Facebook ad boycott organizers cite no progress on hate speech


Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Facebook failed to allay concerns of activists organizing an ad boycott of the leading social network to press for more aggressive action on removing toxic and inflammatory content
Washington (AFP)

Organizers of the Facebook ad boycott vowed Tuesday to continue their campaign, saying the social network's top executives had failed to offer meaningful action on curbing hateful content.

At a virtual meeting that included Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, the #StopHateForProfit coalition leaders "didn't hear anything today to convince us that Zuckerberg and his colleagues are taking action," said Jessica Gonzalez of the activist group Free Press, one of the coalition members.

The meeting took place amid a boycott which has grown to nearly 1,000 advertisers pressing for more aggressive action from Facebook on toxic and inflammatory content which promotes violence and hate.


"I'm deeply disappointed that Facebook still refuses to hold itself accountable to its users, its advertisers and society at large," Gonzalez said in a statement.

"This isn't over. We will continue to expand the boycott until Facebook takes our demands seriously. We won't be distracted by Facebook's spin today or any day."

Sleeping Giants, another activist group involved in the boycott, said it was clear at the meeting that Facebook executives "intend to take no real action to deal with hate and disinformation on their platform."

The boycott has mushroomed to include global brands and small companies joining the effort to pressure Facebook, spurred by the wave of protests calling for social justice and racial equity.

Some of the activists say Facebook should do more to curb disinformation from political leaders including President Donald Trump, and limit his comments which critics say promote violence and divisiveness.

- Sandberg pledges more steps -

Earlier Tuesday, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg pledged further steps to remove toxic and hateful content ahead of the discussions with the boycott organizers, led by the NAACP, Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.

She added that the Silicon Valley giant will be announcing policy updates as a result of discussions with civil rights activists and its own audit of civil rights practices.

"Facebook has to get better at finding and removing hateful content," Sandberg wrote.

"We are making changes -- not for financial reasons or advertiser pressure, but because it is the right thing to do."

Sandberg said the final report of the independent civil rights audit would be published Wednesday following a two-year review, and that this would be used to guide Facebook policy changes.

"While the audit was planned and most of it carried out long before recent events, its release couldn't come at a more important time," she said.

"While we won't be making every change they call for, we will put more of their proposals into practice soon."

The boycott organizers are seeking a top level executive to evaluate "products and policies for discrimination, bias, and hate," as well as independent audits of "identity-based hate and misinformation."

Gonzalez said Facebook should take responsibility for the promotion of violence on the platform including the massacres of Rohingya people in Myanmar, and mass killings which were promoted or streamed on Facebook.

© 2020 AFP

NASA hits Boeing with 80 recommendations before next space test
Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

A Boeing Starliner capsule touches down in White Sands, New Mexico in December 2019 after an unsuccessful uncrewed test flight Bill INGALLS NASA/AFP/FileWashington (AFP)

NASA has drawn up a list of 80 recommendations that US aerospace giant Boeing will have to address before attempting to refly its Starliner space capsule, following the failure of an uncrewed test last year.

The recommendations primarily concern the on-board software, which was the main problem with the flight test last December.

The capsule could not be placed in the correct orbit, due to a clock error, and a had to return to Earth after two days instead of docking with the International Space Station as planned.


Boeing subsequently learned that other software problems could have caused the capsule and the rocket to collide at the time of separation, a potentially very dangerous event if the flight had been crewed.

Most of the problems identified run deep and are organizational, for example NASA's verification procedures. The space agency has been a client of Boeing's for decades, but seems to have placed too much faith in its historic partner.

"Perhaps we were a little more focused on SpaceX," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, in a call with reporters.

SpaceX, a relative newcomer to the space industry, is the other company chosen by NASA to develop a crewed vessel -- but unlike Boeing, its Crew Dragon successfully completed its uncrewed test flight in 2019, then its first crewed flight in May, with two astronauts on board.

Starliner's next attempt could take place in "the latter part of this year," added Stich, without making a guarantee. Boeing won't therefore be able to carry astronauts until at least 2021, while SpaceX's second crewed flight is set to take place this summer.

