How AI is revolutionizing healthcare – Nurse.com

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

AI applications in healthcare can literally change patients lives, improving diagnostics and treatment and helping patients and healthcare providers make informed decisions quickly.

AI in the global healthcare market (the total value of products and services sold) was valued at $2.4 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $31.02 billion in 2025.

Now in the COVID-19 pandemic, AI is being leveraged to identify virus-related misinformation on social media and remove it. AI is also helping scientists expedite vaccine development, track the virusand understand individual and population risk, among other applications.

Companies such as Microsoft, which recently stated it will dedicate $20 million to advance the use of artificial intelligence in COVID-19 research, recognize the need for and extraordinary potential of AI in healthcare.

The ultimate goal of AI in healthcare is to improve patient outcomes by revolutionizing treatment techniques. By analyzing complex medical data and drawing conclusions without direct human input, AI technology can help researchers make new discoveries.

Various subtypes of AI are used in healthcare. Natural language processing algorithms give machines the ability to understand and interpret human language. Machine learning algorithms teach computers to find patterns and make predictions based on massive amounts of complex data.

AI is already playing a huge role in healthcare, and its potential future applications are game-changing. Weve outlined four distinct ways that AI is transforming the healthcare industry.

This transformative technology has the ability to improve diagnostics, advance treatment options, boost patient adherence and engagement, and support administrative and operational efficiency.

AI can help healthcare professionals diagnose patients by analyzing symptoms, suggesting personalized treatments and predicting risk. It can also detect abnormal results.

Analyzing symptoms, suggesting personalized treatments and predicting risk

Many healthcare providers and organizations are already using intelligent symptom checkers. This machine learning technology asks patients a series of questions about their symptoms and, based on their answers, informs them of appropriate next steps for seeking care.

Buoy Health offers a web-based, AI-powered health assistant that healthcare organizations are using to triage patients who have symptoms of COVID-19. It offers personalized information and recommendations based on the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Additionally, AI can take precision medicine healthcare tailored to the individual to the next level by synthesizing information and drawing conclusions, allowing for more informed and personalized treatment. Deep learning models have the ability to analyze massive amounts of data, including information about a patients genetic content, other molecular/cellular analysis and lifestyle factors and find relevant research that can help doctors select treatments.

AI can also be used to develop algorithms that make individual and population health risk predictions in order to help improve outcomes. At the University of Pennsylvania, doctors used a machine learning algorithm that can monitor hundreds of key variables in real time to anticipate sepsis or septic shock in patients 12 hours before onset.

Detecting disease

Imaging tools can advance the diagnostic process for clinicians. The San Francisco-based company Enlitic develops deep learning medical tools to improve radiology diagnoses by analyzing medical data. These tools allow clinicians to better understand and define the aggressiveness of cancers. In some cases, these tools can replace the need for tissue samples with virtual biopsies, which would aid clinicians in identifying the phenotypes and genetic properties of tumors.

These imaging tools have also been shown to make more accurate conclusions than clinicians. A 2017 study published in JAMA found that of 32 deep learning algorithms, seven were able to diagnose lymph node metastases in women with breast cancer more accurately than a panel of 11 pathologists.

Smartphones and other portable devices may also become powerful diagnostic tools that could benefit the areas of dermatology and ophthalmology. The use of AI in dermatology focuses on analyzing and classifying images and the ability to differentiate between benign and malignant skin lesions.

Using smartphones to collect and share images could widen the capabilities of telehealth. In ophthalmology, the medical device company Remidio has been able to detect diabetic retinopathy using a smartphone-based fundus camera, a low-power microscope with an attached camera.

AI is becoming a valuable tool for treating patients. Brain-computer interfaces could help restore the ability to speak and move in patients who have lost these abilities. This technology could also improve the quality of life for patients with ALS, strokes, or spinal cord injuries.

There is potential for machine learning algorithms to advance the use of immunotherapy, to which currently only 20% of patients respond. New technology may be able to determine new options for targeting therapies to an individuals unique genetic makeup. Companies like BioXcel Therapeutics are working to develop new therapies using AI and machine learning.

Additionally, clinical decision support systems can help assist healthcare professionals make better decisions by analyzing past, current and new patient data. IBM offers clinical support tools to help healthcare providers make more informed and evidence-based decisions.

