71 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2021
    1. The question of whether we should stop scientific projects in the name of promoting social justice highlights more of a false dilemma than the reality. In fact, we believe that framing the issue this way masks a much deeper problem of democratic governance. Bolsonaro’s government, at the behest of the United States, is making decisions that advance the business interests of a growing, billionaire-driven private space sector under the guise of being science-driven. The reality is that these authoritarian moves are driven not by curiosity about the universe but rather by the satellite market. Our leaders are arguing that the rights of Alcântara’s quilombolas should take a back seat in order to promote technological efforts that will supposedly benefit all of humanity. However, the groups suffer a double loss. In addition to having their fundamental rights violated, they are excluded from the supposed financial and technological benefits of this science-advancing project.

      The question of whether we should stop scientific projects in the name of promoting social justice highlights more of a false dilemma than the reality. In fact, we believe that framing the issue this way masks a much deeper problem of democratic governance. Bolsonaro’s government, at the behest of the United States, is making decisions that advance the business interests of a growing, billionaire-driven private space sector under the guise of being science-driven. The reality is that these authoritarian moves are driven not by curiosity about the universe but rather by the satellite market. Our leaders are arguing that the rights of Alcântara’s quilombolas should take a back seat in order to promote technological efforts that will supposedly benefit all of humanity. However, the groups suffer a double loss. In addition to having their fundamental rights violated, they are excluded from the supposed financial and technological benefits of this science-advancing project.

    2. This is not just a matter of tragic, decades-old history. In 2021, it may all happen again. In 2019, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro signed a technology safeguard agreement with former President Trump that will allow Americans to use the Alcântara space base to launch rockets and satellites. This time, displacement threatens even more families and 12,000 hectares of quilombo territory. This means that 800 families risk being forced to leave their land at any moment.

      This is not just a matter of tragic, decades-old history. In 2021, it may all happen again. In 2019, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro signed a technology safeguard agreement with former President Trump that will allow Americans to use the Alcântara space base to launch rockets and satellites. This time, displacement threatens even more families and 12,000 hectares of quilombo territory. This means that 800 families risk being forced to leave their land at any moment.

    1. Global climate change, population pressure and environmental stress are some of the reasons we can expect future emergencies, whether these include another pandemic; severe storms with attendant flooding and other threats to public health and safety, such as we have seen in the Gulf and the lower Mississippi; or wildfires such as those that have recently ravaged parts of California and degraded air quality in regions well beyond the impact of the fires themselves. In all of those examples, the ability to use large-scale computational models and data is proving critical to mobilizing effective responses and to saving lives.

      Global climate change, population pressure and environmental stress are some of the reasons we can expect future emergencies, whether these include another pandemic; severe storms with attendant flooding and other threats to public health and safety, such as we have seen in the Gulf and the lower Mississippi; or wildfires such as those that have recently ravaged parts of California and degraded air quality in regions well beyond the impact of the fires themselves. In all of those examples, the ability to use large-scale computational models and data is proving critical to mobilizing effective responses and to saving lives.

    2. One path towards that goal is outlined in the OSTP-led national strategic plan for the Future Advanced Computing Ecosystem. The plan presents a coordinated approach to develop the nation’s next-generation advanced computing ecosystem as a strategic resource that continues to span government, academia, nonprofits and industry. More recently, a multiagency request for information on the NSCR concept has provided insightful input to agencies as they explore next steps.

      One path towards that goal is outlined in the OSTP-led national strategic plan for the Future Advanced Computing Ecosystem. The plan presents a coordinated approach to develop the nation’s next-generation advanced computing ecosystem as a strategic resource that continues to span government, academia, nonprofits and industry. More recently, a multiagency request for information on the NSCR concept has provided insightful input to agencies as they explore next steps.

    1. Making the best use of the time you have can only get you so far. The much more important problem is making more higher quality time for yourself. Most people’s time is eaten up by things like school and work. Obviously if you attend one of these, you should stop. But what else can you do?

      Making the best use of the time you have can only get you so far. The much more important problem is making more higher quality time for yourself. Most people’s time is eaten up by things like school and work. Obviously if you attend one of these, you should stop. But what else can you do?

  2. Feb 2021
    1. chose this metaphor because animal domestication is a gradual process that isn’t always deliberate, and typically revolves around one group becoming dependent upon another. For example: there’s evidence that domestication of dogs began with socialization, resulting in not-entirely-artificial selection promoting genes that resulted in more friendliness with and dependence upon humans.

