For First Time, Scientists Use CRISPR-Cas9 to Target RNA in Live Cells. The genetic code stored in DNA determines everything from the color of our eyes to our susceptibility to disease. This has motivated scientists to sequence the human genome and develop ways to alter the genetic code, but many diseases are linked to a different fundamental molecule: RNA. As the intermediary genetic material that carries the genetic code from the cell’s nucleus, scientists have long sought an efficient method for targeting RNA in living cells. Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have now achieved this by applying the popular DNA-editing technique CRISPR-Cas9 to RNA. The study is published March 17 in Cell. A cell carrying an RNA-targeted Cas9 system that reveals beta-actin mRNA distribution in the cytoplasm. “This work is the first example, to our knowledge, of targeting RNA in living cells with CRISPR-Cas9,” said senior author Gene Yeo, PhD, associate professor of cellular and molecular medicine.
New prediction engine can gauge your personality based on your web history. Watch: By 2020 We Will Be Able to Produce a Brain In a Box. How Big Data Harms Poor Communities. Big data can help solve problems that are too big for one person to wrap their head around. It’s helped businesses cut costs, cities plan new developments, intelligence agencies discover connections between terrorists, health officials predict outbreaks, and police forces get ahead of crime. Decision-makers are increasingly told to “listen to the data,” and make choices informed by the outputs of complex algorithms.
But when the data is about humans—especially those who lack a strong voice—those algorithms can become oppressive rather than liberating. For many poor people in the U.S., the data that’s gathered about them at every turn can obstruct attempts to escape poverty. Low-income communities are among the most surveilled communities in America. And it’s not just the police that are watching, says Michele Gilman, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and a former civil-rights attorney at the Department of Justice.
Young Americans Who Are Choosing to Become Orthodox Jews. HOUSTON—On a typical Friday night in Houston, many young people are out drinking at bars or curled up watching Netflix, grateful to be done with the obligations of the workweek. But in a few Houston homes, Jews in their 20s and 30s have opted to fill these evenings with a different kind of obligation: strictly observing Shabbat, or the Jewish Sabbath. This means no texting, no music, no use of electronics, no driving, no meeting last-minute deadlines, no carrying objects outside of a few hundred square yards. It is a choice to embrace ritual over leisure, a sacrifice of freedom in behavior, diet, and dress for an ancient set of rules.
On its face, this seems like a generation-defying choice. Young Americans are moving away from traditional religious observance in large numbers, and Jews are no exception. Roughly a third of Jews born after 1980 think of their Judaism as a matter of identity or ancestry, rather than as a religion, according to Pew. Minyan Kochav defies that tendency. Are Religious Groups in Arkansas Creating a Constitutional Conflict by Providing Services to the Poor? LITTLE ROCK, Ark. —Inmates in the Little Rock branch of Arkansas Community Correction Center have three options for how to spend their day. They can stay in the prison and do work duty, washing clothes and scrubbing floors. They can get on a work crew outside of prison and do lawn maintenance and highway repair.
Or, if they’re lucky, they can get into The Exodus Project, a program that teaches them how to live when they get out according to Christian values. If they get into Exodus, which only accepts five men each term, they sit in a classroom on the campus of Arkansas Baptist College for four hours a day learning about ethics, recovery, and Jesus. Exodus Project participants are often envied by other cellmates, who’ve spent the day working rather than learning, Timothy Duval, a 37-year-old participant, told me. Not everyone can get into the Exodus Project. The program is effective because the volunteers and staff provide extensive resources for people in and out of prison.
Living to 100 and beyond | Small Steps (live longer) I am renewed, or at least I’m re-motivated to keep going. Yesterday, I participated in the East Hawaii Blue Zones demonstration site visit and I am inspired by their motto – Live Longer Better. They’ve identified 9 principles (Power 9®) to living longer. Down shift PurposePlant SlantWine @ FiveFamily First80% RuleMove NaturallyRight TribeBelong I think you’ll be hearing about the Blue Zones’ principles for the next 9 weeks (great topics for Small Steps) but this week my focus is on assessing where I am and where I want to go.
I definitely want to be a strong and vibrant 100. Where am I now? I will start by taking the Well-Being 5 (WB5) assessment from Healthways/HMSA. For more about the Blue Zones Project in Hawai’i go to Hawaii Community Selection. Do you know where you are and where you want to go? Leave a comment and share where you want to go. If you found this post useful, supportive, interesting or fun, please share it with a friend. Samsung : des lentilles connectées équipées d'un appareil photo.
