Aurelia Butler

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  • 125 Shares129 Views

    in Computers Math

    Scientists develop AI-based tracking and early-warning system for viral pandemics

    Scripps Research scientists have developed a machine-learning system — a type of artificial intelligence (AI) application — that can track the detailed evolution of epidemic viruses and predict the emergence of viral variants with important new properties.
    In a paper in Cell Patterns on July 21, 2023, the scientists demonstrated the system by using data on recorded SARS-CoV-2 variants and COVID-19 mortality rates. They showed that the system could have predicted the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 “variants of concern” (VOCs) ahead of their official designations by the World Health Organization (WHO). Their findings point to the possibility of using such a system in real-time to track future viral pandemics.
    “There are rules of pandemic virus evolution that we have not understood but can be discovered, and used in an actionable sense by private and public health organizations, through this unprecedented machine-learning approach,” says study senior author William Balch, PhD, professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research.
    The co-first authors of the study were Salvatore Loguercio, PhD, a staff scientist in the Balch lab at the time of the study, and currently a staff scientist at the Scripps Research Translational Institute; and Ben Calverley, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in the Balch lab.
    The Balch lab specializes in the development of computational, often AI-based methods to illuminate how genetic variations alter the symptoms and spread of diseases. For this study, they applied their approach to the COVID-19 pandemic. They developed machine-learning software, using a strategy called Gaussian process-based spatial covariance, to relate three data sets spanning the course of the pandemic: the genetic sequences of SARS-CoV-2 variants found in infected people worldwide, the frequencies of those variants, and the global mortality rate for COVID-19.
    “This computational method used data from publicly available repositories,” Loguercio says. “But it can be applied to any genetic mapping resource.”
    The software enabled the researchers to track sets of genetic changes appearing in SARS-CoV-2 variants around the world. These changes — typically trending towards increased spread rates and decreased mortality rates — signified the virus’ adaptations to lockdowns, mask wearing, vaccines, increasing natural immunity in the global population, and the relentless competition among SARS-CoV-2 variants themselves. More

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Computers Math

    Detecting threats beyond the limits of human, sensor sight

    Remember what it’s like to twirl a sparkler on a summer night? Hold it still and the fire crackles and sparks but twirl it around and the light blurs into a line tracing each whirl and jag you make.
    A new patented software system developed at Sandia National Laboratories can find the curves of motion in streaming video and images from satellites, drones and far-range security cameras and turn them into signals to find and track moving objects as small as one pixel. The developers say this system can enhance the performance of any remote sensing application.
    “Being able to track each pixel from a distance matters, and it is an ongoing and challenging problem,” said Tian Ma, a computer scientist and co-developer of the system. “For physical security surveillance systems, for example, the farther out you can detect a possible threat, the more time you have to prepare and respond. Often the biggest challenge is the simple fact that when objects are located far away from the sensors, their size naturally appears to be much smaller. Sensor sensitivity diminishes as the distance from the target increases.”
    Ma and Robert Anderson started working on the Multi-frame Moving Object Detection System in 2015 as a Sandia Laboratory Directed Research and Development project. A paper about MMODS was recently published in Sensors.
    Detecting one moving pixel in a sea of 10 million
    The ability to detect objects through remote sensing systems is typically limited to what can be seen in a single video frame, whereas MMODS uses a new, multiframe method to detect small objects in low visibility conditions, Ma said. At a computer station, image streams from various sensors flow in, and MMODS processes the data with an image filter frame by frame in real time. An algorithm finds movement in the video frames and matches it into target signals that can be correlated and then integrated across a set of video frame sequences.
    This process improves the signal-to-noise ratio or overall image quality because the moving target’s signal can be correlated over time and increases steadily, whereas movement from background noise like wind is filtered out because it moves randomly and is not correlated. More

