A Self ventilating suit to keep you dry and cool while you perform exercise

 

                                                                                    

Images of garment prototype before exercise with flat ventilation flaps (F) and after exercise with curved ventilation flaps (G). Credit: Science Advances (2017). advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/5/e1601984

           

A team of MIT researchers has designed a breathable workout suit with ventilating flaps that open and close in response to an athlete's body heat and sweat. These flaps, which range from thumbnail- to finger-sized, are lined with live microbial cells that shrink and expand in response to changes in humidity. The cells act as tiny sensors and actuators, driving the flaps to open when an athlete works up a sweat, and pulling them closed when the body has cooled off.

The researchers have also fashioned a running shoe with an inner layer of similar cell-lined flaps to air out and wick away moisture. Details of both designs are published today in Science Advances.
Why use live cells in responsive fabrics? The researchers say that moisture-sensitive cells require no additional elements to sense and respond to humidity. The microbial cells they have used are also proven to be safe to touch and even consume. What's more, with new genetic engineering tools available today, cells can be prepared quickly and in vast quantities, to express multiple functionalities in addition to moisture response.
To demonstrate this last point, the researchers engineered moisture-sensitive cells to not only pull flaps open but also light up in response to humid conditions.
"We can combine our cells with genetic tools to introduce other functionalities into these living cells," says Wen Wang, the paper's lead author and a former research scientist in MIT's Media Lab and Department of Chemical Engineering. "We use fluorescence as an example, and this can let people know you are running in the dark. In the future we can combine odor-releasing functionalities through genetic engineering. So maybe after going to the gym, the shirt can release a nice-smelling odor."
Wang's co-authors include 14 researchers from MIT, specializing in fields including mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, architecture, biological engineering, and fashion design, as well as researchers from New Balance Athletics. Wang co-led the project, dubbed bioLogic, with former graduate student Lining Yao as part of MIT's Tangible Media group, led by Hiroshi Ishii, the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences.
Shape-shifting cells
In nature, biologists have observed that living things and their components, from pine cone scales to microbial cells and even specific proteins, can change their structures or volumes when there is a change in humidity. The MIT team hypothesized that natural shape-shifters such as yeast, bacteria, and other microbial cells might be used as building blocks to construct moisture-responsive fabrics.

"These cells are so strong that they can induce bending of the substrate they are coated on," Wang says.
The researchers first worked with the most common nonpathogenic strain of E. coli, which was found to swell and shrink in response to changing humidity. They further engineered the cells to express green fluorescent protein, enabling the cell to glow when it senses humid conditions.
They then used a cell-printing method they had previously developed to print E. coli onto sheets of rough, natural latex.
The team printed parallel lines of E. coli cells onto sheets of latex, creating two-layer structures, and exposed the fabric to changing moisture conditions. When the fabric was placed on a hot plate to dry, the cells began to shrink, causing the overlying latex layer to curl up. When the fabric was then exposed to steam, the cells began to glow and expand, causing the latex flatten out. After undergoing 100 such dry/wet cycles, Wang says the fabric experienced "no dramatic degradation" in either its cell layer or its overall performance.
No sweat
The researchers worked the biofabric into a wearable garment, designing a running suit with cell-lined latex flaps patterned across the suit's back. They tailored the size of each flap, as well as the degree to which they open, based on previously published maps of where the body produces heat and sweat.
"People may think heat and sweat are the same, but in fact, some areas like the lower spine produce lots of sweat but not much heat," Yao says. "We redesigned the garment using a fusion of heat and sweat maps to, for example, make flaps bigger where the body generates more heat."
Support frames underneath each flap keep the fabric's inner cell layer from directly touching the skin, while at the same time, the cells are able to sense and react to humidity changes in the air lying just over the skin. In trials to test the running suit, study participants donned the garment and worked out on exercise treadmills and bicycles while researchers monitored their temperature and humidity using small sensors positioned across their backs.
After five minutes of exercise, the suit's flaps started opening up, right around the time when participants reported feeling warm and sweaty. According to sensor readings, the flaps effectively removed sweat from the body and lowered skin temperature, more so than when participants wore a similar running suit with nonfunctional flaps.
When Wang tried on the suit herself, she found that the flaps created a welcome sensation. After pedaling hard for a few minutes, Wang recalls that "it felt like I was wearing an air conditioner on my back."
Ventilated running shoes
The team also integrated the moisture-responsive fabric into a rough prototype of a running shoe. Where the bottom of the foot touches the sole of the shoe, the researchers sewed multiple flaps, curved downward, with the cell-lined layer facing toward—though not touching—a runner's foot. They again designed the size and position of the flaps based on heat and sweat maps of the foot.
"In the beginning, we thought of making the flaps on top of the shoe, but we found people don't normally sweat on top of their feet," Wang says. "But they sweat a lot on the bottom of their feet, which can lead to diseases like warts. So we thought, is it possible to keep your feet dry and avoid those diseases?"
As with the workout suit, the flaps on the running shoe opened and lit up when researchers increased the surrounding humidity; in dry conditions the flaps faded and closed.
Going forward, the team is looking to collaborate with sportswear companies to commercialize their designs, and is also exploring other uses, including moisture-responsive curtains, lampshades, and bedsheets.
"We are also interested in rethinking packaging," Wang says. "The concept of a second skin would suggest a new genre for responsive packaging."
"This work is an example of harnessing the power of biology to design new materials and devices and achieve new functions," says Xuanhe Zhao, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a co-author on the paper. "We believe this new field of 'living' materials and devices will find important applications at the interface between engineering and biological systems."

2.5 billion-year-old fossils of bacteria that predate the formation of oxygen

A microscopic image of 2.5 billion-year-old sulfur-oxidizing bacterium. Credit: Andrew Czaja, UC assistant professor of geology

Somewhere between Earth's creation and where we are today, scientists have demonstrated that some early life forms existed just fine without any oxygen.

