Micro-Drones Combined With DNA Hacking Could Create A Very Scary Future

Mockup of mosquito drone

Biology Forums

Sightings of insect-sized micro drones have been occurring for years, but combined with the direction of genome sequencing outlined in this Atlantic piece — the pair make for a futuristic and potentially deadly mix.

Even back in 2007, when Vanessa Alarcon was a college student attending an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. she heard someone shout, "Oh my God, look at those."

"I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?'" she told The Washington Post. "They looked like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects," she continued.

A lawyer there at the time confirmed they looked like dragonflies, but that they "definitely weren't insects".

And he's probably right. In 2006 Flight International reported that the CIA had been developing micro UAVs as far back as the 1970s and had a mock-up in its Langley headquarters since 2003.

While we can go on listing roachbots, swarming nano drones, and synchronized MIT robots — private trader and former software engineer Alan Lovejoy points out that the future of nano drones could become even more unsettling.

Lovejoy says "Such a device could be controlled from a great distance and is equipped with a camera, microphone. It could land on you and then use its needle to take a DNA sample." 

Assuming all that to be possible, the Atlantic  paints a complimentary scenario.

Authors Andrew Hessel, Marc Goodman, and Steven Kotler outline futuristic human genome work that evolves from the very real GE $100 million breast cancer challenge.

In the group's scenario a bunch of brilliant freelancers receive bids to design personalized virus' offering customized cures for the sick.

Say you get pancreatic cancer, instead of chemo' — the first step in treatment will be decoding your genome — which costs about $1,000 right now and takes a couple of days.

An eternity when you're rife with cancer, no doubt, but a far cry from the two years and $300 million it required less than a decade-and-a-half ago.

But imagine, the three writers ask: it's 2015, and with information about the disease and your exclusive genome sequence, tomorrow's virologists will have only a simple design problem on their hands.

The problem will be freelanced out for bids, like a brochure design on Elance, and the winning design will be a formula that'll rid your body of the cancer.

All of this is pretty plausible, if not a bit short on the timeline, but imagine the request for proposal of your pancreatic cancer cure was something else.

Imagine it was the genome of a particular African leader recruiting children to fight his wars, and that his DNA had been high-jacked in 2009 at the UN by order of Hillary Clinton.

Same scenario applies. The request for a drug tailored to that particular genome is accepted. It's paid for and forwarded to an online bio-marketplace, which sends it to a synthesis start-up that turns "the 5,984 base-pair blueprint into actual genetic material."

Here the future of drones and virology could intersect.

A few days later tablets are delivered to a group that dissolves them and injects the liquid into a handful of micro-drones. The team releases the drones and infects the people in the African leader's circle of advisors or family.

The infected come down with flu like symptoms, coughs and sneezes that release billions of harmless virus particles — but when they bring their symptoms in the vicinity of the African leader — the particles change.

Once the virus particles are exposed to that very specific DNA sequence, a secondary function within their design unlocks. In the Atlantic piece the target is the U.S. president via sneezing Harvard students, but the effect would be the same. In that case it was a "fast-acting neuro-destructive disease that produced memory loss and, eventually, death."

Same for the African leader, though the symptoms could be tailored an infinite number of ways. Designed to reflect a uniquely local affliction like Dengue Fever, or to appear like symptoms of a genetic condition.

The drone and bio-technologies are approaching the point where something like this is theoretically possible, even if for now, it's only imagination. 

                                               

     Chip Implants: The Next Big Privacy

                              Debate

  

Have you been chipped?

That question is set to divide millions of people in the 2020 s. And perhaps billions of people in the 2030 s and 2040 s.

Just as the world begins to understand the many benefits of the Internet of Things (IOT), but also learns about the ‘dark side’ from ‘smart everything,’ including our connected cities, we are now on the cusp of small chips causing major new privacy disagreements.

As individuals try to grapple with the privacy and security implications that come with IoT, big data, public- and private-sector data breaches, social media sharing, GDPR, a new California privacy law, along with data ownership and “right to be forgotten” provisions, along comes a set of technologies that will become much more personal than your smartphone or cloud storage history.

