Today, the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) announced that it had successfully launched a drone from a submerged submarine. The all-electric eXperimental Fuel Cell Unmanned Aerial System (XFC) was launched in the Bahamas from the Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Providence (SSN 719) using a system that allowed the drone to be deployed without modifications to the boat, or requiring it to surface.
The XFC unmanned aircraft was developed by the NRL in less than six years from initial concept to current stage. It’s all electric and powered by a fuel cell that allows it to stay aloft for more than six hours. According the the NRL, the UAV is relatively low cost, flies at low altitude, and is designed for Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The craft has folding wings and is designed to be launched from a pickup truck or small surface vessel.
Benjamin Franklin said two things are certain in life: death and taxes. Another one we could add to this list is that on any given news website and in almost all print media there will be articles about health and nutrition that are complete garbage.
Some articles that run under the health and nutrition “news” heading are thought provoking, well researched and unbiased, but unfortunately not all. And to help you traverse this maze – alongside an excellent article about 20 tips for interpreting scientific claims – we will look at seven clichés of improper or misguided reporting.
If you spot any of these clichés in an article, we humbly suggest that you switch to reading LOLCats, which will be more entertaining and maybe more informative too.
1. “Scientists have proven that” or “it has been scientifically proven that”
Why?: In science we never prove something, we can only improve our confidence in a hypothesis or find flaws with it.
Details: Sometimes it is possible to disprove something confidently, but that mainly works in domains like physics. Medicine is notoriously messy because it deals with changeable, complex and individual bodies. There are potential exceptions to nearly anything, and the link between two things is generally statistical, rather than clear-cut “if X then Y” relationships.
OMG they’ve done what?! Ninja M
Health and nutrition is even worse because it deals with how we interact with our equally messy environment. We know about most of the big contributory causes of bad health such as starvation, disease, parasites and poisoning so arguably many new findings are smaller refinements that are hard to pick out from the “noise” of individual variation and habits. We know plenty of things, just beware of absolute certainty.
Takeaway: Discount the findings of any health or nutrition article with “scientists prove that…” by 80%.
2. X causes cancer, so it must be bad
Why?: There are no good or bad substances. Even water can kill you if you drink too much of it.
Nutmeg: spice and poison. Marxfoods
Details: There are a surprising number of things associated with slightly increased or decreased risks of getting cancer. We tend to think of things as pure/good/healthy or impure/evil/harmful, but in practice there’s no distinction. Many medications are poisonous, but they are helpful because they are more poisonous to infections or cancer cells than to the rest of the body.
Sometimes it’s the dose that makes the poison. So sleeping a lot or a little is associated with higher mortality (even when you control for depression and sickness, which of course also affect how much you want or can sleep). There can also be trade-offs between risks and benefits. Moderate alcohol intake can be good for heart health (in middle aged men, at least), but it increases the risk of pancreatic cancer and accidents. Whether something is good for you may depend on who you are, what you do and other risk factors.
Takeaway: As Oscar Wilde said, “everything in moderation, including moderation”; it is probably better to eat a diverse diet than to try to only eat “good” things.
3. [Insert natural product, spice or beverage here] cures cancer, diabetes or heart disease
Why?: There are no “natural” or magic cures for cancer, diabetes or any diseases of ageing.
Details: If these “natural products” actually worked, people consuming them would rarely, if ever, get the diseases of old age and die. The longest mean health and life spans of any sizeable population are in developed countries, and they are mainly attributable to antibiotics, vaccinations, reduction in smoking, improved sanitation, and public healthcare infrastructure. We don’t have artificial “silver bullets” either.
Enough said. Nico Paix
The reason is that most of these conditions are very complex and don’t have neat causes that can be fixed easily. Science is certainly working hard on the problem, but progress is generally piecemeal.
Takeaway: We already have many drugs that were extracted from natural things or are based on them. When the Cochrane collaboration, an international network of thousands of researchers and organisations, compiles the results of large human trials involving natural products, then it is time to take notice.
4. X gene causes you to smile/be grumpy/get diabetes
Why?: No single gene causes a behaviour trait or, except in rare cases, a complex disease.
Details: When a single gene mutation causes something, we call it a monogenic disease. Monogenic diseases include cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease and sickle-cell anemia. Complex behavioural traits and diseases of ageing are polygenic and multi-factorial disorders, which depend on both genes and environment. No one gene causes you to be happy, sad or diabetic.
A sad case of personality. aeu04117
The same applies for brain areas and neurotransmitters: serotonin is involved in mood regulation, but it is also involved in regulating gut movement (90% of it is in the intestines). Adding more serotonin is unlikely to help either function. If you get happy by eating chocolate, it could be because you enjoy the taste and may not be due to chemical reactions within the brain.
Takeaway: If you truly want to find reasons for your traits or propensity towards a complex disease, why not compile a detailed family history?
5. Red wine, turmeric or yoga can help you live longer and be healthier
Why?: Unfortunately, there is no fountain of youth or elixir of life.