While researchers proclaim the first half of our 4.5 billion-year-old planet's life as an important time for the development and evolution of early bacteria, evidence for these life forms remains sparse including how they survived at a time when oxygen levels in the atmosphere were less than one-thousandth of one percent of what they are today.
Recent geology research from the University of Cincinnati presents new evidence for bacteria found fossilized in two separate locations in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa.
"These are the oldest reported fossil sulfur bacteria to date," says Andrew Czaja, UC assistant professor of geology. "And this discovery is helping us reveal a diversity of life and ecosystems that existed just prior to the Great Oxidation Event, a time of major atmospheric evolution."
The 2.52 billion-year-old sulfur-oxidizing bacteria are described by Czaja as exceptionally large, spherical-shaped, smooth-walled microscopic structures much larger than most modern bacteria, but similar to some modern single-celled organisms that live in deepwater sulfur-rich ocean settings today, where even now there are almost no traces of oxygen.

UC Professor Andrew Czaja indicates the layer of rock from which fossil bacteria were collected on a 2014 field excursion near the town of Kuruman in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. Credit: Aaron Satkoski, UWM postdoc on the excursion.

In his research published in the December issue of the journal Geology of the Geological Society of America, Czaja and his colleagues Nicolas Beukes from the University of Johannesburg and Jeffrey Osterhout, a recently graduated master's student from UC's department of geology, reveal samples of bacteria that were abundant in deep water areas of the ocean in a geologic time known as the Neoarchean Eon (2.8 to 2.5 billion years ago).
"These fossils represent the oldest known organisms that lived in a very dark, deep-water environment," says Czaja. "These bacteria existed two billion years before plants and trees, which evolved about 450 million years ago. We discovered these microfossils preserved in a layer of hard silica-rich rock called chert located within the Kaapvaal craton of South Africa."
With an atmosphere of much less than one percent oxygen, scientists have presumed that there were things living in deep water in the mud that didn't need sunlight or oxygen, but Czaja says experts didn't have any direct evidence for them until now.

Czaja argues that finding rocks this old is rare, so researchers' understanding of the Neoarchean Eon are based on samples from only a handful of geographic areas, such as this region of South Africa and another in Western Australia.

According to Czaja, scientists through the years have theorized that South Africa and Western Australia were once part of an ancient supercontinent called Vaalbara, before a shifting and upending of tectonic plates split them during a major change in the Earth's surface.
Based on radiometric dating and geochemical isotope analysis, Czaja characterizes his fossils as having formed in this early Vaalbara supercontinent in an ancient deep seabed containing sulfate from continental rock. According to this dating, Czaja's fossil bacteria were also thriving just before the era when other shallow-water bacteria began creating more and more oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis.
"We refer to this period as the Great Oxidation Event that took place 2.4 to 2.2 billion years ago," says Czaja.

Microstructures here have physical characteristics consistent with the remains of compressed coccodial (round) bacteria microorganisms. Credit: Andrew Czaja, permission to publish by Geological Society of America

Early recycling
Czaja's fossils show the Neoarchean bacteria in plentiful numbers while living deep in the sediment. He contends that these early bacteria were busy ingesting volcanic hydrogen sulfide—the molecule known to give off a rotten egg smell—then emitting sulfate, a gas that has no smell. He says this is the same process that goes on today as modern bacteria recycle decaying organic matter into minerals and gases.
"The waste product from one [bacteria] was food for the other," adds Czaja.
"While I can't claim that these early bacteria are the same ones we have today, we surmise that they may have been doing the same thing as some of our current bacteria," says Czaja. "These early bacteria likely consumed the molecules dissolved from sulfur-rich minerals that came from land rocks that had eroded and washed out to sea, or from the volcanic remains on the ocean's floor.
There is an ongoing debate about when sulfur-oxidizing bacteria arose and how that fits into the earth's evolution of life, Czaja adds. "But these fossils tell us that sulfur-oxidizing bacteria were there 2.52 billion years ago, and they were doing something remarkable."

credit; Melanie Schefft

Antarctic explorers help make discovery 100 years after their epic adventures

One of the first aerial photographs of the Antarctic, this picture was obtained from a balloon in 1901. It shows Erich von Drygalski's ship, the logbooks of which were used in the study. Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Heroes of Antarctic exploration have played a crucial role in research that suggests the area of sea ice around Antarctica has barely changed in size in 100 years.

Ice observations recorded in the ships' logbooks of explorers such as the British Captain Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton and the German Erich von Drygalski have been used to compare where the Antarctic ice edge was during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration (1897-1917) and where satellites show it is today.
The study, published in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere, suggests Antarctic sea ice is much less sensitive to the effects of climate change than that of the Arctic, which in stark contrast has experienced a dramatic decline during the 20th century.
The research, by climate scientists at the University of Reading, estimates the extent of Antarctic summer sea ice is at most 14% smaller now than during the early 1900s.
Jonathan Day, who led the study, said: "The missions of Scott and Shackleton are remembered in history as heroic failures, yet the data collected by these and other explorers could profoundly change the way we view the ebb and flow of Antarctic sea ice.
"We know that sea ice in the Antarctic has increased slightly over the past 30 years, since satellite observations began. Scientists have been grappling to understand this trend in the context of global warming, but these new findings suggest it may not be anything new.
"If ice levels were as low a century ago as estimated in this research, then a similar increase may have occurred between then and the middle of the century, when previous studies suggest ice levels were far higher."
The new study published in The Cryosphere is the first to shed light on sea ice extent in the period prior to the 1930s, and suggests the levels in the early 1900s were in fact similar to today, at between 5.3 and 7.4 million square kilometres. Although one region, the Weddell Sea, did have a significantly larger ice cover.
Published estimates suggest Antarctic sea ice extent was significantly higher during the 1950s, before a steep decline returned it to around 6 million square kilometres in recent decades.
The research suggests that the climate of Antarctica may have fluctuated significantly throughout the 20th century, swinging between decades of high ice cover and decades of low ice cover, rather than enduring a steady downward trend.
This study builds on international efforts to recover old weather and climate data from ships' logbooks. The public can volunteer to rescue more data at oldweather.org.
Day said: "The Southern Ocean is largely a 'black hole' as far as historical climate change data is concerned, but future activities planned to recover data from naval and whaling ships will help us to understand past climate variations and what to expect in the future."
Capt Scott perished along with his team in 1912 after missing out on being the first to reach the South Pole by a matter of weeks, while Shackleton's ship sank after becoming trapped in ice in 1915 as he and his crew journeyed to attempt the first ever cross-Antarctic trek.
In addition to using ship logbooks from three expeditions led by Scott and two by Shackleton, the researchers used sea-ice records from Belgian, German and French missions, among others. But the team was unable to analyse some logbooks from the Heroic Age period, which have not yet been imaged and digitised. These include the records from the Norwegian Antarctic expedition of 1910-12 lead by Roald Amundsen, the first person to reach both the south and north poles.

