I miss Dr. Fauci. Hope he's enjoying his retirement

 

Wild turkey numbers are falling in some parts of the US

Maybe we should stop shooting them

Photo by Will Collette

Marcus Lashley, University of Florida and William Gulsby, Auburn University

Birdsong is a welcome sign of spring, but robins and cardinals aren’t the only birds showing off for breeding season. In many parts of North America, you’re likely to encounter male wild turkeys, puffed up like beach balls and with their tails fanned out, aggressively strutting through woods and parks or stopping traffic on your street.

Wild turkeys were abundant across North America when European settlers arrived. But people killed them indiscriminately year-round – sometimes for their meat and feathers, but settlers also took turkey eggs from nests and poisoned adult turkeys to keep them from damaging crops. Thanks to this unregulated killing and habitat loss, by 1900 wild turkeys had disappeared from much of their historical range.

Turkey populations gradually recovered over the 20th century, aided by regulation, conservation funding and state restoration programs. By the early 2000s, they could be found in Mexico, Canada and every U.S. state except Alaska.

Healthy or high risk?

New analysis warns of pesticide residues on some fruits and veggies

CAREY GILLAM  

PHOTO: SARAH ANNE WARD

Several types of fruits and vegetables generally considered to be healthy can contain levels of pesticide residues potentially unsafe for consumption, according to an analysis conducted by Consumer Reports (CR) released on Thursday.

The report, which is based on seven years of data gathered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) as part of its annual pesticide residue reporting program, concluded that 20% of 59 different fruit and vegetable categories included in the analysis carried residue levels that posed “significant risks” to consumers of those foods.

Those high-risk foods included bell peppers, blueberries, green beans, potatoes and strawberries, according to CR. The group found that some green beans even had residues of an insecticide called acephate, which has been banned for use on green beans by US regulators since 2011. 

To understand the risks posed by AI, follow the money

"Cui bono" probably isn't you

Tim O'Reilly, UCL; Ilan Strauss, UCL; Mariana Mazzucato, UCL, and Rufus Rock, UCL

Shutterstock/Chaosamran_Studio

Time and again, leading scientists, technologists, and philosophers have made spectacularly terrible guesses about the direction of innovation. 

Even Einstein was not immune, claiming, “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable,” just ten years before Enrico Fermi completed construction of the first fission reactor in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, the consensus switched to fears of an imminent nuclear holocaust.

Similarly, today’s experts warn that an artificial general intelligence (AGI) doomsday is imminent. Others retort that large language models (LLMs) have already reached the peak of their powers.

It’s difficult to argue with David Collingridge’s influential thesis that attempting to predict the risks posed by new technologies is a fool’s errand. Given that our leading scientists and technologists are usually so mistaken about technological evolution, what chance do our policymakers have of effectively regulating the emerging technological risks from artificial intelligence (AI)?

We ought to heed Collingridge’s warning that technology evolves in uncertain ways. 

However, there is one class of AI risk that is generally knowable in advance. These are risks stemming from misalignment between a company’s economic incentives to profit from its proprietary AI model in a particular way and society’s interests in how the AI model should be monetized and deployed.

Photograph of Albert Einstein in his office at Princeton
University, New Jersey, taken by Roman Vishniac in 1942.
 Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

The surest way to ignore such misalignment is by focusing exclusively on technical questions about AI model capabilities, divorced from the socio-economic environment in which these models will operate and be designed for profit.

Focusing on the economic risks from AI is not simply about preventing “monopoly,” “self-preferencing,” or “Big Tech dominance”. 

It’s about ensuring that the economic environment facilitating innovation is not incentivizing hard-to-predict technological risks as companies “move fast and break things” in a race for profit or market dominance.

It’s also about ensuring that value from AI is widely shared, by preventing premature consolidation. We’ll see more innovation if emerging AI tools are accessible to everyone, such that a dispersed ecosystem of new firms, start-ups, and AI tools can arise.

Billionaires are bad for democracy

Taxing them is good for it

By Omar Ocampo 

A new, disturbing milestone has been confirmed in the latest Forbes World Billionaires List. The U.S. billionaire class is now larger and richer than ever, with 813 ten-figure oligarchs together holding $5.7 trillion.

This is a $1.2 trillion increase from the year before — and a gargantuan $2.7 trillion increase since March 2020.

The staggering upsurge shows how our economy primarily benefits the wealthy, rather than the ordinary working people who produce their wealth. Even worse, those extremely wealthy individuals often use these assets to undermine our democracy.

Billionaires have enormous power to influence the political process. They spent $1.2 billion in the 2020 general election and more than $880 million in the 2022 midterms. Even when their preferred candidates aren’t in office, our institutions are still more likely to respond to their policy preferences than the average voter’s, especially when it comes to taxes.

The vast majority of Americans, including 63 percent of Republicans, support higher taxes on the wealthy. Yet our representatives consistently fail to deliver. A quintessential example was Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the rich — the most unpopular legislation signed into law in the past 25 years.

Donny's new business

The price of gas

 

Westerly plans to bio-bomb mosquitos on Monday

Helicopters will spread bacteria that kills mosquito larvae on Chapman Pond

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) is announcing that the Town of Westerly will conduct an aerial application of mosquito larvicide across 500 acres of Chapman Swamp and nearby swamplands by helicopter on Monday, April 29, weather permitting. 

The application, which consists of pellets that kill mosquito larvae being dropped by a helicopter, will take place between 8 AM and 3 PM. In the event of inclement weather, a rain date will occur on Tuesday, April 30, weather permitting.

