The Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act would require phone carriers and companies to block robocalls without charging customers extra. The legislation would also require carriers to make sure that customers’ calls are coming from actual numbers and not robocalls. The TRACED Act would also encourage the Department of Justice to take more legal action against robocallers. The legislation still has to be signed by President Donald Trump, but The Hill says that the TRACED Act will probably be signed into law within the next week.
A book and a reader engage in dialogue to uncover and confront stereotypes. Photo provided
AHuman Library? Like all libraries, this one is filled with books. The difference in this library is that all of the books are humans with lived experiences and compelling stories. At a Human Library event, books and readers come together at a specific time and place to engage in dialogue. In this format, a book and a reader spend about a half hour together sharing information, asking and answering questions, and increasing understanding. Human books on Their bookshelf represents a group in our society that is often subjected to such things as stereotyping, prejudice, stigmatization, or discrimination because of their lifestyle, a diagnosis, belief, disability, social status, or ethnic origin. Ronni Abergel, founder of the Human Library, calls a library event “living literature.” Each reading is a personal and specific experience.
Residents of Tribeca and Chinatown are up in arms over the decision to build a 45-story jail tower at 125 White Street, currently the Manhattan Detention Complex more infamously known as “the Tombs.” While the city had originally planned to shift a portion of the island’s projected 5,000 inmates (the administration expects to reach that number from the current 9,000 through bail and sentencing reform) to a 40-story tower at 80 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan, that fell through in November of 2018.
Now, the plan is to demolish the two towers at 124 White Street (13 stories) and 125 White Street (9 stories) and replace them with a 45-story, 1.27-million-square-foot tower with 1,440 beds.
In a message recently uploaded to a dark web forum, a hacker solicited bids on an illegally obtained commodity. — it was a set of personal data from thousands of plus-size women.
Others in the dark web forum discussed how to monetize the women’s personal data by targeting them with scams meant to sell weight-loss supplements or plus-size clothing. The original poster included a sample set of a few thousand women’s data, most of whom lived in the US, suggesting the full set included hundreds of thousands of data points.
The hacker gained unauthorized access to the data from women’s clothing websites, according to DynaRisk, a cybersecurity firm who detected the activity and shared its findings with Business Insider. DynaRisk determined that the data was exposed in late August.
Most cybercriminals will find a list of 500 million hacked email addresses and they’ll bombard them with spam, but they don’t know what to send them … in this case, they did and they might be seeking out this specific type of product.
The National Labor Relations Board has opened an investigation into Google After the firing of the so-called “Thanksgiving Four” — Google employees who were prominent in their attempts to organize a labor union before Google terminated them days before the Thanksgiving holiday — a spokesperson confirmed to Digital Trends.
In a statement after their firings, the four alleged they had been let go for “engaging in protected labor organizing.”
When asked for comment, Google provided a rehash of the statement it sent out when the news originally broke about the firings: The company said the individuals that were terminated “were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our long-standing data security policies, including systematically accessing and disseminating other employees’ materials and work. No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company’s activities.”
Smart TVs today come equipped with microphones or cameras that enable you to control the device via your voice or use it for video chatting. The FBI warns that the device could be used to spy on you. TV manufacturer and app developers may be listening and watching you, and that same television can also be a gateway for hackers to come into your home. Samsung even tweeted a reminder to owners of its smart TV to scan their sets for viruses every few weeks in order to “prevent malicious software attacks” — and then deleted the tweet after media coverage sparked backlash. If you do buy a TV, make sure to change any default passwords and figure out how you can turn off its cameras or microphones.
Coca-Cola was first created in 1886 by Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton, who modeled his beverage after a then-popular French refreshment, coca wine, made by mixing coca-leaf extract with Bordeaux wine. To avoid liquor regulations, Pemberton chose to mix his coca-leaf extract with sugar syrup instead of wine. He also added kola-nut extract, lending Coca-Cola the second half of its name, as well as an extra jolt of caffeine.
Cocaine was not made illegal in the United States until 1914, and until then, the substance had a variety of (sometimes questionable) medical uses. Cocaine tonics, powders and pills were popularly believed to cure a variety of ailments, from headache and fatigue to constipation, nausea, asthma and impotence.
Experts warn that many CBD products are unregulated, and very little is known about CBD’s medicinal effects or potential hazards.
