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Delaware Contributes Youth Overdose Death Data for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Report

DOVER, DE (Jan. 3, 2023) – Through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS), Delaware was recently among 47 states to contribute data to the CDC’s Dec. 16, 2022, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, titled “Drug Overdose Deaths Among Persons Aged 10-19 Years – United States, July 2019-December 2021.” The Division of Public Health (DPH) utilizes SUDORS to track available trends and characteristics of […]




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Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit Arrests Woman Posing as Nurse

Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced on Monday that a Maryland resident was arrested for allegedly stealing the identity of a registered nurse (“RN”), and then trying to use those credentials to fraudulently obtain employment in Delaware nursing homes.  “The licensing system for healthcare professionals is crucial to patient safety,” Attorney General Jennings said.  “The Delaware Department of […]



  • Department of Justice Press Releases

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4465 Delaware Radiation Control Regulations

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES: Division of Public Health






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Inflation in nearly half of major states outgrows India's Oct CPI; price pressure steepest in Chhattisgarh - Moneycontrol

  1. Inflation in nearly half of major states outgrows India's Oct CPI; price pressure steepest in Chhattisgarh  Moneycontrol
  2. Retail inflation surges to a 14-month high of 6.2% in October  The Times of India
  3. If we exclude vegetable prices, CPI inflation remains in RBI's range: UBI research  The Economic Times
  4. Rising food prices are likely to push back beginning of rate cutting cycle  The Indian Express
  5. India confident of reaching USD 100 billion trade volume with Russia ahead of 2030 timeline: S Jaishankar  Telegraph India




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Siemens to acquire smart lighting control company Enlighted Inc. for an undisclosed sum

Siemens Building Technologies division announced it will acquire Enlighted Inc., a smart IoT building technology provider. The transaction is expected to close in Q3’18.

Enlighted Inc.’s core element is an advanced lighting control application. It is based on a patented, software-defined smart sensor that collects and monitors real-time occupancy, light levels, temperatures and energy usage.

The sensor can gauge temperature, light level, motion, energy, and has Bluetooth connectivity.

The Enlighted Micro Sensor

The Enlighted system works by collecting temperature, light and motion data via its smart sensors. A gateway device carries the information to Energy Manager, a secure browser-based interface to create profiles and adjust settings of the entire Enlighted Advanced Lighting Control System. The Energy manager operates as an analytics device.

The whole system consists of multi-function sensors, distributed computing, a network, and software applications run by Enlighted Inc.

“With Siemens as a global partner, we will both accelerate innovation and market adoption of our smart building technologies on an international scale.”Joe Costello, Chairman, and CEO of Enlighted Inc

Enlighted Inc.’s main target market is commercial real estate. Key use cases of its intelligent Lighting Control System are energy efficiency, controlling heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and building utilization reports.

Use the Postscapes 'Connected Products Framework' to understand the smart home and buildings eco-system.




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Flow Control Credit Updates in PCIe 6.1 ECN

As technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, the importance of robust and efficient interconnect standards cannot be overstated. Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) has been a cornerstone in high-speed data transfer, enabling seamless communication between various hardware components.   

With the advent of PCIe 6.1 ECN, a significant advancement in speed and efficiency, ensuring the accuracy and reliability of its operations is paramount. One critical aspect of this is the verification of shared credit updates. For detailed understanding on Shared Credit, please refer Understanding PCIe 6.0 Shared Flow Control. 

In this blog, we will discuss why this verification is essential and what it entails.  

Introduction 

PCIe 6.1 ECN brings numerous advancements over earlier versions, such as increased bandwidth and faster data transfer speeds.   

A crucial mechanism for efficient data transmission in PCIe 6.0 is the credit-based flow control system. In this system, devices monitor credits, representing the buffer capacity available for incoming data.   

When a device transmits data, it uses credits, which are replenished or adjusted once the data is received and processed. This system ensures that the sender does not overload the receiver.  

Given the critical role of shared credit updates in maintaining the integrity and efficiency of data transfers, verification of these updates is crucial.  Proper management of credit updates is essential to ensure data integrity, as any discrepancies can lead to data loss, corruption, or system crashes.   

