Category: Technology

Automation Is “About Doing More with the People We’ve Got”

(p. A1) Mr. Persson, 35, sits in front of four computer screens, one displaying the loader he steers as it lifts freshly blasted rock containing silver, zinc and lead. If he were down in the mine shaft operating the loader manually, he would be inhaling dust and exhaust fumes. Instead, he reclines in an office chair while using a joystick to control the machine.
He is cognizant that robots are evolving by the day. Boliden is testing self-driving vehicles to replace truck drivers. But Mr. Persson assumes people will always be needed to keep the machines running. He has faith in the Swedish economic model and its protections against the torment of joblessness.
“I’m not really worried,” he says. “There are so many jobs in this mine that even if this job disappears, they will have another one. The company will take care of us.”
. . .
(p. A8) The Garpenberg mine has been in operation more or less since 1257. More than a decade ago, Boliden teamed up with Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications company, to put in wireless internet. That has allowed miners to talk to one another to fix problems as they emerge. Miners now carry tablet computers that allow them to keep tabs on production all along the 60 miles of roads running through the mine.
“For us, automation is something good,” says Fredrik Hases, 41, who heads the local union chapter representing technicians. “No one feels like they are taking jobs away. It’s about doing more with the people we’ve got.”

For the full story, see:
PETER S. GOODMAN. “Sweden Adds Human Touch to a Robotic Future.” The New York Times (Thurs., December 28, 2017): A1 & A8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 27, 2017, and has the title “The Robots Are Coming, and Sweden Is Fine.”)

Health Info from Apple Watches Will Allow Patients to “Take More Control”

(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — In the last months of Steve Jobs’s life, the Apple co-founder fought cancer while managing diabetes.
Because he hated pricking his finger to draw blood, Mr. Jobs authorized an Apple research team to develop a noninvasive glucose reader with technology that could potentially be incorporated into a wristwatch, according to people familiar with the events, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.
. . .
In September [2017], Apple announced that the Apple Watch would no longer need to be tethered to a smartphone and would become more of a stand-alone device. Since then, a wave of device manufacturers have tapped into the watch’s new features like cellular connectivity to develop medical accessories — such as an electrocardiogram for monitoring heart activity — so people can manage chronic conditions straight from their wrist.
. . .
(p. B4) A digital health revolution has been predicted for years, of course, and so far has been more hype than progress. But the hope is that artificial intelligence systems will sift through the vast amounts of data that medical accessories will collect from the Apple Watch and find patterns that can lead to changes in treatment and detection, enabling people to take more control of how they manage their conditions instead of relying solely on doctors.
Vic Gundotra, chief executive of AliveCor, a start-up that makes portable electrocardiograms, said this would put patients on a more equal footing with doctors because they would have more information on their own conditions.
“It’s changing the nature of the relationship between patient and doctor,” he said, adding that doctors will no longer be “high priests.”
. . .
Apple is also looking at potentially building an electrocardiogram into future models of the Apple Watch, according to a person familiar with the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were confidential. It is unclear whether the EKG development, earlier reported by Bloomberg, would be introduced; such a product would most likely require F.D.A. clearance.
Separately, Apple is continuing research on a noninvasive continuous glucose reader, according to two people with knowledge of the project. The technology is still considered to be years away, industry experts said.
The current solution used by many diabetics is also coming to the Apple Watch. Dexcom, a maker of devices measuring blood sugar levels for diabetics, said it was awaiting F.D.A. approval for a continuous glucose monitor to work directly with the Apple Watch. Continuous glucose monitors use small sensors to pierce the skin to track blood sugar levels and relay those readings through a wireless transmitter.

For the full story, see:
DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI. “As Wearable Devices Evolve, The Apple Watch Offers an EKG.” The New York Times (Weds., December 27, 2017): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 26, 2017, and has the title “Freed From the iPhone, the Apple Watch Finds a Medical Purpose.”)

