The information gained by making a measurement, termed the Kullback–Leibler divergence, assesses how much more precisely the true quantity is known after the measurement was made (the posterior probability distribution) than before (the prior probability distribution). It provides an upper bound for the contribution that an observation can make to the total likelihood score in likelihood-based crystallographic algorithms. This makes information gain a natural criterion for deciding which data can legitimately be omitted from likelihood calculations. Many existing methods use an approximation for the effects of measurement error that breaks down for very weak and poorly measured data. For such methods a different (higher) information threshold is appropriate compared with methods that account well for even large measurement errors. Concerns are raised about a current trend to deposit data that have been corrected for anisotropy, sharpened and pruned without including the original unaltered measurements. If not checked, this trend will have serious consequences for the reuse of deposited data by those who hope to repeat calculations using improved new methods.

Determining the locations of future highways and roads in countries with tropical rainforests will be the greatest single factor in influencing future forest loss, fragmentation and degradation. In broad terms, roads can be thought of as the enemies of rainforests. By spreading people out across the forest, roads inherently promote rapid and widespread deforestation.

The post Roads kill rainforests. Stop them now, say Smithsonian biologists appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

“Places of Invention,” a planned 3,500-square-foot exhibition at the National Museum of American History scheduled to open in 2014, will feature a selection of “hot spots” of invention and innovation—places where a critical mass of inventive people, networks, institutions, funding and other resources come together and creativity flourishes.

The post Lemelson Center receives $2.6 million grant for informal science education appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

History and geology, not current ecology, are likely what has made tropical forests so variable from site to site.

The post What makes rainforests unique? History, not ecology. appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Liza Botros MD., Manon C. A. Pronk PhD., Jenny Juschten MD., John Liddle, Sofia K. S. H. Morsing, Jaap D. van Buul PhD., Robert H. Bates, Pieter R. Tuinman MD. PhD., Jan S. M. van Bezu, Stephan Huveneers PhD., Harm Jan Bogaard MD. PhD., Victor W. M. van Hinsbergh PhD., Peter L. Hordijk PhD., and Jurjan Aman MD. PhD.

Aims: Endothelial barrier dysfunction leads to edema and vascular leak, carrying high morbidity and mortality. Previously, Abl kinase inhibition was shown to protect against vascular leak. Using the distinct inhibitory profiles of clinically available Abl kinase inhibitors, we aimed to provide a mechanistic basis for novel treatment strategies against vascular leakage syndromes.

Methods & Results: Bosutinib most potently protected against inflammation-induced endothelial barrier disruption. In vivo, bosutinib prevented LPS-induced alveolar protein extravasation in an acute lung injury mice model. Mechanistically, Mitogen-activated Protein 4 Kinase 4 (MAP4K4) was identified as important novel mediator of endothelial permeability, which signals via ezrin, radixin and moesin proteins to increase turnover of integrin-based focal adhesions. The combined inhibition of MAP4K4 and Arg by bosutinib preserved adherens junction integrity and reduced turnover of focal adhesions, which synergistically act to stabilize the endothelial barrier during inflammation.

Conclusion: MAP4K4 was identified as important regulator of endothelial barrier integrity, increasing focal adhesion turnover and disruption of cell-cell junctions during inflammation. Inhibiting both Arg and MAP4K4, the clinically available drug bosutinib may form a viable strategy against vascular leakage syndromes.

Here come the stinkbugs...With the cooler temperatures of fall the brown marmorated stinkbug begins a determined quest to find a warm place to spend the winter. Crowding around window screens and searching for other ways to get inside, homeowners in the United States will share their indoor living space this winter with millions of brown marmorated stinkbugs. In this video Gary Hevel, an entomolgist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, shares some information about these interesting creatures, as well as some advice about how to deal with those that inevitably gain entry to your home.

The post Smithsonian entomologist Gary Hevel gives information and advice about stinkbugs in your home appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Maintaining natural movement of animals that live in the tropical rainforest canopy in South America is important for the health of the ecosystem. As development […]

The post Tremie Gregory uses camera traps to study “bridges” in the rainforest canopy appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A team of scientists, including several from the Smithsonian Institution, discovered that leaves of flowering plants in the world's first rainforests had more veins per unit area than leaves ever had before.