Verification also guarantees efficient resource allocation, preventing scenarios where some components are starved of credit while others have an excess, thus avoiding inefficiencies.  Credit inefficiencies pose issues in low power negotiations by preventing devices from entering low power states. Additionally, verification involves checking for proper error handling mechanisms, ensuring that the system can recover gracefully from errors in credit updates and maintain overall stability.   

PCIe 6.1 ECN Flow Control Optimizations Over PCIe 6.0

PCIe 6.1 ECN builds on the FLIT-based architecture introduced in PCIe 6.0, further optimizing flow control mechanisms to handle increased data rates and improved efficiency.  PCIe 6.1 ECN introduced refinements in credit management, making the allocation and advertisement of credits more precise, which helps in reducing bottlenecks and improving data flow efficiency.  Enhancements in flow control protocols ensure better management of buffer spaces and more efficient credit allocation. These enhancements are designed to handle the increased data rates and throughput demands of next-generation applications, ensuring robust and efficient data flow across PCIe devices.  

Below are some major updates: 

  1. There have been improvements in error detection and correction mechanisms in PCIe 6.1 ECN to enhance flow control reliability by ensuring that corrupted data packets are detected and handled appropriately without disrupting the flow of valid packets.  
  2. The merged credit system, which was a key feature introduced int PCIe 6.0 to simplify and optimize credit management, was further enhanced in PCIe 6.1 ECN to improve performance and efficiency.  
  3. PCIe 6.1 ECN introduced better algorithms for allocating and reclaiming merged credits to handle high data rates, introduced more robust error detection and correction mechanism reducing the degradation or system instability. 
  4. PCIe 6.1 ECN provided clear guidelines on how to implement the merged credit system correctly, helping developers to implement more reliable systems. For more details, please refer to Specifications section 2.6.1 Flow Control (FC) Rules.

Summary 

In summary, PCIe 6.0 is a complex protocol with many verification challenges. You must understand many new Spec changes and think about the robust verification plan for the new features and backward compatible tests impacted by new features. Cadence’s PCIe 6.0 Verification IP is fully compliant with the latest PCIe Express 6.0 specifications and provides an effective and efficient way to verify the components interfacing with the PCIe 6.0 interface. Cadence VIP for PCIe 6.0 provides exhaustive verification of PCIe-based IP and SoCs, and we are working with early adopter customers to speed up every verification stage.   

More Information

For more info on how Cadence PCIe Verification IP and Triple Check VIP enable users to confidently verify PCIe 6.0, see VIP for PCI Express, VIP for Compute Express Link  and TripleCheck for PCI Express  

See the PCI-SIG website for more details on PCIe in general and the different PCI standards.  

For more information on PCIe 6.0 new features, please visit PCIeLaneMarginPCIe6.0LaneMargin, and Demonstrating PCIe 6.0 Equalization Procedure.




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No community under bandits’ control in Kebbi – Deputy Gov, Tafida

The Deputy Governor of Kebbi State, Umar Tafida, has debunked reports that villages in the state are under bandits’ control. Tafida, who stated this on Tuesday, labeled the claims as mere imagination from news sources, emphasising that the state government has fortified security across communities to prevent any security breaches. While interacting with newsmen in […]

No community under bandits’ control in Kebbi – Deputy Gov, Tafida





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Turkish-Made Drone Crashes in Al-Shabaab-Controlled Farsooley, Somalia

[Radio Dalsan] A Turkish-made drone armed with missiles reportedly crashed on Tuesday in the Al-Shabaab-controlled village of Farsooley, located in Somalia's Lower Shabelle region, local sources have confirmed.




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Senior Financial Control Assistant

ADB has a vacancy for the position of Senior Financial Control Assistant in the Controller's Department. The deadline for submitting applications is on 21-NOV-2024.




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LHC seeks long-term policy to control smog

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) has observed that a long-term policy is needed to control smog, directing the Punjab government to take actions beyond mere paperwork.

Hearing environment-related petitions on Tues­day, Justice Shahid Karim remarked that the federal government should also be roped in to address the issue that plagues Punjab.

Advocate General for Pu­n­jab (AGP) Khalid Ish­aq and provincial Secr­e­tary of Transport Depar­t­ment Ahmed Javed Qazi also appeared before the court.

The judge noted that the current approach of the government was insufficient, saying that if smog had appeared in Septem­ber this time, it might turn up in August next year.

