Researchers swap lab coats for waders and wellies in a quest to battle a tiny parasite that threatens the $150 million dollar tuna industry.

Australian scientists develop a drought-tolerant beer grain they hope will be a saving grace for some Australian farmers.

Submitted by Deidra Herring: I am pleased to announce several Research & Education interim positions for the 2020 summer term and fall semester in place of David Lincove, who retired on April 30.  Kapil Vasudev will serve as the Interim History Librarian under the College of Arts and Sciences.  Carly Dearborn will serve as the […]

Submitted by Eric Johnson: Beth Kattelman has assumed the position of Curator of the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute (TRI). As lead curator of the TRI, Beth will be the primary contact for and coordinate overall outreach activities, collection development, donor relationships and research services to enhance TRI’s support of local, national […]

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in India recently presented its National Award for Technological Innovation to the IBM India Research Lab for Project Spoken Web.

On Monday, May 7, 2012, the White House honored fourteen individuals as Champions of Change for their efforts to advance access to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for people with disabilities.

(Supreme Court of Delaware) - In an action for misappropriation of trade secrets, judgment for plaintiff is affirmed where a lawful termination of a contract is not fatal to a claim of tortious interference with contractual relations, because the focus of the claim is on the defendant's wrongful conduct that induces the termination of the contract, irrespective of whether the termination is lawful.

(United States Tenth Circuit) - In an action claiming trademark infringement, unfair competition, and cybersquatting, summary judgment for defendant is affirmed where: 1) trademark infringement and unfair competition claims failed as plaintiff did not show that "Utah Lighthouse" was protectable, that defendant's use was in connection with any goods or services, and that defendant was likely to cause confusion among consumers as to the source of goods sold on its online bookstore; 2) defendant lacked a bad faith intent to profit from the use of plaintiff's trademark in several domain names under the Anti-Cybersquatting Protection Act (ACPA); and 3) defendant's website met safe harbor conditions of the ACPA since it was a parody.

(California Court of Appeal) - Reversed. Plaintiff brought a petition for writ of mandate claiming the fee charged by Defendant, County of Alameda, for copies of official records violated Government Code section 27366. Trial court granted petition and issued a preliminary injunction against Defendant and awarded attorney fees to Plaintiff. Appeals court found that the County did not abuse its discretion in determining the fee it charged or that section 27366 was violated.

Despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the container ship Oleander continues to work as a “ship of opportunity that acquires important ocean...

Rachael Sage Has Released A New Single, “Bravery’s On Fire" After Revealing Cancer Diagnosis; All Proceeds From Single And Charity Shows To Benefit Women's Cancer Research.

Rachael Sage Has Released A New Single, “Bravery’s On Fire" After Revealing Cancer Diagnosis; All Proceeds From Single And Charity Shows To Benefit Women's Cancer Research.

From pioneer in our field, Jeanne Brett: With the unprecedented and rapid need to switch from face-to-face to synchronous online classes, everyone using exercises and simulations has learned a lot.  iDG, NegotiateUP and NTR  are launching a series of Conversations about Innovations in Teaching Research and Technology held during three Fridays in June (5th, 12th, … Continue reading Conversations about Innovations in Teaching, Research and Technology →

Detlev Helmig most recently attracted attention for a paper that stated emissions from oil and gas production on the Front Range are largely underestimated.

The recovered Boston guard is giving his blood plasma.

The Alcohol and Other Drugs Committee's Centennial Paper to review what it has accomplished since its inception in the early 1970s, how it has evolved along with the field, and what challenges and opportunities it confronts going forward. To learn more about the history of impaired driving and the Standing Technical Committee on Alcohol, Other Drugs, and Transportation (ANB50), check out the Committee's Centennial Paper. As part of TRB's Centennial Celebration, the Technical Activities Council invited al...

Bimonthly newsletter released by the Institute of Transport Studies at Monash University

Research problem statements are now being accepted for the FY 2021 Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). To submit a problem statement, first review and follow  the format in this outline . Problem statements may be submitted electronically . Previously submitted proposals may be resubmitted. The deadline for consideration is June 19, 2020.   TCRP is managed by TRB and sponsored by the U.S. Federal Transit Administration (FTA). TCRP works in partnership with the American Public Transport...

