Category Archives: Deep Mind
Top AI Announcements Of The Week: TensorFlow Quantum And More – Analytics India Magazine
AI is one of the most happening domains in the world right now. It would take a lifetime to skim through all the machine learning research papers released till date. As the AI keeps itself in the news through new releases of frameworks, regulations and breakthroughs, we can only hope to get the best of the lot.
So, here we have a compiled a list of top exciting AI announcements released over the past one week:
Late last year, Google locked horns with IBM in their race for quantum supremacy. Though the news has been around how good their quantum computers are, not much has been said about the implementation. Today, Google brings two of their most powerful frameworks Tensorflow and CIRQ together and releases TensorFlow Quantum, an open-source library for the rapid prototyping of quantum ML models.
Google AI team has joined hands with the University of Waterloo, X, and Volkswagen, announced the release of TensorFlow Quantum (TFQ).
TFQ is designed to provide the developers with the tools necessary for assisting the quantum computing and machine learning research communities to control and model quantum systems.
The team at Google have also released a TFQ white paper with a review of quantum applications. And, each example can be run in-browser via Colab from this research repository.
A key feature of TensorFlow Quantum is the ability to simultaneously train and execute many quantum circuits. This is achieved by TensorFlows ability to parallelise computation across a cluster of computers, and the ability to simulate relatively large quantum circuits on multi-core computers.
As the devastating news of COVID-19 keeps rising at an alarming rate, the AI researchers have given something to smile about. DeepMind, one of the premier AI research labs in the world, announced last week, that they are releasing structure predictions of several proteins that can promote research into the ongoing research around COVID-19. They have used the latest version of AlphaFold system to find these structures. AlphaFold is one of the biggest innovations to have come from the labs of DeepMind, and after a couple of years, it is exhilarating to see its application in something very critical.
As the pursuit to achieve human-level intelligence in machines fortifies, language modeling will keep on surfacing till the very end. One, human language is innately sophisticated, and two, training language models from scratch is exhaustive.
The last couple of years has witnessed a flurry of mega releases from the likes of NVIDIA, Microsoft and especially Google. As BERT topped the charts through many of its variants, Google now announces ELECTRA.
ELECTRA has the benefits of BERT but more efficient learning. They also claim that this novel pre-training method outperforms existing techniques given the same compute budget.
The gains are particularly strong for small models; for example, a model trained on one GPU for four days outperformed GPT (trained using 30x more compute) on the GLUE natural language understanding benchmark.
China has been the worst-hit nation of all the COVID-19 victims. However, two of the biggest AI breakthroughs have come from the Chinese soil. Last month, Baidu announced how its toolkit brings down the prediction time. Last week, another Chinese giant, Alibaba announced that its new AI system has an accuracy of 96% in detecting the coronavirus from the CT scan of the patients. Alibabas founder Jack Ma has fueled the vaccine development efforts of his team with a $2.15 M donation.
Facebook AI has released its in-house feature of converting a two-dimensional photo into a video byte that gives the feel of having a more realistic view of the object in the picture. This system infers the 3D structure of any image, whether it is a new shot just taken on an Android or iOS device with a standard single camera, or a decades-old image recently uploaded to a phone or laptop.
The feature has been only available on high-end phones through the dual-lens portrait mode. But, now it will be available on every mobile device even with a single, rear-facing camera. To bring this new visual format to more people, the researchers at Facebook used state-of-the-art ML techniques to produce 3D photos from virtually any standard 2D picture.
One significant implication of this feature can be an improved understanding of 3D scenes that can help robots navigate and interact with the physical world.
As the whole world focused on the race to quantum supremacy between Google and IBM, Honeywell silently has been building, as it claims, the most powerful quantum computer yet. And, it plans to release this by the middle of 2020.
Thanks to a breakthrough in technology, were on track to release a quantum computer with a quantum volume of at least 64, twice that of the next alternative in the industry. There are a number of industries that will be profoundly impacted by the advancement and ultimate application of at-scale quantum computing, said Tony Uttley, President of Honeywell Quantum Solutions in the official press release.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has created a panic globally and rightfully so. Many flagship conferences have been either cancelled or have been moved to a virtual environment.
Nvidias flagship GPU Technology Conference (GTC), which was supposed to take place in San Francisco in the last week of March was cancelled due to fears of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Whereas, Google Cloud also has cancelled its upcoming event, Google Cloud Next 20, which was slated to take place on April 6-8 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Due to the growing concern around the coronavirus (COVID-19), and in alignment with the best practices laid out by the CDC, WHO and other relevant entities, Google Cloud has decided to reimagine Google Cloud Next 20, the company stated on its website.
One of the popular conferences for ML researchers, ICLR2020 too, has announced that they are cancelling its physical conference this year due to growing concerns about COVID-19. They are shifting this event to a fully virtual conference.
ICLR authorities also issued a statement saying that all accepted papers at the virtual conference will be presented using a pre-recorded video.
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Top AI Announcements Of The Week: TensorFlow Quantum And More - Analytics India Magazine
The case for an AI that puts nature and ethics first, not humans – The Next Web
Did you know TNW Conference has a track fully dedicated to bringing the biggest names in tech to showcase inspiring talks from those driving the future of technology this year?Tim Leberecht, who authored this piece, is one of the speakers.Check out the full Impact program here.
