Category: Technology

Modern Technology Adds to Knowledge of Culture and Religion

(p. A6) Nearly half a century ago, archaeologists found a charred ancient scroll in the ark of a synagogue on the western shore of the Dead Sea.
The lump of carbonized parchment could not be opened or read. Its curators did nothing but conserve it, hoping that new technology might one day emerge to make the scroll legible.
Just such a technology has now been perfected by computer scientists at the University of Kentucky. Working with biblical scholars in Jerusalem, they have used a computer to unfurl a digital image of the scroll.
It turns out to hold a fragment identical to the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible and, at nearly 2,000 years old, is the earliest instance of the text.
The writing retrieved by the computer from the digital image of the unopened scroll is amazingly clear and legible, in contrast to the scroll’s blackened and beaten-up exterior. “Never in our wildest dreams did we think anything would come of it,” said Pnina Shor, the head of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Scholars say this remarkable new technique may make it possible to read other scrolls too brittle to be unrolled.
. . .
The experts say this new method may make it possible to read other ancient scrolls, including several Dead Sea scrolls and about 300 carbonized ones from Herculaneum, which were destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.
. . .
The feat of recovering the text was made possible by software programs developed by W. Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky. Inspired by the hope of reading the many charred and unopenable scrolls found at Herculaneum, near Pompeii in Italy, Dr. Seales has been working for the last 13 years on ways to read the text inside an ancient scroll.
. . .
He succeeded in 2009 in working out the physical structure of the ruffled layers of papyrus in a Herculaneum scroll.
He has since developed a method, called virtual unwrapping, to model the surface of an ancient scroll in the form of a mesh of tiny triangles. Each triangle can be resized by the computer until the virtual surface makes the best fit to the internal structure of the scroll, as revealed by the scanning method. The blobs of ink are assigned to their right place on the structure, and the computer then unfolds the whole 3-D structure into a 2-D sheet.

For the full story, see:
NICHOLAS WADE. “Technology Unlocks Secrets of a Biblical Scroll.” The New York Times (Thurs., SEPT. 22, 2016): A6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date SEPT. 21, 2016, and has the title “Modern Technology Unlocks Secrets of a Damaged Biblical Scroll.”)

Denmark Drones Saving Lives

(p. B1) Mr. McLinden is a member of a group of middle-aged emergency workers taking part in a trial to jump-start the use of unmanned aircraft by Europe’s emergency services. The goal is to give the region a head start over the United States and elsewhere in using drones to tackle real-world emergencies.
The “drone school” builds on Europe’s worldwide lead in giving public groups and companies relatively free rein to experiment with unmanned aircraft. If everything goes as planned, the project’s backers hope government agencies in Europe and farther afield can piggyback on the experiences, helping to transform drones from recreational toys to lifesaving tools.
“For us, this technology is a game-changer,” said Mr. McLinden, who traveled to Copenhagen (p. B4) for a three-day training course with two colleagues from the Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service. They will start offering 24/7 drone support — allowing colleagues, for example, to monitor accidents from 300 feet above — across central Wales later this month.
“Drones aren’t going to replace what we do,” Mr. McLinden added. “But anything that we can do to give our crews an advantage, that’s great.”
. . .
In a somewhat stuffy classroom at a disused fire station in Copenhagen, Thomas Sylvest gave advice to Mr. McLinden and others from his two years of flying. As Denmark’s first, and so far only, emergency service drone pilot, Mr. Sylvest has responded to things as varied as missing person cases and fires, often receiving calls late at night.
Mr. Sylvest, a fast-talking 50-year-old, offered tips on how best to share videos streamed directly from drones to commanders on the ground. During a recent fire in downtown Copenhagen, Mr. Sylvest said, he was able to beam high-definition images from high above, allowing his bosses to judge if a building’s walls would collapse (they did not). And when the police called him out last year after a man was reported missing, he flew his drone along a stretch of train tracks to guide colleagues on where best to look. (The man was found.)

For the full story, see:
MARK SCOTT. “Emergency Workers Turn to Drones to Save Lives.” The New York Times (Mon., JUNE 20, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JUNE 19, 2016, and has the title “Europe’s Emergency Workers Turn to Drones to Save Lives.”)

