Disinformation campaigns are not new -- think of wartime propaganda used to sway public opinion against an enemy. What is new, however, is the use of the internet and social media to spread these campaigns. The spread of disinformation via social media has the power to change elections, strengthen conspiracy theories, and sow discord. Steven Smith, a staff member from MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Artificial Intelligence Software Architectures and Algorithms Group, is part of a team that set out to better understand these campaigns by launching the Reconnaissance of Influence Operations (RIO) program. Their goal was to create a system that would automatically detect disinformation narratives as well as those individuals who are spreading the narratives within social media networks.

PARIS, (BM) – Two French companies are launching an ambitious project to master cyberspace, big data, and artificial intelligence. Thales and Atos are launching a joint venture to develop and offer technology in this area for both military and civilian purposes. The Joint Undertaking aims first to master the technologies for the internal market and focus its efforts on Europe at a later stage. On Thursday, 27 May, both companies issued statements announcing the joint venture merged under the Athea platform – a "sovereign platform for big data and artificial intelligence." According to the two companies, the countries in Europe and, respectively, the government structures of each country are sweating the need for technology to manage a large amount of data – something that is currently lacking.

Having relied heavily on machine learning, the Israeli military is calling Operation Guardian of the Walls the first artificial-intelligence war."For the first time, artificial intelligence was a key component and power multiplier in fighting the enemy," an IDF Intelligence Corps senior officer said. "This is a first-of-its-kind campaign for the IDF. We implemented new methods of operation and used technological developments that were a force multiplier for the entire IDF."In 11 days of fighting in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military carried out intensive strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets. It targeted key infrastructure and personnel belonging to the two groups, the IDF said.While the military relied on what was already available on the civilian market and adapted it for military purposes – in the years prior to the fighting – the IDF established an advanced AI technological platform that centralized all data on terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip onto one system that enabled the analysis and extraction of the intelligence.Soldiers in Unit 8200, an Intelligence Corps elite unit, pioneered algorithms and code that led to several new programs called "Alchemist," "Gospel" and "Depth of Wisdom," which were developed and used during the fighting.Collecting data using signal intelligence (SIGINT), visual intelligence (VISINT), human intelligence (HUMINT), geographical intelligence (GEOINT) and more, the IDF has mountains of raw data that must be combed through to find the key pieces necessary to carry out a strike."Gospel" "none";}"For the first time, a multidisciplinary center was created that produces hundreds of targets relevant to developments in the fighting, allowing the military to continue to fight as long as it needs to with more and more new targets," the senior officer said.While the IDF had gathered thousands of targets in the densely populated coastal enclave over the past two years, hundreds were gathered in real time, including missile launchers that were aimed at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.The military believes using AI helped shorten the length of the fighting, having been effective and quick in gathering targets using super-cognition.The IDF carried out hundreds of strikes against Hamas and PIJ, including rocket launchers, rocket manufacturing, production and storage sites, military intelligence offices, drones, commanders' residences and Hamas's naval commando unit.

