With cyber attacks on the rise, so too is the need for experts to protect companies, government agencies and individuals from those attacks and the damage they can cause.

That need has prompted Ivy Tech Community College student Dave Houchin to pursue a degree in cyber security/information assurance at the colleges Terre Haute campus.

It is an exponentially growing career choice, said the 34-year-old, who will earn his degree later this year. Demand for services, such as securing and maintaining networks, will only increase, as will job opportunities, he said.

Many cyber crimes go unreported, he said, often because businesses are worried news of such crimes could hurt their reputation.

The internet as we know it is still a wide-open frontier filled with lawlessness much as was seen in the early days of pioneers and cattle drives of the wild west, he said, and cyber criminals are taking advantage of the security lapses.

While one of his goals is career advancement, he also believes being educated in cyber security is important to protect our economy from theft, our citizens from harm and our nation from discord, he wrote in an email. His I.T. internship is with ThyssenKrupp Presta, where he has worked production for several years.

Ivy Tech has offered a two-year degree in cyber security/information assurance since 2013 and it offers a number of related certificate programs.

Purdue and Indiana universities have several well-established programs and research initiatives, and now, Indiana State University is working on a cybersecurity program that focuses on the human missteps that can lead to security breaches.

Indiana State faculty member Bill Mackey has a cybersecurity firm that employs ISU interns.

A growing need

According to the National Security Agency, The newest threats we face, and perhaps the fastest growing, are those in cyberspace. Cyber threats to U.S. national and economic security increase each year in frequency, scope and severity of impact. Cyber criminals, hackers and foreign adversaries are becoming more sophisticated and capable every day in their ability to use the internet for nefarious purposes.

The issue came to the forefront with Russias hacking of Democratic National Committee emails, an act intended to influence the U.S. presidential election.

The FBI websites describes the collective impact of cybercrime as staggering. Billions of dollars are lost every year repairing systems hit by such attacks. Some take down vital systems, disrupting and sometimes disabling the work of hospitals, banks, and 9-1-1 services around the country.

Who is behind such attacks? It runs the gamut from computer geeks looking for bragging rightsto businesses trying to gain an upper hand in the marketplace by hacking competitor websites, from rings of criminals wanting to steal your personal information and sell it on black marketsto spies and terrorists looking to rob our nation of vital information or launch cyber strikes, according to fbi.gov.

Earlier this month, the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security designated Ivy Tech as a National Center of Academic Excellence in its cyber defense education program. According to NSA, its goal is to reduce vulnerability in the countrys information infrastructure by promoting higher education and research in cyber defense.

The recognition is kind of a big deal, said Charles Peebles, department chair, School of Computing and Informatics at Ivy Techs Wabash Valley Region.

The two-year program is pretty thorough, he said. It covers all major areas you need to know to prevent a hack.

Students must know networks, software and server administration. They have to know a little of everything to be a good cyber agent, he said.

The program is a popular one, especially with all the breaches weve had that are getting publicized and with all the Ransomware, where people are clicking on links that end up taking control of their network and they have to pay someone money to get access back to their files and information, Peebles said.

Everybody should be concerned, with todays criminals out there, he said. Everybody should have some kind of protection on their computer.

Those who earn the degree, can do just about anything, he said. They work as a network or server administrator, he said. The average mean salary for cyber information analysis in Indiana is about $37.50 per hour, which translates into about $78,000 annually, he said.

On average, there are 629 annual job openings in cyber security in Indiana, according to the 2014-2024 Department of Workforce Development/Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Demand Report.

New offering at ISU

At Indiana State, a new cybersecurity studies program is in the works that focuses on the human missteps that can lead to security breaches; it will be offered through the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Faculty member Bill Mackey said the new program will be human behavior focused.

We already have a lot of people that know how to work with computers and code and create and analyze viruses and malware, he said. But reports from recent years show us that human exploits are 90 percent plus of the actual cybercrime intrusion.

