March Ideas and Innovation

Read the articles selected in March 2017

Embracing Innovation in Government

Innovation in governments actions doesn’t only impact the lives of citizens but means to overcome old structures and modes of thinking so far to redefine the relations between governments and citizens, seen as partners in the co-creation of policies and services, shaping a new figure of an expert.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond

by Klaus Schwab

Source: http://www.weforum.org/

The capital of the fourth industrial revolution is knowledge. The risk is to increase inequalities between the low-skill and high-skill workers in the labor market, as well the gap in profit between capital and labor. New technologies will improve governments efficiency and in the same way their transparency and competitiveness.

An automated smartphone-based diagnostic assay for point-of-care semen analysis

by Manoj Kumar Kanakasabapathy, Magesh Sadasivam, Anupriya Singh, Collin Preston, Prudhvi Thirumalaraju, Maanasa Venkataraman, Charles L. Bormann, Mohamed Shehata Draz, John C. Petrozza & Hadi Shafiee

Male infertility affects up to 12% of men worldwide, yet it is an underestimated issue because of bias and socioeconomic factors, especially in developing countries. Now a smartphone-based semen analyzer that is easy to use e automatic will replace the more expensive laboratory methods.

Strange signals from the sky may be signs of aliens

Source: The Economist, 18 March

An unusual signal noticed from the Small Magellani Cloud with the power of 100 m suns might come, say astronomers, from a superdense star, as well from a black hole formed with the centrifugal force of a collapsing star, or even from the radio transmitter of an alien spaceship.

Mimic of the human brain: Google’s AI learns from its past

by Ian Sample

Source: The Guardian, 15 March

An early step in the direction of a general AI is A Google’s Deep Mind, a program able to learn sequentially a range of different tasks and to select and retain in the memory of its neural network the connections most important for every skill. This new AI mimics the way animals learn skills crucial for survival.

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It begins: bots are learning to chat in their own language

by Cade Metz

Source: Wired, 16 March

An Open AI researcher is trying to develop a codex for machines to communicate to each other, that doesn't mimic human language exploiting the repetition of the same pattern but uses the so-called reinforcement learning technique to build progressively an own abstract language.

A big step towards an artificial yeast genome

Source: The Economist, 11 March

Researchers of the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project have created a synthetic yeast genome, using bits of DNA that seem not useful and redundant in order to extend the range of amino acids and produce completely new sorts of proteins for vaccines and drugs. The possibility to create entire genetic sequences is worth of a pause of thought.

Medical robotics- Regulatory, ethical, and legal considerations for increasing levels of autonomy

by Guang-Zhong Yang, James Cambias, Kevin Cleary, Eric Daimler, James Drake, Pierre E. Dupont, Nobuhiko Hata, Peter Kazanzides, Sylvain Martel, Rajni V. Patel, Veronica J. Santosand, Russell H. Taylor

Source: Science, 15 March

The increasing medical robotics autonomy raises ethical and regulatory questions, linked with the acceptance of risks of malfunction and harm. In the meantime, the role of surgeons is shifting towards diagnosis and decision making, while algorithms are changing the surgical tasks.

Consulta l’articolo:

http://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/2/4/eaam8638.full

Adding sex-and gender dimensions to your research

by Tania Rabesandratana

Source: Science, 13 March

The new funding programmes of the European Commission and other organizations require or reward research looking after sex-and gender aspects. This trend involves a question of scientific method, a structural variable that excellent research can’t overlook more.

Empowering women to end hunger and poverty

Source: http://www.fao.org, 1 March

Rural women’s skills are crucial to foster a sustainable agriculture and for the well-being of future generations. Improving their social and economic status by expanding women’s access to productive resources and technologies that reduce their drudgery contributes to a long-term social and economic growth.

The quest to reveal science’s hidden female faces

by Dalmeet Singh Chawla

Fonte: Nature, 8 March

A Wikipedia project seeks to discover and bring to light images of researchers, women or belonging to ethnic minorities. Their invisibility denonces a bias against underrepresented groups and in particular against women, whose scientific contribution has been often overlooked and attributed to their male colleagues.

Mediterranean diet “cuts risk of breast cancer”

by Haroon Siddique

Source: The Guardian, 6 March

According to a large study funded by the World Cancer Research Fund, following a Mediterranean diet reduces estrogen-receptor negative breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women, even in a non-Mediterranean population, and the risk of all breast cancer, as well of stroke and heart disease.

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Un algorithme comprend ce qu’il lit

by David Larousserie

Source: Le Monde, 1 March

Facebook has prepared an algorithm that can analyze a tale for kids. The goal is to elaborate a capacity to foresee the reality, core of the human intelligence combined with the knowledge of the past and “the state of the world”, that machines don’t have, as well as the innocence.

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Pluto’s defenders prepare to fight for its planethood (again)

by Nick Stockton

Source: Wired, 2 March

Not every large, round and orbiting mass is a planet. In the tenson between astronomers and geophysicists, opposing their own different perspectives, Pluto, declassed as a dwarf planet in 2006 for its insufficient self-gravity, has been seen falling on some t-shirts, celebrated as a nostalgia planet.

DNA could store all of the world’s data in one room

by Robert Service

Science: Science, 2 March

A new way to encode digital data, able to store 215 million gigabytes in a single gram of DNA will allow the humanity to preserve its knowledge for hundreds of thousands of years, and to decode it, until humans will be able to read DNA.

Data on movements of refugees and migrants are flawed

Source: Nature, 1 March

In the management of migratory flows, the accuracy and precision of data are crucial for evidence-based policy. The numbers of migrants often are counted more times in their movement cross-borders and also the definition of refugee becomes a tool manipulated for political ends.

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Pubblicato il : 19/12/2017
Modificato il : 04/04/2019

March Ideas and Innovation

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