According to Vox, CBD research has been restricted because—at least for now—the Drug Enforcement Administration classifies it as an illegal substance, and researchers in the United States are required to have a license to possess and study the compound.
Yasmin Hurd, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine and the director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai, said scientists and consumers need to “do the research” before trusting CBD.
“It’s crazy that this substance is being consumed by everybody, yet we still don’t know the mechanism of action,” she said. “People are making it out to be a nirvana kind of drug, and that’s a problem. One compound cannot cure everything” (Rabin, New York Times, 2/25; Nosowitz, Vox, 1/17).
Wikipedia defines time travel as the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a widely recognized concept in philosophy and fiction. The idea of a time machine was popularized by H. G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine.
Forward time travel, outside the usual sense of the perception of time, is an extensively observed phenomenon and well-understood within the framework of special relativity and general relativity. However, making one body advance or delay more than a few milliseconds compared to another body is not feasible with current technology. As for backward time travel, it is possible to find solutions in general relativity that allow for it, but the solutions require conditions that may not be physically possible. Traveling to an arbitrary point in space time has a very limited support in theoretical physics, and usually is connected only with quantum mechanics or wormholes, also known as Einstein-Rosen bridges
The absence of time travelers from the future is a variation of the Fermi paradox. As the absence of extraterrestrial visitors does not prove they do not exist, so the absence of time travelers fails to prove time travel is physically impossible; it might be that time travel is physically possible but is never developed or is cautiously used. Carl Sagan once suggested the possibility that time travelers could be here but are disguising their existence or are not recognized as time travelers
Underwater Park
Flaming falls
They claim to scan your genetic code for everything from physical features to personality traits. The only problem? Experts say it’s a complete scam. A site called Genomelink, which advertises tests for everything from medical conditions and mental illnesses to ludicrously specific personality traits including “loneliness,” “social communication problems,” and “vulnerability to helicopter parenting.” The startup predicted that she had a peanut allergy, but Mary told Futurism that “peanut butter is one of the true loves of my life.” Other errors in Mary’s report included traits like blood iron levels, body fat measurements, hearing problems, height, and skin complexion.
A company called Soccer Genomics claims to examine a child’s DNA to create a sports training regimen to turn them into the perfect soccer player. An outfit called GenoPalate told a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter that their DNA demanded a diet of elk meat and passion fruit. A venture called Vinome claims it can recommend the perfect wine for each person based on their genetic code.
The problem, according to experts, is that these companies are promising information about DNA with a granularity that even scientists can’t deliver. Deanna Church, a geneticist at the biotech company Inscripta, told Futurism the tests are “all equally useless.”
“There is not a scientific basis for this sort of testing,” she said. “I certainly would not recommend anyone spend any money on this sort of thing.”Geneticists have only started to crack DNA’s code and experts say that they’re nowhere near able to predict something as complex as personality traits — and that any startup claiming to do so should raise immediate red flags
In recent years, a particular breed of high-achieving technology executive has begun microdosing LSD to increase productivity and as a route up the career ladder.
NASA scientists has reported that, blood flow can stop and even reverse in the upper bodies of astronauts.
The study could have some major implications about prolonged trips through deep space, as we’re still trying to nail down the exact effects of spending long periods in microgravity.
The study looked at periodic ultrasound tests of 11 healthy astronauts who staffed the International Space Station.
The results were alarming: blood flow had either stagnated or reversed in the left internal jugular vein, a major blood vessel on the side of the neck, in seven crew members. The tests also found a clot and a partial clot in two of the crew members after their return to Earth.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google’s financial project, aka Cache, would have accounts run by Citigroup. The financial institutions would be the main focus on Google’s Cache, rather than Google creating its own, separate financial brand.
Federal regulators are already looking into whether Google has an unfair advantage in the financial realm, given its other products like search, home speakers, Google suite, and more. Federal regulators have been wary about big tech companies entering into the financial market, such as Facebook with its proposed cryptocurrency, known as Libra.
A cluster of companies you’ve likely never heard of collect, compile, and analyze your online commerce activities and interactions – what you’ve bought from where and who and on which device, who and how you’ve corresponded with or complained to about purchases or services, etc.
