<h2>Presidential Foe</h2>
President Donald Trump is no friend to science.
At least, that&#8217;s the main takeaway of a new <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/center-science-and-democracy/state-of-science-trump-era?_ga=2.91050910.567203733.1548690629-1056397485.1545926071" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), an influential group of nearly 250 scientists and experts that offers policy suggestions on pressing science-related issues. In the report, published Monday, the group details all the ways it believes science has suffered under the current president — and how Americans could fight back.
<h2>Under Attack</h2>
According to the UCS report, titled “The State of Science in the Trump Era: Damage Done, Lessons Learned, and a Path to Progress,” the Trump administration has attacked science 80 times in just over two years.
The attacks listed by the group include the exclusion of scientists from the political decision-making process, the appointment of <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/genna-reed/michael-dourson-a-toxic-choice-for-our-health-and-safety" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unqualified individuals</a> to lead science agencies, and the rollback of <a href="https://futurism.com/state-suing-trump-vehicle-emissions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">science-based protections</a> for the environment.
&#8220;This large number makes it clear that these are not isolated incidents at this point,&#8221; research scientist Jacob Carter wrote in a <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/jacob-carter/two-years-of-attacks-on-science-are-putting-public-health-and-safety-at-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UCS blog post</a> announcing the report, &#8220;but a pattern that signifies that this administration is undermining science in the policy process.&#8221;
<h2>Fighting Back</h2>
The report doesn&#8217;t just outline the ways the UCS believes the Trump administration has attacked science — it also includes the group&#8217;s recommendations for resisting the attacks.
The UCS floated several suggestions for the newly elected Congress, including the recommendation that it pass a Scientific Integrity Act, a piece of legislation that would &#8220;defend federal science from political interference.&#8221; The UCS also suggests Congress investigate how anti-science actions might threaten public health or safety, and take a look into any potential corruption regarding corporate influences on science policies.
But lawmakers aren&#8217;t the only ones who can fight back against the Trump administration&#8217;s attacks on science, according to the UCS — scientists and the public must continue to make their voices heard, too, by participating in public events, such as marches or rallies, or by writing letters and making calls to their local government officials.
&#8220;There is path forward with a new Congress to stop this administration’s sidelining of science, but continued and sustained engagement is required,&#8221; wrote Carter. &#8220;I hope you’ll continue to march on with me — there’s a lot that we all can do.&#8221;
READ MORE: <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/jacob-carter/two-years-of-attacks-on-science-are-putting-public-health-and-safety-at-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Two Years of Attacks on Science Are Putting Public Health and Safety at Risk</a> [Union of Concerned Scientists]
More on science policy: <a href="https://futurism.com/state-suing-trump-vehicle-emissions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">States Sue to Stop Trump’s EPA From Stripping Vehicle Emissions Rules</a>

The President has attacked science 80 times, the report's authors claim.

A new report claims the Trump era has been terrible for science

Damage Done

According to a new report, the Trump Administration has attacked science more than 80 times — and it's time for Congress to fight back.

A New Report Claims The Trump Era Has Been Terrible for Science

The "administration is undermining science in the policy process." 

