SELF AWARE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE? COMING SOON TO A ROBOT NEAR YOU

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

This classic exchange from Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, epitomizes the risks of a self-aware artificial intelligence.

 Looking through the eye of HAL 9000

a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Credit: Wikimedia

 People who tell us not to worry about the existential threat of super-smart artificial intelligence or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) often argue that however brilliant AI agents--such as deep learning programs or autonomous robots--become at specific tasks, they'll inevitably lack the general, all-purpose kind of intelligence  humans have. Without that high-level understanding of oneself, the world, and one's place in it, those soothing voices say, AI is and will remain a safe and helpful technology; just another tool like a laptop or a smartphone.

I'd like to believe in the lovely AI-enhanced future AI enthusiasts envision, but I keep coming across flaws in their shiny picture. One, that just came to my attention today, is that robots are becoming self aware. That brings them one step closer to becoming truly autonomous agents, not just eager-to-please tools with a Swiss-Army-knife-full of potentially superhuman skills, but entities with minds and goals of their own, like HAL.

 Robot arm with developing self image overlay

Credit: Robert Kwiatkowski/Columbia Engineering

The latest research along this line comes from Hod Lipson, director of the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University and graduate student Robert Kwiatkowski. They built an articulated robot arm with four degrees of freedom, allowing it to rotate, bend and grasp in a huge number of different ways. The arm was controlled by a deep-learning computer network. Deep learning networks mimic the human brain in being able to learn from experience, and are the basis of many of today's most powerful AI applications, such as Google's AlphaZero, which in the course of just one day of "play" became the world champion in chess, Shogi and Go.

Initially the arm's deep learning network--in effect its brain--had no idea of the size, shape or structure of the arm, nor of the ways it could move. However, much like a baby babbling as it learns to speak, the system made thousands of random motions from which it gradually created an accurate internal model of itself. What looks like a distorted shadow in the picture above is an overlay of the arm's model of itself early in its learning process. After 35 hours of practice, the system developed a very accurate self model. In the picture below, you can see how closely the shadowy overlay tracks the actual arm.

Robot arm with nearly perfect self image

Credit Kwiatkowski et al.

 You can watch a video of the robot "babbling" in order to create its self image at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHisJi3ZBeo.

Once the robot arm's brain had an accurate self image, it could very quickly learn how to perform any number of specific tasks. In the video above, you can watch the arm pick up balls and place them in a container, and also print words.

And, much like a person learning to perform a familiar task under unusual circumstances, for example eating with one arm in a cast, the robot rapidly modified its self image when the experimenters substituted a longer, bent piece for one segment of the arm.

Until now, the authors explain, human programmers had to spell out a robot's size, shape, and potential movements in order for it to function. “But if we want robots to become independent, to adapt quickly to scenarios unforeseen by their creators," says Lipson, "then it’s essential that they learn to simulate themselves."

The researchers also suspect that having a self image able to plan and execute a multiplicity of tasks may represent a crucial step in human development. "We believe that this separation of self and task may also have been the origin of self awareness in humans," they write.

It may seem like a long way from a robot arm generating an accurate self image to a high-functioning, seemingly self aware AI like HAL. However, the pace of development in AI is dazzlingly fast and only getting faster. It may not take many iterations before Siri or your Google Assistant isn't just a chatty interface with an amazing collection of knowledge and skills, but a self aware entity, potentially with a mind of its own.

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You can read the paper by Lipson and Kwiatkowsky  here.

For a more in-depth assessment of the risks of AI, here's a recent report.

And for an earlier zerospinzone commentary on the subject, click here.

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ZERO POLIO CASES SO FAR THIS YEAR!

Followers of Zerospinzone know that I've been following the worldwide effort to eradicate polio, a disease that killed or paralyzed 350,000 children per year not long ago. Since the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was launched in 1988, polio has been wiped out in country after country and continent after continent. The wild polio virus now hangs on in only a few countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

The good news is that in the first month of 2019 exactly zero cases of polio were reported. Not a single child fell ill with this once terrifying and deadly scourge. What a great achievement!

Polio virus--it may soon exist only in a few super-secure laboratories

This doesn't yet mean that the virus has been completely eradicated. It may still lurk undetected in a few countries, and there's a very small but real risk that the attenuated virus used for oral inoculations can mutate in some individuals and cause cases of the disease. This complicates the polio end-game, during which at-risk populations may need to receive injections of a vaccine that uses killed virus particles, a costlier and more difficult undertaking.