On July 20, 1969, the first human landed on the moon. Fifty years later we are in desperate need for another moonshot to tackle some of the pressing and overwhelmingly big issues of our time from the climate crisis to the decline of democracy to the upheavals to our labor markets and societies caused by the rise of exponential digital technology especially Artificial Intelligence (AI).
For the past decade, we put our faith in technology as the ultimate problem-solver, and any kind of innovation was tied to technological advances. But as Silicon Valley has lost some of its halo, and arguably, legitimacy, we have come to realize that the most critical factor in enabling a humane future are us humans, and specifically how we relate to one another and the planet we inhabit. The real moonshot of our time is ecological, social, and emotional innovation.
But make no mistake: AI is here, and it is going to change everything. But are these positive changes? And with AI having such a big impact on the way we work, live, play, and even love, arewethinking big enough? How can AI be our companion in our quest to enable not just our future, but our humanity?
The business models of the next 10,000 startups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI, Wired founderKevin Kellyproclaimed in 2016. That may have proven true, but at the same it is disappointing to see that most of the breakthrough AI applications, from pattern analysis based on massive amounts of data, reinforcement learning in the style of Deep Minds Alpha Go to generative adversarial networks performing creative tasks, have been designed and employed to primarily enhance efficiencies (for the enterprise) and/or convenience (for the consumer).
While those are valuable benefits, the concern is growing that we are surrendering to a paradigm of forced reductionism (to borrow a term from former MIT Media Lab directorJoi Ito), shoehorning ourselves into a purely mechanistic, utilitarian model of technology. As AI becomes more and more powerful and invasive, it may inevitably change our world to align with these very design principles. The consequence might be a world full of monochrome societies, as Infineon CEODr. Reinhard Plessputs it.
There are other worries: non-benign actors, unconscious and conscious bias informing algorithms and fomenting a new digital divide, manipulation and even oppression, the threat of a surveillance society, humans turning into super-optimized machines, and not the least super-intelligence soon potentially dominating humans or eventually rendering us obsolete.
Finally, there is a more philosophical problem that cuts to the heart of the matter: todays AI is based on a binary system, in the tradition of Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz. AI researcherTwain Liuargues that Binary reduces everything to meaningless 0s and 1s, when life and intelligence operates XY in tandem. It makes it more convenient, efficient, and cost-effective for machines to read and process quantitative data, but it does this at the expense of the nuances, richness, context, dimensions, and dynamics in our languages, cultures, values, and experiences.
We take some cues from nature, which is anything but binary. Quantum research, for example, has shown that particles can have entangled superposition states where theyre both 0 and 1 at once just like the Chinese concept of YinYang, which emphasizes the symbiotic dynamics of male and female the universe and in us. Liu writes: Nature doesnt pigeonhole itself into binaries not even with pigeons. So why do we do it in computing?
There is another reason we should study nature when it comes to the future of AI: Nature is superseding digital programming, as the tech historianGeorge Dysonargues. He points out that there is no longer any algorithmic model capable of grasping the beautiful chaos manifest in Facebooks dynamic graph. Facebook is a machine no other machine can comprehend, let alone human intelligence. He writes: The successful social network is no longer a model of the social graph, it is the social graph. And further: What began as a mapping of human meaning now defines human meaning, and has begun to control, rather than simply catalog or index, human thought.
He concludes: Nature relies on analog coding and analog computing for intelligence and control. No programming, no code. To those seeking true intelligence, autonomy, and control among machines, the domain of analog computing, not digital computing, is the place to look.
This indicates that any more sophisticated vision of AI must go beyond three current conceptual limitations: it must shift from binary to intersectional, from efficiency to effectiveness, from exploitation to embedment in nature.
While concepts ofethical,explainable, orresponsibleAI are laudable, they are not enough, for they are all still stuck within the confines of us wanting to regulate problem-solving AI. But we must stop treating AI as the great problem-solver and overcome our engineering mindset. Rather, we ought to think of AI more holistically, not just with regard to its purpose and outcomes, but the way it operates.
Drawing from the humanities and the arts, and steeped into our tradition of discourse and critical thinking, AI must be ethical, but not just in the sense of extrinsic compliance, but in the sense of true caring. It must honor the truth, which means, it must sometimes be content with solutions that are not the most impactful, fastest, or cost-efficient.
If we reduce AI to being the great optimizer, it will optimize us to death. To tie AI to human dignity, we must treat it with dignity ourselves. To ensure we are not ending up with a monochrome society of soulless machines, we must instill soul into AI.
This, however, implies we move beyond the type of anthropocentrism that is lurking behind common denominator terms such as human-centered AI which are borrowed from the world of design and now promoted by institutions such as the eponymousStanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligenceor humane technology, a term popularized by theCenter for Humane Technology. Even the focus on human wellbeing espoused by the meticolousIEEE (the global professional organization of engineers) ethical AI standardsappears to fall short of addressing the most stubborn cognitive bias underlying all of our efforts around AI we are, for what its worth and certainly understandably, biased towards humans.