      This is interesting perspective.

    1. Today it is newspapers that are in retreat – as the advertising model on which they came to rely has been undermined by the internet – and subscription newsletters have made an unexpected return. Some 400 years after Pory and Rossingham, the internet has offered a new way for individuals writing letters of news to connect with audiences directly. Like their 17th-century precursors, these missives have the personal tone of a note from a trusted and well-informed friend. The newest business model in journalism, it turns out, is also the oldest

      2

    2. The popularity of handwritten letters of news declined after laws governing the censorship of printed material lapsed in 1695, and printed periodicals eventually superseded the handwritten variety

      1

  3. Jan 2021
    1. Internally, we think something like this: “Why bother reading a whole book when I can read a bunch of tweets (for less than 5 minutes) from smart people?” And not only that. Emotionally, we feel a lot better because each and every tweet is giving us sensation compared to one big dopamine hit at the end of the book. It’s something like the synergy effect but working against us in the long-term.6 We consume more short-form content and we (falsely) believe that we’re getting smarter.

      7

    2. We consider every tip shared in each separate tweet as a separate little positive nudge that gives us an emotional sensation. The sense of completion comes faster because the content is shorter.

    3. The more we participate in platforms that provide frequent rewarding stimuli, the less we become interested in involving ourselves in tasks that require more time and effort to finish

      5

    4. The less mental capacity it takes the viewer to get something on TV, the better.

      4

    5. But let me expand this further so it can make more sense: “Am I spending my time, my resources, my mental capacity, in a way that will give me rewards that will ultimately reinforce my perception of worthiness?”

      3

    6. We think that collecting viral tweets and saving Instagram carousels is making us smarter and intellectually more resilient, but we are simply further degenerating our already heavily fragmented attention.

      1

    1. “It’s a very interesting message … the consumer association is saying we understand the (ill) effects, but we don’t understand the causes, and we want companies to explain the causes to us.

      2

    2. It’s the latest sign that the technology broadly described as “artificial intelligence” — and specifically algorithm-based advertising and sales — is shaping up as a new front in the country’s push to control big tech.

      1

    1. It would be six days before it announced that the new virus was a coronavirus, and even then, it did not share any genetic sequences to allow other countries to develop tests and begin tracing the spread of the virus.

      7

    2. China says that it communicated regularly and fully with the WHO from 3 January. But recordings of internal WHO meetings obtained by the Associated Press (AP) news agency some of which were shared with PBS Frontline and the BBC, paint a different picture, revealing the frustration that senior WHO officials felt by the following week.

      6

    3. "It was reportable," says Professor Lawrence Gostin, Director of the WHO Collaborating Center on national and global health law at Georgetown University in Washington DC, and a member of the International Health Regulations roster of experts. "The failure to report clearly was a violation of the International Health Regulations.

      5

    4. Gao, who refused the BBC's requests for an interview, has told state media that the sequences were released as soon as possible, and that he never said publicly that there was no human-to-human transmission.

      4

    5. Epidemiologist Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York was also trying to reach Gao. Just as he was having dinner to ring in the New Year, Gao returned his call. The details Lipkin reveals about their conversation offer new insights into what leading Chinese officials were prepared to say at this critical point.

      3

    6. The deputy editor of ProMed-mail, an organisation which sends out alerts on disease outbreaks worldwide, received an email from a contact in Taiwan, asking if she knew anything about the chatter online.

      2

    7. Now, as messages suggesting the possible return of Sars began flying over Chinese social media, the Wuhan Health Commission sent two orders out to hospitals. It instructed them to report all cases direct to the Health Commission, and told them not to make anything public without authorisation.

      1

    1. For example, there is no portal that shows UK patients where all of their private medical data has been shared.

      1

    2. According to the 2020 Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey, more than half of IT leaders in the healthcare sector said their top technology investment was security and privacy.

      1

    3. “If we look at the risk of an MRI machine, X-ray machine or dialysis machine, the potential damage to the patient is huge. Life-saving machines could also be turned into non-functioning devices, leaving patients without access to treatment,” he says, adding that such attacks undermine patient trust in the health

      This is problematic.

    4. A September 2020 report from Veritas, a data protection company, found that 39 per cent of healthcare companies around the world have been hit by a ransomware attack at some point.

      The mess has been growing for long!!

    1. The actors have been observed targeting specific security researchers by a novel social engineering method

    2. Their blog contains write-ups and analysis of vulnerabilities that have been publicly disclosed, including “guest” posts from unwitting legitimate security researchers, likely in an attempt to build additional credibility with other security researchers.

