PBS ANNOUNCES NEW INITIATIVES AND PROGRAMMING AT VIRTUAL WINTER TCA PRESS TOUR

January 21, 2022 Audrey

ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — PBS presents its virtual winter Press Tour with new programming and initiatives on January 18, 19 & 20. Please see below for a summary of announcements made by PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger.

PBS presents its virtual winter Press Tour with new programming and initiatives on January 18, 19 & 20.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY and INCLUSION INITIATIVES

PBS Makes Multi-Million Dollar Commitment to Advance the Work of Mid-Career, Diverse Creators

PBS commits $3.6 million to Firelight Media’s William Greaves Fund

As part of a new partnership with Firelight Media, the non-profit filmmaking organization founded by Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith, PBS is committing $3.6 million over the course of three years to support mid-career nonfiction filmmakers through the William Greaves Fund. The Fund is designed to address the persistent structural challenges many filmmakers face after producing their first films, so that they can remain in the field and continue to create vital stories focused on underrepresented people and topics.

PBS Announces Long-Term Initiative to Further Support Diverse Voices Across Public Media

PBS will establish a new effort in support of long-term, ongoing and comprehensive initiatives to diversify public media. This project further advances PBS’s commitment to elevate diverse voices and perspectives and accelerate the transformation of public media’s producing ecosystem to include more diverse perspectives in production roles. Key elements of this comprehensive initiative include an Early-Career Filmmaker Mentorship Program, Executive Fellowship Program, and dynamic accountability and reporting structures.

PBS DIGITAL STUDIOS

PBS Digital Studios Launches First-Ever Podcasts Based on Popular Digital Series IT’S LIT! and EONS

PRX to Distribute IT’S LIT! [UNABRIDGED] and EONS: MYSTERIES OF DEEP TIME in February and March 2022

PBS announced the launch of the first-ever podcasts for PBS Digital Studios, IT’S LIT! [UNABRIDGED] and EONS: MYSTERIES OF DEEP TIME. Inspired by the popular YouTube series and debuting in February 2022, IT’S LIT! unpacks popular and classic literature and their authors. Premiering in March of 2022, EONS, another popular PBS Digital Studios YouTube series, explores prehistoric life on Earth. Podcast listeners will have the opportunity to explore these subjects in new ways that are specific to the audio format. IT’S LIT! [UNABRIDGED] and EONS: MYSTERIES OF DEEP TIME will each consist of 10 episodes. Both projects are distributed by the public media organization PRX, which will enable PBS Digital Studios to build on its successes on YouTube and expand into audio storytelling.

PBS PROGRAMMING

PBS and WETA Announce New Documentary Series from McGee Media and Inkwell Media
Making Black America: Through the Grapevine with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. To Premiere Fall 2022

Four-Part Series Explores Black Americans’ Centuries-Long History of Establishing Communities and Attaining Social, Political and Economic Success in the Face of Racial Segregation

MAKING BLACK AMERICA: THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE, a four-part series from executive producer, host and writer Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., will premiere in Fall 2022 on PBS stations nationwide. In this latest

Trouble For Technology | Seeking Alpha

January 20, 2022 Audrey

It’s been a rough start for the tech heavy NASDAQ in 2022. The media fan favorite benchmark has been on fire in recent years. After gaining over 40% in 2020 despite the outbreak of the COVID crisis, the NASDAQ tacked on another 20% in 2021. And the index was no slouch in the late 2010s, having advanced by more than 65% from 2017 to 2019. So while the New Year is still very young, it is still notable that the NASDAQ Composite Index is off by nearly 5% so far in 2022. Is this stumble out of the gates a fleeting breather, or is it an early sign of what may come for the rest of 2022?

It ain’t cool being no tech turkey so close to Thanksgiving. It should be noted at the outset that the recent NASDAQ weakness is not necessarily a 2022 thing. Instead, the slide in the NASDAQ dates back a couple of months to around Thanksgiving. It was right before Thanksgiving that we saw the NASDAQ grind out two successive new all-time highs. But since November 22, the index has been in a marginally downward sloping trading channel with a successive series of lower highs and lower lows.

The initial bullish take on the chart above is the following. First of all, the NASDAQ has been a rock star for several years now, so the fact that it has been drifting lower for the last several weeks is a healthy and long overdue period of consolidation if nothing else. And even if the NASDAQ is in a marginal downtrend for the time being, it has just bounced off the bottom of this trading channel and has the potential to rally higher to the 15,300 to 15,600 range over the coming weeks even within this trading range.

NASDAQ uptrend still very much intact. If one zooms out and examines a longer-term view of the NASDAQ, this would provide further support to a still optimistic view on the tech heavy index. For once the NASDAQ broke out above long-term uptrend resistance in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the COVID outbreak, it has been off to the races to the upside since. These are very constructive points in support of the Composite Index.