Yet in a time of pending ecological disaster caused by our careless, selfish, and even willfully ignorant exploitation of planetary resources, it is becoming more and more evident that the most existential threat not just to our own wellbeing but that of the world around us (of which we are a small and fleeting part, in the grand scheme of things) is us. Human-centered AI focused on promoting human wellbeing and flourishing can therefore no longer be an undisputed goal. An ecologically conscious and ethical AI must transcend the anthropocentrism shaped by rationalist and neoliberal thinking.
One possible alternative approach can be found in non-Western cultures. Japansanimist Shinto culture, for example, believes that both animate and inanimate things have a spirit: from the dead to every animal, every flower, every particle of dust, every machine. After a century of worshipping human ingenuity and technology in increasingly secularized modern societies, animism invites us to return to a polytheistic world view.
Like animism, indigenous communities worldwide assume all things are interrelated. Indigenous epistemologies do not take abstraction or generalization as a natural good or higher order of intellectual engagement, the indigenous scholarsJason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, andSuzanne Kitewrite in anarticle for MIT. Indigenous cultures offer rituals and protocols to respect and relate to our non-human kin, for man is neither height nor center of creation. The authors propose that we, as a species, figure out how to treat these new non-human kin respectfully and reciprocally and not as mere tools, or worse, slaves to their creators.
This includes AI, which they ask us to accept into our circle of kinship.
SuchIndigenous AIhonors multiplicity over singularity, a non-linear over a linear concept of time (and progress), interiority over externalized knowledge, relationships over transactions, and quality of life as the health of people and land of all animate or inanimate things.
Only this new kind of AI can overcome the dualism that has led to the exploitation of resources and a cynical winner-takes-all mentality. It enables us humans to foster innovation across different generations, cultures, and socio-economic strata, not just within our homogenous tribes. It allows us to collectively tackle the really big problems of our time such as the climate crisis or the growing rift in our societies and the need to relate to the other, including our non-human kin.
There is a word for this kind of AI: beautiful.
Beautiful implies what is essentially human and at the same greater than us: aesthetics, ethics, and the interconnected ecology we inhabit. It describes a sensorial relationship to the world, one of harmony and attunement. It also means bio- and neuro-diversity: the concept of our relationships, organizations, and our work as gardens, not machines, as a broad spectrum of ethnic, cultural, cognitive, and emotional identities that are fluid and not necessarily consistent.
Beautiful is what concerns us, what touches us and yet transcends us.Beauty is the end, not just the means. Beauty is quality. Beauty isthequality.
This article was originally published by Tim Leberecht, an author, entrepreneur, and the co-founder and co-CEO of The Business Romantic Society, a firm that helps organizations and individuals create transformative visions, stories, and experiences. Leberecht is also the co-founder and curator of the House of Beautiful Business, a global think tank and community with an annual gathering in Lisbon that brings together leaders and changemakers with the mission to humanize business in an age of machines.
Published March 7, 2020 17:00 UTC
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The case for an AI that puts nature and ethics first, not humans - The Next Web
How AI and Neuroscience Can Help Each Other Progress? – Analytics Insight
Artificial Intelligence has progressed immensely in the past few years. From being just a fiction context to penetrating into the regular lives of people, AI has brought transformation in several ways. Such advancements are an output of various factors that include the application of new statistical approaches and enhanced computing powers. However, according to 2017 report by DeepMind,a Perspective in the journal Neuron, argues that people often discount the contribution and use of ideas from experimental and theoretical neuroscience.
TheDeepMind reportsresearchers believe that drawing inspiration from neuroscience in AI research is important for two reasons. First, neuroscience can help validate AI techniques that already exist. They said, Put simply if we discover one of our artificial algorithms mimics a function within the brain, it suggests our approach may be on the right track. Second, neuroscience can provide a rich source of inspiration for new types of algorithms and architectures to employ when building artificial brains. Traditional approaches to AI have historically been dominated by logic-based methods and theoretical mathematical models.
Moreover,in a recent blog post, DeepMind suggests that the human brain and AI learning methods are closely linked when it comes to learning through reward.
Computer scientists have developed algorithms for reinforcement learning in artificial systems. These algorithms enable AI systems to learn complex strategies without external instruction, guided instead by reward predictions.
As noted by the post, a recent development in computer science which yields significant improvements in performance on reinforcement learning problems may provide a deep, parsimonious explanation for several previously unexplained features of reward learning in the brain, and opens up new avenues of research into the brains dopamine system, with potential implications for learning and motivation disorders.
DeepMind found that dopamine neurons in the brain were each tuned to different levels of pessimism or optimism. If they were a choir, they wouldnt all be singing the same note, but harmonizing each with a consistent vocal register, like bass and soprano singers. In artificial reinforcement learning systems, this diverse tuning creates a richer training signal that greatly speeds learning in neural networks, and researchers speculate that the brain might use it for the same reason.
The existence of distributional reinforcement learning in the brain has interesting implications both for AI and neuroscience. Firstly, this discovery validates distributional reinforcement learning it gives researchers increased confidence that AI research is on the right track since this algorithm is already being used in the most intelligent entity they are aware of: the brain.
Therefore, a shared framework for intelligence in context to artificial intelligence and neuroscience will allow scientists to build smarter machines, and enable them to understand humankind better. This collaborative drive to propel both could possibly expand human cognitive capabilities while bridging the gap between humans and machines.
