A smart trap for mosquitoes? A new high-tech version is promising to catch the bloodsuckers while letting friendlier insects escape — and even record the exact weather conditions when different species emerge to bite.

Whether it really could improve public health is still to be determined. But when the robotic traps were pilot-tested around Houston last summer, they accurately captured particular mosquito species — those capable of spreading the Zika virus and certain other diseases — that health officials wanted to track, researchers reported Thursday.

The traps act like “a field biologist in real time that’s making choices about the insects it wants to capture,” said Microsoft lead researcher Ethan Jackson, who displayed a prototype trap at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

The traps are part of Microsoft’s broader Project Premonition, aimed at learning how to spot early signs of outbreaks.

“It catches people’s imagination,” said University of Florida medical entomology professor Jonathan Day, who isn’t involved with the project. “But whether it is actually a trap that will functionally improve surveillance, I think that remains to be seen.”

Trapping is a key part of mosquito surveillance and control, important so health officials know where to spray or take other measures to fight mosquito-borne diseases. Trapping hasn’t changed much in decades: Typically net traps are outfitted with mosquito-attracting bait and a fan, and suck in whatever insect gets close enough. Entomologists later sort the bugs for the ones they want.

Jackson’s trap consists of 64 “smart cells,” compartments outfitted with an infrared light beam. When an insect crosses the beam, its shadow changes the light intensity in a way that forms almost a fingerprint for that species, Jackson said.

Program the trap for the desired species — such as the Aedes aegypti mosquito that is the main Zika threat — and when one flies into a cell, its door snaps closed. In pilot testing in Harris County, Texas, last July and August, the trap was more than 90 percent accurate in identifying the insect buzzing through the door, Jackson said.

Harris County already is well known in public health for strong mosquito surveillance, and had been keeping a sharp eye out for Zika — fortunately finding none. But mosquito control director Mustapha Debboun called the high-tech trap promising, and is looking forward to larger scale testing this summer.

“If we are trying to collect the Zika virus mosquito, you can teach this trap to collect just that mosquito,” he said.

When each mosquito is captured, sensors record the time, temperature, humidity and other factors, to show what environmental conditions have different species buzzing. That’s information officials might use to schedule pesticide spraying.

The next step: Rapid genetic scans of the mosquitoes’ blood check for harmful pathogens — and can tell what animal the mosquito had been biting, Jackson said. If that work pans out, he said the data may help predict emerging diseases.

But bringing Microsoft’s tech know-how to mosquito control ultimately will depend on cost, cautioned Debboun, who spends about $350 for one of today’s traps and says the new high-tech ones can’t cost more.

While Jackson doesn’t know a final price, he said he used low-cost microprocessors and other equipment to design the traps and plans to test if drones can place them in remote areas.

Today’s traps already provide lots of useful information, Florida’s Day noted. Some mosquito species are so plentiful that he can catch thousands in a single trap. Others, like Aedes aegypti, are much harder to find, and information about when it flies might be useful, he said.
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Big data is playing an increasing role in people’s lives.

Loosely defined as data that is too massive to be contained or processed by any one machine or person, it includes information on individuals’ Facebook likes, supermarket loyalty cards, and other seemingly innocuous personal information that was used by both the Trump and Brexit campaigns to reach voters who wouldn’t normally disclose their political opinions.

Finding out more about people

Apps created by researchers in Britain and the United States can guess how old a person is, their IQ, and to whom they are sexually attracted.

“There’s lots of different sources for sentiment data,” said John Kreisa, a London-based executive at Hortonworks, a California software company. “One probably very obvious one is things like Twitter. Social media in general is a way that people express themselves and express a like or dislike, sentiments obviously positive or negative,” Kreisa said.

By themselves, the trillions of bits of information would amount to a pile of worthless junk. Add the power of the human mind, and it is a different story.

When Julian Dailly graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in English and philosophy and faced a world dominated by machines and technology, he wondered how he was going to make a living. Now, he is part of a mega industry that, considering it includes Google and Facebook, is so large no one seems able to estimate its worth.