© 2020 AFP

SCHADENFREUDE 

Brazil's Bolsonaro takes Covid-19 test after showing symptoms

WELL AT LEAST WE KNOW HE IS NOT ASYMPTOMATIC 

Issued on: 07/07/2020 - 

 

President Jair Bolsonaro attends the inauguration ceremony of the Main Space Operations Center of the Geostationary Defense and Strategic Communications Satellite in Brasilia, Brazil June 23, 2020. © REUTERS/Adriano Machado

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday he had undergone another test for the novel coronavirus and his lungs were "clean," after local media reported he had symptoms associated with the Covid-19 respiratory disease.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly played down the impact of the virus, even as Brazil has suffered one of the world's worst outbreaks, with more than 1.6 million confirmed cases and 65,000 related deaths, according to official data on Monday.

CNN Brasil and newspaper Estado de S.Paulo reported that he had symptoms of the disease, such as a fever.

Bolsonaro told supporters outside the presidential palace that he had just visited the hospital and been tested.

"I can't get very close," he said in comments recorded by Foco do Brasil, a pro-government YouTube channel. "I came from the hospital. I underwent a lung scan. The lung's clean."

The president's office said in a statement that the president is at his home and is "in good health."

The right-wing populist has often defied local guidelines to wear a mask in public, even after a judge ordered him to do so in late June.

Over the weekend, Bolsonaro attended several events and was in close contact with the U.S. ambassador to Brazil during July 4 celebrations. The U.S. embassy in Brasilia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bolsonaro tested negative for the coronavirus after several aides were diagnosed following a visit to U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago, Florida, estate in March.

CNN Brasil reported that Bolsonaro has begun taking the drugs hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, which he touts as a COVID-19 treatment despite little proof of their effectiveness.

Bolsonaro's official events on Tuesday have been canceled, according to CNN Brasil.

(REUTERS)

https://www.france24.com/en/20200707-brazil-s-president-bolsonaro-tests-positive-for-coronavirus

French feminists criticise choice of justice, interior ministers over sexism and rape claims



Issued on: 07/07/2020 - 20:05

Many French feminists reacted strongly on Monday evening to the appointments of Gérald Darmanin as interior minister – who has been accused of rape – and Éric Dupond-Moretti – who has been accused of making sexist remarks – as justice minister in President Emmanuel Macron’s revamped cabinet. © Thomas Samson and Gérard Julien, AFP
Text by:Romain BRUNET

3 minFrench feminists have reacted strongly to the appointment on Monday of Gérald Darmanin as interior minister and Éric Dupond-Moretti as minister of justice in France’s reshuffled government. Dupond-Moretti has been accused of making sexist remarks while judges last year ordered that an investigation be reopened into rape allegations against Darmanin.
Several feminists started expressing their dismay on social media soon after the appointments were announced on Monday.

“How can you imagine for one moment that the fight against gender-based and sexual violence will be advanced with the appointment of a rapist at the interior ministry and a sexist at the justice ministry? This government is a disgrace,” tweeted the activist group Osez le féminisme (Dare to be feminist).

Darmanin will take on one of France’s highest-profile jobs as interior minister, a dossier that promises to be challenging as the police force faces allegations of racism and violence while others criticise Macron’s government for not doing enough to support the authorities.

Darmanin has been accused of raping a woman after she sought his help in having a criminal record expunged in 2009. He has denied the claims – Darmanin admitted having sexual intercourse with the complainant but insisted that relations were consensual – and the charges were dismissed in 2018. But in November 2019 judges ordered the investigation to be reopened, with a new inquiry that started on June 11.

https://t.co/d3rLZsRLJ7 pic.twitter.com/IbEDLA7MXZ— inna shevchenko (@femeninna) July 7, 2020

FEMEN protest at Élysée Palace

On Tuesday morning, around 20 feminist activists gathered outside the interior ministry in Paris with smoke bombs, protesting Darmanin ascension to his new role with chants of, “Darmanin, rapist” and “Darmanin, resign”.

Later the same day, three members of the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN burst into the Élysée Palace shortly before the new government’s first cabinet meeting, shouting accusations that the government had chosen a “sexist reshuffle”. Police soon arrested the topless demonstrators. “The #FEMEN activists came before the Council of Ministers to express their sincere condolences to the French Republic,” tweeted Inna Shevchenko, the group’s leader in France.