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Smriti is a Content Analyst at Analytics Insight. She writes Tech/Business articles for Analytics Insight. Her creative work can be confirmed @analyticsinsight.net. She adores crushing over books, crafts, creative works and people, movies and music from eternity!!
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How AI and Neuroscience Can Help Each Other Progress? - Analytics Insight
Salt rooms take advantage of the compound’s therapeutic benefits for the mind and body – Las Vegas Sun
Salt has a long list of uses that stretches beyond food flavoring. Its therapeutic benefits were prized by ancient Greeks, who discovered that salt inhalation was an effective treatment for respiratory problems.
In 1843, a Polish physician named Feliks Boczkowski extolled the virtues of salt treatment after noticing that workers in salt mines had fewer respiratory problems than other miners. During World War II, a doctor named Karl Hermann Spannagel noticed that his patients health improved after hiding out in salt caves to avoid bombing. Salt rooms or salt caves have since proliferated across Europe and, in the past few years, in the United States.
Foot scrub: Soak your feet in a bucket of warm water and Epsom salt to remove dead skin and soften your feet. Its a relaxing treatment after a long day.
Neti pot or saline rinse: Salt and warm water rinses keep your sinuses clear, especially during allergy season.
Teeth whitener: Mix one part salt and two parts baking soda to remove stains from teeth enamel.
Mouthwash: Salt is a natural disinfectant. Mix a quarter cup of warm water with half a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of baking soda for fresh breath.
Eye de-puffer: Mix one teaspoon of salt with a cup of warm water, then soak a cotton round in the mixture and place on your eyes. Salts anti-inflammatory properties should reduce puffiness.
Today, halotherapy, as salt therapy is known, has gained popularity as an alternative treatment for a variety of respiratory conditions like asthma and allergies. The Salt Room (10624 S. Eastern Ave. #6 in Henderson and 1958 Village Center Circle #7 in Summerlin) features rooms lined with blocks of Himalayan salt, as a halogenerator blows microparticles of pharmaceutical salt into the air. When inhaled, Himalayan salt emits negative ions that get absorbed by your body, which neutralizes positive ions that come from dust, pollen, electricity and other pollutants.
Salt is also known to have antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and antifungal properties. As you breathe in the salt, it scrubs everything in your respiratory system, from your sinuses all the way to your ear canal, and gets deep into your lungs, loosening up mucus and reducing inflammation.
People come here for many reasons, from asthma, allergies, COPD, emphysema, psoriasis and eczema to anything related to skin and respiratory inflammation, says Ava Mucikyan, Founder of the Salt Room. Salt has historically been a very healing commodity, even back in the day. A lot of people will say take a salt bath, itll help you decongest or it helps with sore muscles. It helps with skin conditions for inflammation and irritation. Doctors will say you just need to go to the ocean. This is like the cheapest ticket to the beach. Forty-five minutes sitting in this room is equivalent to three days by the ocean.
One concern people have about salt rooms is whether breathing in the salt could raise the sodium level in their blood, potentially dangerous for those with health conditions like hypertension. Mucikyan says theres no cause for concern. Its almost like saying you cant go to the ocean because you have high blood pressure. Youre just breathing in the salt air; youre not eating it. Usually, when you hear salt, [you think] its bad for you. Its actually great for you, sitting inside a Himalayan salt cave. Its basically being in a natural environment. Breathing in the salt air thats pure pharmaceutical salt is beneficial in all kinds of ways, including boosting up the immune system.
An added benefit of sitting in a salt cave is the opportunity to unplug from everyday life. There are no phones to look at, no emails to answerjust a quiet space where one can breathe deeply. To that end, the Salt Room also offers a variety of classes throughout the month including yoga and meditation, tea ceremonies, Reiki circles and other healing modalities.
Salt in Float Therapy
Float therapy is another method that uses salt as a therapeutic element to address a variety of ailments. IMR Float Therapy (10870 S. Eastern Ave. #103 in Henderson) offers sessions in cabins and open tanks filled with water set to normal human body temperature and at least 1,300 pounds of Epsom salt. It subscribes to the same idea that salt reduces inflammation and muscle soreness, making float therapy a popular choice among athletes. (Tom Brady has a float tank in his home.) The idea is to simply float for an hour with no effortthe salt in the water keeps you from sinkingin a room with no light or sound.
Float therapy, also known as REST, or Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy, is complete sensory deprivation, and one of its biggest benefits is stress reduction. Its removing all the outside stimulus to your brain, says Elliott Reed, owner of IMR. Your body in the tank is completely weightless, so theres zero stress on your spine. Your nervous system is more relaxed. Your brain isnt firing, taking in all this sensory [input]. When you remove all of that, you can think clearer.
Float therapy has been around since the 1950s, and its benefits on the mind and the body are still being studied. Dr. Justin Feinstein, a clinical neuropsychologist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is one of the leading researchers on the effects of floating. He has performed studies on veterans suffering from PTSD, along with comparative studies on the brain for those taking anti-anxiety medications and those using float therapy.
Hes done two studies now that have been published that show that an hour in the tank can decrease stress and anxiety symptoms, and the results can last up to 20 to 48 hours, as opposed to, say, taking a pill, which could last four to eight hours. So its a healthier approach with longer results, Reed says. I know people who have insomnia who float regularly and it helps them sleep better at night. I have chronic neck pain myself and do regular float sessions. It basically takes away all the pain from my neck through regular float sessions.