Nous équiper de lentilles connectées pour visionner nos photos de famille ? C’est l’ambition de Samsung. Le géant coréen de la high-tech dispose déjà d’un brevet enregistré, selon le blog Sam Mobile, spécialisé dans les technologies Samsung. Ces lentilles devraient être équipées d’un appareil photo et d’une antenne miniaturisés afin de diffuser directement les images sur la rétine de l'utilisateur. Pour fonctionner, un smartphone devra être connecté aux lentilles. Le brevet a été déposé en Corée du Sud, dès 2014, a précisé le site Mashable.
Google cible les diabétiques et les presbytes La même année, Google a signé un accord avec le groupe pharmaceutique suisse Novartis pour développer des lentilles intelligentes à des fins médicales. En parallèle, Google devrait tester sur des hommes courant 2016 un deuxième prototype avec ses lentilles de correction pour les personnes presbytes, incapables de lire de près. Pour aller plus loin, lire notre enquête sur le corps pièces et main-d’œuvre… A stem-cell repair system that can regenerate any kind of human tissue. UNSW researchers say the therapy has enormous potential for treating spinal disc injury and joint and muscle degeneration and could also speed up recovery following complex surgeries where bones and joints need to integrate with the body (credit: UNSW TV) A stem cell therapy system capable of regenerating any human tissue damaged by injury, disease, or aging could be available within a few years, say University of New South Wales (UNSW Australia) researchers.
Their new repair system*, similar to the method used by salamanders to regenerate limbs, could be used to repair everything from spinal discs to bone fractures, and could transform current treatment approaches to regenerative medicine. The UNSW-led research was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Reprogramming bone and fat cells (credit: UNSW Media/Michael Whitehead) Advantages over stem-cell types AZA is known to induce cell plasticity, which is crucial for reprogramming cells. References: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle – review. The Furby is a fluffy robot toy that was popular in the late 90s. It looks part owl, part hamster and is programmed to respond to human attention. It has no intelligence, but it can fake attachment. In an intriguing psychological experiment, subjects are asked to take a Furby, a Barbie doll and a live gerbil and hold them upside down in turn.
The rodent writhes in obvious discomfort and people quickly release it. The Barbie doesn't react and can be inverted indefinitely. The test is one of many cited by Sherry Turkle in Alone Together as evidence that humanity is nearing a "robotic moment". This not a science-fiction dystopia. Plainly, technology is doing peculiar things to us. Turkle is not a luddite, nor is Alone Together a salvo in some analogue counter-reformation. The argument in Alone Together unfolds in two halves. The machines are still primitive, nowhere near the Hollywood version of sociable androids. This digital generation also expects everything to be recorded. It’s time for urbanists and technologists to start talking — Sidewalk Talk. It’s time for urbanists and technologists to start talking When Larry Page announced the creation of Sidewalk Labs last summer, he recognized that digital innovations have an enormous capacity to address big urban challenges like housing affordability, transportation efficiency, and energy conservation.
One of the barriers to faster and wider change is a lack of dialogue between the people who live in today’s cities and the folks who build tomorrow’s technologies. Larry’s diagnosis of the problem was spot on: it takes a strong “big-picture view of the many factors that affect city life” to “develop the technologies and partnerships you need to make a difference.” In other words, it takes talk. So I’m pleased to announce the launch of Sidewalk Talk — a policy blog and discussion forum where urbanists and technologists alike can raise issues, air grievances, spark debate, and trade thoughts on the future of cities.
An urban-tech divide has always frustrated the smart city movement. Snapchat & Periscope Are Transforming Brand Storytelling! — Snapchat Strategy — Medium. Every brand in every industry is currently struggling with finding ways to relate with their audience, creating content of value and find unique ways to tell their stories. Technology and social media are amazing channels for brand storytelling but brands must first have a compelling story then understand and embrace the community. New mobile live streaming app Periscope owned by Twitter, has been causing quite a stir on social media, forcing brands to scramble to try and embrace the power behind mobile live streaming. Unfortunately much like Snapchat the technology, the learning curve and the requirement to embrace change is scaring many brands from adopting this technology.
The more I work with brands and see brands leveraging Snapchat and Periscope the more excited I am for the future of marketing, social media and community engagement. With that being said too many are looking at these technologies as one in the same. In an upcoming post titled “Snapchat, I used to hate you. For social software, user culture is as important as product features — Lightspeed Venture Partners. Earlier this week I did a fascinating exercise.
