Academic explains how future humans could become ‘part organic, part mechanic cyborgs’

HUMANS could combine with artificial intelligence in the future to create "part organic, part mechanic cyborgs of sorts" according to Professor David J. Gunkel, an expert in robot ethics at Northern Illinois University in Chicago.


By JAMES BICKERTON
PUBLISHED: 06:57, Sat, Feb 15, 2020

Professor Gunkel argued the “actual legal standing” of robots has “not been decided”, but added this is likely to become a big issue in the next few decades. The academic added that in the future he expects “lots of contentious debate” over the extent to which humans should be allowed to augment their bodies with technology.

Speaking to Express.co.uk Professor Gunkel said: “I would say right now we are already augmenting ourselves with artificial devices that increase our capacities and capabilities.

“We all carry them [mobile phones] around in our pockets or have them in our purses.
“That’s a kind of external memory device, an external brain, that augments our own cognitive abilities.

“I think the future is going to be not an us verses them, but an us and them.
“We work together and become this collaborative hybrid being that is part organic, part mechanic, a cyborg of sorts.

“At one time putting a pacemaker in your body would be considered weird by a lot of people and now it’s just standard practice.

“As more of this technology becomes acceptable and accessible that line will move in the direction of permitting greater augmentation within our bodies and less of us will be concerned about it.”

“I think the future is going to be not an us verses them, but an us and them"

 (Image: GETTY/JAMES BICKERTON)

 

Advances in robotics are taking place across the world 

(Image: GETTY)

Professor Gunkel claimed the impact of developments in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) over the past few decades on humans has been gradual.

He explained: “Science fiction sells us this image of the robot as being this humanoid thing that enters our world

and may even endanger our world as you see in some of the more dramatic scenarios.
“I think in reality the incursion of robots into our world has been kind of like the fall of Rome. It’s not been dramatic.

“It’s been a slow incursion where everyday more and more autonomous type technologies take over more of our operation – some of the heavy lifting of decision making, recommendations, running various operations in our businesses and in our home life.”

Professor Gunkel is the author of a number of books including ‘Hacking Cyberspace’ and ’The Machine Question’.

READ MORE: Transhumanist argues technology could end all human suffering

 

“We work together and become this collaborative hybrid"

 (Image: GETTY)

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He predicts that the next 20-30 years will see robots and AI become increasingly competent at very specific tasks and integrating together more, but not yet challenging human abilities across the board.

The academic commented: “I see an increase in what I call idiot savants, all of these very capable narrowly tailored specific AI devices and robots that will do very specific tasks very well but they will be dedicated to that one thing.

“Where things get interesting I think in the next decade is we start to wire these devices together so that we have an army of idiot savants all working on our behalf to make our lives better, more enjoyable, less tedious and that I think is going to be the real change.

“Up until now we’ve seen individual devices being put out there but I don’t think we’ve seen the scale of interconnectivity of these devices like is being anticipated by the internet of things.”

In his work Professor Gunkel has focused specifically on the moral and legal responsibility for the actions of robots and AI.

He predicts these questions will cause big debates amongst governments, corporations and private citizens.

The professor asserted: “I think its going to become a really big issue not just with self-driving cars but also with things like autonomous drones.

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A protest against "killer robots" in London (Image: GETTY)

“The drone itself could acquire a target and make a decision about kill or not. This technology exists and its about how it’s rolled out, where it’s rolled out.

“I think we’re at the cusp of this becoming a really important question and a question that will impinge on us in ways that will be very real.

“The corporation that designs, develops and manufactures these devices will initially I think be seen as the party that would be liable for an accident or some other bad outcome.

“At the same time a lot of the systems they are developing are systems that they themselves don’t necessarily have full control over and we can already see now in the complexity of the way a technological system is deployed there are many hands involved in a decision.”

According to Professor Gunkel advances in robotics and AI are likely, at least initially, to impact on some sections of society and parts of the world far more than other.

This has the potential to have a dramatic impact on world politics.

Professor Gunkel explained: “I think there will be a lot of contentious debate around that subject, especially as it will divide the world into the haves and have nots. The augmented and the unaugmented.

“That will play out I think in a way we’ve seen other divides play out historically, whether that has to do with industrial capabilities or the internet.

“We’ve seen historically how it has divided the world up into those who have the access and technology and those who don’t and the political struggles between the haves and the have nots.”

The transhumanist movement argues humans can and should be allowed to use technology to augment their biological capabilities.

 

"I do think it is changing our understanding of our world" (Image: GETTY)

According to Professor Gunkel technological innovation will have a radical impact on how humans see their place in the world.

Responding to the argument from some scientists, including the late Professor Stephen Hawking, that advances in AI could pose an ‘existential threat’ he replied: “I think existential crisis if we put existential with a small e.

“I don’t think we’re talking about an extinction event wiping us out.

“But I do think it is changing our understanding of our world, of our relationships to each other and of the way we engage with and utilise our technology.

“It’s going to take a bit of soul searching on our part to see where we fit in a world where machines are more capable and not just our tools to be used as we see fit.”

Space station situation with Russian module misfire more serious than stated: report

The space station spun far more than the reported 45 degrees, according to NASA flight director Zebulon Scoville.

By Chelsea Gohd 

According to NASA flight director Zebulon Scoville, the docking mishap last week with Russia's Nauka module was worse than reported. In this image you can see Russia's Nauka module docked with the International Space Station on July 29, 2021. (Image credit: Thomas Pesquet/ESA/NASA)

Last week, a Russian module accidentally pushed the International Space Station out of place. Now, a NASA flight director has revealed that the event was more serious than NASA initially reported.

On Thursday (July 29) morning, Russia's long-awaited research module Nauka docked with the space station. But a few hours later, the module accidentally fired its thrusters, briefly tilting the space station and causing it to lose what engineers call "attitude control."

