Affectiva says its algorithms can detect hidden emotions in facial expressions.
Credit: Affectiva
Facial recognition tech has been around for decades, but it has been progressing in leaps and bounds in recent years due to advances in computing vision and artificial intelligence (AI), tech experts say.
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Subject Matter Suggestions?
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I am going to start on a new piece that’s approximately 51"x84" and looking for suggestions as to what I should draw at that scale. Keep in my mind I do detailed/realistic art. Hyperrealism is the way I want to go, but I would need a very high resolution photo, I am just having trouble with subject matter. And I do plan on selling the piece once it’s completed and possibly making prints as well. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Thanks -SBC The drawing I posted was one I originally did when I was 17 (bottom) and I decided to touch it up a little and got a little out of hand, the top is currently where it’s at. There is more to the picture of course. submitted by /u/SketchesByChris |
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The ascent of Artificial Intelligence: How will AI change the nation-state?
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MIT Researchers Automate Drug Design With Machine Learning
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are using machine learning to automate the process of developing and improving drugs.
Credit: University of Maryland School of Pharmacy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers are using machine learning to automate the process of developing and improving drugs.
The team trained a machine learning model on 250,000 molecular graphs, detailed images of a molecule’s structure. The model generated molecules, found the best base molecules from which to build, and designed new molecules with better properties.
The researchers found the model was able to complete these tasks more effectively than other systems designed to automate the drug design process.
In addition, the model was asked to modify 800 molecules to improve them for certain properties while keeping them similar in structure to the lead molecule. About 80% of the time, the system created new, similarly structured molecules that scored higher for those properties than did the original molecules.
From Engadget
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Abstracts Copyright © 2018 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
Drones Survey African Wildlife
Scientists are using drone flights and automated image analysis to develop a new approach to counting animals in the wild.
Credit: gateway-africa.com
Scientists funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) are using drone flights and automated image analysis to develop a new approach to counting animals in the wild.
The new technique enables fast and accurate counting of gnu, oryx, and other large mammals living in wildlife reserves.
The drones remotely photograph wilderness areas, then the images are analyzed using object-recognition software and verified by humans. The drones enable researchers to study vast areas, with more than 150 images captured for each square kilometer.
The researchers use deep learning to analyze this mass of raw visual data, eliminating most images containing no wildlife; in other images, the algorithm highlights the patterns most likely to be animals.
The team trained the artificial intelligence system using an international crowdsourcing campaign in which volunteers tracked animals in thousands of aerial photos of the savanna taken from a Namibian wildlife reserve.
From Swiss National Science Foundation
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Abstracts Copyright © 2018 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
IJCAI 2018 Kicks Off; DeepMind AlphaGo Wins Marvin Minsky Medal
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Plant-e: heats, shoots and leaves — electricity from living plants
— the story —
Plants could soon provide our electricity. In a small way they already are doing that in research labs and greenhouses at project Plant-e — a university and commercially sponsored research group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
The Plant Microbial Fuel Cell from Plant-e can generate electricity from the natural interaction between plant roots and soil bacteria. It works by taking advantage of the up to 70 percent of organic material produced by a plant’s photo-synthesis process that cannot be used by the plant — and is excreted through the roots.
As natural occurring bacteria around the roots break down this organic residue, electrons are released as a waste product. By placing an electrode close to the bacteria to absorb these electrons, the research team — led by Marjolein Helder PhD — is able to generate electricity.
Helder said: “Solar panels are making more energy per square meter — but we expect to reduce the costs of our system technology in the future. And our system can be used for a variety of applications.”
Plant Microbial Fuel Cells can be used on many scales. An experimental 15 square meter model can produce enough energy to power a computer notebook. Plant-e is working on a system for large scale electricity production in existing green areas like wetlands and rice paddy fields.
Helder said: “Our technology is making electricity — but also could be used as roof insulation or as a water collector. On a bigger scale it’s possible to produce rice and electricity at the same time, and in that way combine food and energy production.”
A first prototype of a green electricity roof has been installed on one building at Wageningen University and researchers are keeping a close eye on what is growing there. The first field pilots will be started in 2014. The technology was patented in 2007.
After 5 years of lab research: Plant-e is now taking the first steps toward commercializing the technology. In the future, bio-electricity from plants could produce as much as 3.2 watts per square meter of plant growth.
w. descriptions from: EuroNews
Plant-e | main
Plant-e | brochure
Plant-e | YouTube channel
video | electricity from plants
— watch • videos from Plant-e —
Plant-e | video: animation
Plant-e | video: the power of plants
Plant-e | video: the next step in development
on the web | essentials
Wageningen Univ. | main
Wageningen Univ. | research institutes: plant research
Wageningen Univ. | research institutes: centre for development innovation
Wageningen Univ. | story: Dutch Innovation Award for Plant-e
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This Drug Combo Extends Lifespan and Healthspan in Mice by Killing ‘Zombie’ Cells
Aging may seem like the most natural—and inevitable—thing in life. Yet according to a new study in Nature Medicine, rejuvenating an aging body may be as easy as kitchen renovations. Simply swap drill and hammer for a cocktail of two drugs already on the market; rather than pulling out decrepit cabinets, kill off aged “zombie” cells.
