Posts Tagged ‘quote’

Investigating the case of human nose shape and climate adaptation

September 25, 2017

The case of human nose shape & climate adaptation
http://journals.PLoS.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006616 Comparing its Qst-Fst statistic w/ that for height & skin color

QT:{{”
“To address the question of whether local adaptation to climate is responsible for nose shape divergence across populations, we use Qst–Fst comparisons to show that nares width and alar base width are more differentiated across populations than expected under genetic drift alone. To test whether this differentiation is due to climate adaptation, we compared the spatial distribution of these variables with the global distribution of temperature, absolute humidity, and relative humidity. We find that width of the nares is correlated with temperature and absolute humidity, but not with relative humidity. We conclude that some aspects of nose shape may indeed have been driven by local adaptation to climate. However, we think that this is a simplified explanation of a very complex evolutionary history, which possibly also involved other non-neutral forces such as sexual selection.”
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Artificial intelligence just made guessing your password a whole lot easier

September 22, 2017

#AI just made guessing your password…easier
http://www.ScienceMag.org/news/2017/09/artificial-intelligence-just-made-guessing-your-password-whole-lot-easier rather Number cracked raises #security/#privacy concerns HT @Rozowsky

QT:{{”
The new study aimed to speed this up by applying deep learning, a brain-inspired approach at the cutting edge of AI. Researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, started with a so-called generative adversarial network, or GAN, which comprises two artificial neural networks. A “generator” attempts to produce artificial outputs (like images) that resemble real examples (actual photos), while a “discriminator” tries to detect real from fake. They help refine each other until the generator becomes a skilled counterfeiter.
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How to Follow Hurricane Irma

September 16, 2017

How to Follow #HurricaneIrma
https://www.NYTimes.com/2017/09/06/upshot/how-to-follow-hurricane-irma.html Presentations of weather #uncertainty – cones, spaghetti plots, ensemble forecasts, &c

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Besides individual model runs, there are two other types of
model-based maps you might see on the internet. They’re both “spaghetti plots,” which depict many forecast tracks…..
While you might think that these capture the full range of
uncertainty, they often do not. They’re even more prone to understate the total uncertainty than the N.H.C. “cone.”

Another type of spaghetti plot shows an ensemble forecast. Unlike a typical “determinist” forecast, which takes current conditions and simulates a single scenario forward, an ensemble model varies initial conditions slightly and then simulates, propagating uncertainty through the forecast.
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A Search for Anti-Aging Secrets Starts With the Blood of 600 Estonians | WIRED

September 16, 2017

Search for #AntiAging Secrets Starts w. Blood [biomarkers]
https://www.Wired.com/story/a-search-for-anti-aging-secrets-starts-with-the-blood-of-600-estonians Alternatively walking speed may be test best predictor

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“It’s possible this is all a wild goose chase, and that we already have a powerful biomarker for aging. Steve Cummings, a longtime aging researcher at UCSF, pulled together NIH study data from over 30,000 people over 30 years to look for markers of disease-free survival. The strongest, most consistent signal he found isn’t in blood at all: It’s walking speed. …
They identified a few molecules as well, like cystatin-C, which tells you how healthy your kidneys are (can’t live without your kidneys), and a few other measurements that reflect inflammation. But even with lots more molecules to work with, Cummings still thinks that blood-based tests are more hype than anything else. “Even 20 to 30 predictors together adds only a little to prediction of survival by age,” Cummings says. “And I’m confident that walking speed alone will outperform any new biological marker.””
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Monitor: Picture imperfect | The Economist

September 16, 2017

Picture imperfect
http://www.Economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21572915-digital-imaging-insurers-publishers-law-enforcement-agencies-and-dating-sites-are Photoshop add-ons for finding doctored photos – eg @Fourand6

QT:{{”
“Efforts to automate the detection of doctored images are bearing fruit. Last year Fourandsix Technologies, a start-up based in Silicon Valley, began selling an add-on for Photoshop, called FourMatch, that determines whether an image has come straight from a camera or has been manipulated. It compares the “metadata” associated with the image against a database of signatures that represent the characteristic ways in which different devices capture and compress image data, to ensure that the image is what it claims to be. …So a human analyst is still needed “in the loop”, says Mr Farid, one of the firm’s co-founders. A trained eye can spot inconsistencies in shadows, reflections and incorrect perspective.”
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Sampling DNA From a 1,000-Year-Old Illuminated Manuscript