Get ready for people to ask you to place microchips under your skin for a wide variety of reasons.

Why are implanted chips so controversial? What is at stake?

How can such a small thing affect so many people? 

What leads me to proclaim that implanted chips will become the next big privacy debate?

Short answer: Implanting chips in humans has privacy and security implications that go well beyond cameras in public places, facial recognition, tracking of our locations, our driving habits, our spending histories, and even beyond ownership of your data.  

This topic touches upon your hand, your heart, your brain and the rest of your body —literally. This new development is set to give a very different meaning to ‘hacking the body’ or biohacking . While cyber experts continue to worry about protecting critical infrastructure and mitigating security risks that could harm the economy or cause a loss of life, implanted chips also affect health but add in new dimensions that conflict with people’s religious beliefs.  

Let’s explore the good, the bad and the possible ugly implications that come with microchip implants.

Background on Implanting Microchips in Your Body

First, as background, we initially explored this implanted chips topic last year in this piece about employees at Three Square Market, a technology company in Wisconsin, who had a small chip injected in their hands for security convenience. Reactions to this news was all over the map, with headlines ranging from positive stories about the dawning of a great new era to big brother privacy concerns to fears that biblical prophecies are about to come true.

Many more articles have been written on this topic since my first article in July 2017. USA Today came out in August of 2017 with the headline: You will get chipped — eventually. Here’s a quote: “This would go beyond paying with your smartphone. Instead, chipped customers would simply wave their hands in lieu of Apple Pay and other mobile-payment systems.

The benefits don't stop there. In the future, consumers could zip through airport scanners sans passport or driver’s license; open doors; start cars; and operate home automation systems. All of it, if the technology pans out, with the simple wave of a hand. …”

The Atlantic offered an article in September 2018 describing why you’re probably getting a microchip implant someday. The article focused on how microchip implants are going from tech-geek novelty to genuine health tool — and you might be running out of good reasons to say no.

“Three Square Chip says that its medical RFID implants will be powered by body heat, and McMullan’s plans to develop a single piece of hardware to aid patients with a wider range of conditions could make the chips more affordable than devices with more specialized (and limited) functions. “Many heart patients, right now, the only time they know they’ve got a problem is when they’re in the back of an ambulance,” McMullan says.

The company estimates that it will be selling chips capable of tracking a wearer’s live vital signs in a little more than a year, but a few other developments will come first. McMullan hopes that people will soon consider storing their medical information on encrypted RFID chips, and the group is also working on a way to make GPS-enabled chips available as an option for families to track relatives suffering from severe dementia—another use for the chips that poses both obvious benefits and legitimate concerns. …”

Second, the topic resurfaced last month with several stories, like this NPR article on how thousands of Swedes are inserting microchips under their skin. “More than 4,000 Swedes have adopted the technology, with one company, Biohax International, dominating the market. The chipping firm was started five years ago by Jowan Osterlund, a former professional body piercer.

After spending the past two years working full time on the project, he is currently developing training materials so he can hire Swedish doctors and nurses to help take on some of his heavy workload. …”

Third, the topic became heated — again — after this recent article in the The Guardian (UK) went viral, titled: Alarm over talks to implant UK employees with microchips. The article described how the Trade Union Congress is concerned over tech being used to control and micromanage people.

For a brief time this month, implanting chips into your body became the No. 1 topic of discussion on LinkedIn globally. An article that I posted received more than 30K views and well over a hundred comments — mostly appalled by the practice of implanting chips — at least for convenience. 

Fourth, there have been numerous articles over the past year describing medical advances, potentially even cures for various diseases, which may come by implanting microchips in humans in various ways. Here are three examples:

• BVT successfully restores vision with its bionic eye
• Can a brain implant treat Alzheimer’s? It might just be placebo
• New Implants Could Treat Type 2 Diabetes Without Needles

Implants Offered as an Optional Improvement?

But medical necessities aside, would you pay to receive a chip implant if it offered some other optional medical enhancement for your body? Other research, which started as deep-brain stimulation as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, now suggests that chip implants can boost your memory. 