Justice Karim remar­ked that a 10-year policy was needed to combat the menace of smog. He ack­now­ledged that the sitting government performed better than its predecessors but there was still more work to be done.

He also hailed the performance of Environment Protection Department Director General Imran Hamid Sheikh, urging other departments to follow suit. He noted that the transport sector caused 70 to 80pc of environmental pollution due to the use of smuggled low-grade fuel.

The judge insisted on considering the future of industries established within Lahore, citing the example of Beijing where all industries were moved outside the city. He said Beijing had proposed solutions but the Punjab government didn’t take them seriously.

The AGP replied that there were challenges in the execution of China’s suggestions on smog and the court would be apprised of the matter soon.

He further told the court that a policy to combat smog had been devised and a budget had also been allocated. From next year, he said, the citizens might be asked to avoid holding weddings from October to December.

However, the judge suggested that the government could impose restrictions on weddings, limiting them to one event instead of three, alongside a one-dish policy.

Justice Karim regretted that the government took actions only when the court became aware of environmental issues. He said major construction projects in Lahore might need to be halted to control the situation.

The judge remarked that even government-owned Speedo buses emit significant smoke, what to talk about the private transport. He expressed concerns, saying the current smog would persist until January.

“This is a wake-up call for the government. Planning for the next year must begin immediately,” Justice Karim observed, adding that the planning was the responsibility of the government and the court did not want to intervene.

The judge was of the view that solving the school buses issue alone could reduce pollution significantly.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2024




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to wire a motor control circuit

to wire a motor control circuit




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to write a report on stock control

to write a report on stock control




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2940-PRC: Hubei Huangshi Urban Pollution Control and Environmental Management Project[LR-C01-1 Ci lake dredging part 1 Bid No.: 0703-1520CIC1J602]




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Why midlife is the perfect time to take control of your future health

The lifestyle choices you make in middle age play a particularly important role in how your brain ages




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Take control of your brain's master switch to optimise how you think

The discovery that a small blue blob of neurons, the locus coeruleus, controls your mode of thinking suggests ways to increase learning, creativity, focus and alertness




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Low Levels of Brain Chemical May Control Appetite

Title: Low Levels of Brain Chemical May Control Appetite
Category: Health News
Created: 8/28/2008 2:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/28/2008 12:00:00 AM




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Health Tip: If Bowel Control Is a Problem

Title: Health Tip: If Bowel Control Is a Problem
Category: Health News
Created: 8/30/2012 8:05:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/30/2012 12:00:00 AM




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Move More to Control Weight Gain During Pregnancy: Study

Title: Move More to Control Weight Gain During Pregnancy: Study
Category: Health News
Created: 8/23/2013 2:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 8/26/2013 12:00:00 AM




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For Uncontrolled Tremor, Ultrasound Instead of Brain Surgery?

Title: For Uncontrolled Tremor, Ultrasound Instead of Brain Surgery?
Category: Health News
Created: 8/25/2016 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/26/2016 12:00:00 AM




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Reply to Letter to Editor Concerning “Nocturnal Pressure Controlled Ventilation Improves Sleep Efficiency in Patients Receiving Mechanical Ventilation”




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Effects of Lung Injury and Abdominal Insufflation on Respiratory Mechanics and Lung Volume During Time-Controlled Adaptive Ventilation