Finally, AI has the potential to expedite drug development by reducing the time and cost for discovery. AI supports data-driven decision making, helping researchers understand what compounds should be further explored.

Wearables and personalized medical devices, such as smartwatches and activity trackers, can help patients and clinicians monitor health. They can also contribute to research on population health factors by collecting and analyzing data about individuals.

These devices can also be useful in helping patients adhere to treatment recommendations. Patient adherence to treatment plans can be a factor in determining outcome. When patients are noncompliant and fail to adjust their behaviors or take prescribed drugs as recommended, the care plan can fail.

The ability of AI to personalize treatment could help patients stay more involved and engaged in their care. AI tools can be used to send patients alerts or content intended to provoke action. Companies like Livongo are working to give users personalized health nudges through notifications that promote decisions supporting both mental and physical health.

AI can be used to create a patient self-service model an online portal accessible by portable devices that is more convenient and offers more choice. A self-service model helps providers reduce costs and helps consumers access the care they need in an efficient way.

AI can improve administrative and operational workflow in the healthcare system by automating some of the process. Recording notes and reviewing medical records in electronic health records takes up 34% to 55% of physicians time, making it one of the leading causes of lost productivity for physicians.

Clinical documentation tools that use natural language processing can help reduce the time providers spend on documentation time for clinicians and give them more time to focus on delivering top-quality care.

Health insurance companies can also benefit from AI technology. The current process of evaluating claims is quite time-consuming, since 80% of healthcare claims are flagged by insurers as incorrect or fraudulent. Natural language processing tools can help insurers detect issues in seconds, rather than days or months.

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How AI is revolutionizing healthcare - Nurse.com

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Market with Future Prospects, Key Player SWOT Analysis and Forecast To 2025 – Express Journal

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

The Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Market report offers a detailed study on the evaluation of industry with respect to competitive players, latest advancements, regional analysis, emerging trends, and current tendencies of the end-user. The report also covers Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning market size, market share, growth rate, revenue, and CAGR reported previously along with its forecast estimation. The report also includes performance in terms of revenue influence from various segments. It includes an in-depth analysis of key factors that influencing revenue growth of the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning market.

The report on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning market analyzes the primary growth factors, restraints and opportunities influencing the market outlook in the upcoming years. According to the research document, the market is predicted to generate significant revenue while registering a CAGR of XX% over the estimated timeframe (20XX-20XX).

The study provides detailed information regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the growth of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning market. With the pandemic unceasing, stringent lockdown measures has withheld the revenue of several industries and will continue to have a lingering impact even after the economy rejuvenates. Most of the businesses across various industry verticals have revised their budget plans in a bit to re-establish profit trajectory for the ensuing years.

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Our detailed assessment of this business space allows you to devise a plan-of-action for navigating through the market uncertainty and build versatile contingency plans to stay ahead of the competition. Additionally, the report offers a granular analysis of the various market segmentations as well as the competitive scenario of this business sphere.

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Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Market with Future Prospects, Key Player SWOT Analysis and Forecast To 2025 - Express Journal

Hands-On Guide To Loss Functions Used To Evaluate A ML Algorithm – Analytics India Magazine

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

The loss function is a method of evaluating how well the algorithm performs on your dataset, most of the people are confused about the difference between loss function and the cost function. We will use the term cost function for a single training example and loss function for the entire training dataset. We always try to reduce the loss function of the models using optimization techniques like Gradient Descent.

Loss functions are categorized into two types of losses

So how to choose which loss function to use.? It depends on the output tensor of the model. In regression problems, the output tensor is continuous data, and the output tensor of classification problems are probability values. Depending on the output variable we need to choose loss function to our model. Sometimes while building optimization models we may use multiple loss functions depending on the output tensor.

In this article, we will discuss the following loss functions.

Based on the demonstrated implementations, we can use these loss functions to evaluate the accuracy of any machine learning algorithm.

MSE loss is popularly used loss functions in dealing with regression problems. MSE loss function is an estimator measuring the average of error squares, mathematically it calculates the squared differences between the actual value and the predicted value, it is very easy to understand and implement.

A large MSE value indicates a wider spread of data and a smaller MSE indicated the value is nearest to the mean.