However, while NASA said on Twitter and officials repeated during public comments about the incident that the orbiting lab tilted about 45 degrees, that appears not to have been the full story. According to reporting by The New York Times, Zebulon Scoville, the NASA flight director leading mission control in Houston during the event, says the station tilted far more severely than just 45 degrees.


Related: Russia's Nauka module tilts space station with unplanned thruster fire

According to Scoville, the event has "been a little incorrectly reported." He said that after Nauka incorrectly fired up, the station "spun one-and-a-half revolutions — about 540 degrees — before coming to a stop upside down. The space station then did a 180-degree forward flip to get back to its original orientation," according to the report.

Scoville also shared that this was the first time that he has ever declared a "spacecraft emergency."

Today (Aug. 2), NASA representatives confirmed to Space.com that Scoville's representation of the incident is accurate. "Those numbers representing the change in attitude are correct," they said. "We'd reiterate that the maximum rate at which the change occurred was slow enough to go unnoticed by the crew members on board and all other station systems operated nominally during the entire event."


Another NASA representative added to Space.com that "the 45 degree number was initially offered in the first minutes after the event occurred by our guidance, navigation and control officer in Mission Control, but were later updated following an analysis of the actual divergence."

Unraveling the events

Following the event on Thursday, NASA held a news conference to discuss what had happened. During the news conference, space station program manager Joel Montalbano said, "There was no immediate danger at any time to the crew ... obviously, when you have a loss of attitude control, that's something you want to address right away. But the crew was never in any immediate emergency or anything like that."

Scoville has echoed this same sentiment, agreeing that the astronauts on board were never in danger in his comments to The New York Times. However, he revealed some details about the day's events that show that the mishap was a bit more serious than NASA's initial comments seemed to suggest.

According to the report, Scoville took over mission control after the docking. It was actually his day off, but he was on site because he'd helped to prepare for the module docking and wanted to see how it went. He ended up taking over from the previous lead, Gregory Whitney, who had a meeting to attend, after docking, thinking it would be smooth sailing from there. But soon, a caution warning lit up.

"We had two messages — just two lines of code — saying that something was wrong," Scoville said.

After initially thinking the message could perhaps be a mistake, he told The New York Times, he soon realized that it was not and that Nauka was not only firing its thrusters, but that it was trying to actually pull away from the space station that it had just docked with. And he was soon told that the module could only receive direct commands from a ground station in Russia, which the space station wouldn't pass over for over an hour.

Related: International Space Station at 20: A photo tour

According to Scoville, the station reached a rotation rate maximum of 0.56 degrees per second. This wasn't fast enough for the astronauts to feel it, however, according to Scoville and also said by NASA officials during the briefing.

The crew, working together with ground teams, helped to counteract Nauka's thrusters by counter-firing thrusters on the Russian module Zvezda and Progress cargo ship. Additionally, 15 minutes after starting to fire, Nauka's thrusters stopped, though Scoville said he didn't know why the thrusters did so.

But this combined series of events and counteractive measures allowed the team to get the station to stop moving and return to its correct position.

"After doing that back flip one-and-a-half times around, it stopped and then went back the other way," Scoville told the New York Times.

"Probably the intensity goes up a little bit," Scoville said, as teams on the ground and also the seven astronauts on the station worked quickly to remedy the situation. "But," he added, "there's a pervasive kind of calmness of people not panicking and just looking at the data, figuring out what was happening and try to solve the problem from there."

After what was certainly not the relaxed day off he had planned, Scoville aired a sigh of relief on Twitter Thursday afternoon, after the station was back in position and the situation had stabilized.

"Yeehaw! That. Was. A. Day," he exclaimed.

Scoville also tweeted on Thursday that he had never before "been so happy to see all solar arrays + radiators still attached."

Despite the unexpected scare that the module mishap gave NASA last week, Scoville told the New York Times that he is assured in the partnership that Russia and the U.S. have on board the station.

"I have complete confidence in the Russians," he said. "They are a fantastic partnership with NASA and the entire International Space Station program."

Nauka's accidental thruster firing came one day ahead of the planned launch date for Boeing's uncrewed test flight for its Starliner astronaut taxi, which the company built with support from NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

To ensure that the situation with Nauka and the space station were stable before trying to dock another vehicle with the station, NASA and Boeing decided to postpone Starliner's launch to Tuesday (Aug. 3). at 1:20 p.m. EDT (1720 GMT).

Editor's Note: This story has been updated with  new information and clarity provided by NASA to Space.com.

Chelsea Gohd joined Space.com as an intern in the summer of 2018 and returned as a Staff Writer in 2019. After receiving a B.S. in Public Health, she worked as a science communicator at the American Museum of Natural History and even wrote an installation for the museum's permanent Hall of Meteorites. Chelsea has written for publications including Scientific American, Discover Magazine Blog, Astronomy Magazine, Live Science, All That is Interesting, AMNH Microbe Mondays blog, The Daily Targum and Roaring Earth. When not writing, reading or following the latest space and science discoveries, Chelsea is writing music and performing as her alter ego Foxanne (@foxannemusic). You can follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd.

ISS

Nauka module’s near miss raises concerns about future of space station

"Everything was going well, but there was a human factor."

ERIC BERGER - 8/2/2021, 

Enlarge / Russia's Nauka module is seen attached to the International Space Station.
Roscosmos

Last Thursday the large new Russian space station module, Nauka, finally docked with the International Space Station after several technical issues en route to the orbiting laboratory. However, the problems did not end there. About three hours after linking to the station, Nauka began firing its propulsion thrusters, throwing the space station off kilter.

This led NASA Mission Control in Houston to initiate "loss of attitude control" procedures on board the station, a contingency astronauts and flight controllers train for. Then, in concert with flight controllers in Moscow, the teams commanded the station to fire its thrusters on the Russian segment of the space station, as well as a Progress supply vehicle attached to the laboratory. These combined actions prevented the station from tumbling too violently until Nauka exhausted its primary fuel supply.