  • 38 Shares199 Views

    in Computers Math

    Dreaming in technicolor

    A team of computer scientists and designers based out of the University of Waterloo have developed a tool to help people use colour better in graphic design. 
    The tool, De-Stijl, uses powerful machine learning technology to suggest intuitive colour palettes for novice designers and inexperienced users. The software combines and improves on the functionalities of existing tools like Figma, Pixlr, and Coolor, allowing users to select important theme colors and quickly visualize how they’ll impact a design.
    “You put your graphical elements into the canvas,” said Jian Zhao, an assistant professor of computer science at Waterloo. “De-Stijl separates it into background, image, decoration and text, and based on these it creates a palette and then can make recommendations based on the design elements of layout, colour proximity, and proportion.”
    De-Stijl’s most exciting contribution is an innovative 2-D colour palette, developed in consultation with expert graphic designers, that not only suggests colours but also demonstrates their impact in different distributions.
    “Humans perceive colors differently based on their proportion and their placement,” said Xinyu Shi, a PhD student in computer science and the lead author on the research. “With the 2D format, users can better perceive how their current graphic designs look, focusing on the colour itself.”
    The Waterloo-led project grew out of a longstanding relationship with Adobe, the design powerhouse responsible for products like Photoshop and InDesign.
    Adobe realized that a lot of people responsible for creating branding and other marketing materials didn’t have advanced graphic design knowledge or the resources to hire expert designers. They tasked the Waterloo team with helping them find AI-powered solutions for these novice designers. 
    The De-Stijl team worked with a combination of design experts and ordinary users to build and test the software. During the testing phase, users customized marketing materials from provided templates using both De-Stijl and its competitors. More

  • 113 Shares119 Views

    in Computers Math

    Future AI algorithms have potential to learn like humans

    Memories can be as tricky to hold onto for machines as they can be for humans. To help understand why artificial agents develop holes in their own cognitive processes, electrical engineers at The Ohio State University have analyzed how much a process called “continual learning” impacts their overall performance.
    Continual learning is when a computer is trained to continuously learn a sequence of tasks, using its accumulated knowledge from old tasks to better learn new tasks.
    Yet one major hurdle scientists still need to overcome to achieve such heights is learning how to circumvent the machine learning equivalent of memory loss — a process which in AI agents is known as “catastrophic forgetting.” As artificial neural networks are trained on one new task after another, they tend to lose the information gained from those previous tasks, an issue that could become problematic as society comes to rely on AI systems more and more, said Ness Shroff, an Ohio Eminent Scholar and professor of computer science and engineering at The Ohio State University.
    “As automated driving applications or other robotic systems are taught new things, it’s important that they don’t forget the lessons they’ve already learned for our safety and theirs,” said Shroff. “Our research delves into the complexities of continuous learning in these artificial neural networks, and what we found are insights that begin to bridge the gap between how a machine learns and how a human learns.”
    Researchers found that in the same way that people might struggle to recall contrasting facts about similar scenarios but remember inherently different situations with ease, artificial neural networks can recall information better when faced with diverse tasks in succession, instead of ones that share similar features, Shroff said.
    The team, including Ohio State postdoctoral researchers Sen Lin and Peizhong Ju and professors Yingbin Liang and Shroff, will present their research this month at the 40th annual International Conference on Machine Learning in Honolulu, Hawaii, a flagship conference in machine learning.
    While it can be challenging to teach autonomous systems to exhibit this kind of dynamic, lifelong learning, possessing such capabilities would allow scientists to scale up machine learning algorithms at a faster rate as well as easily adapt them to handle evolving environments and unexpected situations. Essentially, the goal for these systems would be for them to one day mimic the learning capabilities of humans. More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Computers Math

    Unveiling the quantum dance: Experiments reveal nexus of vibrational and electronic dynamics