However, this month with no polio cases tells us that the decades-long worldwide campaign to eradicate polio is closing in on its goal.

The apparently growing number of parents who are choosing not to have their children vaccinated might give a moment's thought to the 1950s, when polio paralyzed 15,000 children per year in the U.S. alone, and smallpox disfigured or killed an estimated 50 million people every year. A massive, worldwide effort similar to the current battle to eradicate polio succeeded brilliantly; the last case of smallpox occurred in 1979. Had anti-vaccination sentiment and propaganda been as strong then as now, millions of people would have been disfigured, paralyzed, or would have died needlessly.

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Seventy people, most of them children, have died from measles in the Philippines just in the past month. Every one of those deaths was preventable.

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A NEW YEAR'S GOAL--TRYING TO FIND THE TRUTH IN A FOG OF LIES

One of the central challenges at this moment in history is homing in on the truth in the midst of a tumult of half truths, false news, spin-doctoring, propaganda, weaponized disinformation and outright lies.

Two recent events brought this home to me.

The first is the subject of my previous blog, "The big picture--the history, size, shape and shape of Russian disinformation." The New York Times video that I summarized in that post demonstrates that "Russiagate," Russia's use of stolen and leaked documents, troll farms and social media to stir up discord and influence the 2016 presidential election, is just the very sharp tip of a huge iceberg of "active measures" or disinformation dating back to the Soviet Union during the depths of the Cold War and continuing today. In addition to tilting the electoral balance and  likely handing the presidency to Trump, in personal and practical terms, this ongoing, multi-decade campaign means that almost any piece of news or information one comes across may truly be "fake news"--a targeted distortion or flat-out lie perhaps cunningly wrapped around a bit of truth to make it more palatable.

If you haven't seen the video, please click here and take the time to view it.

The second eye-opener came from the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence (AI). The high-tech company NVIDIA, which specializes in graphic processing, has perfected a neural network that generates convincing portraits of people who've never existed.* Here's an example:

 

Image credit: NVIDIA/Tero Karras, Samuli Laine, Timo Aila

Add to this Google Assistant's natural voice and speech and so-called "deep fake" videos like the one that seamlessly melded Scarlett Johansson's face to a porn star's body and you realize that in the immediate future we may be watching or reading about absolutely convincing videos of events that didn't take place, seeing politicians saying things they would never say, and witnessing public figures (or our next-door neighbors, friends or family members) saying and doing things they never did.

In other words, as hard is it is today to try to figure out if a news story is factual or an analytic or opinion piece is at least fact-based, telling truth from lies is going to get a lot, lot harder, and soon.

There's a famous quote of uncertain origin--"A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on." I think many of us would agree that recent history provides convincing vindication of the idea. The quote, however, needs to be updated in this age of the internet, 24-7 news cycles, social media and individually-tailored feeds of news, ads and come-ons. Perhaps a more up-to-the-minute version would read, "A swarm of lies can go viral and encircle the globe in minutes or hours, drowning out the truth completely."

I think it's vital to realize that it's not just other people who are the targets and victims of manipulation, disinformation and increasingly sophisticated fake news; it's all of us. Whether you're on the right receiving the latest reason to "lock her up" or on the left hearing about ICE's latest outrage at the border, an evangelical hearing that God has hand-picked Trump to save the US or a non-believer being provoked by the same story, we all need to realize that, like geese being fattened to make foie gras, we're being force-fed a diet that suits someone else's agenda, but is almost certainly not in our own best interest.

As FACEBOOK is discovering now that it belatedly tries to cut down on hate speech and disinformation, highly charged, sensational posts are the ones that generate clicks (and revenue). "As content gets closer to the line of what is prohibited by our community standards," says CEO Mark Zuckerberg, "we see people tend to engage with it more." And as their army of 20,000 fact checkers and content reviewers is finding out, making this kind of call is extremely hard. To get a sense of the size of this problem, Facebook says that it deleted 1.5 billion accounts between June and November of last year, and WhatsApp says it's deleting 2 million accounts every month to try to stop the flow of fake news.

I don't pretend to have a formula, an algorithm, or even much of a clue how to determine if what I'm reading or viewing online is truth or lies, meaningful argument or weaponized propaganda, especially as the purveyors of disinformation get more and more sophisticated and have more and more powerful tools at their disposal.

My alarm bells go off if a story seems too good to be true, or too bad--meaning that it too neatly confirms my preconceived views. In that case it probably is the information equivalent of junk food.  And I'm determined to tune out pretty much anything that tries to bypass my brain and push emotional buttons--communications using terms such as "urgent," "crisis," "demand," "decimate," or  "eviscerate" (button-pushers I found in just one page of emails). 

