Photographer Alberto Bernasconi donned full protective gear to capture the scene of "guests" isolating in the four-star hotel.
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Sunday, July 12, 2020
Pandas Groupby and Sum
A common step in data analysis is to group the data by a variable and compute some summary statistics each subgroup of data. For example, one might be interested in mean, median values, or total sum per group. In this post, we will see an example of how to use groupby() function in Pandas to group a dataframe into multiple smaller dataframes and compute total/sum on another variable.
Let us load the libraries we need.
import pandas as pd import numpy as np
We will use gapminder dataset to learn groupby() and sum() functions to summarise data at a group level.
p2data = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cmdlinetips/data/master/gapminder-FiveYearData.csv" gapminder=pd.read_csv(p2data) gapminder.head()
Let us first subset the data for the sake of simplicity. Here we filter data for year values 2007 using Pandas filter() function.
df= gapminder.query("year==2007")
df.head()
With the data corresponding to the year 2007, let us compute total population in each continent. In order to do that, we first need to use groupby() to group the data corresponding to each continent.
df.groupby(["continent"]) <pandas.core.groupby.generic.DataFrameGroupBy object at 0x1a19c9c850>
From the grouped object, let us select our variable of interest. Since we are interested in computing total population, we select “pop”
df.groupby(["continent"])['pop'] <pandas.core.groupby.generic.SeriesGroupBy object at 0x1a19cc1590>
And chain it with sum() function in Pandas that computes the total population for each continent.
df.groupby(["continent"])['pop'].sum()
Here we have results as Pandas Series with total population for each continent computed by groupby() and sum().
continent Africa 9.295397e+08 Americas 8.988712e+08 Asia 3.811954e+09 Europe 5.860985e+08 Oceania 2.454995e+07 Name: pop, dtype: float64
This post is part of the series on Pandas 101, a tutorial covering tips and tricks on using Pandas for data munging and analysis.
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Saturday, July 11, 2020
Protests Erupt in Detroit Following Fatal Police Shooting of 20-Year-Old Hakim Littleton
Police officers arrested eight people during a protest in Detroit Friday night over the police shooting of a 20-year-old black man.
Chaos broke out in the neighborhood of San Juan near McNichols Road on the city’s northwest side as dozens of people began yelling at police and throwing bricks and bottles at them following the fatal shooting of Hakim Littleton, reports The New York Post. Two officers were injured.
Police Chief James Craig said the shooting was justified, noting that police dashcam video apparently shows that Littleton pulled a gun out of his pocket, aimed at an officer, and opened fire, the Detroit Free Press reported. In response, three officers returned fire. Littleton was pronounced dead shortly after. The dash cam footage was released earlier on Friday.
Craig said messages on social media incited the protest by misleading the public into believing Littleton was unarmed. “We needed to get the facts out,” he said. “It’s always tragic when a police officer has to use force.” Craig added, “This knee-jerk reaction to not knowing facts is a problem … It’s to incite others.”
Police say Littleton’s family has accepted the account given by police. “They weren’t happy,” Craig said, “but they believed what we said, and I greatly appreciate that.”
He went on to explain why Littleton opened fire on the officers. “When Mr. Littleton was walking in the opposite direction, he heard that his friend was being detained, then he walked toward the officers,” Craig told reporters. “Some comments were made. He was angry about his friend being arrested, and that’s when he pulled out his weapon.”
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan agreed that the shooting was justified based on the video. “Public confidence requires citizens to be able to judge for themselves the actions of our officers. The video is clear that the officer was suddenly and unexpectedly fired upon. I commend Chief Craig for moving so quickly to release the video publicly,” Duggan said.
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A wizard of ultrasharp imaging
Though Frances Ross and her sister Caroline Ross both ended up on the faculty of MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, they got there by quite different pathways. While Caroline followed a more traditional academic route and has spent most of her career at MIT, Frances Ross spent most of her professional life working in the industrial sector, as a microscopy specialist at IBM. It wasn’t until 2018 that she arrived at MIT to oversee the new state-of-the-art electron microscope systems being installed in the new MIT.nano facility.
Frances, who bears a strong family resemblance to her sister, says “it’s confused a few people, if they don’t know there are two of us.”
The sisters grew up in London in a strongly science- and materials-oriented family. Her father, who worked first as a scientist and then as a lawyer, is currently working on his third PhD degree, in classics. Her mother, a gemologist, specializes in precisely matching diamonds, and oversees certification testing for the profession.