Predicting what people will do

Dailly’s research company, Morar Consulting, started three years ago with five employees. With annual revenues up by 25 percent each year, Dailly’s firm now has a staff of 90.

“What we ultimately do here is we try to discover what’s meaningful for people, and we correlate that to their economic behavior.” Dailly said.

Diversity, he adds, is important.

“There’s always the risk I think if you have people from too similar backgrounds that you end up with a bit of group think. You don’t consider all the alternatives, and you maybe take too many bets on the same thing,” Dailly said. “We have people from traditional research backgrounds, in addition to some in social sciences, economics, people from tech backgrounds, and sales people.”

Companies like Dailly’s also draw recent college graduates who bring perspectives of youth to the industry.

New forms of data also make it possible for analysts to predict the future. They are thus more valuable to companies and campaigns than the traditional forms of recordkeeping, recording or reporting data.

“We have access to the core information inside people’s heads,” Dailly said. “They tell you what people are going to do as opposed to what they’ve done. That helps people take preemptive action. This makes it much more useful for strategy.”

Brexit, Trump and Clinton used this new data

Both the Clinton and Trump campaigns used big data, with Trump hiring the London-based Cambridge Analytica. The company employs a trademark method known as “psychographs” that uses psychological profiling to influence consumers. The company also provided its services to the Brexit campaign.

Both the Trump and the Brexit campaigns faced charges of xenophobia, a topic many people preferred not to discuss.

For both Trump and Brexit, polls had predicted Election Day losses. But their victories hinged on voters who had remained quiet during the campaign, often declining to publicly state their opinions out of concern of being labeled as racist.

Big Data beat the polls

Polls did not tell the truth, but big data did.

“You just rely on data that you collect at the polls, you’re not going to be able to gather the same amount of data, but also people might lie or might not reveal whom they will vote for or what way they are going to vote,” said Tamara Chehayeb Makarem, a user experience designer at Scott Logic, a British software development consultancy.

“Using big data, you would be able to generate certain patterns, and what people like,” she said. “Let’s say what you like something on Facebook, if you publish certain articles, follow certain people. That could give them (campaign strategists) an indicator about your views, and based on that they could get a better indication about how likely you are to vote for someone or something.” 

The prospect of having companies read minds is spooky, and there has been pushback. Facebook has blocked the use of much of its content and the European Union has enacted some of the world’s toughest privacy protections.

Many uses for Big Data

Proponents of the industry are eager to show that big data is a force for good.

Laurie Miles, director of analytics at SAS UK, an analytics company whose clients include HSBC. He says the ability to capture and process data in real time is crucial for protecting credit card users. 

“You go into a shop, you swipe your card,” she said. “In real time, it’s determined whether that transaction is likely to be fraudulent or not.”

Dailly, of Morar Consulting, discounts concerns that computers have finally taken over.

“There is a moment of suspension of disbelief when we allow ourselves to believe that humans will be allowed to be replaced by machines. I think it’s a fantasy,” he said.

Artificial intelligence will evolve and so will their autonomy to make decisions, he said.

“But fundamentally, they will always be plugged into the wall. They can be turned off. With that in mind, humans will still remain in control.”
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A rising tide of automation, trade problems and lagging growth in productivity have slashed millions of jobs from the U.S. manufacturing sector. At the same time, a small factory in Massachusetts has been hiring, expanding and exporting. Riverdale Mills hopes to grow further by making unusual products and building a strong workforce. VOA’s Jim Randle reports.
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Many dogs and cats have it, and now a small company in Belgium says if people carried a personal identifying chip under their skin, modern life could become a lot easier. Others agree, but what if the technology changes? VOA’s George Putic reports.
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A teenager in northwestern Cameroon has become the first African to win Google’s global youth coding challenge, despite an ongoing internet blackout in his hometown.