“I think opposing these appointments will be our great cause for the remainder of Macron’s term,” tweeted well-known feminist activist Caroline de Haas, in the first of several social media posts in which she criticised remarks by Éric Dupond-Moretti that she deemed sexist.

The famous lawyer came under fire from many quarters during his high-profile defence of Georges Tron, a former member of cabinet, on charges of rape and sexual assault brought by two municipal employees. Upon Tron’s acquittal in 2018, Dupond-Moretti called his accusers “inconsistent, manipulative”.

The lawyer has also targeted feminist groups, including the European Association on Violence against Women at Work (l'Association européenne contre les violences faites aux femmes au travail).


Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morningSubscribe

Dupond-Moretti has acknowledged that "there are predatory men" but said there are also "women who are attracted to power, who like it". By way of example, he cited a hypothetical "starlet who wants to succeed and says to herself, ‘I'm going to sleep [with him]’; 'This is a ‘couch promotion'."

On Monday evening, many were quoting other remarks made by Dupond-Moretti, including his belief that “some women regret not being whistled at” and a lament that actions that would have been considered a misdemeanour in his youth are now considered crimes. He has also been known to observe that, "At 30, a woman is not a bimbo unable to say no to a man."

These two appointments are a “slap in the face” by Macron against “everyone who has campaigned against gender-based violence”, Laurence Rossingol, a former Socialist minister for the family, told France Info news on Tuesday. “It’s a very big problem, especially because neither of the two has made a public commitment to tackling such violence.”

However, Élysée Palace sources said on Monday night that the allegations of rape against Darmanin are “not an obstacle” to his appointment as interior minister.

This article was adapted from the original in French.

COVID-19 shines spotlight on gender inequity in academia

In a new article, a team of 17 faculty members from across the nation, including nine from Texas Tech, examines how the pandemic amplifies gender inequity and proposes novel solutions

TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY

 

As COVID-19 spread across the country earlier this year, forcing schools and universities to close, Jessica L. Malisch began to notice an alarming trend - but not related to the virus.

"I was alarmed by patterns I was observing in the academic community in regards to how COVID-19 campus and childcare closures appeared to be impacting female scientists disproportionately," said Malisch, an assistant professor of biology at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

She called a friend, Breanna N. Harris, a research assistant professor in Texas Tech University's Department of Biological Sciences, with an idea. The pair quickly outlined a paper about the effects of the pandemic on women in academia, then reached out to more than a dozen other women invested in gender equity to contribute their perspectives. The resulting article was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Among the authors were nine from Texas Tech:

• Harris
• Jessica L. Spott, a doctoral candidate in educational psychology
• Elizabeth P. Karam, an assistant professor in the Area of Management
• Naïma Moustaïd-Moussa, a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and founding director of the Obesity Research Institute
• Latha Ramalingam, a research assistant professor of nutritional sciences
• Amelia E. Talley, an associate professor and associate chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences
• Jaclyn E. Cañas-Carrell, a professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology and director of the STEM Center for Outreach, Research & Education
• Karin Ardon-Dryer, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences-Atmospheric Sciences Group
• Dana A. Weiser, an associate professor in the Department of Human Development & Family Studies

The gender divide in academia is well documented. Women face inequality and inequity. Examples include women's underrepresentation in administrative positions; biases against marriage or having children; shortages of working-mother role models and female mentors in general; pay and grant-funding disparities; and advancement based on student evaluations, which consistently rate men higher than women. Culturally, women are more likely to be the caregivers of children and/or parents, leading to a more difficult work/life balance.

But in the age of COVID-19, these existing challenges have been exacerbated, the authors explained. Importantly, the impacts of inequality and inequity are amplified and compounded for women with intersecting identities. For example, Black women, indigenous women and other women of color experience racial and ethnic bias on top of gender bias.

"The upending of daily life and the shift to remote work is hard on everyone, but women, who traditionally do more of the household and dependent care labor, are likely to bear a greater burden," Harris said. "Women tend to teach more and larger classes, students depend on female faculty for emotional support and expect more leniency from women vs. male faculty, and students evaluate women more harshly in teaching evaluations. With the rapid shift to online learning, more students and/or courses means more work, and having more students during a crisis means students will expect more emotional and academic support.