Beyond its physical benefits, float therapy supporters extol what it does for cognitive function. Once stress is removed, the mind has more space for creativity and focus. And just like sitting in a salt cave, floating for a period of time, without the distraction of the trappings of modern life, can help us access a part of our brain not available when were plugged in.
Most of the time when youre floating, youre in that theta state. Thats when your theta brain waves are slowed down and youre not awake, but youre not asleep, Reed says Thats what happens in a meditative state. Youre restoring your brain from constantly having to do things throughout our daily lives.
This story appeared in Las VegasWeekly.
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Salt rooms take advantage of the compound's therapeutic benefits for the mind and body - Las Vegas Sun
Devs Takes Its Time to Blow Your Mind – Vulture
Forest (Nick Offerman) has a chat with Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) in Devs. Photo: Courtesy of FX
In the films Ex Machina and Annihilation, writer-director Alex Garland established his flair for psychologically intense, intellectually engaging science fiction. With Devs an FX on Hulu original whose first two episodes debut today exclusively on Hulu he attempts to transfer those skills to episodic television, with results that range from transfixing to frustratingly opaque.
Devs comes with all the hallmarks of an Alex Garland story. Like Ex Machina, it focuses on the unconventional work being done at a tech company headed by an eccentric CEO who keeps his highest-priority objectives and methodologies a secret. Like both of his films, Devs contains nagging mysteries and has a slick aesthetic that experiments frequently with its visual and auditory approach. (The sound both the portentous, mechanically tinged score and the use of effects is spectacular in this series.) And on television as in his films, Garland, who wrote and directed all eight episodes of the miniseries, takes an approach thats restrained, deliberate, and more concerned with what the characters do and think than what theyre like.
Those latter three qualities, however, stand out more clearly as flaws in the television world, which demands a narrative that can go deep, with characters we care about, and stay compelling over an extended runtime. Devs struggles on that front. It moves very slowly, and its understated and extremely serious sensibility can make it feel even slower than it is. Many of the conversations unfold in low tones and curt, cryptic phrases. (A sample exchange: Whats inside? Everything. Everything is inside.) Watching Devs can be an almost hypnotic experience. The problem with hypnosis is that it tends to make you sleepy, which is not, generally speaking, what a television show should be seeking to do.
At the same time, the stakes on Devs which is a little bit sci-fi but chiefly a corporate conspiracy thriller are established as high from the very beginning. In the first episode, Sergei (Karl Glusman), an AI coder who works at a vaguely Google-esque company called Amaya, delivers a presentation to Amaya CEO Forest (Nick Offerman) and his deputy Katie (Alison Pill), who are so impressed by his skills that they offer him a promotion. Sergei gets a coveted job on the devs team, a mysterious division of the company isolated from the rest of the campus, in a building thats less a building than a fever dream of a Stanley Kubrick set. (A tip for Sergei: If you have to walk through the woods to get to where your desk is located, it might be time to get suspicious.) Sergei lasts only one day on the job and then is found dead in what is characterized as a suicide.
Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno, who co-starred in Ex Machina and Annihilation), a software engineer at Amaya and Sergeis girlfriend, is immediately suspicious and starts investigating to figure out what really happened to him. As she probes deeper, Devs reveals more about Amaya, Forests backstory, and the nature of the work being done by the devs team, which also includes Stuart (longtime stage and screen actor Stephen McKinley Henderson) and young coding prodigy Lyndon (Cailee Spaeny).
But the series takes its time to do all that, and things get pretty confusing along the way. I was able to understand the broad strokes of what the devs group was doing, at least enough to follow the plot. (It involves quantum science and determinism, and if that qualifies as a spoiler, I dont know what to tell you, because I barely know what that means and I just typed it with my own fingers.) But there are also instances of faulty narrative logic and a lack of specificity in Garlands writing that make it difficult to fully engage with the series. Devs, like Forest, is so committed to not revealing certain details that it may lose chunks of the audience who get tired of waiting for Garland to pull the curtain farther back.
That said, I was intrigued just enough to want to keep watching, partly because I was invested in the story but even more because I was impressed by certain elements of the series. As challenging as it can be to get even a semi-tight grip on the particulars of Devs, the actors do a convincing job selling its version of reality. Offerman in particular stands out because his role is such a departure from the comedy for which hes best known. Forest could be played as the classic evil tech genius, and there are certainly times when he comes across as self-involved and uncaring. But Offerman lends him an authority that has a gentleness buried within it. You can understand why people might look to him as a guide and place their trust in him.
The imagery in the series is also arresting. The work of the devs team is often rendered in full-frame close-ups of grainy, pixelated video that hints at something groundbreaking and answers that are maddeningly out of view. The Silicon Valley-based Amaya, named after Forests daughter, is also designed with a fascinating mix of familiar tech company style and unsettling architectural choices. Theres a massive statue of Amaya, Forests little girl, at the center of campus that is so haunting, its amazing the place employs as many people as it does.
Somewhere in Devs, there are relevant lessons to be learned about the misuse of technology and the age-old conflict between predestiny and free will, subjects that have been explored in cautionary sci-fi tales since the genre was invented. But this series is so hard to, pardon the pun, decode that any of its deeper meanings get lost. I spent a lot of my time watching Devs wondering if this would have been better as Alex Garlands third feature film as writer and director instead of an episodic drama. Because in this form, its like a piece of Play-Doh thats been stretched as wide as it will go, threatening to completely fall apart.