Implementation in python

MAE loss is also categorized in the regression problem, MAE loss calculates the average of absolute differences between the actual value and predicted values, when our data includes outliers we use MAE, so what are outliers.? The data points that are too large or too small than the mean. By using MAE loss the outliers dont affect the model.

Cross entropy is mostly used loss function in dealing with classification problems, cross-entropy measures the classification model whose probability in the range of 0 to 1, cross-entropy loss nearer to 0 results low loss and loss nearer to 1 results high loss. We calculate the individual loss for each class in a multiclass classification problem. When the output is probability distribution we use cross-entropy which uses softmax activation in the output layer.

Home Hands-On Guide To Loss Functions Used To Evaluate A ML Algorithm

The above formula is similar to the likelihood function if y=o then y(log(p)) will be 0 if y=1 then (1-y)log(1-p) will be zero.

We use Cross entropy loss in Multi-class classification problems like object detection. Lets consider the ImageNet dataset in which we have 1000 classes to find the loss.

The hinge loss function is used for a binary classification problem, a loss function is used to evaluate how well the given boundary is separating the given data, hinge loss is mostly used in SVM, this is used in the combination of the activation function in the last layer. We use Hinge loss to classify whether an email is a spam or not.

In the above demonstration, we discussed various types of the loss function and saw that depending on the output tensor we need to choose the loss function. Choosing the loss function for our model is very important because using the loss function we evaluate our model and it helps in optimizing the model to obtain error and reaching the global minima. Based on the implementations we showed above, these loss functions can be used to evaluate the accuracy of any machine learning algorithm.

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Hands-On Guide To Loss Functions Used To Evaluate A ML Algorithm - Analytics India Magazine

Oliver Stone Insists Putin Did Not Interfere in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election – Hollywood Reporter

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

"I'm not a liar and I can't go along with what the vast majority believe on so much of this history," the three-time Oscar winner told The Hollywood Reporter's 'Awards Chatter' podcast.

Ever since his film JFK was released nearly 30 years ago, questioning the official story of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and making famous the skeptical phrase "back and to the left," Oliver Stone has been dismissed by some as a conspiracy nut. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter's 'Awards Chatter' podcast tied to the publication of his acclaimed new memoir Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game, the three-time Oscar winner acknowledges that the label hurts if not him, then his films.

"It's not that easy to brush off," Stone, 73, says. "It happens all the time. Politics overshadows the filmmaking, and I realize that, but what am I gonna do? My opinions, when asked, are given. Sometimes I try to be political about it and diplomatic, but I'm not a liar and I can't go along with what the vast majority believe on so much of this history." He adds of the JFK assassination, "You had to have at least two shooters, and [Lee Harvey] Oswald was not one of them."

Lest anyone think Stone has not been driven into conformity, though, he insisted during the podcast that Russian president Vladimir Putin with whom he spent time making the 2017 Showtime docuseries The Putin Interviews did not interfere with America's 2016 presidential election to help advance the cause of Donald Trump, which is the opposite of what numerous U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded.

"Jesus Christ, do you think everybody in the country has to believe this Russian election stuff?" Stone asked. "Do you think we all have to agree? Does anybody have any ability to dissent from an opinion? Is it a fact that that happened? I mean, if you talk to a lot of the intelligent people in the cyber community and I have because I did a film about Edward Snowden [2016's Snowden] they will tell you that it was not a hack, it was a steal, it was an inside job [referring to the hack of Democratic National Committee emails which were then leaked ahead of the 2016 Democratic National Convention]."

Stone continued, "And [the now incarcerated WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange has been good on his word ever since he started; he's been an authentic person. I admire him deeply. To say that he was in collusion with the Russians and all this is part of some kind of crazy fiction that has happened to this country. You probably believe it. You have no choice but to believe it."

When, in response, it was stated that the U.S. intelligence community has uniformly concluded that Putin interfered in the election, Stone protested, "Not uniformly, no! Their original statement was 'a high degree of confidence' or something like that, and it was taken from three agencies, not from the 17 that they claim. In fact, you could go back into the intelligence community and you will find dissenters if they're honest. This has been misrepresented. I've talked to a lot of experts on this."