"In addition to more student demands in the classroom, many women are experiencing increased demands at home - either for care and homeschooling of children or of elderly family members, or for running the household. Given the increased demand of teaching and home responsibilities, women have less time to devote to research and grant writing."

The economic impacts also are likely to be more severe for women, Harris noted, because many institutions' plans for coping with COVID-19 result in some form of decreased income, either through direct firing, furlough or decreased contributions to retirement.

Many universities have instituted gender-neutral policies that treat men and women the same, like tenure-clock extensions. But even these, the authors argue, lead to increased disparity between genders.

"On the surface, having adjustment policies that are gender neutral sounds like the right thing to do, but that isn't always the case," Harris said. "I think it is important to recall the difference between equity and equality. I like the visual of a family riding bikes - in this scenario, the man is riding a traditional man's bike. Equality would be providing everyone in the family with a man's bike, but this solution doesn't address the needs of the woman and the small child. They might be able to manage, but the man's bike isn't the best option. Providing bikes that are suited to their size and needs - for example, adding training wheels for the child - is the better option. This is the equitable solution as it gives each family member the tools they need to complete the task.

"Women in academia face inequality in teaching loads, mentoring and service requirements, and start-up funds and salary. Thus, using policies that are equal for men and women can increase gaps instead of reducing them. In the bike example, it is like giving the whole family a man's bike but the one given to the woman is a lesser or older model, thus there is inequality at the start. A gender-neutral adjustment is then adding something like a cushioned seat to each bike to help the family deal with a long ride. Given that the man already had an advantage, a better bike that is suited to his needs, adding the seat for everyone is helpful, but it helps the man more."

Instead of gender-neutral policies, the authors recommend institutions form Pandemic Faculty Merit Committees to deal with equity issues. Such committees should be proactive, diverse, transparent, informed and trained in both bias and the institution's history.

"We provide a downloadable guide with questions about research, teaching, service and other situations that committees can use as a starting point," Harris said. "We also have a website that contains additional sources and background information."

Co-author Cañas-Carrell, chair of the President's Gender Equity Council, has shared the paper with the council as well as the Women Full Professors Network (WFPN), both of which fully endorsed it.

"The WPFN Executive Board is in support of having some of the group's members work with the administration and the Pandemic Response Merit Committee," Cañas-Carrell said. "We have received a very positive response from the administration and are already working with the Provost's Office to either establish a separate Pandemic Response Merit Committee or to create a subcommittee of the Faculty Success Advisory Council focused on equity in the time of COVID-19."

While there is certainly progress to be made, the authors believe articles like this can help.

"I don't think one article can solve the issues of gender and racial inequity in academia," Harris said, "but I am hoping that committees, departments and institutions use our piece and the provided resources to have honest conversations and personal reflections on their policies and practices. Ultimately, I hope they then enact some changes to begin to remedy inequities."

###

Compounds halt SARS-CoV-2 replication by targeting key viral enzyme

Four promising antiviral drug candidates identified and analyzed by a University of Arizona-University of South Florida team in the preclinical study

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA (USF HEALTH)

 

IMAGE: THREE CONFIGURATIONS OF ACTIVE SITES WHERE INHIBITOR GC-376 BINDS WITH THE COVID-19 VIRUS'S MAIN PROTEASE (DRUG TARGET MPRO), AS DEPICTED BY 3D COMPUTER MODELING. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE GENERATED BY YU CHEN, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA HEALTH, USING X-RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHY

TAMPA, Fla. (July 6, 2020) — As the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic mounts, scientists worldwide continue their push to develop effective treatments and a vaccine for the highly contagious respiratory virus.

University of South Florida Health (USF Health) Morsani College of Medicine scientists recently worked with colleagues at the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy to identify several existing compounds that block replication of the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) within human cells grown in the laboratory. The inhibitors all demonstrated potent chemical and structural interactions with a viral protein critical to the virus's ability to proliferate.

The research team's drug discovery study appeared June 15 in Cell Research, a high-impact Nature journal.

The most promising drug candidates - including the FDA-approved hepatitis C medication boceprevir and an investigational veterinary antiviral drug known as GC-376 - target the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro), an enzyme that cuts out proteins from a long strand that the virus produces when it invades a human cell. Without Mpro, the virus cannot replicate and infect new cells. This enzyme had already been validated as an antiviral drug target for the original SARS and MERS, both genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2.