September 16, 2017

Sampling DNA From a 1K-Year-Old…Manuscript
https://www.theAtlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/the-secret-life-of-illuminated-manuscripts-as-told-in-dna/536172/ As reported from a unsubmitted preprint. Pot. #privacy implications

QT:{{”
Remarkably, the authors say they extracted all this DNA without destroying even a tiny piece of parchment. All they needed were the crumbs from rubbing the book with erasers, which conservationists routinely use to clean manuscripts. The authors report their findings in a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, though they plan to submit it to a scientific journal.”
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Stephen King’s Family Business

September 15, 2017

.@StephenKing’s Family Business
http://www.NYTimes.com/2013/08/04/magazine/stephen-kings-family-business.html 4 writers: father, 2 sons & a daughter-in-law

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Tabitha is an accomplished writer with eight novels to her credit, and two of their three children, Joe and Owen, are novelists. (Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist minister.) Joe’s “NOS4A2,” a sprawling mix of horror and fantasy that is his third critically praised best seller, was published last April; Owen’s second work of fiction, a
well-received comedic novel titled “Double Feature,” was published in March. Owen, perhaps inevitably, married a writer, Kelly Braffet, whose third novel, a literary thriller called “Save Yourself,” is out this month. And Stephen’s much-anticipated sequel to the “The Shining,” titled “Doctor Sleep,” comes out this fall.

Circus performers, klezmer musicians — those are the kinds of entertainers we usually expect to see in a family business, not writers.
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Identity Thieves Hijack Cellphone Accounts to Go After Virtual Currency

September 5, 2017

Identity Thieves Hijack Cellphone Accounts to Go After Virtual
Currency https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/business/dealbook/phone-hack-bitcoin-virtual-currency.html Problematic #privacy loophole w/ #2factor

QT::{{”
“Hackers have discovered that one of the most central elements of online security — the mobile phone number — is also one of the easiest to steal.
In a growing number of online attacks, hackers have been calling up Verizon, T-Mobile U.S., Sprint and AT&T and asking them to transfer control of a victim’s phone number to a device under the control of the hackers.
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Julian Assange, a Man Without a Country

September 3, 2017

.@JulianAssange, man w/o a country
https://www.NewYorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/julian-assange-a-man-without-a-country/amp Eisenhower: “If you can’t solve a problem, enlarge it.” Now applied to @WikiLeaks

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Dwight Eisenhower is said to have once declared, “If you can’t solve a problem, enlarge it.” Assange had taken a personal legal crisis and blown it up into an international incident: he had teleported himself from the mundane into the tragic realm. A number of WikiLeaks volunteers urged him to step down until

There have been calls for his assassination, and for him to be given a Nobel Peace Prize. Assange often describes himself in simple terms—as a fearless activist—but his character is complicated…
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How Driscoll’s Reinvented the Strawberry

September 2, 2017

QT:{{”
“The university, in a countersuit, accused Shaw of illegally breeding with the pipeline cultivars on behalf of his new company, while still employed by Davis. Entrusted with the “crown jewels,” the university contended, Shaw had attempted to destroy the public breeding program in order to enrich himself and his friends. Steven Knapp is a genomics expert, formerly of Monsanto, who was hired as Davis’s new breeder. When I talked to him by phone not long ago, he was apoplectic at what he perceived to be Shaw’s breach of loyalty.

According to Frances Dillard, Driscoll’s global brand strategist and a veteran of Disney’s consumer-products division, berries are the produce category most associated with happiness. (Kale, in contrast, has a health-control, “me” focus.) On a slide that Dillard prepared, mapping psychographic associations with various fruits, strawberries floated between Freedom and Harmony, in a zone marked Extrovert, above a word cloud that read “Social, pleasure, joy, balance, conviviality, friendship, warmth, soft, natural, sharing.” (Blueberries vibed as status-oriented, demanding, and high-tech.)

Driscoll’s senior vice-president and general counsel compared the company to its neighbors in Silicon Valley. “Growers are sort of like our manufacturing plants,” he said. “We make the inventions, they assemble it, and then we market it, so it’s not that dissimilar from Apple using someone else to do the manufacturing but they’ve made the invention and marketed the end product.” Like Apple, Driscoll’s guards its I.P. jealously.
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How Driscoll’s reinvented #strawberries
http://www.NewYorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/how-driscolls-reinvented-the-strawberry Like Apple, invent & market, don’t manufacture. Now in #opendata v IP fight