These so-called senescent cells are a curious oddity: they’re frail, beat-up, and unable to perform their usual roles. Yet they simply refuse to die. What’s more, zombie cells actively leak inflammatory chemicals into their surroundings, damaging nearby tissue and—in a sense—“spreading” the negative effects of aging.
Yet because they’re extremely rare, amounting to only eight percent of the body’s cells at most, scientists have long wondered just how much they contribute to the aging process.
Now, a team from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester convincingly showed that zombie cells punch far above their weight when it comes to driving age. By transplanting a group of aged cells just one ten-thousandth of a mouse’s total cells into middle-aged mice, the team accelerated the recipients’ aging process, turning them weak and frail in just a few weeks.
In contrast, wiping out senescent cells within ancient mice—the equivalent of a 90-year old human—increased their lifespan by 36 percent, without being haunted by diseases that usually mark late life. All it took was two simple drugs.
“This study is really impressive,” said Dr. Felipe Sierra at the National Institute on Aging, who was not involved in the research.
Senolytic Boom
The new results join an increasing mountain of evidence that senolytics—drugs that kill off aging cells—may be a sort of “silver bullet” against aging.
With age, our cells gradually accumulate damage to their DNA. Although the body has natural defenses against minor perturbations, eventually the damages accumulate to a point of no return. The aged, broken cell is given a terrible choice: suicide, become cancerous, or transform into a strange, half-dormant “zombie-like” state called senescence.
Although scientists initially thought senescence was a guardrail against cancer, the picture changed recently. Zombie cells lurk in aged kidneys, hearts, and brains, actively pumping out a whole load of junk into their surroundings. The secretions are a toxic mix of inflammatory compounds that, among other things, kill off young cells and disable stem cells from producing healthy replacements.
“Senescent cells put the brakes on the production of new cells,” explained Dr. James Kirkland, who led the new study.
Back in 2016, another team from the Mayo Clinic genetically tweaked some mice so that their bodies actively destroyed 50–70 percent of senescent cells. The resulting mice had healthier kidneys, stronger hearts, and lived 20 percent longer than their peers.
Then, a year later, another team replicated these findings using a chemical “torpedo” that hunts down senescent cells and efficiently kills them off, all without damaging healthy cells. Not only did the treated aged mice regrow their scraggly fur into rich, luscious pelts, they also had better kidney function and perked up in energy levels, choosing to run and jump rather than sleep huddled in a corner.
“As a concept [for slowing or reversing aging], senolytics is completely valid,” said Sierra, adding that pharmaceutical companies are investigating over a couple dozen potential senolytics in a race to bring the first to market.
The problem, however, is that not everyone is convinced that senescent cells cause aging. They’re extremely low in number even in the elderly. How can such a small fraction of cells wreak so much havoc? And if we really did get rid of them within an already-frail body, wouldn’t that cause even more damage?
An Aging Infection
Kirkland addressed these questions with a series of experiments.
If, his team reasoned, senescent cells actually cause aging, then transplanting them would “infect” healthy, young animals with an aging disease. They manufactured a few million senescent cells by zapping healthy ones with a hefty dose of irradiation, then transplanted between two and five hundred thousand cells into young healthy mice, the equivalent of a 20-to-30-year-old human.
Remarkably, as early as two weeks after the surgery, the recipient mice began displaying signs of aging: they had trouble grasping things and couldn’t walk as fast as mice transplanted with an equal amount of normal cells. The dose mattered: these negative effects only showed up in the group given 500,000 cells.
This means that if senescent cells make up about 0.01 to 0.03 percent of all cells in the body, then that’s enough to trigger the body to physically age, at least in mice.
Even stranger was this: although the transplanted cells only survived for 40 days, the aging effects lasted up to six months. A closer look found that the senescent cells had spread aging throughout nearby tissue like spreading a disease—the recipient mice’s own cells began displaying signs of senescence. What’s more, distant tissues, which did not receive any transplanted cells, also started showing signs of aging.
“Senescence spreading may explain how a small number of transplanted SEN [senescent] cells caused such profound, long-lasting, and deleterious systemic effects,” the authors explained.
The effects were even more prominent when the recipients were 17-month-old mice. Roughly the equivalent of 60-to-70-year-old humans, these mice deteriorated rapidly and were five-times more likely to die in the next year after transplant than middle-aged mice.
An Aging Elixir
The team next gave mice transplanted with senescent cells a cocktail of two drugs (“D+Q”): dasatinib, used to treat leukemia, and quercetin, a plant chemical often found in red wine, kale, and a variety of unregulated supplements.