FURTHER READING Russian module suddenly fires thrusters after docking with space station

Following this near miss, NASA hastily called a news conference and brought out key figures before the media, including human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders and the leader of the International Space Station program, Joel Montalbano. Both said NASA and the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, had the situation well in hand and downplayed the overall risk to the station and the astronauts on board.

However, they deferred many questions on the technical issues to Roscosmos, which has offered mixed messages. A senior official in Roscosmos, former cosmonaut Vladimir Solovyov, said in an official statement, "Due to a short-term software failure, a direct command was mistakenly implemented to turn on the module's engines for withdrawal, which led to some modification of the orientation of the complex as a whole."

This makes the problem sound like a software error. But later, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, acknowledged that someone on the ground could have made a mistake. "Everything was going well, but there was a human factor," he told a Russian publication, as reported by Reuters. "There was some euphoria (after the successful docking), everybody got relaxed."

Now that the immediate danger has passed, the most pressing concerns are that this happened at all and what it may mean for ongoing Russian participation in the International Space Station program. For NASA, the primary goal is to maintain a human presence in low Earth orbit, and this means flying the station for the remainder of the 2020s.

A reliable partner?

Given the likelihood that Nauka's errant thruster firing involved human error, that would be at least the third major problem in less than three years resulting from shoddy work. In October 2018, the launch of Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague was aborted after a Soyuz booster failure, and the crew had to make an emergency return to Earth. A subsequent investigation found that the side-mounted booster had been improperly mated to the core stage of the Soyuz rocket.

FURTHER READING Russian space chief vows to find “full name” of technician who caused ISS leak

At around the same time, Russia announced that there was a small hole in a different Soyuz vehicle, already attached to the International Space Station. “We are able to narrow down the cause to a technological mistake of a technician," Rogozin said of the problem.

These technical errors have occurred as Roscosmos has had difficulty paying its engineers and technicians a living wage. And now the country's space budget faces further pressure as NASA no longer needs to buy Soyuz seats for its astronauts to ride to the International Space Station—thanks to SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle and, hopefully soon, Boeing's Starliner.

Despite all of this, NASA has remained publicly supportive of Russia and its space program. And it has to be relieved that, regardless of its myriad troubles in getting to the space station, Nauka is now there and functional. This is important because it likely cements Russian participation in the space station for the remainder of this decade.

There is no guarantee of that. In recent months Russian officials have begun saying that Roscosmos' existing hardware on orbit, much of which is more than two decades old, is aging beyond repair. The Russians have also suggested they may pull out of the program in 2025 and build a brand-new station. Indeed, just on Saturday, two days after Nauka's troublesome docking, Roscosmos issued a statement saying it was continuing a study of a new station project in low Earth orbit called the Russian Orbital Service Station. This seems very likely to be posturing, as Russia has neither the budget nor likely the ability to rapidly build a new space station.

The question for NASA becomes, then, how long it is willing to rely on a partner that is clearly having technical issues with its workforce, is always asking for more money, and making noises about wanting to exit the space station partnership that has existed for about three decades now.

NASA's stated intent is to maintain a presence in low Earth orbit. By 2028 or shortly after, it hopes to have commercial space stations operating there. But until that time, the International Space Station is NASA's only game in town. Should the Russians become even less reliable, the U.S. space agency has options, but those will take time to implement.

NASA could pay a company like Axiom to accelerate development of its commercial module that will dock to the station, which could take over the propulsion tasks of the Russian Service Module now attached to the station. Or it could even give a company like SpaceX a contract to dock its Starship vehicle at the space station to maintain its altitude.

For now, it does not appear as though the NASA-Roscosmos relationship is at the breaking point, but, like the aging space station, it is showing signs of wear, tear, and cracking. Roscosmos could apply some much-needed mortar by being clear with NASA about what exactly happened with Nauka and committing to the future of the partnership.


ERIC BERGER is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA, and author of the book Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.EMAIL eric.berger@ars

Russian cosmonauts give video tour of module that jolted space station 
By Reuters • Updated: 02/08/2021 - 

Russian cosmonauts give video tour of module that jolted space station - Copyright Thomson Reuters 2021
MOSCOW – Russian cosmonauts have given a video tour of the interior of a research module which briefly threw the International Space Station out of control on Thursday a few hours after docking.

Russian space officials said a software glitch and possible lapse in human attention were to blame for the mishap that caused the entire space station to pitch out of its normal flight position 250 miles above the Earth with seven crew members aboard.

Footage published late on Saturday showed cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov opening the hatches and giving a short tour inside the Nauka module, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

According to NASA‘s account of Thursday’s incident, the mission flight director immediately declared a spaceflight emergency as engineers on the ground struggled to restore stability to the sprawling research satellite.

NASA and Roscosmos each said that the seven crew members – two Russian cosmonauts, three U.S. astronauts and two others from Japan and France – were never in any immediate danger.

Roscosmos, which this week spoke of plans to launch another Russian module to the station in November, has suffered a series of mishaps and corruption scandals, including during the construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the country’s far east where contractors were accused of embezzling state funds.

 COUNTERINTUITIVE

Girls are less likely to see science as a viable career when taught alongside scientifically confident classmates

by Taylor & Francis

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Being in a classroom surrounded by children who are confident and interested in science can actually put girls off pursuing a career in STEM subjects, according to a new study. In contrast, boys seem to be inspired by their peers' confidence and are more likely to see themselves in STEM roles as a result.

Despite studies consistently showing that girls perform at least as well as boys in science subjects at school, women are far less likely to work in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) occupations than men.

One explanation for this phenomenon is that girls are the victims of negative gender stereotypes. Put simply, STEM subjects are often viewed as masculine, and girls are often portrayed as being 'less gifted' in maths and science than men.

Efforts to reverse this trend have focused mainly on providing girls with visible role models. The idea being that if girls see successful female scientists in the media, or read about them in books, they will be much more likely to consider a career in STEM.