The post First rainforests arose when plants solved their plumbing problem appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Bird species in rainforest fragments in Brazil that were isolated by deforestation first disappeared and then reappeared during the next quarter-century.

The post “Extinct” birds reappear in rainforest fragments in Brazil appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

South American rainforests thrived during three extreme global warming events in the past, say paleontologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in a new report […]

The post Smithsonian scientists discover that rainforests take the heat appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Soon after a dirt road through the forests of Lambir Hills National Park in Borneo was improved in 1987, local markets selling the meat of […]

The post Loss of animals spells doom for diversity of rainforest trees appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The North Pole isn’t the only place on Earth affected by slight increases in temperature. Until recently, scientific thinking used to posit that tropical forests, […]

The post Rising temperatures mean more blooms for tropical rainforests appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Rainforests on infertile wet soils support more than half of all plant species. Shrublands on infertile dry soils in southwestern Australia, jokingly called “knee-high tropical […]

The post Microbes rule in ‘knee-high tropical rainforests’ appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Smithsonian scientists have discovered two new gecko species—the Lenya banded bent-toed gecko (Cyrtodactylus lenya) and Tenasserim Mountain bent-toed gecko (C. payarhtanesnsis)—in the little-studied lowland forests […]

The post Smithsonian Scientists Discover Two New Gecko Species in Vanishing Myanmar Rainforest appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

(The Paypers) American Express (Amex) has sent a data breach notification to a group of its...

The explosive growth of information technology is having a profound impact on our lives.

Welcome to the public release of the latest Institute of Medicine report on the quality of health care in America.

To significantly reduce the tens of thousands of deaths and injuries caused by medical errors every year, health care organizations must adopt information technology systems that are capable of collecting and sharing essential health information on patients and their care, says a new report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

Each year, tens of millions of Americans, young and old, choose to learn about science in informal ways -- by visiting museums and aquariums, attending after-school programs, pursuing personal hobbies, and watching TV documentaries, for example.

The best indicator of whether a disabled adult who receives Social Security benefits is capable of managing his or her benefits is evidence of real-world performance of meeting his or her own basic needs, rather than an office-based assessment of financial competence, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

We are pleased to announce that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are exploring ways to mobilize our expertise to counter misinformation on the web related to science, engineering, and health.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicines Task Force on the 2020 Census today issued a letter report and submitted it as a public comment to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which recently requested public comments on the 2020 Census.

If the dilute and dispose approach for disposing of the surplus plutonium in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is fully implemented, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) should use two independent review teams to develop public trust in and improve its decisions, says a new interim report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The National Academies today released Criteria for Selecting the Leading Health Indicators for Healthy People 2030, the first of two reports that will help inform the development of Healthy People 2030 (HP2030).

Medicine regulatory authorities — including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — should strengthen cooperation with other countries’ regulators to ensure the quality, safety, and efficacy of medicines, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

National Academies host three events to explore ways to expand the reach of accurate science and health information online

"Deepfakes" are digitally altered images that make incidents appear real when they are not. Such altered files could have broad implications for politics.; Credit: /Marcus Marritt for NPR

Sophisticated fake media hasn't emerged as a factor in the disinformation wars in the ways once feared — and two specialists say it may have missed its moment.

Deceptive video and audio recordings, often nicknamed "deepfakes," have been the subject of sustained attention by legislators and technologists, but so far have not been employed to decisive effect, said two panelists at a video conference convened on Wednesday by NATO.

One speaker borrowed Sherlock Holmes' reasoning about the significance of something that didn't happen.

"We've already passed the stage at which they would have been most effective," said Keir Giles, a Russia specialist with the Conflict Studies Research Centre in the United Kingdom. "They're the dog that never barked."

The perils of deepfakes in political interference have been discussed too often and many people have become too familiar with them, Giles said during the online discussion, hosted by NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

Following all the reports and revelations about election interference in the West since 2016, citizens know too much to be hoodwinked in the way a fake video might once have fooled large numbers of people, he argued: "They no longer have the power to shock."

Tim Hwang, director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, agreed that deepfakes haven't proven as dangerous as once feared, although for different reasons.