Or, what if a chip implant offered the convenience of embedding a smartphone in your body? This Allure.com article suggests how.

“Chris Harrison, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, has been working on a similar idea since 2009. “People want to do more sophisticated things on mobile phones. And the industrial answer seemed to be: Let’s put bigger and bigger screens on them,” he says. “That only works up to a point. Why don’t we just forget the screen entirely? Why not use the skin? Instead of the three-and-a-half-inch iPhone, why not have the 20-inch arm bone?” So Harrison created OmniTouch (also in collaboration with Microsoft), a device worn on the shoulder that would project your phone interface onto your palm. A depth-sensitive camera picked up when and where you tapped on your skin, so the projection reacted with it. “The invention of smartphones enabled the creation of all these ideas and apps and services. Imagine what that will be like for the body,” Harrison says.

Looking back a few decades, I remember watching the TV show, The Six Million Dollar Man. The opening phrase is still appealing: “We can rebuild him. We can make him ... better, stronger, faster.”  

 Are the criticisms of using technological                     tools not exaggerated?

With the latest research, it has been concluded that we look at our mobile phone every 13 minutes, and in many places, 'technology addiction, sleeping by phone' and many more criticisms are brought. Of course, it is wrong to be buried in technological devices, ignoring our environment. But isn't the job of criticizing this technology a bit exaggerated?

There is a constant critique of technology. It is officially like the updated version of saying "they will also ask a computer in the exam" to children who have been sitting at the computer before.

Besides, I think it is better understood now that it is the mistake of trying to remove the children from the computer and how it is wrong to see the computer as a "blank job". We are in the computer age now. Do many parents who have managed to disconnect their children from the computer regret it now?

We know a lot of people who say to their child, "computer won't save your future, get up and study." No, the computer saves the future. Computer is also made as a profession; it also saves money.

If they freed their children a little more, they could use their children's curiosity towards the computer more positively if they could be a little more forward-looking. For example, enabling them to learn programming language, helping them learn coding. Because there is something called catching the age.

Why is it being criticized that we are constantly dealing with the phone right now, and how many minutes do we check our phone?

A job means a phone for someone who works. Someone to check their mail first looks at his phone. For someone who wants to follow the agenda, the phone comes first. The first option for someone who wants to reach his mother, father, girlfriend or someone else is the phone again! In other words, there can be no more normal situation than using the phone continuously.

It is unnecessary to investigate and criticize how many minutes we receive the phone. Don't be afraid of technology anymore, don't be afraid of technology. Do not confuse the necessity of using technological tools and technology addiction.

And please catch the age.

    What is the definition of                        "PLC"?

A Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC , is a ruggedized computer used for industrial automation. These controllers can automate a specific process, machine function, or even an entire production line.

               How does a PLC work?

The PLC receives information from connected sensors or input devices, processes the data, and triggers outputs based on pre-programmed parameters.
Depending on the inputs and outputs, a PLC can monitor and record run-time data such as machine productivity or operating temperature, automatically start and stop processes, generate alarms if a machine malfunctions, and more. Programmable Logic Controllers are a flexible and robust control solution, adaptable to almost any application.

What-is-PLC-programmable-logic-controller

There are a few key features that set PLCs apart from industrial PCs, microcontrollers, and other industrial control solutions:

 I/O – The PLC’s CPU stores and processes program data, but input and output modules connect the PLC to the rest of the machine; these I/O modules are what provide information to the CPU and trigger specific results. I/O can be either analog or digital; input devices might include sensors, switches, and meters, while outputs might include relays, lights, valves, and drives. Users can mix and match a PLC’s I/O in order to get the right configuration for their application.
• Communications – In addition to input and output devices, a PLC might also need to connect with other kinds of systems; for example, users might want to export application data recorded by the PLC to a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, which monitors multiple connected devices. PLCs offer a range of ports and communication protocols to ensure that the PLC can communicate with these other systems.
• HMI – In order to interact with the PLC in real time, users need an HMI, or Human Machine Interface. These operator interfaces can be simple displays, with a text-readout and keypad, or large touchscreen panels more similar to consumer electronics, but either way, they enable users to review and input information to the PLC in real time.