Crony Credentialism Is Regulatory Barrier to Telemedicine

(p. A11) Telemedicine has made exciting advances in recent years. Remote access to experts lets patients in stroke, neonatal and intensive-care units get better treatment at a lower cost than ever before. In rural communities, the technology improves timely access to care and reduces expensive medevac trips. Remote-monitoring technology lets patients with chronic conditions live at home rather than in an assisted-living facility.
Yet while telemedicine can connect a patient in rural Idaho with top specialists in New York, it often runs into a brick wall at state lines. Instead of welcoming the benefits of telemedicine, state governments and entrenched interests use licensing laws to make it difficult for out-of-state experts to offer remote care.
. . .
Using its power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, Congress could pass legislation to define where a physician practices medicine to be the location of the physician, rather than the location of the patient, as states currently do. Physicians would need only one license, that of their home state, and would work under its particular rules and regulations.
This would allow licensed physicians to treat patients in all 50 states. It would greatly expand access to quality medical care by freeing millions of patients to seek services from specialists around the country without the immense travel costs involved.

For the full commentary, see:

SHIRLEY SVORNY. “Telemedicine Runs Into Crony Doctoring; State medical-licensing barriers protect local MDs and deny patients access to remote-care physicians.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., July 23, 2016): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JUNE 22, 2016.)

Creative Destruction of Polaroid by Digital Photography

(p. A17) There aren’t many 3-year-olds who can take credit for inspiring a revolution in the way millions of people view the world. According to a legend that begins Peter Buse’s welcome history of the Polaroid company, “The Camera Does the Rest,” it was engineer Edwin Land’s daughter, Jennifer, who asked one evening in 1943 why it took so long to view the photographs that the family had shot while on vacation in Santa Fe, N.M. Land set out on a walk to ponder that question and, so the story goes, returned six hours later with an answer that would transform the hidebound practice of photography: the instant snapshot.
. . .
“In 1974 alone there were about 1 billion Polaroid images made, and by 1976 . . . 15 billion in total,” the author writes, “and this before the real explosion in Polaroid photography in the late 1970s and early 1980s.” The party might have gone on forever had it not been for the same type of creative destruction that Polaroid itself had stirred up in the 1940s–this time brought about by the digital revolution.
By the time the company joined that revolution in the 1990s, it was too late. Their digital products were inferior to those being turned out by competing companies. Polaroid had always done well selling cameras, but the real money was in the film, the demand for which was falling precipitately. In July 1997, the company’s stock price was $60.51. Four years later, as the company spiraled toward bankruptcy, it was $0.49. The author writes that Polaroid joined the “analog scrap heap” that included “vinyl turntables and the Sony Walkman.”​

For the full review, see:
PATRICK COOKE. “BOOKSHELF; The Original Instagram; Purists grumbled that Polaroids were ephemeral, but Ansel Adams created some of his most enduring photographs using the camera.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., May 17, 2016): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 16, 2016.)

The book under review, is:
Buse, Peter. The Camera Does the Rest: How Polaroid Changed Photography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Tesla and Google Bet on Different Paths to Driverless Cars

(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — In Silicon Valley, where companies big and small are at work on self-driving cars, there have been a variety of approaches, and even some false starts.
The most divergent paths may be the ones taken by Tesla, which is already selling cars that have some rudimentary self-driving functions, and Google, which is still very much in experimental mode.
Google’s initial efforts in 2010 focused on cars that would drive themselves, but with a person behind the wheel to take over at the first sign of trouble and a second technician monitoring the navigational computer.
As a general concept, Google was trying to achieve the same goal as Tesla is claiming with the Autopilot feature it has promoted with the Model S, which has hands-free technology that has come under scrutiny after a fatal accident on a Florida highway.
But Google decided to play down the vigilant-human approach after an experiment in 2013, when the company let some of its employees sit behind the wheel of the self-driving cars on their daily commutes.
Engineers using onboard video cameras to remotely monitor the results were alarmed by what (p. B5) they observed — a range of distracted-driving behavior that included falling asleep.
“We saw stuff that made us a little nervous,” Christopher Urmson, a former Carnegie Mellon University roboticist who directs the car project at Google, said at the time.
The experiment convinced the engineers that it might not be possible to have a human driver quickly snap back to “situational awareness,” the reflexive response required for a person to handle a split-second crisis.
So Google engineers chose another route, taking the human driver completely out of the loop. They created a fleet of cars without brake pedals, accelerators or steering wheels, and designed to travel no faster than 25 miles an hour.
For good measure they added a heavy layer of foam to the front of their cars and a plastic windshield, should the car make a mistake. While not suitable for high-speed interstate road trips, such cars might one day be able to function as, say, robotic taxis in stop-and-go urban settings.