Rather than trying to infiltrate a companys expensive computer technology systems, hackers find its easier to just get the administrative assistants name and password ... Then they dont need to hack into the system, he said.

Students in the future ISU program will learn to analyze employee behavior, determine who is vulnerable and look at training programs to change the behavior so those employees are not the weak leak that ends up creating a security breach. Were teaching them how to be a human anti-virus, he said.

For example, if some employees are vulnerable to phishing emails, How do we train employees to not click on things? Mackey said.

Four ISU students have interned at his cyber security business, called Alloy Cybersecurity.

Everyone in every workplace needs to be concerned about cyber security because it takes just one person to not care and its all gone, Mackey said. This is not slowing down. This is not going to stop. Its getting worse every year.

The average person should be concerned, but not paranoid, he said. He suggests people can do a lot to protect themselves by taking five seconds before responding to an email if they are not sure who it came from, and taking 10 minutes once a year to learn about new frauds and scams out there.

Madison Meyer, an ISU senior and criminology major, has been working with Mackey for about six months on cybercrime research and with Alloy.

Prior to that, she had no experience with cybersecurity. What shes learned has been eye-opening, she said.

At Alloy, students created phishing emails to assess a businesss employee vulnerabilities. We were more successful than we expected, she said. Students monitored what happened but never actually hacked the system.

The Sellersburg native said her career interests include law enforcement and the FBI.

Sue Loughlin writes for the Tribune-Star in Terre Haute and can be reached at sue.loughlin@tribstar.com Follow Sue on Twitter @TribStarSue.

Follow this link:
Training the cyber Sherlocks - Greensburg Daily News

I know Im referring back to an incident that feels like it happened thousands of controversies ago, but its still worth a revisit. Remember when Mike Pence was crazy and strange for reportedly not wanting to eat dinner with a woman who wasnt his wife? Well, thanks to the New York Times, we now have data about the rest of America, and itturns out that vast numbers of men and women are wary of being alone with the opposite sex.

Heres Claire Cain Miller summing up the polling results:

Many men and women are wary of a range of one-on-one situations, the poll found. Around a quarter think private work meetings with colleagues of the opposite sex are inappropriate. Nearly two-thirds say people should take extra caution around members of the opposite sex at work. A majority of women, and nearly half of men, say its unacceptable to have dinner or drinks alone with someone of the opposite sex other than their spouse.

As one might expect, theres a sliding scale of acceptability, with most people endorsing private work meetings and most rejecting private dinners or drinks. Interestingly,for all the talk that discouraging one-on-onemeetings disadvantages women, they were more likely than men to disapprove of every category of private encounter.

As Millerstates, The results show the extent to which sex is an implicit part of our interactions. Yes indeed they do, but its not just because affairs, harassment, or other inappropriate conduct might occur. The resultsalso demonstratethe extent to which fear of rumors or of even potentially false claims colors human behavior. A single accusation can destroy a reputation and derail a career. Whynot keep your office door open? Why not conduct business more in professional settings than in the intimate confines of dinner or drinks?

In my twenty-plus years of job experience in multiple private-sector and public-sector contexts the influence of private dinners on professional advancement is vastly overstated. At the same time, Ive seen multiple sexual scandals derail the most promising of careers. Given this reality, caution isnt extremist or sexist. Its wise.

Read the original:
It Turns Out That Mike Pence Is Pretty Mainstream - National Review

President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement last month a decision I suspect the United States will quickly come to regret.

The Paris agreement reaffirmed a goal of limiting the global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius and committed countries to develop plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and regularly report on their progress. The United States, under former President Barack Obama, was one of 195 countries signing on to the agreement. But President Trumps decision to withdraw will allow countries such as China and India to further shape a global agreement that will dramatically impact the United States regardless of its lack of participation.

The backlash to the presidents decision in much of the business community and at the state and local levels was swift and unmistakable. But there was a critical voice that was missing: the U.S. insurance sector.