    Nearly a century ago, physicists Max Born and J. Robert Oppenheimer developed an assumption regarding how quantum mechanics plays out in molecules, which are comprised of intricate systems of nuclei and electrons. The Born-Oppenheimer approximation assumes that the motion of nuclei and electrons in a molecule are independent of each other and can be treated separately.
    This model works the vast majority of the time, but scientists are testing its limits. Recently, a team of scientists demonstrated the breakdown of this assumption on very fast time scales, revealing a close relationship between the dynamics of nuclei and electrons. The discovery could influence the design of molecules useful for solar energy conversion, energy production, quantum information science and more.
    “Understanding the interplay between the spin-vibronic effect and inter-system crossing could potentially lead to new ways to control and exploit the electronic and spin properties of molecules.” — Lin Chen, Argonne Distinguished Fellow and professor of chemistry at Northwestern University
    The team, including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University, North Carolina State University and University of Washington, recently published their discovery in two related papers in Nature and Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
    “Our work reveals the interplay between the dynamics of electron spin and the vibrational dynamics of the nuclei in molecules on superfast time scales,” said Shahnawaz Rafiq, a research associate at Northwestern University and first author on the Nature paper. “These properties can’t be treated independently — they mix together and affect electronic dynamics in complex ways.”
    A phenomenon called the spin-vibronic effect occurs when changes in the motion of the nuclei within a molecule affect the motion of its electrons. When nuclei vibrate within a molecule — either due to their intrinsic energy or due to external stimuli, such as light — these vibrations can affect the motion of their electrons, which can in turn change the molecule’s spin, a quantum mechanical property related to magnetism.
    In a process called inter-system crossing, an excited molecule or atom changes its electronic state by flipping its electron spin orientation. Inter-system crossing plays an important role in many chemical processes, including those in photovoltaic devices, photocatalysis and even bioluminescent animals. For this crossing to be possible, it requires specific conditions and energy differences between the electronic states involved. More

  • 88 Shares179 Views

    in Computers Math

    Allowing robots to explore on their own

    A research group in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute is creating the next generation of explorers — robots.
    The Autonomous Exploration Research Team has developed a suite of robotic systems and planners enabling robots to explore more quickly, probe the darkest corners of unknown environments, and create more accurate and detailed maps. The systems allow robots to do all this autonomously, finding their way and creating a map without human intervention.
    “You can set it in any environment, like a department store or a residential building after a disaster, and off it goes,” said Ji Zhang, a systems scientist in the Robotics Institute. “It builds the map in real-time, and while it explores, it figures out where it wants to go next. You can see everything on the map. You don’t even have to step into the space. Just let the robots explore and map the environment.”
    The team has worked on exploration systems for more than three years. They’ve explored and mapped several underground mines, a parking garage, the Cohon University Center, and several other indoor and outdoor locations on the CMU campus. The system’s computers and sensors can be attached to nearly any robotic platform, transforming it into a modern-day explorer. The group uses a modified motorized wheelchair and drones for much of its testing.
    Robots can explore in three modes using the group’s systems. In one mode, a person can control the robot’s movements and direction while autonomous systems keep it from crashing into walls, ceilings or other objects. In another mode, a person can select a point on a map and the robot will navigate to that point. The third mode is pure exploration. The robot sets off on its own, investigates the entire space and creates a map.
    “This is a very flexible system to use in many applications, from delivery to search-and-rescue,” said Howie Choset, a professor in the Robotics Institute.
    The group combined a 3D scanning lidar sensor, forward-looking camera and inertial measurement unit sensors with an exploration algorithm to enable the robot to know where it is, where it has been and where it should go next. The resulting systems are substantially more efficient than previous approaches, creating more complete maps while reducing the algorithm run time by half.
    The new systems work in low-light, treacherous conditions where communication is spotty, like caves, tunnels and abandoned structures. A version of the group’s exploration system powered Team Explorer, an entry from CMU and Oregon State University in DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge. Team Explorer placed fourth in the final competition but won the Most Sectors Explored Award for mapping more of the route than any other team.
    “All of our work is open-sourced. We are not holding anything back. We want to strengthen society with the capabilities of building autonomous exploration robots,” said Chao Cao, a Ph.D. student in robotics and the lead operator for Team Explorer. “It’s a fundamental capability. Once you have it, you can do a lot more.”
    Video: https://youtu.be/pNtC3Twx_2w More

  • 88 Shares129 Views

    in Heart

    What’s causing this summer’s extreme heat waves?

    The dog days of summer are upon us. Brutal heat waves are roasting regions around the globe, smashing records with unrelenting severity.

    In the southwest United States and northern Mexico, devastating heat has been scorching the region for weeks. For 19 straight days and counting, temperatures in Phoenix have reached above 43.3° Celsius (110° Fahrenheit), surpassing a record streak from 1974. The Texas city of El Paso has endured an unprecedented 33 consecutive days of temperatures reaching over 37.8° C (100° F), and that streak is only expected to continue. And just after midnight on July 17, Death Valley, Calif., may have sweltered under the highest temperature ever recorded anywhere for that time: 48.9° C (120° F).