For the full story, see:
JOHN MARKOFF. “Tesla and Google Take Two Roads to Driverless Car.” The New York Times (Tues., JULY 5, 2016): B1 & B5.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JULY 4, 2016, and has the title “Tesla and Google Take Different Roads to Self-Driving Car.”)

Technology Can Restore Hand Control to Quadriplegic

(p. A1) Five years ago, a college freshman named Ian Burkhart dived into a wave at a beach off the Outer Banks in North Carolina and, in a freakish accident, broke his neck on the sandy floor, permanently losing the feeling in his hands and legs.
On Wednesday [April 13, 2016], doctors reported that Mr. Burkhart, 24, had regained control over his right hand and fingers, using technology that transmits his thoughts directly to his hand muscles and bypasses his spinal injury. The doctors’ study, published by the journal Nature, is the first account of limb reanimation, as it is known, in a person with quadriplegia.
Doctors implanted a chip in Mr. Burkhart’s brain two years ago. Seated in a lab with the implant connected through a computer to a sleeve on his arm, he was able to learn by repetition and arduous practice to focus his thoughts to make his hand pour from a bottle, and to pick up a straw and stir. He was even able to play a guitar video game.
. . .
“Watching him close his hand for the first time — I mean, it was a surreal moment,” Dr. Rezai said. “We all just looked at each other and thought, ‘O.K., the work is just starting.'”
After a year of training, Mr. Burkhart was able to pick up a bottle and pour the contents into a jar, and to pick up a straw and stir. The doctors, though delighted, said that more advances would be necessary to make the bypass system practical, affordable and less invasive, most likely through wireless technology. But the improvement was significant enough, at least in the lab, that rehabilitation specialists could reclassify Mr. Burkhart’s disability from a severe C5 function to a less severe C7 designation.
For now, the funding for the project, which includes money from Ohio State, Battelle and private donors, is set to run out this year — and with it, Mr. Burkhart’s experience of restored movement.
“That’s going to be difficult, because I’ve enjoyed it so much,” Mr. Burkhart said. “If I could take the thing home, it would give me so much more independence. Now, I’ve got to rely on someone else for so many things, like getting dressed, brushing my teeth — all that. I just want other people to hear about this and know that there’s hope. Something will come around that makes living with this injury better.”

For the full story, see:
BENEDICT CAREY. “Quadriplegic Gets Use of Hand from Chip Placed in His Brain.” The New York Times (Thurs., APRIL 14, 2016): A1 & A16.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 13, 2016, and has the title “Chip, Implanted in Brain, Helps Paralyzed Man Regain Control of Hand.”)

The scientific article in Nature reporting the advance, is:
Bouton, Chad E., Ammar Shaikhouni, Nicholas V. Annetta, Marcia A. Bockbrader, David A. Friedenberg, Dylan M. Nielson, Gaurav Sharma, Per B. Sederberg, Bradley C. Glenn, W. Jerry Mysiw, Austin G. Morgan, Milind Deogaonkar, and Ali R. Rezai. “Restoring Cortical Control of Functional Movement in a Human with Quadriplegia.” Nature 533, no. 7602 (May 12, 2016): 247-50.