<h2>Science in Crisis</h2>
A lot of what we think we know about psychology is probably wrong.
A major research initiative, <a href="https://futurism.com/how-reliable-is-psychology">the second of its kind</a>, tried to reconstruct 28 famous classic psychology experiments. But of those 28, only 14 of the experiments yielded the same results, <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/9654g">according to research published Monday</a> in the journal Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.
For the past several years, world leaders in psychology research have been scrambling to investigate a looming scandal in their field: many key findings from landmark psychological experiments, in spite of many scientists&#8217; best efforts, have never been replicated. In other words, the insights about the mind uncovered by those experimenters <a href="https://futurism.com/study-finds-half-psych-research-not-reproducible">may be totally invalid</a> — but it’s difficult to tell who was wrong about what.
<h2>Take Two</h2>
That’s why many scientists are working to reproduce classic experiments — recreating their conditions and methodologies to see if they arrive at the same results — and reinvestigating the reasons why some studies led to new discoveries <a href="https://scienceline.org/2017/07/science-negativity-problem/">and others didn’t</a>.
The new paper lays out the 28 studies one after another, comparing and contrasting the original findings with what contemporary scientists discovered. For example, a <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174.5135&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf">2007 study on the trolley problem</a> held up to scrutiny — just as before, most people found it impermissible to push one person onto the tracks in order to stop a trolley from running over five people.
A common critique of modern psychological research is that participants tend to be WEIRD — a term researchers use to describe subjects who are <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/weirdest-people-in-the-world/BF84F7517D56AFF7B7EB58411A554C17">Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic nations</a>; many professors recruit undergraduates to participate in their studies. But this new massive attempt to replicate existing scientific literature, which began back in 2014 and involved over 60 labs around the world, found little difference among different samples or groups of participants.
<h2>Failed Exam</h2>
When scientists found that they couldn&#8217;t replicate a study — which, again, happened for half of the experiments they analyzed — they found that they couldn&#8217;t do so regardless of where they were conducted or who made up the sample pool. If replicability truly depended on the WEIRDness of the participants, then there would have been a <a href="https://cos.io/about/news/28-classic-and-contemporary-psychology-findings-replicated-more-60-laboratories-each-across-three-dozen-nations-and-territories/">random smattering of successes and failures</a> among different labs.
But because every attempt to reach the same conclusions as those 14 studies failed, it may be that their findings, and things that scientists claimed to have discovered about the human mind, could be totally invalid.
READ MORE: <a href="https://twitter.com/OSFramework/status/1064555385573568512">Center for Open Science (via Twitter)</a>
More on the Replication Crisis: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/academic-publisher-verify-research">An Academic Publisher Challenges its Peers: Verify the Research you Publish</a>

A lot of what we thought we knew about ourselves might be way off.

New research just debunked 14 classic psychology experiments

Replication Crisis

A global, four-year research project just found that 14 of the 28 classic psychology studies it examined couldn't be replicated.

New Research Just Debunked 14 Classic Psychology Experiments

What happens when science is wrong?

<h2>Sexy Science</h2>
Most major research institutions have a deeply flawed approach to science.
The academic journals that publish research papers, and the universities and government agencies that allocate funding to scientists, prioritize <a href="https://scienceline.org/2017/07/science-negativity-problem/">splashy new research</a>. That means replication studies, which are experiments that recreate past research in order to kick the tires and make sure their findings hold up, are often cast to the side because they&#8217;re not as sexy.
<h2>Second Best</h2>
That means that a lot of scientific research is never verified or never double checked — a problem which has caused a <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/brian-wansink-cornell-p-hacking">series</a> of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/magazine/when-the-revolution-came-for-amy-cuddy.html">academic scandals</a> in the social sciences. On Monday, <a href="https://royalsociety.org/">The Royal Society</a>, an independent scientific organization in the U.K. which publishes 11 journals, proposed a new solution.
The Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience section of The Royal Society Open Science, an academic journal run by the society, has pledged to publish <a href="https://twitter.com/chrisdc77/status/1051776238141014016">any and all replication studies</a> that seek to verify research that it’s previously published, or to verify similar experiments that were published elsewhere.
<h2>China Shop</h2>
Why it matters: The Royal Society is taking a “<a href="https://thehardestscience.com/2012/09/27/a-pottery-barn-rule-for-scientific-journals/">you break it, you bought it</a>” approach to science. It’s taking on the responsibility to verify what it publishes, at least in one journal. And <a href="https://blogs.royalsociety.org/publishing/reproducibility-meets-accountability/">in its blog post</a>, The Royal Society challenged other major publishers to do the same.
It’s too soon to say whether or not this will help funding find its way to the scientists doing <a href="https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence-journal-boycot-open-access">crucial replication work</a>, but if it does, we now know that their work will find a home.
READ MORE: Reproducibility meets accountability: introducing the replications initiative at Royal Society Open Science [<a href="https://blogs.royalsociety.org/publishing/reproducibility-meets-accountability/">The Royal Society Publishing Blog</a>]
More on scientific accountability: <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-cant-replicate-ai-studies">Scientists Can’t Replicate AI Studies. That’s Bad News.</a>

The worst thing academic journals can do: only publish sexy science

The Royal Society found a new way to fix science

Kick the Tires

The Royal Society pledged to publish studies that attempt to replicate any research that it's published. Other journals should do the same.

