Teaching Computers To Learn

ABC News Australia: Scientists teach computers how to learn like humans

For artificial intelligence and smart machines to really take off, computers are going to have to think more like people, according to experts in the field.

Now, US scientists have created a computer model, or algorithm, that captures the unique human ability to grasp new concepts in a study that involved learning unfamiliar handwritten alphabet characters.

The algorithm enabled computers to recognise and draw simple symbols that were indistinguishable from those created by humans.

The study, reported in the journal Science, is a "significant advance" in the field of artificial intelligence, the scientists said.

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CSN Editor: If these developments continue, I guess it is only going to be a matter of time before the student (AI machines) will surpass the teacher (this is us).

Tracking Global Migration Trends

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Zero Hedge: Tracking People Flows: Global Migration Summarized In 7 Charts

With the topic of global (im)migration getting increasingly more prominence as we get ever closer to the presidential elections, not to mention Europe's ongoing plight with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, here is a handful of factual, and bias-free, charts summarizing the key aspects of global human mobility.

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CSN Editor: I concur with the Zero Hedge's analysis .... global migration is going to be a big news story for the next few years (if not longer).

US Wild Bee Numbers Continue To Decline

This map shows bee abundance in 2013

BBC: US wild bee numbers decline as land is converted for biofuel

Wild bees in the US have declined in many farming areas according to the first national effort to map their numbers.

The study suggests that between 2008 and 2013, the numbers of wild bees went down across almost a quarter of the US.

The researchers say that the conversion of land to grow corn for biofuels is a key element in the decline.

If the trend continues say the scientists, it could drive up costs and destabilise crop production.

Wild bees play an important role in pollinating many US crops and plants. It's estimated that they contribute around $3bn to the value of agriculture every year.

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CSN Editor: This is not a positive trend.

North Korea Has Developed Its Own Computer Operating System

A North Korean operating system is seen in this screen shot taken in Seoul December 23, 2015. REUTERS/JAMES PEARSON

Reuters: Paranoid: North Korea's computer operating system mirrors its political one

North Korea's homegrown computer operating system mirrors its political one, according to two German researchers who have delved into the code: a go-it-alone approach, a high degree of paranoia and invasive snooping on users.

Their research, the deepest yet into the secretive state's Red Star OS, illustrates the challenges Pyongyang faces in trying to embrace the benefits of computing and the internet while keeping a tight grip on ideas and culture.

The researchers, Florian Grunow and Niklaus Schiess of German IT security company ERNW GmbH, spoke to Reuters before presenting their findings to the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg on Sunday, a gathering of hackers and security researchers.

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CSN Editor: I have experienced the major Russian and Chinese operating systems .... "groan" is the only word that comes to my mind. Software is a decidedly Western advantage ... and will probably be the case for the foreseeable future.

Update #1: Russian Operating System to Launch in Next Decade (Moscow Times)
Update #2: A first look at the Chinese operating system the government wants to replace Windows (Quartz)

A Cash Free Future?

New York Times: In Sweden, a Cash-Free Future Nears

STOCKHOLM — Parishioners text tithes to their churches. Homeless street vendors carry mobile credit-card readers. Even the Abba Museum, despite being a shrine to the 1970s pop group that wrote “Money, Money, Money,” considers cash so last-century that it does not accept bills and coins.

Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic.

This tech-forward country, home to the music streaming service Spotify and the maker of the Candy Crush mobile games, has been lured by the innovations that make digital payments easier. It is also a practical matter, as many of the country’s banks no longer accept or dispense cash.

At the Abba Museum, “we don’t want to be behind the times by taking cash while cash is dying out,” said Bjorn Ulvaeus, a former Abba member who has leveraged the band’s legacy into a sprawling business empire, including the museum.

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CSN Editor: Being one who grew up appreciating cash .... this is one trend that this old editor is going to have trouble accepting.

The Science Of Human Taste And Smell

Faye Flam, Bloomberg: The Science Behind a Chocolate Funk

It's been a horrible week for Mast Brothers Chocolate, and therein lies a scientific mystery.

