linkstream2 microblog

https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/Predicting-asthma-attacks-kids/97/i32

QT:{{”
The Southern California team is building an informatics platform that integrates commercially available air pollution sensors as well as wearable environmental sensors developed by academic researchers. The project is part of the PRISMS initiative established in 2015 by the US National Institutes of Health. Information from the sensors, along with a person’s geolocation, physical activity, and health data, is wirelessly transmitted to the person’s smart watch and smartphone in real time. Participants use the smartphone to self-report symptoms and information related to daily activities. The informatics platform also uses the individual’s location to integrate weather, traffic, and air-quality data into the data stream.
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Problems caused by waze !

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/your-navigation-app-is-making-traffic-unmanageable

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/02/28/the-periodic-table-is-150-years-old-this-week a full history!

QT:{{”
“Stéphane Pigeon, an audio-processing engineer based in Brussels, has become the Taylor Swift of white noise, traveling the world recording relaxing soundscapes for his website, myNoise.net, which offers its more than 15,000 daily listeners an encyclopedic compendium of noise-masking tracks that range from “Distant Thunder” to
“Laundromat,” a listener request. (White noise, technically speaking, contains all audible frequencies in equal proportion. In the natural world, falling rain comes close to approximating this pan-frequency shhhhhh.) Impulse noises, such as honking, barking, hammering, and snoring, are the hardest to mask, but Pigeon has tried: While traveling in the Sahara, he recorded “Berber Tent,” a myNoise hit designed to help snorees by harmonizing the gentle whoosh of wind, the burble of boiling water, and the low rattle of snoring.
…
Farther north on Flatbush Avenue, encircled by lowing horns and a wheezing Mister Softee truck, Kanuri used his sound-meter app to measure the ambient noise—a disappointing 75.9 decibels, lower than everyone had thought but still more than 20 decibels above the threshold at which, per a 1974 EPA report, we get distracted or annoyed by sound. (Decibels, which measure volume, are logarithmic: Turn up a sound by 10 decibels, and most people will perceive its loudness as having doubled.)
…
Desperate ears call for desperate measures, and the noise-afflicted go to elaborate lengths to lower the volume. Kanuri taught himself to code so he could analyze New York City’s 311 data and correlate noise complaints with elective districts; he hoped he could hold politicians accountable. … A Wisconsin man who’d re-insulated, re-drywalled, and re-windowed his home was ultimately offered sleeping medication and antidepressants. An apartment dweller in Beijing, fed up with the calisthenics of the kids upstairs, got revenge by attaching a vibrating motor to his ceiling that rattled the family’s floor. The gadget is available for purchase online, where you can also find Coat of Silence paint, AlphaSorb Bass Traps, the Noise Eater Isolation Foot, the Sound Soother Headband, and the Sonic Nausea Electronic Disruption Device, which promises, irresistibly, “inventive payback.”” “}}

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/the-end-of-silence/598366/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867419310724?dgcid=author

Rebecca L. Walker, Gokul Ramaswami, Christopher Hartl, Nicholas Mancuso, Michael J. Gandal, Luis de la Torre-Ubieta, Bogdan Pasaniuc, Jason L. Stein, Daniel H. Geschwind,

Genetic Control of Expression and Splicing in Developing Human Brain Informs Disease Mechanisms,

Cell,

Volume 179, Issue 3,
2019,
Pages 750-771.e22,
ISSN 0092-8674,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.09.021

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/07/19/python-has-brought-computer-programming-to-a-vast-new-audience

A primer on deep learning in genomics | Nature Genetics
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0295-5
James Zou, Mikael Huss, Abubakar Abid, Pejman Mohammadi, Ali Torkamani & Amalio Telenti
Nature Genetics volume 51, pages12–18 (2019)

QT:{{”
“Still, the paper contains essential insights which should frame discussion of data’s role in the economy. One concerns the imbalance of power in the market for data. That stems partly from concentration among big internet firms. But it is also because, though data may be extremely valuable in aggregate, an individual’s personal data typically are not. For one Facebook user to threaten to deprive Facebook of his data is no threat at all. So effective negotiation with internet firms might require collective action: and the formation, perhaps, of a “data-labour union”.

This might have drawbacks. A union might demand too much in
compensation for data, for example, impairing the development of useful AIs. It might make all user data freely available and extract compensation by demanding a share of firms’ profits; that would rule out the pay-for-data labour model the authors see as vital to improving data quality. Still, a data union holds potential as a way of solidifying worker power at a time when conventional unions struggle to remain relevant.”

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https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/01/11/should-internet-firms-pay-for-the-data-users-currently-give-away

These Butterflies Evolved to Eat Poison. How Could That Have Happened? – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/science/monarch-butterflies-milkweed.html

QT:{{”
““The four-year undergraduate experience is often out of reach for large segments of our population,” said Kemi Jona, associate dean for digital innovation and enterprise learning at Northeastern University in Boston. Moreover, he said, “the idea of getting that one degree and you’re set for life doesn’t really hold water anymore. Then the question becomes, ‘how do we make it easier for working adults and people who need to pick up new kinds of tools and technologies?’”

The answer: stackable credits, which Cassandra Horii, director of Caltech’s center for teaching, learning and outreach, defined as “a more bite-sized piece of education that stands on its own and has value in the workplace.” But “if you continue on your educational trajectory, that piece fully counts towards your next educational step.”

The stackable term itself, noted Jimmie Williamson and Matthew Pittinsky in an article in “Inside Higher Education,” is “clever, invoking the image of Lego blocks and the metaphor of assembly.”” “}}

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/education/learning/stackable-degree-continuing-education.html