An Academic Publisher Challenges Its Peers: Verify the Research You Publish

Replication studies have a new home.

A new video tells you what the pharmaceutical company doesn&#8217;t want you to know: a miracle cancer cure, discovered in 1816 and derived from moss, totally works and is easy to purchase online.
The video, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/cancer-cure-video-bad-science-parody-viral/">as WIRED reported</a>, quickly racked up millions of views. But those who followed the video description’s instructions to “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_a181Xkla4">Watch until the end!!!!</a>” figured out the video&#8217;s real purpose: teaching people to be skeptical of videos exactly like this one.
Yes, this video, called “This NATURAL TRICK can CURE YOUR CANCER,&#8221; like hundreds of others like it, is fake. The moss, its alleged discoverer, and the cure itself don&#8217;t exist, falling neatly into the camp of other videos that make dangerous, repeatedly-disproven claims, like that people can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOPG7fBNSyg">cure cancer with energy</a>. But unlike the others, this video ends with a specific message: <a href="https://futurism.com/cheap-quantum-dots-synthesized-tea-leaves-future-nanomedicine/">be careful about the media you consume</a> and look for signs that you might be misled.
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<a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/jonathan-jarry-msc-science-communicator">Jonathan Jarry</a>, a science communicator and biologist from McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, made the video (the made-up cancer cure&#8217;s alleged discoverer, Dr. Johan R. Tarjany, is an anagram of Jarry&#8217;s name).
Futurism caught up with Jarry over email to learn why he made the video and how he feels the experiment has gone since it first made the rounds on social media. Here&#8217;s our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Futurism: What was your original goal for this video? Was it meant to be an educational tool or a tongue-in-cheek joke? A bit of both?
Jarry: Our goal at the Office for Science and Society is to separate sense from nonsense for the public when it comes to scientific issues. And this mission is really challenging because the kind of content that goes viral and reaches the public is rarely nuanced or even scientifically accurate. It&#8217;s videos that purport to reveal some miraculous cure for cancer that Big Pharma doesn&#8217;t want you to know about, and it&#8217;s natural, and it&#8217;s free of side effects. We wanted to make a video that would reach people with a different message, which is that skepticism really does help you make better decisions about your health. So the video was conceived as a Trojan horse of sorts: on its surface, it looked like one of those popular, easily shareable conspiracist videos, but, actually, it was all a hoax to show how easy it is to be manipulated by these moving images online.
Futurism: Along that same vein, who was the intended audience? I imagine that the argument in the video would most benefit people who already consume media with a little bit of scientific skepticism, but it could also be a good way to get others thinking as well.
Jarry: I really wanted to reach people who, for one reason or another, are tempted by these sorts of videos. It&#8217;s often impossible to reach hardened believers in alternative medicine, but so many people are on the fence because they hear contradictory messages. It&#8217;s impossible to know how many of these people our little video reached, but I&#8217;m hoping we did connect with a good number of them for two reasons. First, the video has now surpassed 8.5 million views and, given the size of this reach, I doubt only skeptics saw it. Second, skeptics have friends and relatives who aren&#8217;t trained in critical thinking, so the fact that the video has been shared more than 130,000 times across all platforms makes me hopeful that our &#8220;choir,&#8221; as it were, spread it forward to people who really needed to see it.
Futurism: How has the response been so far? Have you heard back from anyone who came across the video? If so, did their reactions match what you were expecting?
Jarry: The comments on Facebook and Twitter have been priceless, with people getting into arguments over whether or not they&#8217;ve actually watched the whole thing. We&#8217;re in the habit of commenting and sharing before fully consuming content online. So many people share after simply catching a glimpse of a headline. I think this behavior is ultimately a significant component to the spread of misinformation in our society. I saw a lot of people writing, &#8220;You haven&#8217;t watched it until the end, did you,&#8221; which I think contributed to the spread of the video, because when you see what the video actually is, you want to spread it forward to see who amongst your friends will fall for it. It&#8217;s almost like a mini rite of passage.
Futurism: I think the big question for me is about viewing habits. I&#8217;m curious about how long people actually spent on the video, given that the first 40 seconds look like the sort of medical conspiracy or otherwise misleading video that you were hoping to parody or debunk. Do you happen to have access to analytics or any data that would show how many viewers watched long enough to reach the big reveal?
Jarry: I don&#8217;t, actually, especially since our release strategy was a little unusual. I didn&#8217;t want the words &#8220;McGill&#8221; and &#8220;science&#8221; to accompany this video at first, so we identified major influencers on social media: people with large followings who would be on board with what we were trying to accomplish, and they&#8217;re the ones who initially uploaded the video natively to social media and spread the word. The good news is that, even if a segment of our viewing audience didn&#8217;t watch until the reveal, they&#8217;re in no danger of them using this moss to try to cure their cancer: the moss doesn&#8217;t exist.
Futurism: Do you see yourself continuing with projects like these, or was this a one-off deal? 
Jarry: This video was initially a shot in the dark, a bit of experimentation to see if it would work or not, and it has far, far exceeded our expectations. I don&#8217;t think we can pull this kind of stunt on a regular basis, but it has certainly gotten me thinking about doing something similar a few months down the line. I can only hope that people won&#8217;t see it coming, that it&#8217;ll likewise spread like wildfire, and that our core message of being skeptical can continue to reach people far and wide. Those of us engaged in educating the public about critical thinking and scientific literacy could certainly use the publicity boost. The public needs those skills now more than ever.
To read more about combatting misleading videos, click here: <a href="https://futurism.com/youtube-fight-fake-news/">YouTube Tweaks Site Design, Dedicates $25 Million to Combat “Fake News”</a>