“Reject the Dark Side: Free the Net!”

(p. C5) HEALY Matt, what’s a culture/politics tidbit most people don’t know?
FLEGENHEIMER Washington’s most prolific consumer of pop culture is very likely … Ted Cruz. Amateur “S.N.L.” historian, ’80s movie buff and instigator of a Twitter feud with Mark Hamill over net neutrality. He explained the meaning of “Star Wars” to Luke Skywalker. It was very Cruz: @HammillHimself Luke, I know Hollywood can be confusing, but it was Vader who supported govt power over everything said & done on the Internet. That’s why giant corps (Google, Facebook, Netflix) supported the FCC power grab of net neutrality. Reject the dark side: Free the net! Ted Cruz 12:25 PM – Dec 17, 2017
ROGERS ’80s movie buff?
FLEGENHEIMER “The Princess Bride”! Life on the campaign trail with Ted Cruz was basically months of “Princess Bride” imitations with an occasional discussion of Obamacare.

For the full commentary, see:
MATT FLEGENHEIMER and KATIE ROGERS. “‘S.N.L.’ Kimmel. Covfefe.” The New York Times (Weds., December 27, 2017): C1 & C5.
(Note: ellipsis, bold and caps, in original.).
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 26, 2017, and has the title “Kimmel, Covfefe, ‘Wonder Woman’: Washington on Pop Culture in 2017.” The commentary/discussion is credited to Flegenheimer and Rogers, but Patrick Healy also participated. There are a few minor differences in how the print and online versions present the Cruz tweet. The quote above, follows the print version.)

Robots May Be a Threat After They Learn How to Open a Door

(p. A1) Robots may enslave us all someday. In the meantime, if one of them goes berserk, here’s a useful tactic: Shut the door behind you.
One after another, robots in a government-sponsored contest were stumped by an unlocked door that blocked their path at an outdoor obstacle course. One bipedal machine managed to wrap a claw around the door handle and open it but was flummoxed by a breeze that kept blowing the door shut before it could pass through.
Robots excel at many tasks, as long as they don’t involve too much hand-eye coordination or common sense. Like some gifted children, they can perform impressive feats of mental arithmetic but are profoundly klutzy on the playground.
The machines stumble over tasks requiring even toddler-level balance, like kicking a ball, getting out of a car or (p. A9) climbing stairs. Grasping objects of varying size and weight is also perplexing.

For the full story, see:
Daniela Hernandez. “If the Robot Apocalypse Comes, Try Closing the Door.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Nov. 11, 2017): A1 & A9.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 10, 2017, and has the title “How to Survive a Robot Apocalypse: Just Close the Door.”)

High Demand for STEM Workers Is Mainly High for Workers in Info Tech

(p. 10) A working grasp of the principles of science and math should be essential knowledge for all Americans, said Michael S. Teitelbaum, an expert on science education and policy. But he believes that STEM advocates, often executives and lobbyists for technology companies, do a disservice when they raise the alarm that America is facing a worrying shortfall of STEM workers, based on shortages in a relative handful of fast-growing fields like data analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and computer security.
“When it gets generalized to all of STEM, it’s misleading,” said Mr. Teitelbaum, a senior research associate in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. “We’re misleading a lot of young people.”
Unemployment rates for STEM majors may be low, but not all of those with undergraduate degrees end up in their field of study — only 13 percent in life sciences and 17 percent in physical sciences, according to a 2013 National Science Foundation survey. Computer science is the only STEM field where more than half of graduates are employed in their field.

For the full story, see:
STEVE LOHR. “Where the STEM Jobs Are/Aren’t.” The New York Times, Education Life Section (Sun., NOV. 5, 2017): 10.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 1, 2017, and has the title “Where the STEM Jobs Are (and Where They Aren’t).”)

