2020-09-02 Raphael Satter
(Reuters) – Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful – and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.
2006-01-10
Rhinosinusitis is an inflammation or infection of the nose and air pockets (sinuses) above, below and between the eyes which connect with the back of the nose through tiny openings (ostia). Rhinosinusitis can be caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi (molds) and possibly by allergies. Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is an immune disorder caused by fungi. The immune response produced by eosinophils causes the fungi to be attacked, which leads to damage of the sinus membranes, resulting in full-blown rhinosinusitis symptoms. Gaseous nitric oxide (NO) is naturally released in the human respiratory tract. The major part of NO found in exhaled air originates in the nasal airways, although significant production of NO also takes place in the paranasal sinuses. Proper ventilation is essential for maintenance of sinus integrity, and blockage of the ostium is a central event in pathogenesis of sinusitis. Concentrations of NO in the healthy sinuses are high. Nasal NO is known to be increased 15- to 20-fold by humming compared with quiet exhalation. NO is known to be broadly antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial. This case report shows that a subject hummed strongly at a low pitch ( approximately 130 Hz) for 1h (18 hums per minute) at bedtime the first night, and hummed 60-120 times 4 times a day for the following 4 days as treatment for severe CRS. The humming technique was described as being one that maximally increased intranasal vibrations, but less than that required to produce dizziness. The morning after the first 1-h humming session, the subject awoke with a clear nose and found himself breathing easily through his nose for the first time in over 1 month. During the following 4 days, CRS symptoms slightly reoccurred, but with much less intensity each day. By humming 60-120 times four times per day (with a session at bedtime), CRS symptoms were essentially eliminated in 4 days. Coincidentally, the subject’s cardiac arrhythmias (PACs) were greatly lessened. It is hypothesized that strong, prolonged humming increased endogenous nasal NO production, thus eliminating CRS by antifungal means.
It combines resistance, capacitance, and what’s called a Mott memristor all in the same device. Memristors are devices that hold a memory, in the form of resistance, of the current that has flowed through them. Mott memristors have an added ability in that they can also reflect a temperature-driven change in resistance. Materials in a Mott transition go between insulating and conducting according to their temperature. It’s a property seen since the 1960s, but only recently explored in nanoscale devices.
The transition happens in a nanoscale sliver of niobium oxide in the memristor. Here when a DC voltage is applied, the NbO2 heats up slightly, causing it to transition from insulating to conducting. Once that switch happens, the charge built up in the capacitance pours through. Then the device cools just enough to trigger the transition back to insulating. The result is a spike of current that resembles a neuron’s action potential.
2020-09-27
The story of how neural nets evolved from the earliest days of AI to now.
2020-08-21 Caleb Parke
this year, the Democratic caucuses are taking God out of the pledge of allegiance. The Black community is a faith community … they’ve got a real problem ahead.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dnc-god-2020-election-christians-prayer-march-dc-franklin-graham
2020-09-10 Ned Batchelder
https://nedbatchelder.com//blog/202009/how_to_be_helpful_online.html
2020-09-01 Andrew Ghobrial
the federal government pays the universities/colleges up front, and the student then owes the government that money.
This represented a large shift in the alignment of incentives. When the loans come from the federal gov, there’s much less pressure on schools to compete on price.
States that resemble sleep-like cycles in simulated neural networks quell the instability that comes with uninterrupted self-learning in artificial analogs of brains
…
Watkins and her research team found that the network simulations became unstable after continuous periods of unsupervised learning. When they exposed the networks to states that are analogous to the waves that living brains experience during sleep, stability was restored. “It was as though we were giving the neural networks the equivalent of a good night’s rest,” said Watkins.
https://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-archive/2020/June/0608-artificial-brains.php
2020-07-25 Joseph A. Wulfsohn
“Do you sometimes — because I follow you on Twitter and I know I do this… do you ever tweet out and be like — you wake up and, ‘Aw man, I wish I didn’t send that one out’?” Portnoy asked.
“Often, too often,” Trump responded. “It used to be in the old days before this, you’d write a letter and you’d say this letter is very big. You put it on your desk and then you go back tomorrow and you say, ‘Oh, I’m glad I didn’t send it,’ right? But we don’t do that with Twitter, right? We put it out instantaneously, we feel great, and then you start getting phone calls — ‘Did you really say this?’ I say, ‘What’s wrong with that?’ and you find out a lot of things.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-admits-often-regrets-tweets-barstool-sports-ceo
2020-07-11 Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/
Wayback Machine copy:
http://web.archive.org/web/20200822193504/https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/