BACKGROUD:Lung volume measurements are important for monitoring functional aeration and recruitment and may help guide adjustments in ventilator settings. The expiratory phase of airway pressure release ventilation (APRV) may provide physiologic information about lung volume based on the expiratory flow-time slope, angle, and time to approach a no-flow state (expiratory time [TE]). We hypothesized that expiratory flow would correlate with estimated lung volume (ELV) as measured using a modified nitrogen washout/washin technique in a large-animal lung injury model.METHODS:Eight pigs (35.2 ± 1.0 kg) were mechanically ventilated using an Engström Carescape R860 on the APRV mode. All settings were held constant except the expiratory duration, which was adjusted based on the expiratory flow curve. Abdominal pressure was increased to 15 mm Hg in normal and injured lungs to replicate a combination of pulmonary and extrapulmonary lung injury. ELV was estimated using the Carescape FRC INview tool. The expiratory flow-time slope and TE were measured from the expiratory flow profile.RESULTS:Lung elastance increased with induced lung injury from 29.3 ± 7.3 cm H2O/L to 39.9 ± 15.1cm H2O/L, and chest wall elastance increased with increasing intra-abdominal pressures (IAPs) from 15.3 ± 4.1 cm H2O/L to 25.7 ± 10.0 cm H2O/L in the normal lung and 15.8 ± 6.0 cm H2O/L to 33.0 ± 6.2 cm H2O/L in the injured lung (P = .39). ELV decreased from 1.90 ± 0.83 L in the injured lung to 0.67 ± 0.10 L by increasing IAP to 15 mm Hg. This had a significant correlation with a TE decrease from 2.3 ± 0.8 s to 1.0 ± 0.1 s in the injured group with increasing insufflation pressures (ρ = 0.95) and with the expiratory flow-time slope, which increased from 0.29 ± 0.06 L/s2 to 0.63 ± 0.05 L/s2 (ρ = 0.78).CONCLUSIONS:Changes in ELV over time, and the TE and flow-time slope, could be used to demonstrate evolving lung injury during APRV. Using the slope to infer changes in functional lung volume represents a unique, reproducible, real-time, bedside technique that does not interrupt ventilation and may be used for clinical interpretation.




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Degradation of Obidoxime Chloride Solution for Injection upon Long-Term Storage under Field Conditions of Mediterranean Climate vs the Controlled Environment

Obidoxime chloride is an antidote for nerve gas intoxication. As an emergency medicine, it is being stored by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) scattered throughout Israel in depots without a controlled environment (field conditions), thus being exposed to high and fluctuating temperatures. These conditions do not meet the manufacturer’s requirements. In addition, due to possible supply shortages, the utilization of expired batches was suggested. The current work investigated these matters. Long-term (15 years) storage under different conditions was initiated. Chemical stability and toxicity in rats were assessed. No difference was found between field conditions vs the controlled environment. The obidoxime assay remained >95% for 5 years and >90% for 7 years. The pH remained above the lower specification limit for 7–8 years. The major degradation product, 4-pyridinealdoxime, surpassed the allowed limit at 5 years. The content of total unknown impurities reached its maximum allowed by the IDF limit at 4–5 years. Threefold higher than clinically utilized doses of valid-to-date Toxogonin batches administered to rats did not cause any abnormality. However, expired batches produced significant toxic effects. Although no difference was found between storage of obidoxime ampoules when adhering to manufacturer’s recommendations vs field conditions, accumulation of degradants over the limit allowed by the IDF at 4–5 years of storage and the toxicity of the expired batches observed in rats led the IDF to a decision to shorten the shelf-life of this product from 5 to 4 years when stored in an uncontrolled environment of the Mediterranean climate.




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Artificial Intelligence Efficacy as a Function of Trainee Interpreter Proficiency: Lessons from a Randomized Controlled Trial [RESEARCH]

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:

Recently, artificial intelligence tools have been deployed with increasing speed in educational and clinical settings. However, the use of artificial intelligence by trainees across different levels of experience has not been well-studied. This study investigates the impact of artificial intelligence assistance on the diagnostic accuracy for intracranial hemorrhage and large-vessel occlusion by medical students and resident trainees.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

This prospective study was conducted between March 2023 and October 2023. Medical students and resident trainees were asked to identify intracranial hemorrhage and large-vessel occlusion in 100 noncontrast head CTs and 100 head CTAs, respectively. One group received diagnostic aid simulating artificial intelligence for intracranial hemorrhage only (n = 26); the other, for large-vessel occlusion only (n = 28). Primary outcomes included accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity for intracranial hemorrhage/large-vessel occlusion detection without and with aid. Study interpretation time was a secondary outcome. Individual responses were pooled and analyzed with the t test; differences in continuous variables were assessed with ANOVA.

RESULTS:

Forty-eight participants completed the study, generating 10,779 intracranial hemorrhage or large-vessel occlusion interpretations. With diagnostic aid, medical student accuracy improved 11.0 points (P < .001) and resident trainee accuracy showed no significant change. Intracranial hemorrhage interpretation time increased with diagnostic aid for both groups (P < .001), while large-vessel occlusion interpretation time decreased for medical students (P < .001). Despite worse performance in the detection of the smallest-versus-largest hemorrhages at baseline, medical students were not more likely to accept a true-positive artificial intelligence result for these more difficult tasks. Both groups were considerably less accurate when disagreeing with the artificial intelligence or when supplied with an incorrect artificial intelligence result.

