Science bits: AI-driven physics; Male birth control

AI-driven physics: This is about using AI (artificial intelligence) to find fundamental variables that control phenomena. This one is really interesting and fun. It is ripe for conspiracy theory crackpots,  grifters and liars to have tons 'o fun with in fun places like Trumplandia and Crackpotlandia. Instead of being useful only for mischief, scientists can use it too for actual research. Interesting Engineering writes:

In physics news, researchers at Columbia University in the City of New York may have discovered a new realm of physics. They did this using a new AI program, and their findings may prove revolutionary for the future of physics and our understanding of the universe.

Albert Einstein's famous equation E=MC2 comprises three main variables; mass, energy, and velocity. But, the researchers behind the new study pondered whether such variables could be discovered automatically. If they could, it should significantly improve the process of scientific discovery.

To test if this would be possible, researchers at Columbia Engineering developed a new AI algorithm to attempt to find a way. The program's purpose was to use a video camera to monitor physical processes before attempting to identify the smallest possible collection of fundamental variables that might adequately capture the dynamics being observed.

The study was published on July 25, 2022, in Nature Computational Science.

The researchers fed films of physical systems for which they lacked the explicit solution after testing a number of other physical systems with known solutions. In the first videos, a local "air dancer" could be seen swaying in front of a used car sale. Eight variables were returned by the program after several hours of analysis. Additionally, a Lava lamp video also generated eight suggested variables. The program then outputted twenty-four variables after being fed a video clip of flames from a holiday fireplace loop.

"I always wondered, if we ever met an intelligent alien race, would they have discovered the same physics laws as we have, or might they describe the universe in a different way?” said Lipson. “Perhaps some phenomena seem enigmatically complex because we are trying to understand them using the wrong set of variables.” Every time the AI restarted, the total number of variables remained constant, but the individual variables changed.

This line of research could wind up fundamentally changing physics as we know it. Right now, the researchers are having a hard time translating the AI analysis results into human language, which is necessary to understand the variables the AI finds. This kind of AI can be applied to complicated phenomena in many fields including cosmology and biology. At present, theoretical knowledge is falling behind the vast amounts of data being generated. Depending on how it plays out, this research could wind up winning a Nobel Prize for someone or two or three someones.

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Male birth control: Boys are such weenies, wuss & numbnuts. The BBC writes: 

The weird reasons there still isn’t a male contraceptive pill

Many side-effects deemed unacceptable in the male pill have been plaguing women for decades. Is there a double standard?

Though a safe, effective male pill would have the potential to finally unburden women of the responsibility for contraception, and prevent millions of unwanted pregnancies every year, some men found the idea of an invisible orgasm distinctly unappealing. For a proportion of men, the so-called "clean sheets" pill was seen as emasculating. The method eventually lost its funding, and researchers went back to the drawing board (more on this later).

Today the male contraceptive pill is still yet to materialise. This week, research in mice identified a promising new target – a molecular switch that can stun sperm for two hours, rendering its taker temporarily infertile. But though the protein has been hailed as a game-changer, it still has a long way to go before it is approved for use in humans.

In fact, finding effective drugs has never been the problem.

Over the last half century, numerous possible methods for male birth control have been proposed, including some that have made it to clinical trials in humans. However, each one has eventually met a brick wall – even those that are safe and effective have been written off due to undesirable side effects. Several male pills have been rejected on the grounds that they lead to symptoms that are extremely common among women taking female versions.

Which brings us to the next reason male contraceptive pills are held to a higher set of standards – both in terms of acceptable side effects, and safety more generally: to state the medically obvious, men (except transgender men) can't get pregnant.

Naturally men don't face these risks [pregnancy and childbirth] if they choose to have unprotected sex, so the safety standards for any contraceptives they might take have a higher bar to get across.

However, a number of non-hormonal contraceptive options for men have also been proposed, including a vaccine that targets a protein involved in sperm maturation and a kind of temporary vasectomy, reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance (RISUG).

RISUG involves injecting a synthetic polymer into the tube that carries sperm out of the testes – the vas deferens – to block the exit of sperm. It was originally developed as a way to sterilise water pipes, but later adapted to be safe inside the human body. It's currently undergoing Phase III clinical trials – the final stage of testing before a treatment is approved – in India.

Men just can’t psychologically handle being messed with. And, as usual, the profit motive is also at work. Drug companies can’t make as much profit selling male contraceptives as they can selling to women. Once again, capitalism shows it cares only about profit. Everything else, including possible extinction of the human species, is just a public relations problem. 

One can also imagine that forced birthers are not enthusiastic about male contraception. They already hate female contraception. Male contraception would add to the long list of things they have to hate. Who needs more stuff to hate?

