‘Old age may soon become treatable pathology rather than an inevitability’
In July 2017, I sat in a closed-door meeting coordinated by the State Department and the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. In the room were research scientists, government officials and policy wonks with PhDs in the hard sciences. Our task that day was to talk about the future...
25 countries notorious for human rights violations invest in spyware
A surveillance technology that can identify the location of a phone anywhere in the world in just seconds with only a telephone number has been detected in 25 countries, some with chequered records on human rights, according to research findings released this week. Forbes magazine reports that the technology was...
How coronavirus vaccines are being divvied up around the world
Vaccine developers who have already reported promising phase III trial results against Covid-19 estimate that, between them, they can make sufficient doses for more than one-third of the world’s population by the end of 2021. But many people in low-income countries might have to wait until 2023 or 2024 for...
Firing director of Homeland Security crosses a line – even for Trump
Within minutes of Donald Trump tweeting that he had fired Christopher Krebs as the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency on Tuesday night, Twitter slapped on a warning label that the accompanying claim about electoral fraud “is disputed.” The disinformation warning was, in some ways, a fitting...
Why Oxford’s positive Covid vaccine results are puzzling scientists
A highly anticipated Covod-19 vaccine has delivered some encouraging — but head-scratching — results. The vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, UK, and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca was found to be, on average, 70 per cent effective in a preliminary analysis of phase III trial data, the developers announced in...
‘Technology that identifies people remotely can be used to criminalise them’
To get a wider sense of academic views on facial-recognition ethics, Nature this year surveyed 480 researchers who have published papers on facial recognition, artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science.On some questions, respondents showed a clear preference.When asked for their opinions on studies that apply facial-recognition methods to recognise or...
Ethical questions that dog facial-recognition research
In September 2019, four researchers wrote to publisher Wiley to “respectfully ask” that it immediately retract a scientific paper. The study, published in 2018, had trained algorithms to distinguish faces of Uyghur people, a predominantly Muslim minority ethnic group in China, from those of Korean and Tibetan ethnicity.China had already...
As Kenya mulls facial recognition technology, resistance builds up in Europe, US
In Belgrade’s Republic Square, dome-shaped cameras hang prominently on wall fixtures, silently scanning people walking across the central plaza.It is one of 800 locations in the city that Serbia’s government said last year it would monitor using cameras equipped with facial-recognition software, purchased from electronics firm Huawei in Shenzhen, China.The...
Scientists criticise use of unproven Covid-19 drugs in India
In India, which has the world’s second-largest Covid-19 outbreak, there is a desperate need for effective treatments. But researchers are concerned about how the country’s drug regulator is handling potential therapies.The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has approved several repurposed drugs for ‘restricted emergency use’ for treating the disease,...
China set to retrieve first Moon rocks in 40 years
Later this November, a Chinese spacecraft will travel to the Moon to scoop up lunar rocks for the first time in more than 40 years. The mission, named Chang’e-5, is the latest in a series of increasingly complex trips to the lunar surface led by the China National Space Administration...