CONCLUSIONS:

This study demonstrated greater improvement in diagnostic accuracy with artificial intelligence for medical students compared with resident trainees. However, medical students were less likely than resident trainees to overrule incorrect artificial intelligence interpretations and were less accurate, even with diagnostic aid, than the artificial intelligence was by itself.




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Hori’s spiritual successor to the Steam Controller is up for preorder on Amazon today

Hori's latest addition to its controller lineup, the "Horipad Wireless for Steam," is now available for preorder on Amazon. After already releasing in Japan at the end of October, now the gamepad is coming to the US.

Read more




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Twitter chat: How the gun control debate mirrors larger issues of partisanship in America

Participants with One Million Moms for Gun Control, a gun control group formed in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, school mass shooting, march across the Brooklyn Bridge on Jan. 21, 2013, in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

What would it take to turn Texas, a Republican stronghold, into a blue state? According to data from SurveyMonkey, just remove all the gun owners from the Lone Star State and it would have gone to Hillary Clinton in 2016. You can do the same thing in liberal California. Remove all the non-gun owners and the state would have voted for Donald Trump.

That’s how divisive the issue of gun control is in American politics.

SurveyMonkey found that no other demographic — not race, religion or gender — so perfectly divided voters. In the 2016 election, 47 percent of Trump supporters said gun control was an issue important enough to influence their vote. That’s compared to just 27 percent of voters who supported Hillary Clinton.

But what does this divide mean? How is it impacting gun control policy, and how might this issue change in light of recent mass shootings like Las Vegas, Orlando and Newtown? To discuss the data, join a PBS NewsHour-hosted Twitter chat at 1 p.m. EDT Thursday with data journalist Dante Chinni (@Dchinni), professor and chairman of political science at the University of Kansas Don Haider-Markel (@dhmarkel), and Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump (@pbump).

Have questions? Tweet them using #NewsHourChats.

The post Twitter chat: How the gun control debate mirrors larger issues of partisanship in America appeared first on PBS NewsHour.




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I took control of NASA's Valkyrie robot and it blew my mind

Are humanoid robots the future of space exploration? New Scientist reporter James Woodford took NASA's Valkyrie for a spin to find out




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Neuroscientist finds her brain shrinks while taking birth control

A researcher who underwent dozens of brain scans discovered that the volume of her cerebral cortex was 1 per cent lower when she took hormonal contraceptives




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Principles of PID Controllers



Thanks to their ability to adjust the system’s output accurately and quickly without detailed knowledge about its dynamics, PID control loops stand as a powerful and widely used tool for maintaining a stable and predictable output in a variety of applications. In this paper, we review the fundamental principles and characteristics of these control systems, providing insight into their functioning, tuning strategies, advantages, and trade-offs.

As a result of their integrated architecture, Zurich Instruments’ lock-in amplifiers allow users to make the most of all the advantages of digital PID control loops, so that their operation can be adapted to match the needs of different use cases.




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Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back



Tactile controls are back in vogue. Apple added two new buttons to the iPhone 16, home appliances like stoves and washing machines are returning to knobs, and several car manufacturers are reintroducing buttons and dials to dashboards and steering wheels.

With this “re-buttonization,” as The Wall Street Journal describes it, demand for Rachel Plotnick’s expertise has grown. Plotnick, an associate professor of cinema and media studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them. She studies the relationship between technology and society with a focus on everyday or overlooked technologies, and wrote the 2018 book Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (The MIT Press). Now, companies are reaching out to her to help improve their tactile controls.

You wrote a book a few years ago about the history of buttons. What inspired that book?

Rachel Plotnick: Around 2009, I noticed there was a lot of discourse in the news about the death of the button. This was a couple years after the first iPhone had come out, and a lot of people were saying that, as touchscreens were becoming more popular, eventually we weren’t going to have any more physical buttons to push. This started to happen across a range of devices like the Microsoft Kinect, and after films like Minority Report had come out in the early 2000s, everyone thought we were moving to this kind of gesture or speech interface. I was fascinated by this idea that an entire interface could die, and that led me down this big wormhole, to try to understand how we came to be a society that pushed buttons everywhere we went.

