An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Twitter accounts run by machines are a major source of climate change disinformation that might drain support from policies to address rising temperatures. In the weeks surrounding former President Trump’s announcement about withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, accounts suspected of being bots accounted for roughly a quarter of all tweets about climate…
Tag: York University
Facebook Uses AI To Predict If COVID-19 Patients Will Need More Care
Facebook is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to help doctors predict whether they will need more resources, such as extra oxygen to care for COVID-19 patients in hospitals. CNET reports: The social network said Friday it developed two AI models, one based on a single chest X-ray, and another from a series X-rays, that could help forecast if a patient…
Most-Played Song of 2020? For Many It’s White Noise
An anonymous reader shares a report: In an average year, Spotify Wrapped is a sharing-optimized novelty hinging on nostalgia for a time that’s barely passed. But in 2020, this data mirror instead presented many users with unexpected empirical evidence of their pandemic coping mechanisms: a strange hit parade of ambient music, background noise and calming sound effects that soothed them through…
Meet the hell planet with a magma ocean and rocky rain
Exoplanet K2-141b is fiery hot world that circles so close to its star that 1 side of the planet features a deep ocean of molten lava. Meanwhile, the other side is freezing cold. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/k2-141b-lava-planet-with-magma-ocean-rocky-rain-supersonic-winds-super-earth…
Scientists Find a New Way To Search for Habitable Exoplanets
An anonymous reader shares a report: Earthlings are lucky to live near a relatively stable Sun, which has enabled life on our planet to emerge and thrive over the past four billion years. While many worlds in our galaxy might contain the right ingredients to support life, though, a lot of them could be stuck with a more volatile star that…
Supersonic winds, rocky rains forecasted on lava planet
Among the most extreme planets discovered beyond the edges of our solar system are lava planets: fiery hot worlds that circle so close to their host star that some regions are likely oceans of molten lava. According to scientists from McGill University, York University, and the Indian Institute of Science Education, the atmosphere and weather cycle of at least one such…
‘Time Cells’ Discovered In Human Brains
Researchers have identified cells in the human brain that are responsible for episodic memories. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. NPR reports: The cells are called time cells, and they place a sort of time stamp on memories as they are being formed. That allows us to recall sequences of events or…
Facebook Tells Academics To Stop Monitoring Its Political Ads
couchslug shares a report from The Register: Facebook has ordered the end to an academic monitoring project that has repeatedly exposed failures by the internet giant to clearly label political advertising on its platform. The social media goliath informed New York University (NYU) that research by its Tandon School of Engineering’s Online Transparency Project’s Ad Observatory violates Facebook’s terms of service…
Zoom Deleted Events Discussing Zoom ‘Censorship’
Zoom shut down a series of events meant to discuss what organizers called “censorship” by the company. From a report: The events were planned for Oct. 23 and were organized in response to a previous cancellation by Zoom of a San Francisco State University talk by Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated…
Facebook Demands Shutdown of Research Project Into Its Targeting of Political Ads
“Facebook Inc. is demanding that a New York University research project cease collecting data about its political-ad targeting practices,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “setting up a fight with academics seeking to study the platform without the company’s permission.” The dispute involves the NYU Ad Observatory, a project launched last month by the university’s engineering school that has recruited more than…