I was paired with a stranger and we were each asked to introduce ourselves in a two minute monologue. The second person to speak was asked if their introduction paralleled that of the first person. Did you feel compelled to cover areas that the other person did (e.g. family, work history, where you went to school, hobbies etc), and at similar length? And the answer, of course, was yes. How strange, that this stranger had such an impact on how you described yourself, what you chose to talk about, and what you chose not to talk about. That is how quickly culture can be created. Culture is “the way we do things around here”. The same is true for any social software, from Snapchat to Instagram to Facebook. When this works well, you get fantastic, coherent experiences and terrific content. When this works badly, you get ChatRoulette, Youtube comments, and Secret. Social software, like all software, can be used for good or for ill.
Forbes Welcome. Should Americans Be Line-Drying Clothes Instead of Using Washers and Dryers? In October 2015, I was in the Philippines, on a bus heading up the North Luzon Expressway out of Manila and into the mountains. I had traveled from San Francisco to visit my friend Imman, and we were escaping the relentless heat. Out the window, tropical palm trees, rice fields, and rural villages rolled by. We were talking about domestic labor when the topic of laundry came up. He asked, “How do Americans have time to do laundry?” “I don’t know,” I said. “We just…do it?” A seemingly small cultural difference began to unravel into something bigger about technology and urban planning.
When I was a kid growing up in Tennessee, my mom did our family’s laundry at home, in our own washer and dryer. The history of laundry in America In the U.S., laundry didn’t become a weekly chore until the 19th century. With industrialization came the manufacture of cotton cloth. Competition started heating up, though. Industrialization continued to transform laundry. A different approach in the Philippines. Ethereum : rendre les contrats intelligents | Triplex, le blogue techno de Radio-Canada. Cette semaine, sans tambour ni trompette, Microsoft a rendu Ethereum Virtual Machine accessible à des millions de développeurs de logiciels l’utilisation d’Ethereum Virtual Machine dans sa plateforme Visual Studio (une suite de logiciels de développement pour Windows).
Ethereum? Pour faire court, Ethereum est la monnaie cryptographique décentralisée dont la valeur montée en flèche depuis quelques mois talonne maintenant Bitcoin. Mais réduire Ethereum à une cryptomonnaie alternative serait cacher la forêt avec l’arbre. Voici venir les contrats intelligents Ethereum Virtual Machine est une plateforme bâtie autour de la « chaîne de blocs » (blockchain) où se trouve sont enregistrées toutes les transactions, à l’image d’un grand livre comptable, comme pour Bitcoin, mais qui comprend aussi un langage de programmation (appelé Solidity) permettant de créer des contrats dits intelligents.
Prenons un exemple. S’ils se font confiance mutuellement, le perdant payera la somme prévue sans se défiler. Journal du Geek on Instagram: “Tiens, on a enfin pu découvrir la lampe LED de chevet de #Dyson. On nous promet une durée de vie de 37 ans (ou 160.000h), le tout avec un design sur 3 axes ! Très honnêtement, c'est intéressant mais ça coûte super cher (500€ Allocation sociale unique : que faut-il unifier ? Wechat, Line, Telegram : les messageries instantanées au cœur de la révolution des «chatbots», Une. C’est la ruée vers les bots. L’annonce de Microsoft ne fait que confirmer l’intérêt des géants de la tech pour ces petits programmes informatiques qui veulent ringardiser les applis.
Mais la firme de Redmond arrive sur un marché encombré, où les messageries Internet ont pris une longueur d’avance. La plus en pointe est la chinoise WeChat. Commander un taxi, payer sa facture d’électricité, réserver un karaoké ou un restaurant pas cher à proximité... tout cela est déjà possible en échangeant par courts messages avec des bots sur cette application, qui vient de fêter ses cinq ans et compte 697 millions d’utilisateurs actifs. Plus besoin d’installer une appli pour chaque usage. tout se fait au sein de la messagerie, aujourd’hui sous forme de texte, demain par reconnaissance vocale. « Les applis de “chat” vont devenir les nouveaux navigateurs, les bots seront les nouveaux sites Web. Le « bot store » de Facebook L’appli Telegram a lancé ses bots en juin.
« La périphérie est abandonnée par les dieux de l’architecture » LE MONDE | • Mis à jour le | Propos recueillis par Jean-Jacques Larrochelle Le projet de loi relatif à la liberté de création, à l’architecture et au patrimoine vient d’achever son parcours en deuxième lecture à l’Assemblée nationale avant de repasser entre les mains de la commission de la culture du Sénat. La présidente du Conseil national de l’ordre des architectes, Catherine Jacquot, fait le point sur l’avancement du volet architecture. Lire le récit : L’architecture subit des secousses au Sénat Le Conseil national de l’ordre des architectes que vous présidez est-il satisfait de l’avancée du projet de loi ?