That pesky mean regression thing. This leads us to our first problem confronting the NASDAQ in general and the tech sector in particular (more on this in a minute) as we begin making our way through 2022. Note in the chart above how the NASDAQ kept hitting the upward sloping blue line from 2018 to 2020. Although it deviated meaningfully to the downside over the period from 2018 through the first half of 2020, the NASDAQ would eventually rally and hit this line. And once it broke out above this line in mid-2020, it still came back down to hit it twice before surging higher starting in November 2020. While this surge to

A Transistor for Sound Points Toward Whole New Electronics

January 20, 2022 Audrey

While machine learning has been around a long time, deep learning has taken on a life of its own lately. The reason for that has mostly to do with the increasing amounts of computing power that have become widely available—along with the burgeoning quantities of data that can be easily harvested and used to train neural networks.

The amount of computing power at people’s fingertips started growing in leaps and bounds at the turn of the millennium, when graphical processing units (GPUs) began to be
harnessed for nongraphical calculations, a trend that has become increasingly pervasive over the past decade. But the computing demands of deep learning have been rising even faster. This dynamic has spurred engineers to develop electronic hardware accelerators specifically targeted to deep learning, Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) being a prime example.

Here, I will describe a very different approach to this problem—using optical processors to carry out neural-network calculations with photons instead of electrons. To understand how optics can serve here, you need to know a little bit about how computers currently carry out neural-network calculations. So bear with me as I outline what goes on under the hood.

Almost invariably, artificial neurons are constructed using special software running on digital electronic computers of some sort. That software provides a given neuron with multiple inputs and one output. The state of each neuron depends on the weighted sum of its inputs, to which a nonlinear function, called an activation function, is applied. The result, the output of this neuron, then becomes an input for various other neurons.

Reducing the energy needs of neural networks might require computing with light

For computational efficiency, these neurons are grouped into layers, with neurons connected only to neurons in adjacent layers. The benefit of arranging things that way, as opposed to allowing connections between any two neurons, is that it allows certain mathematical tricks of linear algebra to be used to speed the calculations.

While they are not the whole story, these linear-algebra calculations are the most computationally demanding part of deep learning, particularly as the size of the network grows. This is true for both training (the process of determining what weights to apply to the inputs for each neuron) and for inference (when the neural network is providing the desired results).

What are these mysterious linear-algebra calculations? They aren’t so complicated really. They involve operations on
matrices, which are just rectangular arrays of numbers—spreadsheets if you will, minus the descriptive column headers you might find in a typical Excel file.

This is great news because modern computer hardware has been very well optimized for matrix operations, which were the bread and butter of high-performance computing long before deep learning became popular. The relevant matrix calculations for deep learning boil down to a large number of multiply-and-accumulate operations, whereby pairs of numbers are multiplied together and their products are added up.

Over the years, deep learning has required an ever-growing number of these multiply-and-accumulate operations. Consider

Would you play a video match for 500 hours? | Online games

January 20, 2022 Audrey

In the wintertime of 1996, I just about dropped my job since of the acclaimed management sim Civilization II. I was intended to be reviewing it for the movie recreation magazine Edge, exactly where I was a fledgling team writer. But I bought so hooked, participating in it was all I did for 3 months. Throughout that time period I ate, slept and drank Civilization II. At the close, I handed in my incredibly thorough two-page assessment: the only factor I experienced submitted for the entire concern. I was supposed to be producing 25 internet pages a month. My editor was … displeased.

On Saturday evening, movie recreation publisher Techland proudly tweeted that if gamers hoped to absolutely complete its forthcoming apocalyptic journey Dying Light-weight 2, they would have to have close to 500 several hours – “almost as long as it would consider you to stroll from Warsaw to Madrid”. The message instantly provoked a storm of controversy. A lot of respondents were important, complaining that there wasn’t a probability they’d be able to locate more than enough time for this sort of a problem. Author Andy Kelly summed up it up by tweeting: “How not to industry a activity to any person about 30 years outdated.”

For gamers with demanding work opportunities, family members and other interests, the prospect of obtaining to put aside 500 hours to complete a recreation about slaughtering zombies appeared also exhausting to contemplate. Other commentators saw it as a image of unhealthy games marketplace techniques, in which developers melt away themselves out through many years of crunch to provide gigantic video games, setting impossibly substantial targets – only for the match to fall shorter, demanding months of bug-chasing. “Easily the most poisonous and damaging way to market and established expectations for online video game titles,” tweeted Luke Plunkett of game titles web site Kotaku. “Well carried out to every person included.”

Techland instantly clarified its unique post. “Note: It is about 100% completion charge,” the firm described, giving an estimate of 80-100 hours for most gamers to end the most important story and all the facet-quests. But by then the 500-hour figure had stuck.

The detail is, as my Civilization expertise taught me, there are lots of players who do worth shelling out lots of hundreds of hrs with a game, immersing by themselves in the world and its group for months or even a long time. In your teens and 20s, when you have number of duties, unquestionably burying oneself in a sprawling journey is a real take care of, like having dropped in a large fantasy novel. Today, online games this kind of as Minecraft and Fortnite totally deficiency definitive endings and are far more like social platforms than online games a big share of supporters will be paying countless numbers of hrs in people virtual getaways. Request players what games (or collection) they’ve invested the most time on, and the answers selection from infinite multiplayer sci-fi shooter Destiny

Convincing Your Business Leaders to Spend in New Technology

January 19, 2022 Audrey

Human conclusion creating is a challenging phenomenon. A lot of scientific studies on the subject highlight the parameters defining our mental procedures, even if they can’t completely clarify them. These research often locate that we can be guided to an consequence that we know is against our finest interests. And this is the case in business, much too.