TRB's “Tell Us ‘Our’ Story" challenge is now looking into the future. What impact do you hope to have on the world and how is the Transportation Research Board helping you make that impact? What is your vision for the Transportation Research Board 100 years from now? What are solutions that you have identified as a result of research you learned about through TRB? TRB welcomes all stories: small or large, profound or light-hearted, sobering or humorous. In addition to posting responses to these questions...

As all aspects of transportation deal with the unfolding effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are research needs, gaps, and potential ways to leverage innovation revealing themselves across all modes, systems, and disciplines in transportation. In keeping with the mission of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide trusted, timely, impartial, and evidence-based information exchange and research, TRB is issuing an urgent and directed call for Research Needs Statements sp...

Airports must maintain a safe and efficient facility while considering environmental impacts. Though traditional environmental challenges such as noise and water quality remain, several new themes are emerging, including energy management, sustainability, resiliency, and wildlife management. Airports will need guidelines and practices to help them address these pressing issues, and the first step in the process is to identify knowledge gaps and research needs. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program...

If you’re fortunate enough to still be working during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, you are likely to be doing so from home. Teleworking (or telecommuting) has been suddenly and widely adopted. For example, Arizona DOT reports doubling the number of employees who telework in multiple departments in just two weeks. In conjunction with Texas' disaster declaration related to COVID-19, TxDOT is also requiring its office-based employees to telework beginning March 16. Your workplace is likely making si...

TRB's “Tell Us ‘Our’ Story" challenge is now looking into the future. What impact do you hope to have on the world and how is the Transportation Research Board helping you make that impact? What is your vision for the Transportation Research Board 100 years from now? What are solutions that you have identified as a result of research you learned about through TRB? TRB welcomes all stories: small or large, profound or light-hearted, sobering or humorous. In addition to posting responses to these questions...

As all aspects of transportation deal with the unfolding effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are research needs, gaps, and potential ways to leverage innovation revealing themselves across all modes, systems, and disciplines in transportation. In keeping with the mission of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide trusted, timely, impartial, and evidence-based information exchange and research, TRB is issuing an urgent and directed call for Research Needs Statements sp...

The University of Texas at Austin is hosting Bridging Transportation Researchers (BTR) Online Conference  on August 11-12, 2020. TRB is pleased to cosponsor this event. This zero-carbon, zero-cost conference will host multiple Zoom-based tracks to virtually and globally unite transportation engineers, planners, and policymakers to discuss a wide range of transportation research topics and results, including: Multi-modal transportation network and systems Travel demand forecasting, including connecte...

A University at Buffalo-led research team is studying the details of how enzymes perform their job. The focus of the project is on understanding the molecular interactions that enable enzymes to accelerate chemical reactions.

Given all we know about facial recognition tech, it is literally jaw-dropping that anyone could make this claim… especially without being vetted independently.

A group of Harrisburg University professors and a PhD student have developed an automated computer facial recognition software capable of predicting whether someone is likely to be a criminal.

The software is able to predict if someone is a criminal with 80% accuracy and with no racial bias. The prediction is calculated solely based on a picture of their face.

There's a whole lot of "what even the fuck" in CBS 21's reprint of a press release, but let's start with the claim about "no racial bias." That's a lot to swallow when the underlying research hasn't been released yet. Let's see what the National Institute of Standards and Technology has to say on the subject. This is the result of the NIST's examination of 189 facial recognition AI programs -- all far more established than whatever it is Harrisburg researchers have cooked up.

Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. Native Americans had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy.

The faces of African American women were falsely identified more often in the kinds of searches used by police investigators where an image is compared to thousands or millions of others in hopes of identifying a suspect.

Why is this acceptable? The report inadvertently supplies the answer:

Middle-aged white men generally benefited from the highest accuracy rates.

Yep. And guess who's making laws or running police departments or marketing AI to cops or telling people on Twitter not to break the law or etc. etc. etc.