The good news: it will help you spot fake conspiracy theories. The bad news: this miracle cure for cancer doesn't exist.

This "cancer cure" video is fake. That's the point.

Future Society

Jonathan Jarry of McGill University explains why he published a parody of a medical conspiracy video that warns against falling for misinformation.

This “Cancer Cure” Video Is Fake. That’s The Point.

Its creator tells us why he made a "Trojan horse" to teach people to be more skeptical of videos just like that one.

Remember that massive clinical trial that was supposed to determine the health impacts of alcohol once and for all? Well, the National Institutes of Health <a href="https://acd.od.nih.gov/documents/presentations/06152018Tabak.pdf">decided Friday</a> to shut it down.
The official reasoning, in short, is that the $100 million experiment was a complete and utter train wreck, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/health/alcohol-nih-drinking.html?smid=fb-nytscience&amp;smtyp=cur">as The New York Times reported</a>. The National Institutes of Health recommended throwing out everything the study&#8217;s found so far, meaning the researchers threw away the chance of a lifetime to finally settle all the dubious health claims people make about beer, wine, and liquor.
Since we here at Futurism are now sitting around worrying instead of enjoying a <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-drinking-wine-really-good-for-your-heart-85954">maybe-helps-your-heart-maybe-increases-your-risk-of-cancer</a> glass of red wine, we decided to help the scientists of tomorrow do a better job by designing an undergraduate course on how to not totally screw up scientific research. Here is the syllabus for Common Science Sense 101, in a highly informative, five-week summer course.
Week 1: When People Give You Money, They Expect Something In Return.
Wow, who knew that taking industry money to fund an experiment would make that study’s findings questionable? Pretty much everyone! It&#8217;s called a conflict of interest, people. To avoid this, avoid funding your experiment with the greasy, greasy cash of those who stand to benefit if your results come out a particular way.
For instance, if you’re running the landmark experiment on whether or not moderate alcohol consumption has health benefits, maybe don’t take <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/well/eat/alcohol-national-institutes-of-health-clinical-trial.html">tens of millions of dollars</a> from alcohol companies!
Week 2: No One, Not Even You, Knows How Your Experiment Will Turn Out.
A good scientist tries to remove, or at least challenge, their assumptions. So if you already forgot last week’s lesson and are traveling to the headquarters of an alcohol company to beg for funding on your “is alcohol healthy?” study, try to avoid telling the company reps that you expect the answer to be yes.
Week 3: If You’re Running A Clinical Trial About Health Impacts, Make Sure The FDA Approves.
The U.S. Food &amp; Drug Administration is the regulatory body that oversees medical research. Don’t forget to ask for its approval! If you think you might forget, memorize this handy acronym: “Hey, Is My Research In Violation Of Federal Law? Maybe I Should Do Something About That” or “HIMRIVOFLMISDSAT.” <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2018/06/12/alcohol-study-failed-to-seek-fda-approval/?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&amp;utm_campaign=b01fef7a77-MR_COPY_09&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-b01fef7a77-134219417">As STAT News reported</a>, the researchers behind this now-shut-down alcohol study forgot to HIMRIVOFLMISDSAT big time.
Week 4: If You’re Studying Something Super Controversial, Make Sure You Collect Enough Data To Actually Learn Something.
There’s a lot of money in sorting out the health risks and benefits of alcohol. If you failed week one, you&#8217;ve already learned this lesson, because you&#8217;ve already got your hands on giant wads of cash. If you want to use your study to come to conclusions that mean something, you should find a decent number of participants. For instance, you’ll need to make sure you actually recruited enough men and women to be able to tell if there’s a difference in the way alcohol affects people of different genders. If you didn&#8217;t, well, other scientists won&#8217;t pay much mind to what you&#8217;ve found.
Week 5: If You Only Recruit Volunteers In Perfect Health, You Won&#8217;t Know How That Substance Affects Anyone Else.
Stay with me here, because this one gets confusing. If you want to know how alcohol, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/mar/07/safe-level-alcohol-consumption">a poison</a>, affects the entire human species, you can’t exclude from your experiment people whose bodies already have some form of damage from alcohol.
Not so difficult, right?

This study to assess how drinking affects our health is a master class in how to do science poorly

Health & Medicine

The major study on how alcohol impacts health was just cancelled over multiple concerns of ethical and scientific failures.

This Study To Assess How Drinking Affects Our Health Is A Master Class In How To Do Science Poorly

Happy hour is ruined.

Mehdi Sadaghdar runs Electroboom, a Youtube channel that shows off the fun, and occasionally dangerous sides of engineering.

Earth & Energy

Mehdi Sadaghdar runs Electroboom, a YouTube channel that shows off the fun, and occasionally dangerous sides of electrical engineering.

