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Are you worried about AI collecting your facial data from all the pictures you have ever posted or shared? Researchers have now developed a method for hindering facial recognition.

It is a commonly accepted fact nowadays that the images we post or share online can and might find themselves being used by third parties for one reason or another. It may not be something we truly agree with, but it’s a fact that most of us have accepted as an undesirable consequence of using freely available social media apps and websites.

To avoid this happening, a team of researchers from the University of Chicago have developed an algorithm, named “Fawkes,” as an ode to Guy Fawkes, that works in the background to slightly alter your image, which is mostly unnoticeable to human eye. The reason for this is that companies, such as, Clearview, which collect large amounts of facial data, use artificial intelligence to find and connect one photograph of one’s face to another photograph from elsewhere. This connection is found by linking the similarities between the two photos. However, it doesn’t mean that the recognition only occurs when identical facial symmetry or characteristics, such as moles, are found. Facial recognition also looks into “invisible relationships between the pixels that make up a computer-generated picture of that face.”

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The Study

Now, Format Medical Research takes on two high profile clinical trials involving the antibody cocktail known as REGN-COV2. Garnering national attention, this investigational therapy targeting COVID-19 has receive a lot of attention. The Ventura County Star reports that the SMO will commence the first study, representing one of 150 sites in North and South America, this Friday. The goal: determine if the antibody medicine offers a safe and effective treatment for those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

The second study focuses on those participants who are actually healthy but “at risk” of the virus. In this study, the participants will take the therapy to determine if there are prevention properties and the sponsor seeks up to 2,000 participants.

Although perhaps not a household name among big pharmaceutical sponsors perhaps that may change as FORMAT Medical Research in Oxnard, California, recently secured a major contract with Regeneron to participate in their highly watched, Operation Warp Speed-funded REGN-COV2 double antibody COVID-19 clinical trial. The Southern California-based research organization starts two trials with the New York State-based sponsor chief, Nicholas Focil, who now faces “the most important study of my career.”

Continue reading “Oxnard, CA’s FORMAT Medical Research Secures Two Big Clinical Trials with Regeneron Investigating REGN-COV2” | >

Scientists can use some pretty wild forces to manipulate materials. There’s acoustic tweezers, which use the force of acoustic radiation to control tiny objects. Optical tweezers made of lasers exploit the force of light. Not content with that, now physicists have made a device to manipulate materials using the force of… nothingness.

OK, that may be a bit simplistic. When we say nothingness, we’re really referring to the attractive force that arises between two surfaces in a vacuum, known as the Casimir force. The new research has provided not just a way to use it for no-contact object manipulation, but also to measure it.

The implications span multiple fields, from chemistry and gravitational wave astronomy all the way down to something as fundamental and ubiquitous as metrology — the science of measurement.

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We would soon have an Ai teacher @ Ogba Educational Clinic.

Watch our Discussed episode where we dive deeper into the topic with Dr. Joanna Bryson: https://bit.ly/what-if-your-teacher-were-ai

Have you ever had a teacher that was just, well, kind of boring? Maybe even a little, robotic? We’ve all been there. Let’s face it, it’s hard to learn when you’re being put to sleep. But what if we found a completely new way of learning? Could a robot be a better teacher than a human? How might education change with AI?

Continue reading “What If Your Teacher Were AI?” | >

Do you agree Eric Klien

Apple AI chief and ex-Googler John Giannandrea dives into the details with Ars.

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) now permeate nearly every feature on the iPhone, but Apple hasn’t been touting these technologies like some of its competitors have. I wanted to understand more about Apple’s approach, so I spent an hour talking with two Apple executives about the company’s strategy—and the privacy implications of all the new features based on AI and ML.

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But new findings from a team of researchers led by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis point to another theory and suggest that become ill because their immune systems can’t do enough to protect them from the virus, landing them in intensive care units. They suggest that boosting immunity could be a potential treatment strategy for COVID-19.

Such a strategy has been proposed in two recently published papers, one published online in JAMA Network Open and the other published online in the journal JCI Insight.

“People around the world have been treating patients seriously ill with COVID-19 using drugs that do very different things,” said senior investigator Richard S. Hotchkiss, MD, professor of anesthesiology, of medicine and of surgery. “Some drugs tamp down the immune response, while others enhance it. Everybody seems to be throwing the kitchen sink at the illness. It may be true that some people die from a hyperinflammatory response, but it appears more likely to us that if you block the too much, you’re not going to be able to control the virus.”

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On March 11, 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake triggered a powerful tsunami, generating waves higher than 125 feet that ravaged the coast of Japan, particularly the Tohoku region of Honshu, the largest and most populous island in the country.nnNearly 16,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, and millions left without electricity and water. Railways and roads were destroyed, and 383,000 buildings damaged—including a nuclear power plant that suffered a meltdown of three reactors, prompting widespread evacuations.nnIn lessons for today’s businesses deeply hit by pandemic and seismic culture shifts, it’s important to recognize that many of the Japanese companies in the Tohoku region continue to operate today, despite facing serious financial setbacks from the disaster. How did these businesses manage not only to survive, but thrive?nnOne reason, says Harvard Business School professor Hirotaka Takeuchi, was their dedication to responding to the needs of employees and the community first, all with the moral purpose of serving the common good. Less important for these companies, he says, was pursuing layoffs and other cost-cutting measures in the face of a crippled economy.nn

As demonstrated after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japanese businesses have a unique capability for long-term survival. Hirotaka Takeuchi explains their strategy of investing in community over profits during turbulent times.

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