How Fires, Floods and Hurricanes Create Deadly Pockets of Information Isolation

Trouble viewing? View in your browser. View all Scientific American publications.

    

September 12, 2023

During a disaster like a wildfire or hurricane, telecommunication enables residents to stay in touch with each other and receive emergency updates so they know when and how to evacuate. But that lifesaving connectivity is often disrupted when storms sweep through. This week's lead story is about how to keep people informed when they need it most. Read more below.

Sophie Bushwick, Associate Editor, Technology

Natural Disasters How Fires, Floods and Hurricanes Create Deadly Pockets of Information Isolation Telecommunications grids are vulnerable to worsening climate disasters—which highlights the importance of one age-old survival system By Timmy Broderick

Automobiles 'Robo-Taxi Takeover' Hits Speed Bumps Self-driving cars are expanding their ranges in a handful of U.S. cities, but the reality doesn't yet match the hype By Lauren Leffer

Policy Algorithms Are Making Important Decisions. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Seemingly trivial differences in training data can skew the judgments of AI programs—and that's not the only problem with automated decision-making By Ananya

Computing Physicists Explain How Heat Kills Machines and Electronics Extreme heat can slow and even damage electronics ranging from computers to cars By Srinivas Garimella,Matthew T. Hughes,The Conversation US

Mathematics Candy Crush Is Complicated--Even from a Mathematical Point of View Don't be annoyed if you fail at a certain level of the popular game Candy Crush Saga; computers also have their problems with it By Manon Bischoff

Artificial Intelligence Without Small Data, AI in Health Care Contributes to Disparities Artificial intelligence systems in health care must be trained on the data of lived experience to prevent bias and disparities By Fay Cobb Payton

Transportation Why High-Speed Bullet Trains Won't Work in the U.S. Right Now Amtrak will soon get 28 high-speed rail cars. But they won't operate at high speeds because Amtrak tracks are outdated By Minho Kim,E&E News

Statistics What This Graph of a Dinosaur Can Teach Us about Doing Better Science "Anscombe's quartet" and the "datasaurus dozen" demonstrate the importance of visualizing data By Jack Murtagh

Artificial Intelligence Scientists Are Beginning to Learn the Language of Bats and Bees Using AI The new field of digital bioacoustics is machine learning to try decipher animal speak, including honeybee toots and quacks and woops. By Sophie Bushwick,Kelso Harper,Jeffery DelViscio | 11:10

QUOTE OF THE DAY "The sleek integration of various apps into a larger [superapp] ecosystem may provide convenience, but these are still apps concerned with extracting as much as they can out of each one of us either by labor exploitation or endless commodification." Edward Ongweso Jr., Wired

FROM THE ARCHIVE Cell Phone Service Must Be Restored Quicker after Hurricanes Officials pressure wireless companies so first responders and residents can communicate and save lives By Thomas Frank,E&E News | October 2019

LATEST ISSUES

Questions?   Comments?

Download the Scientific American App

To view this email as a web page, go here. You received this email because you opted-in to receive email from Scientific American. To ensure delivery please add newsletters@scientificamerican.com to your address book. Unsubscribe     Manage Email Preferences     Privacy Policy     Contact Us

Scientific American

1 New York Plaza, FDR Dr, Floor 46, New York, NY 10004

Unsubscribe - Unsubscribe Preferences