Explosive and Comedic Electrical Education by Electroboom

Ever since we reached towards the stars, and as a civilization, made our way upward — ever since Buzz Aldrin <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/13/buzz-aldrin-communion-moon">took communion on the moon</a> — an awestruck human populace has often looked down the horizon of space travel, and wondered: Great, now how can we get drunk up there? And now, we&#8217;ve got an answer.
Australian brewery 4 Pines Brewing has teamed up with engineering firm Saber Astronautics Australia to develop a stout called Vostok Space Beer. They&#8217;re currently crowdfunding a brand-new type of bottle, too. Both the bottle and the brew in it are designed for consumption in space that could turn the cold, empty void into one endless, extraterrestrial party.
Mind you, this comes just days after Australia <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/updated-australia-creates-nation-s-first-space-agency">announced a new space agency.</a> Coupled with this news,  &#8216;seems like the country&#8217;s working hard to win the only space race that truly matters: Getting sauced, well beyond the confines of our atmosphere.
The idea behind designing a beer bottle for microgravity was to make the drinking experience as familiar as possible. Rather than relying on a squeeze bag, astronauts will be able to drink straight from the bottle thanks to surface tension — which will keep the beer clinging to the glass — and a sort of wick that will draw beer from the bottom of the bottle up towards the neck.
The beer itself is less carbonated than normal, meaning there’s less of a chance of a big bubbly mess in the middle of a space station, but also enough for the drink to still taste and feel like a beer, <a href="https://www.space.com/40542-vostok-space-beer-astronaut-bottle-4-pines.html">according to Space.com</a>
Still, there are more hurdles facing space beer aficionados than just designing a vessel for the stout. We don’t really know how drinking in different levels of gravity will affect people’s tolerance or typical alcohol metabolism, but these are the kinds questions that the brewing and engineering team hope to research if they receive funding (and good luck getting that incredible job). But truly: While Chris Hadfield’s videos of him playing an acoustic guitar and singing aboard the International Space Station (which, currently, is a designated dry area) might present spaceflight as a tranquil vacation, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Having drunken space-sailors on deck could make matters worse.
All of this goes without mentioning the fact that interstellar beer runs would be, once your supply runs out,  expensive and difficult (the beer has to come to you, basically, and unless you&#8217;ve got the cash to launch a satellite into space to beer someone, you&#8217;re outta luck). It&#8217;s why Russian (and Anheuser-Busch) scientists have conducted experiments to see if <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-to-make-beer-in-space-180968404/">hops and barley can grow in space</a>.
Currently, NASA astronauts are forbidden from drinking alcohol, though there were eventually-scrapped plans <a href="https://vinepair.com/articles/can-you-drink-alcohol-in-space/">to send sherry</a> as part of an astronaut’s meals in the 1970s. Russia, however, has had fewer restrictions and even recommended that their <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/alcohol-that-has-flown-in-space-2016-1#the-presence-of-alcohol-in-space-dates-all-the-way-back-to-the-80s-and-the-soviet-union-space-station-called-mir-at-that-time-cognac-was-actually-doctor-recommended-for-russian-cosmonauts-1">astronauts drink cognac</a> from time to time. You know, for their health.