    3. n order to build credibility and connect with security researchers, the actors established a research blog and multiple Twitter profiles to interact with potential targets.

    1. Some areas in the life sciences have already a considerable history of benefiting from Semantic Web technologies, for example, the previously noted SNOMED-CT and Gene Ontology. Generally speaking, biomedical fields were early adopters of Semantic Web concepts. Another prominent example would be the development of the ICD11, which was driven by Semantic Web technologies

      8

    2. Another difference is one of central control versus bottom-up community contributions: The Linked Data Cloud is in a sense the currently largest existing knowledge graph known, but it is hardly a concise entity. Rather, it consists of loosely interlinked individual subgraphs, each of which is governed by its very own structure, representation schema, and so on. Knowledge graphs, in contrast, are usually understood to be much more internally consistent, and more tightly controlled, artifacts.

    3. While Google does not provide the Knowledge Graph for download, it does provide an API to access contentw—the API uses standard schema.org types and is compliant with JSON-LD,34 which is essentially an alternative syntax for RDF standardized by the W3C.
    4. Another prominent effort launched in 2012 is Wikidata,39 which started as a project at Wikimedia Deutschland funded among others by Google, Yandex, and the Allen Institute for AI. Wikidata is based on a similar idea as Wikipedia, namely, to crowdsource information, However, while Wikipedia is providing encyclopedia-style texts (with human readers as the main consumers), Wikidata is about creating structured data that can be used by programs or in other projects

      6

    5. Number of RDF graphs in the Linked Open Data Cloud over time.

    6. Also in 2004, the Resource Description Framework (RDF) became a W3C standard (the revision RDF 1.132 was completed in 2014). In essence, RDF is a syntax for expressing directed, labeled, and typed graphs.k RDF is more or lessl compatible with OWL, by using OWL to specify an ontology of types and their relationships, and by then using these types as types in the RDF graph, and the relationships as edges. From this perspective, an OWL ontology can serve as a schema (or a logic of types) for the RDF (typed) graph.

      5

    7. Perhaps, each of these three perspectives has merit, and the field exists in a confluence of these, with ontologies, linked data, knowledge graphs, being key concepts for the field, W3C standards around RDF, OWL, and SPARQL constituting technical exchange formats that unify the field on a syntactic (and to a certain extent, semantic) level; the application purpose of the field is in establishing efficient methods for data sharing, discovery, integration, and reuse (whether for the Web or not); and a long-term vision that serves as a driver is the establishing of The Semantic Web as an artifact complete with intelligent agent applications at some point in the (perhaps, distant) future.

      4

    8. One perspective is that the field is all about the long-term goal of creating The Semantic Web (as an artifact) together with all the necessary tools and methods required for creation, maintenance, and application. In this particular narrative, The Semantic Web is usually envisioned as an enhancement of the current World Wide Web with machine-understandable information (as opposed to most of the current Web, which is mostly targeted at human consumption), together with services—intelligent agents—utilizing this information

      3

    9. The review is also very selective, because Semantic Web is a rich field of diverse research and applications, borrowing from many disciplines within or adjacent to computer science. In a brief review like this one cannot possibly be exhaustive or give due credit to all important individual contributions.

      2

    10. A concrete artifact, which may deserve to be called "The Semantic Web" may or may not come into existence someday, and indeed some members of the research field may argue that part of it has already been built.

      1

    1. An Australian Cousin Jack cartoon by Oswald Pryor from 1915; the caption reads 'Cousin Jack miner:- "Call isself Cap'n 'e do; and I 'spoase ef the truth ez known, 'e never did a day's work underground in all 'ez life

    2. Quite when and where these Cornish emigrants started to be known as 'Cousin Jacks' is not wholly clear, unfortunately, and various theories have been proposed over the years, most of which locate the genesis of the term overseas in America, Australia or other places where Cornish miners emigrated to in the nineteenth century.

      2

    3. The 'Great Emigration' of the Cornish in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seems to have occurred on a quite remarkable scale. Margaret James-Korany has, for example, identified 42,000 individual emigrants sailing from the principal ports of Cornwall for Canada between 1831 and 1860, with some 6,200 leaving from Padstow alone in that period, and this outflow continued long after 1860 too.

      1

    1. In March, the company was able to quickly build number-crunching bots designed to help corporate customers process new tax deferrals and credits set out in federal Covid-19 relief measures under the Cares Act, Mr. Roseman said. “The changes were announced on Friday and we moved our solution into production on Monday

      Software is indeed eating the world!