When the constitution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science was revised in 1946, its statement of objectives contained new language: “…to increase public understanding and appreciation of the importance and promise of the methods of science in human progress.” The association has since fulfilled that charge in diverse sectors, including policy, education, and public engagement, to make science more relatable and relevant to the public. Making science relatable also requires a variety of engagement strategies, including facilitating in-depth discussions with local policy leaders, translating technical language into digestible summaries for the classroom, and promoting science role models. In the case of the AAAS Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues or EPI Center, for instance, a successful part of bringing clear and actionable scientific advice to policy-makers has been encouraging discussions among a broad group of experts and policy peers. During meetings organized by the EPI Center this year, city council members, mayors, water engineers, and local utility managers joined scientists to discuss perand polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, synthetic chemicals found in drinking water systems. At least two PFAS have been associated with increased rates of some cancers and thyroid disease. The EPI Center provides nontechnical syntheses of topics for policy-makers, “but one thing we have seen is that examples from their peers that have implemented and used the scientific evidence are much more valuable and easier to understand,” said Kathryn McGrath, communications director for the center. Whether the focus is clean water or voting technology or hydraulic fracturing, the EPI Center strives to make the science of these topics relatable by talking with the public and policy-makers to find out exactly what information would be helpful for them. The discussions allow city council members, for instance, “to ask the science experts what they need to know to go back to their communities and regions and take action on some of these issues,” McGrath said. AAAS's Local Science Engagement Network, a grassroots platform that nurtures local and state science advocates for climate and energy policy, has also found success with local partnerships. In Colorado, Missouri, and Georgia, LSENs work with organizations in each state that “have a good sense of policy landscapes as well as the cultural and scientific landscapes in those areas,” said Daniel Barry, local and state advocacy director and head of LSEN at AAAS. LSENs offer an avenue for engagement and advocacy that AAAS members have been asking for, by connecting scientists with their own elected representatives on the local, state, and federal levels. As both constituents and neutral, honest brokers of scientific information, LSEN participants can be a key resource when legislatures grapple with the more local implications of climate change, such as modernizing the state power grid, said Barry. “They can step up and say, ‘Science, that's what I do, and I live here in this community. I know how to get you the science you need.’” LSEN members also condense technical research into locally relevant analyses in plain English for business leaders and citizens. So far in 2021, Missouri LSEN partner MOST Policy Initiative has produced more than 80 such “science notes” about pending state legislation. Among AAAS's numerous education efforts to make science more relevant is Science in the Classroom, an initiative that annotates and provides additional resources to accompany research papers from the Science family of journals. The goal is to make scientific papers more accessible to high school, community college, and undergraduate students, while putting a face on the papers' authors in communities with little exposure to working scientists, said program director Suzanne Thurston. The popular resource had more than 1 million page views in the past 3 years, and the hunger for accessible scientific content during a pandemic year led to a 50% increase in total site visits in 2020 compared to 2019. The program also offers professional development workshops to educators, researchers, and annotators. By showcasing a range of authors and annotators, Science in the Classroom helps “to expose students to diversity within STEM and demonstrates what ‘actual living scientists’ look like,” said Thurston, who serves as a program director in AAAS's Inclusive STEM Ecosystems for Equity and Diversity (ISEED). The IF/THEN Ambassador program, led by AAAS's Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology, was another recent effort to show off the diverse faces of science, by highlighting 125 women in STEM as role models for middle school girls. Lyda Hill Philanthropies, which funds the IF/THEN initiative, wanted to work with AAAS on the ambassador program after the association's success with other public engagement initiatives such as the AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship and the Leshner Leadership Institute for Public Engagement with Science, said Emily Therese Cloyd, director of the AAAS Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology. The ambassador program was distinguished by its emphasis on increasing visibility for women in STEM who demonstrate how science is involved in everyday careers beyond the traditional lab, said Cloyd. “We're moving beyond scientists who work at an academic institution and thinking about the ways that a video game designer or a fashion designer might be using STEM every day.” AAAS is committed to making science relatable and relevant for everyone from policy-makers to educators to students. It is at the core of the organization's mission and will continue to be a top priority for years to come.