Sundar Pichai details Google, Alphabet response to coronavirus and this unprecedented moment – 9to5Google
Given the companys size, the wide-ranging impact of COVID-19 on Google is not surprising. Google today published a letter from Sundar Pichai to employees that lays out the companys coronavirus response.
The primary takeaway from the Alphabet and Google CEO is how this unprecedented moment requires the company to maintain a sense of calm and responsibility given its large role in various online facets.
Every day people turn to Google products for help: to access important information; to stay productive while working and learning remotely; to stay connected to people you care about across geographies; or to simply relax with a great video or some music at the end of a long day.
To ensure continued operations amid the coronavirus, Google has a 24-hour incident response team as upper management meets daily to assess the state of worldwide offices and whether to allow remote work. In areas where thats being instituted, like the San Francisco Bay Area from today onward, hourly service workers responsible for cafeterias and facilities are being paid for the time they would have worked.
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Do Insiders Own Lots Of Shares In Deep Yellow Limited (ASX:DYL)? – Simply Wall St
If you want to know who really controls Deep Yellow Limited (ASX:DYL), then youll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders. Warren Buffett said that he likes a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people. So its nice to see some insider ownership, because it may suggest that management is owner-oriented.
Deep Yellow is not a large company by global standards. It has a market capitalization of AU$45m, which means it wouldnt have the attention of many institutional investors. In the chart below, we can see that institutions own shares in the company. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about Deep Yellow.
Check out our latest analysis for Deep Yellow
Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once its included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.
Deep Yellow already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own 7.8% of the company. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we cant rely on that fact alone, since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Deep Yellow, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.
We note that hedge funds dont have a meaningful investment in Deep Yellow. Resource Capital Investment Corporation is currently the largest shareholder, with 12% of shares outstanding. Next, we have Collines Investments Ltd and Paradice Investment Management Pty Ltd. as the second and third largest shareholders, holding 8.0% and 7.3%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.
A deeper look at our ownership data shows that the top 24 shareholders collectively hold less than 50% of the register, suggesting a large group of small holders where no one share holder has a majority.
While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. Our information suggests that there isnt any analyst coverage of the stock, so it is probably little known.
The definition of company insiders can be subjective, and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.
I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.
It seems insiders own a significant proportion of Deep Yellow Limited. Insiders own AU$5.0m worth of shares in the AU$45m company. This may suggest that the founders still own a lot of shares. You can click here to see if they have been buying or selling.
The general public, who are mostly retail investors, collectively hold 59% of Deep Yellow shares. This level of ownership gives retail investors the power to sway key policy decisions such as board composition, executive compensation, and the dividend payout ratio.
Private equity firms hold a 12% stake in DYL. This suggests they can be influential in key policy decisions. Sometimes we see private equity stick around for the long term, but generally speaking they have a shorter investment horizon and as the name suggests dont invest in public companies much. After some time they may look to sell and redeploy capital elsewhere.
It seems that Private Companies own 10%, of the DYL stock. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.
Its always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Deep Yellow better, we need to consider many other factors. Like risks, for instance. Every company has them, and weve spotted 5 warning signs for Deep Yellow (of which 1 makes us a bit uncomfortable!) you should know about.
Of course this may not be the best stock to buy. Therefore, you may wish to see our free collection of interesting prospects boasting favorable financials.
NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
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Do Insiders Own Lots Of Shares In Deep Yellow Limited (ASX:DYL)? - Simply Wall St
Wellness At The Deep End Of The Pool – The Pulse – Chattanooga Pulse
Understanding that the think tank cant run on empty
I was having a conversation with a physician friend recently. Hes in top notch physical condition, and it shows. You know the typeone percent body fat (not really of course), toned, muscled, full head of hair (well okay, thats my issue), and a set of pearly whites you could use to guide a barge into a foggy harbor.
But you cant dislike this guy even as you loosen your belt to the next notch. Hes upbeat, motivating and excited about the conversation. Exuding endorphins, he was talking with me about the nutrition-exercise connection.
People sometimes think we lose weight by exercising. That may be a byproduct and increasing our exercise can certainly help break through a weight-loss plateau. But really, our weight is about nutrition. Our health maintenance is about exercise.
This sounds like a clear, no-nonsense understanding of the broad brushstrokes of good health. And this is one reason I like talking with him. He wants people to be educated in order to optimize their success.
Exercise, movement, breathing properly and such, he continued, keeps our heart healthy. As well as our blood pressure, our brain, lungs and other internal organs. And of course, there are the benefits to our mood and general psychology. If we want to lose or gain weight, however, turn to nutrition to manage blood sugar, balance carbs, proteins, fats, etc.
His words are as gold as his Rolex (last one I promise) and provide inspiration for the healer within. My own experience at the gym has been very positive. Whether working with a personal trainer or on my own with the machines, the benefits are plentiful. But hes rightweight management success is relatively minor from purely working out. Its the protein, carb, fat percentages and whole, natural foods that make the most difference.