Perhaps it is a fear of offending customers who reject either the very idea of climate change or the fact that human behavior is a significant contributor to global warming that has kept domestic insurers, and even the trade associations that normally speak for them on political issues, mostly on the sidelines.

But that silence works against them because they are abdicating an opportunity to play a constructive role in addressing a serious threat to their own profitability, as the natural catastrophes that they are financially responsible for will only get worse without timely intervention.

Their European reinsurance counterparts are not nearly as skittish, with officials from Munich Reinsurance America Inc. and Swiss Re Ltd. denouncing the presidents decision to withdraw. They should be commended for their willingness to publicly oppose an action they know will keep the United States from being a critical player in addressing what their own research tells them is a real threat to human life and property.

Insurers are going to have to deal with the climate issue some way or the other. California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones launched the Climate Risk Carbon Initiative in January 2016 to require insurers with $100 million in annual premiums doing business in California to disclose investments in fossil fuels and asked all insurers operating in the state to divest investments in thermal coal. He recently vowed to continue this initiative despite a threat of legal action by Republican officials in 13 states, predominantly those with major oil, gas and coal interests. As Mr. Jones stated in his response, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is real and should not be ignored.

The 2004 disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow depicted the consequences of failing to heed warnings on climate change, including devastating catastrophes in areas of the United States where they are least expected. While the movie significantly exaggerates the time frame of these events for dramatic purposes, two key elements ring true: that human behavior is contributing to a changing climate and that those in power who can act to prevent catastrophic climate change often ignore the scientific warnings until its too late.

President Trump has failed to heed these warnings. Its time for others to step up.

Original post:
View from Washington: Insurers silent on climate - Business Insurance

(TNS) -- We were gratified, if a little perplexed, to learn that local and state transportation planners apparently awoke from a deep sleep to discover congestion on Arapahoe Avenue east of the city and a bottleneck on U.S. 36 could be improved by gasp adding lanes to accommodate the traffic volume.

It is an article of ideological dogma in the governments of Boulder and Boulder County that building new roads or lanes doesn't relieve congestion a concept known as "induced demand." In the minds of some officials, this conviction appears to have morphed into the notion that no infrastructure improvements for auto travel are ever appropriate. But a basic rule of traffic engineering still applies: Capacity must be sufficient for the smooth flow of existing demand (unless, of course, you are trying purposefully to inconvenience motorists for other political purposes).

A review of existing demand on Arapahoe between Lafayette and Boulder reveals too many cars to move efficiently on a two-lane road. With population growth and housing development certain to continue in the east county, basic traffic engineering requires the infrastructure to keep up.

This goes against the ideological position of many local officials, who continue to believe that starving motorists of space will convince them to switch to bikes or buses. Unfortunately, actual human behavior indicates this is not true. Despite all sorts of well-meaning public pressure to do just that, the percentage of commuters that drive into Boulder roughly four out of five - hasn't changed in 25 years.

As we have observed before, this is not because motorists want to confound the ideological objectives of Boulder progressives. This is because cycling is not practical for many commuters and mass transit in these parts still presents enormous first-mile, last-mile problems that extend commute times dramatically.

Having finally acknowledged the problem, some local officials remain determined to steer commuters into the behaviors those officials prefer. Hence the enthusiasm to revamp Arapahoe not to accommodate the cars already there but to create dedicated lanes for a bus rapid transit system that does not yet exist.

Boulder City Councilman Aaron Brockett had the temerity some months ago to ask how often such buses would run. Nobody knows, of course. In part, that's because it would be up to the Regional Transportation District. In part, it's because nobody knows what the market demand might be. But it would not be surprising if ideologically-driven county officials devoted large portions of the roadway to a mode few people use at the expense of the mode most people use in yet another attempt at forced behavior modification.

Officials will respond that they are fighting climate change by trying to reduce auto emissions, a laudable goal. But it is far more likely that goal will be achieved by improvements in transportation technology electrification of the automobile fleet, for example than coercion. Political progressives have every right to try to persuade their constituents to behave differently, but purposefully making them miserable to force them to come around goes against the basic concept of public service.