For an Autistic Boy, Siri’s Patience Is “the Gift of Common Courtesy”

(p. C6) Late in the book, as a girl in Gus’s school takes him under her affectionate wing, the reader watches it all through Newman’s trepidation, followed by the dawning recognition that her son is someone “who may never be able to be responsible for another life, but who is nevertheless capable of deep affection, caring and considering. Sure, those emotions started with machinery and electronics — trains, buses, iPods, computers — and, particularly with Siri, a loving friend who never would hurt him.”
Hence, the title – drawn directly from a New York Times article Newman wrote in 2014, about Gus’s bond with Siri, Apple’s “intelligent personal assistant,” who could endlessly answer his questions, keep her son company and express — in that flat, sweet Siri voice — the gift of common courtesy. It went viral and led to this book. Why? Because the autistic boy displayed the dream/nightmare of this era: humans bonding with machines to get what they’re not getting from flesh-and-blood interactions. In this chapter, late in the book, Newman gallops through all the continuing experiments that use technology to lift and unleash the autistic (including my own effort to build augmentative technologies).
This is fertile terrain, born of the gradual recognition that technology’s great promise may in fact be to summon, capture and display our most human qualities, both the darkness and the light, to pave avenues of deepened connection with others. Here’s where the autistic, with their search for alternatives to traditional human connection, are actually innovators.
Does it dehumanize us if tenderness is tried out first with a machine? While his hyper-aware twin is showing standard bright-future achievements, Gus tentatively feels his way through life. But make no mistake. Gus’s deft fingers — rendered with unsentimental affection by his mom — are feeling things others will miss.
At one point, Gus says, “Good night, Siri, will you sleep well tonight?” Siri replies: “I don’t need much sleep, but it’s nice of you to ask.”
Newman’s response could speak for the entire book: “Very nice.”

For the full review, see:
RON SUSKIND. “A Character Among Characters.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, Aug. 20, 2017): 13.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 16, 2017, and has the title “A Family Memoir Makes the Case That Autism Is Different, Not Less.”)

The book under review, is:
Newman, Judith. To Siri with Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines. New York: HarperCollins, 2017.

The Ship that Held the Antikythera Mechanism Was Greek, Not Roman

(p. A12) A bronze statue’s orphaned arm. A corroded disc adorned with a bull. Preserved wooden planks. These are among the latest treasures that date back to the dawn of the Roman Empire, discovered amid the ruins of the Antikythera shipwreck, a sunken bounty off the coast of a tiny island in Greece.
. . .
For decades people referred to it as a Roman shipwreck, like in Jacques Cousteau’s documentary “Diving for Roman Plunder,” but the team’s findings since 2012 — such as a chemical analysis of lead on the ship’s equipment that trace it back to northern Greece and the personal possessions they found with Greek names etched on them — are changing that narrative, Dr. Foley said. “It’s starting to look an awful lot like a Greek-built, Greek-crewed ship, not a Roman-Italian vessel.”

For the full story, see:
NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR. “A Bronze Arm Points to More Treasure Below.” The New York Times (Sat., OCT. 7, 2017): A12.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 5, 2017, and has the title “Bronze Arm Found in Famous Shipwreck Points to More Treasure Below.”)

Baseball Immigrants Learn English by Watching “Friends”