Just days ago, serious foodies were buying the stuff for $10 a bar. Then, a series of posts on a blog called Dallasfood.org suggested the chocolate was not as authentic as the Brooklyn-based company claimed, and suddenly the food press was calling the product “crappy," “bitter” and “chalky.” One scathing review in the Guardian suggested that one of the bars carried “that sweaty gym sock sourness” associated with funky cheese.

If the chocolate really tastes that terrible, why is it only obvious now?

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CSN Editor: I have tried their chocolate .... it is not bad at all.

Is Apple Running Out Of Ideas?

Repetition ... After launching the Apple Watch this year, Apple’s next big thing is more of the same. Picture: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

News.Com.au: Apple sales set to slump in 2016 with no new products, analysts warn

AFTER a year of big Apple releases, analysts are predicting a flat 2016 where the world’s biggest tech company refines product lines rather than produces the next big thing.

Apple’s share price has taken a battering in the past six months, with more than $220 billion slashed from the company’s value as analysts look towards an era of smartphone saturation.

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty recently predicted that 2016 would be first time that iPhone sales would shrink, dropping by up to three per cent.

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CSN Editor: Like Facebook (previous post) .... innovate or die.

Facebook Wants To Dominate The World

CNet: Facebook will stop at nothing short of world domination

How do you keep growing when you're already the world's largest social network? Fast food may provide the answer.

Facebook has more in common with McDonald's than you might think.

Both are at the top of their respective fields, so widely used and recognized that they're the icons of the industries they dominate. It took the fast-food chain eight years to serve up a billion burgers; it took the social network eight years to sign up a billion people.

Now it seems they've taken similar strategies to get more attention and win over more customers.

McDonald's looked beyond its staples of Big Macs and fries and added the Filet-O-Fish, Chicken McNugget and Egg McMuffin to its menu over a few decades, along with salads and gourmet coffees.

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CSN Editor: The story of every tech company .... innovate or die. Facebook is not an exception to this rule.

If You Missed The SpaceX Landing, You Can Watch It Here

Popular Science: Missed The SpaceX Landing? Watch It Here

Last night, SpaceX stuck its landing, setting down the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket after it launched satellites into space.

The move means that it may now be possible to re-use rockets that can transport cargo into orbit. But this particular rocket isn't slated to return to flight. The Verge reports that Elon Musk doesn't want this rocket to fly again because it's the first they've brought back, and is therefore unique. It will be test-fired on the ground, just to see if it could have been reused, then presumably retire to a farm upstate where it can frolic in the meadows. Other rockets that come later will actually be reused across multiple launches (which is kind of the point of re-usable rockets).

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CSN Editor: Cool

These Incredible Maps Reveal The World At A Glance

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This map shows how large parts of Asia have the smallest penis measurements, between 4.5 inches and 11.4cm, while men in Sudan, the Democratic of Congo and Columbia, amongst others, typically measure between 6.5 inches and 16.5cm in length

Daily Mail: The stunning maps that reveal the world at a glance: From manhood and breast size to obesity and divorce rates, how does YOUR country fare?

* Men in some African and Central American countries have the biggest penis sizes averaging more than 6.5 inches
* Women in Russia have the largest average breast size, with most measuring in at above a D-cup
* The places with the highest levels of obesity were the US and Saudi Arabia when it comes to both men and women

Ever wondered where women with big breasts are abundant and which country has men that are most well-endowed?

These colourful globes map the world's vital statistics but as you have never seen them before.

It seems that some of the stereotypes are true at least with men in many African countries having the biggest penis sizes on average.

Meanwhile, women in Russia have the largest cup-size, with most females measuring in at a D-cup or above.

From which fast-food joint is the most popular in Denmark to which nation keeps the most people incarcerated, some of the results are likely to surprise you.

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CSN Editor: This answers a few questions that I have accumulated over my many years of travel.

Why Modern Cars Are So Much Safer

Popular Mechanics: The Physics of Why Modern Cars Are So Much Safer, Explained in 146 Seconds

The science of why you should learn to love the crumple zone.