It is uncomplicated to perspective company choice building as anything steeped in thorough consideration — a binary procedure led by facts and greatest exercise. However, businesses are in the end run by human beings. Commercial development is decided by the alternatives that we make, possibly by itself or as a group.

As a final result, the unpredictability of the human mind can influence a vary of business enterprise selections. This is even much more pronounced when processing the results of technological know-how-connected conclusions, which teases out every single dimension of our psyche. This is since for lots of businesses, particularly tiny and mid-sized corporations, new tech is continue to incredibly significantly a leap into the unknown.

In some cases, when faced with a difficult determination, we need a catalyst to pressure us to make it. The Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, accelerated technological innovation adoption in many organizations, who took the leap and embraced new electronic applications to endure. Though numerous smaller-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) established up internet sites or e-commerce platforms to approach on line orders, a substantial part were being less inclined to consider the plunge.

I a short while ago collaborated with Xero on a behavioral science analyze that explored the psychological limitations to digital adoption. It uncovered that there remains a resistance to adjust and a skepticism toward technological know-how that prevents popular uptake. This is inspite of the clear benefits it delivers.

The Variables Driving Electronic Apathy

Though six out of 10 organizations claimed to be self-assured when embracing new technological know-how, there was also a very clear feeling of apathy, with only a few out of 10 contemplating by themselves even worse off if electronic expenditure is postponed.

It’s no shock that variables these as charge, and the availability of competent workers, can stall the pursuit of digital methods. Additional stunning, on the other hand, was the observed inertia close to technology (specifically at periods that necessitate digitalization to keep on being agile), which can be defined by psychological variables keeping small business leaders back again.

Knowing Resistance to Modify

Immediately after a turbulent pair of years, from the pandemic to political upheaval, you may possibly imagine that mid-sized enterprises would be accustomed to regular modify. Given the around-continuous condition of flux, it would be reasonable to assume that they may possibly be additional inclined to embrace new procedures or tools to get on their own back again on keep track of, adapt and thrive in an growing electronic overall economy.

In its place, lots of nonetheless opt to keep the status quo. In accordance to the Xero review, a good quantity of firms nonetheless grapple with the

“Bosom peril” is not “breast cancer”: How bizarre computer-generated phrases support researchers uncover scientific publishing fraud

January 19, 2022 Audrey

In 2020, in spite of the COVID pandemic, experts authored 6 million peer-reviewed publications, a 10 per cent raise compared to 2019. At 1st glance this huge quantity would seem like a superior factor, a constructive indicator of science advancing and awareness spreading. Between these millions of papers, nevertheless, are countless numbers of fabricated articles, many from academics who really feel compelled by a publish-or-perish mentality to deliver, even if it usually means dishonest.

But in a new twist to the age-aged problem of academic fraud, present day plagiarists are earning use of software package and perhaps even rising AI technologies to draft articles—and they are having absent with it.

The growth in analysis publication blended with the availability of new digital technologies recommend pc-mediated fraud in scientific publication is only most likely to get even worse. Fraud like this not only influences the scientists and publications included, but it can complicate scientific collaboration and slow down the rate of study. Possibly the most risky final result is that fraud erodes the public’s trust in scientific study. Finding these instances is for that reason a essential process for the scientific neighborhood.

We have been able to place fraudulent study thanks in large portion to one particular important tell that an article has been artificially manipulated: The nonsensical “tortured phrases” that fraudsters use in place of common phrases to stay away from anti-plagiarism computer software. Our laptop or computer process, which we named the Problematic Paper Screener, queries by means of printed science and seeks out tortured phrases in purchase to uncover suspect work. Though this technique functions, as AI engineering improves, spotting these fakes will most likely develop into more challenging, increasing the possibility that much more faux science makes it into journals.

What are tortured phrases? A tortured phrase is an recognized scientific principle paraphrased into a nonsensical sequence of words and phrases. “Artificial intelligence” gets to be “counterfeit consciousness.” “Mean sq. error” gets “mean sq. blunder.” “Signal to noise” results in being “flag to clamor.” “Breast cancer” will become “Bosom peril.” Academics might have noticed some of these phrases in students’ attempts to get very good grades by using paraphrasing resources to evade plagiarism.

As of January 2022, we have found tortured phrases in 3,191 peer-reviewed articles published (and counting), together with in respected flagship publications. The two most repeated nations around the world stated in the authors’ affiliations are India (71.2 per cent) and China (6.3 p.c). In one certain journal that had a substantial prevalence of tortured phrases, we also seen the time involving when an report was submitted and when it was accepted for publication declined from an ordinary of 148 times in early 2020 to 42 days in early 2021. Numerous of these article content experienced authors affiliated with establishments in India and China, where by the pressure to publish may be exceedingly superior.

In China, for example, institutions have been documented to impose generation targets that are approximately impossible to satisfy. Medical practitioners