SCI COMMUN### Planetary science China's Zhurong rover rolled off the Tianwen-1 Mars mission's lander last week to start its explorations, leaving tracks in the Red Planet's dust. Zhurong's sensors will provide an up-close look at Mars's subsurface strata, minerals, and weather and atmosphere. Researchers expect 90 days of operations but hope for more. Meanwhile, the mission's orbiter will continue to gather data on Mars's topography and ionosphere. The flawless 15 May landing and subsequent smooth deployment of the rover (which photographed the lander in the photo above) may encourage China in its ambitions for planetary exploration. After bringing rocks back from the Moon in December 2020, China is considering a landing site for a planned, second sample return mission to the Moon's far side in 2023 or 2024. > “I frequently vomit before going to the lab.” > > Anonymous scientist, in a survey conducted by the antibullying Academic Parity Movement and posted as a preprint. Many of the 2000 self-selected respondents said they had been bullied but didn't report it to their institution, fearing retaliation. Most who did said they found the process unfair. ### History of science A picture may be worth 1000 words, but a letter containing a single equation written in Albert Einstein's shaky hand sold last week for a whopping $1.2 million, Boston-based RR Auction reported. Penned on 26 October 1946, when the famous theorist was 67, the letter contains one of four extant instances of Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 in his own hand. The equation implies that a small amount of mass (m) equals a huge amount of energy (E) because the speed of light (c) is enormous. The letter's recipient, Polish-American physicist Ludwik Silberstein, wrote one of the first English-language textbooks on relativity—a theory that encompasses both the special theory of relativity that Einstein published in 1905 and the general theory, published in 1915, which explains the origins of gravity. Silberstein had doubts about general relativity and engaged Einstein in public debate—which Silberstein lost as the theory became a cornerstone of modern physics. ### Evolution With more than 350,000 species, flowering plants feed, fuel, and adorn the world. Now, researchers have taken a big step toward understanding the origin of traits that distinguish them from an older group of plants, the gymnosperms, which today includes pine trees and ginkgoes. Among the differences, the flowering plants or “angiosperms,” which evolved about 125 million years ago, produce more sophisticated seeds, with two outer protective coats instead of just one. In 2017 in an open-pit coal mine in Inner Mongolia, palaeobotanists discovered evidence of an evolutionary link between these two major groups of plants: a treasure trove of exquisitely preserved, extinct gymnosperms with double-coated seeds. The outer coat or “cupule” most likely gave rise to the outer coat, the integument, of angiosperm seeds, palaeobotanist Gongle Shi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences's Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and colleagues write this week in Nature . Modern gymnosperms lack cupules. The ancient plants, which no longer exist, also had specialized leaves or other tissues that may have been the forerunners of the female angiosperm reproductive structures called carpels. ### Gene therapy A blind man who received a gene for a light-sensing algal protein in one eye can now see objects with the help of special goggles, researchers report this week in Nature Medicine . It is the first published case of using optogenetics, a method of controlling neurons, to treat a disease in people. The 58-year-old French man was a participant in a clinical trial of the technique. He has an inherited disease called retinitis pigmentosa that destroys the eye's light-sensing photoreceptor cells; he could sense light but not discern shapes. Researchers used a virus to insert the algal gene into the man's retinal ganglion cells, which carried signals from the light-sensing protein to the brain. Months later, while wearing goggles that focused light on his retina, he could find and touch a notebook and count glass tumblers. If the treatment helps others, it may offer advantages over alternative technologies such as retinal implants. ### Science education The latest results from a quadrennial national test have disappointed U.S. science educators. The scores of fourth grade students in science showed a significant drop of three points on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) between 2015 and 2019, while the scores of eighth and 12th grade students stayed flat. Key metrics for measuring how science is taught are also discouraging. For example, just 30% of fourth grade students engage in inquiry-based activities—a teaching method that studies have validated as more effective than others—only once or twice a year, and only 18% as often as twice a month. “Far too many elementary teachers have told us that science is not a priority in their schools and is perceived as less important than math and English language arts,” says Erika Shugart, executive director of the National Science Teaching Association. Until that attitude changes, Shugart says, “we can anticipate that lackluster NAEP scores will continue.” ### Climate policy President Joe Biden's administration last week reinstated the past director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which coordinates climate science across 13 federal agencies and oversees a periodic and influential review, the National Climate Assessment. In November 2020, the Trump administration reassigned Michael Kuperberg, a climate scientist who had run USGCRP for 6 years, to the Department of Energy and replaced him with a climate change denier. Trump subordinates had criticized the 2018 installment of the climate assessment, which, like previous ones, predicted calamitous, costly effects from climate change. In restoring Kuperberg to his old post, the White House also directed