In highly lethal type of leukemia, cancer gene predicts treatment response

New research led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) whose cancer cells carry TP53 mutations -- a feature that correlates with an extremely poor prognosis -- may live longer if they are treated with decitabine, a less intensive chemotherapy drug. The study's first author, John Welch, M.D., PhD, is pictured with Phillip Houghton, who is being treated for AML. Credit: Washington University

Patients with the most lethal form of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) - based on genetic profiles of their cancers - typically survive for only four to six months after diagnosis, even with aggressive chemotherapy. But new research indicates that such patients, paradoxically, may live longer if they receive a milder chemotherapy drug.

Treatment with the less intensive drug, decitabine, is not a cure. But surprisingly, AML patients whose leukemia cells carried mutations in a nefarious cancer gene called TP53 consistently achieved remission after treatment with decitabine. Their median survival was just over a year.
The study, by a team of scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is published Nov. 24 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
In AML, treatment involves intensive chemotherapy to try to kill the patient's leukemia cells and put the cancer into remission. If successful, a follow-up bone-marrow transplant can offer a possible cure, but this course of treatment is recommended only for patients with a high risk of relapse because the procedure can cause severe complications, even death.
"What's really unique here is that all the patients in the study with TP53 mutations had a response to decitabine and achieved an initial remission," said the study's senior author, Timothy J. Ley, MD, the Lewis T. and Rosalind B. Apple Professor of Medicine, noting that in AML, TP53 mutations have been correlated with an extremely poor prognosis. "With standard aggressive chemotherapy, we only see about 20 to 30 percent of these patients achieving remission, which is the critical first step to have a chance to cure patients with additional therapies.
"The findings need to be validated in a larger trial," Ley added, "but they do suggest that TP53 mutations can reliably predict responses to decitabine, potentially prolonging survival in this ultra high-risk group of patients and providing a bridge to transplantation in some patients who might not otherwise be candidates."
In an accompanying editorial, Elihu Estey, MD, an AML expert at the University of Washington Medical Center and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, noted that AML is not one disease but many, each driven by different genetic mutations. The results of the current trial, he said, point to the inevitable need to replace large cancer clinical trials evaluating homogeneous drug treatments with smaller trials that involve subgroups of patients, with treatments targeted to their specific mutations.

The current study involved 116 patients treated with decitabine at the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and at the University of Chicago. The patients either had AML - a cancer of the bone marrow - or myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a group of blood cancers that often progresses to AML. This year, an estimated 20,000 people living in the U.S. will be diagnosed with AML, and at least 11,000 deaths will be attributed to the disease.
Decitabine often is given to older patients with AML or MDS because it is less toxic than standard chemotherapies. But fewer than half of patients who get the drug achieve an initial remission, so the researchers wanted to determine whether specific mutations in the patients' cancer cells could predict their responses to treatment.
To find out, they sequenced all the genes in patients' cancer cells or analyzed select cancer genes. They also conducted standard tests to look for broken, missing or rearranged chromosomes. Then, the researchers correlated these molecular markers with treatment response to identify subgroups of patients likely to benefit from decitabine.
Among the patients in the study, 46 percent achieved a remission with decitabine. But, remarkably, all 21 patients whose leukemia cells carried TP53 mutations went into remission.
Patients also were likely to respond to decitabine if they were deemed to have an "unfavorable risk" prognosis based on extensive chromosomal rearrangements in their cancer cells; many of these patients also had TP53 mutations. Indeed, 66 percent of patients with an unfavorable risk achieved remission, compared with 34 percent of patients who had more favorable prognoses.
"The challenge with using decitabine has been knowing which patients are most likely to respond," said co-author Amanda Cashen, MD, an associate professor of medicine who led an earlier clinical trial of decitabine in older patients with AML. "The value of this study is the comprehensive mutational analysis that helps us figure out which patients are likely to benefit. This information opens the door to using decitabine in a more targeted fashion to treat not just older patients, but also younger patients who carry TP53 mutations."
First author John Welch, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine, added: "It's important to note that patients with an extremely poor prognosis in this relatively small study had the same survival outcomes as patients facing a better prognosis, which is encouraging. We don't yet understand why patients with TP53 mutations consistently respond to decitabine, and more work is needed to understand that phenomenon."
Responses to decitabine are usually short-lived, however, with remissions typically lasting for about a year. Decitabine does not completely clear all the leukemia cells that carry TP53 mutations, and these cells invariably become resistant to the drug, leading to relapse.
"Remissions with decitabine typically don't last long, and no one was cured with this drug," Ley explained. "But patients who responded to decitabine live longer than what you would expect with aggressive chemotherapy, and that can mean something. Some people live a year or two and with a good quality of life, because the chemotherapy is not too toxic."
Roughly 10 percent of AML patients carry TP53 mutations in their leukemia cells. Among patients in the study with such mutations, median survival was 12.7 months - which is not significantly different from the 15.4 months' survival seen in patients without the mutations - and is longer than the typical four- to six-month survival observed in such patients treated with more aggressive therapies.
Decitabine was approved by the FDA in 2006 as a treatment for MDS, but oncologists often prescribe it off-label as a treatment for AML, particularly in older patients. AML typically strikes in a person's mid-60s; the average age of people in the current study was 74.
"We're now planning a larger trial to evaluate decitabine in AML patients of all ages who carry TP53 mutations," Welch said. "It's exciting to think we may have a therapy that has the potential to improve response rates in this group of high-risk patients."

Cannabinoids control memory through mitochondria

Cannabinoids and memory

Few classes of drugs have galvanized the pharmaceutical industry in recent times like the cannabinoids. This class of molecules includes not only the natural forms, but also a vast new treasury of powerful synthetic analogs with up to several hundred times the potency as measured by receptor activity and binding affinity. With the FDA now fast tracking all manner of injectables, topicals, and sprays promising everything from relief of nebulous cancer pain to anti-seizure neuroprotection, more than a few skeptics have been generated.