              Advanced PLC Features

In today’s world of the Industrial Internet of Things (iIoT), and Industry 4.0 programmable controllers are called upon to communicate data via Web browser, connect to databases via SQL, and even to the cloud data via MQTT.

               The All-In-One PLC

An All-in-One PLC integrates the controller with the HMI panel, creating a compact, easy-to-use automation solution. Users no longer need to establish PLC to panel communications and can program both the Ladder Logic and HMI design in a single software environment. An all-in-one approach saves time, reduces wiring, and cuts the cost of purchasing multiple devices.

           How is a PLC Programmed

A PLC program is usually written on a computer and then is downloaded to the controller
Most PLC programming software offers programming in Ladder Logic, or “C”. Ladder Logic is the traditional programming language. It mimics circuit diagrams with “rungs” of logic read left to right. Each rung represents a specific action controlled by the PLC, starting with an input or series of inputs (contacts) that result in an output (coil). Because of its visual nature, Ladder Logic can be easier to implement than many other programming languages.
“C” programming is a more recent innovation.
Some PLC manufacturers supply control programming software.

                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                        ACTG

TECHNOLOGIES VERTES OU PROPRES :          DÉFINITION ET ENJEUX

→Le terme « technologie » est très peu souvent mis en corrélation avec la protection de l’environnement. En effet, le progrès technologique est souvent signe d’action humaine et donc de destruction ou de pollution. Fort heureusement, ce n’est pas toujours le cas ! Certaines d’entre elles sont dîtes « vertes » ou « propres » en raison de leur finalité : entretenir et préserver les écosystèmes naturels.

Définition et enjeux des technologies vertes

Ces dernières années, le mot « vert » a gagné une place considérable dans notre société, sur notre lieu de travail ou dans notre maison. Mais, si le terme de « technologies vertes » est encore assez méconnu, ces dernières sont pourtant présentes tout autour de nous. Leur objectif premier est simple : réduire les effets préjudiciables de l’activité humaine sur l’environnement. La clé est de « produire plus avec moins ».

Les technologies vertes les plus souvent rencontrées sont le recyclage des déchets, le traitement des eaux usées, les énergies renouvelables… De nombreux chercheurs et scientifiques ce sont également penchés sur la question pour mettre au point des technologies vertes dont le but est, si ce n’est stopper les actions dévastatrices de l’homme, tenter de les prévenir voire de les réduire. C’est par exemple le cas des inventions suivantes :

• Le béton écologique : ce béton écologique ne contient pas de composés azotés nocifs, comme l’oxyde d’azote. Si la Hollande a déjà pu le tester, elle s’est vite heurtée à un problème de coût, bien qu’il soit très efficace. S’il contient également du dioxyde de titane, comme d’autres béton, il en a besoin en plus grande quantité ce qui le rend plus cher ;

• Le nettoyage des océans : si les plastiques sont très utiles dans notre vie quotidienne, ils sont également très polluants lorsqu’ils se retrouvent dans l’environnement. En plus de mettre des centaines d’années à disparaître, ils sont responsables de la mort de milliers d’animaux marins. Certaines sociétés ont alors mis au point des machines de traitement des plastiques. L’OMPE soutient également depuis de nombreuses années la mise en place de barges géantes anti-plastiques ;
• 
  

Google Invents AI That Learns a Key Part of Chip Design

AI helps designs AI chip that might help an AI design future AI chips

There’s been a lot of intense and well-funded work developing chips that are specially designed to perform AI algorithms faster and more efficiently. The trouble is that it takes years to design a chip, and the universe of machine learning algorithms moves a lot faster than that. Ideally you want a chip that’s optimized to do today’s AI, not the AI of two to five years ago. Google’s solution: have an AI design the AI chip.

“We believe that it is AI itself that will provide the means to shorten the chip design cycle, creating a symbiotic relationship between hardware and AI, with each fueling advances in the other,” they write in a paper describing the work that posted today to Arxiv.

