Big data: A tool for development or threat to privacy? Big data consists mainly of data that is openly available, created and stored. It includes public sector data such as national health statistics, procurement and budgetary information, and transport and infrastructure data. While big data may carry benefits for development initiatives, it also carries serious risks, which are often ignored. Expanding beyond publicly accessible data Along with other humanitarian organisations and UN agencies, one key advocate and user of big data is the UN Global Pulse, launched in 2009 in recognition of the need for more timely information to track and monitor the impacts of global and local socio-economic crises. UN Global Pulse clearly identified the privacy concerns linked to their use of big data and the impact of privacy in “Big Data for Development: Challenges & Opportunities” and have adopted Privacy and Data Protection Principles. Dangers of big data What about consent? Whose data and for what policies and programmes? So what must be done?
Your Backup Brain There is, you may be happy to know, a guru of intestinal intelligence. And as improbable as it sounds, he just may be able to explain why you get depressed and anxious, dive for the peanut butter when you are stressed, and rely on "gut instincts," among many other matters of the mind. Meeting him turned out to be a gut-wrenching experience—literally. When a security guard at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons kept me waiting 45 minutes in the lobby while checking and rechecking my credentials, my stomach began churning like a washing machine. The answer turned out to be double-sided. "The gut can work independently of any control by the brain in your head—it's functioning as a second brain," says Michael Gershon, professor and chair of pathology and cell biology at Columbia. That anguish has paid off. It is only logical that the gut should have a nexus of sensors to gather vital information. Tags:
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Mark D'Esposito, MD, Editor-in-Chief Published by the MIT Press and the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience investigates brain-behavior interaction and promotes lively interchange among the mind sciences. Contributions address both descriptions of function and underlying brain events and reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the field, covering developments in neuroscience, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, neurobiology, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. Impact Measures: #6 in Cognitive Science (2017 Google Scholar Metrics)#4 in Language and Linguistics; #7 in Cognitive Neuroscience (2015 SCImago Journal & Country Rank, Indicator: 2.712)Impact Factor: 3.468 (2017 Journal Citation Reports) Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience offers access to uncorrected and corrected proofs of articles before they are published.
Cyborg surgeon: Hand and technology combine in new surgical tool that enables superhuman precision Even the most skilled and steady surgeons experience minute, almost imperceptible hand tremors when performing delicate tasks. Normally, these tiny motions are inconsequential, but for doctors specializing in fine-scale surgery, such as operating inside the human eye or repairing microscopic nerve fibers, freehand tremors can pose a serious risk for patients. By harnessing a specialized optical fiber sensor, a new "smart" surgical tool can compensate for this unwanted movement by making hundreds of precise position corrections each second -- fast enough to keep the surgeon's hand on target. A paper describing their new device, named SMART (Smart Micromanipulation Aided Robotic-surgical Tool), was published September 27 in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express. "Microsurgery relies on excellent motor control to perform critical tasks," said Cheol Song, a postdoctoral fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Johns Hopkins.
Global Privacy Leaders React to Obama's NSA Reform Proposals President Barack Obama delivered a speech this morning on proposed reforms to the NSA’s mass surveillance program. To help illustrate what human rights and other organizations around the world are saying internationally, we have highlighted some excerpts that raise awareness of the need to protect the privacy rights of everyone everywhere, regardless of national boundaries: Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation: ”Mass non-targeted surveillance violates international human rights law. Steven W. "The big picture takeaway from today's speech is that the right to privacy remains under grave threat both here at home and around the world. Simon Davies, global privacy advocate, Privacy Surgeon. US privacy advocates are right to conditionally welcome some of Obama’s reforms, but they should take into account two critically important implications that the President avoided. Carly Nyst, legal director of Privacy International: Brett Solomon, executive director at Access:
The brain&s silent majority - 2009 FALL - Stanford Medicine Magazine When you have no clue, call it glue. “Glia,” the Greek word for glue, was the name the pathologist Rudolph Virchow gave, back in 1856, to the gelatinous substance that forms the bulk of the brain. And it stuck. “When the brain is injured, the neighborhood astrocytes go into a completely altered state.” We now know they’re doing much more. Certainly, it’s no stretch to imagine that knowing what glial cells do, and how they do it, could help explain brain disorders and how to cure them. From time to time, Ben Barres brings a brain in to his office. Barres says, “When you think about cells in the brain, pretty much the first thing you think about is neurons.” The guardian angels of the synapses Probably the least understood glial cells, astrocytes are the most common, constituting about half of all human brain cells. Most neurobiologists are too polite to tell you that neurons, although talented, are slobs. Arne Hurty The other brain cells Neurons are the brain’s rock stars.
Master's Programme in Cognitive Neuroscience - Master's in Cognitive Neuroscience How do our brains work? How do you perceive the outside world? How do you focus your attention on something in your environment? How do you manage when the environment is constantly changing? And what about language? Cognitive Neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience studies the cognitive and neural basis for such diverse mental functions as perception, action, language, attention and memory. Thanks to advanced brain-imaging techniques today scientists are able to observe the human brain in action.
Primates' Thinking Power Augmented by Brain Implant What's the Latest Development? For the first time ever, scientists have improved primates' capacity for thought using an electronic brain implant, raising questions about how the human mind might be augmented in the future. After training monkeys to do perform reasonably well on a matching game, which required them to select one of seven images that corresponded to a separate image shown on a screen, researchers gave the monkeys cocaine in order to impair the neural pathways essential to the task. The monkey's performance on the game fell immediately by a factor of 20 percent. What's the Big Idea? Prior to the experiment, researchers had implanted a neural device in the monkeys' brains which measured blood flow, temperature, and the electrical activity of neurons. Photo credit: Shutterstock.com
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