After earning her doctorate at Cambridge University in materials science, specializing in electron microscopy, Frances Ross went on to do a postdoc at Bell Labs in New Jersey, and then to the National Center for Electron Microscopy at the University of California at Berkeley. From there she continued her work in electron microscopy at IBM in Yorktown Heights, New York, where she spent 20 years working on development and application of electron microscope technology to studying crystal growth.
When MIT built its new cutting-edge nanotechnology fabrication and analysis facility, MIT.nano, it was clear that state-of-the-art microscope technology would need to be a key feature of the new center. That’s when Ross was hired as a professor, along with Professor Jim LeBeau and Research Scientist Rami Dana, who had an academic and industrial research background, to oversee the creation, development, and application of those microscopes for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and the wider MIT community.
“Currently, our students have to go to other places to do high-performance microscopy, so they might go to Harvard, or one of the national labs,” says Ross, who is the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor in Materials Science and Engineering. “Very many advances in the instrumentation have come together over the last few years, so that if your equipment is a little older, it’s actually a big disadvantage in electron microcopy. This is an area where MIT had not invested for a little while, and therefore, once they made that decision, the jump is going to be very significant. We’re going to have a state-of-the-art imaging capability.”
There will be two major electron microscope systems for materials science, which are gradually taking shape inside the vibration-isolated basement level of MIT.nano, alongside two others already installed that are specialized for biomedical imaging.
One of these will be an advanced version of a standard electron microscope, she says, that will have a unique combination of features. “There is nothing that exists with the capabilities that we are aiming for here.”
The most important of these, she says, is the quality of the vacuum inside the microscope: “In most of our experiments, we want to start with a surface that’s atomically clean.” For example, “we could start with atomically clean silicon, and then add some germanium. How do the germanium atoms add onto the silicon surface? That’s a very important question for microelectronics. But if the sample is in an environment that’s not well-controlled, then the results you get will depend on how dirty the vacuum is. Contamination may affect the process, and you can’t be sure that what you’re seeing is what happens in real life.” Ross is working with the manufacturers to reach exceptional levels of cleanliness in the vacuum of the electron microscope system being developed now.
But ultra-high-quality vacuum is just one of its attributes. “We combine the good vacuum with capabilities to heat the sample, and flow gases, and record images at high speed,” Ross says. “Perhaps most importantly for a lot of our experiments, we use lower-energy electrons to do the imaging, because for many interesting materials like 2D materials, such as graphene, boron nitride, and related structures, the high-energy electrons that are normally used will damage the sample.”
Putting that all together, she says, “is a unique instrument that will give us real insights into surface reactions, crystal growth processes, materials transformations, catalysis, all kinds of reactions involving nanostructure formation and chemistry on the surfaces of 2D materials.”
Other instruments and capabilities are also being added to MIT’s microscopy portfolio. A new scanning transmission electron microscope is already installed in MIT.nano and is providing high-resolution structural and chemical analysis of samples for several projects at MIT. Another new capability is a special sample holder that allows researchers to make movies of unfolding processes in water or other liquids in the microscope. This allows detailed monitoring, at up to 100 frames per second, of a variety of phenomena, such as solution-phase growth, unfolding chemical reactions, or electrochemical processes such as battery charging and discharging. Making movies of processes taking place in water, she says, “is something of a new field for electron microscopy.”
Ross already has set up an ultra-high vacuum electron microscope in DMSE but without the resolution and low-voltage operation of the new instrument. And finally, an ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscope has just started to produce images and will measure current flow through nanoscale materials.
In their free time, Ross and her husband Brian enjoy sailing, mostly off the coast of Maine, with their two children, Kathryn and Eric. As a hobby she collects samples of beach sand. “I have a thousand different kinds of sand from various places, and a lot of them from Massachusetts,” she says. “Everywhere I go, that’s my souvenir.”
But with her intense focus on developing this new world-class microscopy facility, there’s little time for anything else these days. Her aim is to ensure that it’s the best facility possible.
“I’m hoping that MIT becomes a center for electron microscopy,” she says. “You know, with all the interesting materials science and physics that goes on here, it matches up very well with this unique instrumentation, this high-quality combination of imaging and analysis. These unique characterization capabilities really complement the rest of the science that happens here.”