    2. The bots have helped streamline time-intensive processes, enabling the company to handle a growing volume of online orders and customer queries about Covid-19, he said.
    3. Nearly 80% of some 440 global corporate executives surveyed by Deloitte LLP in mid 2020 said they had implemented some form of robotic process automation in the past year. Roughly 15% said they plan to in the next three years. The survey included chief information officers, heads of automation, IT directors and other executives.

      Test 3

    4. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, which makes gear for semiconductors, has experienced strong growth, but “key support functions have been stretched” during the pandemic, Mr. Ahmed said. To bolster productivity, he added, the company is aiming to have 255 bots in place for a range of workplace processes by the end of February. They are making them in-house using a bot-making platform created by UiPath Inc.

      Test 2

  4. Jun 2020
    1. Then there’s the increasingly fluid and expanding nature of the jobs we do, which increases our need to learn more and adapt quickly. All of these factors combined can result in overload, confusion and serious obstacles to progress. The very information that should be helping us, is creating a barrier to learning. There’s simply too much to read and not enough time to read it.

      Information overload

    1. NA-based vaccines like the one being developed by the Jenner Institute may have problems like randomly integrating with the host cell chromosome and resulting in a recombination of genes. He says pioneers in adenovirus technology in the US, who have explored the technology very well, expressed their limitations, which was also the reason it was not tried successfully even in gene therapy

      Difficulty for SNA based vaccines

    2. dengue vaccine Dengvaxia spearheaded by French drug maker Sanofi. The vaccine was introduced after two decades of research and hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. But it was not received well as it led to unexpected events like inducing a higher risk of contracting the disease in a group of children in Philippines. Similarly, Merck of US had to wound up a large-scale clinical trial on a HIV vaccine after data showed it may backfire and make people more vulnerable to the disease.

      Failures of different vaccines.

    3. The quickest that a vaccine has been developed is the Ebola vaccine branded Ervebo that was granted an approval by the USFDA only last year, four years after the dreaded disease reared its head in parts of west Africa.

      Lots of difficulties

    4. . According to published reports, the vaccine being developed uses a replication-deficient adenovirus (a harmless virus) to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 protein to induce a protective immune response. Coded as ChAdOx1, the same vaccine has been used against several other pathogens, including one for the Mers virus.

      Still nothing in sight!

    5. Kang cited how the BCG vaccine underwent as many as 200 sub-cultures before it was considered attenuated (weakened) enough for human use. Another leading virologist tells ET Prime that Moderna is in an uncharted territory and no vaccine using that technology has reached the licensing stage.

      Requires significant attenuation before you actually see results.

    6. Known as messenger RNA, Moderna’s vaccine essentially aims to induce an immune response by sending instruction signals for a spike protein located on the surface of the virus. These immune cells are then expected to develop antibodies against the virus whenever a person contracts the coronavirus. Although promising, this pathway has not been successful or used to develop vaccines before.

      Novel form of vaccine but not entirely worth it.

    7. Moderna had earlier announced that it would start its pivotal phase III studies in July, to be followed by a biologic-licence application (BLA) with the USFDA. While apprehensions have been raised over that timeline, senior researchers like Fauci who had backed Moderna’s vaccine have not made any observations on the quality of data shared.

      Very bad quality of data

    8. For example, on May 18, Moderna shared data showing that eight persons who were administered its vaccine coded mRNA-1273 elicited neutralising antibodies against the novel coronavirus. Moderna’s is an exceptional case in the history of vaccine development. In a rather unusual twist, the vaccine skipped animal studies, a pre-requisite, before it was tested on humans.
    9. He passionately explains how his team developed a reverse-genetics system against a poultry virus called avian paramyxovirus. In simple terms, this is a method of recovering a virus, manipulating its genome, and using it as a vector to induce an immune response.
    10. A few days ago, the US launched a public-private partnership under Operation Warp Speed that hand-picked five companies that can develop and make vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics on an accelerated basis.
    11. Tests on patients showed that remdesivir helped shrink the recovery time for critical patients from 15 days to 11 days but could not prevent mortality or bring down death rates. In short, remdesivir isn’t a definitive cure for Covid-19.
    12. Hundreds of chemistry-based and biological drugs – new and existing – are being tested everyday across continents to rein in the coronavirus, but so far only one has shown partial activity.
    1. Cochrane meta-analysis, however, came to similar conclusions as the VA study, showing no difference in overall survival.

      de Castria TB, da Silva EM, Gois AF, and Riera R: Cisplatin versus carboplatin in combination with third-generation drugs for advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013

    2. Most recently, a National Cancer Database (NCDB) study compared the effect of PORT in patients with N2 disease. The use of PORT resulted in a significant improvement in 5-year OS (27.8 vs. 34.1%, p < 0.001).