These companies not only collect and AI analyze intimate interactions, but they also sell this data to clients. You’re assigned a “score,” something like a credit rating that impacts how commerce companies treat you online, or even whether you can get a job. Unlike a credit score, however, there’s no one to protest to if you don’t like your online activity score – assuming you could even access it.
A June report from the Consumer Education Foundation exposed what it calls “secret surveillance scoring.” It found 11 companies that collect, package, rate, and often sell our online commerce data to the companies that then use this data to decide how to conduct business with us. The Consumer Education Found has petitioned the FTC to investigate.
These companies often explain that this data helps e-commerce sites detect fraud and abuse, and help commerce sites improve service both broadly and individually.
Best Buy was using The Retail Equation to analyze consumer return behavior and ban individuals from making returns.
This secret surveillance could soon be coming to an end.
A Charlotte woman was surprised to find out Tuesday she had a warrant out for her arrest — for failing to return two library books.
Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile — formed a joint venture, the Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI), to establish a new messaging standard with Rich Communications Services (RCS).
By the end of 2020, the CCMI intends to launch a new default app for messaging across all Android devices sold by the participating carriers.Wireless carriers: US wireless carriers are embracing RCS in part because it unlocks a new revenue stream within business-to-consumer communication.
A spike in UFO sightings by US Navy pilots has prompted Pentagon officials to brief the US president and other senior politicians about the encounters. President Donald Trump confirmed he had received the briefing earlier this week.
Wednesday three more US senators received the classified briefing, including Mark Warner who is vice chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee.
Following an increasing number of sightings by FA/18 pilots from Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia.
That spike prompted the US Navy to introduce new reporting procedures for its pilots in April, so it can more effectively track the sightings.
At the time, the Navy said in a statement that “a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years”.
| Date | Name | City, State | Country | Description | Sources | Hynek Scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ca. 1440 BC | Fiery disks | Lower Egypt | Ancient Egypt | According to the disputed Tulli Papyrus, the scribes of the pharaoh Thutmose III reported that “fiery disks” were encountered floating over the skies. | [1][2] | 1 |
| Date | Name | City, State | Country | Description | Sources | Hynek Scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 218 BC | ships in the sky | Rome, Italia | Roman Republic | Livy records a number of portents in the winter of this year, including vanadium speciem de caelo adfulsisse (“phantom ships had been seen gleaming in the sky”). | Livy‘s Ab Urbe Condita Libri[3][4] | 1 |
| 76 BC | spark from a falling star | unknown | Roman Republic | According to Pliny the Elder, a spark fell from a star and grew as it descended until it appeared to be the size of the Moon. It then ascended back up to the heavens and was transformed into a light. | [5][6][4] |
The plane — at 10,000 feet, out of signal range — sends the information to a smaller aircraft below, which relays it to a UC San Diego research team running a lab known as WIFIRE. The lab’s supercomputer produces mapping and heat-detection data within minutes, and it generates a model of how the fire might spread based on a number of factors — Eventually, such information will go to a wildfire warning center created under a new state law.
The planes are part of a pilot program. In the state’s new landscape of more frequent and more ferocious fires, it takes a village to combat the menace: private technology, state and local fire agencies and computing know-how at California’s universities.
California has already signed the program’s first two contracts. One project will use advanced computing to predict a fire’s path; the other will fund a network of “sky sensors” to detect fires as soon as they ignite and send alerts to emergency officials.
In addition to the plane pilot program, UC San Diego operates the ALERT Wildfire system with the University of Nevada and the University of Oregon, a network of almost 300 high-definition cameras trained on high-fire-threat areas. The remotely operated cameras can see up to 70 miles in daylight and 100 miles with infrared at night.
Researchers have developed a new technology to capture carbon dioxide from a stream of air — virtually at any concentration level — an advance that may pave the way for new strategies to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas levels.
The researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said that while most methods of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of gas required higher concentrations — such as those found in the flue emissions from fossil fuel-based power plants — the new method could suck out the gas even when it was present in very low concentrations.
Furthermore, the method required significantly energy, and could even suck out the greenhouse gas at the roughly 400 parts per million currently found in the atmosphere.
In a study, published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, the researchers described the device as a large, specialized battery with a stack of electrodes that absorbs carbon dioxide from the air passing over its surface as it was being charged up, and then released the gas as it was being discharged.
