Category Archives: Post Human

This is a guest post by director ofSheffield Robotics Tony Prescott. Prescott, who is also professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Sheffield and a fellow of the British Psychological Society, researches the development of biomimetic robots, assistive robots, and human-robot interaction. He is also collaborating on building a companion robot and an intelligent robotic table. You can follow him at @tonyjprescott

It is good to see more attention being paid to the ongoing change in UK population demographics. The number of people aged 60 or over will pass 20 million by 2030. The number of people aged 65 or over will also have risen 50 percent by that year. We need to get organised to deal with the consequences of this dramatic shift. The 2013 "Ready for Ageing?" report by the House of Lords gave us a stark warning: "The UK population is ageing rapidly, but we have concluded that the government and our society are woefully underprepared".

In response to the Lords' report, The Guardian newspaper is organising an event on 5 Marchwhere we can expect to hear from all of the major political parties about their policies for coping with the UK's ageing population. It will be interesting to see what they each have to say.

I will be particularly interested to see if the politicians have anything to say about developing new technologies that could help us as we age. The Lords report is rather cautious on this topic, focusing on what we can do now in terms of telehealth and monitoring: "fire alarms, movement sensors, alarm pendants, temperature alerts and programmes to manage complex medication regimes." This list doesn't even begin to take into account many of the assistive technologies already in development, never mind those we might have by 2030. Their lordships seem to be have imagined a future UK much like it is today. However, look back 20 years and the internet age had barely started -- look forward, and who knows what life-changing technologies we might have around us?

I know that many people are sceptical about the possible use of robots in care, and perhaps fear being left to age in the hands of robots. These are genuine concerns, but they are also fed by the idea of robots that we get from science fiction rather than by first-hand experience of robots. So put aside the idea of robots that we get from movies and TV and look at what real robots are actually like.

I'd like to clear one thing up right away. An assistive robot doesn't have to look like person. To be useful, robots do not have to be at all human-like, and it's probably better if they are not. Human-like robots struggle to avoid being uncanny and their substantial bulk would make them impractical and hazardous for use in people's homes. In fact, useful non-humanoid assistive robots are already here -- you may not even think of them as robots. Keeping your house clean is one of the many tasks that get harder as you grow old. But for a few hundred pounds, you can already buy a small robot that does the job of vacuuming your floor. By 2030, cleaning robots will be part of a larger ecology of smart devices that will have transformed the way we perform household tasks, making our living spaces easier to manage as we grow old. We can see the seeds of this now, but there is much more to come. In research labs around the world, robots are being developed to perform household chores like washing, cleaning, tidying, preparing and serving food.

For older people with disabilities, robots also have the potential to assist with those aspects of care that require direct physical intervention. These include help with moving around (e.g. from sitting to standing), eating and drinking, dressing, and toileting. The goal is not to replace all human help -- we will always want human-to-human social and physical contact to be a part of our lives. However, we will also want privacy and control. These kinds of robotic appliances will allow people to regain control over their daily routines, they will preserve dignity and enhance independence.

Carers spend much of their time addressing people's physical needs and thus cannot always prioritise social need, even though having a social connection is fundamental to human nature. Robots can help here too. Paro is an animal-like robot, resembling a baby arctic seal, that has large eyes, artificial fur, orients to sounds, and responds to gentle stroking by waving its paws and tail. This artificial pet is proving to be an effective aid for people with Alzheimer's Disease for use in settings such as hospital wards, where keeping a living animal would be impractical. Two of Paro's most useful functions are its capacity to calm patients who are distressed, and to encourage people to talk to one another by giving them something to talk about. Whereas Paro makes only animal sounds, Jibo is a table-top companion robot, currently under development, that can hold a simple, practical conversation and can perform tasks such as managing messages and organising a daily schedule. This kind of functionality should be useful to an older person experiencing memory problems.

Social robots will become more sophisticated and engaging with time, but they won't be able to converse like other people any time soon so there is no reason to think that they will replace human companionship.