Nji Patrick Gbah’s tailor shop in Bamenda is buzzing with business and pride. His son, Collins, was recently named one of 34 grand-prize winners in this year’s Google Code-In, a global challenge for young programmers.

He used to punish his son for “joking” with the computer.

“I was feeling that he is just spending his time without doing house chores. At times I used to seize my computer and lock it in the house and I tell him not to use it anymore because I was believing that he is just spending time on that computer for nothing,” said the teen’s father.

Nji Collins Gbah has won a trip to Google headquarters in California this June with the other top finishers. 

The competition was open to students between the ages of 13 and 17. More than 1,300 young people from 62 countries participated this year.

“The only thing I want to say is focus on studies,” Collins said. “Get to know more about the opportunities that are around you and go to sites which have real information about opportunities like this.” 

But that may be hard at the moment for his fellow students in Bamenda. In mid-January, the internet was cut to English-speaking parts of Cameroon, amid ongoing unrest.

Collins had to plead with his uncle for travel money so he could go to to Mbouda, a French-speaking town 30 kilometers away, to get online and compete. He had just a few days to complete 842 programming tasks.

Many believe the government ordered the internet blackout, though there has been no official confirmation.

Teachers and lawyers have been on strike in the English-speaking regions since November. They have been joined by activists calling for secession. Some demonstrations have turned violent and dozens of people have been arrested.

Officials say activists have been using social media to spread anti-government messages.

Cameroon’s minister of post and telecommunication, Libom Li Likeng, told VOA there has to be a responsible use of technology. She says although social networks provide lots of opportunities, they have noticed that many people use them for unhealthy purposes.

African countries have been increasingly responding to unrest by cutting internet access. Uganda, Congo and Mali are just a few other examples.

Last week, a U.N. rights expert called the internet blackout in parts of Cameroon “an appalling violation” of freedom of expression.

Residents in affected areas say it is impacting the economy as money transfer services and ATM’s are not working.
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The word “robot” was coined by Czech playwright Karel Capek almost 100 years ago. But robots have been around, in some form, for 500 years or more. London’s Science Museum has opened a “Robots” exhibit that traces the mechanical technology over the past five centuries. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
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Donald Trump was an avid Twitter user during his campaign for the U.S. presidency, and in his nearly three weeks in office, he hasn’t stopped. While most of Trump’s 24.4 million followers like the immediacy the commander in chief’s tweets provide, others are more critical.

“I don’t think there’s any connection between immediacy and sincerity. I think immediacy is overrated. It may be times when it’s absolutely necessary, but most of what President Trump tweets should be delayed and should be given more thought,” Theodore Glasser, professor of communication at Stanford University, told VOA.

“Do I love the different tweets that Trump has been putting out … absolutely not,” said Scott Goodstein, founder and chief executive officer of Revolution Messaging, a digital communications strategy company.

But as someone who’s spent the past decade pioneering digital strategy and technology for political campaigns, Goodstein said, “I love that in America I get the ability to organize and do rapid response on platforms like Twitter … the ability for the American citizenry to ask questions, engage and be part of that conversation they weren’t part of prior to Twitter, and social media has, to me, made our country better.”

Trump explained his use of Twitter as “a way of bypassing [the] dishonest media.” He has labeled the media the “opposition party” and says he calls “his own shots largely based on an accumulation of data.”

In January, he tweeted 206 times and had about 25 million interactions — consisting of retweets, replies and likes — more than any other world leader, according to data pulled from CrowdTangle, which tracks how links are shared on social media platforms.

But he is not the first U.S. president who has tried to use the popular medium of the moment to bypass mainstream media.

Radio, TV

Franklin D. Roosevelt used “fireside chats” on radio “to talk directly to the country, and that was done periodically and it was very effective,” Glasser said. Roosevelt led the nation through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, and some say that by using his radio broadcasts, he was able to quell rumors and directly explain his policies.

President John F. Kennedy is considered to be one who mastered the television medium, while President Richard Nixon “went out of his way to avoid the press and didn’t have a good relationship with them,” Glasser said.