CVS announced on Monday 10/21/2019, it has teamed up with shipping specialist UPS to develop a drone delivery service for customers.
UPS Flight Forward, is a unit created by the shipping company in July 2019 aimed at the rapid scaling of drone delivery operations across various markets.
The CVS/UPS partnership wants to deliver prescription drugs and a range of retail products to the homes of CVS Pharmacy customers.
CVS and UPS made no mention of when it hopes to begin drone deliveries, or where they’ll take place.
Start-up named MediView XR, spinning out of the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, using augmented reality via Microsoft HoloLens or similar AR goggles. MediView XR’s technology allows surgeons the ability to view inside patients and see their organs, blood vessels, bones, and other structures such as cancerous lesions. This is all thanks to a system that “fuses” sensor readings from ultrasound devices with CT or MRI scans to provide an X-ray-like view that doesn’t involve repeated exposure to X-rays. The three-dimensional view means that surgeons can move around patients and continue to see their internal anatomy in the right position and from the correct angle.
That’s not all the technology can do, either. It also offers advanced positioning data that can help surgeons as they operate. When surgeons picks up an instrument while wearing the AR goggles, they will see a “lightsaber-like” ray of light emitted from the end of the tool. When moved toward the patient, the augmented reality platform lets them see exactly how it will intersect with the patient’s anatomy. It will even alert surgeons when they have the correct placement.
Most of these titles were written in conjunction with her son, Slade, whose childhood musings formed the basis of The Big Box and The Book of Mean People.
The story is told through the eyes of four-year-old TJ, who plays ball with friends on his Harlem block and runs errands for his neighbors.
The Widow and the Parrot, in which a widow inherits her brother’s house after he passes away. She travels there to collect her inheritance only to find a peculiar parrot named James.
Chike and the River, which tells the story of an eleven-year-old boy who longs to cross the Niger River to a city called Asaba.
Since the 1980s, she’s published picture books aiming to help children face real-life problems with titles like Martha’s New Daddy and Freddie’s First Night Away. Steel’s most recent kids’ series is about her chihuahua, Minnie, and her adventures.
Printed on pink pages and blue ink (which Stein insisted upon), the book introduces its young readers to themes of identity and individuality with quirky, elliptical lines like “And which little girl am I am I the little girl named Rose which little girl named Rose.”
King’s main contribution to the world of children’s literature is Charlie the Choo Choo, which he wrote under the pseudonym Beryl Evans. The title character is a sentient train with a life of his own.
As USAToday reports, Yahoo has launched the website www.yahoodatabreachsettlement.com, where someone can go to make a claim. In order to be eligible for a claim, you need to have met the following requirements:
A new gadget designed to tackle sexual harassment on public transport has sold out just half an hour after going on sale in Japan.
The “anti-groping” stamps allow those who experience harassment to imprint their attackers with invisible ink and also provide a deterrent to would-be attackers. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department recorded 1,750 cases of groping or molestation in 2017 – with more than 50 per cent of sexual harassment cases taking place on trains and a further 20 per cent in train stations.
“Most victims remain silent”
Victims’ voices are never heard. Even when they do speak out, people tend to dismiss their claims as lies or tell them they are over-reacting. People say, ‘The victim was dressed badly,’ or, ‘Her makeup was bad,’ or, ‘The perpetrator has a family and a job. If the victim goes to the police, the perpetrator will lose them.’ They say the victim is lying or is delusional
BEWARE OF THE FEMALE WHO GROPES WOMEN
Some want groping Many Don’t
Gigi Hadid, Kendra Wilkinson, and More Celebrities Caught Groping Other Women on the Red Carpet
Groping, ogling, and catcalling are often ways of inducing in women feelings of vulnerability, weakness, and fear. Compared to women scurrying away from a frightening man, the man seems to himself to be tough, strong, and courageous. Compared to a woman paralyzed or befuddled by being groped, the man seems to himself to be a master of the universe. Bullying works the same way.
men are raised to detest their own dependence, passivity, and vulnerability. This occurs not only through punishment of boys for being weak but also through excessive praise for their strength, agency, and toughness. The latter creates a situation where the boy being normally vulnerable or scared becomes a loss of face.