However, this study, published in the peer-reviewed British Journal of Sociology of Education, suggests that the issue may be more complicated.

Janina Beckmann, a researcher from the University of Cologne and the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training in Germany, analysed data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), a longitudinal study in Germany which tracks the lives of 60,000 people from birth until adulthood.

Beckmann focused on 8,711 9th graders from 916 classrooms across Germany. In Germany, 9th graders are usually 14-15 years old.

Each of the children were asked what their dream occupation would be given no constraints, what kind of job they expected to do in the future and to what extent they agreed with statements like 'mathematics is one of my best subjects', 'I learn quickly in mathematics' and 'I've always been good at mathematics'.

The study showed that just 10% of the pupils surveyed expected to work in a STEM occupation in the future. Of those, 84% were male and 17% female.

The results highlight the huge impact that classroom culture has on male and female pupil's job expectations.

Being in a classroom surrounded by pupils who see STEM as an aspirational career choice seemed to inspire boys, who were more likely to view themselves in such a role as a result. However, this environment had the opposite effect on girls, even when they found themselves in classrooms with a high proportion of females with high aspirations in science.

The same pattern was found when looking at classmates' confidence in maths. Girls taught alongside pupils who expressed confidence in maths were far less likely to see themselves in a STEM role. While boys taught in this environment were much more likely to choose a STEM job.

The finding challenges the idea that all you need to do to increase the number of female scientists is to provide girls with visible role models.

'My study confirms that females are less likely than males to expect to work in STEM occupations, even when they have comparable abilities and aspirations,' says Beckmann.

'One explanation could be that perhaps despite perhaps aspiring to be scientists, girls lose confidence in their abilities when taught alongside other confident and aspirational pupils. Whereas boys may be more likely to thrive in such a competitive environment.'

Multiple-choice exams favor boys over girls, worsening the math gender gap

---

More information: Janina Beckmann, Gendered career expectations in context: the relevance of normative and comparative reference groups, British Journal of Sociology of Education (2021). DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2021.1914547

Provided by Taylor & Francis 

Can Consciousness Be Explained by Quantum Physics? Fascinating Research Takes Us a Step Closer to Finding Out

By CRISTIANE DE MORAIS SMITH, UTRECHT UNIVERSITY AUGUST 2, 2021

Some scientists believe consciousness is generated by quantum processes, but the theory is yet to be empirically tested.

One of the most important open questions in science is how our consciousness is established. In the 1990s, long before winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his prediction of black holes, physicist Roger Penrose teamed up with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff to propose an ambitious answer.

They claimed that the brain’s neuronal system forms an intricate network and that the consciousness this produces should obey the rules of quantum mechanics – the theory that determines how tiny particles like electrons move around. This, they argue, could explain the mysterious complexity of human consciousness.

Penrose and Hameroff were met with incredulity. Quantum mechanical laws are usually only found to apply at very low temperatures. Quantum computers, for example, currently operate at around -272°C. At higher temperatures, classical mechanics takes over. Since our body works at room temperature, you would expect it to be governed by the classical laws of physics. For this reason, the quantum consciousness theory has been dismissed outright by many scientists – though others are persuaded supporters.

Instead of entering into this debate, I decided to join forces with colleagues from China, led by Professor Xian-Min Jin at Shanghai Jiaotong University, to test some of the principles underpinning the quantum theory of consciousness.

In our new paper, we’ve investigated how quantum particles could move in a complex structure like the brain – but in a lab setting. If our findings can one day be compared with activity measured in the brain, we may come one step closer to validating or dismissing Penrose and Hameroff’s controversial theory.

Brains and fractals

Our brains are composed of cells called neurons, and their combined activity is believed to generate consciousness. Each neuron contains microtubules, which transport substances to different parts of the cell. The Penrose-Hameroff theory of quantum consciousness argues that microtubules are structured in a fractal pattern which would enable quantum processes to occur.

Fractals are structures that are neither two-dimensional nor three-dimensional, but are instead some fractional value in between. In mathematics, fractals emerge as beautiful patterns that repeat themselves infinitely, generating what is seemingly impossible: a structure that has a finite area, but an infinite perimeter.

This might sound impossible to visualise, but fractals actually occur frequently in nature. If you look closely at the florets of a cauliflower or the branches of a fern, you’ll see that they’re both made up of the same basic shape repeating itself over and over again, but at smaller and smaller scales. That’s a key characteristic of fractals.

The same happens if you look inside your own body: the structure of your lungs, for instance, is fractal, as are the blood vessels in your circulatory system. Fractals also feature in the enchanting repeating artworks of MC Escher and Jackson Pollock, and they’ve been used for decades in technology, such as in the design of antennas. These are all examples of classical fractals – fractals that abide by the laws of classical physics rather than quantum physics.

This extension of Escher’s Circle Limit III shows its fractal, repeating nature. Credit: Vladimir-Bulatov/Deviantart, CC BY-NC-SA

It’s easy to see why fractals have been used to explain the complexity of human consciousness. Because they’re infinitely intricate, allowing complexity to emerge from simple repeated patterns, they could be the structures that support the mysterious depths of our minds.

But if this is the case, it could only be happening on the quantum level, with tiny particles moving in fractal patterns within the brain’s neurons. That’s why Penrose and Hameroff’s proposal is called a theory of “quantum consciousness”.

Quantum consciousness

We’re not yet able to measure the behavior of quantum fractals in the brain – if they exist at all. But advanced technology means we can now measure quantum fractals in the lab. In recent research involving a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), my colleagues at Utrecht and I carefully arranged electrons in a fractal pattern, creating a quantum fractal.

When we then measured the wave function of the electrons, which describes their quantum state, we found that they too lived at the fractal dimension dictated by the physical pattern we’d made. In this case, the pattern we used on the quantum scale was the Sierpiński triangle, which is a shape that’s somewhere between one-dimensional and two-dimensional.