His theory regarding the DNC hack: "The FBI did not do its job. They should have gotten the original system got back into the DNC computer but they didn't give it. They gave it to a private company, CrowdStrike, that was on their payroll. So the whole thing is crooked from the inside. It feels like the JFK case again. It wasn't planned, it was developed that way. But it certainly was developed from inside. Sore losers, I would call it. And, by the way, I don't have any Trump has done things that are horrifying to me." (The CrowdStrike theory has been discredited.)

Stone explained, "I'm trying to understand both sides, trying to understand the mind of Julian Assange, the mind of whoever hacked the DNC what did he hack and what was on his mind? Maybe it bothered him that the Democratic Party was selling out the way it did; maybe it bothered him Hillary Clinton's Wall Street speeches or the DNC undermining of Bernie Sanders. Maybe it bothered him and maybe he did take things out to give them to Assange, which is what a lot of people say happened. But that story has been 'discredited'; I don't know why. Because it doesn't fit the present agenda for a Cold War against Russia, which is basically for more money for the military, when we're spending a fortune already, and now it's for China, too."

He added, "You're gonna regret this kind of thinking. This kind of thinking leads to conventional war. The Cold War grows and grows and grows, and then we take it to the edge because we have to, because 'We're Americans and we're top of the world' we think we're top of the world. We're gonna take things to a place that is very dangerous for our people. That's why I'm dissenting from this, you understand? And it's important we have dissenters."

Asked who he would encourage Americans to vote for in the 2020 presidential election, Trump or former vice president Joe Biden, Stone demurred, "It's up to them. I'm not gonna jump into that one. Biden has his problems, too."

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Oliver Stone Insists Putin Did Not Interfere in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election - Hollywood Reporter

Fired Tiverton teacher gets her job back – Fall River Herald News

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

TIVERTON -- Amy Mullen has her job back with the Tiverton School Department.

U.S. District Court Chief Justice John J. McConnell Jr., ruling on a preliminary injunction Friday morning, said Mullens First Amendment rights were violated when she was terminated from her teaching job April 15 for speaking up about wanting to discuss distance learning as it pertained to her member teachers. Mullen is the head of the teachers union.

In granting the preliminary injunction filed by attorney Elizabeth Wiens, the judge ordered that Mullen be restored as a teacher until further notice. No doubt Ms. Mullen was retaliated against because of her First Amendment speech, McConnell said from the bench at the end of a virtual hearing.

Never once was her teaching called into question in the 25 years Mullen has worked for the district as a special education teacher, McConnell said, adding that she is considered an exemplary teacher.

Four attorneys were representing the School Department two were from the Interlocal Trust, the insurance carrier for the town. There was no ruling on their motion to dismiss the case Mullen brought against the district.

McConnell said he would take the motion to dismiss under advisement but at least part will be denied, he said. He said he was bothered by the individual suits against individual members of the School Committee who voted to terminate Mullen on the recommendation of Superintendent Peter Sanchioni.

Shell be back on the payroll as of today, School Committee attorney Stephen Robinson said Friday afternoon. We clearly will respect the courts orders, Robinson said, but added they respectfully disagree with the judge in his findings of fact and conclusions of law. We will explore our options.

Wiens wrote in the motion for preliminary injunction that Mullen should be reinstated immediately, noting in the 15-page motion that less than two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held that union speech is overwhelmingly of substantial public concern.

Wiens also wrote that there can be no doubt that speech relating to public education, including the creation of a Distance Learning Plan for students during a global pandemic is a matter of public concern. Mullens speech, Wiens wrote, was the sole factor in her termination.

In providing background, Wiens said Sanchioni repeatedly violated the collective bargaining agreement between the School Department and NEA-Tiverton, and because of numerous grievances and unfair labor practice complaints filed by the union, there was animus towards Mullen.

On March 12, 2020, Mullen attended a professional development committee meeting and communicated to the superintendent that online learning plans need to be negotiated with the union. She learned of a March 18 meeting for a distance learning plan and she arrived early to say the union should be part of the discussion.

Sanchioni raised his voice, told Mullen she was not invited to the meeting and told her he would write her up for insubordination if she did not leave, according to the motion.

She was placed on paid administrative leave on March 21 and told to cease and desist all communications with parents, teachers and administrators, or there would be further discipline, Wiens wrote. An April 6 letter to Mullen from the superintendent notified her of his intent to recommend to the School Committee that she be suspended without pay for her persistent disruption and insubordination. A Facebook post she made violated the gag order, it was later charged.

The School Committee voted unanimously April 14 to terminate Mullen, but voted again at a meeting in May to suspend without pay and terminate her at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. That vote was 4-0, with committee member Sally Black abstaining. Voting in favor was Chairman Jerome Larkin, Vice Chairwoman Diane Farnworth, Deborah Pallasch and Elaine Pavao.

Mullen filed suit soon after her termination, saying she was retaliated against by the district for speaking on behalf of her union members. The district said she was terminated for unprofessional and disruptive behavior.

In a June 17 email to Mullen, who wanted to be on the School Reopening Committee as a representative of the teachers union, she was advised by School Department legal counsel that she was not allowed on school property and not permitted to speak with school staff or administrators because of her suspension, Wiens wrote.

Much of the discussion at the hearing Friday morning centered on whether Mullen was speaking as an employee of the district, or as a private citizen at the distance learning meetings.

The speech took place in the workplace. It had to do with work-related issues, said attorney Marc DeSisto, representing the Interlocal Trust. When a union president speaks, that union official is speaking in a workplace official capacity and not as a private citizen, DeSisto argued, saying union and public employee are symbiotic.

He said the court was crossing out union and making it outside the employee realm. It goes back to whether she spoke as a private citizen and was protected by First Amendment speech, or spoke as an employee subject to disciplinary action.

Wiens told the judge that every court has found that speech as a union representative is not speech as an employee. We allege Amy Mullen was terminated because of her association with the union. The reason for the termination was her status as union president.

Wiens also argued the Tiverton School Department and the individual members of the School Committee who voted to terminate her and thus violated her First Amendment rights, should be held liable for damages for violating the Constitution.

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Fired Tiverton teacher gets her job back - Fall River Herald News

We are pursuing a clear, far-sighted strategy to ensure Covestro’s long-term success – Automotive World

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

Covestro considers itself to be on a clear course and well-positioned for the rest of the year following challenging first six months as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. At the virtual Annual General Meeting, broadcasted from the World Conference Center in Bonn, CEO Dr. Markus Steilemann confirmed the strategy pursued by the company: The development over the first six months and the economic outlook for the current year show that we still find ourselves in a macroeconomicly difficult situation. However, I am sure that we will steer Covestro through this successfully. We are pursuing a clear, far-sighted strategy that addresses current challenges, but most importanly will secure the companys long-term success.

For a more sustainable restart, Covestro has drawn on a new corporate vision to chart a clear course for the company. Over the long term, the company plans to align its entire production, its range of products and solutions as well as all areas to the circular concept. That means we aim to comprehensively establish the principle of circularity at our company, Steilemann said. Focus topics are alternative raw materials, innovative recycling, joint solutions and renewable energies.

On the path towards achieving a circular economy, Covestro will also be strengthening its innovative capabilities, for example in areas such as digital chemistry. Quantum computing can, for example, enable highly complex chemical reaction processes to be digitally simulated in the future, thus saving considerable time and resources. This would play a vital role in successfully driving the circular economy, Steilemann said. Quantum computing will enable us to take research and development to a completely new level also, and in particular, in regard to the pace at which we can develop innovations, Steilemann explained. The company has only recently announced a research partnership with Google in this area.

Steilemann again confirmed the guidance for the current fiscal year to the shareholders. Although Covestro has been observing a trend of sequential improvement since mid-May, 2020 nevertheless continues to be an exceptional year and the economic environment will remain uncertain in the second half of the year as well. Further developments depend largely on the course taken by the coronavirus pandemic, and this is not completely foreseeable. This makes it all the more important that our measures work and providepositive results already, Steilemann adds.

Since the beginning of the Corona crisis, Covestro had quickly and consistently taken measures to counter the effects on its business, setting clear priorities: Our top priority is to ensure the safety of our employees, business partners and customers. This is followed by maintaining production and supply chains. Equally important to us is to safeguard our strong liquidity position.

Early on, Covestro set the course for sustainably improving efficiency through the companys Perspective program. The company is now benefiting from this as well as from strengthening the short-term cost-saving measures approved at the beginning of this year. By 2020, the aim is to save a total of over EUR 430 million. In addition, the company has adjusted its investment plans and taken various financing measures in the first half of the year, including a new revolving credit facility, short-term working capital facilities, a loan from the European Investment Bank and the issuance of Eurobonds.

To further strengthen Covestros liquidity position in the current exceptional economic environment, the company decided in spring to propose a dividend of EUR 1.20 per share to the Annual General Meeting instead of the originally planned EUR 2.40 per share. This would equal a payout ratio of 40 percent and a new peak in relative terms.

CFO Dr. Thomas Toepfer at the Annual General Meeting: Our policy is to pay out an increased or at least a stable dividend to our shareholders. That was also our intention this year. We will, however, deviate from that policy in 2020 due to the enormous impact of the coronavirus pandemic. I am convinced we have made a balanced decision with this proposed dividend. We are taking the interests of our shareholders into account while at the same time securing our robust liquidity position and credit rating.

Covestro is broadcasting the complete virtual Annual General Meeting, including the Board of Management presentations and the Q&A, live via Webcast athttps://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/w6xzo9wa/lan/enstarting at 10 a.m. CET. Speeches by the Board of Management can also be followed live via LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. The manuscripts of the speeches by Dr. Markus Steilemann and Dr. Thomas Toepfer are available online athttps://www.covestro.com/en/investors. The voting results will also be provided there after the Annual General Meeting.

SOURCE: Covestro

Opinion: Heres a monument all Americans can rally around: Lets celebrate the Bill of Rights – Pocono Record

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

Amid the turmoil over taking down Confederate monuments and others ranging from Christopher Columbus to Theodore Roosevelt, heres an idea that that almost everyone can get behind: How about erecting monuments that celebrate the Bill of Rights?

Yes, the Bill of Rights: 10 amendments to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, that spelled out the individual freedoms Americans have enjoyed ever since including the freedom to protest against things like monuments (thanks to the First Amendment.)

A campaign to place Bill of Rights monuments in state capitols in all 50 states is already underway, albeit moving slowly. Arizonas Bill of Rights monument was built in Phoenix in 2012, and plans for an OkIahoma monument in Oklahoma City are progressing. A smaller scale monument can be found in Montezuma, Iowa.

Its the brainchild of Chris Bliss, a comic by trade who has made the Bill of Rights his side project. Comics, after all, benefit greatly from the First Amendment. His campaign began nearly two decades ago, when there was controversy over monuments that celebrated the Ten Commandments, also often placed in state capitols.

Bliss envisioned erecting Bill of Rights monuments as a way to "comparison shop" with the Ten Commandments, he says whimsically. He also wants the monuments built near state capitols because "every kid goes to state capitols" on school field trips. He estimates that 40,000 students a year have visited the Arizona monument.

As he delved into the project, Bliss found that the Bill of Rights was something of a forgotten document, rarely taught in schools. People knew about a patients bill of rights or a bill of rights for airline passengers. But it was hard for people to grasp the abstract principles of the constitutional Bill of Rights, Bliss says, and therefore hard to turn those principles into marble or limestone.

Donations and support for Bliss Bill of Rights project have been sporadic over the years, with comedians like Lewis Black and the late Dick Gregory helping out. The Bill of Rights has "no preexisting constituency," Bliss says, unlike other organized groups that can lobby successfully for building monuments.

But in the aftermath of the recent protests nationwide that involve monuments and civil liberties, he hopes to jump-start his project and hasten the building of Bill of Rights monuments nationwide. "This is a very positive moment," Bliss says.

Amendments a safeguard for citizens

The relevance of the Bill of Rights to todays divisions is clear and deserves recognition. The Bill of Rights fosters freedom of expression, religion, due process, fair trials, protection against unreasonable government intrusion or excessive fines, among other important rights.

The 10 amendments are not without controversy. Interpreting the religion clauses of the First Amendment, the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment, and the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment has been a contentious task for centuries.

And there are parts of the Bill of Rights that are quirky, to say the least. The Third Amendment, for example, prohibits soldiers from being quartered in homes without the consent of owners. It was a big issue at the time of the founding, but not now.

Opportunity to celebrate liberty

Bliss says there is no better remedy for monument controversies than to commemorate the Bill of Rights, which he calls "the most powerful and successful assertion of individual rights and liberties ever written."

He adds, "The ideas were radical at the time, but now, people say, Of course. There is not an exclusionary phrase in the entire document. It is time for us to rediscover our own Bill of Rights and to elevate it to the position of public prominence it richly deserves."

Tony Mauro, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, covered the Supreme Court for USA TODAY from 1982 to 2000.

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Opinion: Heres a monument all Americans can rally around: Lets celebrate the Bill of Rights - Pocono Record

Coinbase Planning Addition of Balancer, Helium, and 17 More Cryptos – Finance Magnates

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

Coinbase, the leading crypto exchange in the United States, is considering the addition of 19 more digital currencies that include tokens from the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem to wrapped cryptos.

As announced on Friday in an official blog post, all the cryptocurrencies on Coinbases list are Ampleforth, Band Protocol, Balancer, Blockstack, Curve, Fetch.ai, Flexacoin, Helium, Hedera Hashgraph, Kava, Melon, Ocean Protocol, Paxos Gold, Reserve Rights, tBTC, The Graph, THETA, UMA, and WBTC.

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Coinbase detailed that the additions of these coins will require significant technical and compliance review in the part of the exchange, and in some cases even a green light from the local regulators.

We, therefore, cannot guarantee whether or when any above-listed asset will be listed on a Coinbase product in any jurisdiction, the San Francisco-based exchange stated.

What Trading Companies Really Need to Increase Their RevenuesGo to article >>

The popular crypto exchange and wallet platform also detailed that it will follow a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction approach in listing the digital currencies, meaning its users some jurisdiction might get their access early compared to others.

As part of the exploratory process customers may see public-facing APIs and other signs that we are conducting engineering work to potentially support these assets, Coinbase added.

The move came when the cryptocurrency market is gaining steam and is slowly moving towards a bull run again major cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum have recently breached major resistance levels.

Following the news of possible Coinbase listing, most of the coins have surged significantly Ocean Protocol is among the leading gainers jumping over 17 percent in the last 24 hours, while Balancer also gained in double-digits, as seen onCornmarketcap.com.

This surge in prices with major listing is usual with crypto as, last May, Maker, the token of one of the major DeFi platform, surged 37 percent with a listing on Coinbase.

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Coinbase Planning Addition of Balancer, Helium, and 17 More Cryptos - Finance Magnates

Trump says he’ll ban Tik Tok, to hoots of derision – Boing Boing

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump last night declared that he would ban the social media site Tik Tok.

As far as TikTok is concerned were banning them from the United States, Trump said, calling the action a severance.

Trump did not specify whether he will act through an executive order, or another method. such as a designation, according to NBC News.

Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that, Trump said.

Microsoft is negotiating to buy Chinese-owned Tik Tok, which would fill a social-media hole in the tech giant's lineup of consumer offerings. But commentators think Trump is mostly just upset that the platform is an explosively-growing social media platform that will not supplicate to him as Twitter and Facebook have.

Vox recently gamed out how Trump might accomplish a "ban" on Tik Tok, but the experts consulted found it an unlikely scenario.

To really take TikTok off Americans phones, the government would have to do something like make Apple and Google sever their ties with ByteDance (along with any other Chinese app makers). Getting removed from the iOS App Store and Google Play Store would vastly reduce TikToks appeal, even if you could still access it through a sideloaded app or website. Apple, in particular, keeps tight control over iOS devices; its App Store policy is so restrictive that its spurred antitrust lawsuits. The government would essentially be ordering companies to deplatform TikTok and deplatforming can be extremely powerful.

To do this, the Trump administration could repeat a tactic it used with Huawei: have the Commerce Department put TikTok on the entity list that limits its commercial ties to US companies. The administration doesnt need congressional approval to do this, and it can cite any US company that does business with them (barring special exemptions) for violating sanctions. The entity list has stopped Google from working with Huawei on Android phones, and if TikTok were successfully added to the list, Apple and Google would have a hard time keeping them in the App Store.

James Lewis, director of technology policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says putting TikTok on the list would be extreme, unusual, and legally dubious.

Foreign Policy agreed.

Because the attempted ban by the United States is likely to rely on novel theories and will be imposed in haste, the companies are likely to have an opening to challenge the U.S. government action in court as lacking factual and legal support. A legal challenge might also put pressure on the U.S. government by forcing it to risk disclosure of sensitive intelligence on the Chinese companies if it chooses to fully defend court actions. Given the dearth of public evidence to date that TikTok provides any data to the Chinese government and the Trump administrations less-than-stellar record against procedural challenges to its executive orders, it is possible that a well-structured challenge might be able to overturn, or at least delay, any ban.

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Trump says he'll ban Tik Tok, to hoots of derision - Boing Boing

Artificial Intelligence Is the Hope 2020 Needs – Asharq Al-awsat – English

Posted on August 1, 2020 by admin

This year is likely to be remembered for the Covid-19 pandemic and for a significant presidential election, but there is a new contender for the most spectacularly newsworthy happening of 2020: the unveiling of GPT-3. As a very rough description, think of GPT-3 as giving computers a facility with words that they have had with numbers for a long time, and with images since about 2012.

The core of GPT-3, which is a creation of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, is a general language model designed to perform autofill. It is trained on uncategorized internet writings, and basically guesses what text ought to come next from any starting point.

That may sound unglamorous, but a language model built for guessing with 175 billion parameters 10 times more than previous competitors is surprisingly powerful.

The eventual uses of GPT-3 are hard to predict, but it is easy to see the potential. GPT-3 can converse at a conceptual level, translate language, answer email, perform (some) programming tasks, help with medical diagnoses and, perhaps someday, serve as a therapist. It can write poetry, dialogue and stories with a surprising degree of sophistication, and it is generally good at common sense a typical failing for many automated response systems. You can even ask it questions about God.

Imagine a Siri-like voice-activated assistant that actually did your intended bidding. It also has the potential to outperform Google for many search queries, which could give rise to a highly profitable company.

GPT-3 does not try to pass the Turing test by being indistinguishable from a human in its responses. Rather, it is built for generality and depth, even though that means it will serve up bad answers to many queries, at least in its current state. As a general philosophical principle, it accepts that being weird sometimes is a necessary part of being smart. In any case, like so many other technologies, GPT-3 has the potential to rapidly improve.

It is not difficult to imagine a wide variety of GPT-3 spinoffs, or companies built around auxiliary services, or industry task forces to improve the less accurate aspects of GPT-3. Unlike some innovations, it could conceivably generate an entire ecosystem.

There is a notable buzz about GPT-3 in the tech community. One user in the UK tweeted: I just got access to gpt-3 and I can't stop smiling, i am so excited. Venture capitalist Paul Graham noted coyly: Hackers are fascinated by GPT-3. To everyone else it seems a toy. Pattern seem familiar to anyone? Venture capitalist and AI expert Daniel Gross referred to GPT-3 as a landmark moment in the field of AI.

I am not a tech person, so there is plenty about GPT-3 I do not understand. Still, reading even a bit about it fills me with thoughts of the many possible uses.

It is noteworthy that GPT-3 came from OpenAI rather than from one of the more dominant tech companies, such as Alphabet/Google, Facebook or Amazon. It is sometimes suggested that the very largest companies have too much market power but in this case, a relatively young and less capitalized upstart is leading the way. (OpenAI was founded only in late 2015 and is run by Sam Altman).

GPT-3 is also a sign of the underlying health and dynamism of the Bay Area tech world, and thus of the US economy. The innovation came to the US before China and reflects the power of decentralized institutions.

Like all innovations, GPT-3 involves some dangers. For instance, if prompted by descriptive ethnic or racial words, it can come up with unappetizing responses. One can also imagine that a more advanced version of GPT-3 would be a powerful surveillance engine for written text and transcribed conversations. Furthermore, it is not an obvious plus if you can train your software to impersonate you over email. Imagine a world where you never know who you are really talking to Is this a verified email conversation? Still, the hope is that protective mechanisms can at least limit some of these problems.

We have not quite entered the era where Skynet goes live, to cite the famous movie phrase about an AI taking over (and destroying) the world. But artificial intelligence does seem to have taken a major leap forward. In an otherwise grim year, this is a welcome and hopeful development. Oh, and if you would like to read more, here is an article about GPT-3 written by GPT-3.

Bloomberg