The ramp from Foothills Parkway onto eastbound U.S. 36 was an even more egregious example, if that's possible. When U.S. 36 was rebuilt to add an express lane in each direction, the eastbound express lane made its initial appearance tantalizingly close to the Foothills ramp, but not close enough. That left two lanes of eastbound U.S. 36 and two lanes of Foothills Parkway to merge into . . . two lanes. Naturally, it became a bottleneck, with two lanes of cars backing up on each roadway and producing more emissions, not less.

The state Department of Transportation patted itself on the back for its innovative solution last week restriping the merge area to make room for three lanes which could have been the original configuration if the express lane had started a little earlier.

"This shows how, by thinking a little differently, we can improve operations despite constrained resources and constrained funding," CDOT Executive Director Shailen Bhatt said. "This relatively low-cost project will save 200 to 700 vehicle hours per day, according to our study."

We don't want to seem ungrateful, but anyone who works in transportation for a living and was surprised that the original configuration produced a daily traffic jam might be better off choosing another line of work.

The suspicion of many commuters whose views don't seem to matter much to Boulder transportation planners is that these apparent signs of incompetence are actually intentional coercive measures intended to change commuter behavior.

But they didn't. Traveling by car remains the fastest way for most commuters to get where they're going, even accounting for increasing congestion and some poor traffic engineering along the way. Until that changes, all the lectures in the world from well-meaning officials won't change the basic calculus for people trying to get to and from work as quickly as they can.

Given that fact of human behavior, it's probably best to go back to basic traffic engineering rules and make the system operate as efficiently as possible. That reduces emissions, too.

2017 the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Read more:
Traffic Engineering Rules Must Be Followed Off the Bat (Opinion) - Government Technology

Street signs at Nine Mile Corner near the intersection of Arapahoe Road and U.S. Highway 287. Boulder County officials are looking at ways to relieve congestion on the crowded Arapahoe corridor. (Jeremy Papasso / Staff Photographer)

We were gratified, if a little perplexed, to learn that local and state transportation planners apparently awoke from a deep sleep to discover congestion on Arapahoe Avenue east of the city and a bottleneck on U.S. 36 could be improved by gasp adding lanes to accommodate the traffic volume.

It is an article of ideological dogma in the governments of Boulder and Boulder County that building new roads or lanes doesn't relieve congestion a concept known as "induced demand." In the minds of some officials, this conviction appears to have morphed into the notion that no infrastructure improvements for auto travel are ever appropriate. But a basic rule of traffic engineering still applies: Capacity must be sufficient for the smooth flow of existing demand (unless, of course, you are trying purposefully to inconvenience motorists for other political purposes).

A review of existing demand on Arapahoe between Lafayette and Boulder reveals too many cars to move efficiently on a two-lane road. With population growth and housing development certain to continue in the east county, basic traffic engineering requires the infrastructure to keep up.

This goes against the ideological position of many local officials, who continue to believe that starving motorists of space will convince them to switch to bikes or buses. Unfortunately, actual human behavior indicates this is not true. Despite all sorts of well-meaning public pressure to do just that, the percentage of commuters that drive into Boulder roughly four out of five - hasn't changed in 25 years.

As we have observed before, this is not because motorists want to confound the ideological objectives of Boulder progressives. This is because cycling is not practical for many commuters and mass transit in these parts still presents enormous first-mile, last-mile problems that extend commute times dramatically.

Having finally acknowledged the problem, some local officials remain determined to steer commuters into the behaviors those officials prefer. Hence the enthusiasm to revamp Arapahoe not to accommodate the cars already there but to create dedicated lanes for a bus rapid transit system that does not yet exist.

Boulder City Councilman Aaron Brockett had the temerity some months ago to ask how often such buses would run. Nobody knows, of course. In part, that's because it would be up to the Regional Transportation District. In part, it's because nobody knows what the market demand might be. But it would not be surprising if ideologically-driven county officials devoted large portions of the roadway to a mode few people use at the expense of the mode most people use in yet another attempt at forced behavior modification.