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    China has also been enduring extreme heat for weeks. On July 16, the township of Sanbao broke not only the national record with a temperature of 52.2° C (126° F), but also the record for highest temperature above 40˚ N latitude. Meanwhile, southern Europe is in its second heat wave in a week, with Rome recording a new all-time high of 42.9° C (109.2° F) on July 18 while a town in Catalonia, Spain set a new record for the region, 45.3° C (113.5° F).

    What’s concocting these bouts of extreme heat? It’s partly because the world has been exceptionally warm this year, thanks to the compounding of human-caused climate change with a natural climate phenomenon called El Niño, whose influence is known to temporarily warm our planet (SN: 7/13/23).

    But it’s not just that Earth’s a hotter stovetop; the cooks have been busy. The jet streams, powerful ribbons of wind that control much of the planet’s weather, have been meandering and getting stuck, holding bulges of hot air over many parts of the Earth. While that’s not unusual, some scientists have suggested that climate change may be altering the dynamics of the consequential winds.

    Here’s what we know about how climate change is impacting extreme heat and how these potentially dangerous events occur.

    Extreme heat waves are becoming more likely

    Let’s start with that hot stovetop. Humans have been warming the planet for decades by emitting climate-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That’s made extreme heat waves more common, many researchers say.

    Since 2004, scientists have conducted attribution studies to estimate how much climate change may have influenced the probability and severity of a specific bout of extreme weather. These studies essentially simulate the world with and without climate change to compare how often certain types of extreme weather events occur.

    The work of the World Weather Attribution initiative has repeatedly indicated that climate change has made extreme weather events like heat waves more likely and more severe (SN: 4/11/22; SN: 7/7/21).

    A May report concluded that an April heat wave in South Asia — during which locations in Thailand and Laos set new national temperature records of 45.4° C and 42.9° C, respectively — was made at least 30 times more likely due to climate change.

    Another study suggested that a different heat wave in northern Africa and southwestern Europe, which subjected some areas to temperatures 20 degrees C higher than is normal in April, was at least 100 times more likely due to climate change.

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    Climate change is pushing heat waves in general to have higher temperatures, but it’s having a particularly strong impact on the frequency of the most extreme events, says atmospheric scientist Noboru Nakamura of the University of Chicago.

    “What used to be once every 1,000 years might now occur every 20 years,” he says. “It’s still a rare event, but … you can actually feel that in our daily lives.”

    How heat waves form

    What’s actually whipping up these summer scorchers, and why are only certain regions getting roasted?

    The answer lies roughly 8 to 14 kilometers high in the sky. There, the jet streams flow at about 177 kilometers per hour on average, though they can reach speeds of more than 400 kilometers per hour — faster than a Shinkansen bullet train.

    These powerful winds control much of Earth’s weather by transporting high- and low-pressure systems around the world.

    Jet streams develop where large masses of air with different temperatures meet, flowing faster where the temperature contrast is stronger. When jet streams are blowing strong, they tend to orient themselves more parallel to the equator, says atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Mass. “But when those winds get weaker … then we tend to see the jet stream take these bigger meanders.”

    When the jet stream meanders, it forms broad waves, with crests and troughs that reach north and south for hundreds of kilometers. Jet streams in the northern and southern hemispheres typically undulate more during their respective summers. Due to Earth’s axial tilt, polar regions receive more warming sunlight during their summers, weakening their temperature contrast with the tropics. As the waves become amplified, high- and low-pressure systems in the crests and troughs encroach farther north and south. Sometimes these pressure systems become stuck over one spot for days to weeks, causing weather to persist over a region.

    When a high-pressure system gets stuck over an area, it pushes air down toward the surface, compressing and warming the air. The high pressure also pushes clouds away, clearing the sky for the hot sun to beat down unabated. These factors compound to produce a heat dome, a phenomenon that scorches and often dries landscapes.