 

We all know who these little dudes are

Toxic Democratic Party neoliberalism is on display

When it comes to capitalism, the Democrats often look too much like the Republicans. Capitalism trumps the public interest. The Lever (high fact accuracy, solid left bias) reports on a Biden administration effort to protect Norfolk Southern railroad’s effort to shield itself from lawsuits. The Lever writes:

Biden DOJ Backing Norfolk Southern’s Bid To Block Lawsuits

The company whose train derailed in Ohio is asking the Supreme Court to kill a suit by a sick rail worker — and help the firm block future lawsuits

A looming Supreme Court decision could end up making it easier for the railroad giant whose train derailed in Ohio this month to block lawsuits, including from victims of the disaster.

In the case against Norfolk Southern, the Biden administration is siding with the railroad in its conflict with a cancer-stricken former rail worker. A high court ruling for Norfolk Southern could create a national precedent limiting where workers and consumers can bring cases against corporations.

In its fight against the lawsuit, Norfolk Southern is asking the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court ruling, overturn Pennsylvania’s law, and restrict where corporations can be sued, upending centuries of precedent.

If the court rules in favor of Norfolk Southern, it could overturn plaintiff-friendly laws on the books in states including Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia that give workers and consumers more leeway to choose where they take corporations to court — an advantage national corporations already enjoy, as they often require customers and employees to agree to file litigation in specific locales whose laws make it harder to hold companies accountable.  

Limiting lawsuits is exactly what the American Association of Railroads (AAR), the industry’s primary lobbying group, wants. The organization filed a brief on the side of Norfolk Southern in the case, arguing that a ruling in favor of the plaintiff would open up railroads to more litigation.

It is also apparently what the Biden administration wants — the Justice Department filed its own brief in favor of Norfolk Southern.  

Pennsylvania has what’s known as a “consent-by-registration” statute — something states have had on the books since the early 19th century — which stipulates that when corporations register to do business in the state, they are also consenting to be governed by that state’s courts. Norfolk Southern asserts that being forced to defend the case in Pennsylvania would pose an undue burden, thereby violating its constitutional right to due process.  

Corporate lobbying groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Trucking Association have weighed in on the case on behalf of Norfolk Southern. Many have warned that a ruling in favor of the former railroad worker could allow people to sue corporations in whatever venue they’d like — a practice known as “forum shopping.”

Once again, we see the toxic side of Democratic Party, pro-corporation, anti-consumer neoliberal ideology at work. As the article notes, corporations can force consumers to go to court in states with laws stacked in favor of the corporation. That is forum shopping in the extreme. But corporations scream and howl in self-righteous indignation about consumers having forum shopping rights in some states. The law is stacked against consumers. Most Democrats in power, or at least Biden, apparently like it that way. 

Note that Biden is from Delaware, one of the most pro-corporate (therefore anti-consumer) states in the country. That’s why tens of thousands of corporations incorporate there to get shielding from staunchly pro-corporation Delaware laws. 

Here is a second example of the anti-consumer neoliberalism that poisons the Democratic Party. The Lever writes:

Buttigieg Pretends He’s Powerless To Reduce Derailment Risks

Facing pressure to act, America’s chief rail regulator now insists he is “constrained.” He’s not.

Facing pressure from lawmakers in his own party after a spate of train derailments, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has now resorted to falsely suggesting that he does not have power to compel the rail industry to upgrade its safety equipment and procedures.

In a Twitter thread posted more than a week after Norfolk Southern’s fiery train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Buttigieg indicated that he cannot reinstate an Obama-enacted, Trump-repealed law requiring some trains carrying hazardous materials to replace their Civil War-era braking systems with new Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brake technology.

.... nothing prevents Buttigieg from using his existing rulemaking authority to expand the definition of a “high-hazard flammable train” to cover trains like the one in Ohio.

Under the existing limited definition, the Ohio train — which was carrying five tanker cars of vinyl chloride, a Class 2 flammable gas and known carcinogen — was exempted from the classification’s more stringent safety regulations.

Meanwhile, Buttigieg’s agency is currently considering a separate rule that would weaken brake testing standards.

As far as consumers are concerned, with friends like the Democratic Party, who need enemies like the radical right Republican Party? Or, is that assessment over the top because, e.g., Dems are not as bad as Repubs?

My, my, my...

FOX “News” lies to people to keep ratings up and to avoid loss of stock prices. The behind the scenes story.

Q: Do you think the regular viewers of Fox are aware of this?  Or, since they likely don’t watch other outlets outside of Fox, do they remain in the dark because Fox sure isn't gonna spill the beans?

What’s your guess?  Comments.