Scientific Knowledge Matters More than Myth Because of Its Practical Effectiveness

(p. C6) Stories matter; knowledge matters more.
“When we talk about the big bang or the fabric of space,” . . . [Carlo Rovelli] writes, “what we are doing is not a continuation of the free and fantastic stories that humans have told nightly around campfires for hundreds of thousands of years.” You might tell a great campfire story about an antelope, he comments. Knowing how to track and kill one is more relevant to survival.
“Myths nourish science, and science nourishes myth,” Mr. Rovelli says. “But the value of knowledge remains. If we can find the antelope, we can eat.”

For the full review, see:
DWIGHT GARNER. “Books of The Times; A Vast Cosmos, Made Bite-Size and Delectable.” The New York Times (Weds., MARCH 23, 2016): C1 & C6.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed name, added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date MARCH 22, 2016, and has the title “Books of The Times; Review: ‘Seven Brief Lessons on Physics’ Is Long on Knowledge.”)

The book under review, is:
Rovelli, Carlo. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. New York: Riverhead Books, 2016.

Federal Regulations Restrict Concrete Innovation

(p. B1) Chris Tuan, a professor of civil engineering for the University of Nebraska at the Peter Kiewit Institute, has been perfecting an electrically semiconductive concrete over the past 20 years.
The mixture includes a 20 percent mix of steel fibers, shavings and carbon added to a traditional concrete mix. Steel reinforcing bars serve as the conductor, and once electricity is added, the concrete heats to 35 to 40 degrees — just enough to melt the ice and snow.
. . .
For now, the concrete can’t be used in public spaces. Anything exposed and electrified above 48 volts — much less than the 208 volts used in Tuan’s concrete — is considered high voltage and is not allowed. Federal law will have to be rewritten to change that.
. . .
Tuan said traditional concrete needs to be replaced every five years or so. Without chemical use, the electric concrete lasts much longer, with fewer potholes. His concrete is also maintenance-free, because the power cords and conductive rods are encased in the concrete and not exposed to the elements.
. . .
In 2013 Tuan also implemented his concrete on ramps in China. He recently installed a private driveway in Regency using the legally allowed 48-volt limit, which is less energy efficient.
“If the government or if insurance agencies approve this technology, then everybody can use it,” Tuan said. “But right now, it’s almost cost prohibitive.”

For the full story, see:
Reece Ristau. “In Concrete World, This Is Hot Stuff.” Omaha World-Herald (Tues., JAN. 15, 2016): B1 & B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Special Concrete Mix Can Melt Snow and Ice All by Itself — Just Add Electricity.”)

The Use of Virtual Reality (VR) in Education and Training

(p. B5) The thing that’s especially difficult to convey about “room-scale” VR–the kind enabled by the HTC Vive, where you can actually walk around with a headset on, exploring a virtual environment in exactly the same way you would experience a real one–is just how compelling it is. “Any VR experience is so much more engrossing than any you’d have on a flat screen,” says Patrick Hackett, senior user interface designer at Google for the Google Cardboard VR headset.
That has potentially huge implications for education.
Amir Rubin, head of VR software company Sixense, is working with a client on a system to train thousands of technicians to decommission nuclear-power plants. “Any application that has high liability, where teaching students has a high cost of insurance, and is high risk, we’re seeing people ask for VR training,” says Mr. Rubin. At Stanford, Dr. Bailenson is taking students on virtual tours of the world’s great works of art–letting them clamber over and deeply experience, for example, Michelangelo’s “David.”

For the full commentary, see:
CHRISTOPHER MIMS. “Virtual Reality Isn’t Just About Games.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Aug. 3, 2015): B1 & B5.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 2, 2015.)