USGCRP to accelerate its work on two fronts: advancing climate science on socially relevant topics and ensuring that knowledge is more easily accessible to the public. The next climate assessment is now due by the end of 2023. ### Energy The United Kingdom's rebooted fusion reactor, MAST-Upgrade, has successfully demonstrated a novel exhaust system for superhot waste gases, key to making future commercial devices smaller and cheaper, researchers announced this week. Such reactors generate energy by fusing hydrogen isotopes in gas heated to more than 100 million degrees Celsius and confined with powerful magnets. As waste gases are expelled, they must touch a reactor surface, and not many materials can stand the heat for long. MAST-Upgrade was built with extra chambers and magnets, known as a super-X diverter, to lead the waste gases on a winding 20-meter path, during which they have time to cool. In tests since the reactor was fired up in October, researchers showed that this reduced the heat load 10-fold at the final contact surface. “This will make a big change in the amount of downtime in a future power plant,” says lead scientist Andrew Kirk of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. ### COVID-19 India is suffering an epidemic within the pandemic. Nearly 9000 COVID-19 patients have also contracted mucormycosis, a rare disease also called black fungus, for its discolored lesions on the nose and inside the mouth. Spread by spores in the environment, mucormycosis has a mortality rate of more than 50%. Healthy people easily stave off infection, but those with weakened immune systems are vulnerable. In India, the disease is appearing mostly in COVID-19 patients given steroids to suppress an overactive immune response and in those who also suffer from diabetes. The surge in mucormycosis is causing a shortage of amphotericin B, the drug used to treat the disease. Last week, India's health ministry urged the country's 36 states and territories to declare mucormycosis epidemic, a step that leads to closer tracking of cases. ### COVID-19 Belgian authorities have hunted for more than a week for a heavily armed former soldier who they said threatened a prominent virologist, Marc Van Ranst of KU Leuven, over his support of COVID-19 lockdowns. Police took Van Ranst, a member of two expert panels advising the government, and his family to a safe house on 18 May. The fugitive, far-right former military shooting instructor Jürgen Conings, is on the Belgian list of terrorism suspects and “very dangerous,” Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said in a 21 May TV interview. He added that Conings spent 2 hours on 17 May near a “target,” identified as Van Ranst by Belgian media. Van Ranst had been receiving police protection since July 2020 because he received pandemic-related threats regularly. Tweeting from his hideout last week, he said the threats “don't impress me at all.” ### Publishing Who voices more anxiety about peer reviews: researchers whose manuscripts have been accepted or rejected? The answer: It's a tie. That's one of the counterintuitive findings of a study of researchers' emotional and cognitive reactions to peer reviews, as revealed in more than 3600 comments posted by researchers on SciRev.org. The website allows authors to rate the quality of reviews at each of more than 3500 journals by name. The 16 May paper in Scientometrics unpacked the SciRev.org comments using language-analysis software. Although authors of rejected papers were not more likely to report anxiety than authors of accepted papers, they were more prone to say they were saddened by the decision. Also surprising, authors who waited longer for review decisions were no more likely to make negative comments about peer review. “Possibly, slow peer review processes have become so prevalent in academia [that] most authors did not bother to criticize it,” wrote the study's author, Shan Jiang of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Further research about psychological reactions to peer review could help improve the process, the paper suggests. ### Genetics After the last ice age, the population of modern humans in northern East Asia may have undergone a major turnover, a study this week in Cell suggests. Researchers analyzed DNA from across the genomes of 25 ancient hunter-gatherers. It shows that the earliest known modern humans in the north China Plain, which stretches from Mongolia to the Amur Peninsula of Russia, who lived there 33,000 to 40,000 years ago, belonged to one widespread population. But by the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, about 19,000 years ago, they had been replaced by another population of people related to living East Asians and ancient Siberians. The first group may have died out during the ice age, the research team writes, noting that frigid temperatures in Europe may have driven a similar ancient population turnover. ### Space science Future robotic and crewed missions to the Moon could find their way on its surface more easily under a plan proposed by the European Space Agency (ESA) to establish a fleet of navigation satellites—a lunar version of GPS. The agency last week announced €2 million contracts to each of two industrial consortia to devise plans. Space agencies and companies hope to dispatch dozens of lunar probes this decade, but they must carry heavy radio gear to stay in contact with large dishes on Earth that guide them. Instead, ESA proposes that three or four satellites in lunar orbit and surface beacons could provide GPS-like signals so future missions could make do with a simple, less costly, lightweight receiver. The system would improve navigational accuracy, fixing position to within 100 meters compared with the current 500 meters at best. 8023 —Depth in meters where the deepest ocean bed core was drilled. The sample, for earthquake research, was taken this month in the Japan Trench, near the epicenter of the 2011 quake that caused a tsunami and knocked out the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