(PSYCHOLOGY TODAY)
Groping is illegal in the United States when there is no consent. The charge can vary from state to state but generally is considered to be sexual battery, sexual groping, or unlawful touching.
| City | Figure | Date | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam | 9.8 | 2013 | Dutch Association of Public Libraries | |
| Austin | 3.6 | 2015 | City of Austin | |
| Bogotá | 0.7 | 2017 | BibloRed | |
| Buenos Aires | 2.3 | 2015 | Direccion General del Libro y Promocion de la Lectura | |
| Cape Town | 9.9 | 2018 | Library and Information Services – City of Cape Town | |
| Chengdu | 6.8 | 2016 | ||
| Dublin | 5.9 | 2017 | Dublin City Council/Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown | |
| Edinburgh | 2.1 | 2017 | Edinburgh Council City Facts and Figures 2018/19 | |
| Helsinki | 7.1 | 2018 | ||
| Hong Kong | 49.8 | 2018 | Leisure and Cultural Services Department | |
| Istanbul | 0.4 | 2014 | Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality | |
| Johannesburg | 9.0 | 2010 | Gauteng Library/Information Services 2010 Annual Report | |
| Lisbon | 0.2 | 2017 | Câmara Municipal de Lisboa Programa de Aavalição e desempenho da Rede de Bibliotecas de Lisboa | |
| London | 25.8 | 2017 | The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy | |
| Los Angeles | 42.0 | 2013 | Institute of Museum and Library Services | |
| Madrid | 3.8 | 2013 | Archivo del Área de Gobierno de Las Artes, Deportes y Turismo. Ayuntamiento de Madrid | |
| Melbourne | 29.1 | 2018 | PLVN Annual Statistical Survey | |
| Milan | 0.7 | 2017 | Comune di Milano – Area Biblioteche & ASK Bocconi | |
| Montréal | 10.5 | 2016 | StatBib | |
| Moscow | 30.3 | 2017 | Statistics of the Ministery of Culture of the Russian Federation | |
| New York | 56.3 | 2017 | Center for an Urban Future | |
| Oslo | 1.3 | 2018 | Deichman | Book loans not including renewals |
| Paris | 28.3 | 2016 | Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication | |
| Rome | 0.5 | 2017 | ROMA CAPITALE | |
| San Francisco | 10.8 | 2016 | SFPL | |
| Seoul | 26.0 | 2017 | Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture | Seoul culture index 2017 |
| Shanghai | 86.2 | 2016 | Shanghai Statistical Yearbook | |
| Shenzhen | 9.1 | 2017 | Shenzhen Municipal People’s Government | |
| Singapore | 33.0 | 2016 | National Library Board | |
| Stockholm | 8.4 | 2016 | National Library of Sweden | |
| Sydney | 17.7 | 2016 | State Library of NSW | |
| Taipei | 13.3 | 2016 | National Library of Public Information / National Central Library /Ministry of Education | |
| Tokyo | 111.9 | 2017 | Tokyo Metropolitan Library 2017 | |
| Toronto | 30.2 | 2018 | Toronto Public Library | |
| Vienna | 6.1 | 2014 | Vienna Annual Statistics 2014 | |
| Warsaw | 6.1 | 2014 | Main Library of Mazovia Voivodship | |
| Zürich | 3.6 | 2015 | Statistics City of Zürich |
Thousands of Mexicans cross the border into the U.S. on temporary visas to sell their blood plasma to profit-making pharmaceutical companies that lure them with Facebook ads and colorful flyers promising hefty cash rewards.
The donors, including some who say the payments are their only income, may take home up to $400 a month if they donate twice a week and earn various incentives, including “buddy bonuses” for recruiting friends or family. Unlike other nations that limit or forbid paid plasma donations at a high frequency out of concern for donor health and quality control, the U.S. allows companies to pay donors and has comparatively loose standards for monitoring their health.
Donating plasma too frequently can hurt a donor’s immune system. A donor’s level of the antibody immunoglobulin G should be screened every four months under guidelines from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But in the U.S., donors are still allowed to give plasma up to 104 times a year, far more than in most other countries. Selling plasma has been banned in Mexico since 1987.
A21-year-old Mexican studying to be a paramedic said she gives plasma twice a week in El Paso, Texas. She said she often faints, gets migraines and has numbness in her limbs. The more she donates plasma, the weaker she feels. She now has trouble lifting stuff, problems with my muscles.