"With a rapidly emerging infectious disease like COVID-19, we don't have time to develop new antiviral drugs from scratch," said Yu Chen, PhD, USF Health associate professor of molecular medicine and a coauthor of the Cell Research paper. "A lot of good drug candidates are already out there as a starting point. But, with new information from studies like ours and current technology, we can help design even better (repurposed) drugs much faster."

Before the pandemic, Dr. Chen applied his expertise in structure-based drug design to help develop inhibitors (drug compounds) that target bacterial enzymes causing resistance to certain commonly prescribed antibiotics such as penicillin. Now his laboratory focuses its advanced techniques, including X-ray crystallography and molecular docking, on looking for ways to stop SARS-CoV-2.

Mpro represents an attractive target for drug development against COVID-19 because of the enzyme's essential role in the life cycle of the coronavirus and the absence of a similar protease in humans, Dr. Chen said. Since people do not have the enzyme, drugs targeting this protein are less likely to cause side effects, he explained.

The four leading drug candidates identified by the University of Arizona-USF Health team as the best (most potent and specific) for fighting COVID-19 are described below. These inhibitors rose to the top after screening more than 50 existing protease compounds for potential repurposing:

• Boceprevir, a drug to treat Hepatitis C, is the only one of the four compounds already approved by the FDA. Its effective dose, safety profile, formulation and how the body processes the drug (pharmacokinetics) are already known, which would greatly speed up the steps needed to get boceprevir to clinical trials for COVID-19, Dr. Chen said.
• GC-376, an investigational veterinary drug for a deadly strain of coronavirus in cats, which causes feline infectious peritonitis. This agent was the most potent inhibitor of the Mpro enzyme in biochemical tests, Dr. Chen said, but before human trials could begin it would need to be tested in animal models of SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Chen and his doctoral student Michael Sacco determined the X-ray crystal structure of GC-376 bound by Mpro, and characterized molecular interactions between the compound and viral enzyme using 3D computer modeling.

• Calpain inhibitors II and XII, cysteine inhibitors investigated in the past for cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and other conditions, also showed strong antiviral activity. Their ability to dually inhibit both Mpro and calpain/cathepsin protease suggests these compounds may include the added benefit of suppressing drug resistance, the researchers report.

All four compounds were superior to other Mpro inhibitors previously identified as suitable to clinically evaluate for treating SARS-CoV-2, Dr. Chen said.

A promising drug candidate - one that kills or impairs the virus without destroying healthy cells — fits snugly, into the unique shape of viral protein receptor's "binding pocket." GC-376 worked particularly well at conforming to (complementing) the shape of targeted Mpro enzyme binding sites, Dr. Chen said. Using a lock (binding pocket, or receptor) and key (drug) analogy, "GC-376 was by far the key with the best, or tightest, fit," he added. "Our modeling shows how the inhibitor can mimic the original peptide substrate when it binds to the active site on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease."

Instead of promoting the activity of viral enzyme, like the substrate normally does, the inhibitor significantly decreases the activity of the enzyme that helps SARS-CoV-2 make copies of itself.

Visualizing 3-D interactions between the antiviral compounds and the viral protein provides a clearer understanding of how the Mpro complex works and, in the long-term, can lead to the design of new COVID-19 drugs, Dr. Chen said. In the meantime, he added, researchers focus on getting targeted antiviral treatments to the frontlines more quickly by tweaking existing coronavirus drug candidates to improve their stability and performance.

Dr. Chen worked with lead investigator Jun Wang, PhD, UA assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology, on the study. The work was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Leap in lidar could improve safety, security of new technology

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

 

IMAGE: A SILICON CHIP WITH A TILED ARRAY OF SERPENTINE OPTICAL PHASED ARRAY (SOPA) TILES. THE 32 TILES IN THE 8-BY-4 ARRAY HAVE SLIGHTLY DIFFERING GRATING DESIGNS, SHOWING HERE TWO MATCHING... view more 

CREDIT: BOHAN ZHANG AND NATHAN DOSTART

Whether it's on top of a self-driving car or embedded inside the latest gadget, Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) systems will likely play an important role in our technological future, enabling vehicles to 'see' in real-time, phones to map three-dimensional images and enhancing augmented reality in video games.