No doubt these steps are just a start, but given how toxic a diet of lies can be, I'm determined to up my game. What about you?

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*As with all things digital, the rate of progress in this area is astonishing. As of 9/20/19, a company is now offering a collection of 100,000 convincing computer-generated faces online, for free, for any use.

 

 

xx

THE BIG PICTURE-THE HISTORY, SIZE, SHAPE AND IMPACT OF RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION

If you're like me, every so often you come across something--an idea, a talk, an event--that ties all kinds of things together and makes them perfectly clear. This 47-minute video from the New York Times entitled Operation InfeKtion did that for me, putting the drip-by-drip revelations about Russian intervention to divide the US and help elect Trump into the context of Russia's, and before that the Soviet Union's multi-decade practice and perfection of the art of disinformation.

 

Remember Pizzagate?

Just one of many disruptive interventions. 

Photo credit: Blink O'fanay

 

I don't usually take the time to watch videos, but this very clear, well researched and well made piece from the Times was worth every minute. If you want to understand the origin, goals, scope and sophistication of Russia's disinformation apparatus, and how that all came together to stir up confusion and division among Amerians, denigrate Hillary Clinton and boost Trump, click here and watch the video. As I post this piece, the video has been watched by just 145,000 people. It needs to be seen by 145,000,000.

As many commentators have pointed out, the US is far from innocent when it comes to intervening in other nation's elections and internal affairs. Just note the 800 military bases that the US maintains in some 70 countries. However, that fact doesn't relieve us of the responsibility to understand what has been and is still being done to us by a very skillful, practiced and determined adversary, or to at least start to learn how to counter it.

The report reverse-engineers seven key ingredients to a successful disinformation campaign. Once you've seen the list, you'll start to see them everywhere, contributing to the miasma of misinformation and disinformation that we are immersed in. Here they are:

1. Find the cracks in the targeted society.
2. Create a big, dramatic, emotionally charged lie.
3. Wrap that lie around a kernel of truth.
4. Conceal your hand.
5. Find some "useful idiots" to back it up or propagate it.
6. If you're exposed, deny, deny, deny.
7. Play the long game.

To which I would add, in this era of social media, "Repeat, repeat, repeat on as many platforms as possible."

Russia's "meddling" in our 2016 elections may have been their most successful disinformation program, but this documentary shows that it was far from their first, and will not be the last.

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REMARKABLE 15-YEAR-OLD GRETA THUNBERG SPEAKS TRUTH ABOUT CLIMATE

You may have heard about Greta Thunberg, the 15-year-old Swedish student who made headlines worldwide by skipping school for a month to demand action on climate change by camping out on the steps of the Swedish parliament.

Greta Thunberg and friends

on strike for climate action

Credit: Marc Fermenia

If you haven't heard her remarkable speech at the plenary session of the UN Climate Summit at Katowice, Poland, you need to. Every word rings true, and should make anyone who is not already acting to save the planet get moving now. What an amazing young person--she's like an old-testament prophet in the body of a 15-year-old girl.

You can see her speech here.  Please watch it. Every sentence hits home.

And here's a brief video she made to be played at the Davos meeting of the rich and powerful.

If you need more convincing, you can read more about the importance of her speech at Grist.

And to learn a bit more about this amazing young person, please view her TED talk here. 

And her talk to the British Houses of Parliament: You Did Not Act in Time.

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3/14/19: Just before tomorrow's global youth manifestation for climate action, Ms. Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. What an amazing young person!

BREAK POINT

The swift rise and rapid collapse of McCarthyism more than sixty years ago offers evidence and a relatively recent example of the capacity of American society and democratic institutions to recover from the paralyzing sway the politics of fear, xenophobia, ethnic division and subversion can temporarily hold over the body politic.

Donald Trump and Joseph McCarthy

Credit: NYMag.com

Surfacing during eras of extreme cultural stress, and highly dependent on the symbolic appeal of simplistic purifying or redemptive solutions targeting infectious ‘alien’ agents—the Red Menace in the ‘50s or terrorist Muslims and Central American caravans today-- such movements rely on two basic ingredients. First, a heightened fear that ‘enemies’ have penetrated the nation’s porous borders, taking advantage of our over-tolerant institutions; and second the powerful appeal of a self-appointed charismatic leader willing to transcending normal institutional limits in order to protect the vulnerable homeland and root out by any means necessary subversive elements within and without.