The FDA requires companies to monitor patient health before each donation. In some CSL centers, the payment amount depends on body weight, which determines how much blood plasma can be collected. Donors weighing between 110 and 149 pounds receive $20 per donation, while donors between 175 and 400 pounds earn up to $40. However, a person who doesn’t finish the donation for any reason doesn’t get paid.
To avoid getting turned away at the clinics for being underweight, which has happened in the past, Donator says she regularly fools the scales by putting water bottles in her pockets. Her trick has never been noticed.
Ryoo Tae-hyun, director of Shinhan Card’s digital first division / Courtesy of Shinhan Card
Korea is planning to go from a country known for high credit card use into a first mover in “deviceless” payment systems, according to the nation’s leading card firm’s executive in charge of its digital transformation strategy.
Ryoo Tae-hyun, director of Shinhan Card’s digital first division, told The Korea Times that they plan to have plastic-free and deviceless payments available here within a few years.
“The senior vice president of Visa, who directs the firm’s innovation, came to Korea before the Chuseok holiday and told me that he expects Korea will lead the new payment system before the United States or China,” he said.
“Digital payments already account for 16.5 percent of the way our customers make payments. The figure has jumped from 12 percent two years ago.”
Shinhan Card is taking the initiative in several futuristic payment systems ― facial recognition-based payment systems, blockchain-powered payment systems and internet of things (IoT) financial platforms.
Ryoo says Korea will take the lead in such technologies, if the government supports the introduction of a nationwide infrastructure.
The Financial Services Commission (FSC) will decide whether to designate their facial payment as an innovative financial service.
According to the FSC, providers of innovative financial services are immune to diverse financial regulations and have exclusive rights for their services for two years after they get approval.
Shinhan Card, which has run “Shinhan Face Pay” at the cafeteria, coffee shop and CU convenience store inside the company’s headquarters since August, will allow customers to use the system at universities starting from November, given that they are closed communities with many early adopters.
Shinhan Face Pay does not infringe on privacy.
“Unlike China’s facial payment system collecting original images, their system only stores key points of images, allowing freedom from privacy issues.
“Our Face Pay also features age tracing algorithms that means our customers using the system do not have to submit a new photo for 10 years.”
Another technology that Shinhan Card employs is a blockchain-based payment system.
The card issuer obtained a patent for the system in Korea, being the first in the world to have established a credit transaction service using the new record-keeping technology.
It applied for patents in five other countries and one trading bloc ― the U.S., China, Japan, Vietnam and Indonesia, and the European Union. Decisions on these will be made in 2020.
“With our system, we provide our customers with cryptocurrencies available at our affiliated stores, in accordance with their credit limits,” Ryoo said.
“Cryptocurrencies developed by other blockchain companies can only be used at a limited number of stores. Their’s can be used at a wider range of places, because they have served as a platform for our customers and affiliated stores for over the past 30 years. The executive also said the combination of blockchain and IoT technologies will accelerate the end of plastic.
Adolescents vape by using an e-cigarette device to inhale a heated aerosol that typically contains nicotine.
A project was conducted and respondents surveyed consist of 12th-, 10th-, and 8th-grade students annually. Students who had vaped nicotine during the previous 12 months and those who had ever vaped nicotine also significantly increased in each grade from 2018 to 2019. Table 1 also shows the prevalence of daily nicotine vaping, which was defined as nicotine vaping on at least 20 days during the previous 30 days. These levels were 12%, 7%, and 2% in 12th, 10th, and 8th grade, respectively.
The huge levels of daily vaping suggest the development of nicotine addiction. New efforts are c needed to protect youth from using nicotine during adolescence, when the developing brain is particularly susceptible to permanent changes from nicotine use and when almost all nicotine addiction is established
Federal authorities have begun a criminal investigation into e-cigarette giant Juul Labs, according to the Wall Street Journal. The government has been stepping up enforcement against vaping as a whole.
Nike Fit, is a foot-scanning platform using a smartphone camera that applies AI techniques using a proprietary combination of computer vision, data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence and recommendation algorithms. It does this by measuring the full shape of both feet, offering the ability to know your truly perfect fit for each Nike shoe style.to find the best fit for each person’s foot. The algorithms then identify and recommend the appropriately sized and shaped shoe in different styles.