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New York Yankees player, Aroldis Chapman, has COVID-19
Despite some players testing positive for COVID-19, the MLB is expected to resume
Afro-Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman has COVID-19, and it is unclear if he will ever play again.
One of the New York Yankees’ prominent pitchers, and one of the fastest pitchers in Major League Baseball history, Chapman, 32, is out of the game according to the organization’s manager, Aaron Boone.
READ MORE: Ian Desmond calls out MLB for racism as he opts out of 2020 season
In a Zoom call on Saturday, Boone announced Chapman’s COVID-19 test results were positive, showing “mild symptoms” of the disease, The New York Daily News reported.
Boone, however, has decline to answer specific questions about Chapman’s health.
The Daily News reports that Chapman passed the league’s intake screening for the coronavirus on July 1, which could imply that his contracted the dieases as early as last Thursday, the Yankees last test.
Chapman, carrying the disease, was at the team’s training campsite, unwittingly exposing fellow players.
Boone seems to be unfazed.
“Right now we feel like we’re doing a good job of managing,” Boone said. “I feel like we’re following all protocols. We have not had any other positive tests.”
READ MORE: A long-overdue ‘Tip of the Cap’ to baseball’s Black pioneers
Aaron Hicks, a center fielder for the Yankees, joined Boone’s Zoom call and reacted to the news.
“It’s tough especially when it comes to a teammate of yours they just test positive,” said Hicks, who like Chapman, joined the Yankees in 2016. “But you know, it just proves how safe we gotta be within our little bubble.”
Chapman is the third Yankees player to contract COVID-19 – DJ LeMahieu, the team’s second baseman who has been called best player during last season, and fellow Latino pitcher Luis Cessa tested positive.
The MLB is expected to have its 2020 season with a shorter schedule, The Associated Press reported. The opening game starts with the match between Yankees and last year’s World Series champion, Washington Nationals.
As theGrio previously reported, infielder and outfielder for the Colorado Rockies Ian Desmond has chosen to opt-out of the 2020 season and called out the MLB for their lack of diversity.
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Reparations bill gains traction amid national protests
The death of George Floyd has helped to reignite the discussion about reparations.
The case for reparations for descendants of slaves has long been debated, but the H.R. 40 bill may finally make reparations a reality.
H.R. 40, if passed, would study what the federal government owes the descendants of slaves, and explore ways to repay that debt.
The Black Lives Matter movement and calls for racial equality have pushed the bill, which was introduced in January of 2019, into the limelight once more.
The death of George Floyd has helped to reignite the discussion. As you may remember, Floyd was killed in May when a group of officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, held him down, while another kneeled on his neck for nearly 9 minutes.
Not too long afterwards, the California Assembly passed a bill to establish a task force to determine reparation proposals for African Americans. This California bill was similar to the federal bill H.R. 40, and this renewed conversation ignited calls for the federal mandate to be passed.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D) Texas sponsored bill H.R. 40, also known as the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.
READ MORE: Rectifying HR 40: The prelude to Black reparations in the 21st century
Last week, the Congressional Black Caucus met to discuss the bill and what it can mean moving forward.
“There is no better time for H.R. 40 to be part of the national dialogue, and part of the national legislative response,” Rep. Jackson Lee said.
The “40” is a reference to the 40 acres of land promised, but never fully delivered, to former slaves by Union Army general, William Sherman, in 1865. Sherman’s promise was not fulfilled by President Andrew Johnson or by President Abraham Lincoln’s successor.
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Social media thinks Wayfair is part of a child trafficking operation
The conspiracy is being compared to Pizzagate, a theory that linked Hilary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to a pizzeria accused of human trafficking.
Wayfair, the American online furniture retailer, is being accused of child trafficking and money laundering.
A post on a subreddit called r/conspiracy showed products like cabinets and pillows with the names of missing children, being sold for thousands of dollars – seemingly much more than they are worth.
READ MORE: Time’s Up: Child care providers are not America’s mammy
One Reddit user theorized that the missing children’s names matched the product names of several Wayfair storage cabinets, and that people were paying for the children through the website, the Courier Daily reported.
Samiyah Mumun, Samara Duplessis, Yaritza Castro, Cameron James Dziedzic, Mary Durett, and Kylah Coleman are the names of missing children, and the first names are used by the site.
The cabinets named “Neriah,” “Yaritza,” “Samiyah,” and “Alyvia,” were being prices at about $13,000 each, Gizmondo reported.