What inquiring minds really want to know, beyond the thorny issue of how well they actually work, is how do they work at all? If you want to understand what something is doing in the cell, one useful approach is to ask what it does to their mitochondria. With drug companies now drooling over the possibility of targeting drugs and treatments directly to these organelles by attaching mitochondrial localization sequences (MLS) or other handler molecules, answers to this kind of question are now coming into focus.
But even with satisfactory explanations in hand, there would still be one large hurdle standing in the way of cannabinoid medical bliss: Namely, even if a patient can manage to avoid operating vehicles or heavy machinery throughout the course of their treatment, how do they cope with the endemic collateral memory loss these drugs invariably cause?
A recent paper published in Nature neatly ties all these subtleties together, and even suggests a possible way out of the brain fog by toggling the sites of cannabinoid action between mitochondria and other cellular compartments. By generating a panel of cannabinoid receptor and second messenger molecules with and without the appropriate MLS tags or accessory binding proteins, the authors were able to directly link cannabinoid-controlled mitochondrial activity to memory formation.
One confounder in this line of work is that these MLSs are very fickle beasts. The 22 or so leader amino acids that make up their 'code' is not a direct addresses in any sense. While the consensus sequences that localize protease action or sort nuclear, endoplasmic reticulum, and plasma membrane proteins generally contain clearly recognizable motifs, any regularities in the MLSs have only proven visible to a computer. That is not to say that MLSs are fictions—they clearly do work—but their predictable action is only witnessed whole once their 3-dimensional vibrating structures are fully-conformed.
The authors availed themselves of two fairly sophisticated programs called Mitoprot and PSQRT to remove any guesswork in identifying a potential MLS in CN1 cannabinoid receptors. CN1s had been previously associated by immunohistochemical methods to what we might call the mitochondrial penumbra, but their presence there may have been purely incidental. This in silico analysis theoretically confirmed the presence of a putative MLS in CB1 and encouraged them to carry out further manipulations of this pathway.
Namely, the researchers took a mouse with the mitochondrial mtCB1 receptor knocked out, and then added modified versions back using viral vectors. When they applied the synthetic cannabinoid ligands (known as WIN55,212 and HU210 ) they found that mitochondrial respiration and mobility, and subsequently memory formation, remained largely intact in animals without the MLS in their receptor.
The researchers were then able to look further downstream using the same general strategy of controlling localization of the second messenger molecule protein kinase A (PKA). By fusing a constitutively active mutant form of PKA to an MLS and putting it inside using an adenovirus they were able to trace the signal cascade into the heart of the complex I of the respiratory chain.
The presence and origin of full G-protein receptor signal pathways in mitochondria is now more than just an academic question. Exactly how retroviruses and other molecular agents of sequence modification managed to re-jigger gene duplicated backups of proteins like CN1 to add alternatively spliced MLS tags is still shrouded in mystery.
Our ability to now harness these same slow evolutionary processes in real time, and bend them to our needs, will undoubtedly have implication well beyond the cannabinoid market. Together the results above suggest the tantalizing possibility of preserving some of the desired benefits of cannabinoids while eliminating the unintended consequences like memory loss or full blown amnesia.

credit; John Hewitt report

How machine learning advances artificial intelligence

Computers that learn for themselves are with us now. As they become more common in 'high-stakes' applications like robotic surgery, terrorism detection and driverless cars, researchers ask what can be done to make sure we can trust them.

There would always be a first death in a driverless car and it happened in May 2016. Joshua Brown had engaged the autopilot system in his Tesla when a tractor-trailor drove across the road in front of him. It seems that neither he nor the sensors in the autopilot noticed the white-sided truck against a brightly lit sky, with tragic results.
Of course many people die in car crashes every day – in the USA there is one fatality every 94 million miles, and according to Tesla this was the first known fatality in over 130 million miles of driving with activated autopilot. In fact, given that most road fatalities are the result of human error, it has been said that autonomous cars should make travelling safer.
Even so, the tragedy raised a pertinent question: how much do we understand – and trust – the computers in an autonomous vehicle? Or, in fact, in any machine that has been taught to carry out an activity that a human would do?
We are now in the era of machine learning. Machines can be trained to recognise certain patterns in their environment and to respond appropriately. It happens every time your digital camera detects a face and throws a box around it to focus, or the personal assistant on your smartphone answers a question, or the adverts match your interests when you search online.
Machine learning is a way to program computers to learn from experience and improve their performance in a way that resembles how humans and animals learn tasks. As machine learning techniques become more common in everything from finance to healthcare, the issue of trust is becoming increasingly important, says Zoubin Ghahramani, Professor of Information Engineering in Cambridge's Department of Engineering.
Faced with a life or death decision, would a driverless car decide to hit pedestrians, or avoid them and risk the lives of its occupants? Providing a medical diagnosis, could a machine be wildly inaccurate because it has based its opinion on a too-small sample size? In making financial transactions, should a computer explain how robust is its assessment of the volatility of the stock markets?
"Machines can now achieve near-human abilities at many cognitive tasks even if confronted with a situation they have never seen before, or an incomplete set of data," says Ghahramani. "But what is going on inside the 'black box'? If the processes by which decisions were being made were more transparent, then trust would be less of an issue."