On Jan. 11, 2020, Chinese authorities shared the genetic sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19 for the first time. By Jan. 13, the biotechnology firm Moderna had used this information to finalize the design of its vaccine. This miracle of modern science -- shortening to a matter of hours a process that had previously taken months or years -- was not a stroke of luck. It was enabled by significant advancements in AI and machine learning, investments in these technologies by industry, and a research base built by decades of U.S. government funding in life sciences and biotechnology. AI is transforming the biotechnology sector, and the U.S. government should take bold steps now to realize the important influence AI will have on the sector's overall potential, and ensure the United States leads the coming biotechnology revolution.

Life could become like George Orwell's 1984 within three years if laws aren't introduced to protect the public from artificial intelligence, Microsoft president Brad Smith has warned. Smith predicts that the kind of controlled, mass surveillance society portrayed by Orwell in his 1949 dystopian novel'could come to pass in 2024' if more isn't done to curb the spread of AI. It is going to be difficult for lawmakers to catch up with rapidly advancing artificial intelligence and surveillance technology, he told BBC Panorama during a special exploring China's increasing use of AI to monitor its citizens. The Microsoft president said: 'If we don't enact the laws that will protect the public in the future, we are going to find the technology racing ahead.' Life for humans will'become like Orwell's 1984' by 2024 if laws aren't introduced to protect the public from artificial intelligence, warns Microsoft president Brad Smith Facial recognition software works by matching real time images to a previous photograph of a person.

How much do you know about Alan Turing, who was portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2014 film The Imitation Game? October 1931 Turing takes up a mathematics scholarship at King's College Cambridge, earning a first-class degree. March 1940 The first Bombe machine, designed by Turing, arrives at Bletchley. The coroner's verdict is that he had taken his own life The founding father of computing played a vital role in breaking German codes during the Second World War. In September 1939, just as the Second World War was declared, a young man arrived to stay at the Crown Inn in the hamlet of Shenley Brook End, Buckinghamshire.

Life could become like George Orwell's 1984 within three years if laws aren't introduced to protect the public from artificial intelligence, Microsoft president Brad Smith has warned. Smith predicts that the kind of controlled, mass surveillance society portrayed by Orwell in his 1949 dystopian novel'could come to pass in 2024' if more isn't done to curb the spread of AI. It is going to be difficult for lawmakers to catch up with rapidly advancing artificial intelligence and surveillance technology, he told BBC Panorama during a special exploring China's increasing use of AI to monitor its citizens. The Microsoft president said: 'If we don't enact the laws that will protect the public in the future, we are going to find the technology racing ahead.' Life for humans will'become like Orwell's 1984' by 2024 if laws aren't introduced to protect the public from artificial intelligence, warns Microsoft president Brad Smith Facial recognition software works by matching real time images to a previous photograph of a person.

Despite the a wave of national strategies on artificial intelligence that has washed over the world, none have yet proposed or published specific ethical or legal frameworks for artificial intelligence. Over the past several years, a wave of national strategies on artificial intelligence (AI) has washed over the world, with many jurisdictions introducing policies for its regulation. With the exception of the European Union (EU), none have yet proposed or published specific ethical or legal frameworks for AI. Canada led the way, announcing national AI policies in 2017, and has since been followed by many other jurisdictions. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) AI Policy Observatory early last year released a continuously updated database of over 600 AI policy initiatives from 60 countries, territories, and the EU. Of course, not all are the same, but some are noteworthy.