One 2010 study forecast that annual UK public expenditure on long-term care will increase from around 12 billion to 31 billion by 2032; that's almost a threefold increase. The cost of care escalates as those who need it move from their own homes, into residential care, and then into hospital. Older people prefer their own homes, suggesting a win-win scenario -- both an economic and a welfare benefit from developing new technologies that allow people to age in place.

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From seal pup pets to cleaners: how robots will help us age

Crysis 3 - Post Human | GTX 970 | 1080p 8x MSAA
About ten minutes of gameplay from the first mission of Crysis 3. All settings are at Very High (except for Motion Blur, which is turned off) with 8x MSAA. S...

By: Dustin M

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Crysis 3 - Post Human | GTX 970 | 1080p 8x MSAA - Video

Lawmakers in North Dakota have filed several bills aimed at combating human trafficking and providing a greater level of service to victims of that trade.

If passed, the bills would amend the language of certain criminal offenses to reflect human trafficking's role, appropriate funds to provide human trafficking victims with treatment and support services and create a statewide commission to coordinate agency efforts in that area.

Changing the language

A pair of bills under consideration in both houses of the Legislature are aimed at amending the legal language relating to the subject of human trafficking.

Senate Bill 2107 defines such terms as coercion, commercial sexual activity, debt bondage and, most notably, victim.

"'Victim' means an individual who is subjected to human trafficking ... regardless of whether a perpetrator is identified, apprehended, prosecuted or convicted," according to the definition given in the bill.

The bill would create the criminal offenses "trafficking an individual," "forced labor" and "sexual servitude," each of which would be classified as a Class A felony if the victim is a minor and a Class B felony if the victim is an adult.

Patronizing a victim of sexual servitude or commercial sexual activity would become a felony offense of varying severity depending on whether the victim was a minor or an adult.

The bill also includes language aimed at punishing businesses that engage in human trafficking, including a potential $1 million fine, and increasing the length of the sentence by up to five years if the victim of the human trafficking was recruited or coerced from a shelter.

The bill calls for shielding minor victims of human trafficking from a variety of charges, such as prostitution, theft and forgery, and would allow human trafficking victims to be eligible for restitution.

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Legislature eyes package of human trafficking bills

19 January 2015 Stressing that the United Nations is built around the three pillars of peace and security, development and human rights, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, today underlined the need to pay attention to their interdependence, during an address to the Security Council.

The founders of the United Nations well understood that if we ignore one pillar, we imperil the other two, said Mr. Ban during todays Security Council debate on inclusive development for the maintenance of international peace and security, which was chaired by Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile, which holds the 15-member bodys presidency for the month.

The post-2015 sustainable development agenda is an important opportunity to reinforce the interdependence of development, peace and security, and human rights, he told the Council debate, which coincides with the opening of the General Assemblys three-day informal stock-taking in the process of intergovernmental negotiations on that future agenda.

The Secretary-General said he was encouraged that during debates so far held about completing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the end of this year, launching a post-2015 sustainability agenda, and reaching an agreement on climate change, Member States had paid considerable attention to peace and security and to human rights.

The General Assembly Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals had discussed the importance of inclusive growth and decent work, called for reducing inequality and ensuring universal access to basic services, including health care and education, had explicitly linked peace with social inclusion and access to justice for all, and had called for inclusive, representative decision-making.

In the so called synthesis report he presented to the General Assembly last month The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet Mr. Ban underscored the importance of justice to building peaceful and inclusive societies, emphasising the need for strong and responsive institutions.

With the full membership of the United Nations beginning its negotiations later this morning, we now have an important opportunity to broaden the development agenda and highlight the fundamental importance of inclusive societies in building a more peaceful world, he said.

Every country could benefit from sustainable and inclusive development, tackling persistent exclusion and inequality, ensuring that the most vulnerable have access to basic services and can participate in political dialogue, tackling the blatant injustice of discrimination against women and girls, and extending social security provision to the worlds population still lacking a safety net for times of illness or unemployment.