Details: Articles that state eating something or doing something can help you live longer generally make their case using a long-lived or comparatively healthy population such as Japan. In these populations, the effects of eating or doing something can be explained by their homogenous genetics and environment. Even so, these people still live the normal maximum human lifespan, which is about 100 years.
So innocent. Public domain photos
Science has figured out a lot about how ageing works, and some researchers work on slowing it down. However, there is still a vast step from what works on a small lab animal to a useful pill for humans. Stay tuned.
Takeaway: If you want to live longer, don’t smoke, take recommended vaccinations, exercise and just try to enjoy life.
6. A new study from [insert elite university name here] …
Why?: Science, unlike religion, doesn’t work based on authority. Don’t assume that an experiment is well constructed and executed because it’s from an elite university.
Better croquet doesn’t mean better science. Spartacus
Details: Less elite universities can of course do bad research but “brand names” apply in academia as they do elsewhere. Some universities have or can afford bigger press teams than others. Journalists are trained to provide accurate, nuanced and unbiased analyses to the public. This is regularly practised in the political domain with reports on political scandals and other investigative journalism. We need the same for science.
Takeaway: Would you still read this article if the research was performed at the University of Never-heard-of-them in Where-in-the-world-is-this city?
7. Just-so stories
Why?: In science, laboratory results seldom make simple stories. This is especially true when dealing with biology.
Not 200,000 years ago. Ell Brown
Details: It’s easy to believe a good story, such as how diet habits like those of your ancient ancestors are healthier for you or that women think in a certain way because they were gatherers rather than hunters. It sounds plausible. Unfortunately, sounding plausible often has almost nothing to do with actually being true.
Takeaway: If you come across a neat little just-so story, it is likely over-simplified and stripped of its contextual underpinning, or just plain wrong.
Our aim isn’t to undermine the value of science but to become more critical reporters and readers. The list is by no means exhaustive and if you feel we have missed an important cliché, please comment below, email or tweet us. In the meantime remember, if you want to live longer, have fun and do nothing.
The authors do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. They also have no relevant affiliations.
Thousands of people die every year due to drunk driving. It’s a statistic that’s both appalling and frightening. We all like to party, but then when the party’s over, many still refuse to recognize the danger they not only put themselves in, but others as well when they choose to drive while mentally impaired. Thankfully a lot of potential situations are averted every year as well due to taxi services, or even friends willing to drive them home.
Today, however, we live in a very sensor-oriented society. Our phones have sensors. Our homes have sensors. Our tablets have sensors. Our cars have sensors. Take Tesla Motors as an example. They have sensors by their doors which detects whether or not the right driver is approaching the vehicle. If it detects its correct driver, then it’ll extrude the door handle out, ready to be open. If you’re not the correct driver, however, like someone trying to hijack the vehicle, then the door handle will not pop out for you. Sorry.
Another good example is the Mercedes-Benz, which has driving sensors attached to its braking system. If any object in front gets too close, then the brakes kick in automatically, preventing any accident from occurring. Too many fatalities occur due to simple, brief loss of eye contact to the road.
So Mercedes-Benz’s braking sensors represent a revolutionary means of saving thousands of lives every year, just as Tesla provides a revolutionary approach towards alleviating car theft.
And what makes them so damn revolutionary? They create a real relationship between the car and its owner — to not just provide transportation for them, but to actually recognize them and protect them when they’re incapable of doing so themselves.
So imagine with me: It’s 2018 and you’re at a party. A lot of drinking and drugs. You realize it’s already early morning and it’s time to go home and get some rest. So you call for an automated vehicle using Uber’s transportation services. The vehicle arrives 10 minutes later. It recognizes via its sensors the debit card in your wallet used to pay for its transportation services and lets you in the vehicle. You try starting the car yourself, but the car doesn’t let you. Instead it alarms you of your blood alcohol content and tells you that it cannot allow you to drive yourself while intoxicated. Given its automated system, it drives you home itself.
Is this not the type of transportation system we’d want as a society keen on safety above all else? I’d surely hope so, because this isn’t just some mere science-fiction tale. It’s a science-fact in the making, which can be seen every year as our cars get smarter and more integrated with our own personal needs and desires. We’ll never be alone — always watched and observed. That may sound scary, but when compared to hundreds of thousands of people dying every year due to car accidents, I find the above prospect of an automobile-sensor revolution to be “heaven on Earth.”
Vicco, Ky., is about as small town as it gets, with a population that hovers around 330 people. That does not appear to have kept its residents, namely Police Chief Tony Vaughn, in the dark when it comes to Internet trends and emerging crypto-currencies.
The city commission on Monday approved a measure that would allow Vaughn to receive his salary entirely in Bitcoin, an alleged first in the US and yet another story bolstering the reputation of the unregulated virtual currency as a payment method that will one day, supporters hope, stabilize and become commonplace.