Rachel Plotnick studies the ways we use everyday technologies and how they shape our relationships with each other and the world.Rachel Plotnick

The more that I looked around, the more that I saw not only were we pressing digital buttons on social media and to order things from Amazon, but also to start our coffee makers and go up and down in elevators and operate our televisions. The pervasiveness of the button as a technology pitted against this idea of buttons disappearing seemed like such an interesting dichotomy to me. And so I wanted to understand an origin story, if I could come up with it, of where buttons came from.

What did you find in your research?

Plotnick: One of the biggest observations I made was that a lot of fears and fantasies around pushing buttons were the same 100 years ago as they are today. I expected to see this society that wildly transformed and used buttons in such a different way, but I saw these persistent anxieties over time about control and who gets to push the button, and also these pleasures around button pushing that we can use for advertising and to make technology simpler. That pendulum swing between fantasy and fear, pleasure and panic, and how those themes persisted over more than a century was what really interested me. I liked seeing the connections between the past and the present.

[Back to top]

We’ve experienced the rise of touchscreens, but now we might be seeing another shift—a renaissance in buttons and physical controls. What’s prompting the trend?

Plotnick: There was this kind of touchscreen mania, where all of a sudden everything became a touchscreen. Your car was a touchscreen, your refrigerator was a touchscreen. Over time, people became somewhat fatigued with that. That’s not to say touchscreens aren’t a really useful interface, I think they are. But on the other hand, people seem to have a hunger for physical buttons, both because you don’t always have to look at them—you can feel your way around for them when you don’t want to directly pay attention to them—but also because they offer a greater range of tactility and feedback.

If you look at gamers playing video games, they want to push a lot of buttons on those controls. And if you look at DJs and digital musicians, they have endless amounts of buttons and joysticks and dials to make music. There seems to be this kind of richness of the tactile experience that’s afforded by pushing buttons. They’re not perfect for every situation, but I think increasingly, we’re realizing the merit that the interface offers.

What else is motivating the re-buttoning of consumer devices?

Plotnick: Maybe screen fatigue. We spend all our days and nights on these devices, scrolling or constantly flipping through pages and videos, and there’s something tiring about that. The button may be a way to almost de-technologize our everyday existence, to a certain extent. That’s not to say buttons don’t work with screens very nicely—they’re often partners. But in a way, it’s taking away the priority of vision as a sense, and recognizing that a screen isn’t always the best way to interact with something.

When I’m driving, it’s actually unsafe for my car to be operated in that way. It’s hard to generalize and say, buttons are always easy and good, and touchscreens are difficult and bad, or vice versa. Buttons tend to offer you a really limited range of possibilities in terms of what you can do. Maybe that simplicity of limiting our field of choices offers more safety in certain situations.

It also seems like there’s an accessibility issue when prioritizing vision in device interfaces, right?

Plotnick: The blind community had to fight for years to make touchscreens more accessible. It’s always been funny to me that we call them touchscreens. We think about them as a touch modality, but a touchscreen prioritizes the visual. Over the last few years, we’re seeing Alexa and Siri and a lot of these other voice-activated systems that are making things a little bit more auditory as a way to deal with that. But the touchscreen is oriented around visuality.

It sounds like, in general, having multiple interface options is the best way to move forward—not that touchscreens are going to become completely passé, just like the button never actually died.

Plotnick: I think that’s accurate. We see paradigm shifts over time with technologies, but for the most part, we often recycle old ideas. It’s striking that if we look at the 1800s, people were sending messages via telegraph about what the future would look like if we all had this dashboard of buttons at our command where we could communicate with anyone and shop for anything. And that’s essentially what our smartphones became. We still have this dashboard menu approach. I think it means carefully considering what the right interface is for each situation.

[Back to top]

Several companies have reached out to you to learn from your expertise. What do they want to know?

Plotnick: I think there is a hunger out there from companies designing buttons or consumer technologies to try to understand the history of how we used to do things, how we might bring that to bear on the present, and what the future looks like with these interfaces. I’ve had a number of interesting discussions with companies, including one that manufactures push-button interfaces. I had a conversation with them about medical devices like CT machines and X-ray machines, trying to imagine the easiest way to push a button in that situation, to save people time and improve the patient encounter.