Using your smartphone’s camera, Nike Fit will scan your feet, collecting 13 data points mapping your foot morphology for both feet within a matter of seconds. This hyper-accurate scan of your unique foot dimension can then be stored in your NikePlus member profile and easily used for future shopping online and in-store.
You can also use Nike Fit in a Nike retail store. This experience leverages a specially developed Nike Fit mat (rather than a wall) and allows store athletes to help recommend the best fit for whatever Nike shoe you’re shopping.
The President of Microsoft, Brad Smith, believes that a new digital Geneva Convention is essential to protect the world from the threat of killer robots. Smith told the Daily Telegraph, that the use of “lethal autonomous weapon systems” poses a host of new ethical questions which need to be considered by governments as a matter of urgency. He claimed the rapidly advancing technology, including flying, swimming and walking drones, can be equipped with lethal weapons systems such as missiles, bombs or guns.
Weapon systems with a significant degree of autonomy in the critical functions of selecting and attacking targets are being developed in the US, China, Israel, South Korea, Russia and the UK.
Additionally, technology is a growing focus for many militaries because replacing troops with machines can make the decision to go to war easier. Lethal autonomous weapons are military robots able to make lethal decisions free from human oversight. They are designed to select and attack targets without intervention or the control of a human operator. These weapons are capable of operation in the air, on land, in water, under water or in space.
The development of autonomous weapon systems has received heavy criticism in a open letter to the UN. It was signed by over 100 artificial intelligence robot experts.
Racist artificial intelligence can only be stopped if Silicon Valley giants share the secret databases used to train them, the creator of a viral selfie app has claimed.
Trevor Paglen, is an artist and one of the pair behind an app that exposed racist and sexist flaws in a colossal database used to train AI. He has warned that these same terms could be present in systems developed by big technology companies.
The flaws could have spread to companies including Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Huawei if they used it as a “seed” database, he has claimed.
Paglen says that we can assume similar things are going on in the databases of Google and Facebook or whatever, but we can’t see that happening.
He also says there are often trade secrets, and this is a huge problem for the field of machine learning in general, especially in applications that touch people’s everyday lives.
Paglan has called for “a lot more transparency” from companies on how machine learning systems are being used and how they’re classifying people to stop this from making biased decisions.
Mr Paglen’s app, created with the AI researcher Kate Crawford and called ImageNet Roulette, exposed that pictures of black and ethnic minority people generated race labels such as “negroid” or “black person”, while results from caucasian faces varied more widely, such as “researcher”, “scientist” or “singer”.
In other words, white people were more likely to be categorised as a specific profession or character type, whereas non-white people were more likely to be categorized by their race alone, that can have negative connotations.
The app, which was “trained” using a popular image recognition database called ImageNet, was described as “a peek into the politics of classifying humans in machine learning systems and the data they’re trained on”.
ImageNet, created by Stanford University scientists, has been credited with kickstarting the modern AI boom and has become a benchmark against which new image recognition systems are measured.
The team led by Stanford professor Fei-Fei Lin has committed to removing over 600,000 images of people from the database since the challenge went viral earlier this week.
Mr Paglen’s comments follow plans launched by the UK government to pilot diversity regulations for staff working on artificial intelligence to reduce the risk of sexist and racist computer programs.
Five areas are anticipated to influence the most change in cityscapes includes: climate change and micromobility, airports, data centers, patient-driven health care, and museums and libraries.
Cities must adapt and “aggressively” prepare for climate change. Public-private partnerships will help cities adopt strategies by zoning low-lying areas like parks and wetlands, and creating elevated transportation networks in advance of floods.
Roadways will also have to adapt to the influx of new mobility vehicles, including autonomous vehicles (AVs), e-bikes and scooters. As more people turn to AVs in the U.S., 500 million parking spaces will open up for redevelopment, making way for reuse opportunities that include outdoor dining or gathering spaces.
Airports will evolve from transportation centers to essentially miniature cities. The number of people traveling by air is expected to almost double to 7.8 billion people in 2036, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Airports will seek ways to make their locations authentic to the surrounding area with locally sourced elements like foods and artwork. Airports will also work to attract local residents with their retail, restaurant and entertainment options. To help lure in non-travelers, airports will in-part focus on wellness experiences to help visitors feel welcome and pampered — such as: yoga rooms, outdoor green spaces, gyms and even walking paths.