This was an exciting finding, but STM techniques cannot probe how quantum particles move – which would tell us more about how quantum processes might occur in the brain. So in our latest research, my colleagues at Shanghai Jiaotong University and I went one step further. Using state-of-the-art photonics experiments, we were able to reveal the quantum motion that takes place within fractals in unprecedented detail.

We achieved this by injecting photons (particles of light) into an artificial chip that was painstakingly engineered into a tiny Sierpiński triangle. We injected photons at the tip of the triangle and watched how they spread throughout its fractal structure in a process called quantum transport. We then repeated this experiment on two different fractal structures, both shaped as squares rather than triangles. And in each of these structures we conducted hundreds of experiments.

We also conducted experiments on a square-shaped fractal called the Sierpiński carpet. Credit: Johannes Rössel/wikimedia

Our observations from these experiments reveal that quantum fractals actually behave in a different way to classical ones. Specifically, we found that the spread of light across a fractal is governed by different laws in the quantum case compared to the classical case.

This new knowledge of quantum fractals could provide the foundations for scientists to experimentally test the theory of quantum consciousness. If quantum measurements are one day taken from the human brain, they could be compared against our results to definitely decide whether consciousness is a classical or a quantum phenomenon.

Our work could also have profound implications across scientific fields. By investigating quantum transport in our artificially designed fractal structures, we may have taken the first tiny steps towards the unification of physics, mathematics and biology, which could greatly enrich our understanding of the world around us as well as the world that exists in our heads.

Written by Cristiane de Morais Smith, Professor, Theoretical Physics, Utrecht University.

Originally published on The Conversation.

Sasha Suda awakens the National Gallery 

of Canada



KATE TAYLOR

GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED  AUGUST 2, 2021

Sasha Suda, the director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada, spoke with The Globe and Mail on July 16, the day the gallery could finally reopen its doors.
ASHLEY FRASER/GLOBE AND MAIL

In the front lobby of the National Gallery of Canada on a long-awaited reopening day, director Sasha Suda greets a cleaner by name. A year before the pandemic, Suda descended on Ottawa with a mandate to change a struggling institution, and at first glance the symbolism of this particular encounter seems irresistible. Here is the white woman with a PhD in art history who runs the gallery chatting collegially with the Black woman in a headscarf who cleans it: Diversity and democracy seem to have arrived.

Or the scenario could be seen in another light, one that highlights a familiar old power imbalance: Suda herself points out it’s going to take a lot more than friendly chats – or even a bold strategic plan and a sparkling new logo – to defeat professional and cultural hierarchies.

“The hardest thing for any leader today is to have a human-centered management style in a 140-year-old institution that leans hard into …. that top-down approach,” Suda said in a recent interview, adding “It’s easy for me to say I want to empower everyone. How to redesign the system so that everything gets done and everybody feels empowered is another conversation.”

Suda, a Canadian who trained in New York before returning to Toronto in 2011 as the Art Gallery of Ontario’s European curator, had never served as a museum director when she was hired to oversee the national art collection. But at the AGO she was known as a highly collegial professional committed to new ideas, someone who could successfully bring about change. The final year of her predecessor, Marc Mayer, had been marred by his controversial decision to sell a painting by Marc Chagall, a complex curatorial move that outraged the citizenry and left the gallery looking remote. The Ottawa Citizen reported that a staff survey around that time showed only 16 per cent of employees felt senior managers made effective decisions.

It was a crisis of public relations and morale that now feels minor compared to the challenges COVID-19 has forced on all museums. Revenues have collapsed during prolonged closures that have eroded public participation.


“I didn’t want to believe it was happening,” Suda said of the repeated lockdowns, which closed the gallery for all but six of the last 16 months. She insisted a federally funded institution – at least 75 per cent of the budget is covered by the parliamentary grant – would not lay off any permanent employees, and kept up an aggressive timetable for a strategic plan and new branding. The major adjustment brought on by COVID-19 – and the Black Lives Matter movement – was that change was now being pushed from outside.

“Questions of equity and leadership and squeezing of staff to do more and more with the same amount of resources … those are all things we grappled with,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve solved it. It’s going to take time to change our rhythms and our patterns.”

Demands to democratize and decolonize are swamping less responsive institutions. As Ottawa prepared for reopening this spring, protesters were picketing the Museum of Modern Art in New York, complaining it only catered to its wealthy donors, while the director of the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria resigned following accusations of institutional racism.

With refreshing frankness, Suda is confronting the moment head on. She had already swept into her new job as a clean broom, overseeing several management departures, including deputy director Anne Eschapasse. Meanwhile, her attempt to rein in an independent photo institute established inside the gallery by collector David Thomson (whose family investment company owns The Globe and Mail) led to its closure in 2020. She has also been making strategic hires including two new vice-presidents, the Black museum executive Angela Cassie (who had worked at Winnipeg’s Museum of Human Rights) to take responsibility for diversity and inclusion, and Tania Lafrenière to oversee a more people-centered approach to HR.

That’s behind the scenes. Up front, two Black artists now have special commissions displayed in the gallery’s most prominent lobbies. In the main entrance, U.S. artist Rashid Johnson has installed one of his semi-biographical sculptures where living plants, books and chunks of shea butter are mounted in a soaring metal armature. And Tau Lewis, a Jamaican-Canadian who lives in Brooklyn, has contributed Symphony, a gigantic rag doll sculpture of reclaimed fabric and floral garlands dangling from the gallery’s rotunda.

On the exterior, along the arcade once reserved for banners advertising big exhibitions, the gallery has installed photographs by Quebecker Geneviève Cadieux, a senior female artist whom it largely ignored during her mid-career years. Launching the Leading with Women series, the giant work, featuring a couple captured in some drama of romantic alienation, compensates for the surprising decision to ask Johnson, a prominent American artist whose work speaks specifically to African-American experience, to create the first piece viewers encounter inside the Canadian institution.