Hwang argued that users of "active measures" (efforts to sow misinformation and influence public opinion) can be much more effective with cheaper, simpler and just as devious types of fakes — mis-captioning a photo or turning it into a meme, for example.

Influence specialists working for Russia and other governments also imitate Americans on Facebook, for another example, worming their way into real Americans' political activities to amplify disagreements or, in some cases, try to persuade people not to vote.

Other researchers have suggested this work continues on social networks and has become more difficult to detect.

Defense is stronger than attack

Hwang also observed that the more deepfakes are made, the better machine learning becomes at detecting them.

A very sophisticated, real-looking fake video might still be effective in a political context, he acknowledged — and at a cost to create of around $10,000, it would be easily within the means of a government's active measures specialists.

But the risks of attempting a major disruption with such a video may outweigh an adversary's desire to use one. People may be too media literate, as Giles argued, and the technology to detect a fake may mean it can be deflated too swiftly to have an effect, as Hwang said.

"I tend to be skeptical these will have a large-scale impact over time," he said.

One technology boss told NPR in an interview last year that years' worth of work on corporate fraud protection systems has given an edge to detecting fake media.

"This is not a static field. Obviously, on our end we've performed all sorts of great advances over this year in advancing our technology, but these synthetic voices are advancing at a rapid pace," said Brett Beranek, head of security business for the technology firm Nuance. "So we need to keep up."

Beranek described how systems developed to detect telephone fraudsters could be applied to verify the speech in a fake clip of video or audio.

Corporate clients that rely on telephone voice systems must be wary about people attempting to pose as others with artificial or disguised voices. Beranek's company sells a product that helps to detect them and that countermeasure also works well in detecting fake audio or video.

Machines using neural networks can detect known types of synthetic voices. Nuance also says it can analyze a recording of a real known voice — say, that of a politician — and then contrast its characteristics against a suspicious recording.

Although the world of cybersecurity is often described as one in which attackers generally have an edge over defenders, Beranek said he thought the inverse was true in terms of this kind of fraud detection.

"For the technology today, the defense side is significantly ahead of the attack side," he said.

Shaping the battlefield

Hwang and Giles acknowledged in the NATO video conference that deepfakes likely will proliferate and become lower in cost to create, perhaps becoming simple enough to make with a smartphone app.

One prospective response is the creation of more of what Hwang called "radioactive data" — material earmarked in advance so that it might make a fake easier to detect.

If images of a political figure were so tagged beforehand, they could be spotted quickly if they were incorporated by computers into a deceptive video.

Also, the sheer popularity of new fakes, if that is what happens, might make them less valuable as a disinformation weapon. More people could become more familiar with them, as well as being detectable by automated systems — plus they may also have no popular medium on which to spread.

Big social media platforms already have declared affirmatively that they'll take down deceptive fakes, Hwang observed. That might make it more difficult for a scenario in which a politically charged fake video went viral just before Election Day.

"Although it might get easier and easier to create deepfakes, a lot of the places where they might spread most effectively, your Facebooks and Twitters of the world, are getting a lot more aggressive about taking them down," Hwang said.

That won't stop them, but it might mean they'll be relegated to sites with too few users to have a major effect, he said.

"They'll percolate in these more shady areas."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A new tool has been developed, with input from the public, to measure and compare the quality of green spaces in urban areas. A UK case study suggests that litter and vandalism are among the factors most likely to prevent local residents from using and benefiting from green spaces.

While cities worldwide are expanding so is the significant carbon dioxide footprint of urban transport. Consequently, there is an urgent need for sustainable urban mobility solutions. A thorough analysis of the variables and dynamics of urban mobility in cities can aid in planning sustainable mobility policy. This study used a new system of classification by type (typologisation) relevant to urban mobility in global cities, with data from 331 cities in 124 countries covering 40% of the global urban population (as of 2016).

In a recent experiment in Norway, electrical appliance stores increased their sales of energy-efficient tumble driers when consumers were made aware of their cheaper lifetime operating costs by shop staff and a new product labelling system.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) can enhance the design of a building, reduce costs and save energy. However, little research has been carried out on its impact on sustainable practices. A US survey illustrates that many practitioners do not see sustainability as a primary application, suggesting that more effort is needed to encourage the integration of ‘green’ design and construction into BIM.