The Kunming Changshui International Airport in China is an example of such an airport. It includes two hotels, multiple transit connections and a roof that is designed to act like a canopy of leaves, “softly illuminating the concourse, reducing glare, and increasing passenger comfort.”
Uber Air skyports also incorporate these trends with co-working areas, retail and restaurant space, and micromobility and ride-hailing zones. Gensler recently unveiled a Los Angeles skyport design that would include fitness centers and even museums to help create a community feel.
Super Computers The “arms race” to build supercomputers will also contribute to the data center market growth. National labs will continue their work to develop ever-faster supercomputers that can be used for everything from quantum mechanics to climate change research.
Patient-Doctor dynamic is expected to change in future smart cities thanks in part to increasingly tech-savvy patients who have greater choice in where and how they receive treatments, according to the report.
Data analytics will provide doctors with a holistic patient view, improving communication and personalized care plans
Many waiting rooms of the areas will transform from drab fluorescent-lit rooms to “active health and wellness concourses, where the community can access advice, participate in classes or connect with patients in support groups.”
Libraries will play an increasingly important role in the smart city. That role will include helping the community by promoting community service, learning through play and providing access to technology, according to the report. To help meet these new needs, the report suggests that libraries reconfigure their space to meet the changing ways people seek information.
Museums are advised to incorporate “gender-inclusive restrooms, railings, clear interpretive labels and navigational signage, and trigger warnings.”
Potential Riders can simply submit their name and phone number in the self-service kiosk. The company’s first-ever kiosk solution is designed to be more accessible for travelers with language or technological barriers, or who have difficulty using smartphones.
No USD 82 billion IPO? No airport presence? No problem. Even if your brand isn’t Uber-sized, there are still lessons from how it approached this kiosk:
Uber’s physical kiosk, for instance, is ideal for travelers who aren’t technologically fluent or those who’ve arrived without a local SIM!
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has begun a criminal probe into vaping-related illnesses and deaths. The Washington Post reports
An artificially intelligent chatbot used Twitter to learn how to talk into a bigot bot, so Taylor Swift reportedly threatened legal action because the bot’s name was Tay. Microsoft would probably rather forget the experiment where Twitter trolls took advantage of the chatbot’s programming and taught it to be racist in 2016.
Tay was a social media chatbot first geared toward teens in China. The bot, however, was programmed to learn how to talk based on Twitter conversations. In less than a day, the automatic responses the chatbot tweeted had Tay siding with Hitler, promoting genocide, and just generally hating everybody. Microsoft immediately removed the account and apologized.
According to The Guardian, the singer’s lawyer threatened legal action over the chatbot’s name. The singer claimed the name violated both federal and state laws. Rather than get in a legal battle with the singer, Smith writes, the company instead started considering new names. The chatbot began sending out racist tweets, giving the singer even more reason for concern. Microsoft removed the bot. But when the chatbot reappeared, Tay was no longer TayTweets but Zo, complete with new program that prevents the bot from broaching politics, race, and religion as topics. The revised chatbot, available on Messenger and others along with Twitter, was later criticized for being too much like a stereotypical teenage girl.
Photos and videos posted to private accounts on Instagram and Facebook can be accessed, downloaded, and distributed publicly by friends and followers via source code
The hack — which works on Instagram stories as well — requires only a rudimentary understanding of HTML and a browser. It can be done in a handful of clicks. A user simply inspects the images and videos that are being loaded on the page and then pulls out the source URL. This public URL can then be shared with people who are not logged in to Instagram or do not follow that private user.
“The behavior described here is the same as taking a screenshot of a friend’s photo on Facebook and Instagram and sharing it with other people,” a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “It doesn’t give people access to a person’s private account.”
But it’s not exactly the same. There is a difference between being able to screenshot a private image from a webpage and being able to easily publicly share the URL of that private image with un-authenticated users.
The hack also works when images and videos in a private Instagram story, which are meant to last for only 24 hours, expire or are deleted. Linking URLs to content from stories seems to be valid for a couple days; links to photos on the feed remain live for potentially even longer. The same is true for stories that have purportedly expired.
Ongoing Information & Trends: A Weblog 
Written
on October 6, 2019