Category Archives: Science And Technology

Connecting The Dots, Science And Technology

Apple and Google Unite to Contact Trace Covid-19

The big tech giants Apple and Google are teaming up to help develop technology to contact users if they have been in contact with someone who has Covid-19.

Initially they hope to work with third party apps.

However, they hope the need for users to download an app will not be needed as users will be encouraged to have such a feature as standard.

They hope to use bluetooth technology to trace who a person has been in contact with, how close and for how long. This data would then determine the risk that a person could have contracted the virus.

However, many are alarmed at the privacy concerns us technology poses.

“Privacy, transparency and consent are of utmost importance in this effort and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders,” Apple and Google said in a joint statement.

“We will openly publish information about our work for others to analyse.”

President Trump said his administration needed time to consider the development.

“It’s very interesting, but a lot of people worry about it in terms of a person’s freedom,” he said during a White House press conference.

“We’re going to take… a very strong long at it, and we’ll let you know pretty soon.”

Read More: BBC

Science And Technology

Archbishops Asks Clergy to Pray Exorcism at this Time

Catholic Archbishop Vigano has asked bishops, and priests to pray exorcism at this time of “terrible tribulation”. He has said the Evil One has gone on a “frenzy” and has increase his attempts to “tempt souls into sin”.

The Archbishop has called on clergy to use Holy Saturday, traditionally a day of quiet meditation to be used. It is the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. And according to Catholic tradition is when Christ descended into hell to preach to the souls in torment.

Vilano said, “I should like to ask all my brother Bishops and Priests to join me as I recite this Exorcism, knowing the power of this Sacramental – especially when it is recited together with all other Priests – to help the Church in Her fight against Satan. I should also like to recommend that all of you wear a stole, the sign of your Priestly power, and Holy Water.”

Read More: Life Site News

News, Science And Technology

Covid-19: Why do More Men Die than Women?

As Covid-19 sweeps through nations at a seemingly unstoppable rate, scientists desperately try to understand it. Most importantly they are seeking to find out what makes one person more vulnerable than another.

One trend that has become apparent from the data across every country is men are at a higher risk of dying than women.

“We are seeing with every country that provides us with sex-disaggregated data that men are more likely to die from the virus, anything from 10 percent to more than twice as likely,” said professor Sarah Hawkes, the director of the UCL Centre for Gender and Global Health in the UK.

Scientists believe part of the disparity is driven by behaviour: men are more likely to smoke and drink heavily. However, this cannot explain the data entirely.

Hormonal differences are believed to also play a role; as well as genetic differences. Many of the genes that regulate the immune system are found on the X chromosome- men have one X chromosome whereas women have two.

“We know that women’s immune systems function differently to men’s – after all, women’s bodies are designed to host a foetus for nine months at a time without it being rejected as a foreign body,” professor Hawkes said.

In general women’s immune systems launch a better defence against infection and  viruses.

Dr Sabra Klein, an immunologist has said she is disappointed by the lack of awareness of this issue:

“I am disappointed that many of the public health officials around the world are not speaking out that being male is indeed a risk factor for a more severe outcome and, in particular, being an older male. I do think that there could be public heath messaging [that] could occur in that context.” she said.

Read More: France 24

Science And Technology

Ring Doorbell App’s Third Party Trackers

The tech website EFF has investigated the popular door bell app Ring. They found that the android version of the app is packed with third-party trackers. Ring sends out an array of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Ring has avoided a lot of scrutiny as it has successfully marketed itself as a company that helps customers with their personal security.

However, this investigation has drawn attention to the company for passing information, which is then used for marketing purposes, to branch.io, mixpanel.com, appsflyer.com and facebook.com.

It has also been found that Ring and the companies who have access to the users information have at times mismanaged this information. Also when data has been used lawfully it is not always clear to customers that their data has been passed onto third party, or how it is used.

Read More: EFF

Science And Technology

Alphabet CEO Larry Page to Step Down

Larry Page CEO of Alphabet the parent company of google has announced he is to step down. Current google CEO Sundar Pichai will take on the role of Alphabet CEO as well as his current responsibilities at Google. Co-Founder and President of Alphabet Sergey Brin will also step down, and the role of President eliminated.

Google’s shares increased at the news.

“With Alphabet now well-established, and Google and the Other Bets operating effectively as independent companies, it’s the natural time to simplify our management structure,” Page and Brin wrote in a blog post announcing the change. “We’ve never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there’s a better way to run the company. And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President.”

Read More: CNBC

Science And Technology

China Begins Work on 6G Technology

As telecommunications companies roll out 5G, China and the US are already urging companies to begin working of 6G.

The race to faster wireless connections are needed for the innovations in driverless cars and augmented reality. Especially as current bandwidths are clogged by the shear volume of data we are sending.

These technologies are already a point of tension between the US and China. The US have banned Huawei from using their equipment in the US 5G infrastructure after it was found that Huawei rerouted data through Chinese government servers.

Read More: Channel News Asia

Science And Technology

AI “Too Dangerous to Release” Comes Out into Wold

A new AI technology  known as “GPT-2” has been released. The technology is able to be fed a piece of text and accurately predict what would come next. The text would be indistinguishable from human text.

The technology is so powerful, its creators have only released a limited version to researchers. In the wrong hands the technology could be used for malicious purposes by scammers; and political and terror organisations to generate propaganda.

GPT-2 could become the text equivalent of “deep fakes” in the image field. The consequences for internet users would be individuals would not know if content were genuine or not. Requiring the public to be more skeptical of online content as well as better educated.

Read More: The Independent

Science And Technology

French Politicians Looking to Embrace Facial Recognition Technology

French politicians are looking at how to best utilise facial recognition technologies.  Over the summer French the interior ministry unveiled a new app, Alicem, allowing individuals with a biometric passport or electronic residence permit to identify themselves over the internet using the app.

Macron’s government are also planning to “supervise and assess” how else to use the technology.

However critics warn that Alicem is a step closer to a Chinese-style surveillance program, with questions asked as to how the data will be collected and used.

French authorities also want to harness the technology in the fight against terrorism and crime.

However the technology is still not perfect, and in a recent incident in London facial recognition technology resulted in the arrest of an innocent man.

Experts also warn about the threat hackers pose to huge data bases which contain the biomimetic data of individuals. They argue terrorists could hack such a database and remove information for a wanted criminal replacing it with that of an innocent individual. Pointing out that we are unable to maintain the security of peoples personal financial data; how can we expect to protect a persons facial identity?

Read More: France 24

Science And Technology

How Trustworthy is Science?

Any student of science knows that the first lesson is in scientific method. That this enables us to put our trust in science. Scientific method leads on the idea  of reproducibility. This means that an idea or theory can only be accepted as true if it is proven through experimental means, and those results have to be reproducible, i.e. someone repeating your experiment will get the same result. However a study found that only 25% of papers were reproducible. Why is this the case? And what does it mean for science?