    Jet streams are mostly high-velocity wind currents (shown in red and purple) that often flow at the altitudes passenger planes frequent. When the currents form broad crests and troughs (one shown over the eastern United States), the winds can weaken (slow winds are shown in green). Swirling high-pressure systems (one shown over the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico) can get stuck over areas, generating persistent heat. The city of Phoenix is indicated by the green dot. This graphic shows jet stream activity on July 18.N. Ogasa, C. Beccario/earth.nullschool.net

    Source: GFS/NCEP/NOAA

    An exception is when heat domes form by coastlines — such as the one that has formed by the U.S. Gulf Coast. Since warmer air can carry more moisture, heat domes near the ocean can make for weather that is both hot and humid, a potentially lethal combination for humans (SN: 7/27/22).

    It’s a bit of a mystery why pressure systems become stuck, Nakamura says, making the phenomenon difficult to predict. It may occur when jet streams become especially wavy, he and a colleague reported in 2018 in Science. The waves may get stuck like cars in a traffic jam, causing weather to idle in place.

    But this explanation is a theoretical one, and more evidence is needed to validate it, Nakamura says. Until then, he says, the underlying mechanics of those jams will remain elusive.

    The jet streams’ uncertain future

    A related, but similarly unresolved, problem is how climate change may affect the dance of the jet streams in the future. In 2012, Francis and a colleague proposed climate change could make the powerful winds more wobbly.

    “The Arctic is warming about four times faster than the globe as a whole,” Francis says. “That means that the north-south temperature difference has been getting weaker and weaker.” As a result, jet streams may be becoming more unstable, she says, and more prone to meandering.

    But that’s still “a very hotly contested hypothesis,” Nakamura says, pointing out that some climate simulations have suggested that in the Northern Hemisphere, the jet stream may actually become less wavy. “There is not a widely accepted consensus on this,” Nakamura says.

    Even if the fate of the jet streams remains up in the air, one thing seems clear: Extreme heat waves aren’t going anywhere. More

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    Learning from superheroes and AI: Researchers study how a chatbot can teach kids supportive self-talk

    At first, some parents were wary: An audio chatbot was supposed to teach their kids to speak positively to themselves through lessons about a superhero named Zip. In a world of Siri and Alexa, many people are skeptical that the makers of such technologies are putting children’s welfare first.
    Researchers at the University of Washington created a new web app aimed to help children develop skills like self-awareness and emotional management. In Self-Talk with Superhero Zip, a chatbot guided pairs of siblings through lessons. The UW team found that, after speaking with the app for a week, most children could explain the concept of supportive self-talk (the things people say to themselves either audibly or mentally) and apply it in their daily lives. And kids who’d engaged in negative self-talk before the study were able to turn that habit positive.
    The UW team published its findings in June at the 2023 Interaction Design and Children conference. The app is still a prototype and is not yet publicly available.
    The UW team saw a few reasons to develop an educational chatbot. Positive self-talk has shown a range of benefits for kids, from improved sport performance to increased self-esteem and lower risk of depression. And previous studies have shown children can learn various tasks and abilities from chatbots. Yet little research explores how chatbots can help kids effectively acquire socioemotional skills.
    “There is room to design child-centric experiences with a chatbot that provide fun and educational practice opportunities without invasive data harvesting that compromises children’s privacy,” said senior author Alexis Hiniker, an associate professor in the UW Information School. “Over the last few decades, television programs like ‘Sesame Street,’ ‘Mister Rogers,’ and ‘Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood’ have shown that it is possible for TV to help kids cultivate socioemotional skills. We asked: Can we make a space where kids can practice these skills in an interactive app? We wanted to create something useful and fun — a ‘Sesame Street’ experience for a smart speaker.”
    The UW researchers began with two prototype ideas with the goal to teach socioemotional skills broadly. After testing, they narrowed the scope, focusing on a superhero named Zip and the aim of teaching supportive self-talk. They decided to test the app on siblings, since research shows that children are more engaged when they use technology with another person.
    Ten pairs of Seattle-area siblings participated in the study. For a week, they opened the app and met an interactive narrator who told them stories about Zip and asked them to reflect on Zip’s encounters with other characters, including a supervillain. During and after the study, kids described applying positive self-talk; several mentioned using it when they were upset or angry. More