The conspiracy is being compared to #Pizzagate, a debunked right-wing conspiracy that linked Hilary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to a pizzeria that was accused of human trafficking. children in the basement.
The rumors on missing children being trafficked at Wayfair’s warehouses are already being debunked as many names flowing around the controversy are children that have already been found.
Mumin was missing last month, but she was found in her hometown, the Courier Daily reported.
Duplessis, a 13-year-old girl from Michigan, is another missing person who was safely recovered.
Dziedzic was found by the police, in April 2, 2020 in Calvert County.
Durett, 16, went missing in the Hermann Park on December 14, 2017, but she was found one week later.
READ MORE: Chris Rock facing possible ‘child trafficking’ charges over South African girl
In an email to Newsweek, a Wayfair spokeswoman has denied the accusations, saying, “There is, of course, no truth to these claims.”
“The products in question are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately priced. Recognizing that the photos and descriptions provided by the supplier did not adequately explain the high price point,” the spokeswoman said. “We have temporarily removed the products from the site to rename them and to provide a more in-depth description and photos that accurately depict the product to clarify the price point.”
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Black woman harassed for sitting on a church’s lawn
The church claims that the incident was not handled in a way that is representative of the church or the school.
Alex Marshall-Brown, an actress and stunt performer, says she was harassed after sitting on the lawn of St. Paul’s First Lutheran Church.
A pair of security guards on bikes advised her that someone called to complain about her presence on the property and that if she didn’t leave, it was likely that the police would get involved.
Marshall-Brown stood her ground and didn’t bother leaving.
“I said that was an unusual choice considering I was a person sitting on grass,” Marshall-Brown said. That’s when she noticed a woman looking at her from a school window affiliated with the church.
Shortly after that, a woman came out of the school and checked the locks of the church. If that wasn’t enough, two men came out with no trespassing signs.
The incident was captured by Marshall-Brown through a Facebook live video. In the five-minute video, a man with a drill can be seen telling Marshall-Brown she’s on private property and that they’ve had “problems” with people in the past.
She presses him, asking if she poses a threat to them as they continue to put up the sign. “We have to treat everybody the same — all lives matter,” he says at one point.
“I said nothing about any lives, sir,” she responds.
READ MORE: Walmart to stop sales of ‘All Lives Matter’ merchandise
After the incident, St. Paul’s First Lutheran Church put out a statement on Facebook saying in part, “Marshall-Brown, who was sitting under a tree on church property, was asked to leave, as she was sitting on private property. After initial interaction with church personnel, Marshall-Brown started recording when the two men posted no trespassing signs near where she was sitting. It is the position of St. Paul’s First Lutheran Church and School that Marshall-Brown posed no risk or threat to the property and that this incident was not handled in a way representative of the church or the school.”
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Netflix on YouTube
The Very Best Friendship Tips In Dead To Me | Netflix
Making new friends as an adult is tough. Losing your husband in a freak accident? Also tough. Unfortunately for Jen Harding (Christina Applegate), she’s dealing with both at the same time. Luckily, she might just have found a new partner in crime in Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini), a hippie with a few skeletons stashed in the back of her VW Van. Can a story straight out of a true crime podcast be the beginning of a true friendship? This is the part where we say, well… you’ll have to watch to find out. Watch their friendship blossom (or wilt) in the second season of Dead to Me, the Netflix dark comedy series that earned Applegate a primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Missed the first season? No problem. It’s all available, you guessed it, here on Netflix. Check out the first two seasons of the black comedy created by Liz Feldman and executively produced by Feldman, Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Jessica Elbaum. Watch Dead to Me, Only on Netflix: https://ift.tt/2ChnPQS SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/29qBUt7 About Netflix: Netflix is the world's leading streaming entertainment service with 183 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on any internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments. Dead To Me: The Best Friendship Tips | Netflix https://youtube.com/Netflix Jen and Judy are not OK. Not even a little. With their lives spinning out of control, they're clinging to each other — and their secrets.