The challenge: these 3-D imaging systems can be bulky, expensive and hard to shrink down to the size needed for these up-and-coming applications. But University of Colorado Boulder researchers are one big step closer to a solution.

In a new paper, published in Optica, they describe a new silicon chip--with no moving parts or electronics--that improves the resolution and scanning speed needed for a lidar system.

"We're looking to ideally replace big, bulky, heavy lidar systems with just this flat, little chip," said Nathan Dostart, lead author on the study, who recently completed his doctorate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Current commercial lidar systems use large, rotating mirrors to steer the laser beam and thereby create a 3-D image. For the past three years, Dostart and his colleagues have been working on a new way of steering laser beams called wavelength steering--where each wavelength, or "color," of the laser is pointed to a unique angle.

They've not only developed a way to do a version of this along two dimensions simultaneously, instead of only one, they've done it with color, using a "rainbow" pattern to take 3-D images. Since the beams are easily controlled by simply changing colors, multiple phased arrays can be controlled simultaneously to create a bigger aperture and a higher resolution image.

"We've figured out how to put this two-dimensional rainbow into a little teeny chip," said Kelvin Wagner, co-author of the new study and professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The end of electrical communication

Autonomous vehicles are currently a $50 billion dollar industry, projected to be worth more than $500 billion by 2026. While many cars on the road today already have some elements of autonomous assistance, such as enhanced cruise control and automatic lane-centering, the real race is to create a car that drives itself with no input or responsibility from a human driver. In the past 15 years or so, innovators have realized that in order to do this cars will need more than just cameras and radar--they will need lidar.

Lidar is a remote sensing method that uses laser beams, pulses of invisible light, to measure distances. These beams of light bounce off everything in their path, and a sensor collects these reflections to create a precise, three-dimensional picture of the surrounding environment in real time.

Lidar is like echolocation with light: it can tell you how far away each pixel in an image is. It's been used for at least 50 years in satellites and airplanes, to conduct atmospheric sensing and measure the depth of bodies of water and heights of terrain.

While great strides have been made in the size of lidar systems, they remain the most expensive part of self-driving cars by far--as much as $70,000 each.

In order to work broadly in the consumer market one day, lidar must become even cheaper, smaller and less complex. Some companies are trying to accomplish this feat using silicon photonics: An emerging area in electrical engineering that uses silicon chips, which can process light.

The research team's new finding is an important advancement in silicon chip technology for use in lidar systems.

"Electrical communication is at its absolute limit. Optics has to come into play and that's why all these big players are committed to making the silicon photonics technology industrially viable," said Miloš Popovi?, co-author and associate professor of engineering at Boston University.

The simpler and smaller that these silicon chips can be made--while retaining high resolution and accuracy in their imaging--the more technologies they can be applied to, including self-driving cars and smartphones.

Rumor has it that the upcoming iPhone 12 will incorporate a lidar camera, like that currently in the iPad Pro. This technology could not only improve its facial recognition security, but one day assist in creating climbing route maps, measuring distances and even identifying animal tracks or plants.

"We're proposing a scalable approach to lidar using chip technology. And this is the first step, the first building block of that approach," said Dostart, who will continue his work at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia. "There's still a long way to go."

###

Additional co-authors of this study include Michael Brand and Daniel Feldkhun of CU Boulder; Bohan Zhang, Anatol Khilo, Kenaish Al Qubaisi, Deniz Onural and Milos A. Popovic of Boston University.

RESEARCHERS FORESEE LINGUISTIC ISSUES DURING SPACE TRAVEL
Mon, 07/06/2020


LAWRENCE — It lacks the drama of a shape-shifting alien creature, but another threat looms over the prospect of generations-long, interstellar space travel: Explorers arriving on Xanadu could face problems communicating with previous and subsequent arrivals, their spoken language having changed in isolation along the way.

Therefore, a new paper co-written by a University of Kansas linguistics researcher and published in a journal affiliated with the European Space Agency recommends that such crews include, if not a linguist, members with knowledge of what is likely to occur and how to adapt.

Andrew McKenzie, associate professor of linguistics at KU, and Jeffrey Punske, assistant professor of linguistics at Southern Illinois University, co-wrote the article “Language Development During Interstellar Travel” in the April edition of Acta Futura, the journal of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team.