But even if the ISS isn’t about to install a minibar any time soon, 4 Pines said they have received some interest from space tourism companies who might someday want to let people enjoy a cold one while bouncing around on a parabolic flight. But until that happens, you&#8217;re just gonna have to do it the old-fashioned way, and pregame.

No word yet if beer olympics will be added to NASA's training regimen.

Drunk astronauts: This beer is the beginning of zero-gravity drinking

Off World

An Australian brewery and space engineering firm have teamed up to develop beer and a space-age beer bottle that could let astronauts drink in space.

Drunk Astronauts: This Beer Is the Beginning of Zero-Gravity Drinking

One small drink for man, one giant party for mankind. 

There&#8217;s no doubt that medicine has come a long way; we know way more about how the human body works than ever before.
Seeing inside the body, though, still presents a challenge. Yes, we have scans, stains, and microscopes that let us glimpse of the body’s workings, but they offer only limited information. Not to mention that they can also damage or alter the cells that a doctor or researcher is trying to see in the first place.
It’s particularly difficult to see exactly what&#8217;s going on with individual cells as they fight disease. And that can make it hard to figure out what a person needs to make them better.
To get a more thorough view of what’s going on in individual cells, researchers at the Allen Institute <a href="http://www.allencell.org/allen-integrated-cell.html">turned to artificial intelligence</a> to create the first complete, 3D model of a human cell that shows how all the different components and structures found within a cell fit and work together.
The model shows what a typical <a href="https://www.nature.com/subjects/pluripotent-stem-cells">human induced pluripotent stem cells</a> (hiPSCs) might look like (they chose hiPSCs because they were cloning them as they tagged different structures within them). To train the AI that generated it, the researchers took detailed scans of thousands of cells  — <a href="http://www.allencell.org/3d-cell-viewer.html">their online tool</a>, which is free and open to the public, offers 3D views of 32,000 cells.
With that information, the AI generated a model that predicts where each organelle, or internal component, of a cell is most likely to be found, and how it fits in with the rest of the cell. This model can predict where these organelles will be found in any new cell, so long as it&#8217;s provided with an image from a microscope.
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The researchers also used AI to create a probabilistic model that takes its best guess at where one might expect to find those same organelles if provided with a cell&#8217;s size and shape, along with the location of its nucleus.
These models are useful for doctors and scientists because they provide a close-up look at the effects of cancer and other diseases on individual cells. By feeding the AI with data and images of cancer cells, they can get a more complete picture of how the cell, and its individual components, are affected. And that can indicate how doctors can help each patient with treatment tailored to their disease.
The team from the Allen Institute hopes their tools can help democratize medical research, improving healthcare in underserved areas. So the researchers are working to improve them, creating more complete models, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/09/609361688/artificial-intelligence-takes-scientists-inside-living-human-cells">according to NPR</a>. They hope to have a broader database, full of models of more cells, available over the next few months.
Editor&#8217;s note, 5/9/18 5:32 PM EDT: This post originally stated that the researchers had made a model of embryonic stem cells. They had, in fact, used hiPSCs, which are derived differently. The article has been updated. We regret the error.