The Mind-Body-Spirit Connection
I find all this very helpful. However, I also believe this type of discussion addresses just the tip of the wellness iceberg. Understanding the body and mind are intimately and irrefutably connected, true wellness is possible only when viewing ourselves as a synthesisa holistic, organic, interdependent being that requires fuel for all our selves.
For proof, all one needs to do is think about the last time you were depressed. A state of even mild depression shows itself physically in a sluggish, unmotivated body. Lets go play tennis. Lets go for a walk. Are you serious? Im fine right here binging on Netflix with my two friends, Ben and Jerry.
Conversely, when you feel physically unwell, youre far more prone to brain fog, depression and other mental health issues. Better physical healthimproved mood and a more positive outlook on life. Better psychological healthgreater motivation to become and stay physically healthy.
This isnt necessarily new info. Many of us use this awareness and work very hard at mind and body wellness. But knowing something intellectually (Knowledge Is Power!) and moving that knowledge into your life in a real and measurable way, are two different things.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the much-admired Zen Master and prolific author whos been teaching mindfulness practice for more than seventy years has written a love meditation that begins:
May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit. May I be safe and free from injury. May I be free from fear and anxiety.
Witness the easy fluidity with which he addresses mind, body and spirit, and how he asks us to feel the intimate connection of all three.
He also writes, Everything inside and around us wants to reflect itself in us. We dont have to go anywhere to obtain the truth. We only need to be still, and things will reveal themselves in the still water of our heart.
Words to Ponder
Lets consider our mind to be the think tank that sparks our emotions, and our emotional self and physical self as the two selves doing the dance. Sometimes its house music, sometimes a slow, sensual sway. But the dance between the two selves must be in harmony.
One way to bridge any disconnect is to ponder this: Its not just what youre eating; its how you feel about what youre eating. Its not just doing push-ups and going to the gym; its how it feels to know you are strong and healthy. Its not just knowing you really need to sit on the back porch and calm down with a quiet meditation; its how you feel about carving out time for your self-care.
Consider the following terms: balance, whole self, mindfulness, transformation, inner wisdom, and self-love.
What do these terms mean to you? Perhaps you can spend a few moments meditating on them and see how that feels. Can they apply to both your physical well-being and to your mental/emotional well-being? Can they serve to connect the two?
I think about conversations Ive had with my own patients about embarking on a holistic journey of wellness. We consider things like relationships and home life, work life, support system, nutrition, spirituality, quality of sleep, and so forth. We also discuss childhood issues, early life messages, self-esteem, grief, loneliness, and much more.
Another physician friend of mine who practices Integrative Medicine will tell you an individuals health is inextricably linked to their physical, emotional, spiritual and social lives. He offers everything from X-rays and Western medicine to biofeedback and Chinese herbs.
One of my many yoga instructor friends says, Yoga allows ones body to feel strong and supple, and ones mind to be focused and calm. These are key elements for a long, healthy life.
Love, Gratitude and Mindfulness
Where to begin on this journey of integration?
In his mindfulness book, Arriving at Your Own Door, Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches, When you are taking a shower, check and see if you are in the shower. You may already be at a meeting at work. Maybe the whole meeting is in the shower with you.
My Catholic friend, Frances, and my Nicaraguan friend, Sara, each feels their spiritual wholeness comes from devotion to their religion. My Pagan friend, Woody, finds his spiritual wholeness in nature. My atheist friend, Zoe, finds her spiritual wholeness in acts of kindness.
Recently our holistic veterinarian (Dr. Colleen at CHAI) lovingly said, Lily Pad will be just fine. She then prescribed a combination of probiotics and ginseng. And she was right: Lilys now fine. My own doc recently prescribed for me a Western medication, an Eastern supplement, and more cardio! (Ugh.) But I am truly grateful that she views me holistically. Remember, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This can be a problem in non-holistic medicine.
I have a talented colleague who is both a psychologist and astrologer and teaches folks how to create their own astrological charts. She feels that an intimate understanding of the stars can open the door to a greater understanding of the self.
And when my mom was in the hospital with an undiagnosed but persistent pain that her medical team could not figure out, it was my Qigong group, 150 miles away, that harnessed and sent the energy to effectively remove her pain. Her doc and nurses were stunned. Her pain dissipated at the preciseprecisemoment she was on our hearts and minds. Where two or more are gathered
I am reminded of the time I suffered a skiing accident that badly tore the meniscus in my left knee. I was just twenty years old and, as I woozily looked down at my oddly bent leg, I felt the most excruciating pain Id ever felt before or since. There I was, thousands of feet up in the snow, literally leaning on friends, and wondering how I was going to get down the mountain.
Several hours later began what would become a series of consults with physicians. The news wasnt good. Back then, medical technology wasnt what it is today. Back then, the odds of a full recovery were only fifty percent.
That just wasnt good enough for me. So right then and there I asked for a knee brace, gratefully pocketed the big bottle of pain meds, and decided I would help my body heal itself. I embarked on a journey of holistic options that would be non-invasive and encourage my bodys innate intelligence. This is what I believed in. Someone else might have gone in for surgery, which may have been right for them. But here I am, and my knee is healed. Sure, it lets me know when rain is coming (as do other body parts), but I love my knee. I consider my knee well. I am well. And I am grateful.