The main focus of Suda’s outreach, however, is not toward Black or female artists, but Indigenous communities. The gallery’s new slogan is the Anishinaabemowin word ankosé, meaning “everything is connected,” while the digital logo is a shifting pattern of crosses and starbursts. Although it represents the new Indigenous-centered philosophy, there have been complaints from Canadian graphic designers because the studio that created it is based in New York, as Suda, who has also been criticized for her less-than-fluent French, sometimes struggles to parse Ottawa politics.

Meanwhile, the strategic plan has raised eyebrows because its first purpose – “We nurture interconnection across time and place” – doesn’t mention visual art. Deeper down, it articulates a social justice mission with the visual arts building bridges and opening minds. Like most documents of its kind, it’s high-minded but abstract, promising both inclusivity and bold change with Indigenous knowledge at the core but offering few examples.

“The National Gallery is a national symbol and the idea of reconciliation is of paramount importance: I think the direction is right,” said Diana Nemiroff, director of the Carleton University Art Gallery and a former National Gallery curator who has written a forthcoming book about its female leadership. “In principle this is all good. We have to see how it plays out in practice.”

The practice right now is the current Rembrandt in Amsterdam exhibition where the gallery’s traditional summer blockbuster of European masterworks gets a facelift with contemporary works that speak to Black and Indigenous themes as well as information about Dutch colonialism and 17th-century trade with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

Suda, not afraid of criticizing past practices, points out that a 2019 Paul Gauguin show didn’t say enough about that artist’s exploitation of Tahitian culture. But Rembrandt, while his career blossomed with Dutch colonial wealth, was not himself a colonist. So what is the viewer to make of the attenuated link between Rembrandt and Turtle Island?

“The perspectives … come from a place of trust,” Suda says of curators’ willingness to broaden the agenda. “Trust that the Rembrandt narrative will not be diminished; trust that the Indigenous narrative won’t be window dressing, that the African perspective won’t be some kind of virtue signalling. The fact that we’re willing to get behind it … feels very courageous for an institution of this size and position.”

It is going to require both courage and trust – from the gallery and from its visitors – as change sweeps through the nation’s art collection.

Canada's Quinn to become 1st openly transgender, non-binary athlete to win Olympic medal

Midfielder part of women's soccer team playing for gold against Sweden later this week

Andrea Janus · CBC Sports · Posted: Aug 02, 2021 

Canada's Quinn, left, and Lindsey Horan of the United States battle for the ball during their semifinal soccer match at Tokyo 2020 at Kashima Stadium on Monday.

 (Fernando Vergara/The Associated Press)

Canada's appearance in the gold-medal match in Japan won't be the only first for the women's soccer team when it takes to the pitch Friday (10 p.m. ET on Thursday in Canada).

Quinn, a 25-year-old midfielder from Toronto, will also become the first openly transgender and non-binary athlete to win an Olympic medal, as the team is assured of a gold or silver.

Quinn came out publicly as transgender in a social media post last fall, changed their pronouns to they/them and now goes by one name.

Since Canada's 1-0 semifinal victory over the United States on Monday at Kashima Stadium, setting up the final against Sweden, Quinn said they've been "getting messages from young people saying they've never seen a trans person in sports before."

CBC SPORTS IN TOKYO Canada shocks U.S. in semis, will play for Olympic gold in women's soccer

Quinn played college soccer for Duke University in North Carolina, and is the highest-drafted Canadian in National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) history — taken third overall by the Washington Spirit in 2018. They now play for the OL Reign.

They won the bronze at the 2016 Games in Rio and were also on the squad that suffered a heartbreaking loss to the U.S. in London in 2012.

Quinn came out last September, telling The Canadian Press it was partly because they were "tired of being misgendered" in society and the media, and also to be a "visible figure" for younger people who may be "questioning their gender, exploring their gender."

New guidelines coming for transgender athletes

At these Games, another transgender athlete has helped spark a conversation about greater inclusivity in sports. New Zealand's Laurel Hubbard, the first openly transgender Olympic weightlifter, competed Monday in the women's +87-kg category, but was knocked out of medal contention by failing to complete a lift in the first portion of the event.

"Of course, I'm not entirely unaware of the controversy which surrounds my participation in these Games," Hubbard said after exiting the competition. "And, as such, I'd particularly like to thank the IOC [International Olympic Committee] for, I think, really affirming their commitment to the principles of Olympism, and establishing that sport is something for all people. It is inclusive. It is accessible."

In 2015, the IOC established a set of regulations for transgender athletes in the Games. It has said it will release updated guidelines in the coming months.

For Quinn, being an advocate and a role model is not new. While at Duke, Quinn sat on the board of the school's chapter of Athlete Ally, an organization that aims to foster equal opportunity in sports regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.

Canadian soccer international Quinn hopes to start conversation, help young trans people

"Athletics is the most exciting part of my life and it brings me the most joy," Quinn told CBC Sports on Monday.

"If I can allow kids to play the sports they love, that's my legacy and that's what I'm here for."

Laurel Hubbard, 1st openly transgender Olympic weightlifter, competes in Tokyo

43-year-old Kiwi ruled out of medal contention after failing to complete a lift

James Ellingworth, Sally Ho · The Associated Press · Posted: Aug 02, 2021 

New Zealand's Laurel Hubbard competes in the women's +87kg weightlifting competition at the Tokyo Olympics on Monday. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard finally got to compete at the Tokyo Olympics.

It didn't last long, but it was significant. Hubbard couldn't complete any of her first three lifts on Monday night, ruling her out of medal contention in the women's over-87-kilogram division that ultimately was won by China's Li Wenwen.

Hubbard made a heart gesture to the audience with her hands before leaving the competition arena.

Even without completing a lift, she was a pioneer for transgender athletes.