Vaughn’s pay, still set in US dollars, will receive standard federal and state deductions, the Hazard Herald reports, before being converted into Bitcoin based on current trading values at the time of pay and deposited into an account held by Vicco. The Bitcoins will then be transferred to Vaughn’s personal account. The city expects to be able to pay Vaughn this way as early as this month.
We don’t usually write much about buyouts here at DVICE. Buyouts usually go something like this: big company pays a crap-ton of money for smaller company and then we never hear from the smaller company again. Whoopty doo.
But Apple’s latest buyout of PrimeSense for $360 million is worth some discussion because the company’s tech could become part of the building blocks for the living room of the future. That, or we could be looking at some serious Minority Report-type tablets or Macs.
PrimeSense was the company behind the 3D depth camera tech in the original Kinect (Microsoft has since moved on with its own in-house tech for the Xbox One’s Kinect). Microsoft talked the big talk in 2010, and the hacks were a nice distraction, but ultimately, Kinect’s primitive technology only managed to make us look like silly fools dancing around to Dance Central in front of our TVs.
At the dawn of rapid prototyping, a common predication was that 3D printing would transform manufacturing, spurring a consumer revolution that would put a printer in every home. That hasn’t quite happened—-and like so many emerging technologies, rapid prototyping has found its foothold in a surprisingly different field: Medicine.
The following studies and projects represent some of the most fascinating examples of “bioprinting,” or using a computer-controlled machine to assemble biological matter using organic inks and super-tough thermoplastics. They range from reconstructing major sections of skull to printing scaffolding upon which stem cells can grow into new bones. More below—and look out for more 3D printing week content over the next few days.
Online shopping is not the most glamorous aspect of the digital revolution, but it has just become the latest Silicon Valley battleground, with droids racing drones to become the courier of the future.
First Amazon promised to eliminate the drudgery of the post office queue with parcels delivered by drone. Now Google has revealed that it is developing humanoid robots that could one day carry groceries to your door.
Andy Rubin, the Google executive who brought smartphones to the masses by developing Google’s free Android software, has revealed he is working on a secret project for the search engine company to create a new generation of robots.
Rubin resigned unexpectedly from running Android in March, and over the past six months has quietly overseen Google’s acquisition of seven small companies whose combined technology could be used to create a robot with animal characteristics such as a form of vision and moving limbs.
“With robotics it’s a green field,” Rubin told the New York Times. “We’re building hardware, we’re building software, We’re building systems, so one team will be able to understand the whole stack.”
Since Jeff Bezos announced Amazon’s hypothetical delivery-by-octocopter service earlier this week, its drones have become a point of focus for existing debates over privacy, regulation, and “disruptive” technology. The plan has given a sense of urgency to questions about widespread governmental and commercial drone use, and a new hook for members of Congress trying to answer those questions through legislation. Yesterday, Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) became the second member of Congress to raise the specter of Amazon Prime Air to support an anti-surveillance bill, giving a sometimes colorful account of how the drones could change our future.
“In just a few years, Bezos said people will be able to order something online and have it in their hands within 30 minutes by the use of drones. It sounds like something out of the Jetsons, doesn’t it? Gone will be the days of the neighborhood mail carriers. Soon there will be a drone to replace them. According to Amazon, these drones can deliver packages up to 5 pounds, which makes up 90 percent of their deliveries.
Mr. Speaker, thousands of Americans use Amazon every year, especially around the holiday season. Amazon, unlike the glitch-ridden government Web sites, can efficiently use online Internet services that get a timely product to market. Think of how many drones could soon be flying around the sky. Here a drone, there a drone, everywhere a drone in the United States.”
Good news, future space travelers: Now you can enter the void without bringing your wallet.
U.K. business magnate Richard Branson announced Friday that his commercial space travel venture, Virgin Galactic, will allow customers to pay for their flights with the digital currency Bitcoin.
“Virgin Galactic is a company looking into the future, so is Bitcoin. So it makes sense we would offer Bitcoin as a way to pay for your journey to space.” Branson wrote in a blog post.
“A lot of the people who have joined Bitcoin are tech-minded people, as are many of our current future astronauts.”
The theme of Big Data has spawned a tremendous amount of attention and investor interest in recent years. While much of the big data hype has focused on the storage, structured and unstructured processing technologies, London based investment bank GP Bullhound predicted that some of the most exciting developments are in the fields of Predictive Analytics and Advanced Visualization.
The “Exabyte Research Report” of the international tech investment bank GP Bullhound shows why the investment activities currently skyrocket. Based on over 30 interviews with technology providers, investors and customers, the study shed light on developments in the Big Data market. As per report, big data has already furnished $1.4 billion worth of investment over the last 12 months and has been able to achieve revenue of more than 200 per cent last year.
A large chunk of progress is coming from processing information and using analytics. The report said over 17 percent of information processing individuals eventually use big data analytics and the number is expected to progress to over one third of information workers by 2016.
