Paola Mera, a professor at New Mexico State University, has been awarded a $1.5 million grant for research on antibiotic resistance. The grant is from National Institutes of Health.
Grant Is For Antibiotic-Resistance Research
LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) — A researcher at New Mexico State University has been awarded $1.5 million from the National Institutes of Health for her work on antibiotic resistance.
The university announced Tuesday that professor Paola Mera will use the five-year grant for equipment and manpower that will be aimed at identifying new targets that can help others design new antibiotics so the growth of resistant bacteria can be controlled.
Bacteria can grow from one cell to billions in less than a day, so Mera's approach is to find out how bacteria maintain their genetic information intact after every cell division while growing so fast.
The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say antibiotic resistance is one of today's biggest health challenges. The CDC reports more than 2 million people in the U.S. get an antibiotic-resistant infection each year and about 23,000 die.
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UND And NASA Partner To Colonize Mars
When the first international mission in the University of North Dakota’s (UND) Inflatable Mars/Lunar Habitat (IMLH) was launched last fall, four students from Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Peru entered the facility to spend two weeks running experiments to help NASA and their program to explore the moon and Mars. After the successful completion of the mission, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, accompanied by U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), visited the UND John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, calling the work being done there “second to none.” At UND to also discuss future collaborations, Bridenstine explained the university’s importance to the Mars/Lunar program. “The University of North Dakota is delivering – on behalf of NASA – technology that is helping us understand the earth, helping us understand the earth’s atmosphere, helping us better predict weather events and the climate. Beyond that, the University of North Dakota is helping us with human space flight. What happens here enables us to do more than ever before.” He confirmed, “UND will be part of NASA’s future space exploration efforts.” According to Pablo de León…
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The Peril And Promise Of AI
Editor’s Note: Lethal machines able to make decisions on their own are likely to become reality in the near future. But the ethics regarding such weapons are being considered now.
(AP)(THE CONVERSATION) Robotics is rapidly being transformed by advances in artificial intelligence. And the benefits are widespread: We are seeing safer vehicles with the ability to automatically brake in an emergency, robotic arms transforming factory lines that were once offshored and new robots that can do everything from shop for groceries to deliver prescription drugs to people who have trouble doing it themselves. But our ever-growing appetite for intelligent, autonomous machines poses a host of ethical challenges.
Ethical Dilemmas
Rapid advances have led ethical dilemmas.
These ideas and more were swirling as my colleagues and I met in early November at one of the world’s largest autonomous robotics-focused research conferences – the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. There, academics, corporate…
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Can Hate Speech Be Quarantined?
Editor’s Note: Is it possible to deal with online hate speech without using censorship? Two university researchers are proposing it can be done by using cyber security techniques.
The spread of hate speech via social media could be tackled using the same “quarantine” approach deployed to combat malicious software, according to University of Cambridge researchers. Definitions of hate speech vary depending on nation, law and platform, and just blocking keywords is ineffectual: graphic descriptions of violence need not contain obvious ethnic slurs to constitute racist death threats, for example. As such, hate speech is difficult to detect automatically. It has to be reported by those exposed to it, after the intended “psychological harm” is inflicted, with armies of moderators required to judge every case.
This is the new front line of an ancient debate: freedom of speech versus poisonous language. Now, an engineer and a linguist have published a proposal in the journal Ethics and Information Technology that harnesses cyber security techniques to give control to those targeted, without…
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Editor’s Note: The latest PISA results have found that while the math performances of 15-year-olds in the U.S. are not declining, they are still behind their international peers.
American students may not be reading any better, but they’re moving up in rankings of educational achievement worldwide because many of their peers in other countries are performing worse. And while their math performance may not be declining, 15-year-olds in the United States still lag the scores of their peers in dozens of other countries. Overall, the latest global snapshot of achievement shows American students scoring above average in reading and science, but below average in math. The 2018 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, shows several Asian school systems at the top. The best-performing across all three measures was a group of four Chinese provinces — Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. PISA seeks to test not only what students know, but whether they can apply that knowledge to solve problems. About 600,000 15-year-old students in nearly 80 nations and educational systems took…
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Imagine finding a job where you not only earned more than enough to take care of yourself and your family, but also found success and fulfillment while bringing joy to others. Now imagine suddenly being diagnosed with a disease that even if you survive it could take away your ability to do that job. This is what faced voice actor Rob Paulsen when he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Known for his work on such series as “Animaniacs,” “Pinky and the Brain,” and two of the TV incarnations of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” Paulsen’s resume includes such top studios as Disney and Warner Bros., such legends as Steven Spielberg and Mel Brooks, and such accolades a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program. To an outsider, his career looked like it was hitting a new high with the probable reboot of “Animaniacs” on the horizon. But as he talks about in his book “Voice Lessons: How a Couple of Ninja Turtles, Pinky, and an Animaniac Saved My Life,” a small lump on his throat turned out to be stage III squamous cell carcinoma with occult primary, and the treatments for it could permanently damage his voice.
“The irony of me getting throat cancer was inescapable,” Paulsen writes.
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