Officials will respond that they are fighting climate change by trying to reduce auto emissions, a laudable goal. But it is far more likely that goal will be achieved by improvements in transportation technology electrification of the automobile fleet, for example than coercion. Political progressives have every right to try to persuade their constituents to behave differently, but purposefully making them miserable to force them to come around goes against the basic concept of public service.

The ramp from Foothills Parkway onto eastbound U.S. 36 was an even more egregious example, if that's possible. When U.S. 36 was rebuilt to add an express lane in each direction, the eastbound express lane made its initial appearance tantalizingly close to the Foothills ramp, but not close enough. That left two lanes of eastbound U.S. 36 and two lanes of Foothills Parkway to merge into . . . two lanes. Naturally, it became a bottleneck, with two lanes of cars backing up on each roadway and producing more emissions, not less.

The state Department of Transportation patted itself on the back for its innovative solution last week restriping the merge area to make room for three lanes which could have been the original configuration if the express lane had started a little earlier.

"This shows how, by thinking a little differently, we can improve operations despite constrained resources and constrained funding," CDOT Executive Director Shailen Bhatt said. "This relatively low-cost project will save 200 to 700 vehicle hours per day, according to our study."

We don't want to seem ungrateful, but anyone who works in transportation for a living and was surprised that the original configuration produced a daily traffic jam might be better off choosing another line of work.

The suspicion of many commuters whose views don't seem to matter much to Boulder transportation planners is that these apparent signs of incompetence are actually intentional coercive measures intended to change commuter behavior.

But they didn't. Traveling by car remains the fastest way for most commuters to get where they're going, even accounting for increasing congestion and some poor traffic engineering along the way. Until that changes, all the lectures in the world from well-meaning officials won't change the basic calculus for people trying to get to and from work as quickly as they can.

Given that fact of human behavior, it's probably best to go back to basic traffic engineering rules and make the system operate as efficiently as possible. That reduces emissions, too.

Dave Krieger, for the editorial board. Email: kriegerd@dailycamera.com. Twitter: @DaveKrieger

Read more here:
Editorial: Traffic engineering rules still apply - Boulder Daily Camera

Even CEOs have to start somewhere.

Some of Americas top executives made humbling debuts as teenagers in the workplace. They scrubbed toilets, cut tobacco, worked at McDonalds.

Such work is becoming less common . Todays youths are more likely to enroll in summer school, do volunteer work or pursue extracurricular activities, especially to improve their prospects for college admission.

At the same time, teens who do want summer work find that adults increasingly occupy the low-skill jobs that once went to younger workers. Overall, the percentage of Americans ages 16-19 who work in July has fallen from 57 percent in 1986 to 36 percent last year.

At a time when a smaller proportion of teens are working summer jobs, some of todays corporate chief executives reminisced to The Associated Press about what they did and what they learned in their earliest jobs.

___

Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison worked three summers as a phone operator. At first, her competitive instincts led her to try to field as many calls as possible.

I learned an important lesson about human behavior and the importance of customer service, she says.

Although I wanted to move quickly, there were some callers who required more of my time, and I had to slow down my approach in order to resolve their questions.

The job could be physically exhausting: She had to reroute calls by plugging a cord into a switchboard, a task that eventually was taken over by automation.

It was also the first time I had earned my own money, she says. So I learned the value of a dollar.

___

Sonic CEO Cliff Hudson said he delivered newspapers from ages 11 to 13 but stopped after being hit by a car. He then worked on a construction site for his fathers company.

Tasked with cleaning bathrooms, Hudson was unenthusiastic. His superintendent decided to motivate him by changing how he was compensated. Instead of being paid hourly, he would receive a set amount each time he cleaned something a urinal or a sink.

Quite suddenly, I could see the connection between my output and my compensation, and it really got me going, Hudson says.