There have been previous outbreaks of what historian Richard Hofstadter first described as the “Paranoid Style” in American politics. But the infectious America First nationalism and anti immigrant fear-mongering of Donald Trump today has only one major parallel: the fierce anti-communist witch-hunt fanned to a fever pitch by the Junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, in the early 1950’s. Though different in scope and scale, both McCarthyism and Trumpism share a common script, and, if history is any guide, contain similar seeds leading to their own ultimate devolution and destruction.

McCarthy was late to recognize but quick to exploit the enormous potential and power that extreme and undocumented charges against ‘elite’ government officials could bring at a critically unsettling moment in the early Cold War. Aided and enabled by ambitious politicians, credulous reporters and officials like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover willing to use the Senator for their own purposes, McCarthy was suddenly elevated to a position where even the threat of his investigations could silence or destroy powerful individuals and institutions at every level of government and society. Even without Trump’s enormous degree of institutional authority, McCarthy’s assumed power, for a time, seemed unlimited.

Though initially challenged by a few members of his own party who recognized the danger he posed to constitutional freedoms, and later, publicly, by media figures such as the respected broadcaster, Edward R. Murrow, it was, importantly, McCarthy himself whose continuing excesses brought him down.

Legal decisions ultimately prevented some of his most extreme actions, though not before thousands of individuals had their careers and lives destroyed by mere threats or charges. Exposed to a national audience during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, McCarthy and his counsel Roy Cohn’s bullying misuse of power, prompting the famous line uttered by Attorney Joseph Welch: “Senator, have you at last no decency left?” exposed him for the demagogue he was.

Once the “spell” was broken, the air went rapidly out of the balloon. Public approval diminished; previous supporters backed away from the spectacle. McCarthy’s political power in congress soon evaporated, and though in some cases it took decades, individuals and institutions McCarthy had attacked could begin to respond and rebuild.

We don’t know yet how many insulted American heroes, generals or admirals it will take, or how many humiliated or berated intelligence agents, or agencies. Nor how many ignorant and un-empathetic comments about the Puerto Rican hurricane, synagogue shooting or Californian fire victims.

How many juvenile or vile name-calling tweets belittling basketball players, commentators or political critics it will take to break the spell. But the spell will break. Indecency has its limits!

On the political side, the scale of the country’s growing repudiation of Trumpism is becoming increasingly evident as final vote counts in various regions confirm the strength of an actual ‘blue wave’ in national and state elections. Where Trump’s acolytes and enablers did win, their victories were hard-fought and far narrower than expected, often dependent on deliberate techniques of voter suppression and political gerrymandering. Denied or not, rising blue tides do indicate gradually melting poles of support.

True to form, and much like that of the earlier demagogue, the President’s immediate response was to attack: first by deriding losing candidates who had not sought his blessing; then by firing the Attorney General whom he had long blamed and demeaned for not sufficiently protecting him from the Mueller investigation, and then by appointing a strong supporter who would do so. Attempting to reassure his base, Mr. Trump then reignited his war with the “fake news” media, berating African American reporters at his first full news conference and then banning an assertive CNN reporter who insisted on asking difficult questions.

As vote counts tightened, he was quick to charge election officials with fraud, whipping up resentment and public passion against nameless ‘enemies’ as well as against the legitimate mechanisms of democratic governance. Most recently, in attacking a Federal Appeals Court ruling against his asylum policies, he incurred an unheard of rebuke by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who defined the independence of the Judicial System as a critical feature of American democracy countering the President’s attack by saying “there are no Obama judges, or Bush or Clinton judges…..”

Continual exposure to a Chief Executive whose authoritarian tendencies, willingness to incite violent passions, compulsion to lie, lack of empathy towards minorities, asylum-seekers, victims of natural disasters—and even homeless children-- and vindictiveness toward those in the press or public who dare to question his policies and behavior, appears to have begun to awaken a significant portion of the public, among them former supporters.

We may not know yet whether the “spell” has fully been broken, or where the  “break point” actually is, but it is clear politically that his self-inflated balloon has sprung leaks. Attacks on old ‘enemies’ (Hillary, ‘fake news’ media, congressional opponents, proponents of climate change, NATO allies) will go on, as well, but have passed their sell-by date. Those, and even newer threats like the ‘invasion’ of legitimate asylum-seekers from Central America may no longer serve to patch the increasingly visible holes. Failed tax policies, disruptive tariff wars and unexpected foreign events emanating from the Middle East—as well as the fallout from the Mueller investigation—may well complete the process.