In it, they discuss the concept of language change over time, citing such earthbound examples of long-distance voyages as the Polynesian island explorers and extrapolating from there.

It might seem far-fetched, but the authors cite language change even during their own lifetimes with the rise – no pun intended – of uptalk.

They write that “it is increasingly common for speakers to end statements with a rising intonation. This phenomenon, called uptalk (or sometimes High Rising Terminal), is often mistaken for a question tone by those without it in their grammars, but it actually sounds quite distinct and indicates politeness or inclusion. Uptalk has only been observed occurring within the last 40 years but has spread from small groups of young Americans and Australians to most of the English-speaking world, even to many baby boomers who had not used it themselves as youth.”

“Given more time, new grammatical forms can completely replace current ones.”

Imagine trying to chat with Chaucer today. Even improvements in translation technology might not be enough.

“If you're on this vessel for 10 generations, new concepts will emerge, new social issues will come up, and people will create ways of talking about them,” McKenzie said, “and these will become the vocabulary particular to the ship. People on Earth might never know about these words, unless there's a reason to tell them. And the further away you get, the less you're going to talk to people back home. Generations pass, and there's no one really back home to talk to. And there's not much you want to tell them, because they'll only find out years later, and then you'll hear back from them years after that.

“The connection to Earth dwindles over time. And eventually, perhaps, we'll get to the point where there's no real contact with Earth, except to send the occasional update.

“And as long as the language changes on the vessel, and then at an eventual colony, the question becomes, ‘Do we still bother learning how to communicate with people on Earth?’ Yes. So if we have Earth English and vessel English, and they diverge over the years, you have to learn a little Earth English to send messages back, or to read the instruction manuals and information that came with the ship.

“Also, keep in mind that the language back on Earth is going to change, too, during that time. So they may well be communicating like we'd be using Latin — communicating with this version of the language nobody uses.”

The authors also point out that an adaptation in the form of sign language will be needed for use with and among crew members who, genetics tell us, are sure to be born deaf.

In any case, they write, “Every new vessel will essentially offload linguistic immigrants to a foreign land. Will they be discriminated against until their children and grandchildren learn the local language? Can they establish communication with the colony ahead of time to learn the local language before arrival?

“Given the certainty that these issues will arise in scenarios such as these, and the uncertainty of exactly how they will progress, we strongly suggest that any crew exhibit strong levels of metalinguistic training in addition to simply knowing the required languages. There will be need for an informed linguistic policy on board that can be maintained without referring back to Earth-based regulations.”

If a study of the linguistic changes aboard ship could be performed, it would only “add to its scientific value,” McKenzie and Punske concluded.

Photo: An image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Tarantula Nebula in three wavelengths of infrared light, each represented by a different color. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech


The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. The university's mission is to lift students and society by educating leaders, building healthy communities and making discoveries that change the world. The KU News Service is the central public relations office for the Lawrence campus.

kunews@ku.edu | 1450 Jayhawk Blvd., Suite 37, Lawrence, KS 66045

Yellow pond-lily prefers cyclic flowers to spiral ones

And helps in understanding the structure of Earth's oldest flowers

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Biologists from Lomonosov Moscow State University and HSE University have studied the patterns of flower development in yellow water-lily (Nuphar lutea). They found out that all the floral organs are arranged in cycles (whorls) rather than inserted sequentially in a spiral, as is the case in some other basal angiosperms. The ancestors of yellow pond-lily were among the first to diverge from the root of the angiosperm evolutionary tree, which is why it can be used to hypothesize about the structure of the first flowers. The study has been published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology journal.

The flower is one of the key evolutionary innovations of angiosperms. It helps attract various pollinators, protect the seeds inside the fruit, and adds some new means of distribution that do not exist in gymnosperms. Thanks to these advantages, flowering plants have settled across the planet and have become the most numerous group of land plants.

How flowers evolved and how they looked initially remains a mystery. The appearance of the ancestral flowers can be inferred with the help of plants that have preserved the greatest degree of similarity to the first angiosperms. It makes sense to look for them among the basal groups, whose ancestors diverged from the phylogenetic root of flowering plants earlier than the others. It is highly probable that the flower structure in such organisms will be similar to the initial one.