Hudson concedes that if his father hadnt owned the company, he probably wouldnt have gotten the job in the first place or, if he had, he would have lost it after his lackluster start.

___

Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger worked in McDonalds for a few summers. Before that, in the late 1960s, he sold Black Cat firecrackers until the police shut him down. He also spent a summer hawking sunglasses from fold-up tables outside his home in San Jose, California.

He sold hundreds of pairs and made good money $1,000, he estimates, which translated into about $7,000 today after adjusting for inflation. The sunglasses were discards from a manufacturer where his mother worked as an office manager.

They couldnt sell them at the stores because they had blemishes in them, says Danziger, 63. It was zero cost, and 100 percent (profit) margin.

Danziger started working year-round at 17, skipping college for a job as a bellman at a San Francisco hotel.

He put both his children to work at 16. Not having a summer job, he says, leaves a hole in a teenagers education.

Its learning the value of money, but its also learning the responsibility of people you are working with, says Danziger, who took over the oversight of hotels for President Donald Trumps company in 2015. You have a schedule; people count on you.

___

Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich says he started his own bagel-and-lox delivery service at 16, using his bicycle to make deliveries.

Shaich learned that business is harder than he had thought. He loved the actual selling, but getting up early to make deliveries took time to adjust to. Hes kept a copy of the advertisement he placed in the local newspaper for the service.

___

Krogers CEO Rodney McMullen got started working on the family farm in Williamstown, Kentucky.

Every summer in my youth consisted of performing different tasks on the farm, he says.

He recalls being paid 6 cents for each stick of tobacco he cut. He started at Kroger at 17 while attending the University of Kentucky.

I worked nights and picked up as many shifts as I could to earn extra money to help pay my way through college, he says.

___

When he was 15, Taco Bell CEO Brian Niccol got his first summer job as a bag boy and range attendant at a Texas golf course. He carried golf bags, cleaned clubs and drove a caged cart that picked up balls on the driving range.

It combined something I was passionate about golf, and a fun environment with great people criteria I think are important at any point in your career.

Early on, Niccol recognized something: He was in the people business, not the golf business.

Those relationships with the golfers, management and the staff showed me that regardless of what youre doing or what your role is, theres a fundamental quality in everything that will prepare you for your next step.

___

Jeffrey Mezger, CEO of Los Angeles-based builder KB Home, worked three summers as a laborer for a masonry contractor, mixing and shoveling mortar, loading bricks, pushing a wheelbarrow.

It was all his fathers idea.

He thought hard manual labor would keep me in shape for football and would keep me out of trouble, Mezger says. There was no question in his mind whether I would be working every summer while in high school and college.

He earned $6.50 an hour, about twice the minimum wage at the time.

Still, I learned that I did not want to do something like that the rest of my life, he says. The older guys working there were worn out.

Excerpt from:
CEOs recall when teens like them actually worked summer jobs - Fairfield Daily Republic

Photo by: Robin Scholz/The News-Gazette

Scott Bennett

Image

Image

Next month will mark 27 years since a 20-year-old Parkland College student was stabbed to death while taking a shower in her apartment near the University of Illinois campus.

It's tragic times like these that memories of Jennifer Amerio's murder haunt those who followed the 1990 case.

"All day, I've been thinking about the young lady stabbed to death almost 27 years ago when I was just three months into my graduate studies at the University of Illinois," Carol Bradford, clinical director at The Prairie Center of Urbana, said Saturday, one day after the FBI announced it believes missing UI scholar Yingying Zhang is dead.

"When something like this happens, it is devastating and very unsettling to everyone. I have two sons, 16 and 23 years old. I hope I never have to face what her poor family is going through right now. I'm so sorry this happened to her."

In Springfield, where state legislators worked overtime to try to hash out a fiscal budget, Scott Bennett took a break to reflect upon the terrible news that left his community back home reeling.

Before becoming a state senator representing a district that includes Champaign and Urbana, he was a prosecutor with the state's attorney's office.