His team builds the algorithms that lie at the heart of these technologies (the "invisible bit" as he refers to it). Trust and transparency are important themes in their work: "We really view the whole mathematics of machine learning as sitting inside a framework of understanding uncertainty. Before you see data – whether you are a baby learning a language or a scientist analysing some data – you start with a lot of uncertainty and then as you have more and more data you have more and more certainty.
"When machines make decisions, we want them to be clear on what stage they have reached in this process. And when they are unsure, we want them to tell us."
One method is to build in an internal self-evaluation or calibration stage so that the machine can test its own certainty, and report back.
Two years ago, Ghahramani's group launched the Automatic Statistician with funding from Google. The tool helps scientists analyse datasets for statistically significant patterns and, crucially, it also provides a report to explain how sure it is about its predictions.
"The difficulty with machine learning systems is you don't really know what's going on inside – and the answers they provide are not contextualised, like a human would do. The Automatic Statistician explains what it's doing, in a human-understandable form."
Where transparency becomes especially relevant is in applications like medical diagnoses, where understanding the provenance of how a decision is made is necessary to trust it.
Dr Adrian Weller, who works with Ghahramani, highlights the difficulty: "A particular issue with new artificial intelligence (AI) systems that learn or evolve is that their processes do not clearly map to rational decision-making pathways that are easy for humans to understand." His research aims both at making these pathways more transparent, sometimes through visualisation, and at looking at what happens when systems are used in real-world scenarios that extend beyond their training environments – an increasingly common occurrence.
"We would like AI systems to monitor their situation dynamically, detect whether there has been a change in their environment and – if they can no longer work reliably – then provide an alert and perhaps shift to a safety mode." A driverless car, for instance, might decide that a foggy night in heavy traffic requires a human driver to take control.
Weller's theme of trust and transparency forms just one of the projects at the newly launched £10 million Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI). Ghahramani, who is Deputy Director of the Centre, explains: "It's important to understand how developing technologies can help rather than replace humans. Over the coming years, philosophers, social scientists, cognitive scientists and computer scientists will help guide the future of the technology and study its implications – both the concerns and the benefits to society."
CFI brings together four of the world's leading universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley and Imperial College, London) to explore the implications of AI for human civilisation. Together, an interdisciplinary community of researchers will work closely with policy-makers and industry investigating topics such as the regulation of autonomous weaponry, and the implications of AI for democracy.
Ghahramani describes the excitement felt across the machine learning field: "It's exploding in importance. It used to be an area of research that was very academic – but in the past five years people have realised these methods are incredibly useful across a wide range of societally important areas.
"We are awash with data, we have increasing computing power and we will see more and more applications that make predictions in real time. And as we see an escalation in what machines can do, they will challenge our notions of intelligence and make it all the more important that we have the means to trust what they tell us."
Artificial intelligence has the power to eradicate poverty and disease or hasten the end of human civilisation as we know it – according to a speech delivered by Professor Stephen Hawking 19 October 2016 at the launch of the Centre for the Future of Intelligence.

List of speech editing software

(geekkeep)-voice editing software has become tools that people has come to work with. The military, hackers, hosts, animators , up to an ever increasing list of people has come to rely on for achieving their aims.

 Animating studios has come to use these applications in productions of character lines without relying on hiring voice artists( this has become beneficial to rising studios)In this age the security of some units uses bio scans, speech recognition units is prey common and that brings the downside. Agents, buggers, military infiltration rely on speech editing software to bypass these systems hence gaining unauthorized access to the units.

you must have seen the ever rising artificial intelligence struggle in the tech market or hubs. AI like Deep-mind, Cortana,Clever bot, Virtual Assistant Denise,    Verbots,    MadomaVirtual Assistant,

DesktopMates,     Braina,      Syn Virtual Assistant   uses these speech recognition softwares to make the voice of these assistants or artificial intelligence.

lists of speech recognition software are

 WavePad audio editing software                                                                                                            This audio editing software is a full-featured professional audio and music editor for Windows and Mac. It lets you record and edit music, voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files, you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings, and then add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction. WavePad works as a wav or mp3 editor, but it also supports a number of other file formats including vox, gsm, wma, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg, and more.               

 free audio editor

Free Audio Editor can digitize sound recordings of your rare music cassette tapes, vinyl LPs and videos, creating standard digital sound files. Timer and input level triggered recording are included. There is a button to activate the system Windows Mixer without visiting the control panel. The recording can be directly loaded into the waveform window for further perfection.

You can edit audio using the traditional Waveform View or the frequency-based Spectral Display that makes it easy to isolate and remove unwanted noise. Intuitive cut/copy/paste/trim/mute and more actions can be performed easily. The selection tools make the editing operations performed with millisecond precision.Enhance your audio with more than 30 native signal and effects processing engines, including compression, EQ, fade in/out, delay, chorus, reverb, time stretching, pitch shifting and more. It significantly increases your audio processing capabilities. The real-time preview enables you to hear the results before mixing down to a single file.This free audio editor supports a large amount of input formats including MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, FLAC, OGG, APE, AC3, AIFF, MP2, MPC, MPGA, M4A, CDA, VOX, RA, RAM, ARW, AIF, AIFC, TTA, G721, G723, G726 and many more as source formats. Any audio files can be saved to the most popular audio formats like MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, etc. Furthermore, it is available to control the output quality by adjusting the parameters & our software also prepares many presets with different combinations of settings for playback on all kinds of software applications and devices.

Audacity  

Audacity can record live audio through a microphone or mixer, or digitize recordings from other media. With some sound cards, and on any recent version of Windows, Audacity can also capture streaming audio.

• Device Toolbar manages multiple recording and playback devices.
• Level meters can monitor volume levels before, during and after recording. Clipping can be displayed in the waveform or in a label track.
• Record from microphone, line input, USB/Firewire devices and others.
• Record computer playback on Windows Vista and later by choosing “Windows WASAPI” host in Device Toolbar then a “loopback” input.
• Timer Record and Sound Activated Recording features.
• Dub over existing tracks to create multi-track recordings.
• Record at very low latencies on supported devices on Linux by using Audacity with JACK.
• Record at sample rates up to 192,000 Hz (subject to appropriate hardware and host selection). Up to 384,000 Hz is supported for appropriate high-resolution devices on Windows (using WASAPI), Mac OS X, and Linux.
• Record at 24-bit depth on Windows (using Windows WASAPI host), Mac OS X or Linux (using ALSA or JACK host).
• Record multiple channels at once (subject to appropriate hardware).

Power Sound Editor

Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports many advanced and powerful operations with audio data.
You can use Power Sound Editor Free to record your own music, voice, or other audio files, edit it, mix it with other audio or musical parts, add effects like Reverb, Chorus, and Echo, and burn it on a CD, post it on the World Wide Web or e-mail it.

mp3DirectCut

mp3DirectCut is a fast and extensive audio editor and recorder for compressed mp3. You can directly cut, copy, paste or change the volume with no need to decompress your files for audio editing. Using Cue sheets, pause detection or Auto cue you can easily divide long files.

Music Editor Free

Music Editor Free (MEF) is a multi-award winning music editor software tool. MEF helps you to record and edit music and sounds. It lets you make and edit music, voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction.

Wavosaur

Wavosaur is a free sound editor, audio editor, wav editor software for editing, processing and recording sounds, wav and mp3 files. Wavosaur has all the features to edit audio (cut, copy, paste, etc.) produce music loops, analyze, record, batch convert. Wavosaur supports VST plugins, ASIO driver, multichannel wav files, real time effect processing. The program has no installer and doesn’t write in the registry. Use it as a free mp3 editor, for mastering, sound design.