Just as McCarthy’s rampage weakened democratic institutions at home while endangering America’s standing abroad, Trump’s embrace of authoritarian leaders and murderous tyrants can only undermine any remaining sense of America’s moral capacity to guide international affairs in a positive direction.

Yet, cultural and institutional limits to coarse, brutal and amoral practices in the name of public welfare do exist, and if modern American history is any guide, there is a point when ‘fevers’ (political or otherwise) do break. The question then is how basically healthy bodies can slowly recover and rebuild, and how much lasting damage has been done.

Les Adler

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You can also view this post on OpEdNews. 

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A MUST-READ ARTICLE ABOUT CLIMATE AND OUR FUTURE

A friend alerted me to a superb and extremely sobering article by Bill McKibben in the November 26, 2018 edition of the New Yorker. Entitled "How Extreme Weather is Shrinking the Planet," the piece lays out in detail the depth of the climate crisis we're in, and how we got here with the help of Exxon, the Koch brothers, Rex Tillerson and decades of dithering or deluded politicians. 

McKibben offers a ray of hope, if we the people, worldwide, can come together and fight against disinformation and special interests for our own survival and the survival of the biosphere that supports us.

The future is here--Southern California wildfire

Credit: FEMA

FOR BLACK CHILDREN, HAVING EVEN ONE BLACK TEACHER CAN LEAD ON TO COLLEGE

Decades of research have shown that negative stereotypes have a major impact on people's performance and achievement. The theory that best explains these deleterious effects--stereotype threat--argues that the targets of negative stereotypes have to fight against a potentially disabling dose of anxiety and self-doubt when they are in a situation that evokes the stereotype. Typical examples might include a black student taking a scholastic aptitude test, a woman starting a STEM-related job, or an older person faced with a physically or mentally demanding task.

Happily, a growing body of research has shown that seemingly small interventions can reduce or in some cases even eliminate the impacts of stereotype threat. Many of these interventions focus on creating a different mind-set, for example by removing stimuli that evoke the stereotype, writing an essay about one's own family and character at the beginning of a school year, or reinforcing the idea that intelligence is malleable. Some of these positive effects last far beyond a single test or challenge, in some cases improving students' grades for an entire year.

For black children we can now add the potentially lifelong impact of having even one black teacher early in life.

 Graduates--Bennet College, 2008

Credit: Steven Depolo

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and American University utilized student data derived from Tennessee's STAR class-size reduction program, which started in 1986. They found that black children who had a black teacher in kindergarten were 14 to 18 percent more likely to enter college. Having two black teachers in their first two school years boosted children's chances of enrolling in college by a remarkable 32 percent compared to peers who did not have those black role models.

The researchers believe that having one or more black teachers enhances black children's sense of what is possible and worthwhile for them.

One way in which having a same-race role model may have played out is by inculcating "grit" or determination, traits that are as important to achievement in school and life as knowledge or cognitive skills. The researchers found that black middle-school students who had had a black teacher in their first years of school were 10 percent more likely to receive teacher comments such as "persistent," "made and effort," or "tried to finish difficult work" than peers who had had only white teachers early on.

Having at least one black teacher as an early role model may be particularly important for boys. Using data from North Carolina, the researchers found that for boys, having had a black teacher in elementary school reduced the high school drop out rate by one-third.

"The role model effect seems to show that having one teacher of the same race is enough to give a student the ambition to achieve, for example, to take a college entrance exam," said Nicholas Papageorge, an assistant professor of economics at Johns Hopkins. "But if going to college is the goal, having two teachers of the same race helps even more."

In addition to the impact of having same-race role models, the researchers found that teachers' expectations also influence children's long-term aspirations and success. Black teachers, it turns out, tend to have significantly higher expectations for black students than white teachers do. Those expectations, in turn, can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Since the vast majority of teachers are white, even if they cannot be same-race roll models to black children, it falls to them not to under-estimate the potential of their black students, but to assume and convey the belief that they have the same potential for learning, achievement and success as white children.

"While we make efforts to find and train new black teachers," says Papageorge, "we also need to educate white teachers about implicit bias, teach them to be culturally competent, and show them how not to exacerbate these existing achievement gaps."

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You can access the original research article here.