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Making new friends as an adult is tough. Losing your husband in a freak accident? Also tough. Unfortunately for Jen Harding (Christina Applegate), she’s dealing with both at the same time. Luckily, she might just have found a new partner in crime in Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini), a hippie with a few skeletons stashed in the back of her VW Van. Can a story straight out of a true crime podcast be the beginning of a true friendship? This is the part where we say, well… you’ll have to watch to find out. Watch their friendship blossom (or wilt) in the second season of Dead to Me, the Netflix dark comedy series that earned Applegate a primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Missed the first season? No problem. It’s all available, you guessed it, here on Netflix. Check out the first two seasons of the black comedy created by Liz Feldman and executively produced by Feldman, Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Jessica Elbaum. Watch Dead to Me, Only on Netflix: https://ift.tt/2ChnPQS SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/29qBUt7 About Netflix: Netflix is the world's leading streaming entertainment service with 183 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on any internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments. Dead To Me: The Best Friendship Tips | Netflix https://youtube.com/Netflix Jen and Judy are not OK. Not even a little. With their lives spinning out of control, they're clinging to each other — and their secrets.
View on YouTube
‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ top writer resigns after sexist, racist online comments uncovered
Blake Neff for years frequented a racist online forum to air his thoughts under a pseudonym
Fox News‘ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the top-rated cable news show, just lost its top writer.
Blake Neff has resigned from his post after it was discovered that he had been posting sexist and racially offensive commentary on online forums under an alias.
CNN Business reports that Neff under a pseudonym for years participated in online forums where he would create and respond to racist threads.
Many of the threads live on AutoAdmit, a messaging board also known as XOXOhth that has little moderation. The posts in question are attributed to the username CharlesXII, Neff’s pseudonym.
Autoadmit, which is frequented by lawyers and law school students, has been the subject of lawsuits due to threatening language.
READ MORE: KKK leader David Duke endorses Trump, Tucker Carlson for 2020
One recent thread was titled, “Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?”
Neff replied: “I wouldn’t get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no.”
In a 2015 post, he referred to a woman he knew via Facebook as an “Azn megashrew,” mocking the woman’s dating life as recently as last month, the CNN report said. The thread led to over 1,000 comments of vulgarity and sexist remarks toward the woman.
On June 5, one user commented on a thread saying: “Didn’t Michael Brown rob a store and attack a police officer? And wasn’t [George Floyd] a piece of sh** with a long criminal record? Jfc libs.” Another user responded with “It doesn’t matter to these people,” to which Neff replied, “It does. The violent criminals are even MORE heroic.”
READ MORE: Fox News reporter retreats inside car after shoving BLM protester
Neff began writing for Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show in February 2017. Prior to that, he had worked for Carlson’s conservative news outlet The Daily Caller. During his tenure, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became the highest-rated cable news show in TV history.
His resignation was confirmed by a Fox News spokesperson.
Carlson has yet to comment on the situation.
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Protesters accuse Louisville mayor of gentrification during housing project ribbon-cutting ceremony
Mayor Greg Fischer remains under tense scrutiny by the community after the killing of Breonna Taylor
Louisville, Ky. Mayor Greg Fischer can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to his leadership.
Fischer, who continues to be criticized for the handling of the investigation into the shooting death of 26-year-old EMT worker Breonna Taylor in her bed by police, on Friday faced another challenge as dozens of protesters confronted him at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a housing project in the western part of the city, WLKY-TV reports.
“Fire! Fire! Gentrifier!” the protesters shouted at the event commemorating the completion of the affordable housing complex.
It didn’t take long for a few of them to confront the mayor about their dismay over the project, but he did not engage them.
Housing Partnership Inc., a nonprofit real estate development organization behind the $2.9 million development, says the Montgomery Apartments are for families whose incomes are below 80% of the area median income. The apartment complex offers 9 two-bedroom apartments and 15 three-bedroom apartments. The protests were caught on the organization’s live stream of the event.
One protester, however, exclaimed that the apartments are not affordable for the Portland neighborhood’s residents, the CBS-affiliate noted.
In the videos, Fischer can be seen walking away as protesters continue chanting. Protesters eventually left the area and marched through the streets.
After leaving the event, the mayor’s office released a statement about the housing complex.
“Affordable housing is a critical component of our economic development strategy and our racial equity work – and it is the opposite of gentrification,” the statement read adding that Fischer has “consistently advocated” for peaceful protests against systemic racism and is “committed to restoring public trust” in the face of a racial reckoning.
“We appreciate the great work done by non-profit partners like HPI and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. They’re helping close the gap between supply and demand in housing for our neediest neighbors, an important step on the important journey toward racial and economic equity in Louisville,” it said.
Some people believe there is a direct link between the development of the Russell neighborhood and the shooting death of Taylor.
Fischer called the linkage between “Vision Russell” and Taylor’s death outrageous and nefarious.
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