I think about one of Kobe Bryants inspirational messages: When you make a choice and say, Come hell or high water, I am going to be this, then you should not be surprised when you are that.
Believe what you choose and believe it with all your heart. That which we believe holds the greatest chance of success, because our mind and body are then playing for the same team. Wellness is a creative symphony of mindfulness and effort.
A dear friend of mine whos a registered nurse summed up his philosophy on mental, physical and spiritual wellness this way: Follow your inner compass. And everything in moderation.
Sounds like good medicine to me.
Read more:
Wellness At The Deep End Of The Pool - The Pulse - Chattanooga Pulse
The man who refused to freeze to death – BBC News
After a short while deliberating, the three men decide to risk the swim. Within 10 minutes, the two others had succumbed to the cold. In all, it took Frirsson six hours to swim to land. How was he able to survive for so much longer than his compatriots?
For the fishermen, the first few minutes after hitting the water were critical. Cold water takes heat away from the body quicker than air at the same temperature. Those that succumbed quickly were probably unable to control the cold shock response. Gasping and panicking, they inhaled water. Frirsson, by contrast, managed to control his breathing.
He later described remaining clear-headed throughout his swim. He even chose to get back in the sea to swim further along the shoreline after the cliffs at his first landing spot proved too difficult to climb. The presence of mind to do this probably saved his life.
Finally, Frirsson reached a village, and around 7am on Monday morning he knocked on someones door. He was later discharged from hospital having been treated for his cuts and dehydration. There was no sign that he had suffered from hypothermia at all.
Frirsson, now 58, is a large man. He stands 63 (193cm) and weighed 19.6 stone (125kg) in his twenties. A generous layer of fat about two and a half centimetres thick wraps his abdomen. His body fat kept him insulated, but it was also a vital source of energy.
Even so, his ability to stay warm was exceptional. Researchers who conducted tests on Frirsson after his ordeal concluded that he must have been able to maintain near normal body temperature for the entirety of his swim.
Unlike other extreme survivors, Frirsson has not made his story into a money-spinner. A 2012 independent Icelandic film is the sum total of the mainstream coverage. The clothes that he wore, now on display in the Eldheimar Museum on Heimaey in a small exhibit to the islands fishing history, are a modest recognition for his remarkable story.
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The man who refused to freeze to death - BBC News
Why Mindfulness is the Next Frontier in Sports Performance – GQ
Michael Gervais is a sports psychologist who works with athletes in high stakes, consequential environments. Sometimes those stakes are as low as winning and losing (hes worked with the Seattle Seahawks for eight years) and sometimes they are as high as living and dying (like in his work with Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian who free dove from 130,000 feet as part of Red Bulls 2012 Stratos project). No matter the consequences, his end goal remains the same: to help his clients respond constructively to high stress environments.
I'm fortunate to work with people that are some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers in the world, and in some cases they're working in operating environments where mistakes are costly, Dr. Gervais says. To operate well in those environments requires a mastery of craft, a mastery of your body and mastery of mind [those people are] teaching and informing the rest of us, in many ways, what it means to have a full command of one's inner life and to be able to apply it on command in rugged hostile and stressful environments.
This is, of course, a very fancy way of saying that Dr. Gervais helps his clients be more mindful. If that word just made you cringe, we hear you. Mindfulness isand has been for some timethe panacea du jour in the wellness world, so overused its effectively devoid of substance. But Dr. Gervaiss work goes deeper than your usual run-of-the-mill take five deep breaths and let serenity cascade over you. (Though, to be clear: he is a fan of deep breathing.)
He is tasked with helping patients be hyper-aware in situations that threaten to transport them to anywhere except wherever they currently are (the deafening noise of an opposing stadium, 130,000 feet above earth, at the mercy of gravitys will). The success some of his clients have had in that regardRussell Wilson, a contender for this years NFL MVP, chief among themproves a compelling case not just for why, in his hands, awareness is not some bullshit hack, but why it might actually be a future pillar of elite sports performance (alongside nutrition, recovery, and strength and conditioning, which, Gervais, points out, were once viewed with cynicism, too).
And why does any of this matter for you? Maybe your environment doesnt contain about to leap from the stratosphere levels of stress. But the modern world is still leaving many of us feeling overworked, under-recovered, anxious, and alone. Here, Gervais walks you through some of the techniques that have proven most effective in his years on the jobthe tools that have allowed his patients to build mental resilience, feel more confident and capable, and fortify their inner world against external adversity.
First off: how would you define confidence?Confidence is, essentially, I think I can do that thing over there. Confidence is not I can. Confidence is That looks hardI think I have the skills to match it. Confidence comes from one place and one place only: what you say to yourself. It's not built on past success. Past success certainly has a great influence on it, but confidence essentially has to pass through the gate of what you say to yourself. The good news about that is, ultimately, we are responsible for what we say to ourselves. Its a trainable skill. So, by default, confidence is trainable, and it's 100% under our control.
Its interesting that you say its not built on past success. Because I feel like when you think of confidence, it's: Look at all the cool shit I've done.Past success alone is not enough. It's knowing how to use and pull past success into an appropriate appraisal of the demands that youre about to meet. And if you believe you can meet those demands based on your skills and your state of being, you got it.
See the rest here:
Why Mindfulness is the Next Frontier in Sports Performance - GQ