A new concrete-reinforcement system, used by the LIFE INSU-SHELL1 project, replaces steel rods with non-corrosive textile structures to reduce the amount of concrete needed in construction. This nearly halves the global warming potential of traditional steel-reinforced concrete which is the largest producer of CO2 emissions in the building industry.

Public authorities in EU Member States are encouraged to purchase more environmentally-friendly goods and services through Green Public Procurement (GPP). A recent survey of purchasing managers in Italy has identified some factors that influence their adoption of this strategy, and suggests that a broad knowledge of GPP is key to its implementation.

Providing information to consumers on the environmental and social impacts of their food purchases could help change their consumption choices, research from Norway suggests. In a psychological study, researchers noted an increase in the number of organic and fair trade products bought per week when participating consumers were informed of the products’ benefits for the environment and the wellbeing of producers.

Simply supplying more scientific information on the environment may not be enough to persuade urban planners to give greater consideration to the environment, suggests new research. The Dutch study suggests that environmental values also need to be made more important to municipal decision makers.

New EU-funded research from Finland has indicated that poor communication between producers of energy-efficient housing technologies and potential house-buyers is a major barrier to sustainable housing. It suggests that government bodies can encourage energy-efficiency innovations not only through regulations but also by improving information flow.

Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and temperatures under climate change are likely to increase the rate of corrosive damage in reinforced concrete structures, according to a recent study. This could result in costly repairs in the future, unless structures are suitably adapted.

In a recent experiment in Norway, electrical appliance stores increased their sales of energy-efficient tumble driers when consumers were made aware of their cheaper lifetime operating costs by shop staff and a new product labelling system.

Recycling waste from farming and mining could help improve the sustainable use of phosphorus, a recent study suggests. The study traced the stocks and flows of phosphorus over a 50 year period to reveal changing patterns of global phosphorus use. The results can be used to develop the sustainable management of phosphorus — a finite and critical resource — in the future.

Scientists have tested the behaviour of biodegradable plastics in managed composting and anaerobic conditions, as well as under simulated environmental conditions, such as in seawater or soil. This study found that blending different types of biodegradable plastics may open up new opportunities in relation to their end-of-life treatment — notably the potential to make one of the world’s best-selling biodegradable plastics, polyactic acid (PLA), home-compostable by blending it with another polymer (polycaprolactone — PCL). However, the researchers were also concerned that most materials tested could still cause plastic pollution as they failed to biodegrade sufficiently — and, in some cases, not at all, in particular, in soil and the marine environment.

As clients turn to vendor consolidation, IT firm may acquire captives global firms may hive off

A new oil-spill risk-management system has been developed by researchers, which shows the likely effects of a coastal spill on the environment and economic activities for specific locations. It provides maps of oil-spill risk through a web portal and could help decision makers and emergency-response authorities protect the local environment and businesses through targeted and efficient planning and responses.

A look at what’s going beyond the scenes in one of the largest software bot deployments in the world.

Adapting to climate change is essential to the sustainable management of forestry but it needs to be grounded in current scientific knowledge. A recent US study has brought together scientific experts and forestry managers to ascertain some general adaptation strategies for the future.

Using open-access software and power saving technologies, researchers have developed an easily deployed, low-cost network for monitoring large areas of the Amazon rainforest. This Peruvian study shows that environmental information, such as soil moisture and rates of photosynthesis, can be recorded and uploaded to the internet without having to make repeated visits to remote areas.

Informing consumers about their energy use and giving advice on how it can be improved can result in lower public energy consumption, new research suggests. However, if such information campaigns are based solely on monetary savings they are not effective, the study concludes.

One of the greatest challenges facing environmental policymakers is encouraging people to behave more sustainably. A recent study explores how 'nudging' people to make environmentally friendly choices, together with providing information, can be a successful combination for achieving behavioural change.

Agricultural land use presents a number of environmental challenges, which the European Commission is committed to addressing through a range of agri-environmental policies. A new study points to the importance of aligning agri-environmental policies with farmers’ needs and operations. Using the case of land clearing in Finland, the research underlines the importance of incorporating input from grassroots stakeholders into policy design.