Bti, a naturally occurring bacterium applied in granular form to control mosquito breeding in swamps and other breeding habitats, is the treatment that will be applied. It is applied to standing water where developing larvae are found. 

It is an environmentally friendly product whose toxins specifically affect the larvae of only mosquitoes, black flies, and fungus gnats and do not pose a risk to human health. 

Larviciding is recommended as part of the state's action plan to control West Nile Virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) and considered an effective strategy to reduce mosquito populations and related disease risk.

In most communities, the state recommends applying larvicide by hand to roadside catch basins. In the Chapman Swamp area of Westerly, however, aerial application is recommended given the area’s remote location and large footprint. Mosquitoes carrying the EEE virus were found in Chapman Swamp in 1996, 2003, 2019, 2020, 2022. 

Since 1997, the Town has applied Bti annually to help control mosquito breeding. Additional dates for treatment may be scheduled by the Town; the targeted areas include portions of Chapman Swamp and swampland near Hespar Drive.

For additional mosquito prevention tips, videos, and local data from the Rhode Island Department of Health, visit health.ri.gov/mosquito.

For more information on DEM programs and initiatives, visit www.dem.ri.gov. Follow DEM on Facebook, Twitter (@RhodeIslandDEM), or Instagram (@rhodeisland.dem) for timely updates.

New Research Reveals Why You Should Always Refrigerate Lettuce

Eat your greens but store them safely

By UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 

A new study explores E. coli contamination in leafy greens, finding that factors like temperature and leaf characteristics affect susceptibility. 

Lettuce is particularly vulnerable, but kale and collards show promise as less susceptible options due to their natural antimicrobial properties when cooked.

Leafy greens are valuable for their dietary fiber and nutrients, yet they may also carry dangerous pathogens. Lettuce, in particular, has frequently been linked to foodborne illness outbreaks in the U.S. A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign investigates the factors influencing E. coli contamination in five different types of leafy greens: romaine lettuce, green-leaf lettuce, spinach, kale, and collard greens.

Medical Providers Still Grappling With UnitedHealth Cyberattack

‘More Devastating Than Covid’

Samantha Liss 

DALL-E Created Thumbnail

Two months after a cyberattack on a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary halted payments to some doctors, medical providers say they’re still grappling with the fallout, even though UnitedHealth told shareholders on Tuesday that business is largely back to normal.

“We are still desperately struggling,” said Emily Benson, a therapist in Edina, Minnesota, who runs her own practice, Beginnings & Beyond. “This was way more devastating than covid ever was.”

Change Healthcare, a business unit of the Minnesota-based insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, controls a digital network so vast it processes nearly 1 in 3 U.S. patient records each year. The network is a critical conduit for shuttling information between most of the nation’s insurance companies and medical providers, who submit claims through it to get paid for treating patients.

We can't recycle our way out of our plastic mess

Reduce. Period.

By Daily Dose

This year’s Earth Day theme was Planet vs. Plastics, a problem we have been railing against since Alan Weisman first published his essay “Polymers Are Forever,” in 2007, where we first learned about the persistence of microplastics and their infiltration into the marine food chain.

“Plastic is still plastic. The material still remains a polymer. Polyethylene is not biodegraded in any practical time scale. There is no mechanism in the marine environment to biodegrade that long a molecule.” Even if photodegradable nets help marine mammals live, he concluded, their powdery residue remains in the sea, where the filter feeders will find it.

“Except for a small amount that’s been incinerated,” says Tony Andrady the oracle, “every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last fifty years or so still remains. It’s somewhere in the environment.”

The official Earth Day organization is “demanding a 60% reduction in the production of ALL plastics by 2040. Our theme, Planet vs. Plastics, calls to advocate for widespread awareness on the health risk of plastics, rapidly phase out all single use plastics, urgently push for a strong UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution, and demand an end to fast fashion.”

What a nice boy!

Draw your own conclusions

Star Trek's Holodeck recreated using ChatGPT and video game assets

What could possibly go wrong?

University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science

Many of STNG's worst episodes centered around
holodeck malfunctions, such as "Fistful of Datas"

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise leverage the holodeck, an empty room capable of generating 3D environments, to prepare for missions and to entertain themselves, simulating everything from lush jungles to the London of Sherlock Holmes. Deeply immersive and fully interactive, holodeck-created environments are infinitely customizable, using nothing but language: the crew has only to ask the computer to generate an environment, and that space appears in the holodeck.

Today, virtual interactive environments are also used to train robots prior to real-world deployment in a process called "Sim2Real." However, virtual interactive environments have been in surprisingly short supply. 

Rhode Island public radio and TV merger is OK'd

Hopes high for stronger non-profit journalism

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

AG Peter Neronha's statement that the
merger offers "a community benefit"

Rhode Island PBS and The Public’s Radio’s will soon be one entity.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha announced the approval of the merger of the two public media organizations Tuesday after conducting a review to ensure compliance with state law.

Elizabeth Delude-Dix, chair of the board of directors of The Public’s Radio, thanked the attorney general’s office and said in a statement: “The Public’s Radio and Rhode Island PBS have long provided honest journalism, robust educational programming, and engaging and entertaining content to Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Our impact will be increased and our audience expanded as we take these next exciting steps forward.” 

Torey Malatia, CEO of The Public’s Radio, said via email: “I agree the new institution has great potential for community service.”

Now, a new jointly-made board will begin to work with staff from both broadcast stations to align their respective operations and administration, according to a press release from Rhode Island PBS.