Barack Obama was the first American presidential candidate to organize on major platforms like Facebook and YouTube, along with more niche platforms like Black Planet, Asian Avenue and others, said Goodstein, who was in charge of that during Obama’s 2007 election campaign. The Obama White House used digital technology to its fullest later to disseminate information. Right now, @BarackObama has 84.4 million followers, third highest on a list kept by twitaholic.com.

The social media platform, created a little over a decade ago, had 317 million monthly active users as of the third quarter of 2016, according to statistics portal statista.com.

Brazil

In Brazil, ousted President Dilma Rousseff, who has 5.7 million followers, was a great example of someone “who used the tool [Twitter] during the election and then turned it off essentially and stopped listening when they started governing; that was a huge mistake,” said Goodstein, who also worked in that country.

He said Rousseff had the ability to build a giant Twitter following during her first election, and he criticized her for “not engaging in her base voters and her general electorate … around issues of people protesting building around the Olympics when it was first announced. She had the ability to go over the media, talk directly to her citizenry. Unfortunately, she did not, and you saw these protests grow bigger and bigger.”

Rousseff has vowed to appeal what she called a “parliamentary coup,” and some of her supporters continue to call her Brazil’s only legitimate president, as shown in a recent picture posted on her Twitter page.

Mexico

The feud between Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Trump continued when the U.S. president reaffirmed his campaign promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico, and that if Mexico wasn’t going to pay for the wall, Pena Nieto should cancel a scheduled visit in Washington a week after Trump was inaugurated.

In Mexico, after congratulating Trump and tweeting that his country would work with the U.S. to strengthen their relationship, Pena Nieto took to the same medium to inform his 6.21 million followers, and the White House shortly afterward, that he would not attend the meeting with Trump.

Gambia

While some leaders have been using the medium for years and have followings in the millions, others are just starting. Newly elected Gambian President Adama Barrow announced to his 11,000 followers that he was back after going into exile in neighboring Senegal, fearing his life was in danger. Barrow defeated President Yahya Jammeh in December’s elections, but the veteran leader of 22 years did not want to cede power.

Since joining Twitter in December, Barrow has sent 62 tweets, mostly about the postelection crisis, his return home and cabinet announcements.

Rwanda

Since June 2016, Rwandan President Paul Kagame has tweeted only 23 times, including one retweet to his 1.59 million followers. Mostly in English and sometimes in Kinyarwanda, the posts varied but included a congratulatory message to the Cleveland Cavaliers on their National Basketball Association title last year. He revealed that as a supporter of Cleveland’s opponent, the Golden State Warriors, he was outnumbered in his house by Cavs fans.

India

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined Twitter in 2009 and today has 27 million followers of his personal page and 16 million of the PM office’s page. He sent 233 tweets in January. Although not all tweets generate responses, he had about 2.8 million interactions.

The subjects of his tweets in English and Hindi have varied; he has asked for people’s thoughts about his new personal app, shared pictures of rallies he’s attended in Ghaziabad, and discussed such issues as demonetization, sanitation coverage in rural areas and defense of the sanctity of institutions above politics. He’s one of a few leaders who reply to their followers.  

Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s English-language page shows he sent about 15 tweets in January, and subjects included a conversation with Trump and a videoconference in which he was briefed on tests of a new jet fighter.

All the tweets have links to the official Kremlin website for longer articles. He has 489,000 followers on the page’s English version and 3.59 million on the official Kremlin page, which tweets in Russian.

Twitter’s problems

Whether one’s followers are in the millions or hundreds, people don’t always engage with every tweet. Goodstein said there are also problems Twitter needs to address, including spam, robot tweets and idle accounts. But he also said the Twittersphere is engaged enough that those who tweet authentically will be able to draw others into conversations.

The biggest mistake that politicians make on Twitter is that they want to use it as “a one-way communication and forget the word ‘social,’ ” Goodstein said. The medium is not meant to be used as a public relations device to send out old-fashioned press releases, he said.