-----Here's the same story in Spanish:

Décadas de investigación han demostrado que los prejuicios y estereotipos negativos tienen un gran impacto en el rendimiento y los logros de las personas. La teoría que mejor explica estos efectos nocivos—las amenaza del estereotipo—propone que los impactados por estereotipos negativos tienen que batallar contra una dosis potencialmente incapacitante de ansiedad y dudas de si mismo cuando estén en una situación que evoca el estereotipo. Ejemplares típicos pueden incluir un estudiante negro tomando una prueba de aptitud académica; una mujer empezando un trabajo en las ciencias, la tecnología, la ingeniería o las matemáticas; o una persona mayor frente a una tarea físicamente o mentalmente exigente.

Felizmente, un creciente cuerpo de investigación ha mostrado que aparentemente pequeñas intervenciones pueden reducir o, a veces, incluso eliminar los impactos de la amenaza del estereotipo. Muchas de estas intervenciones funcionan por crear un contexto cognitivo y emocional diferente, por ejempolo por eliminar estímulos que evocan el estereotipo; por escribir un ensayo sobre su propia familia, valores y carácter cuando empieza un año de escuela; o por reforzar la idea que la inteligencia es maleable, o que la edad no tiene que disminuir las capacidades de uno. Algunos de estos efectos positivos pueden durar mucho más allá que una sola prueba o desafío, a veces pueden mejorar las calificaciones de un estudiante por todo un año.

Para niños negros ahora podemos agregar el impacto positivo potencialmente por toda la vida de tener a lo menos un maestro negro temprano en la vida.

Investigadores en la Universidad de Johns Hopkins y la Universidad Americana usaban datos derividos del programa STAR Reducción del Tamaño de Classes, lo que empezó en 1986. Ellos descubrieron que niños negros quienes hayan tenido un maestro negro en el jardín de niños fue 14 hasta 18 por ciento más probable que hubiera entrado la universidad. Tener dos maestros negros en los dos primeros años subió la probabilidad de empezar en la universidad por un notable 32 por ciento en comparasión con compañeros a quienes les faltaron estos modelos negros a seguir.
Los investigadores creen que tener uno o mas maestros negros realza el sentido de niños negros de lo que sea posible y valioso para ellos.

Una manera en la que tener un modelo a seguir de la misma raza podía haber tenido un impacto es por inculcar valentía o determinación, rasgos que son tan importantes en la preparación y en la vida como conocimiento o habilidades cognitivas. Los investigadores descubrieron que entre los estudiantes negros de la escuela intermedia, los que han tenido un maestro negro durante sus primeros años de escuela fueron 10 por ciento más probable que recibiesen comentarios como “persistente,” “hizo un esfuerzo,” o “trató de terminar trabajo difícil” en comparasión con compañeros quienes han tenido nada más maestros blancos en sus primeros años.

Tener a lo menos un maestro negro como un modelo a seguir temprano en la vida puede ser especialmente importante para niños. Usando datos de Carolina del Norte, los investigadores descubrieron que para niños, haber tenido un maestro negro en la primaria redújo la tasa de deserción

“Este efecto de modelo a seguir parece mostrar que tener un maestro de la misma raza es suficiente para darle a un estudiante la ambición de lograr, por ejemplo, tomar un examen para entrar la universidád,” dice Nicholas Papageorge, un profesor asistente de la economía en Johns Hopkins. “Pero, si ir a la universidad es la meta, tener dos maestros de la misma raza ayuda aún más.”

Aparte del impacto de tener modelos a seguir de la misma raza, los investigadores desubrienron que las expectativas de los maestros también influyen en las aspiraciónes y en el éxito a largo plazo de los jóvenes. Maestros/profesores negros, resulta, tienden a tener expectativas significativamente mas altas para estudiantes negros que maestros blancos. Estas expectativas, en turno, pueden convertirse en profecías autocumplidas.

Ya que la gran mayoría de maestros son blancos, aún que no pueden ser modelos de seguir de la misma raza para estudiantes negros, les toca a ellos no subestimar el potencial de sus estudiantes negros, al contrario, asumir y transmitir la creencia que ellos tienen el mismo potencial para aprender, lograr y tener exito como jóvenes blancos.

“Mientras echamos esfuerzos para encontrar y entrenar nuevos maestros negros,” dice Papageorge, “también necesitamos educar maestros blancos sobre sesgo implícito, enseñarlos a estar competente culturalmente, y mostrarles como no exacerbar/hacer aún peor estas brechas de logros existentes.”

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DID AN ALIEN SPACE SAIL ZOOM THROUGH THE SOLAR SYSTEM A YEAR AGO?

Just a quick note linking to an intriguing story on spaceweather.com about the possibility that the interstellar object 'Oumuamua that zipped through the solar system last fall--the first such interstellar interloper ever detected--may have been a light sail built by an extraterrestrial civilization.