I’ve also talked to people about what will make someone use a defibrillator or not. Even though it’s really simple to go up to these automatic machines, if you see someone going into cardiac arrest in a mall or out on the street, a lot of people are terrified to actually push the button that would get this machine started. We had a really fascinating discussion about why someone wouldn’t push a button, and what would it take to get them to feel okay about doing that.

In all of these cases, these are design questions, but they’re also social and cultural questions. I like the idea that people who are in the humanities studying these things from a long-term perspective can also speak to engineers trying to build these devices.

So these companies also want to know about the history of buttons?

Plotnick: I’ve had some fascinating conversations around history. We all want to learn what mistakes not to make and what worked well in the past. There’s often this narrative of progress, that things are only getting better with technology over time. But if we look at these lessons, I think we can see that sometimes things were simpler or better in a past moment, and sometimes they were harder. Often with new technologies, we think we’re completely reinventing the wheel. But maybe these concepts existed a long time ago, and we haven’t paid attention to that. There’s a lot to be learned from the past.

[Back to top]







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Apple could launch a smart home control center next year

Apple is rumored to be working on a new smart home product. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg reported that the company is developing a wall-mounted display for controlling appliances, interacting with Siri and videoconferencing. The tablet is said to look "like a square iPad" with "a roughly 6-inch screen." It would have a camera at the top as well as internal speakers and a built-in rechargeable battery. His sources said this smart home display could be officially announced as soon as March following three years in development.

This description sounds a lot like the Google Home Hub, which came out in 2018, or the Echo Show, which is already up to its eighth iteration. If Apple wants to be a serious competitor in this smart home space, it'll have to prove to customers that it has something to offer that these more established brands and products don't.

Right now, the only distinguishing feature is likely Apple Intelligence, which finally began rolling out to users in late October, and the upcoming App Intents system for controlling software programs with AI. But Apple may be looking farther ahead toward something more extravagant than just a smart device control panel. Gurman reported that Apple is already working on a version with a robotic arm that could move the tablet around. It should be interesting to see exactly what Apple does formally launch and when.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/apple-could-launch-a-smart-home-control-center-next-year-222136073.html?src=rss




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Robotic Ankle Helps with Postural Control in Amputees

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a robotic prosthetic ankle that can provide stability for lower limb amputees. The ankle uses electromyographic sensors placed on the sites of muscles in the residual limb that then convey the intentions of the wearer with regard to movement. So far, the system has been shown to […]




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The Cuban Missile Crisis at 60: Six Timeless Lessons for Arms Control

As the best documented major crisis in history, in substantial part because Kennedy secretly taped the deliberations in which he and his closest advisers were weighing choices they knew could lead to a catastrophic war, the Cuban missile crisis has become the canonical case study in nuclear statecraft. Over the decades since, key lessons from the crisis have been adapted and applied by the successors of Kennedy and Khrushchev to inform fateful choices.




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LLMs’ Data-Control Path Insecurity

The comingling of data and commands means that large language models are vulnerable to manipulation by prompt injection.




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Mexico to boost, control renewables expansion






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Neuroscientist finds her brain shrinks while taking birth control

A researcher who underwent dozens of brain scans discovered that the volume of her cerebral cortex was 1 per cent lower when she took hormonal contraceptives





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Early Glycemic Control in Gestational Diabetes Reduces Childhood Obesity

When gestational diabetes is diagnosed, achieving quick glycemic control can reduce the baby's risk of obesity in childhood to a level comparable to that




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Partnering With Community Health Workers Controls High Blood Pressure

Patients with hypertension paired with a community health worker (CHW) through their primary care practice were more than three and a half times as likely




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Keeping Blood Pressure Under Control is Good for the Brain

Intensive management of hypertension (high blood pressure) significantly reduces the risk of adverse events in the brain such as medlinkstroke/medlink,




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Rethinking Hypertension Control With Potassium-Enriched Salt

Group of international experts advocates for a crucial change in medlinkhypertension/medlink treatment guidelines, urging the inclusion of recommendations




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Early Blood Pressure Controls Dual Impact in Acute Stroke

Prompt identification of stroke type may hold the key to maximizing the advantages of promptly administering medlinkblood pressure/medlink-lowering




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3 in 1 Pill Revolutionizing Blood Pressure Control

A treatment strategy utilizing a novel combination of three anti-hypertensive drugs at low doses in a single pill-referred to as GMRx2-was more effective