Google’s Academic Influence Campaign: It's Complicated
Update: Google's Transparency Project has posted an addendum to its Academics Inc. report. Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published a detailed investigation showing that Google has been systematically paying academics to publish research favorable to the company’s policy and business positions—often without disclosure of the financial relationship. Concurrently, an organization called the Campaign…
High-Res Satellites Want to Track Human Activity From Space
Hopkinsville, Kentucky, is normally a mid-size town, home to 32,000 people and a big bowling ball manufacturer. But on August 21, its human density more than tripled, as around 100,000 people swarmed toward the total solar eclipse. Hundreds of miles above the crowd, high-resolution satellites stared down, snapping images of the sprawl. These satellites belong…
For Scientists Predicting Sea Level Rise, Wind Is the Biggest Unknown
From the air, the largest glacier on the biggest ice sheet in the world looks the same as it has for centuries; massive, stable, blindingly white. But beneath the surface it’s a totally different story. East Antarctica’s Totten Glacier is melting, fast, from below. Thanks to warm ocean upwellings flowing into the glacier—in some places…
AI Research Is in Desperate Need of an Ethical Watchdog
About a week ago, Stanford University researchers posted online a study on the latest dystopian AI: They'd made a machine learning algorithm that essentially works as gaydar. After training it with tens of thousands of photographs from dating sites, the algorithm could perform better than a human judge in specific instances. For example, when given…
A Keen-Eyed Robot Goes to Work for a Paralyzed Veteran
In December of 2016, a team of researchers showed up at Romy Camargo's house with a better-than-average holiday gift. The front of the nondescript silver box lowered—like one of those spaceship doors from Star Wars, minus the dramatic clouds of vapor—to reveal a fetching robot, with cameras for eyes and a flatscreen for a hat.…
Why Men Don’t Believe the Data on Gender Bias in Science
Earlier this summer Google engineer James Damore posted a treatise about gender differences on an internal company message board and was subsequently fired. The memo ignited a firestorm of debate about sex discrimination in Silicon Valley; this followed months of reporting on accusations of harassment at Uber and elsewhere. Sex discrimination and harassment in tech,…
What's Inside a Magical (and Flammable) Grease-Lifting Cleaner
In 1954, Italian inventor Carlo Vanoni swelled with patriotic pride when he learned that his fellow countrymen had summited K2, the second-tallest mountain in the world. He was so proud, in fact, that he started naming all his formulas after it: K2a, K2b, K2c, and on down the alphabet. K2r turned out to be his…
To Protect Genetic Privacy, Encrypt Your DNA
In 2007, DNA pioneer James Watson became the first person to have his entire genome sequenced—making all of his 6 billion base pairs publicly available for research. Well, almost all of them. He left one spot blank, on the long arm of chromosome 19, where a gene called APOE lives. Certain variations in APOE increase…
Helix’s Bold Plan to Be Your One Stop Personal Genomics Shop
Every day you make thousands of decisions, from the imperceptibly quotidian to those that will change your life forever. But what if instead of listening to the little voice inside your head, you listened to your genes? Your DNA makes you who you are, so theoretically, it could help dictate your daily workout or pick…
SpaceX's Top Secret Zuma Mission Set to Launch
Update: On January 7, 2018 at 8pm EST, SpaceX successfully launched the Zuma mission and landed its Falcon 9 rocket back on Earth. The launch marks the company's first mission of 2018, and its 21st successful rocket landing. Usually, when a SpaceX thing unexpectedly goes boom, it grounds the company for months and raises questions…