Deep learning discussed on the TED Radio Hour

Deep Learning / Ian Goodfellow, Joshua Bengio and
Aaron Courville.  MIT Press, 2016.

The TED Radio Hour on Friday, April 21, 2017 was titled The Digital Industrial Revolution, followed by the question, "As machine learning surpasses human intelligence, where does that leave us?"

During the session, TED speakers explored "ideas about the exciting — and terrifying — future of human-robot collaboration."

One of the speakers referenced deep learning, which immediately brought to mind this book on our new book shelf.  It defines deep learning as a "form of machine learning that enables computers to learn from experience and understand the work in terms of a hierarchy of concepts."  Seemingly benign, and the book's cover is soothing at first glance, with its profusion of blossoms.  On close examination, the cover art work has multiple layers of meaning, and it is this multiplicity of issues surrounding deep learning and neural networks that the TED Radio Hour speakers address.  It makes for fascinating listening!  The four talks are linked here:

• Erik Brynjolfsson: In A Race With Machines, Can We Keep Up?
• Marco Annunziata: What Will Human-Machine Collaboration Mean For Our Jobs?
• Maurice Conti: Can Machines Think And Feel For Themselves?
• Jeremy Howard: Will Artificial Intelligence Be The Last Human Invention?

Hormones at the hippocampus, caffeine cocrystals, lateral roots, and transcirptome: new publications

Four recent publications from Oberlin College science faculty (names indicated in bold). Student or alumni co-authors in the list below include Veronica Burnham, Christopher Sunday, Abigail Laman-Magarg, and Nicolas Vigilante.

As indexed in Web of Science

Burnham, Veronica, Christopher Sundby, Abigail Laman-Maharg, and Janice Thornton. 2017. Luteinizing hormone acts at the hippocampus to dampen spatial memory. Hormones and Behavior 89, : 55-63. Download: OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center

Laskowski, Marta and Kirsten H. ten Tusscher. 2017. Periodic lateral root priming: What makes it tick? Plant Cell 29, no. 3: 432-444. Download, open access, at Plant Cell

Vigilante, Nicolas J. and Manish A. Mehta. 2017. A C-13 solid-state NMR investigation of four cocrystals of caffeine and theophylline. Acta Crystallographica Section C-Structural Chemistry 73, : 234-243. Read the abstract online at publisher's site

Yang, Ya, Michael J. Moore, Samuel F. Brockington, Alfonso Timoneda, Tao Feng, Hannah E. Marx, Joseph F. Walker, and Stephen A. Smith. 2017. An efficient field and laboratory workflow for plant phylotranscriptomic projects. Applications in Plant Sciences 5, no. 3: 1600128. Download: BioOne

Happy National Library Week! Come get a book...

What better way to celebrate National Library Week than with a new good read?  Check out a book - enjoy your library.  We have a (very small) sweet treat for everyone who checks out a science library book (and reads it, we trust!).  Reserve materials don't count, despite how essential they are for your coursework, so find something great from a display or in the stacks of bookshelves in the middle of the library.

We've received hundreds of new books in the past three months - something is surely of interest to you!  We would be so happy to help you find your perfect read.

There are thousands and thousands of books online, too, beautifully cataloged in OBIS.  Click on the E-BOOKS tab for an easy way to limit your search to online books.

Unintended side effects of conservation: case study in China.

New publication from Assistant Professor of Geology Amanda Schmidt

Schmidt, Amanda H., Yongxian Li, and Ya Tang. 2017. Unintended side effects of conservation: A case study of changing land use in Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan, China. Mountain Research and Development 37, no. 1: 56-65.

Mountain Research and Development is an open access journal.

Partial abstract and conclusions of the study:

Photos by Amanda Schmidt showing
treeless areas of the JNNR

"Toward the goals of returning the landscape of Jiuzhaigou National Nature Reserve (JNNR) to a perceived “natural” state and protecting the environment, the Reserve in 1998–2002 implemented forest preservation policies that included restrictions on forestry, agriculture, and animal herding practiced by resident Tibetans. ...As argued in prior studies in JNNR (Trac et al 2013; Urgenson et al 2014; Harrell et al 2016), we suggest that land managers carefully consider the baseline conditions to which they are trying to restore landscapes. If, as is the case in JNNR, landscapes have been altered by human activity for millennia (eg d'Alpoim Guedes et al 2015), it may not make sense to aim for restoration to a “natural” landscape that does not include people. Likewise, if management policies and changing economic conditions result in people relocating from traditional villages, complete assessments of natural hazards would enable those making relocation decisions to make informed choices about where to situate new developments."

How to Spot Fake News - with thanks to IFLA and FactCheck.org

Read the story behind the infographic.  IFLA is the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.  

IFLA infographic based on FactCheck.org’s 2016 article "How to Spot Fake News"
Source: https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/11174