(p. D1) When he returns home from the stadium, Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Freddy Galvis often gets into bed and watches reruns of “Friends.”
. . .
For at least one generation of Americans, “Friends” endures as a cultural touchstone, a glowing chunk of 1990s amber. But its runaway popularity stretched far beyond the United States, and for some Latino baseball players it is something more: a language guide, a Rosetta Stone disguised as six 20-somethings commingling in a Manhattan apartment.
And also just a funny show.
“Now that it’s on Netflix, I always put it on and watch it,” said Mets infielder Wilmer Flores, 26, who is from Venezuela. “When I get up in the morning, I turn on the TV, and whatever episode is there I’ll watch and keep watching. I stop it when I come to the stadium. When I come home from the stadium, I pick up where I left off.”
What has the sitcom done for his English proficiency?
“It’s near perfect,” said Flores’s teammate, Jerry Blevins, who is from Tennessee. “When he doesn’t know something, it’s surprising.”
. . .
(p. D2) For Galvis, the English-language broadcast with Spanish subtitles on Venezuelan television, was an excellent learning tool. “You can compare what’s going on that way,” he said. “If they say ‘happy,’ you see he’s happy and the subtitle says ‘feliz’, then you can learn. You might not learn 100 percent, but you’ll learn to associate.”
. . .
Like Flores, Galvis is evangelical about “Friends.” He tells young Spanish-speaking players that he is living proof that consuming popular culture in English can help. And although he is now a capable English speaker, he still watches “Friends” with subtitles in Spanish so that his wife can learn English.
Marta Kauffman, one of the creators of the show, said she was delighted to hear about its unlikely and unintended impact on certain players. She compared the phenomenon to how Viagra was originally designed to treat heart problems but later was embraced for a very different purpose.

For the full story, see:
JAMES WAGNER. “For Some Major Leaguers, It’s Always Great to See ‘Friends’.” The New York Times (Mon., SEPT. 18, 2017): D1-D2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “‘Friends,’ the Sitcom That’s Still a Hit in Major League Baseball.”)

“Vinyl Rose from the Ashes”

(p. A10) LODENICE, Czech Republic — He was a businessman, not a clairvoyant. Zdenek Pelc did not really foresee, a generation ago, that vinyl records would one day make a return from near extinction.
But he was smart enough to keep a vinyl record factory here, a relic of the Communist era, through all those years when albums gave way to CDs and then to iTunes and streaming, and to be ready when vinyl suddenly got hot again.
And that is why this village of 1,800, nestled in a lush furl of the Bohemian hills, improbably finds itself a world leader in the production of vinyl albums.
“I realized when I came to the company 33 years ago that vinyl would be finished one day,” said Mr. Pelc, 64, who now owns GZ Media and serves as president. “But I wanted our company to be the last one to stop making them.”
The trajectory of the company — and the village it once dominated — traces the Czech Republic’s transition to quirky capitalist colt from cranky Communist nag, all played to the kind of rock soundtrack that accompanies many modern Czech tales.
Instead of getting rid of the old equipment and moving CD-making machines into their space — as most music production companies around the world did in the late 1980s and early ’90s — Mr. Pelc kept only enough machines running to meet the dwindling demand, moving the rest into storage and cannibalizing their parts as needed.
“Frankly, if someone had told me back then that vinyl would return, I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said.
. . .
“Vinyl rose from the ashes,” Mr. Pelc said happily.
. . .
“From around 2005, the demand for vinyl grew steadily,” said Michael Sterba, GZ Media’s chief executive. “Then, it really took off in the last two or three years, like, whoosh.”
. . .
“Only an idiot thinks this can go on forever,” Mr. Sterba said. “Maybe making vinyl is a fashion that will disappear in a few years. Who knows? No one predicted this.”

For the full story, see:
RICK LYMAN. “LODENICE JOURNAL; Long-Playing Czech Company Rides a Resurgence to the Top.” The New York Times (Fri., AUG. 7, 2015): A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 6, 2015, and has the title “LODENICE JOURNAL; Czech Company, Pressing Hits for Years on Vinyl, Finds It Has Become One.”)