Glasser said Twitter has a place in the political landscape but cautioned that it’s dangerous to use in matters of diplomacy. For example, he said, “it’s not a useful tool for announcing policy. One hundred forty characters doesn’t provide enough room for context, nuance and sophistication that public diplomacy requires.”
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Twitter, Incorporated reported its fourth-quarter losses nearly doubled from the same period in 2015.

The online messaging company reported a quarterly loss of $167 million at the end of 2016. In 2015, the company reported a loss of $90 million over the same period.

The business said revenues in the fourth quarter were up 1 percent from $710 million in 2015 to $717 million in 2016. It was the the slowest revenue growth since the company went public in November of 2013.

There was one bright spot: The average number of active users rose 4 percent compared to a year earlier to 319 million.

Twitter has been failing to keep up with other social media platforms such as Facebook. Twitter recently reduced staff and an attempt to sell the company failed.

The 10-year-old Twitter has never made a profit, and despite tweaks to the format, has only seen modest growth in users.

Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, called 2016 a “transformative year.”

“We reset and focused on why people use Twitter: It’s the fastest way to see what’s happening and what everyone’s talking about,” he said. “We overcame the toughest challenge for any consumer service at scale by reversing declining audience trends and re-accelerating usage.”

He advised patience, saying revenue growth “will take time, but we’re moving fast to show results.”

Investors may not be as patient, as Twitter shares were down about 10 percent in Thursday pre-market trading.
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Physicist Arthur Rosenfeld, who spearheaded breakthroughs in energy efficiency for lighting, refrigerators, televisions and other electronics while working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has died. He was 90. 

Rosenfeld died January 27 at his home in Berkeley, said Lawrence Berkeley National Lab spokeswoman Julie Chao.

Rosenfeld was known to his colleagues as California’s “godfather” of energy efficiency, a field he is credited with creating.

Worked with Nobel Prize winner 

A native of Alabama, he was known for his detailed calculations, but also for his talent in translating the results into terms that could be easily understood.

A particle physicist, he moved to Berkeley in the 1950s to work in the particle physics group of Luis Alvarez, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1968.

A turning point in his career came in 1973 when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries declared an oil embargo. Knowing he would have to wait in a long line the next day to buy gas, he decided to calculate how much energy could be saved by turning off unused lights. 

“After 20 minutes of uncovering light switches (and saving 100 gallons for the weekend), I decided that UC Berkeley and its Radiation Laboratory should do something about conservation,” he wrote in a 1999 autobiography of his career, The Art of Energy Efficiency.

Many honors

He received numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2011, the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement, for the development of energy efficient building technologies.

Gov. Jerry Brown said that during his first term as governor in 1975, Rosenfeld told him that simply by requiring more efficient refrigerators, California could save as much energy as would be produced by the then-proposed Sundesert Nuclear Power plant.

“We adopted Art’s refrigerator standards and many others, did not build the power plant and moved the country to greater energy efficiency,” Brown said in a statement after Rosenfeld’s death was announced. 
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We know that preventive care saves lives and money. The idea is that regular doctor visits can help catch diseases early, and avoid expensive emergency room visits. Soon, new technology will allow patients to do some preventive care at home, and send the results to their doctor. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports
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The college application process is complex and stressful for many students. Colleges not only look for students who do well academically, but also pursue passions and interests outside of school. A new app now allows students to present themselves to colleges in a creative and personal way. VOA’s Helena Djordjevic has more on how the ZeeMee app gets students noticed.
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Many urban areas in the U.S. experience large traffic jams that extend well beyond the usual rush hours. While rapid mass transportation has developed considerably in other parts of the world, such as Japan, China and Western Europe, the idea has not caught on as enthusiastically among Americans. Some entrepreneurs say instead of high-speed rail lines, it would be better to build high-tech underground tubes through which passenger pods would zoom at dizzying speeds. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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