Post-conflict societies in particular need to prioritize social, economic and political inclusion in order to rebuild trust between communities. Womens participation in reconciliation and reconstruction also depended on gender equality and womens empowerment, he said.

The Peacebuilding Commission provides coordinated international support targeted at countries emerging from conflict, continued Mr. Ban. The current review of the UNs peacebuilding architecture should help to make that support more robust and flexible.

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UN must boost links among development, security, human rights, Ban tells Security Council

Story highlights Shin Dong-hyuk has changed "key parts of his story," the author of a book about him says Shin's accounts of his time in a North Korean prison camp have been widely reported The publisher says it's working on "an accurate understanding of the facts"

He was one of the most high-profile North Korean defectors, winning several human rights awards and inspiring a documentary as his memoir was translated into 27 languages.

Now the publisher of the book and its author say Shin -- who claims to have been born in and escaped from a North Korean prison camp -- has revealed that parts of the story he told weren't true. Shin may have spent most of his life in North Korea at a different prison camp, rather than the total control zone that formed the title of his biography.

Shin's accounts of his time in the gulag have been widely reported in interviews with media including CNN. He also wrote an opinion piece describing his experiences for CNN Digital.

Blaine Harden, author of the book "Escape from Camp 14," said in a statement on his website over the weekend that Shin had changed "key parts of his story."

"On Friday, Jan. 16, I learned that Shin Dong-hyuk, the North Korean prison camp survivor who is the subject of 'Escape from Camp 14,' had told friends an account of his life that differed substantially from my book," Harden said. "I contacted Shin, pressing him to detail the changes and explain why he had misled me."

Harden declined to provide additional details to CNN, but published a lengthy explanation on his website. A Washington Post story based on information Harden said he had provided to the newspaper said "the most horrific details" of Shin's story "still stand," but some of the times and places of the events in his accounts were wrong.

"From a human rights perspective, he was still brutally tortured, but he moved things around," Harden told the Post, where he worked as a reporter for 28 years.

Shin did not immediately respond to a request from CNN for comment. In a post on his Facebook page, he doesn't go into details about the purported discrepancies, but he includes a link to the Post's story and apologizes to his supporters.

"This particular past of mine that I so badly wanted to cover up can no longer be hidden, nor do I want it to be," he says. "To those who have supported me, trusted me and believed in me all this time, I am so very grateful and at the same time so very sorry to each and every single one of you."

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North Korean defector changes story

Police have said they believe human trafficking syndicates are behind the series of murders in mainland Penang.

This was what I was alluding to in my blog post in August 2014: Bukit Mertajam in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. The news about human trafficking syndicates operating here had emerged in January 2014.

Penang police said yesterday:

Polis Sedang mengesan empat lelaki warga Myanmar yang dipercayai terlibat dalam kejadian culik dan bunuh membabitkan rakan senegara mereka pada selasa lalu.

YDH. Ketua Polis Daerah Timur Laut, ACP Mior Faridalathrash bin Wahid berkata identiti empat lelaki berusia 30-an itu telah dikenal pasti dan mereka dipercayai masih berada di Pulau Pinang dan Kedah.

Empat lelaki termasuk perancang utama dalam kes culik dan bunuh itu telah dikenal pasti dan siasatan kami juga mendapati mereka adalah anggota sindiket pemerdagangan manusia. Polis percaya dengan beberapa maklumat dan perkembangan baru yang diperolehi kami mampu mengesan mereka ( empat lelaki Myanmar itu ) dan menyelesaikan kes berkenaan.

The latest body to be found was on Tuesday morning and police are probing whether this case is linked to a human trafficking operation in Kedah.

The United States had downgraded Malaysia and three other countries to Tier 3 the lowest possible ranking in its annual Trafficking of Persons (TIP) Report due to insufficient action taken to prevent human trafficking and forced labour.

We are in the same group as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Saudi Arabia! See this Guardian report: US penalises Malaysia for shameful human trafficking record.

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Human trafficking syndicates believed to be behind grisly mainland Penang murders

Human trafficking expert Ken Lawson, of the Columbus Division of Police, gives a lecture on the subject during a seminar held at Pat OBrien Chevrolet in Medina on Friday morning. (ANDREW DAVIS / GAZETTE)

Caseworkers, law enforcement, elected officials and interested residents from across Northeast Ohio gathered Friday in Medina to discuss a widely misunderstood criminal industry: human trafficking.

Mead Wilkins, director of Medina County Job and Family Services, said the seminar is a crucial way to educate caseworkers and court workers on the law and how to recognize human trafficking.

In Medina, the nonprofit Child Advocacy Center deals with child welfare issues. Many times through their work with sexual assault victims, they find a new layer to the story.

This is such a natural gateway to finding exploited children, he said. It is happening here. There are children in Medina County who are being sexually exploited and it happens more often than you think.

Wilkins said that anyone suspects human trafficking should contact Job and Family Services or the Sheriffs Office.

Part of it is if you are not aware of it, you are not going to see it, he said.

The seminar, held at Pat OBrien Chevrolet, featured Ken Lawson, a Columbus police officer and human trafficking expert, as the keynote speaker.

We have to change from seeing these people as criminals to seeing them as victims, he told the crowd of more than 80 people. When we do that, we will be able to provide the atmosphere where they can thrive.

According to Lawson, as late as 2002, law enforcement and health services across the nation were not equipped with knowledge to identify someone who has been the victim of human trafficking. Instead, the person would have been charged with prostitution and most likely released to her abuser.

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Law enforcement discusses extent of human trafficking

TOKYO Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean prison camp survivor who has become the symbol of human rights injustices suffered in that country, has changed key parts of the story of his ordeal.

Although the most horrific details, such as being lowered by a hook over a fire, still stand, Shin has admitted that many of the places and timing of events in his telling of his story were wrong, Blaine Harden, the author of Escape from Camp 14, a best-selling book about Shins life, said Saturday.

From a human rights perspective, he was still brutally tortured, but he moved things around, said Harden, a former Washington Post journalist who first wrote Shins story for The Post in 2008.

Shin, 32, has been one of the most prominent defectors from North Korea, trying to raise awareness about human rights abuses there. He also testified in front of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, whose report has led to an international campaign to hold the totalitarian states leaders to account for decades of human rights violations.

North Korea, alarmed by this campaign and the prospect of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un being indicted, has been trying to undermine Shins testimony and will doubtless seize on these revisions to try to portray all accounts of human rights abuses as fabrications.

In Escape from Camp 14 and in his testimony to the U.N. commission, Shin has told this story: He was born in Camp 14, a sprawling high-security political prison in the mountains of north of Pyongyang, where he was brutally tortured and lived until his escape in 2005. He has consistently said that he escaped with a fellow inmate, climbing over his body when the man was electrocuted on the fence that surrounded the camp, and then made his way into China.

Shin admitted to Harden on Friday that when he was about 6, he, his mother and his brother were transferred to another prison camp, Camp 18, across the Taedong River from Camp 14.

It was there, after learning of his mother and brothers plans to escape, that he betrayed them to the authorities, Shin told Harden. It was also in this camp, he said, that he witnessed their executions.

In the book, Shin recounted all these events as happening in Camp 14.

Shin also now says that he escaped from the camps on two occasions, in 1999 and 2001. The second time, he made it to China but was caught after four months by local police and sent back to North Korea. He was first held at Camp 18, then transferred back to the more draconian Camp 14, Shin told Harden.

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Prominent N. Korean defector Shin Dong-hyuk admits parts of story are inaccurate

His friends and colleagues knew Michel du Cille, the many-laureled Washington Post photographer and editor, only as Michel (pronounced Michael). But at a memorial celebration Friday afternoon, they learned that the name was shorthand. Du Cilles full given name was Michelangelo.

And like the transcendent Renaissance sculptor and painter, du Cille, who died last month of a heart attack at age 58 while covering the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, was hailed as an artist who captured timeless images of human emotion and struggle in his way through the lens of a camera.

A great man, a great artist with a lovely soul, said Donald Graham, former chief executive of The Washington Post Co. Graham, now chairman of Graham Holdings Co., quoted a tribute written by a student of the original Michelangelo: The great ruler of heaven looked down and, seeing these artists attempts, resolved to send to Earth a genius. He further endowed him with true moral philosophy and a sweet, poetic spirit so the world would marvel.

Du Cilles memorial at the Newseum in Washington was by turns solemn, spirited, spiritual, humorous and musical. Friends, colleagues, relatives and even a contingent from du Cilles college newspaper at Indiana University filled the 450-seat Newseum auditorium to overflowing. It was multicultural and multiregional, drawing people from around the country and from Jamaica, du Cilles birthplace.

Du Cilles daughter, Lesley Anne, played a vibrant violin solo in her fathers honor. Leighton, his son, described du Cille as a quiet man who spoke loudly with images he shot, as well as a closet Trekkie who binge-watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. In a loving e-mail exchange with his son about his photos from West Africa, du Cille wrote shortly before he died: My work is a calling to me. I hope it makes a difference.

Before he set off on his final assignment, du Cille texted his love to his wife, Post photographer Nikki Kahn, and enthusiastically wrote, Africa, here you come! Said Kahn, If he were here today, hed be reminding us of the real story: 8,429 lives lost to Ebola and counting. Hed be saying, Remember the real story. Remember the thousands of people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and the rest of the world who are dying and will die from this Ebola virus.

The most eloquent tribute may have been a wordless one: a slide show of du Cilles photos over the decades.

The people depicted included the famous President Obama, the late Post editor Ben Bradlee, civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks and the decidedly not famous drug addicts in filthy surroundings, Ebola patients awaiting death, militiamen (and women) in Sierra Leone, disabled American veterans.

Some of the latter photos won du Cille the third of his Pulitzer Prizes for photography in 2008, for a Post series that documented neglectful conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District. He also shared a Pulitzer in 1986 with fellow Miami Herald photographer (and future Post staffer) Carol Guzy for photos documenting a volcanic eruption in Colombia, and in 1988 for images of crack-cocaine addicts in Miami.

Under a projection of a smiling du Cille carrying a camera, naturally photojournalist Donald Winslow announced that du Cille would be the posthumous recipient of the National Press Photographers Associations annual Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award, the groups highest honor.

See the article here:
A farewell to Michel du Cille, photographer and artist with a lovely soul

RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Volunteers raise awareness about human trafficking

Volunteer Marjorie Saylor, 32, puts up a poster about human trafficking at Del Lago Market in Lake Elsinore as part of a countywide "Day of Action" against human trafficking on Jan. 17, 2015.

FRANK BELLINO, FRANK BELLINO, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

If you or someone you know is being forced to engage in any activity and can't leave whether it's commercial sex, housework, farmwork, construction, factory, retail or restaurant work, or some other activity there are numbers to call for help.

National Human Trafficking Resource Center: 1-888-373-7888

California Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking: 1-888-539-2373

Volunteers fanned out across Riverside County Saturday to spread awareness about human trafficking and help businesses comply with a law to help victims.

Though the law has not yet been enforced in Riverside County, since April 2013 California has required certain types of businesses to post notices informing the public and potential victims of human trafficking and slavery about telephone hotlines where they can seek help or report suspicious activity.

I dont think a lot of people are even aware of it, sheriffs Lt. Paul Bennett, who oversees the Riverside County Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, said of the law.

The businesses affected include massage parlors, farm labor contractors, transit stations, sexually oriented businesses, liquor stores, emergency rooms and privately operated job recruitment centers.

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RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Volunteers raise awareness about human trafficking