Canada's Quinn to become 1st openly transgender, non-binary athlete to win Olympic medal

Transgender Olympic weightlifter becomes focus of inclusion vs. fairness debate

While the New Zealander isn't the only transgender athlete competing at the Tokyo Games, she has been out for years and has been the focus of attention as a medal contender in weightlifting.

"Of course, I'm not entirely unaware of the controversy which surrounds my participation in these Games," Hubbard said after exiting the competition. "And, as such, I'd particularly like to thank the IOC, for, I think, really affirming their commitment to the principles of Olympism, and establishing that sport is something for all people. It is inclusive. It is accessible."

Hubbard also thanked the International Weightlifting Federation, because "they too have shown that weightlifting is an activity that's open to all of the people in the world," and the people of Japan for hosting the Games under extraordinary circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hubbard received applause and also applauded her fellow athletes when they were introduced on stage. Returning to compete, she took a moment to close her eyes, smile and take a deep breath. She overbalanced on her opening weight of 120 kilograms, taking the bar behind her shoulders.

Her second effort of 125 kilograms — a weight Hubbard has often managed in previous competitions — was ruled invalid on a majority decision by the referees. With New Zealand teammates and staff calling out encouragement, the third attempt was almost a repeat of the first.

IOC to release new 'framework' for transgender athletes

Athletes are eliminated if they do not record at least one valid lift in each of the two parts of the competition.

Li's victory gave China its seventh gold medal in weightlifting at the Tokyo Games. Her rivals never got close to the 320-kilogram winning total, with Emily Campbell finishing 37 kilograms behind to take silver. She became the first British woman to win a weightlifting medal.

Sarah Robles of the United States repeated her bronze from 2016 with 282, becoming the first U.S. woman with two weightlifting medals. Robles was challenging for second place, but had her last lift ruled invalid for elbow movement. "The refs should be doing their jobs so they're doing it. It is really, really strict but if there's anytime to be strict, it should be at the Olympics," Robles said.

The International Olympic Committee in 2015 drew up a set of recommendations for including transgender athletes. Many sports bodies, including the IWF, have implemented similar policies based on those recommendations. Different sports are allowed to set their own specific policies.

Transgender weightlifter thanks IOC for 'commitment to making sport inclusive and accessible'

Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard set to break new ground at Olympics

In weightlifting, that includes a requirement for athletes to show their testosterone is below a certain level after transitioning, a requirement which Hubbard met. She won a silver medal at the 2017 world championships but had not competed for 1 1/2 years before Tokyo because the coronavirus pandemic hit the competition schedule.

"My performance wasn't what I had hoped but I'm humbled by the support I've received from so many people around New Zealand," Hubbard said in a statement released by the New Zealand team."

The IOC will release a new "framework" for transgender athletes' eligibility in the coming months. That document is expected to take into account newer scientific studies published since the last major review in 2015. That will form a basis for sports to draw up their own updated policies.

Canadian judge, Olympics' 1st openly trans official, fears stealing spotlight from canoeist daughter

Tokyo Games shaping up as a watershed for LGBTQ Olympians

The New Zealand Olympic Committee recognized the sometimes-bitter discussions over what conditions should apply for transgender athletes to compete.

"We acknowledge that gender identity in sport is a highly sensitive and complex issue requiring a balance between human rights and fairness on the field of play," the NZOC said.

"The New Zealand team is committed to supporting all eligible New Zealand athletes at the Olympic Games, ensuring their mental and physical wellbeing as they compete on the world stage." Earlier Monday, Wang Zhouyu won the women's 87-kilogram category for the first of China's two weightlifting gold medals of the day. Wang won with a total of 270 kilograms. Tamara Salazar won the silver for Ecuador with a total 263, and Crismery Santana took the bronze with 256 for the Dominican Republic.

NLRB officer says Amazon violated US labor law

The officer recommends a new election in Amazon’s Bessemer union drive

By Russell Brandom and Zoe Schiffer Aug 2, 2021, 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

An initial assessment from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has recommended workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama hold a new election to determine whether to unionize with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The recommendation comes from the hearing officer assigned to the case and is only a preliminary ruling, but still hands the union a surprising win in a fight that many in the labor movement had considered lost.

In April, workers at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama voted not to unionize by a margin of more than 2-to-1. But in the aftermath of the result, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) alleged that Amazon had illegally influenced the drive and petitioned the NLRB to invalidate the result. In particular, the RWDSU raised questions around a USPS mailbox installed in the fulfillment center parking lot during the drive. The union alleged it gave some workers the impression that Amazon had improper access to mailed ballots.

RWDSU’s defeat opened the door for other unions to announce plans to unionize Amazon workers. On June 24th, the Teamsters announced a nationwide campaign to organize Amazon’s sprawling workforce. The teamsters committed to spending “all resources necessary” to make the campaign successful.

Now, it appears RWDSU is getting another chance. “Throughout the NLRB hearing, we heard compelling evidence how Amazon tried to illegally interfere with and intimidate workers as they sought to exercise their right to form a union,” said RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum in a statement. “We support the hearing officer’s recommendation that the NLRB set aside the election results and direct a new election...Amazon’s behavior throughout the election process was despicable. Amazon cheated, they got caught, and they are being held accountable.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The hearing officer’s recommendation is only a preliminary assessment of the claim, and does not by itself have any legal force. A full ruling will only come when the acting regional director issues a decision for the case, which will likely not occur for serveral weeks. Parties to the case will still have the opportunity to file exceptions in the intervening time.

As the case proceeds, Amazon’s labor issues have spread well beyond Bessemer. In June, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters voted to prioritize organizing efforts for Amazon delivery drivers, creating a special division to focus on the company’s operations over the next five years. “Amazon workers are calling for safer and better working conditions,” said the project’s director at the time, “and with today’s resolution, we are activating the full force of our union to support them.”

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/08/anatomy-of-anti-union-meeting-how-no.html

How No Evil Foods, a plant-based meat company, squashed a union drive

New iron-air battery aims to make multi-day, clean energy storage systems a reality
MINING.COM Staff Writer | July 27, 2021 | 

Wind turbines. (Image from Pxhere, CC0).