Inventor’s Semiconductor Background Was Source of New, Safer Lithium Battery

(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — Mike Zimmerman likes to shock his guests by using a hammer to drive a nail through a solid polymer lithium metal battery.
Nothing happens — and that’s a good thing.
Mr. Zimmerman’s battery is a new spin on lithium-ion batteries, which are widely used in products from smartphones to cars. Today’s lithium-ion batteries, as anyone who has followed Samsung’s recent problems with flammable smartphones may know, can be ticking time bombs. The liquids in them can burst into flames if there is a short circuit of some sort. And driving a nail into one of them is definitely not recommended.
With that in mind, Mr. Zimmerman’s demonstration commands attention.
His Woburn, Mass., start-up, Ionic Materials, is at the cutting edge of an effort to design safer batteries. The company is working on “solid” lithium polymer batteries that greatly reduce their combustible nature.
A solid lithium polymer metal battery — when it arrives commercially — will also allow electronics designers to be more creative, because they will be able to use a plasticlike material (the polymer) that allows smaller and more flexible packaging and requires fewer complex safety mechanisms.
“My dream is to create the holy grail of solid batteries,” Mr. Zimmerman said.
After four years of development, he believes he is nearly there and hopes to begin manufacturing within the next two years. Ionic Materials is one of a new wave of academic and commercial research ef-(p. B4)forts in the United States, Europe and Asia to find safer battery technologies as consumers demand more performance from phones and cars.
. . .
Mr. Zimmerman’s background is in the world of semiconductors; he worked at Bell Labs and then a company called Quantum Leap Packaging. Several university researchers who have worked with the company believe that has lead him to a technology that will be more manufacturable than competing polymer and ceramic battery technologies now being explored.
“What is so intriguing about Mike and his folks is they are using known production techniques borrowed from the semiconductor packaging industry,” said Jay Whitacre, a Carnegie Mellon University physicist who was involved with Ionic Materials when it first started and who now is chief scientist at Aquion Energy, a maker of home storage and industrial batteries based in Mt. Pleasant, Pa.
The new progress has led a number of technologists in the field to believe that batteries may finally be getting out of their rut.
“We’re in a golden age of new chemistry development which probably hasn’t been seen in thirty or 40 years, since the last energy crisis,” said Paul Albertus, a program manager at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. “It’s a pretty exciting time to be developing energy storage technology.

For the full story, see:
JOHN MARKOFF. “Creating a Safer Phone Battery (This One Won’t Catch Fire).” The New York Times (Mon., DEC. 12, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 11, 2016, and has the title “Designing a Safer Battery for Smartphones (That Won’t Catch Fire).”)

Tinkerer Won Nobel for Gene Targeting

(p. B15) Oliver Smithies, a British-born biochemist and inveterate tinkerer who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering a powerful tool for identifying the roles of individual genes in health and disease, died on Tuesday [January 10, 2017] in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 91.
. . .
Dr. Smithies’s discovery, known as gene targeting, allows scientists to disable individual genes in mice to understand what the genes do. The loss of a gene typically brings about changes in the appearance or the behavior of the mice, providing important clues about the gene’s function.
. . .
In addition to gene targeting, Dr. Smithies invented a method of separating proteins with a jelly made from ordinary potato starch, a major advance that was cheaper, easier and more precise than existing technologies. His invention, called gel electrophoresis, is in wide use today.
Behind Dr. Smithies’s breakthroughs were ingenious homemade contraptions cobbled from everyday objects and junk. He thought of himself as an inventor and toolmaker and acknowledged that he could not pass a rubbish bin without pausing to inspect the contents — a trait he said he shared with his paternal grandfather, who used to pick up nails and straighten them for later use.
His tinkering did not go unnoticed. Colleagues at Oxford University, where Dr. Smithies pursued his graduate studies, set aside their discarded equipment for him, labeling it, “NBGBOKFO,” or “No bloody good but O.K. for Oliver.”
. . .
To Dr. Smithies, the process of invention was straightforward. “You use whatever is lying around, and you see something that needs to be done, and you try to do it,” he said. “I think it is making things work, you know, somehow.”

For the full obituary, see:
DENISE GELLENE. “Oliver Smithies, Tinkerer Who Transformed Genetics and Won a Nobel, Dies at 91.” The New York Times (Thurs., JAN. 12, 2017): B15.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date JAN. 11, 2017.)