Among extant flowering plants, Nymphaeales are rather close to the root of angiosperms. Yellow pond-lily (Nuphar lutea) is widespread in Eurasia; it is also sometimes seen in North America, which is why it could be a convenient model object. But detailed studies of its flower structure using modern research methods are lacking.

Researchers from Lomonosov Moscow State University and HSE University have collected several dozen rhizomes of Nuphar lutea with leaves and flowers. Some of them were dissected to prepare specimens for light and scanning electron microscopy.

The researchers focused on shoot tips, where new leaves and flowers form. Young flowers at different stages of development were selected for the study. To determine their architecture, the researchers measured the angles between similar organs of the flower.

Elements of shoots in plants--leaves, flowers, lateral buds and lateral branches developing from them--are frequently arranged in a spiral. It had previously been assumed that plants similar to basal angiosperm type, including Nuphar, have a similar arrangement of organs. But the researchers discovered that in Nuphar lutea, the angles between the sepals differed from the spiral insertion (85° and 55°, rather than 137.5°). It looked like sepals and petals form cycles--two whorls for sepals and a single whorl for petals--although they are not always initiated simultaneously within a whorl.

Nuphar lutea develops five sepals. If they all were in one whorl, the angle between adjacent sepals would be 72°. In fact, they were placed at such angles that de-facto formed two circles: three elements in the external circle, and two in the internal one. The number of petals usually varied from 14 to 15, but they also formed a cycle rather than a spiral. And even the numerous stamens tended to arrange in alternating whorls.

###

What ethical models for autonomous vehicles don't address - and how they could be better

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

There's a fairly large flaw in the way that programmers are currently addressing ethical concerns related to artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles (AVs). Namely, existing approaches don't account for the fact that people might try to use the AVs to do something bad.

For example, let's say that there is an autonomous vehicle with no passengers and it is about to crash into a car containing five people. It can avoid the collision by swerving out of the road, but it would then hit a pedestrian.

Most discussions of ethics in this scenario focus on whether the autonomous vehicle's AI should be selfish (protecting the vehicle and its cargo) or utilitarian (choosing the action that harms the fewest people). But that either/or approach to ethics can raise problems of its own.

"Current approaches to ethics and autonomous vehicles are a dangerous oversimplification - moral judgment is more complex than that," says Veljko Dubljevi?, an assistant professor in the Science, Technology & Society (STS) program at North Carolina State University and author of a paper outlining this problem and a possible path forward. "For example, what if the five people in the car are terrorists? And what if they are deliberately taking advantage of the AI's programming to kill the nearby pedestrian or hurt other people? Then you might want the autonomous vehicle to hit the car with five passengers.

"In other words, the simplistic approach currently being used to address ethical considerations in AI and autonomous vehicles doesn't account for malicious intent. And it should."

As an alternative, Dubljevi? proposes using the so-called Agent-Deed-Consequence (ADC) model as a framework that AIs could use to make moral judgements. The ADC model judges the morality of a decision based on three variables.

First, is the agent's intent good or bad? Second, is the deed or action itself good or bad? Lastly, is the outcome or consequence good or bad? This approach allows for considerable nuance.

For example, most people would agree that running a red light is bad. But what if you run a red light in order to get out of the way of a speeding ambulance? And what if running the red light means that you avoided a collision with that ambulance?

"The ADC model would allow us to get closer to the flexibility and stability that we see in human moral judgment, but that does not yet exist in AI," says Dubljevi?. "Here's what I mean by stable and flexible. Human moral judgment is stable because most people would agree that lying is morally bad. But it's flexible because most people would also agree that people who lied to Nazis in order to protect Jews were doing something morally good.

"But while the ADC model gives us a path forward, more research is needed," Dubljevi? says. "I have led experimental work on how both philosophers and lay people approach moral judgment, and the results were valuable. However, that work gave people information in writing. More studies of human moral judgment are needed that rely on more immediate means of communication, such as virtual reality, if we want to confirm our earlier findings and implement them in AVs. Also, vigorous testing with driving simulation studies should be done before any putatively 'ethical' AVs start sharing the road with humans on a regular basis. Vehicle terror attacks have, unfortunately, become more common, and we need to be sure that AV technology will not be misused for nefarious purposes."

###

The paper, "Toward Implementing the ADC Model of Moral Judgment in Autonomous Vehicles," is published in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics.