3Q: Julien de Wit on searching for red worlds in the northern skies

With a new telescope situated on a scenic plateau in Tenerife, Spain, MIT planetary scientists now have an added way to search for Earth-sized exoplanets. Artemis, the first ground-based telescope of the SPECULOOS Northern Observatory (SNO), joins a network of 1-meter-class robotic telescopes as part of the SPECULOOS project (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars), which is led by Michael Gillon at the University of Liège in Belgium and carried out in collaboration with MIT and several other institutions and financial supporters. Artemis is the latest product of a collaboration with MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). The other network telescopes that make up the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory — named Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto after the four Galilean moons of Jupiter — are up and running at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, busily scanning the skies for exoplanets in the Southern Hemisphere.

Together, these SPECULOOS telescopes will look for terrestrial planets circling very faint, nearby stars, called ultra-cool dwarfs, and the new Artemis telescope will allow the research group to expand the search into the Northern Hemisphere skies. Artemis was unveiled today at an inauguration event attended by scientists and dignitaries from MIT, the University of Liège, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in Tenerife. Artemis was funded by MIT donors Peter A. Gilman, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and Colin and Leslie Masson, with additional support from the Ministry of Higher Education of the Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles, and the Balzan Foundation.

Before the SPECULOOS telescopes were conceived, researchers had already established the proof of concept for this technique with a project using a small, ground-based telescope located in La Silla, Chile, known as TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope). With the TRAPPIST telescope, researchers looked at a limited sample of 50 target stars and discovered the TRAPPIST-1 system, which consists of seven terrestrial planets orbiting their cool, ultra-dwarf star. To date, these are the only known planets that are nearby, Earth-sized, temperate, and amenable for future atmospheric characterization, setting them apart from previous exoplanet findings. The SPECULOOS group is building on this earlier project with its new telescope network to scan more of the sky for similar Earth-sized exoplanets, and deliver more targets that can be assessed for habitability and potentially signs of life in the future.

Julien de Wit is an EAPS assistant professor, SPECULOOS collaborator, Artemis principal investigator, and SNO co-principal investigator with Gillon. As a postdoc in the group of MIT Professor Sara Seager, he worked with Gillon and the TRAPPIST team to identify and characterize the TRAPPIST-1 system. Later he spearheaded the expansion of the SPECULOOS venture into the Northern Hemisphere. EAPS recently spoke with de Wit about the capabilities of Artemis and what we can expect to find with the SPECULOOS project.

Q: Tell us about the new Artemis telescope. Why is it particularly exciting?

A: The first telescope of the SPECULOOS Northern Observatory is named Artemis, built and owned by MIT, after the Greek goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, the moon, which seemed appropriate as we are hunting for planets and signs of life.

Artemis is located on the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife about 150 miles off the coast of Morocco. The SNO is built within the Teide Observatory, which is an astronomical observatory by the Teide Volcano, 2,400 meters above sea level and operated by the Insituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The location, which hosts one of the first major international observatories, boasts excellent astronomical conditions for viewing.

As far as the telescope itself, it measures about 4 meters high, with an optical quality of less than 0.8 arcsec and a field of view, 12 arcmin by 12 arcmin. Artemis, which was built by the German company ASTELCO, has a robot mount, and its detectors are very sensitive to the near-infrared wavelengths that we find emanating from these ultra-cool dwarf stars. We will be operating it remotely from MIT or any other collaborating institutes.

With TRAPPIST, we demonstrated a proof of concept — confirming that ultra-cool dwarf stars have the capacity to host planets — and are investigating the atmospheres of these TRAPPIST-1 planets with the Hubble Space Telescope. To date, there are no other temperate Earth-sized planets that would be such exquisite targets for atmospheric study. This justified fully scaling up with the SPECULOOS project.

Telescopes like this provide two important observational advantages. One, due to similar planet-to-star area ratios, the signal we’ll get from an Earth-sized planet transiting an ultra-cool dwarf star will be similar to a Jupiter-sized planet crossing in front of a sun-like star. Two, the vicinity of their habitable zone, due to their small size and temperature, means that habitable planets will have small transit periodicities, similar to gas giants, which are in close orbit around solar-type stars. This means that each star will require less monitoring time, and that the transit search targeting the roughly 1,200 nearest ultra-cool stars could be done in about 10 years with four telescopes scanning each hemisphere.

Q: What is the goal of Artemis, and how many exoplanets do you estimate can be evaluated by MIT’s new SPECULOOS Northern Observatory?

A: Over each night, we will be gathering pictures of a specific section of the sky, focused on our target stars in order to search for a brightness drop characteristic of a planetary transit.

The goal of the Artemis telescope is to look at the roughly 800 nearest ultra-cool dwarf stars located in the northern skies (and a sliver of the southern skies) to find Earth-sized planets that may have a temperate climate and be amenable for further in-depth characterization with the next generation of observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Extremely Large Telescopes. These will be able to tell us more about their atmosphere, climate, and what molecules might be present on them. We are confidently expecting to identify about 15 temperate planets with the SPECULOOS network, and doing so on a relevant timeline, which will allow for their atmospheres to be studied with the JWST, which is expected to launch in 2021 and last for 10 years.

Additionally, we’ll expand Artemis’s scope of work. We plan to do a follow-up of some of the trickiest planet candidates (terrestrial planets around small M-dwarfs) identified by the MIT-led TESS [Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite] NASA mission, since Artemis has 100 times larger viewing areas. We’ll also be able to study asteroids, comets, and other objects, such as observations of the Quaoar occultation, with other scientists at MIT and outside of the Institute.

Q: You mentioned that Artemis is the first telescope for the SPECULOOS Northern Observatory. Does that mean more telescopes might be added to the SPECULOOS network in the future?

A: Yes, we hope to build out the SPECULOOS Northern Observatory and add telescopes to accompany Artemis. As a matter of fact, we have already built an additional platform ready to host a twin to Artemis, as soon as we have found additional funding. Our agreement with the Teide Observatory reserves space to accommodate up to three additional telescopes. Doing so will allow us to thoroughly study all the nearest ultra-cool dwarf stars and complete the Northern Hemisphere survey in time to perform the atmospheric characterization of their transiting planets with the JWST.

With SPECULOOS, we are giving it our best shot at enabling the identification of habitats beyond Earth within the next decade. Our team is looking forward to sharing “first light” with our donors and the public, and it is a privilege for MIT to be working with our international partners on this exciting venture.

from MIT News http://bit.ly/2L35pW5
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The Big Business of ASMR Apps, Videos, and Gadgets

ASMR videos and apps feature soft sounds and quiet whispers that help you relax. But they're also a path to serious revenue.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2MZJgKX
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Under Trump, Cybersecurity Has Waned

Opinion: Congress has abdicated its role in preventing and punishing cyberattacks. The Cyber Solarium Commission is our best defense.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2Fmnue5
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Gay refugees sent back to 'homophobic Kenya camp'

The group had been staying in safe houses in Kenya's capital after fleeing attacks, the UN says.

from BBC News - Africa https://bbc.in/31MacBt
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Real Housewives of Atlanta star Todd Tucker explains ‘daddy/daughter’ strip club visit video after birthday backlash

Brim 8-Cup Pour-Over Coffee Maker Review: Barista-Style Brew Without All the Effort

An automatic coffee machine that gives you a barista-style brew.

from Wired http://bit.ly/31Nhi8u
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B. Smith’s husband Dan Gasby continues to wife approves of his side chick while battling Alzheimer’s

While the world continues to give B. Smith’s husband the side-eye for moving on with a girlfriend while the famed restaurateur battles Alzheimer’s disease, he insists that he’s been taking good care of her all the while.

—‘I love my wife but I can’t let her take away my life!’: B. Smith’s husband responds to critics—

Dan Gasby’s been under fire for parading his girlfriend Alex Lerner around his ailing wife who has significant memory loss and then doing a number of interviews late last year explaining that she approved.

Recently he talked to Page Six to continue to try to explain that he’s giving his wife the best care.

“Barbara’s being cared for and loved. She’s not in a box. Not struggling or dying,” he told the outlet. “I take care of Barbara. I’ll always take care of her.”

“Everybody tells you how to live your life,” he said. “But that’s while they’re living theirs and not surviving through our problems. I’m in my 60s. I lived tied up in a box five years. Childlike, Barbara can no longer spell a word,” he said.

—‘Why not now?’ Ta-Nehisi Coates and Danny Glover join lawmakers to debate slavery reparations—

The social media backlash has been harsh and swift for Gasby from those who quickly condemned him for bringing a white woman into the home while B. Smith suffers from the disease. But Gasby maintains that his relationship with his girlfriend is wife-approved.

“I take care of Barbara. I’ll always take care of her. My daughter, Dana, who’s 32, is caring for her. My ladyfriend Alexandra is taking care. We’ve gone through the whole circle of brain foundations. Diagnosed with dementia in 2013, Barbara then told me to live my life. It would maybe not be bad if I weren’t so lonely.

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‘Why not now?’ Ta-Nehisi Coates and Danny Glover join lawmakers to debate slavery reparations

The debate over reparations catapulted from the campaign trail to Congress on Wednesday as lawmakers heard impassioned testimony for and against the idea of providing compensation for America’s history of slavery and racial discrimination.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, the sponsor of a resolution to study reparations, put a fine point on the discussion: “I just simply ask: Why not and why not now?”

It was Congress’ first hearing on reparations in more than a decade, and came amid a growing conversation both in the Democratic Party and the country at large about lingering racial disparities in the United States. Once considered a fringe topic, mostly pushed aside in Congress, the possibility of reparations was treated with seriousness by the witnesses and lawmakers alike, though Republicans made clear their opposition.

One of the most striking moments came as writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of a widely read 2014 essay making the case for reparations, challenged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s assertion that no one alive today is responsible for the past treatment of black Americans.

“It’s impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery,” Coates told the House Judiciary panel.

“For a century after the Civil War, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror,” Coates said. “Victims of that plunder are very much alive today. I am sure they’d love a word with the majority leader.”

McConnell, R-Ky., said on Tuesday he doesn’t think “reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea.”

Wednesday’s hearing coincided with Juneteenth, a cultural holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved black people in the United States, and it attracted a crowd. More than a hundred people were lined up to try and get a seat in the hearing room. Those inside frequently reacted to testimony and comments from members of Congress with cheers and boos.

At one point, an audience member shouted “You lie!” at Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert when he urged that Americans know their history and “not punish people today for the sins of their predecessors in the Democratic Party.”

Coates was among eight witnesses who testified for more than three hours on the topic of House Resolution 40, aimed at creating a commission to study reparations. Actor and activist Danny Glover, a longtime advocate of reparations, urged passage of the resolution.
“A national reparations policy is a moral, democratic and economic imperative,” said Glover, noting that his great-grandmother was a former slave he met as a young boy. “This hearing is yet another important step in the long and historic struggle of African Americans to secure reparations for the damage that has been inflicted by slavery and Jim Crow.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., a presidential contender, testified that the U.S has “yet to truly acknowledge and grapple with the racism and white supremacy that tainted this country’s founding and continues to cause persistent and deep racial disparities and inequality.”
But another witness, Coleman Hughes, who at times testified over boos from the audience, said black people don’t need “another apology,” but safer neighborhoods, better schools, a less punitive criminal justice system and better health care.

“None of these things can be achieved through reparations for slavery,” said Hughes, a writer and student at Columbia University who said he is the descendant of blacks enslaved at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

The Democratic legislation, which would set up a bipartisan commission to study the issue, spotlights a national conversation over the legacy of slavery. Several of the party’s presidential candidates have endorsed looking at the idea, though they have stopped short of endorsing direct payouts for African Americans.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., on Wednesday called reparations a “serious issue” and said he expects the resolution will see a vote in the House.

While reparations has been moving toward the mainstream of the Democratic Party, the idea remains far from wide acceptance. And the panelists themselves, mostly black, differed on what reparations should look like and who should benefit from them.

In a Point Taken-Marist poll conducted in 2016, 68 percent of Americans said the country should not pay cash reparations to African American descendants of slaves to make up for the harm caused by slavery and racial discrimination. About 8 in 10 white Americans said they were opposed to reparations, while about 6 in 10 black Americans said they were in favor.

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the top Republican on the panel, said he respects the beliefs of those who support reparations. He called America’s history with slavery “regrettable and shameful.”

But he said paying monetary reparations for the “sins of a small subset of Americans from many generations ago” would be unfair, difficult to carry out in practice and, in his view, likely unconstitutional.

The Republican witnesses for the hearing were Hughes and Burgess Owens, a former Oakland Raiders football player and Super Bowl champion, who recently wrote a Wall Street Journal editorial eschewing reparations.

The debate over reparations for black Americans began not long after the end of the Civil War. A resolution to study the issue was first proposed in 1989 by Conyers of Michigan, who put it forward year after year until his retirement in 2017. His portrait hangs in the room where the hearing was held.

The post ‘Why not now?’ Ta-Nehisi Coates and Danny Glover join lawmakers to debate slavery reparations appeared first on theGrio.

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Judge says R. Kelly’s lawyers have week to answer sex abuse lawsuit

Attorneys for R. Kelly have one week to respond to a lawsuit alleging sex abuse or face losing the case.

Kelly’s attorneys sought to put the lawsuit on hold while the singer fights sex-related felony charges. Associate Judge Moira Johnson on Wednesday agreed with lawyers for the woman who filed the lawsuit that Kelly needs to file an answer to the litigation.

Johnson gave Kelly’s lawyers until June 26 to respond to the lawsuit in Cook County.
Kelly did not attend Wednesday’s hearing in Chicago.

After the hearing, the attorneys for the woman said they expect the lawsuit will be delayed while the criminal case proceeds. However, they said it was improper for Kelly’s attorneys to seek a delay before acknowledging the lawsuit.

The woman who brought the lawsuit is one of four women Kelly is charged with sexually abusing.

The post Judge says R. Kelly’s lawyers have week to answer sex abuse lawsuit appeared first on theGrio.

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Tiffany Haddish explains why she won’t perform in Georgia

Tiffany Haddish says she chose to join a boycott of Georgia after she read the state’s new anti-abortion legislation.

Haddish announced this week that she had cancelled a show in the state and explained her reasoning Tuesday at the launch of a “Harry Potter” mobile augmented-reality game.

“The reason that I cancelled the show, is because I read that bill,” she said. “And I feel like everyone should just take the time to read it.”

The new law bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. It was signed into law on May 7.

Haddish had been scheduled to perform June 22 at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Major Hollywood studios have said they may reevaluate filming in Georgia. Celebrities like John Legend and Spike Lee have joined calls for a boycott.

The “Girls Trip” star on Tuesday was the host of an event that unveiled the new “Wizards Unite” video game at Universal Studios’ Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

“I love everything about ‘Harry Potter’ because it teaches unity, it teaches friendship, it teaches loyalty, it teaches to believe in something,” Haddish said.

The post Tiffany Haddish explains why she won’t perform in Georgia appeared first on theGrio.

from theGrio https://on.thegrio.com/2N2hpK8
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Fifa confirms appointment of Fatma Samoura in Africa

Fifa confirms the appointment of its general secretary Fatma Samoura as a 'General Delegate for Africa' in light of recent governance issues on the continent.

from BBC News - Africa https://bbc.in/2KsV06B
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Disney's New *Lion King* Is the VR-Fueled Future of Cinema

Director Jon Favreau shot the remake of the animated classic inside virtual reality. He doesn't know what to call the result, but it looks like a real movie.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2WSabgg
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Africa Cup of Nations: What to look out for in this summer's tournament

The Africa Cup of Nations gets under way on Friday as hosts Egypt face Zimbabwe. BBC Sport looks at some of the things to keep an eye out for.

from BBC News - Africa https://bbc.in/2XWsFsI
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Spotting objects amid clutter

A new MIT-developed technique enables robots to quickly identify objects hidden in a three-dimensional cloud of data, reminiscent of how some people can make sense of a densely patterned “Magic Eye” image if they observe it in just the right way.

Robots typically “see” their environment through sensors that collect and translate a visual scene into a matrix of dots. Think of the world of, well, “The Matrix,” except that the 1s and 0s seen by the fictional character Neo are replaced by dots — lots of dots — whose patterns and densities outline the objects in a particular scene.

Conventional techniques that try to pick out objects from such clouds of dots, or point clouds, can do so with either speed or accuracy, but not both.

With their new technique, the researchers say a robot can accurately pick out an object, such as a small animal, that is otherwise obscured within a dense cloud of dots, within seconds of receiving the visual data. The team says the technique can be used to improve a host of situations in which machine perception must be both speedy and accurate, including driverless cars and robotic assistants in the factory and the home.

“The surprising thing about this work is, if I ask you to find a bunny in this cloud of thousands of points, there’s no way you could do that,” says Luca Carlone, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and a member of MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). “But our algorithm is able to see the object through all this clutter. So we’re getting to a level of superhuman performance in localizing objects.”

Carlone and graduate student Heng Yang will present details of the technique later this month at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference in Germany.

“Failing without knowing”

Robots currently attempt to identify objects in a point cloud by comparing a template object — a 3-D dot representation of an object, such as a rabbit — with a point cloud representation of the real world that may contain that object. The template image includes “features,” or collections of dots that indicate characteristic curvatures or angles of that object, such the bunny’s ear or tail. Existing algorithms first extract similar features from the real-life point cloud, then attempt to match those features and the template’s features, and ultimately rotate and align the features to the template to determine if the point cloud contains the object in question.

But the point cloud data that streams into a robot’s sensor invariably includes errors, in the form of dots that are in the wrong position or incorrectly spaced, which can significantly confuse the process of feature extraction and matching. As a consequence, robots can make a huge number of wrong associations, or what researchers call “outliers” between point clouds, and ultimately misidentify objects or miss them entirely.

Carlone says state-of-the-art algorithms are able to sift the bad associations from the good once features have been matched, but they do so in “exponential time,” meaning that even a cluster of processing-heavy computers, sifting through dense point cloud data with existing algorithms, would not be able to solve the problem in a reasonable time. Such techniques, while accurate, are impractical for analyzing larger, real-life datasets containing dense point clouds.

Other algorithms that can quickly identify features and associations do so hastily, creating a huge number of outliers or misdetections in the process, without being aware of these errors.

“That’s terrible if this is running on a self-driving car, or any safety-critical application,” Carlone says. “Failing without knowing you’re failing is the worst thing an algorithm can do.”

A relaxed view

Yang and Carlone instead devised a technique that prunes away outliers in “polynomial time,” meaning that it can do so quickly, even for increasingly dense clouds of dots. The technique can thus quickly and accurately identify objects hidden in cluttered scenes.

The MIT-developed technique quickly and smoothly matches objects to those hidden in dense point clouds (left), versus existing techniques (right) that produce incorrect, disjointed matches. Gif: Courtesy of the researchers

The researchers first used conventional techniques to extract features of a template object from a point cloud. They then developed a three-step process to match the size, position, and orientation of the object in a point cloud with the template object, while simultaneously identifying good from bad feature associations.

The team developed an “adaptive voting scheme” algorithm to prune outliers and match an object’s size and position. For size, the algorithm makes associations between template and point cloud features, then compares the relative distance between features in a template and corresponding features in the point cloud. If, say, the distance between two features in the point cloud is five times that of the corresponding points in the template, the algorithm assigns a “vote” to the hypothesis that the object is five times larger than the template object.

The algorithm does this for every feature association. Then, the algorithm selects those associations that fall under the size hypothesis with the most votes, and identifies those as the correct associations, while pruning away the others.  In this way, the technique simultaneously reveals the correct associations and the relative size of the object represented by those associations. The same process is used to determine the object’s position.  

The researchers developed a separate algorithm for rotation, which finds the orientation of the template object in three-dimensional space.

To do this is an incredibly tricky computational task. Imagine holding a mug and trying to tilt it just so, to match a blurry image of something that might be that same mug. There are any number of angles you could tilt that mug, and each of those angles has a certain likelihood of matching the blurry image.

Existing techniques handle this problem by considering each possible tilt or rotation of the object as a “cost” — the lower the cost, the more likely that that rotation creates an accurate match between features. Each rotation and associated cost is represented in a topographic map of sorts, made up of multiple hills and valleys, with lower elevations associated with lower cost.

But Carlone says this can easily confuse an algorithm, especially if there are multiple valleys and no discernible lowest point representing the true, exact match between a particular rotation of an object and the object in a point cloud. Instead, the team developed a “convex relaxation” algorithm that simplifies the topographic map, with one single valley representing the optimal rotation. In this way, the algorithm is able to quickly identify the rotation that defines the orientation of the object in the point cloud.

With their approach, the team was able to quickly and accurately identify three different objects — a bunny, a dragon, and a Buddha — hidden in point clouds of increasing density. They were also able to identify objects in real-life scenes, including a living room, in which the algorithm quickly was able to spot a cereal box and a baseball hat.

Carlone says that because the approach is able to work in “polynomial time,” it can be easily scaled up to analyze even denser point clouds, resembling the complexity of sensor data for driverless cars, for example.

“Navigation, collaborative manufacturing, domestic robots, search and rescue, and self-driving cars is where we hope to make an impact,” Carlone says.

This research was supported in part by the Army Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, and the Google Daydream Research Program.

from MIT News http://bit.ly/2IsZfwU
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Lawmakers debate reparations for slavery: ‘We elected an African-American president’

The heated debate over reparations came to a head this week as lawmakers listened to passionate testimonies both for and against the idea of allotting compensation to African Americans whose ancestors were adversely affected by generations of slavery and racial discrimination.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be one of the people who believe that due to Barack Obama being elected president, we’re living in a post-racial society. But he took it further by suggesting that as a reason reparations for slavery are not needed.

According to The Hill, Tuesday, during a weekly press conference, McConnell made it clear that he does not support reparations for descendants of slaves, an issue that this week, the House Judiciary Committee will hold it’s first hearing on in a decade.

READ MORE: Man falsely claiming to be cop before allegedly shooting Black woman at a Walgreen’s still not arrested

“I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” McConnell said. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We elected an African American president.”

“I think we’re always a work in progress in this country, but no one currently alive was responsible for that, and I don’t think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it. First of all, it would be pretty hard to figure out who to compensate. … No, I don’t think reparations are a good idea,” McConnell continued.

READ MORE: CNN segment explodes when Trump supporter defends president’s treatment of the Central Park Five

Wednesday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties is held the hearing, “to examine, through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice.”

“It’s impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery,” writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of a widely read 2014 essay making the case for reparations, told the House Judiciary panel.

“For a century after the Civil War, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror,” Coates added. “Victims of that plunder are very much alive today. I am sure they’d love a word with the majority leader.”

READ MORE: Black seminarians say Princeton theology school owes reparations for benefiting from slavery

Reparations has become a topic of debate in the Democratic presidential primary, with several 2020 candidates, including Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), vowing that they would sign a bill forming a reparation study commission into law if they become president.

However, in the GOP-controlled Senate the chances of the legislation moving seems unlikely.

“I think it’s too remote in time. I think it’s too divisive,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told the press earlier this year.

The post Lawmakers debate reparations for slavery: ‘We elected an African-American president’ appeared first on theGrio.

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Google's Troubles Encroach on Alphabet's Shareholder Meeting

Shareholders proposed 14 resolutions, from Google's conduct in China to conditions for Google workers. Cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't attend.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2WPzdg6
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Tesla Arcade Let’s You Play a Videogame Right in Your Car

Tesla gives drivers access to games they can play on the center screen, including Beach Buggy Racing 2. The car has to be in park, however.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2WTibZN
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Three guilty over Kenya Garissa militant raid

Three of four suspects guilty over 2015 militant raid on Kenya's Garissa University in which nearly 150 people died

from BBC News - Africa https://bbc.in/2Y1dvCu
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Garissa University attack: Three found guilty in Kenya

Islamist militant group al-Shabab killed 148 people, mostly students, in the 2015 attack.

from BBC News - Africa https://bbc.in/2MXlVti
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3 Questions: An experiment illuminates the value of public transportation

Urban residents hear a lot about public transit fares, but to what extent do transportation costs really affect riders? A group of urban studies researchers at MIT has conducted a new experiment — a randomized, controlled trial — on Boston’s MBTA system showing that if low-income people are offered a 50 percent fare discount, their ridership increases by over 30 percent. A new white paper with the results was issued this month. The paper’s lead author is MIT PhD student Jeffrey Rosenblum; his co-authors are Department of Urban Studies and Planning professors Jinhua Zhao, Mariana Arcaya, Justin Steil, and Chris Zegras. MIT News spoke to Rosenblum about the results.

Q: What was the impetus for the study, and what did you find?

A: The idea was to look at travel behavior of riders. One of the things we don’t ordinarily have access to is how low-income people use the system. We can track seniors because seniors have a special card. But for low-income people, a lot of the information had previously been anecdotal.

There were hardly any studies to help me understand how low-income riders would respond to fare decreases. When I have to look back to a 1964 study from New York City as one of the prime examples that looked at low-income riders, you know there’s some missing data.

There have been two hypotheses in this area. One is that low-income people have no choice but to use public transit, so they have to take it out of their food budget or child budget. The other is that they do change behavior when fares decrease. The second is what we ended up finding: Low-income people did take significantly more trips, about a third more, based on the analysis. This suggests that for the low-income people in the study group, who were selected out of food stamps recipients, affordability was a big factor. So that’s really the take-home message.

Q: There is another layer to the results, though, which is that the increased use of public transit was strongly linked to certain purposes, such as using social services.

A: This gets into an important concept in transportation. No one gets on a bus to get on a bus. They want to go someplace. In the past transit systems really just cared about the numbers of people using the system, and they didn’t really care about the purposes of those trips.

In most categories of trip purpose, we didn’t see much difference, but in the social services category, we did. Usually when people think of public transportation, they think of commuting to work. And when people think about low-income riders, they don’t think about other really important things in life. Low-income people also spend more time on public transit doing errands, visiting family, as well as going to social services and health care providers.

Q: So this is not just a matter of household finance, since it seems like lower fares for low-income people have a kind of multiplier effect, allowing them to access other goods, right?

A: Yes. And any decisions related to implementation and the impact on the system would be as important as trying to find the money to fund such a program. Whenever studies like this get done, the implication is that this is an important issue to address.

But then one question is: Who is going to pay for it, and how? And the second is: Who would administer it? One option would be just to say the MBTA has to do it all. A more creative option would be to incorporate it into an existing government program, like Mass Health, or SNAP, the food stamps program, where those agencies already have a whole customer-service system set up, a database of low-income people, and are already issuing them cards. Imagine if a low-income person had one card, with a debit-card for food stamps, the Mass Health information, and a Charlie Card [an MBTA metro card] chip embedded in it. That’s where government efficiency counts. The technology is there but the lack of interagency coordination is a significant barrier.

from MIT News http://bit.ly/2Ir5ZLV
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Over 1,000 Entrepreneurs and Innovators at Black Enterprise’s 2019 Black Business Conference, FWD

For almost 50 years, black entrepreneurs and business owners have looked to BLACK ENTERPRISE as the definitive authority on everything related to black business ownership. Now, the iconic Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Summit, the leading black business conference, has been re-branded and revamped as the FWD conference. FWD kicks off on Wednesday in the city of Charlotte—Queen City or, the “QC.”

The FWD conference takes place at the Charlotte Convention Center and is hosted by Nationwide. And more than the name of this premier event has changed—it’s going to be bigger and better than ever.

Over 1,000 Black Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders

Over 1,000 innovators, creators, and founders will be gathering and collaborating to move their businesses forward. There is a three-track programming agenda; Launch, Grow, and Innovate along with SistersInc., immersive workshops and sessions targeted at black women entrepreneurs and professionals.

The BizHub will feature exhibits of products and services all from black-owned businesses. Attendees can explore the BizHub at their leisure.

Speakers include several heavy hitters: Wendy Williams, media personality and entrepreneur; John Henry, partner at Harlem Capital Partners; Isiah Thomas, chairman and CEO of Isiah International; and Ryan Leslie, Grammy-nominated music artist and entrepreneur. All will share how they’ve been able to dominate in their industries while building their brands and businesses.

An incredible line up of 56 speakers will impart their knowledge over the course of the next three days.

In true homecoming fashion, this year’s host, Carlos Davis, CEO of Stand & Deliver, will kick off the official #BEintheQC welcome with Lu Yarbrough, associate vice president, Enterprise Diverse & Cause Marketing at Nationwide; Alfred Edmond, BE‘s SVP and executive editor-at-large; and Henry Child, national director, Minority Business Development Agency.

Engaging and Actionable Workshops, Panels, and Black Food Trucks

There will be three days of engaging content planned for attendees along with endless networking opportunities. Noshes are available on Black Food-Truck Thursday in partnership with Black Business of Charlotte.

If you want to move your business and career forward, FWD is where you need to be, June 19–22. There’s still time to register. Click here to get your ticket and check out the complete agenda here.

Be sure to follow Black Enterprise on Instagram and Twitter for real-time coverage and join in on the conversation using the hashtag #BEintheQC!

from Black Enterprise http://bit.ly/2x5NG8w
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Freedom vs. Emancipation: The Celebration of Juneteenth

Although President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, declaring all slaves as legally free, it actually took years before the news traveled to all parts of the country, writes Henry Lous Gates, Jr. in his piece What Is Juneteenth?. It was also harder to enforce the Executive Order in rebellious Southern states like Texas where there were few Union troops. As a result, African American slaves were still working on plantations as late as 1865, while 250,000 people were still enslaved in Texas.

However, on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers, led by Gen. Gordon Granger, traveled to Galveston, Texas, to announce that the Civil War had ended and all enslaved people were free. Granger issued the call with “General Order No. 3,” which he read to the people of Texas. It read as follows:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

Newly freed slaves rejoiced in the streets following the announcement of the order. In 1866, freedman organized the first June 19, or Juneteenth, celebrations. Today, it is observed in 45 states as a holiday that celebrates freedom. To commemorate the holiday, people engage in customary activities such as barbecuing, rodeos, fishing, prayer services, and baseball games. The day also serves as a time for reflection and an opportunity for Americans to trace their family roots.

For more information about Juneteenth visit www.juneteenth.com and What Is Juneteenth? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Editor’s Note: This article originally published on June 19, 2017.

from Black Enterprise http://bit.ly/2MTnVCW
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Aretha Franklin’s youngest son files to take over control over her estate from her niece

Aretha Franklin’s youngest son is fighting to take control of the deceased singer’s estate and has filed documents asking to be named as the executor in place of her niece.

—Aretha Franklin: ‘Genius’ third season devoted to the Queen of Soul—

After several handwritten wills were discovered earlier this year, her son Kecalf Franklin, has now sought to secure control over his mother estate after a 2014 will allegedly named him as the person the singer wanted to be executor.

Kecalf is the son of Franklin and her former road manager Ken Cunningham.

Kecalf filed paperwork requesting that a Michigan judge replace Franklin’s niece Sabrina Owens, who is currently the estate’s representative. The three wills however have not been authenticated yet.

Kecalf argues that Owens has left Franklin’s heirs in the dark about his mother’s financial affairs, CNN reports.

Franklin’s son said he has yet to receive an inventory of his mom Aretha’s “jewelry, master tracks, Grammys, gold records and other awards,” the outlet reports.

And he contends he hasn’t been told about the results of an investigation involving the value of her musical catalog.

—Why CNN’s Don Lemon likening Trump’s brand of hate to Hilter and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling out concentration camps isn’t wrong—

The attorneys for the estate reportedly believe that 49-year-old Kecalf lacks the “ability, skill (and) knowledge” to be executor and they’ve filed their own response.

They also contend that other family members don’t want Kecalf taking control either and his filing is reportedly in “direct conflict” with other family members wants, according to CNN.

The 76-year-old music legend died last August from cancer at the age of 76.

The post Aretha Franklin’s youngest son files to take over control over her estate from her niece appeared first on theGrio.

from theGrio https://on.thegrio.com/2MYfbf1
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From one brain scan, more information for medical artificial intelligence

MIT researchers have devised a novel method to glean more information from images used to train machine-learning models, including those that can analyze medical scans to help diagnose and treat brain conditions.

An active new area in medicine involves training deep-learning models to detect structural patterns in brain scans associated with neurological diseases and disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis. But collecting the training data is laborious: All anatomical structures in each scan must be separately outlined or hand-labeled by neurological experts. And, in some cases, such as for rare brain conditions in children, only a few scans may be available in the first place.

In a paper presented at the recent Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, the MIT researchers describe a system that uses a single labeled scan, along with unlabeled scans, to automatically synthesize a massive dataset of distinct training examples. The dataset can be used to better train machine-learning models to find anatomical structures in new scans — the more training data, the better those predictions.

The crux of the work is automatically generating data for the “image segmentation” process, which partitions an image into regions of pixels that are more meaningful and easier to analyze. To do so, the system uses a convolutional neural network (CNN), a machine-learning model that’s become a powerhouse for image-processing tasks. The network analyzes a lot of unlabeled scans from different patients and different equipment to “learn” anatomical, brightness, and contrast variations. Then, it applies a random combination of those learned variations to a single labeled scan to synthesize new scans that are both realistic and accurately labeled. These newly synthesized scans are then fed into a different CNN that learns how to segment new images.

“We’re hoping this will make image segmentation more accessible in realistic situations where you don’t have a lot of training data,” says first author Amy Zhao, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “In our approach, you can learn to mimic the variations in unlabeled scans to intelligently synthesize a large dataset to train your network.”

There’s interest in using the system, for instance, to help train predictive-analytics models at Massachusetts General Hospital, Zhao says, where only one or two labeled scans may exist of particularly uncommon brain conditions among child patients.

Joining Zhao on the paper are: Guha Balakrishnan, a postdoc in EECS and CSAIL; EECS professors Fredo Durand and John Guttag, and senior author Adrian Dalca, who is also a faculty member in radiology at Harvard Medical School.

The “Magic” behind the system

Although now applied to medical imaging, the system actually started as a means to synthesize training data for a smartphone app that could identify and retrieve information about cards from the popular collectable card game, “Magic: The Gathering.” Released in the early 1990s, “Magic” has more than 20,000 unique cards — with more released every few months — that players can use to build custom playing decks.

Zhao, an avid “Magic” player, wanted to develop a CNN-powered app that took a photo of any card with a smartphone camera and automatically pulled information such as price and rating from online card databases. “When I was picking out cards from a game store, I got tired of entering all their names into my phone and looking up ratings and combos,” Zhao says. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could scan them with my phone and pull up that information?”

But she realized that’s a very tough computer-vision training task. “You’d need many photos of all 20,000 cards, under all different lighting conditions and angles. No one is going to collect that dataset,” Zhao says.

Instead, Zhao trained a CNN on smaller dataset of around 200 cards, with 10 distinct photos of each card, to learn how to warp a card into various positions. It computed different lighting, angles, and reflections — for when cards are placed in plastic sleeves — to synthesized realistic warped versions of any card in the dataset. It was an exciting passion project, Zhao says: “But we realized this approach was really well-suited for medical images, because this type of warping fits really well with MRIs.”

Mind warp

Magnetic resonance images (MRIs) are composed of three-dimensional pixels, called voxels. When segmenting MRIs, experts separate and label voxel regions based on the anatomical structure containing them. The diversity of scans, caused by variations in individual brains and equipment used, poses a challenge to using machine learning to automate this process.

Some existing methods can synthesize training examples from labeled scans using “data augmentation,” which warps labeled voxels into different positions. But these methods require experts to hand-write various augmentation guidelines, and some synthesized scans look nothing like a realistic human brain, which may be detrimental to the learning process.

Instead, the researchers’ system automatically learns how to synthesize realistic scans. The researchers trained their system on 100 unlabeled scans from real patients to compute spatial transformations — anatomical correspondences from scan to scan. This generated as many “flow fields,” which model how voxels move from one scan to another. Simultaneously, it computes intensity transformations, which capture appearance variations caused by image contrast, noise, and other factors.

In generating a new scan, the system applies a random flow field to the original labeled scan, which shifts around voxels until it structurally matches a real, unlabeled scan. Then, it overlays a random intensity transformation. Finally, the system maps the labels to the new structures, by following how the voxels moved in the flow field. In the end, the synthesized scans closely resemble the real, unlabeled scans — but with accurate labels.

To test their automated segmentation accuracy, the researchers used Dice scores, which measure how well one 3-D shape fits over another, on a scale of 0 to 1. They compared their system to traditional segmentation methods — manual and automated — on 30 different brain structures across 100 held-out test scans. Large structures were comparably accurate among all the methods. But the researchers’ system outperformed all other approaches on smaller structures, such as the hippocampus, which occupies only about 0.6 percent of a brain, by volume.

“That shows that our method improves over other methods, especially as you get into the smaller structures, which can be very important in understanding disease,” Zhao says. “And we did that while only needing a single hand-labeled scan.”

In a nod to the work’s “Magic” roots, the code is publicly available on Github under the name of one of the game’s cards, “Brainstorm.”

from MIT News http://bit.ly/2Kro4vw
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Engineers 3-D print flexible mesh for ankle and knee braces

Hearing aids, dental crowns, and limb prosthetics are some of the medical devices that can now be digitally designed and customized for individual patients, thanks to 3-D printing. However, these devices are typically designed to replace or support bones and other rigid parts of the body, and are often printed from solid, relatively inflexible material.

Now MIT engineers have designed pliable, 3-D-printed mesh materials whose flexibility and toughness they can tune to emulate and support softer tissues such as muscles and tendons. They can tailor the intricate structures in each mesh, and they envision the tough yet stretchy fabric-like material being used as personalized, wearable supports, including ankle or knee braces, and even implantable devices, such as hernia meshes, that better match to a person’s body.

As a demonstration, the team printed a flexible mesh for use in an ankle brace. They tailored the mesh’s structure to prevent the ankle from turning inward — a common cause of injury — while allowing the joint to move freely in other directions. The researchers also fabricated a knee brace design that could conform to the knee even as it bends. And, they produced a glove with a 3-D-printed mesh sewn into its top surface, which conforms to a wearer’s knuckles, providing resistance against involuntary clenching that can occur following a stroke.

“This work is new in that it focuses on the mechanical properties and geometries required to support soft tissues,” says Sebastian Pattinson, who conducted the research as a postdoc at MIT.

Pattinson, now on the faculty at Cambridge University, is the lead author of a study published today in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. His MIT co-authors include Meghan Huber, Sanha Kim, Jongwoo Lee, Sarah Grunsfeld, Ricardo Roberts, Gregory Dreifus, Christoph Meier, and Lei Liu, as well as Sun Jae Professor in Mechanical Engineering Neville Hogan and associate professor of mechanical engineering A. John Hart.

Riding collagen’s wave

The team’s flexible meshes were inspired by the pliable, conformable nature of fabrics.

“3-D-printed clothing and devices tend to be very bulky,” Pattinson says. “We were trying to think of how we can make 3-D-printed constructs more flexible and comfortable, like textiles and fabrics.”

Pattinson found further inspiration in collagen, the structural protein that makes up much of the body’s soft tissues and is found in ligaments, tendons, and muscles. Under a microscope, collagen can resemble curvy, intertwined strands, similar to loosely braided elastic ribbons. When stretched, this collagen initially does so easily, as the kinks in its structure straighten out. But once taut, the strands are harder to extend.

Inspired by collagen’s molecular structure, Pattinson designed wavy patterns, which he 3-D-printed using thermoplastic polyurethane as the printing material. He then fabricated a mesh configuration to resemble stretchy yet tough, pliable fabric. The taller he designed the waves, the more the mesh could be stretched at low strain before becoming more stiff — a design principle that can help to tailor a mesh’s degree of flexibility and helped it to mimic soft tissue.

The researchers printed a long strip of the mesh and tested its support on the ankles of several healthy volunteers. For each volunteer, the team adhered a strip along the length of the outside of the ankle, in an orientation that they predicted would support the ankle if it turned inward. They then put each volunteer’s ankle into an ankle stiffness measurement robot — named, logically, Anklebot — that was developed in Hogan’s lab. The Anklebot moved their ankle in 12 different directions, and then measured the force the ankle exerted with each movement, with the mesh and without it, to understand how the mesh affected the ankle’s stiffness in different directions.

In general, they found the mesh increased the ankle’s stiffness during inversion, while leaving it relatively unaffected as it moved in other directions.

“The beauty of this technique lies in its simplicity and versatility. Mesh can be made on a basic desktop 3-D printer, and the mechanics can be tailored to precisely match those of soft tissue,” Hart says.

Stiffer, cooler drapes

The team’s ankle brace was made using relatively stretchy material. But for other applications, such as implantable hernia meshes, it might be useful to include a stiffer material, that is at the same time just as conformable. To this end, the team developed a way to incorporate stronger and stiffer fibers and threads into a pliable mesh, by printing stainless steel fibers over regions of an elastic mesh where stiffer properties would be needed, then printing a third elastic layer over the steel to sandwich the stiffer thread into the mesh.

The combination of stiff and elastic materials can give a mesh the ability to stretch easily up to a point, after which it starts to stiffen, providing stronger support to prevent, for instance, a muscle from overstraining.

The team also developed two other techniques to give the printed mesh an almost fabric-like quality, enabling it to conform easily to the body, even while in motion.

“One of the reasons textiles are so flexible is that the fibers are able to move relative to each other easily,” Pattinson says. “We also wanted to mimic that capability in the 3-D-printed parts.”

In traditional 3-D printing, a material is printed through a heated nozzle, layer by layer. When heated polymer is extruded it bonds with the layer underneath it. Pattinson found that, once he printed a first layer, if he raised the print nozzle slightly, the material coming out of the nozzle would take a bit longer to land on the layer below, giving the material time to cool. As a result, it would be less sticky. By printing a mesh pattern in this way, Pattinson was able to create a layers that, rather than being fully bonded, were free to move relative to each other, and he demonstrated this in a multilayer mesh that draped over and conformed to the shape of a golf ball.

Finally, the team designed meshes that incorporated auxetic structures — patterns that become wider when you pull on them. For instance, they were able to print meshes, the middle of which consisted of structures that, when stretched, became wider rather than contracting as a normal mesh would. This property is useful for supporting highly curved surfaces of the body. To that end, the researchers fashioned an auxetic mesh into a potential knee brace design and found that it conformed to the joint. 

“There’s potential to make all sorts of devices that interface with the human body,” Pattinson says. Surgical meshes, orthoses, even cardiovascular devices like stents — you can imagine all potentially benefiting from the kinds of structures we show.”

This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, the MIT-Skoltech Next Generation Program, and the Eric P. and Evelyn E. Newman Fund at MIT.

from MIT News http://bit.ly/2KsnVaU
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Google Turns to Retro Cryptography to Keep Datasets Private

Google's Private Join and Compute will let companies compare notes without divulging sensitive information.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2XmTDMY
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Why CNN’s Don Lemon likening Trump’s brand of hate to Hilter and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling out concentration camps isn’t wrong

Don Lemon doubled down against President Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric and likened his brand of hate to Hitler’s.

—Don Lemon confronted by racist Trump supporters while filming ‘I can’t wait for CNN to fire your Black ass, you fa**ot’—

Lemon initiated the conversation after congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took fire on Monday for saying Trump was running “concentration camps” at the US border when talking about the detention centers.

“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps,” she said.

And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps.

Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.”

And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019

As Trump fires up his 2020 campaign, the CNN anchor who has been threatened by Trump supporters, told Chris Cuomo his thoughts on whether their news outlets should continue to give “bad people” aka the President and his administration, a platform to “spread lies.”

Lemon then made comparisons between Trump and Adolf Hitler, and asked Cuomo to “think about the most despicable people in history.”

“I’m going to use an extreme example, think about Hitler, think about any of those people,” Lemon said.

“If you could look back at history would you say, ”I’m so glad that that person was allowed a platform to spread their lies and propaganda?” Or would you say that probably wasn’t the right thing to do to spread that because you knew in that moment that that was a bad person and they were doing bad things and not only were they hurting people, they were killing people,” according to The Daily Mail.

Lemon also called out Trump’s refusal to apologize to the exonerated Central Park Five men after who called for them to receive the death penalty for a crime they didn’t commit.

Lemon then backed off a bit saying he wasn’t comparing Trump to Hitler but instead trying to make the point asking if a “bad person’ should be given a platform for hate speech.

—Activists allege racism in treatment of St. Louis prosecutor—

“I’m not comparing him to that, I’m comparing the way you would cover someone who is a bad person who does bad things.

“It starts with little lies, that become bigger lies. Good people follow bad people, it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person, it just means they were used.”

Many on social media are also calling the president for the concentration camps.

I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 19, 2019

Here’s an idea. Call them fucking concentration camps and stop equivocating or playing devil’s advocate or swimming in semantics to make the villains in this feel better. Literally all they want us to do is argue over terminology.

— Ira thee Third (@ira) June 19, 2019

My Facebook memories are showing me my posts from two years ago, where I was yelling and screaming to get any of my non-activist friends to pay attention to the Nazi rallies about to happen in my home city of Charlottesville. Two years later, we have concentration camps.

— Emily of the State (@EmilyGorcenski) June 19, 2019

Man, some people don’t like when you call their concentration camps concentration camps.

— Ron Marz (@ronmarz) June 19, 2019

The post Why CNN’s Don Lemon likening Trump’s brand of hate to Hilter and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling out concentration camps isn’t wrong appeared first on theGrio.

from theGrio https://on.thegrio.com/2RloSme
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Olympus Tough TG-6 Review: A Durable Point-and-Shoot Camera

The latest Olympus TG is a go-anywhere camera that soars where smartphones crash.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2x1Jc2J
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South African MP punches man during alleged racist incident

Phumzile van Damme says she punched a white man in self-defence at Cape Town's V&A Waterfront.

from BBC News - Africa https://bbc.in/31LwO59
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Whoopi Goldberg slammed by crying actress for shaming her for taking nude photos ‘Shame on you Whoopi’

A tearful Bella Thorne torn into Whoopi Goldberg for shaming her after she released nude photos to thwart an alleged hacker from posting them first.

—Whoopi Goldberg reportedly ‘at her breaking point’ trying to contain Meghan McCain’s meltdowns—

On Monday, Goldberg and her View co-hosts took up the issue of celebrities taking nude pics in the first place and criticized Thorne for making what they considered to be a questionable decision given that the internet and places like iClouds are accessible and vulnerable to hackers.

“If you’re famous, I don’t care how old you are. You don’t take nude pictures of yourself,” Goldberg said, according to PEOPLE.

“Once you take that picture it goes into the cloud and it’s available to any hacker who wants it, and if you don’t know that in 2019 that this is an issue, I’m sorry. You don’t get to do that,” Goldberg said.

BELLA THORNE POSTS NUDE PICS TO THWART HACKER: Actress Bella Thorne said she took her “power back” by sharing nude photos of herself after blackmailers threatened to leak them – the co-hosts discuss if this was the right move. https://t.co/1091s9Fn2d pic.twitter.com/VqFXmggPle

— The View (@TheView) June 17, 2019

Thorne, 21 hit back at 63-year-old Goldberg on her Instagram Story on Thursday saying she was “saddened and displeased and calling the host and the other ladies “old” for their judgy response.

“Dear whoopi, I have loved u for so long but honestly I’m so displeased and saddened by your response to my leek [sic]. Blaming girls for taking the photo in the first place? Is sick and honestly disgusting.”

“So what a girl can’t send her boyfriend that she misses photos of her that are sexy?” Thorne continued. “Things he’s already seen? I as a women [sic] should be so scared walking around my home, being on my phone, doing anything?”

“Is that what u want our women to be like? Scared of the masses for their sexuality?? Is that what u want? I don’t. I’m offended for anyone out there who has ever taken a sexy photo. I am offended for Jennifer Lawrence who feels publicly raped. I am offended for every person who has committed suicide for someone leaking their nudes. Ur view on this matter is honestly awful and I hope u change ur mind set as u are on a show talking to young girls,” Thorne wrote.

In another post Thorne explained that she had decided to opt of of visiting the show saying she was “supposed to go on The View,” but won’t now because she doesn’t “feel like being beaten down by a bunch of older women.”

—Whoopi Goldberg fires back at her ‘View’ co-host Meghan McCain who snaps, ‘So, I don’t get to talk’—

Thorne accompanied her posts with a tearful video about how Goldberg’s comments affected her saying: “I’m not going to lie, I want to say I feel pretty disgusting, you know, I feel pretty disgusting.”

“Whoopi, now that everyone’s seen my s—, I hope you’re so f—ing happy.”

She the broke down crying.

“I can only imagine all the kids who have their s— released and then they commit suicide. You’re so crazy for thinking such terrible things on such an awful situation,” she said.

“Shame on you Whoopi,” she continued. “Shame on you for putting that public opinion out there like that for every young girl to think that they’re disgusting for even taking a photo like that. Shame on you.”

It seems that Thorne has taken Goldberg’s comments to heart after she posted a messsage on Saturday saying that a nude photo of her was hack and she posted it to stop getting blackmailed.

We’ll have to see if Goldberg sticks to her guns or apologizing to Thorne.

The post Whoopi Goldberg slammed by crying actress for shaming her for taking nude photos ‘Shame on you Whoopi’ appeared first on theGrio.

from theGrio https://on.thegrio.com/2XkSnK9
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Activists allege racism in treatment of St. Louis prosecutor

Some black activists in St. Louis say there’s an unfair racial component to criticism of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner over her hiring of a man who led the investigation of former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens and who now faces perjury charges.

About a dozen black activists gathered Tuesday outside of a downtown courthouse to defend Gardner and the investigator, William Tisaby, who are both black. Tisaby faces six counts of perjury and one count of tampering with evidence stemming from his investigation of Greitens.

“The bottom line is this whole episode is racism,” said Zaki Baruti, who heads the St. Louis-based Universal African Peoples Organization. He said the black community needs “someone who’s in our interest and Kim Gardner is that person, and we are not going to allow her to be treated as she’s being treated.”

Gardner, a Democrat, was elected in November 2016 after campaigning to rebuild trust in the criminal justice system at a time when the St. Louis area was still healing from the events in nearby Ferguson, where a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, two years earlier.

She has been at odds with the law enforcement establishment virtually since taking office.
Like many among the new wave of progressive urban prosecutors across the U.S., Gardner has moved away from prosecuting low-level drug crimes. She angered police leaders and the police union last year by creating an “exclusion list” made up of more than two dozen officers who she said were so lacking in credibility that they won’t be permitted as primary witnesses in criminal cases.

In January, Gardner’s criticism of how police investigated a male officer’s alleged Russian roulette-style fatal shooting of a female colleague drew an angry rebuke from police Chief John Hayden. The male officer, Nathaniel Hendren, is awaiting trial on involuntary manslaughter charges.

But the biggest wedge occurred in January 2018, when Gardner sidestepped police and hired Tisaby, a former FBI agent, to investigate Greitens, a Republican who had just admitted to an affair with his St. Louis hairdresser that happened in 2015, a year before he was elected.

Gardner charged Greitens with felony invasion of privacy, accusing him of taking a compromising photo of the woman and threatening to share it if she exposed the affair.
The charge was eventually dropped, but the fallout was significant on both sides: Greitens, facing additional investigations and legislative scrutiny, resigned in June 2018 — his once promising political career in shambles. Tisaby surrendered to authorities on Monday.
Tisaby’s attorney, Jermaine Wooten, said Tuesday that Tisaby is “absolutely, 100 percent innocent.”

Gardner’s reliance on Tisaby and her office’s overall handling of the Greitens case drew strong criticism from Greitens’ attorneys, who asked police to investigate whether Tisaby lied under oath as part of a deposition of the woman.

The indictment alleged that Tisaby denied taking notes during his interview of the hairdresser, although a recording of the interview showed him doing so. The indictment also said that while Tisaby claimed he didn’t receive notes from the prosecutor’s office before interviewing the woman, a document uncovered during grand jury proceedings shows that Gardner provided Tisaby her notes.

The indictment also said Gardner failed to correct false statements and noted that relying on an outside investigator rather than police was “contrary to normal protocol.”
Scott Rosenblum, one of Greitens’ former lawyers, described the prosecution of Greitens as “misguided” and said he “should still be governor.”

Gardner, meanwhile, has raised her own concerns about Greitens’ defense team. She told a judge in April 2018 that attorneys for Greitens threatened to “ruin” her if she didn’t drop the criminal case against him. She said in a statement Tuesday that she told police of the threat in June 2018 and was interviewed by police in October. Greitens’ former attorneys have denied making any threat.

Gardner said she asked about two weeks ago for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate her claims about Greitens’ lawyers threatening her.

Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis NAACP, questioned why the investigation of Gardner’s allegation is dragging.

“Where can you go where you can threaten a prosecutor while she’s prosecuting a case, and it’s not investigated thoroughly and it’s not taken seriously, especially when you go tell the judge?” Pruitt asked.

Jeff Roorda, business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association, has been a frequent critic of Gardner. In the December issue of a union newsletter, he penned a Dr. Seuss parody entitled, “The Grinch That Stole Justice,” with verses that included, “You’re a disaster, Misses Kim, your heart is dark and vile.”

Roorda said any allegation that the investigation involving Gardner is racially motivated is “absurd.”

“Cops expect people who violate the law to be answerable for their crimes,” Roorda said in an email. “Prosecutors should feel the same way. That’s all that’s going on here.”

The post Activists allege racism in treatment of St. Louis prosecutor appeared first on theGrio.

from theGrio https://on.thegrio.com/2WRWAAX
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Phoenix police chief promises change after video of Black family held at gunpoint at Family Dollar goes viral

Police Chief Jeri Williams promised change in her department after being booed by some of hundreds of people gathered Tuesday night to discuss a videotaped police encounter that has caused a national outcry.

The meeting at a downtown church was called by the city in the wake of the release of a bystander’s video of police officers who pointed their guns and shouted obscenities last month at a black family. Dravon Ames and his pregnant fiancee Iesha Harper, who was holding their 1-year-old daughter, say their 4-year-old daughter had stolen a doll from a store without their knowledge.

“Real change starts with the community,” Williams said to a sometimes hostile crowd comprised mainly of blacks and Hispanics.

“Real change starts with the firing of the officers! Fire them!” one woman shouted toward the stage, where Williams, who is herself black, was seated next to Mayor Kate Gallego and other Phoenix city leaders.

Appearing frustrated at times, Williams assured those gathered that the meeting would not be the last.

“We are here to listen, we are here to make change,” she said.

The couple has called for the officers to be fired.

Ames addressed the crowd briefly, drawing applause when he said he and his family were lucky to be alive after the incident.

“No one should ever try to justify what happened that day,” he said.

“We matter,” said Harper, holding the couple’s 1-year-old.

The father of Jacob Harris, a black 19-year-old man who was shot and killed by a Phoenix officer in January following an armed robbery at a fast food restaurant, also spoke at the meeting along with others who have had loved ones killed in police-related shootings.
Earlier Tuesday, Phoenix police released surveillance video aimed at backing up their assertion that adults and not just a child were shoplifting before the incident.

The store video is difficult to follow because it has been edited and the subjects’ faces are blurred. It shows a man taking something from a display rack and examining it, but it’s unclear what happened to the package when he walked off camera.

Another snippet of video later shows a little girl with a doll in a box walking out of the store accompanied by adults.

A police statement last week about the incident in late May states Dravon Ames told police he threw a pair of stolen underwear out of his car. Police also say a woman traveling in a different vehicle was arrested separately for stealing aluminum foil.

A bystander’s video that came to light last week shows officers aiming guns and yelling profane commands at Ames and his pregnant fiancée, Iesha Harper, as she held their 1-year-old daughter. They say their 4-year-old daughter had taken a doll from a store without their knowledge.

The store decided not to prosecute and no charges have been filed.

The couple filed a $10 million claim against the city alleging civil rights violations as a precursor to a lawsuit. The race of the officers is not known.

Ames has a pending case on charges of aggravated assault of a police officer in an unrelated case that followed a traffic accident in suburban Tempe, Arizona, last year. Court documents say Ames unsuccessfully tried to kick officers several times when they arrested him on suspicion of driving under the influence of marijuana.

One Tempe officer used a stun gun on Ames because he thought he was trying to grab the other officer’s gun, according to documents.

Phoenix police have not responded to repeated questions about whether the officers in the videotaped encounter following the alleged shoplifting were aware of, or influenced by, Ames’ earlier case. Civil liberties attorney Sandra Slaton said Monday the prior case was irrelevant.

The police chief has said an investigation into the officers’ actions is under way. The Phoenix police union is urging calm, saying it will not express an opinion until the investigation is completed.

The bystander’s video comes amid an investigation by police departments in Phoenix and other cities into a database that appears to catalog thousands of bigoted or violent social media posts by active-duty and former officers.

Williams, has moved some officers to “non-enforcement” assignments while the department looks into Facebook posts she called “embarrassing and disturbing.”
The database published by Plain View Project earlier this month included nearly 180 posts tied to current Phoenix police officers that disparage Muslims, black people, transgender people and other groups.

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Kamala Harris boosts outreach to historically Black colleges

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is stepping up her campaign outreach to the black community.

The California senator is seeking to mobilize students and graduates of historically black colleges and universities — known as HBCUs — as well as the country’s nine black fraternities and sororities.

The effort getting underway Wednesday includes adding a new section to her campaign website that will make it easier for people connected to these groups to organize and to advance her candidacy.

Supporters will be encouraged to host events that could feature Harris’ senior campaign members or surrogates.

HBCUs and black Greek organizations are a natural constituency for Harris. She graduated from flagship HBCU Howard University and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, America’s oldest sorority started by and for black women.

Since getting into the 2020 race in February, Harris has visited more HBCUs than any other candidate.

The new outreach is a recognition that she needs to do more to organize this network of schools and Greek organizations.

“As we look to realize the promise of the first African American female president, we must be intentional about organizing these communities to ensure they feel part of this campaign and incentivized to take political action going forward,” Missayr Boker, Harris’ national political director, told The Associated Press.

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How Facial Recognition Is Fighting Child Sex Trafficking

A nonprofit called Thorn is using Amazon Rekognition to scan online ads for underage sex-trafficking victims.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2RpAsfX
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Hospitals Aren’t Ready for a Mass-Casualty Wildfire

With wildfires intensifying, the number of burn victims is likely to rise. But hospitals have been losing their burn treatment expertise, leaving the country unprepared.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2Kql2HF
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Mohammed Morsi: Egypt accuses UN of 'politicising' death

Egypt says its former leader died of natural causes, and is critical of calls for an investigation.

from BBC News - Africa https://bbc.in/2Xmx8I0
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Creating 3-D images, with regular ink

This month, 5,000 distinctive cans of Fuzzy Logic beer will appear on local shelves as part of Massachusetts-based Portico Brewing’s attempt to stand out in the aesthetically competitive world of craft beer.

The cans feature eye-catching arrays of holographic triangles that appear three dimensional at certain angles. Curious drinkers might twist the cans and guess how Portico achieved the varying, almost shining appearance. Were special lenses or foils used? Are the optical effects the result of an expensive, holographic film?

It turns out it takes two MIT PhDs to fully explain the technology behind the can’s appearance. The design is the result of Portico’s collaboration with Lumii, a startup founded by Tom Baran SM ’07 PhD ’12 and Matt Hirsch SM ’09, PhD ’14.

Lumii uses complex algorithms to precisely place tens of millions of dots of ink on two sides of clear film to create light fields that achieve the same visual effects as special films and lenses. The designs add depth, motion, and chromatic effect to packages, labels, IDs, and more.

“We describe [the technology] differently to different crowds,” Baran says. “You can formulate this as a machine learning problem or a signal processing problem, but basically at the end of the day we think of it as an optimization problem. To produce a three-dimensional image, you could place dots of ink so that you get a perfect rendition of a three-dimensional image from one perspective. Then you could rotate the print and say, ‘Well now the perspective is off, so I need to readjust all of the dots,’ and that will mess things up from the first perspective. We make it possible to have a three-dimensional image using just two layers of ink from as many perspectives as possible.”

Lumii does not operate its own printing presses. Instead the company is partnering with package manufacturers, who are often surprised to learn that the machines they’ve been operating for decades are capable of printing designs with such special effects.

The Portico collaboration is Lumii’s first project in packaging, and the founders are hoping it serves as technical validation for the large manufacturers who create packages for the world’s biggest brands.

“[The Portico label manufacturers] are using equipment that can start at 5,000 units and go up to hundreds of millions per year,” Baran says. “Our technology can blow people away, but the people who do package printing say, ‘This is beautiful; I just need to make sure I can make one hundred million of these if I have to.’ That’s what this project does.”

Tech for effects

Baran and Hirsch met as undergraduates at Tufts University and stayed in touch as they both came to MIT for their graduate degrees. Hirsch’s PhD work at the Media Lab focused on using algorithms to make something appear three-dimensional, without fancy cameras or display screens.

“The challenge of making something look 3-D is about not just pixels on a screen but light rays in space,” Hirsch explains. “To have a quality 3-D image, for every pixel on your screen you have to have potentially hundreds of different viewpoints to replicate a reality, so the problem is more difficult than just using brute force to build a finer optical system to represent that.”

Baran’s research into new classes of a field of mathematics called nonconvex optimization made it possible for Lumii to process trillions of light rays to create its designs.

Hirsch knew he wanted to start a company around the technology he’d worked on for his PhD, and Lumii was officially incorporated in 2015 when Baran joined.

The founders received support from MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service and the Media Lab-affiliated E14 Fund.

In 2016, they entered MassChallenge, where they decided to move from digital displays to print, which represented a bigger market but a much more complex problem.

“On a digital display, 8K [or 8,000 pixels] is high resolution,” Baran says. “But if I take a magazine and tear off one page from it, I’m probably holding several billion pixels on that one page.”

Still, the size of the various commercial printing sectors made them worth the added complexity. For instance, Baran says consumer packaged goods alone represent a $200 billion industry.

“When we first read some of the numbers for package printing, we thought, ‘This sounds crazy.’ But everything we buy, every product we consume, has some form of language or label on it,” Baran says. “It’s so pervasive people don’t even think about it.”

One type of packaging the founders are especially focused on is the shrink sleeve — the ubiquitous plastic wrap that covers products from mouthwash to energy drinks and spray cleaners. Lumii has also attracted attention in the security sector for applications like ID cards, which often rely on expensive foils to achieve holographic effects.

By charging a small fee for its designs, Hirsch says Lumii offers a significant cost savings for package manufacturers when compared with using holographic foils and lenses that can be impractical at the high volumes required for commercial packaging.

“There aren’t very often direct competitors to what we’re doing,” Hirsch says. “We see our technology as more complementary. If you’re using something like a brightly colored ink, we can use that ink in conjunction with our technology.”

Because Lumii’s algorithms replace foils and other label materials, they can also make bottles and cans recyclable that weren’t previously, a benefit that has resonated with many potential customers.

The Portico Fuzzy Logic can design created by Lumii. Courtesy of Lumii

An intoxicating milestone

Many consumer brands export the production of their packaging to a group of large manufacturers. Hirsch and Baran have impressed some of these manufacturers with their designs, but it’s been difficult getting incorporated into production lines.

“One of the things we’ve realized is it’s really important to be able to prove to people that it will work on their assembly line, and there are significant challenges to getting people to reserve time to try your experiments on their line,” Baran says.

That’s what makes the Portico project so significant for Lumii. Portico wanted an eye-catching design for its new Fuzzy Logic cans, but it couldn’t change the materials or equipment it was using. The cans use a 45-micron-thick shrink sleeve, a relatively thin material that would test Lumii’s technology.

That material is also used by many large consumer brands and so represented a perfect way to demonstrate Lumii’s potential for large companies across industries.

“The Portico project is verification that what we’re doing works with a material that can be applied across a broad range of different markets,” Baran says. “Just the fact that it’s working on those types of materials is a big deal for us.”

Now that they’ve gotten their designs on shelves, the founders have to decide how to focus their efforts to spread Lumii’s technology onto packages and labels everywhere.

“We’re thinking, ‘What are the industries where we can have the biggest impact?’” Baran says. “We get to see the reaction on people’s faces when they see their printing press printing out things that are 3-D. We want to deliver that to more places.”

from MIT News http://bit.ly/2IQtzAB
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WATCH: Anthony Anderson and Chris Robinson on tackling tough issues in ‘BEATS’

It’s almost time for BEATS to premiere on Netflix and TheGrio caught up with the film’s star, Anthony Anderson and director, Chris Robinson, just after it premiered at ABFF to find out why they decided to take on the project.

Set in Chicago, the film follows August (Khalil Everage); a teenager traumatized after witnessing a devastating tragedy. The Netflix film that also stars Khalil Everage and Uzo Aduba is certainly worth watching, as it shines a light on the long-lasting effects gun violence has on mental health.

REVIEW: Anthony Anderson, Uzo Aduba and Khalil Everage shine bright in ‘BEATS’

According to Chris Robinson, this film sets itself apart by shining a light on the way gun violence affects young people’s mental health.

“For me, Chicago is always in the news. There’s always so much violence that’s happening and our kids are affected by it. We all come from these areas where violence is at an all-time high but amongst that, there’s the rest of life that happens. Everybody has a grandmother, everyone has a mom, everybody has a family and there’s love and birthdays and happiness in between that,” says Chris Robinson. “Part of this movie is about what makes people not respect that. A lot of that has to do with trauma. A lot of it has to do with what’s happening inside yourself. We wanted to examine that in a real way, not in a sensationalized way.”

The film’s director also explained why Anthony Anderson as the perfect person to play the lead.

“He’s one of the biggest stars in the world but I think what sometimes we forget because he does so many things is…his chops, what he does as an actor is amazing,” he says. “I think this film shows just how deep he goes in creating something that makes you feel that it’s real and that’s what acting is all about.”

Anthony Anderson, Marsai Martin, Omari Hardwick and more stars takeover Miami for ABFF

Anderson took time to explain what attracted him to the role that’s a far cry from the comedic performances we’re used to seeing from him.

“Mainly the script and the subject matter and dealing with mental health issues, what’s going on in the streets of Chicago but more importantly, the story of the young man,” he says. “I like to say the movie is ‘Good Will Hunting’ meets Hustle & Flow. It’s a nice coming-of-age story of this kid helping me find my way back in life and me helping him get a new life.” 

Check out the full interview above.

BEATS premieres June 19 on Netflix.

 

 

 

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What the Google-Genius Copyright Dispute Is Really About

Genius says it caught Google red-handed. Then the evidence disappeared. The real story is even more complicated.

from Wired http://bit.ly/2x077PX
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QS ranks MIT the world’s No. 1 university for 2019-20

MIT has again been named the world’s top university by the QS World University Rankings, which were announced today. This is the eighth year in a row MIT has received this distinction.

The full 2019-20 rankings — published by Quacquarelli Symonds, an organization specializing in education and study abroad — can be found at topuniversities.com. The QS rankings were based on academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, student-to-faculty ratio, proportion of international faculty, and proportion of international students. MIT earned a perfect overall score of 100.

MIT was also ranked the world’s top university in 11 of 48 disciplines ranked by QS, as announced in February of this year.

MIT received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Chemistry; Computer Science and Information Systems; Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering; Linguistics; Materials Science; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Statistics and Operational Research.

MIT also placed second in six subject areas: Accounting and Finance; Architecture/Built Environment; Biological Sciences; Earth and Marine Sciences; Economics and Econometrics; and Environmental Sciences.

from MIT News http://bit.ly/31GcFgH
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