From the real conspiracy files: Eliminalia Corporation creates faux reputations

What is Eliminalia? It’s a company that whitewashes the online reputation of individuals and corporations using threats of lawsuits and fake news to (i) make clients look good, and (ii) bury embarrassing online information about the clients. Clients pay Eliminalia to do whatever it can to spin damaged or insufficiently good reputations of clients. Eliminalia manufactures fake reputations. This is something useful to be aware of. The WaPo writes:

Leaked files reveal reputation-management firm’s deceptive tactics

They look at first glance like ordinary news outlets serving up headlines from around the world. The hundreds of websites, seemingly unconnected to one another, come in six languages and purport to cover far-flung cities such as Paris, London and Chicago.

But beneath the surface, the sites have something in common: They host frothy stories about clients of a little-known reputation-management company that promises to remake the online images of its customers.

The network of fake news sites is one part of a complex apparatus the Spain-based firm Eliminalia uses to manipulate online information on behalf of a global roster of clients, an investigation by The Washington Post and other media partners found. The firm employs elaborate, deceptive tactics to remove or drown out unflattering news stories and other content, the investigation revealed. Eliminalia had close to 1,500 clients over six years, including businesses, minor celebrities, and suspected or convicted criminals.

Reputations like this get repaired

Between 2015 and 2021, Eliminalia sent thousands of bogus copyright-infringement complaints to search engines and web hosting companies, falsely claiming that negative articles about its clients had previously been published elsewhere and stolen, and so should be removed or hidden, the company records show. The firm sent the legal notices under made-up company names, the examination found.

Eliminalia also tried to make embarrassing information about its clients harder to find by burying it under false, flattering stories.

Those stories, published on the network of fake news sites, are designed to show up prominently in internet searches of the clients’ names, the review found.

To accomplish this, the firm exploited a glitch in the websites of dozens of U.S. government agencies and universities, including Stanford University, to make the fake news sites appear more legitimate to search engine algorithms, the review revealed.

Its U.S. clients included a popular reality-TV personality publicly accused of sexual misconduct and a California biotech entrepreneur who had been convicted of financial fraud and is now fighting charges he hired a hit man to kill a business associate. The leader of a major religious charity in Chicago that faced criticism over its executives’ salaries also turned to Eliminalia, the records show.

Eliminalia did work for an Italian spyware company that had been fined for selling surveillance technology to Syria’s autocratic regime, and for a Swiss bank that had drawn public scrutiny over Venezuelan clients who were suspected of money laundering. It also worked on behalf of a well-known traveling circus clown who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Switzerland.

A woman who answered the door at the Eliminalia office in January, after The Post and partner news organizations began contacting Eliminalia’s clients, told a reporter that the company had changed its name to iData Protection and that its new focus was data security. Three people were in the office.

“We erase your past,” the tagline on its website pledges.

Diego “Dídac” Sánchez - Eliminalia founder

I’m a gooood boy!

In the years after its creation, Eliminalia quickly expanded its footprint, with a hub in Kyiv, Ukraine, and offices in Miami; Milan; Manchester, England; Guayaquil, Ecuador; and a dozen other cities, according to its website.

The reputation-management industry grew in parallel, experts said. Although measuring the industry is difficult, dozens of firms with names such as Reputation Defense Network, Guaranteed Removals and Reputation Resolutions advertise online-content-removal services. Few provide details about their methods.

“There are ethical reputation-management companies that try to use methods that are entirely on the up and up,” said Matt Cutts, formerly a top engineer at Google and administrator of the U.S. Digital Service, a unit of the executive branch that advises federal agencies on information technology. “It is also safe to say that there are many unethical companies.”

Such companies are often called “black hat” firms because they use deceptive or legally dubious tactics. Cutts and other experts said they would put Eliminalia in that group.

“They are clearly using black-hat techniques,” said Zach Edwards, a data privacy researcher who reviewed The Post’s findings. “It’s unethical and may even be illegal in some cases.”  

The links to Eliminalia’s fake stories had another feature that experts said appeared designed to make search engines give prominence to the fake news outlets. They were crafted to piggyback on the URLs of legitimate websites, including those of Stanford University, NASA and the Federal Highway Administration.

The article goes on to detail how the reputation of a nasty money-laundering drug lord in Argentina got his reputation whitewashed after he hired Eliminalia. Before, a search of the criminal showed stories about drugs and money laundering. After Eliminalia has been on the job for a while, fake stories about the thug turned up fluffy propaganda like how he loved American football, what he thought about the personalities of Chihuahua dogs and his commentary on the tenets of philosophy. The thug, Hernan Gabriel Westmann, had been whitewashed into respectability on the internet. 

And, this is not just about Eliminalia. An entire industry has popped up to make bad people and companies look good.

That’s just the world we live in. Truth has no value to elites. Could that be why elites and corporations deserve little or no trust about anything they say, or has the situation not deteriorated that far yet?