To craft a terrible pun, the researchers' claim of "no racial bias" is absurd on its face. Per se stupid af to use legal terminology.

Moving on from that, there's the 80% accuracy, which is apparently good enough since it will only threaten the life and liberty of 20% of the people it's inflicted on. I guess if it's the FBI's gold standard, it's good enough for everyone.

Maybe this is just bad reporting. Maybe something got copy-pasted wrong from the spammed press release. Let's go to the source… one that somehow still doesn't include a link to any underlying research documents.

What does any of this mean? Are we ready to embrace a bit of pre-crime eugenics? Or is this just the most hamfisted phrasing Harrisburg researchers could come up with?

A group of Harrisburg University professors and a Ph.D. student have developed automated computer facial recognition software capable of predicting whether someone is likely going to be a criminal.

The most charitable interpretation of this statement is that the wrong-20%-of-the-time AI is going to be applied to the super-sketchy "predictive policing" field. Predictive policing -- a theory that says it's ok to treat people like criminals if they live and work in an area where criminals live -- is its own biased mess, relying on garbage data generated by biased policing to turn racist policing into an AI-blessed "work smarter not harder" LEO equivalent.

The question about "likely" is answered in the next paragraph, somewhat assuring readers the AI won't be applied to ultrasound images.

With 80 percent accuracy and with no racial bias, the software can predict if someone is a criminal based solely on a picture of their face. The software is intended to help law enforcement prevent crime.

There's a big difference between "going to be" and "is," and researchers using actual science should know better than to use both phrases to describe their AI efforts. One means scanning someone's face to determine whether they might eventually engage in criminal acts. The other means matching faces to images of known criminals. They are far from interchangeable terms.

If you think the above quotes are, at best, disjointed, brace yourself for this jargon-fest which clarifies nothing and suggests the AI itself wrote the pullquote:

“We already know machine learning techniques can outperform humans on a variety of tasks related to facial recognition and emotion detection,” Sadeghian said. “This research indicates just how powerful these tools are by showing they can extract minute features in an image that are highly predictive of criminality.”

"Minute features in an image that are highly predictive of criminality." And what, pray tell, are those "minute features?" Skin tone? "I AM A CRIMINAL IN THE MAKING" forehead tattoos? Bullshit on top of bullshit? Come on. This is word salad, but a salad pretending to be a law enforcement tool with actual utility. Nothing about this suggests Harrisburg has come up with anything better than the shitty "tools" already being inflicted on us by law enforcement's early adopters.

I wish we could dig deeper into this but we'll all have to wait until this excitable group of clueless researchers decide to publish their findings. According to this site, the research is being sealed inside a "research book," which means it will take a lot of money to actually prove this isn't any better than anything that's been offered before. This could be the next Clearview, but we won't know if it is until the research is published. If we're lucky, it will be before Harrisburg patents this awful product and starts selling it to all and sundry. Don't hold your breath.

IBM Research today opened its second research location on the African continent and announced several new project collaborations in the areas of data driven healthcare, digital urban ecosystems and astronomy.

As climate change accelerates, IBM is galvanizing the global science community with a massive infusion of computing resources, weather data, and cloud services to help researchers examine the effects of climate change, and explore strategies to mitigate its effects. IBM pledges to help direct the equivalent of up to $200 million for up to five climate-related projects judged to offer the greatest potential impact, and will then broadly share the experiments' results.

IBM today announced its Health Cloud and Watson cognitive computing capabilities will support health data entered by customers in iOS apps using Apple's ResearchKit and HealthKit frameworks. The move, which complements IBM’s new Watson Health business unit, will arm medical researchers with a secure, open data storage solution, as well as access to IBM’s most sophisticated data analytics capabilities.

Sci-Tech Daresbury and IBM today announced the opening of a new building for the collaborative research facility at The Hartree Centre in Daresbury. The building, opened by the Duke of York, is the latest evolution of the long-running collaboration between Sci-Tech Daresbury and IBM.