Traverso DAW

Traverso DAW is a GPL licensed, cross platform multitrack audio recording and editing suite, with an innovative and easy to master User Interface. It’s suited for both the professional and home user, who needs a robust and solid DAW. Adding and removal of effects plugins, moving Audio Clips and creating new Tracks during playback are all perfectly safe, giving you instant feedback on your work!

Ardour

Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. You can produce your own CDs, mix video soundtracks, or just experiment with new ideas about music and sound. Ardour capabilities include: multichannel recording, non-destructive editing with unlimited undo/redo, full automation support, a powerful mixer, unlimited tracks/busses/plugins, timecode synchronization, and hardware control from surfaces like the Mackie Control Universal. If you’ve been looking for a tool similar to ProTools, Nuendo, Pyramix, or Sequoia, you might have found it.

Rosegarden

Rosegarden is a well-rounded audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment. Rosegarden is an easy-to-learn, attractive application that runs on Linux, ideal for composers, musicians, music students, and small studio or home recording environments.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is an advanced drum machine for GNU/Linux. It’s main goal is to bring professional yet simple and intuitive pattern-based drum programming.

Sound Engine

SoundEngine is the best tool for personal use, because it enables you to easily edit a wave data while it has many functions required for a mastering process.

Expstudio Audio Editor

Expstudio Audio Editor is a visual music file editor that has many different options and a multiple functionality to edit your music files like editing text files. With a given audio data it can perform many different operations such as displaying a waveform image of an audio file, filtering, applying various audio effects, format conversion and more.

DJ Audio Editor

DJ Audio Editor is easy-to-use and well-organized audio application which allows you to perform various operations with audio data. You can create and edit audio files professionally, also displaying a waveform image of audio file makes your work faster.

Eisenkraut

Eisenkraut is a cross-platform audio file editor. It requires Java 1.4+ and SuperCollider 3. It supports multi-channel and multi-mono files and floating-point encoding. An OSC scripting interface and experimental sonagramme functionality are provided.

FREE WAVE MP3 Editor

Free Wave MP3 Editor is a sound editor program for Windows. This software lets you make and edit voice and other audio recordings. You can cut, copy and paste parts of recording and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction.

Kangas Sound Editor

Fun Kangaroo-themed program that allows the user to create music and sound effects. It uses a system of frequency ratios for pitch control, rather than conventional music notation and equal temperament. It allows instruments, both musical and percussion, to be created.

Ecawave

Ecawave is a simple graphical audio file editor. The user-interface is based on Qt libraries, while almost all audio functionality is taken directly from ecasound libraries. As ecawave is designed for editing large audio files, all processing is done direct-to-disk. Simple waveform caching is used to speed-up file operations. Ecawave supports all audio file formats and effect algorithms provided by ecasound libraries. This includes JACK, ALSA, OSS, aRts, over 20 file formats, over 30 effect types, LADSPA plugins and multi-operator effect presets.

Audiobook Cutter

Audiobook Cutter splits your MP3 audio books and podcasts in a fast and user friendly way. The split files can easily be used on mobile MP3 players because of their small-size. Their duration allows smooth navigation through the book. The split points are determined automatically based on silence detection.

Jokosher

Jokosher is a simple yet powerful multi-track studio. With it you can create and record music, podcasts and more, all from an integrated simple environment.

LMMS

LMMS is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.

Mp3Splt

Mp3Splt-project is a utility to split mp3 and ogg files selecting a begin and an end time position, without decoding. It’s very useful to split large mp3/ogg to make smaller files or to split entire albums to obtain original tracks. If you want to split an album, you can select split points and filenames manually or you can get them automatically from CDDB (internet or a local file) or from .cue files. Supports also automatic silence split, that can be used also to adjust cddb/cue splitpoints. You can extract tracks from Mp3Wrap or AlbumWrap files in few seconds.

Qtractor

Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ with the Qt4 framework. Target platform is Linux, where the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) for audio, and the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) for MIDI, are the main infrastructures to evolve as a fairly-featured Linux desktop audio workstation GUI, specially dedicated to the personal home-studio.

ReZound

ReZound aims to be a stable, open source, and graphical audio file editor primarily for.

Sweep

Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and compatible systems. It supports many music and voice formats including WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, Speex and MP3, with multichannel editing and LADSPA effects plugins.

Wavesurfer

WaveSurfer is an Open Source tool for sound visualization and manipulation. It has been designed to suit both novice and advanced users. WaveSurfer has a simple and logical user interface that provides functionality in an intuitive way and which can be adapted to different tasks.

Researchers show how a targeted drug overcomes suppressive immune cells

Jedd Wolchok is the Director of the Ludwig Collaborative Laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Credit: Ludwig Cancer Research

A Ludwig Cancer Research study shows that an experimental drug currently in clinical trials can reverse the effects of troublesome cells that prevent the body's immune system from attacking tumors. The researchers also establish that it is these suppressive cells that interfere with the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors. This class of immunotherapies lifts the brakes that the body imposes on the immune system's T cells to unleash an attack on cancer cells.

"Though checkpoint inhibitors have durable effects when they work, not all patients respond to the treatment," says Taha Merghoub, an investigator at the Ludwig Memorial Sloan Kettering Collaborative Laboratory who led the study with Director Jedd Wolchok. "Part of the reason for this is that some tumors harbor tumor-associated myeloid cells, or TAMCs, that prevent T cells from attacking tumor cells."
In a study published online today in Nature, Merghoub and his team used mouse models of cancer to show that the effects of TAMCs can be reversed by an appropriately targeted therapy.
To show that TAMCs were indeed involved in resistance to checkpoint blockade, the researchers used a specific growth stimulant to increase their number in melanoma tumors to create a suitable model for their studies. They found that this made the tumors less susceptible to checkpoint blockade.
"We were able to make a tumor that was not rich in immune suppressing myeloid cells into one that was," says Merghoub.
Having established a link between TAMCs and checkpoint inhibitor resistance, the researchers next set out to test the hypothesis that blocking immune suppressor cell activity would improve immunotherapy response. To do this, they used an experimental drug manufactured by Infinity Pharmaceuticals called IPI-549. The drug, which is available for clinical use, blocks a molecule in the suppressor cells called PI3 kinase-gamma. Blocking this molecule changes the balance of these immune suppressor cells in favor of more immune activation.
"We effectively reprogrammed the TAMCs, turning them from bad guys into good guys," Merghoub said.
IPI-549 dramatically improved responses to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy for tumors with high concentrations of TAMCs. When checkpoint inhibitors were administered to mice with suppressed tumors, only 20% of the animals underwent complete remission. When the same drugs were administered with IPI-549, that number jumped to 80%. IPI-549 provided no benefit to tumors lacking the suppressor cells.
Merghoub and his team also showed that tumors that were initially sensitive to checkpoint inhibitors were rendered unresponsive when their TAMC concentrations were boosted with growth stimulants.
Taken together, these results indicate that TAMCs promote resistance to checkpoint inhibitors and that IPI-549 can selectively block these cells, thereby overcoming their resistance.
Merghoub said the findings help pave the way for a precision medicine approach to immunotherapy that will allow cancer treatments to be tailored to a patient's particular tumor profile. "We can now potentially identify patients whose tumors possess immune suppressor cells and add a drug to their treatment regimen to specifically disarm them," he added.
IPI-549 is currently undergoing a Phase I trial in the United States to assess its safety when administered alone and in combination with the FDA-approved checkpoint inhibitor drug nivolumab (Opdivo).

