Browsed by
Month: August 2018

The digital corruption of the human brain

The digital corruption of the human brain

Comments 0 Comment

Maryanne Wolf writes: Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older boys don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on Kindles or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknownst to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly,…

Read More Read More

Detecting ‘deepfake’ videos in the blink of an eye

Detecting ‘deepfake’ videos in the blink of an eye

Comments 0 Comment

It’s actually very hard to find photos of people with their eyes closed. Bulin/Shutterstock.com By Siwei Lyu, University at Albany, State University of New York A new form of misinformation is poised to spread through online communities as the 2018 midterm election campaigns heat up. Called “deepfakes” after the pseudonymous online account that popularized the technique – which may have chosen its name because the process uses a technical method called “deep learning” – these fake videos look very realistic….

Read More Read More

California advances an ambitious climate policy that should be a model for the world

California advances an ambitious climate policy that should be a model for the world

Comments 0 Comment

MIT Technology Review reports: California is accelerating its rollout of clean energy, even as the White House is racing to unravel climate regulations. On Tuesday evening, the California Assembly passed a bill requiring 100 percent of the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free sources by the end of 2045, putting one of the world’s most aggressive clean-energy policies on track for the governor’s desk. Given the size of California’s economy and the bill’s ambitions, it “would be the most important…

Read More Read More

Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people suffer from nutritional deficiencies

Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people suffer from nutritional deficiencies

Comments 0 Comment

The Guardian reports: Rising levels of carbon dioxide could make crops less nutritious and damage the health of hundreds of millions of people, research has revealed, with those living in some of the world’s poorest regions likely to be hardest hit. Previous research has shown that many food crops become less nutritious when grown under the CO2 levels expected by 2050, with reductions of protein, iron and zinc estimated at 3–17%. Now experts say such changes could mean that by…

Read More Read More

Death toll from Hurricane Maria higher than 9/11

Death toll from Hurricane Maria higher than 9/11

Comments 0 Comment

CBS News reports: Hurricane Maria killed far more people in Puerto Rico than initially thought, accounting for an estimated 2,975 deaths on the island from September 2017 through February 2018, according to a new analysis. The study found that those in low-income areas, and elderly men, were at greatest risk of dying. The independent analysis was commissioned by the governor of Puerto Rico and conducted by researchers at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. CBS News obtained…

Read More Read More

Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism

Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism

Comments 0 Comment

Josh Glancy writes: [During a speech Jeremy Corbyn gave in 2013,w]hile bemoaning the activities of a group of Zionists, he identified two problems. “One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either,” he said. “I think they need two lessons, which we can help them with.” There’s been some debate over whether he was berating just that particular…

Read More Read More

‘I remember Pearl Harbor,’ (1941) said Trump (born in 1946)

‘I remember Pearl Harbor,’ (1941) said Trump (born in 1946)

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: During a tense meeting at the White House in June, President Trump caught Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe off guard with a pointed remark. “I remember Pearl Harbor,” the president said, referring to the surprise attack that propelled the United States into World War II. Trump then launched into a blistering critique of Japan’s economic policies, according to people familiar with the conversation. He railed against the U.S. trade deficit with Japan and urged Abe to…

Read More Read More

Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals

Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals

Comments 0 Comment

The Guardian reports: Air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health. The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost…

Read More Read More

Bruce Ohr fought Russian organized crime for decades. Now he’s being attacked by Trump

Bruce Ohr fought Russian organized crime for decades. Now he’s being attacked by Trump

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: When a lawyer for one of Russia’s most powerful reputed crime bosses arrived at F.B.I. headquarters one day around 2006, he wanted to cut a deal. The Russian, Semion Y. Mogilevich, had been indicted three years earlier by the department on charges of defrauding a company outside Philadelphia out of $150 million and could not travel for fear of arrest. As the lawyer made his pitch, a supervising F.B.I. agent and a senior career Justice…

Read More Read More

John McCain opened Pandora’s box – Sarah Palin came out, but Trump was right behind her

John McCain opened Pandora’s box – Sarah Palin came out, but Trump was right behind her

Comments 0 Comment

David Smith writes: Much has been said about the contrast between the late John McCain – war veteran, bipartisan statesman, noble truth-teller – and a man who seemed way less likely to become president, Donald Trump. But as the Arizona senator, like Shakespeare’s John of Gaunt, spent his twilight years raging against the coarsening of civic life, he must have been aware that his legacy would include a decision that helped unleash the very forces he came to despise. Wednesday…

Read More Read More

ISIS is ready for a resurgence

ISIS is ready for a resurgence

Comments 0 Comment

Hassan Hassan writes: For nearly a year, Islamic State–watchers had wondered whether Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the group, was alive. Then, on Wednesday, he resurfaced for the first time in 11 months, releasing a recorded speech to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. In the 55-minute speech—his longest of those that have been made public—he referenced recent events, indicating that it was recorded over the past few weeks. The speech came amid reports of a resurgence by…

Read More Read More

As many languages die out, new languages also emerge

As many languages die out, new languages also emerge

Comments 0 Comment

Peter Bakker writes: In Italy they speak Italian. In Germany they speak German, and in Denmark, Danish. If this was true for all other countries, there would be 193 languages spoken today. But in reality, there are many more: 8,475 according to glottolog.org, where linguists map languages from around the world. In fact few countries speak just one or two languages natively, such as Iceland and Denmark. Besides their mother tongue, most people there also speak English. And if that…

Read More Read More

John McCain tried ‘to inspire young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest’

John McCain tried ‘to inspire young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest’

Comments 0 Comment

The cynicism with which most Americans view most politicians, has long made it difficult to believe a claim such as John McCain’s stated goal during the 2000 presidential race — that he wanted ‘to inspire young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest’ — and yet while travelling with the candidate, David Foster Wallace couldn’t ignore McCain’s moral authority — a very rare commodity on the campaign trail. In October of ’67 McCain was himself still…

Read More Read More