This isn't wide-eyed speculation from a tabloid, but a serious analysis by two respected researchers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Shmuel Biali and Abraham Loeb. What caught their attention was the fact that 'Oumuamua didn't follow a purely gravitationally-driven trajectory as it careened through the solar system. Instead, it accelerated away from the sun with a force proportional to the inverse square of its distance from the sun.

 'Oumuamua's trajectory through the solar system

Credit: Nagualdesign/Tomruen

That would have been understandable if the object had been a comet, accelerated by jets of gas and dust triggered by the sun's heat. However, astronomers were unable to detect traces of any comet-like activity from 'Oumuamua, which left the anomalous acceleration unexplained. To Loeb, who chairs the advisory board of the Breakthrough Starshot solar sail project, 'Oumuamua's one-over-r-squared acceleration exactly matched the way a lightweight solar sail would have acted.

 Artist's representation of 'Oumuamua as an elongated asteroid
(Observers estimated that it was 10 times longer than its width)

Credit: ESO/Kornmesser

Loeb and Biali went on to analyze in detail the properties of a solar sail following 'Oumuamua's trajectory. They found that it would have to be constructed of very thin material, less than a millimeter in thickness, weighing no more than a tenth of a gram per square centimeter. They also calculated the wear and tear on a sail of this description speeding through interstellar space, colliding with gas and dust as well as being stressed by its own rotation. They conclude that it could have survived a trip of at least 16,000 light years, about one-sixth of the way across our home galaxy.

(Note that there's nothing mysterious or hypothetical about a solar sail with these specifications. We humans have made, tested and deployed a variety of solar sails.)

'Oumuamua sailed out of the solar system before astronomers could perform more definitive studies, and it's not going to return. So it's nature will remain a mystery. Critics point out that that makes the hypothesis that it was an alien craft untestable, and so not scientific. However, Loeb and Biali point out, even the possibility that it was the product of an alien technological civilization warrants an active search for more such visitors.

It's a bit technical, but you can read their article here.

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GUNS AND KIDS IN THE US

We all know that guns are a hot-button issue here in the United States. The Constitution grants and the Supreme Court affirms Americans' right to bear arms, and we do that to a fault. According to the Independent, US citizens own 40 percent of all the privately owned arms in the world, more than the next 25 most heavily armed countries combined. That's a remarkable 12 guns for every 10 of us, men, woman and children.

Many of those 393 million guns don't just sit unloaded, securely stored and unavailable to children. While millions of responsible gun owners do keep their weapons safely away from children, millions do not. Here's one sad result whose magnitude shocked me: According to Stephanie Chao, a pediatric surgeon and professor of surgery at Stanford University, children aged 15-19 in the US are 82 times more likely to die from gun homicide than in any other developed country.

Nearly 3000 US children die from firearm injuries every year

Photo credit: Mediapart

Please excuse my emphasis here: American teenagers are not twice as likely to die from a deliberate gunshot, not 10 times more likely, not 50 times more likely, but 82 times more likely. Than in any other developed country.

The statistics for younger children, and for suicide and accidental deaths from guns are not quite so horrendous, but the US is a consistent and clear outlier on every measure relating to gun deaths.

As a pediatric surgeon dealing with trauma every day, Chao would very much like to find ways to reduce or prevent these tragic deaths. Here's a clue that she found. State by state, laws make a difference.

"Firearm-related injuries are the second leading cause of death among children in the United States," she says, "but we found a clear discrepancy in where those deaths happen that corresponds with the strength of states' firearm legislation. In states with lenient laws, children die at alarmingly greater rates."

How much difference can gun laws make? Chao and her colleagues found that in states with the most relaxed gun laws 5 children out of every 100,000 die from gun-related injuries every year. States with the strictest gun-control laws cut that death rate nearly in half, down to 2.6 children out of every 100,000.

Saving half of children at risk from gun-related death would be a very good thing. Saving all of them would be even better. "Each and every one of these deaths is preventable," says Chao. "Our study demonstrates that state-level legislation prevents children from dying from guns."

When it comes to our children, perhaps we can get away from slogans and fiery rhetoric, and work towards sensible gun-safety laws in more states. Three thousand US children don't need to die from gunshots next year.

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As I write this, the 2018 midterm elections are just a day away. If you would like to find out about gun-control legislation and pro-gun-control candidates in your state, here's an excellent resource. Your vote could save young lives.

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There's a strong relationship between gun ownership and youth suicide. You can read a zerospinzone post about that here.