Feed it a microscope image and the AI can predict how every piece of a cell fits together.

AI created complete 3D models to show doctors how diseases alter cells

Artificial Intelligence

The Allen Institute used AI to create the first complete 3D model of a cell and all its inner workings, which they say can be used to monitor disease.

AI Created Complete 3D Models Of Cells So Doctors See How Diseases Change Them

If doctors see how cancer changes specific cells, they can find better treatments to fight it. 

If scientific journals don’t make their articles available to everyone, we want nothing to do with them.
That’s the gist of <a href="https://openaccess.engineering.oregonstate.edu/home">a petition</a> signed by more than 2,000 artificial intelligence researchers publicized in <a href="https://twitter.com/tdietterich/status/990325895729594368">a tweet on Saturday</a>. Specifically, the scientists are boycotting a recently-announced journal, Nature Machine Intelligence, because it would trap the articles published there behind a paywall.
Artificial intelligence research should be transparent and open to the community at large, argues Tom Dietterich of Oregon State University, the machine learning researcher who began the boycott, <a href="https://retractionwatch.com/2018/05/01/thousands-boycott-new-nature-journal-about-machine-learning/">according to Retraction Watch</a>.
Reminder: science publishing is a business. Many journals, especially the most reputable ones (which include those from the Nature Publishing Group), require payment from anyone who wants to read a full article.
For reference: an online subscription to a Nature journal costs $59 per year (print and online will run you $225 annually). Alternatively, people can pay to view individual research articles. While it’s common for universities and media organizations to purchase access for entire institutions, these costs can push the latest research out of the grasp of independent researchers or simply people interested in a field.
There&#8217;s been <a href="https://blogs.royalsociety.org/publishing/the-rise-of-open-access/">a larger push</a> towards making more scientific journals open access. But the transparency and participation that brings is especially important for artificial intelligence. AI is inherently multidisciplinary — it requires engineering, math, computer science, cognitive science, and a slew of other scientific specialties. Also valuable: input from people who would use AI algorithms, or who <a href="https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/artificial-intelligence-leaders-generate-greater-shareholder-value-finds-new-report-from-accenture-research.htm">stand to benefit</a> from them.
With paywalls in place, it is much harder for everyone — scientists and non scientists alike — to stay on top of the current state of the field, and to participate in it.
This is why many of the researchers who signed the boycott, which include AI experts from Google, Facebook, IBM, as well as prestigious universities, often opt to publish their work on <a href="https://arxiv.org/">public archives like arXiv</a>, where everyone can see their work.
Nature Machine Intelligence responded to the petition by agreeing that open-access has its place, but also <a href="https://twitter.com/NatMachIntell/status/990503910673715200">defending its business model</a>. After all, other journals ask the researchers themselves to pay to publish an article. And many open access journals aren&#8217;t as picky about some of the articles they publish, which detracts from the field in the long run.
But the ultimate goal of machine learning is to create algorithms with a <a href="https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-advocates-for-collaborative-ai-research-at-2018-artificial-intelligence-summit">general, broadly-beneficial</a> semblance of intelligence. Unrestricted access to cutting edge research and algorithms is crucial. Artificial intelligence can do some really cool things, but without collaboration and transparency, the field won&#8217;t blossom.
Having a bunch of teams working in isolation behind paywalls isn&#8217;t the worst thing in the world. But it doesn’t really jive with people’s dreams of what AI ought to do in the future. And it might delay how quickly we can get there.