Form Energy has announced the launching of its first commercial product, a rechargeable iron-air battery capable of delivering electricity for 100 hours at system costs competitive with conventional power plants and at less than 1/10th the cost of lithium-ion.


According to the Massachusetts-based company, its front-of-the-meter battery can be used continuously over a multi-day period and will enable a secure and fully renewable electric grid year-round.

“We conducted a broad review of available technologies and have reinvented the iron-air battery to optimize it for multi-day energy storage for the electric grid,” Mateo Jaramillo, Form Energy’s CEO and co-founder, said in a media statement.

“With this technology, we are tackling the biggest barrier to deep decarbonization: making renewable energy available when and where it’s needed, even during multiple days of extreme weather or grid outages.”

The battery’s basic principle of operation is reversible rusting, which means that while discharging, the battery breathes in oxygen from the air and converts iron metal to rust. While charging, the application of an electrical current converts the rust back to iron and the battery breathes out oxygen.

(Image by Form Energy).

Each individual battery is about the size of a washing machine, which is filled with a water-based, non-flammable electrolyte, similar to the electrolyte used in AA batteries. Inside of the liquid electrolyte there are stacks of between 10 and 20 meter-scale cells, which include iron electrodes and air electrodes.

To create a storage system, Form Energy proposes grouping together thousands of batteries in modular megawatt-scale power blocks, which are to be installed in environmentally protected enclosures.

Depending on the system size, tens to hundreds of these power blocks will be connected to the electricity grid. For scale, in its least dense configuration, a one-megawatt system requires about an acre of land. Higher density configurations can achieve >3MW/acre.

“Our battery systems can be sited anywhere, even in urban areas, to meet utility-scale energy needs,” the company’s website states. “Our batteries complement the function of lithium-ion batteries, allowing for an optimal balance of our technology and lithium-ion batteries to deliver the lowest-cost renewable and reliable electric system year-round.”

According to Jaramillo, Form Energy’s goal is to source the iron domestically and manufacture the battery systems near where they will be sited. The firm has already signed a deal with Great River Energy to develop its first project near the heart of America’s Iron Range in Minnesota.

It also received a $200-million Series D financing round led by ArcelorMittal’s XCarb innovation fund, which should be devoted to the development of iron materials for the battery systems.

Besides the steel giant, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Form Energy also counts Breakthrough Energy Ventures – a climate investment fund whose investors include Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos among its backers.

UNESCO names Romanian ancient gold mine settlement a world heritage site
Reuters | July 27, 2021 | 

The ancient Roman gold mining area of Rosia Montana, in western Romania, is now a world heritage site. (Image courtesy of AdreDea | Flickr Commons.)

UNESCO added the ancient Roman gold mining area of Rosia Montana in western Romania to its list of world heritage sites on Tuesday, throwing the town a lifeline and further complicating a long-stalled mine project.


Canada’s Gabriel Resources, which had planned to build Europe’s largest open cast gold mine in Rosia Montana, is currently seeking $4.4 billion in damages from Romania for losses related to its stalled project at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

The government, which has a 20% stake in the project, officially withdrew its support for the mine in 2014 after months of country-wide street protests against it. The company gained concession rights to the area in 1999.

“With joint efforts from officials and specialists Rosia Montana must become a role model of showcasing the patrimony through sustainable development,” Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said on Tuesday, saluting UNESCO’s decision.

THE GOVERNMENT, WHICH HAS A 20% STAKE IN THE PROJECT, OFFICIALLY WITHDREW ITS SUPPORT FOR THE MINE IN 2014 AFTER MONTHS OF COUNTRY-WIDE STREET PROTESTS AGAINST IT

The town, which has few employment options and poor infrastructure, could see an inflow of funds after UNESCO’s decision, officials said.

Not everyone was pleased. Rosia Montana’s mayor Eugen Furdui, a long-time supporter of the mining project, said the decision only brought additional conservation costs.

The European Union state first put the ancient Roman mine tunnels and vestiges up for inclusion on the world heritage list in 2016.

Gabriel Resources did not comment on Tuesday’s decision.

Rosia Montana’s remaining reserves – an estimated 314 tonnes of gold and 1,500 tonnes of silver – put it at the core of a decades-long battle between Gabriel Resources and a handful of local residents and civic and environmental groups which oppose the potential damages posed by the company’s plans.

The project envisioned carving open four quarries over the mine’s lifespan, which would destroy four mountain tops and wipe out three outlying villages of 16 that make up Rosia Montana municipality.

(By Luiza Ilie; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Rio Tinto faces UK finance watchdog probe into value of Oyu Tolgoi
Reuters | July 27, 2021 | 

Oyu Tolgoi is Rio Tinto’s biggest copper growth project.

 (Image courtesy of Rio Tinto.)

Britain’s financial watchdog is conducting a probe into Rio Tinto and its $6.75 billion underground copper project in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.


The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) was investigating whether the Anglo-Australian miner breached listing rules in disclosures about the value of Oyu Tolgoi in 2018 and 2019, the report added, citing people familiar with the matter.

Rio reached a binding agreement with Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd earlier this year over funding for expansion of the copper-gold mine, whose development has faced cost and timeline blowouts and has caused acrimony between the mining giant and its junior partner.

The expansion of Oyu Tolgoi mine, Rio’s biggest copper growth project, has seen costs balloon up to $6.75 billion, about $1.4 billion higher than Rio’s estimate in 2016, and has led to friction over funding with Turquoise Hill.

Both FCA and Rio Tinto declined Reuters’ requests for comments.

Oyu Tolgoi, one of the world’s largest-known copper and gold deposits, is 34% owned by the Mongolian government. The rest is held by Turquoise Hill, in which Rio owns a 50.8% stake.

(By Indranil Sarkar; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)