  

SOMETHING NEW TO WORRY ABOUT--QUASI-RESONANT AMPLIFICATION

Picture a river flowing down from the mountains to the plains. In the high country, where the river's descent is steep and hedged in by canyon walls, it's likely to follow a relatively straight path, basically tracing the shortest route down. Once it gets to the plains, however, there's no big difference between one path and another, and the river will begin to meander.

 Meandering river

Credit: Alana Whitman

Something similar is true for the jet streams, vast rivers of air that circle the globe from west to east, sometimes reaching speeds of 250 miles per hour. Like rivers, jet streams typically meander north and south. The size of those meanders and the speed with which they gradually drift eastward have major impacts on the weather. The UK, for example, was deluged by record floods in 2007 and again in 2012 when the jet stream looped far to the south and then stalled, unleashing extended periods of heavy rains.

Meandering polar jet stream

Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center 

That, in turn, gets us to climate change and quasi-resonant amplification (QRA). 

One of the most dramatic impacts of global warming and climate change is that the far north and south are warming much faster than the mid-latitudes and the tropics, a phenomenon known as polar amplification. What this means is that the temperature difference between the poles and the tropics-- which is what creates and drives the jet streams--is reduced. And like a river crossing a plain, this reduced gradient lets the jet stream meander farther north and south, and also tends to make the individual loops, known as Rossby waves, drift more slowly from west to east.

At the extreme, the meanders in the jet stream can form a stable sequence of exaggerated loops around the planet that can stay in place for weeks or months. This is known as quasi-resonant amplification  (QRA) and its results can be devastating. Warm, sunny days can extend into deadly heat waves, droughts and wildfires; while cool, rainy weather can linger, drenching an unlucky region with unprecedented rains and floods.

Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science and Pennsylvania State University, says that as of 2018 this phenomenon has now passed from the theoretical to the all-too-real and threatening. "It played out in real time on our television screens and newspaper headlines in the form of an unprecedented hemisphere-wide pattern of extreme floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires," he says.

Unfortunately, Mann adds, climate models indicate that such QRA-caused weather extremes will grow more frequent and more severe unless we get a handle on global warming. Recent research reinforces the link between reduced Arctic sea ice and the meandering jet stream, along with equally dire predictions. We can hope that humanity (and the politicians and corporations who hold the reins) will get their act together. In the meantime, however, we can all expect more QRAs and the devastating weather extremes they bring coming to a region near us.

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You can read an earlier post on this subject here.

For more detail on arctic warming and its impacts on our weather click here.

And for a new study that shows that these destructive "blocking events" will cover greater areas as the world heats up, navigate to this URL.

(As-yet unpublished research shows that these stalled atmospheric waves have the potential to cut crop production across much of the northern hemisphere.)

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HOW VALUABLE IS A SCHOOLYARD TREE?

A few schoolyard trees might make the difference between a child's future success or failure.

That's the remarkable implication of new research carried out by Ming Kuo, an environmental scientist at the University of Illinois and her colleagues. Using advanced imaging technology and innovative statistical analysis, Professor Kuo and her colleagues found that the amount of tree cover in and around schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods predicted the academic achievement of students, especially in mathematics. She cautions that the current study only shows a statistically robust correlation, not proof of cause and effect. Still, she  would like to see these findings widely applied as a relatively inexpensive intervention that could potentially benefit millions of disadvantaged children in the US.

"Early math skills are one of the best predictors of later success, not just in math, but in school in general," says Kuo. "So what we have here is a very exciting clue that maybe simply greening -- planting trees in school yards -- could potentially have a significant impact in math achievement and school success down the line for these kids. And you don't have to plaster the schoolyard with trees -- just bringing schools up to average looks like it could have a substantial effect."

 Treeless schoolyard, Washington, DC

Credit: chesbayprogram

Kuo and her colleagues found that tree cover in and around schools had a beneficial effect on children's academic success independently of the levels of disadvantage in their student bodies, the percentage of bilingual students, the number of students, the percentage of female students, and the pupil/teacher ratio. And the impact of trees was localized and specific--more tree cover in the catchment neighborhood did not have the same effect, nor did the amount of grass or shrubbery in the schoolyard.

Schoolyard with trees, Greenbelt, Maryland

Credit: Marjorie Collins/Library of Congress 

As most of us have learned, complicated problems usually require complicated solutions. Wouldn't it be great if Professor Kuo has alerted us to a simple intervention that could at least help solve the complex and extremely important problem of so-called "underachieving schools"?

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You can find the full research article here. 

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