They feel that their field in particular stands to benefit from collaboration and open access.

AI researchers are boycotting a new journal because its not open access

Abstract connections of lines and spheres

Over 2,000 artificial intelligence researchers recently signed a boycott of the new journal Nature Machine Intelligence because it has a paywall.

AI Researchers Are Boycotting A New Journal Because It’s Not Open Access

Artificial intelligence will only flourish with transparency.

Studying an animal’s behavior can be a real pain for researchers. It takes hours of observing an animal in carefully-designed lab environments, or out in the wild, to glean an ounce of insight into how they act and why. For a team of biologists at Columbia University, there seemed to be a better way: set up a camera and let artificial intelligence do the tedious observing.
The researchers recently <a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/32605/figures">published a study </a>about their technique in the journal eLife. 
The organism in question is a Hydra vulgaris, a tiny animal related to jellyfish and coral that tends to live in ponds. In the past, the researchers studied the animal’s nervous system and figured out which parts of its brain prompt much of its behavior. Now they’re using AI to track all of that behavior in hopes of figuring out how the two pair up.
The team used an artificial intelligence algorithm that automatically annotated the behaviors of the wormlike Hydra — all of its wiggles, pivots, stretches, and bends. They learned that the species only really engaged in <a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/32605#abstract">six basic behaviors</a>, which it did no matter the environmental conditions, such as the amount of light, the temperature, or the amount of food nearby.
<div style="width: 346px;" class="wp-video">
<video class="wp-video-shortcode" id="video-130326-1" width="346" height="346" preload="metadata" controls="controls"><source type="video/mp4" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2018/05/elife-32605-video10.mp4?_=1" /><a href="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2018/05/elife-32605-video10.mp4">https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2018/05/elife-32605-video10.mp4</a></video></div>
Video Credit: <a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/32605/figures">Han et al, eLife, 2018</a>
While it may seem obvious to just keep a camera on these animals and record what they do, remember that our knowledge of animal behavior is far from complete. For example, we didn’t learn until last June that <a href="https://www.inverse.com/article/32512-aardvark-drinking-water-spotted">aardvarks drink water</a> because we had never seen them do it.
Now that they have the animal’s basic behaviors as well as an understanding of its neural circuitry, the researchers hope to learn how the two connect. That is: they want to map out Hydra vulgaris’ nervous system to understand exactly how it causes behavior, and to determine if (and how) it could learn new ones. Because the Hydra is a relatively simple organism and pretty easy to study, such experimentation is much more feasible (and, probably, ethical) than it would be on an animal like a dog, cat, or person.
Of particular interest: the Hydra’s ability to carry on with business as usual, even when the biologists were messing around with its environment. The researchers speculate that, in the distant future, understanding this ability could lead to better machines, and vehicles that could withstand extreme environments.
For now, the algorithm these scientists develop could further our understanding of other animals, and even groups of animals, by keeping a watchful eye over them and categorizing everything they do. In the past, this was one of the most arduous tasks for behavioral analysis. It&#8217;s tedious and inherently biased, as all human analysis of animal behavior is, since researchers might project intent onto an animal’s behavior, or mis-categorize a particular action.
By handing the keys over to an AI, we can eliminate most of those errors. The result: a better assessment of how, and why, animals do what they do.

These jellyfish relatives are pretty simple and easy to watch in a lab, making them easier (and, probably, more ethical) to study than a mouse, cat, or human.

To understand why animals behave the way they do, scientists need AI

By using an artificial intelligence to monitor Hydra vulgaris, researchers now have a full catalog of the animal's behavior.

/Science

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