Old Photographic Technology Makes a Limited Comeback

(p. C1) The Phoenix artist Annie Lopez wanted to stand out among her contemporary peers. Instead of trying to invent something utterly new, she has been turning to a 174-year-old photographic printing process — cyanotypes, once used for copying architectural drawings — and giving it her own distinctive twist.
Ms. Lopez created a dress pattern cut from tamale wrapping paper and printed all over with cyanotypes, which have a distinctly cyan-blue color. She printed the cyanotypes herself, in a process that took about 25 minutes per sheet of images. No darkroom was needed.
That ease has brought cyanotypes roaring back to relevance, attracting a surprising number of true-blue adherents showing their work in galleries.
, , ,
(p. C2) Anna Atkins, considered by many to be the first female photographer and the first person to create a book of photo-based images, blended science and art in botanical cyanotypes, starting in the 1840s. Atkins’s “Honey Locust Leaf and Pod” (circa 1854) is featured in the Worcester show.
The fine-art application was scarce for more than a century after Atkins’s day — rare enough that Steichen once called his use of cyanotypes a “secret” in a letter to his friend and mentor Alfred Stieglitz. For fine artists, it was often considered an “ugly stepchild” of the larger medium, Ms. Burns said, “because it was too easy.”
Amateurs embraced cyanotypes more easily. “In terms of popular usage they were big until the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and women’s periodicals were giving people instructions on how to make them,” Ms. Burns said. “But then they fell off the map of photography.”
Well into the 20th century, the long-dormant medium was awakened by artists looking for something different.
“As of the 1960s, people started to be interested in reviving old photo processes,” said Dusan Stulik, a former senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute who has studied cyanotypes for decades. “Cyanotypes handle subtle light well, and they are fairly sturdy.”
On a gut level, cyanotypes produce a result that is universal. “The color blue strikes some chord in us that goes beyond words,” said the San Francisco photography dealer Jeffrey Fraenkel. “It’s that simple.”

For the full story, see:
TED LOOS. “Photography’s Stepchild Snaps Back.” The New York Times (Sat., Feb. 6, 2016): C1-C2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Feb. 5, 2016, and has the title “Cyanotype, Photography’s Blue Period, Is Making a Comeback.”)

New Middle-Skill Jobs Combine Technical and Social Skills

DemingGraphOnMathSocialSkillJobs2015-10-18.jpgSource of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below, based on Deming paper cited further below.

(p. 4) For all the jobs that machines can now do — whether performing surgery, driving cars or serving food — they still lack one distinctly human trait. They have no social skills.

Yet skills like cooperation, empathy and flexibility have become increasingly vital in modern-day work. Occupations that require strong social skills have grown much more than others since 1980, according to new research. And the only occupations that have shown consistent wage growth since 2000 require both cognitive and social skills.
The findings help explain a mystery that has been puzzling economists: the slowdown in the growth even of high-skill jobs. The jobs hit hardest seem to be those that don’t require social skills, throughout the wage spectrum.
“As I’m speaking with you, I need to think about what’s going on in your head — ‘Is she bored? Am I giving her too much information?’ — and I have to adjust my behavior all the time,” said David Deming, associate professor of education and economics at Harvard University and author of a new study. “That’s a really hard thing to program, so it’s growing as a share of jobs.”
. . .
“If it’s just technical skill, there’s a reasonable chance it can be automated, and if it’s just being empathetic or flexible, there’s an infinite supply of people, so a job won’t be well paid,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s the interaction of both that is virtuous.”
Mr. Deming’s conclusions are supported by previous research, including that of Mr. Autor. Mr. Autor has written that traditional middle-skill jobs, like clerical or factory work, have been hollowed out by technology. The new middle-skill jobs combine technical and interpersonal expertise, like physical therapy or general contracting.
James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, did groundbreaking work concluding that noncognitive skills like character, dependability and perseverance are as important as cognitive achievement. They can be taught, he said, yet American schools don’t necessarily do so.

For the full commentary, see:
Claire Cain Miller. “The Upshot; The Best Jobs Require Social Skills.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., OCT. 18, 2015): 4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date OCT. 16, 2015, and has the title “The Upshot; Why What You Learned in Preschool Is Crucial at Work.”)

The Deming paper referred to above, is:
Deming, David J. “The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market.” National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., NBER Working Paper # 21473, Aug. 2015.

The Autor paper referred to above, is:
Autor, David. “Polanyi’s Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth.” National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., NBER Working Paper # 20485, Sept. 2014.

The Heckman paper referred to above, is:
Heckman, James J., Jora Stixrud, and Sergio Urzua. “The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labor Market Outcomes and Social Behavior.” Journal of Labor Economics 24, no. 3 (July 2006): 411-82.