alla confessione. Nel mondo ce ne sono tanti, ma quello più grande si trova nello Utah. In particolare qui ha sede la Family History Library, ovvero la megabiblioteca di familySearch che ha in pancia la bellezza di 2 miliardi di dati archiviati. Senza contare che nello Utah, e in giro per il mondo, ci sono società che fanno lauti affari «vendendo» la consultazione dei file.