Car crashes are still extremely deadly—32,719 Americans died in car accidents in 2013, or almost 90 people a day. But the number of people dying in car crashes—particularly when expressed as how many people per 100,000 die in an auto accident—has essentially steadily declined since the early 1970s. the early 1970s.

CSN Editor: The problem with cars that easily "crumple" is that it is easy to damage them at minor speed ... hence higher insurance rates. But it is a still a no brainer .... at moderate to high speeds it is better to be in a a car that crumples than being in a car that does not.

A Look At How Animals Think

Economist: Animals think, therefore…

The inner lives of animals are hard to study. But there is evidence that they may be a lot richer than science once thought

IN 1992, at Tangalooma, off the coast of Queensland, people began to throw fish into the water for the local wild dolphins to eat. In 1998, the dolphins began to feed the humans, throwing fish up onto the jetty for them. The humans thought they were having a bit of fun feeding the animals. What, if anything, did the dolphins think?

Charles Darwin thought the mental capacities of animals and people differed only in degree, not kind—a natural conclusion to reach when armed with the radical new belief that the one evolved from the other. His last great book, “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals”, examined joy, love and grief in birds, domestic animals and primates as well as in various human races. But Darwin’s attitude to animals—easily shared by people in everyday contact with dogs, horses, even mice—ran contrary to a long tradition in European thought which held that animals had no minds at all. This way of thinking stemmed from the argument of René Descartes, a great 17th-century philosopher, that people were creatures of reason, linked to the mind of God, while animals were merely machines made of flesh—living robots which, in the words of Nicolas Malebranche, one of his followers, “eat without pleasure, cry without pain, grow without knowing it: they desire nothing, fear nothing, know nothing.”

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CSN Editor: I sometimes wonder if my dog trained me .... and not the other way around.

Is There A Safe Level Of Alcohol Consumption?

Photo courtesy of www.somethingyoushouldread.com

The Guardian: There is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol consumption

The idea that drinking small amounts of alcohol will do you no harm is a myth, claims Professor David Nutt

Last week I attended a discussion group chaired by the Observer's health correspondent Denis Campbell where one of the other experts, a public health doctor, asserted that alcohol should be treated differently from tobacco (and by inference other drugs) because there is no safe dose of tobacco whereas alcohol is safe until a person's drinking gets to "unsafe" levels. Its health benefits for the cardiovascular system are also often used to support the claim that in low doses alcohol is safe, for how else could it be health-promoting?

The myth of a safe level of drinking is a powerful claim. It is one that many health professionals appear to believe in and that the alcohol industry uses to defend its strategy of making the drug readily available at low prices. However, the claim is wrong and the supporting evidence flawed.

There is no safe dose of alcohol for these reasons:

CSN Editor: I need a drink.

Glitches Prevent Users From Using Skype

Daily Mail: Skype goes offline: Glitch prevents users from making calls and logging in

* Skype says glitch makes users appear to be offline even if they are online
* The technical problem is thought to be affecting users around the world
* Microsoft, which owns Skype, said engineers were working to fix the issue

Skype users around the world have been left unable to make calls with service after a glitch made everyone appear as if they were offline.

Microsoft, which owns Skype, said the technical problem meant users signed into were unable to change their status and all contacts showed as offline even if they were online.

This meant users were unable to initiate calls to each other.

CSN editor: I needed Skype today .... but in the end I had to make a long distance phone call. Yup .... you never appreciate the tech that we have until we no longer have it.

Some Surprising Facts About LEGOs

Popular Mechanics: 10 Surprising Facts About LEGO

You're never going to look at your favorite toy the same way again

Like Easy-Bake Ovens and Troll dolls, you probably remember these famous plastic bricks fondly from your childhood. But did you know the first one was made in 1932 and out of wood? Didn't think so. Here are a few more facts you might not know about the toy of the century:

CSN Editor: I guess this explains why they are so expensive.

How One Drop Of Blood Can Tell Your Medical History

The virus SV40, which might cause cancer in humans. Phoebus87 via Wikimedia Commons

Popular Science: Your History In A Drop Of Blood

A new test can see just about every virus you've ever had

A blood sample can now reveal a record of viruses you’ve had throughout life, thanks to a new test developed at Harvard called VirScan. It looks for evidence of antibodies produced by the immune system to kill viral invaders. “It’s kind of like fishing,” says geneticist Tomasz Kula. “We’ve made this huge pond [of viral bits], and we see which ones the antibodies stick to.”