Researchers discover way to inhibit major cancer gene

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified a new way to block the action of genetic mutations found in nearly 30 percent of all cancers.

Mutations in genes for the RAS family of proteins are present in nearly 90 percent of pancreatic cancers and are also highly prevalent in colon cancer, lung cancer and melanoma, the most dangerous kind of skin cancer.
The group of proteins include three members, K-RAS, H-RAS and N-RAS.
The prevalence of RAS mutations in human cancers and the dependence of tumors on RAS for survival has made a RAS a prime target for cancer research and drug discovery. Scientists and drug developers have long studied RAS oncogenes hoping to find a new treatment for cancer, but they have not yet been able to identify drugs that safely inhibit the oncogene's activity.
John O'Bryan, associate professor of pharmacology in the UIC College of Medicine, led a team of researchers that took a different approach to studying RAS, and discovered that a synthetic binding protein they call "NS1 monobody," which they created in the lab, can block the activity of the RAS proteins.
"We did not look for a drug or specifically for an inhibitor," said O'Bryan, who is also a member of the University of Illinois Cancer Center and holds an appointment at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago. "We used monobody technology, a type of protein-engineering technology, to identify regions of RAS that are critical for its function."
Unlike conventional antibodies, monobodies are not dependent on their environment and can be readily used as genetically encoded inhibitors, O'Bryan said.
"The beauty of the technology is that when a monobody binds a protein, it usually works as an inhibitor of that protein," he said.
Monobodies were developed by Shohei Koide, a co-author on the study who is professor of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology at New York University. They have been used to target a diverse array of proteins that include enzymes and receptors.
The researchers found that the NS1 monobody binds to an area of the RAS protein molecule that was not previously known to be important for its oncogenic activity. NS1 strongly inhibits oncogenic K-RAS and H-RAS function by blocking the ability of the protein to interact with an identical one to form a molecular pair. NS1 does not affect N-RAS.
O'Bryan says the findings, published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, provide important insight into long-standing questions about how RAS proteins function in cells. These insights may help guide the development of new therapeutic approaches to treating cancer by interfering with mutant RAS function in cancer cells.
"Development of effective RAS inhibitors represents a 'holy grail' in cancer biology," O'Bryan said. "We now have a powerful tool we can use to further probe RAS function. While future studies and trials are needed before these findings can be leveraged outside the lab, this study provides new insight into how we can potentially inhibit RAS to slow tumor growth."

How to survive through a company ( off niche post)

Every company has a board of directors — but few founders and entrepreneurs give the matter of board composition much thought.
Samer has been on five startup boards and has founded and served on the boards of two of his own companies; Adam is a corporate partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a technology and startup law firm. We’d like to offer some advice to founders and CEOs seeking to learn more about their boards, as well as to people who have been invited to sit on a board.

The basics

Do I have to have a board of directors?
Yes. Every company is required by law to have a board of directors. The board doesn’t need to be elaborate, or even more than one person, but every company must have a board in place.
When do I need to start a board?
A board must be put in place when you start a company. Interestingly, it is ok for the company to have only one board member, and it may be you. You must have a board to handle corporate matters like issuing stock, setting up a stock option plan, authorizing a fundraising or getting loans. In most startups, the founder will typically appoint himself or herself to the board. From there, others get added to the board as the company grows.
What should I do when starting a board?
To create a board, you should hire a lawyer experienced in board setup. There are many other factors to consider, so we’ve included other resources at the end of this article.
Who else is on the board and why does it matter?
The board will ultimately be responsible for making the critical decisions for the company, like whether to raise money, whether to be acquired, whether to enter into important strategic transactions and whether to hire or fire senior management. So make no mistake — who sits on the board is critical. It’s important to ensure these major decisions are made by smart people who are knowledgeable about the company and the industry in which it operates.
While the composition of the board can and likely will evolve over time, and certainly will vary from company to company, standard approaches for startups do exist, depending on the stage of the company.

If you have a board where votes are frequently divided and contentious, then ultimately you have a serious problem at the company itself.