IBM and the University of California San Diego have announced a multi-year project to enhance quality of life and independence for aging populations through the new Artificial Intelligence for Healthy Living Center (AIHL), located on the campus of UC San Diego. The groundbreaking center will bring together the technology, artificial intelligence and life sciences knowledge of IBM and UC San Diego to promote critical research and applications in two thematic areas: Healthy Aging and the Human Microbiome.

IBM today announced the first clients to tap into its IBM Q™ early-access commercial quantum computing systems to explore practical applications important to business and science. They include: JPMorgan Chase, Daimler AG, Samsung, JSR Corporation, Barclays, Hitachi Metals, Honda, Nagase, Keio University, Oak Ridge National Lab, Oxford University and University of Melbourne.

IBM and MIT today announced that IBM plans to make a 10-year, $240 million investment to create the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab in partnership with MIT. The lab will carry out fundamental artificial intelligence (AI) research and seek to propel scientific breakthroughs that unlock the potential of AI. The collaboration aims to advance AI hardware, software and algorithms related to deep learning and other areas, increase AI’s impact on industries, such as health care and cybersecurity, and explore the economic and ethical implications of AI on society. IBM’s $240 million investment in the lab will support research by IBM and MIT scientists.

IBM today announced it plans to shift $100 million investment over the next five years into a major Research effort which aims to advance mobile services and capabilities for businesses and consumers worldwide.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today it will upgrade the University of Canterbury’s BlueFern High Performance Computing (HPC) facility, enhancing its ability to deliver quality science and technology outcomes and significantly increasing New Zealand’s research capacity.

IBM has successfully prototyped a new software architecture for automating data management, potentially making it easier for researchers to collect usable information from mega-scale data collection projects like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) global telescope which aims to address unanswered questions about our universe.

IBM has provided extra high performance computing (HPC) capacity to the Universities of Auckland and Otago within a new collaboration called the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) that makes large-scale scientific computing more widely available to New Zealand researchers.

IBM Research has announced a research agreement with MoleMap New Zealand to help further advance the identification of melanoma using cognitive technology. It builds on planned research with Melanoma Institute Australia. IBM Research plans to analyse dermatological images of skin lesions to help identify specific clinical patterns in the early stages of melanoma. The New Zealand and Australian research aims to help reduce unnecessary biopsies and help clinicians more accurately understand skin cancer, which could help to improve patient care.

IBM's World Community Grid, a worldwide network of PC owners helping scientists solve humanitarian challenges, today announced several computing projects aimed at developing techniques to produce cleaner and safer water, an increasingly scarce commodity eluding at least 1.2 billion people worldwide.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has partnered with academia, government and industry to launch the Smart Transport Research Centre (STRC) based at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which is being opened today by the Minister for Transport, the honourable Annastacia Palasczuk. IBM will contribute its global consulting expertise and technology in developing smarter traffic solutions to help make Australia’s transportation infrastructure smarter, improve commuter experiences and reduce environmental impact.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a new collaboration with Thiess, one of the world’s largest contract miners, to use Big Data to improve machine availability and operational productivity utilizing predictive analytics and modeling technologies. This initial collaboration focuses on Thiess’ Mining haul trucks and excavators, and will help unify asset management and business operations.

Today on Data Privacy Day, IBM is announcing an innovative cloud-based technology for developers to help consumers better protect their personal data online such as their date of birth, home address and credit card numbers. As cybersecurity threats and identity theft continue to threaten both consumers and businesses, IBM scientists have been developing a clever cryptographic algorithm which enables transactions to occur without involuntarily sharing any personal data.

IBM Research in Australia has announced plans to undertake research with Melanoma Institute Australia to help further advance the identification of melanoma using cognitive technology. This planned research builds on IBM’s existing research agreement with Molemap, which uses advanced visual analytics to analyse more than 40,000 data sets including images and text. IBM Research plans to analyse dermatological images of skin lesions to help identify specific clinical patterns in the early stages of melanoma1. The Australian research aims to help reduce unnecessary biopsies and help clinicians more accurately understand skin cancer, which could help to improve patient care.