According to the Paris Agreement (also known as the Paris climate accord), which was initialed in 2015 and signed by more than 190 countries all over the world, we all human beings are in a war against the global climate change and should work together to curb the greenhouse emissions. The Paris Agreement has a very specific goal to limit a global temperature rise within 2 Celsius degrees compared with the pre-industrial levels. Otherwise, the temperature rise will be irreversible and lead to sea level rising and more frequent extreme weather conditions threatening millions of lives.
Artificial intelligence is the future, is it?
Many believe that, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the future. During the Cold War, then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson believed that “whoever wins the space race would gain control over the Earth”. Today, AI development is the new space race. Recently, Russian President Putin said, “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world”. Despite the hyperbole in this statement, the importance of technology’s power should never be overlooked and artificial intelligence is truly today’s hot topic.
Alumni consulting company acquired by Ideo
Ideo is a San Francisco Bay Area consulting firm that helps companies design new products and services. It has 52 employees in Chicago and will add 16 more, including 15 data scientists, with the acquisition of Datascope Analytics. Datascope, founded by two Northwestern University and Amaral Lab alumni, has partnered ...
New paper linking fractal dynamics of worms to aging and stress
Luiz G. A. Alves, Peter B. Winter, Leonardo N. Ferreira, Renée M. Brielmann, Richard I. Morimoto, and Luís A. N. Amaral: Long-range correlations and fractal dynamics in C. elegans: Changes with aging and stress Physical Review E 96, 022417 (2017)
Function wrapper and python decorator
When researchers translate their thoughts into codes, they usually have the needs to modify their existing functions to accommodate their new ideas, such as adding new arguments or a little more computations to the functions.
Shootings in U.S. schools are linked to increased unemployment
By Megan Fellman EVANSTON – A rigorous Northwestern University study of a quarter-century of data has found that economic insecurity is related to the rate of gun violence at K-12 and postsecondary schools in the United States. When it becomes more difficult for people coming out of school to find ...
Do it live!
Code at rest is a dreary thing. Worse, it’s often ignored. Distributing your lifeless code is nice and all, but running it for others can be even better.
Thought about imperial units
As a European, I’ve never been interested in working with the imperial units. But today I want to talk about a good point I discovered in it.
New paper out in G3:Genes|Genomes|Genetics!
The recent work of Chuyue Yang, a talent undergraduate (now recently graduated!), and graduate student Adam Hockenberry is now online. This work is a part of a multi-year collaboration with Professor Michael Jewett investigating the mechanisms by which the sequence of messenger-RNA can influence its translation. In this particular work, ...
post hoc != propter hoc
Lest I scare you away immediately, let me clarify that the topic of this blog is only marginally about the ethics of animal research. Rather, it’s about making a cogent argument. And more specifically, about the sense of nausea I feel when reading terrible arguments from people who should know ...
Interesting facts about China
It surprises me that there exists so many misconceptions about China, my homeland. Some of them are really hilarious, while others are both funny and annoying. Let’s begin with some famous American Chinese food. Only after I found myself chewing a piece of paper did I realize what the fortune ...
How much was the Japanese Imperial Palace worth?
With the Japanese Emperor attempting to abdicate the throne this week, it is a good time to reflect on the significance of the event. While not odd historically (the Emperors in Heian Era resigned fairly often), this is the first resignation in the modern era. Whether he will actually be ...
Unintended effects of data privacy in healthcare
I would like to draw attention to an instance where I believe the pendulum has swung too far: the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)