      Corso CD, Rutter CE, Wilson LD, et al: Re-evaluation of the role of postoperative radiotherapy and the impact of radiation dose for non-small-cell lung cancer using the National Cancer Database. J Thorac Oncol 2015; 10: pp. 148-155

    3. A combined analysis of two of these trials, the STARS and ROSEL trials, was recently reported. Combined eligibility included those with a tumor less than 4 cm, with the surgical arm requiring a lobectomy and mediastinal lymph node sampling. Central tumors were allowed on the STARS protocol, while only peripheral tumors were enrolled on the ROSEL protocol. SBRT regimens included 54 Gy in 3 fractions, 50 Gy in 4 fractions or 60 Gy in 5 fractions. A total of 58 patients were randomized; after a median follow-up of 40 months, SBRT was noted to have superior OS (3-year OS, 95% vs. 79%, p = 0.04) but similar rates of local, regional, and distant recurrence-free survival

      Chang JY, Senan S, Paul MA, et al: Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy versus lobectomy for operable stage I non-small-cell lung cancer: a pooled analysis of two randomised trials. Lancet Oncol 2015; 16: pp. 630-637

    4. Patterns of pathological mediastinal lymph node involvement based on the involved lobe have been described. In one such study, right upper lobe tumors most commonly spread to the ipsilateral lower paratracheal nodes, while right middle and right lower lobe tumors had similar distributions of paratracheal and subcarinal nodal involvement

      Asamura H, Nakayama H, Kondo H, et al: Lobe-specific extent of systematic lymph node dissection for non-small cell lung carcinomas according to a retrospective study of metastasis and prognosis. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 1999; 117: pp. 1102-1111

    5. Thyroid transcription factor-1 (TTF-1) and napsin are characteristic of primary adenocarcinoma of the lung in which cytokeratin (CK) 7 is usually positive and CK 20 is negative. Squamous cell carcinomas will usually stain positive for p40, CK 5/6, and/or p63. Typical neuroendocrine markers include chromogranin A, synaptophysin, neuron-specific enolase and cluster of differentiation (CD) 56. In some tumors, especially when biopsy material is limited, it may not be possible to characterize histological type and the term NSCLC not otherwise specified (NOS) may be applied.

      Important markers- TTF-1, Napsin, CK-7 usually negative for CK20.

    6. useful metric in quantifying this exposure is known as pack years smoked , which is the amount of packs per day multiplied by the length of time in years smoking. Up to 90% of the risk attributable to tobacco exposure can be avoided with early tobacco cessation.

      Peto R, Darby S, Deo H, et al: Smoking, smoking cessation, and lung cancer in the UK since 1950: combination of national statistics with two case-control studies. BMJ 2000; 321: pp. 323-329

  5. May 2020
    1. Once a jumbled shop, it now resembles an organized ministore, complete with red and blue JioMart branding. Customers can place orders for items such as salt and lentils via a JioMart WhatsApp account. The orders come to the shop and the items are then delivered and paid for in cash. Reliance is also providing a manager and free deliveries.

      The last mile delivery will be a huge issue.

    2. Reliance last year paid about 350,000 rupees ($4,600) to overhaul the space, according to a person familiar with the matter. The shop owner will pay Reliance back in installments over six years.

      This explains its well

    3. Information reviewed by The Wall Street Journal regarding one small shop participating in a trial shows how Reliance’s vision—and willingness to spend now to reap future gains—is taking shape.

      This is odd though. Perhaps related to the Facebook storefronts announced.

  6. Oct 2019
    1. “Using open annotation to bring reviews to preprints takes full advantage of its promise, namely the ability to layer diverse perspectives over original documents for the benefit of all,” said Dan Whaley, Founder of Hypothesis. “The scholarly process can only benefit when researchers can immediately know what they previously had no easy way to discover.”

      You can add comments to the annotations.

    2. eLife and the EMBO Press journals, together with Peerage of Science and Review Commons, two journal-independent peer review initiatives, will be the first to participate. Several other groups plan to join the pilot later, including the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) and the Public Library of Science (PLOS).

      It makes sense but there is no way you can export the annotations out of the service.