Cases like this one involving a kidnapping allegedly orchestrated by a former UI grad student in broad daylight and others Bennett prosecuted "make victims of the entire community, as they steal our sense of security and force us to look at our hometowns as much scarier places than we previously thought we lived," he said.

"Our community is so vibrant, so diverse and welcoming that sometimes we become lulled into an exaggerated sense of safety. During my days as a prosecutor, I used to see it in the eyes of horrified jurors in the opening minutes of a trial when they first heard of a grotesque crime that happened in 'their' friendly town.

"From my time in the courthouse, I have long understood that evil exists in every community, regardless of how it may appear on the surface. But there are unnerving crimes like this one that can shake us from our peace and leave us a little more guarded, a little less trusting of strangers we would normally welcome. We say to ourselves: 'Maybe this could have happened to me or someone I love.'"

Friday's news left Emma Dorantes with more questions than answers.

As a UI alumna who chose Champaign-Urbana "not just for its reputation and rankings, but for the sense of safety and warmth it gave," the allegation that a former UI grad student and local resident was responsible made her think back to all the times she described Champaign-Urbana to old friends from her hometown of Chicago as "all the culture of the city, but without the crime or the commute."

As an attorney with Champaign's Dodd & Maatuka, reading the affidavit given by FBI special agent Anthony Manganaro was chilling, given that Brendt Christensen's alleged actions "were not out of rage or jealousy, or any of the other usual justifications for bad human behavior, but just for thrills," she said. "Random acts of evil are not something we can ever be prepared for."

And that the UI announced via massmail Friday night that a campuswide memorial would be held Saturday in Ms. Zhang's honor came across as "more than a little tasteless," Dorantes said, "especially since it seems the investigation is ongoing, and there has yet been no final determination about Ms. Zhang's whereabouts."

The memorial was called off Saturday morning, per the family's wishes.

"I'm not ready to give up hope," Dorantes said. "And I think we owe Ms. Zhang's family respect as they continue to seek answers and closure, good or bad, in their ordeal."

Read the original here:
'Evil exists in every community' - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

Artificial Intelligence is a computer program of a higher order and nothing else.

When I saw men fighting off a sinister takeover attempt by machines in Terminator 2- The Judgment Day, 25 years ago, I laughed it off, even though I enjoyed the thrill of the movie.

Man versus machine is probably the second best bogey after God versus Lucifer eternal battle.

Of course, we all want the man to win. We cant imagine ourselves serving some metal bodies, after all. But there may be some among us who are still wondering if the consequences of AI would eventually lead us there.

Recently, a senior manager in analytics in one my client companies, a very large business house indeed, was infatuated with the idea that AI can eventually take over human intelligence. That was surprising because he is not a teenager looking for cheap excitement or someone who does not know what analytics is about.

In fact, he has a pedigree of working for one of the largest analytics companies in the world before he joined my client company. Until now, I thought this idea is for Hollywood filmmakers who are short on creativity. But I think it is better to put this into right perspective as folks are churning enormous hype about AI, confusing everyone as usual.

AI means different things to different people. Some visualise machines working for their own purposes like in Terminator movies. Others imagine something like Watson that is so intelligent that it has solutions to all kinds of problems of mankind. Yet, to some data scientists, it means a piece of python code or a software package which they can run every day to earn a living.

But we can broadly divide AI into two streams: Generalised AI, which we call as Machine Learning (ML) and Applied AI, which focuses on replicating human behavior, such as making robots.

In either of the cases, it is a computer program of a higher order and nothing else!

Let me explain. In programming, we define what a program has to do. We then input data and get an output. We look at the output and if its not satisfactory enough, we go and correct the program. Now, what if, the program itself can look at the output and improve for itself? That is MLor generalised AI. But how does it do that?

Suppose you want to guess the next product a customer is going to buy on Amazon or anywhere else based on her activity until now. If you are a predictive modeler from econometric school, you would want to look at all historical data and find out the factors that determine a customers behavior and use that learning to predict what this customer would do now in the near future.