Oui, nous avions déposé un nombre important de propositions en faveur de l’excellence de l’architecture ordinaire et certaines ont pu aboutir. La première, l’abaissement à 150 m2 du seuil de recours à un architecte pour une construction individuelle [il était jusqu’alors de 170 m2], a été votée telle quelle. Lire le décryptage : L’architecture fait sa loi brique par brique. When Friends Are 'Like Family' En Isère, les allocataires du RSA incités à faire du bénévolat. Will the Internet of Things set family life back 100 years? Buy Me Once: the online shop for stuff that lasts, from T-shirts to tweezers.
Un jeune français crée un lave-linge « increvable » anti-obsolescence. The Revolution will (not) be decentralised: Blockchains. The Co-operative City. Our World in Data — Visualising the Empirical Evidence on how the World is Changing. Pourquoi l’étude d’Oxfam sur les personnes les plus riches est à prendre avec précaution. Expanding National Service to Address Long-Term Unemployment. How Silicon Valley Could Solve--Instead Of Cause--Income Inequality. Pp81. Disparity in Life Spans of the Rich and the Poor Is Growing. Innovation is not going to end poverty. Wealth gap between middle-income and upper-income families reaches record high. Technology and Inequality. B n volat et service communautaire obligatoire document de travail. The World Is More Unequal Than Ever. Is That Because of Technology?
What growing income inequality is costing Canada’s future generations. How to Think About Economic Inequality After Thomas Piketty. RSA contre bénévolat : ATD Quart Monde dénonce une «proposition inacceptable» RSA contre bénévolat : la mesure qui fait polémique. Goldman Sachs Says It May Be Forced to Fundamentally Question How Capitalism Is Working. Google Backs Startup Oscar Health Insurance. Thomas Piketty: New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century. Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think.
How to Think about Inequality. L'UE en ordre de bataille contre les multinationales rétives à l'impôt. The neglected wealth of nations. Rethinking the public wealth of nations - OxPol. Paul Duan, le petit génie qui veut résoudre le chômage en France. Equity crowdfunding: the future of capital raising? - Mineweb. New Research Debunks One of the Biggest Arguments Against Raising the Minimum Wage. January/February 2016. Quinn: Google is becoming U.S. K-12 schools' operating system. France considers a social welfare club card. « Pauvreté et précarité en chiffres », Les Cahiers français, n° 390, 2016, pp. 8-14. Forbes Welcome. America’s Middle-class Meltdown: Core shrinks to half of US homes.
The rich will get richer while two million more children slide into poverty, 2030 economic forecast suggests | UK Politics | News. The Health Benefits of Volunteering. The Marriages of Power Couples Reinforce Income Inequality. For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions. An economist’s dreams of a fairer gig economy. Retrievefile. A tale of two trends - Policy Options. The-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest. La classe moyenne au Quebec. De quelle classe moyenne faites-vous partie? Who are the middle class, anyway? How politicians risk missing the mark. Are you in the middle class? All of the World's Money and Markets in One Visualization. 47723414. Inégalités : 1% de la population domine la planète. Income inequality - Canada and world results. Piketty’s Inequality Story in Six Charts.
Income and wealth inequality | Lane Kenworthy. 2012071005451212. Piketty Corrects the Inequality Crowd by Robert Rosenkranz. Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us. Sucess and Failure of Nations Modeling Inefficie. Why Nations Fail. Presentation. How to Fight Economic Inequality With Smartphones. The Welfare State: A Terrible Name for an Essential System. Finland to pay every citizen $1,100 per month and scrap all other benefits in effort to reduce unemployment rate.
Welcome to the Failure Age! Democracy, Redistribution and Inequality. Mouthbreathing Machiavellis Dream of a Silicon Reich. The Champagne Tranarchist Who Hijacked Occupy’s Twitter Feed. The Education of a Libertarian. Q&A with Evgeny Morozov and Dan Davies. Pew Report: America's Shrinking Middle Class Is at a 'Tipping Point' When the Government Tells Poor People How to Live. Mapping the Emerging Post-Capitalist Paradigm and its Main Thinkers.
The strange case of America’s disappearing middle class | Paul Mason | Opinion. Cybertopia - Dreams of Silicon Valley (VPRO, Marije Meerman) Silicon Valley likes to promise ‘digital socialism’ – but it is selling a fairy tale | Evgeny Morozov. Why the internet of things could destroy the welfare state | Technology.