“We have already seen that there are algorithms or neural network architectures that… don’t perform as well on existing generations of accelerators, because the accelerators were designed like two years ago, and back then these neural nets didn't exist,” says Azalia Mirhoseini, a senior research scientist at Google. “If we reduce the design cycle, we can bridge the gap.”

Mirhoseini and senior software engineer Anna Goldie have come up with a neural network that learn to do a particularly time-consuming part of design called placement. After studying chip designs long enough, it can produce a design for a Google Tensor Processing Unit in less than 24 hours that beats several weeks-worth of design effort by human experts in terms of power, performance, and area.

Placement is so complex and time-consuming because it involves placing blocks of logic and memory or clusters of those blocks called macros in such a way that power and performance are maximized and the area of the chip is minimized. Heightening the challenge is the requirement that all this happen while at the same time obeying rules about the density of interconnects. Goldie and Mirhoseini targeted chip placement, because even with today’s advanced tools, it takes a human expert weeks of iteration to produce an acceptable design.

Goldie and Mirhoseini modeled chip placement as a reinforcement learning problem. Reinforcement learning systems, unlike typical deep learning, do not train on a large set of labeled data. Instead, they learn by doing, adjusting the parameters in their networks according to a reward signal when they succeed. In this case, the reward was a proxy measure of a combination of power reduction, performance improvement, and area reduction. As a result, the placement-bot becomes better at its task the more designs it does.

The team hopes AI systems like theirs will lead to the design of “more chips in the same time period, and also chips that run faster, use less power, cost less to build, and use less area,” says Goldie.

                      Tiny AI

We can now run powerful AI algorithms on our phones.

AI has a problem: in the quest to build more powerful algorithms, researchers are using ever greater amounts of data and computing power, and relying on centralized cloud services. This not only generates alarming amounts of carbon emissions but also limits the speed and privacy of AI applications.

These advances are just starting to become available to consumers. Last May, Google announced that it can now run Google Assistant on users’ phones without sending requests to a remote server. As of iOS 13, Apple runs Siri’s speech recognition capabilities and its QuickType keyboard locally on the iPhone. IBM and Amazon now also offer developer platforms for making and deploying tiny AI.But a countertrend of tiny AI is changing that. Tech giants and academic researchers are working on new algorithms to shrink existing deep-learning models without losing their capabilities. Meanwhile, an emerging generation of specialized AI chips promises to pack more computational power into tighter physical spaces, and train and run AI on far less energy.

All this could bring about many benefits. Existing services like voice assistants, autocorrect, and digital cameras will get better and faster without having to ping the cloud every time they need access to a deep-learning model. Tiny AI will also make new applications possible, like mobile-based medical-image analysis or self-driving cars with faster reaction times. Finally, localized AI is better for privacy, since your data no longer needs to leave your device to improve a service or a feature.

But as the benefits of AI become distributed, so will all its challenges. It could become harder to combat surveillance systems or deepfake videos, for example, and discriminatory algorithms could also proliferate. Researchers, engineers, and policymakers need to work together now to 

develop technical and policy checks on these potential harms.

                      Digital money

•        The rise of digital currency has massive ramifications for financial privacy.
  Last June Facebook unveiled a “global digital currency” called Libra. The idea triggered a backlash and Libra may never launch, at least not in the way it was originally envisioned. But it’s still made a difference: just days after Facebook’s announcement, an official from the People’s Bank of China implied that it would speed the development of its own digital currency in response. Now China is poised to become the first major economy to issue a digital version of its money, which it intends as a replacement for physical cash.
  
  China’s leaders apparently see Libra, meant to be backed by a reserve that will be mostly US dollars, as a threat: it could reinforce America’s disproportionate power over the global financial system, which stems from the dollar’s role as the world’s de facto reserve currency. Some suspect China intends to promote its digital renminbi internationally.
  Now Facebook’s Libra pitch has become geopolitical. In October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised Congress that Libra “will extend America’s financial leadership as well as our democratic values and oversight around the world.” The digital money wars have begun.
  
  
  Digital cash explained