In reality, these factors can be anything. It can be demographic factors such as her age, marital status, location, education, or occupation. Or it can be the offers of competing products available at that point in time. Or let us say, even the weather influencing her buying behavior, or just that she is frustrated with the results of the American presidential elections. And, lets not forget the influence of her boyfriend on her buying moods?

As we can see, the possibilities are many. And if we consider further possibilities of all the interactions of these different factors among themselves, which means each factor having a partial influence by itself and a combined influence along with some other factors, then the combinations become unmanageable to human attention.

Read the original here:
Artificial Intelligence versus humans, who will win? - YourStory.com

Administrative affairs | Education | For UW employees | News releases

June 29, 2017

Anind K. Dey has been named dean of the Information School at the University of Washington, President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Jerry Baldasty announced this week. Dey comes to the UW from Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science, where he is the Charles M. Geschke professor and director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. His appointment is subject to approval by the UW Board of Regents.

Anind K. Dey

Anind brings great knowledge, insight and experience to the iSchool and the UW, Baldasty said. We are confident that he will build on the remarkable work by Dean Emeritus Mike Eisenberg and Dean Harry Bruce, whose combined vision and leadership has helped make the iSchool one of the premier schools of its kind in the country.

Bruce announced earlier this year his decision to step down as dean. This spring, U.S. News & World Report ranked the iSchool second among U.S. masters degree programs in library and information science.

In his research, Dey uses everyday technology (worn, carried and embedded in the environment) to develop tools and techniques for understanding and modeling human behavior, primarily within the areas of health, transportation, sustainability and education. Some of his work has involved using sensors to collect information on the activities of older people that could be used to better personalize their health care.

Dey has been a professor at Carnegie Mellon since 2005. He has also held positions at Intel Research in Berkeley from 2001 to 2004, and at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2002 to 2005.

Anind earned his bachelors degree in computer engineering from Simon Fraser University in Canada. He holds two masters degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology one in aerospace engineering and one in computer science. He received his Ph.D. in computer science, also from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Originally posted here:
Anind K. Dey named dean of the UW's Information School - UW Today

June 29, 2017

FINDINGS

Researchers have identified gut microbiota that interact with brain regions associated with mood and behavior. This may be the first time that behavioral and neurobiological differences associated with microbial composition in healthy humans have been identified.

BACKGROUND

Brain-gut-microbiota interactions may play an important role in human health and behavior. Previous research suggests that microbiota, a community of microorganisms in the gut, can influence behavior and emotion. Rodent models have demonstrated the effects of gut microbiota on emotional and social behaviors, such as anxiety and depression. There is, however, little evidence of this in humans.

For this study the researchers sought to identify brain and behavioral characteristics of healthy women clustered by gut microbiota profiles.

METHOD

Forty women supplied fecal samples for profiling, and magnetic resonance images were taken of their brains as they viewed images of individuals, activities or things that evoked emotional responses. The women were divided by their gut bacteria composition into two groups: 33 had more of a bacterium called Bacteroides; the remaining seven had more of the Prevotella bacteria. The Bacteroides group showed greater thickness of the gray matter in the frontal cortex and insula, brain regions involved with complex processing of information. They also had larger volumes of the hippocampus, a region involved in memory processing. The Prevotella group, by contrast, showed more connections between emotional, attentional and sensory brain regions and lower brain volumes in several regions, such as the hippocampus. This group's hippocampus was less active while the women were viewing negative images. They also rated higher levels of negative feelings such as anxiety, distress and irritability after looking at photos with negative images than did the Bacteroides group.

IMPACT

These results support the concept of brain-gut-microbiota interactions in healthy humans. Researchers do not yet know whether bacteria in the gut influence the development of the brain and its activity when unpleasant emotional content is encountered, or if existing differences in the brain influence the type of bacteria that reside in the gut. Both possibilities, however, could lead to important changes in how one thinks about human emotions.

Original post:
Scientists identify link between gut microbiota and mood, behavior - News-Medical.net