These are the first senolytics reported, and the team found them by analyzing the different pathways senescent cells use to ward off suicide. Even more importantly: they work in human tissues to kill off senescent cells and reduce their inflammatory secretions.
In young mice transplanted with senescent cells, just three days of D+Q treatment efficiently killed off the aged cells. The recipients were also spared from premature aging, in that they remained relatively physically fit even after the senescent cell assault.
The drug combo also worked its magic in older mice. When given intermittently for four months to geriatric mice, the drugs boosted their appetite and increased overall activity. It’s like a 90-year-old human swallowing a few drugs and suddenly jumping off the couch and running around the block.
Even more impressively, they lived 36 percent longer (that’s huge!) without an increased risk of getting cancer or other age-related diseases. That is, they had a longer healthspan—the current goal of anti-aging research.
“We can say with certainty that senescent cells can cause health problems in young mice, including causing physical dysfunction and lowering survival rates, and that the use of senolytics can significantly improve both healthspan and lifespan in much older naturally-aged animals,” said Kirkland.
A Methuselah Wonder?
The D+Q combo is already in clinical trials to ward off senescence in kidney diseases. But Kirkland isn’t ready to test out the combo on himself.
“People should absolutely not be taking this until we have the results from clinical trials,” he stressed.
He has cause for concern. Other promising anti-aging therapies, such as resveratrol and young blood, all came up short in clinical trials. And the side effects of D+Q can’t be easily brushed off. Dasatinib, as a type of chemotherapy drug, has a danger list dozens of entries long starting with low blood cell counts and bleeding problems.
Nevertheless, senolytics as a field is rapidly maturing from the backwaters of science into mainstream. As is the idea that aging—rather than being an inevitable part of life—can be reversed, even at advanced stages.
“We once felt that once people are elderly, it’s too late to avoid geriatric syndromes like frailty, loss of independence, decreased muscle strength, and forms of mild cognitive impairment,” said Kirkland. “We have to rethink that.”
Image Credit: POOKAOSTOCK / Shutterstock.com
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Microsoft and National Geographic Form AI for Earth Innovation Grant Partnership
The grants will support projects that use AI to advance conservation research.
Credit: National Geographic
Microsoft Corp. and National Geographic announced a new partnership to advance scientific exploration and research on critical environmental challenges with the power of artificial intelligence (AI). The newly created $1 million AI for Earth Innovation Grant program will provide award recipients with financial support, access to Microsoft cloud and AI tools, inclusion in the National Geographic Explorer community, and affiliation with National Geographic Labs, an initiative launched by National Geographic to accelerate transformative change and exponential solutions to the world’s biggest challenges by harnessing data, technology, and innovation. Individuals and organizations working at the intersection of environmental science and computer science can apply for a grant online.
“National Geographic is synonymous with science and exploration, and in Microsoft we found a partner that is well-positioned to accelerate the pace of scientific research and new solutions to protect our natural world,” says Jonathan Baillie, chief scientist and executive vice president, science and exploration at the National Geographic Society. “With today’s announcement, we will enable outstanding explorers seeking solutions for a sustainable future with the cloud and AI technologies that can quickly improve the speed, scope, and scale of their work as well as support National Geographic Labs’ activities around technology and innovation for a planet in balance.”
“Microsoft is constantly exploring the boundaries of what technology can do, and what it can do for people and the world,” says Lucas Joppa, chief environmental scientist at Microsoft. “We believe that humans and computers, working together through AI, can change the way that society monitors, models, and manages Earth’s natural systems. We believe this because we’ve seen it—we’re constantly amazed by the advances our AI for Earth collaborators have made over the past months. Scaling this through National Geographic’s global network will create a whole new generation of explorers who use AI to create a more sustainable future for the planet and everyone on it.”
The $1 million AI for Earth Innovation Grant program will provide financial support to between five and 15 novel projects that use AI to advance conservation research toward a more sustainable future. The grants will support the creation and deployment of open-sourced trained models and algorithms that will be made broadly available to other environmental researchers, which offers greater potential to provide exponential impact.
Qualifying applications will focus on one or more of the core areas: agriculture, biodiversity conservation, climate change, and water. Applications are now open and must be submitted by Oct. 8, 2018. Recipients will be announced in December 2018. Additional information is available online.
Calling all AI Practioners for CFP
We’re organizing DataEngConf in Europe (Barcelona) for the first time this year and we’re looking for speakers to submit their talk proposals. DataEngConf is the first technical conference that bridges the gap between data scientists, data engineers and data analysts. Conference talks focus on examples of real-world architectures of data pipelines and platforms, and applied, practical examples of data science & data engineering.
We are looking for deeply technical talks with practical real world examples and applications. If that’s you we’d love to give you a chance to speak at our event.
You can submit your talks at: https://dataeng.co/2NY379N
Submission deadline is Friday July 20. See you at the conference 🙂
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