While it isn’t necessary, many companies choose to have an odd number of directors. This reduces the risk of a tie vote, which equals a “no” vote in the board room.
After your initial seed round, you’ll usually have to allocate a board seat to the firm or person who led that seed round. To ensure that the founding team still remains in control of the board, a fairly typical setup at this stage would be for the common stockholders (i.e. the founders) to retain two board seats and your new investor to have one seat.
It is common to allocate a new board seat for the lead investor for each new round of investment. Keep in mind that when you accept an investor, you also typically will be bringing on a new board member. Some investors will attach a board seat to their terms of investment. If you do not want a certain person on your board, you may have to turn down that person’s investment. If you need the money, welcome your new board member.
After the second round of financing, it is fairly common to also designate one seat as an “independent” seat. This person is typically not an investor or a founder or an employee of the company, but should have industry knowledge and valuable contacts. By appointing an independent after the second round, the composition of the board would be the two founders, the two investors and the independent. Hence, the independent potentially serves another important role — tiebreaker.
While each “series” of investors typically get to appoint a board member, it’s important to know that the representative of that series represents all investors — not just that series.
At some point, if the board is getting too big or if the investment size doesn’t merit a board seat, instead of giving out more board seats, the company might allow investors to act as “observers.” That is, they can come to and participate in the board meetings, but they do not get a formal vote.  Sometimes the later investors become the observers, and sometimes earlier investors will become observers. (More about observers later.)
What does a board do?
The board is responsible for the overall direction of the company and for making major decisions, such as hiring and firing senior management, approving a budget and keeping the company financed through equity investments and debt financing. Key hires will need to be approved by the board, along with salary and other compensation, like stock. This last one includes your salary as CEO.
Finally, board members provide connections with other helpful companies, individuals and resources, as well as offer overall advice and guidance.
I don’t understand where the loyalties of board members lie.
Board members are “fiduciaries” because they are entrusted with managing the business that is owned by different people — stockholders. Hence, they have what are called “fiduciary duties” to the company’s stockholders. In short, fiduciary duties are the obligations that the board has to act responsibly and in the best interests of stockholders. It’s a common misconception that the official role of board members is to protect the value of their own or their firm’s investment. In fact, the fiduciary duty of board members is to maximize value for all stockholders.
The board can get sued by stockholders if board members do not satisfy their fiduciary duties, resulting in time-consuming and expensive litigation, potentially major damages and otherwise disturbing the business. To comply with fiduciary obligations, directors must satisfy what is called the duty of care and the duty of loyalty.

The duty of loyalty states that the director must act in the best interests of the company and stockholders and not in his or her own self interests.

The duty of care says that directors must be informed about what is going on and make decisions armed with the relevant facts. In other words, pay attention and don’t just show up for the quarterly meetings and do the crossword puzzle. Keep involved between meetings and stay abreast of what is going on with the company. The duty of loyalty states that the director must act in the best interests of the company and stockholders and not in his or her own self interests. If the director has a conflict of interest — for example, the company wants to sign a major contract with another company owned by one of its directors — the conflict must be disclosed to the other board members and the conflicted board member should recuse him/herself from the discussion and approval process.
How often do boards meet?
How often a board meets depends on the stage of the company, the needs of management and other factors. It is fairly typical for startup boards to meet in person once a quarter, toward the beginning of the quarter to review the prior quarter’s results. Early-stage companies might also hold more frequent informal board meetings, either in person or by phone. The more frequent, informal board meeting can be beneficial because the strategy at early-stage startups changes more often (such as the pivot Zeel undertook in fall 2012, culminating in a new launch in April 2013).
During particularly intense times, such as crisis situations or when the company is being acquired or is acquiring another company, the board can meet much more frequently, possibly every day or multiple times per day.
A typical, regular quarterly board meeting lasts about three hours, but some go much longer.
Do I pay board members?
Compensation for board members varies by stage and by the identity of the board member (e.g. a renowned chairman); it also varies between companies. Normally, board members who are representatives of funds that invest in the company do not get compensated to serve on the board. However, it is typical for independent board members to get compensated for their time and services. Usually, the independent board members get equity for their services. For early-stage companies, a typical director might get somewhere between 0.5 percent and 2.0 percent equity. This percentage should drop as the company grows. In some cases, cash compensation is included.
Companies will almost always reimburse the directors for out-of-pocket expenses, like travel expenses. Also, the company will usually indemnify directors from any liabilities they incur in their capacity as a director, like if they get sued by stockholders. Directors should also require the company to maintain a minimum of $1 million of directors and officers (D&O) insurance (and more as the company grows).

Problems and issues

My board is trying to get rid of me!

You never forget the pain, so try to avoid it Ten Tips On How To Work With Your Board Of Directors

As companies grow, it is fairly common for founding CEOs to move to different roles — or even get fired from the company. In such a case, the founder may find himself or herself removed from the board of the company he or she founded if that founder does not control the common stock vote.  In such a case, the founder may find he or she does not have a voice in the direction of the company. When creating a board, assuming that you want to remain involved, try creating a permanent role for the founder separate from the CEO. That way, even if you, as the founding CEO, are removed from your position as CEO, you can remain on the board. This position is often a hotly contested point in a financing.

My board members disagree
Board members should work cooperatively and have vigorous discussions prior to any vote. Ideally, however, consensus will be reached before any vote.
If you have a board where votes are frequently divided and contentious, then ultimately you have a serious problem at the company itself.
That said, the issue may sit with one particular board member, in which case you should address that member’s issues separately, and not as part of a group meeting.

Some of my investors want to be observers. Do I let them into board meetings?
Often angels or other investors have invested a substantial amount, but not enough to merit a board seat. If these investors are nonetheless demanding a board seat, or otherwise to attend board meetings, you might want to compromise and make them board observers.
True to their name, observers attend board meetings but do not have a formal board vote. There are other major differences between observers and board members — for example, directors are bound by confidentiality requirements and have fiduciary duties and are covered by attorney/client privilege, while observers are not. So make sure you have counsel involved to put the proper agreements in place for observers in order to protect the company properly.

Synthesize Speech In Any Voice,New Software that can can cause controversy

 

Good luck ever trusting a recording again. as it is right now, records done and presented in court as evidence will hardly have any value. 
A low quality video has emerged from the Adobe conference MAX showing a demo for a prototype of a new software, called Project VoCo, that appears to be a Photoshop for audio.The program is shown synthesizing a man's voice to read different sentences based on the software's analysis of a real clip of him speaking. Just copy and paste to change it from "I kissed my dog and my wife" to "I kissed my wife and my wife." Or even insert entirely new words—they still sound eerily authentic.In case you were confused about what the software's intended purpose is, Adobe issued a statement:

When recording voiceovers, dialog, and narration, people would often like to change or insert a word or a few words due to either a mistake they made or simply because they would like to change part of the narrative. We have developed a technology called Project VoCo in which you can simply type in the word or words that you would like to change or insert into the voiceover. The algorithm does the rest and makes it sound like the original speaker said those words.

The crowd laughs and cheers uproariously as the program is demod, seemingly unaware of the disturbing implications for a program like this especially in the context of an election cycle where distortions in truth are commonplace. Being able to synthesize —or claim that real audio was synthesized—would only muddy waters even further.

Somehow the clip also involves the comedian Jordan Peele, present at the conference, whose shocked expression is the only indication that anyone there is thinking about how this software will be used out in the real world.