How it works: VirScan matches antibodies in a person’s blood sample to a library of 93,000 snippets of viral code. It can find evidence of up to 1,000 different viruses.

Here are the viruses the team found in 303 blood samples--hover over the yellow circles to learn more.

CSN Editor: Recent advances in diagnostics have been truly impressive.

The Science Behind Melting Cheese

Serious Eats: The Science of Melting Cheese

Have you ever gotten all excited to make a grilled cheese and then...your cheese just doesn't melt? Or maybe it breaks, separating into a tough, stringy mass surrounded by a pool of oil? Yup, it's a crappy feeling. Luckily, there are ways to know what you're getting into before that happens. Science ways.

Want to reliably tell whether the cheese you're buying is gonna dominate the melting game or stay nice and solid for cooking or grilling? Wish you could make any melting cheese melt better? Here's what you need to know.

CSN Editor: Damn .... I feel hungry.

This Is What One Year In Space Does To Your Body

The Verge: Here’s what one year in space does to your body

Want to know how much poop an astronaut produces while spending a year on the International Space Station? It's somewhere around 180 pounds.

That fun fact is brought to you by NASA, which just released an infographic breaking down all the numbers surrounding astronaut Scott Kelly's one-year stay on the ISS. Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are both in the midst of spending a full year on the station as part of the One Year Mission — an experiment to study the long-term effects of spaceflight on the human body. The mission will help NASA better prepare for its eventual journey to Mars in the 2030s. A trip to the Red Planet is going to take multiple months, so NASA wants to know how the microgravity environment of space will affect the body during that time.

CSN Editor: One year in space .... that is a long time.

Killer Whales Can 'Talk' Like Dolphins

Killer Whales Can 'Talk' Like Dolphins When The Two Species Spend Time Together: Orcas Imitate Sounds To Help Them Communicate -- Daily Mail

* Killer whales can engage in cross-species ‘vocal learning’ by matching the types of sounds made by bottlenose dolphins when spending time with them
* Results suggest vocal imitation may enable social interactions in cetaceans
* Killer whales make clicks, whistles and pulsed calls, which are repeated brief bursts of sound punctuated with silence
* When they spent time with dolphins they altered these noises to make more dolphin-like clicks and fewer pulsed calls, which dolphins don't make
* Study was conducted by Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute in San Diego

Most animals make noises that are innate, not learned.

But scientists claim killer whales can learn to ‘talk’ like dolphins when the two species spend time together.

This means the ocean predators join the likes of bats, some birds and humans that each copy sounds and use them in appropriate social contexts.

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My Comment: I always find it amazing that we are still making discoveries even though we have been studying animals .... like killer whales .... for years.

A Means To Harness Wind Energy At 2,000 Feet

Altaeros' Buoyant Air Turbine: Last year, Altaeros tested a prototype of the turbine at a height of 500 feet in Maine, where it flew in 45mph winds. courtesy Altaeros

The Quest To Harness Wind Energy At 2,000 Feet -- Popular Science

High-altitude wind contains enough energy to power the planet. A Boston start-up wants to be the first to bring it down to Earth.

Nothing about the grooved, inflatable body taking shape inside Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts, resembles a wind turbine. It looks more like a jetliner's emergency ramp, or something you'd tie behind a boat and cling to desperately while bumping across the surface of a lake. But the 14-foot-long structure most resembles what it actually is--an air-filled wing.

To be more precise, it's a stabilizing fin, part of a tube-shaped, robotic airship designed to tap the power of high-altitude winds. The blade tips of today's tallest conventional wind turbine, installed at a test center in Denmark this year, stretch to 720 feet. The fully autonomous, lighter-than-air BAT (short for buoyant airborne turbine) will climb as high as 2,000 feet, where winds blow stronger and steadier.

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My Comment: People are protesting windmills on the ground .... I expect the same protests for these wind turbines 2,000 feet in the air.