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Master bladesmith Bob Kramer’s lessons from the school of life

MIT Latest News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 5:10pm

The story of Bob Kramer’s career is a wild one, peppered with twists and turns, false starts, and happy accidents. Before gaining renown as one the finest bladesmiths at work today (a bladesmith is an expert at creating knives and other bladed objects), Kramer had enrolled in and dropped out of college, worked as a chef, performed in improvisational theater, and traveled the United States by train as a circus clown.
 
“The main takeaway for me was that this is an incredible adventure,” Kramer said in a special lecture at MIT on Jan. 26. He was talking about his stint under the big top, but Kramer might as well have meant his lifelong quest for excellence, of making things of exceptional quality and passing on his expertise to others.
 
One of just 120 master bladesmiths in the world, Kramer earned the American Bladesmith Society title after years of hand-forging knives from hot steel and then passing a rigorous test — swiping through an inch-thick rope, chopping a two-by-four, and shaving off his own arm hair.
 
Kramer was at MIT for all of January, invited by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) to teach bladesmithing classes during the institute’s Independent Activities Period. Students lucky enough to get a spot — more than 100 people signed up for 18 spots — learned to shape, heat treat, and grind blades in DMSE’s forge and foundry.

Pursuit, and perfection

Although he called his talk “In Pursuit of the Perfect Blade,” Kramer admitted that perfection is unachievable. “You might think that ‘perfect’ is the operative is this sentence, but for me it’s the pursuit,” Kramer said. “I got my master smith rating in 1997, and in many ways that’s like getting your black belt in a martial art. You are just beginning. You are just starting to understand what needs to be done.”
 
He began by displaying pictures of some of his Kramer Knives — blades with intricate patterns that “go all the way through the steel,” one with a gold inlay of a boy riding a fish, a “plug weld,” or metal insert, and another with steel made from the metals found in a meteorite.
 
Kramer traced his life journey back to his childhood in Michigan as the youngest of six; his older brothers and sisters “were looking outwards. They want to move on, they want to begin their lives. And I’m just trying to figure out like how to survive, how to get some chicken off the plate or get a little bit of attention.”
 
So he was “a little bit of a goofball.” In school, Kramer took to wood shop — measuring and cutting materials and making things — rather than reading and writing book reports. Later, in a high school divided into alternative-lifestyle hippies and letter-sweater-wearing jocks, he learned how to juggle, do card tricks, and ride a unicycle.
 
After a short time as a college student at Wayne State University, where he found out he had dyslexia, he was inspired by Robin Lee Graham’s memoir “Dove,” about the author’s voyage in a sloop as a teenager: “This was one of the easiest books for me to read because it was about adventure.”
 
At 19 Kramer left Detroit to travel across the country. “I was now fully responsible for myself,” he said. “And I began to try to figure out, ‘How do I fit in the world?’”
 
His travels took him to Houston, Texas, where he found a job waiting on the wealthy patrons of the Houston Country Club. Later, on a lark, he went to auditions for Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus clowns, got a contract, and went off with the circus for a year, performing all over the country.
 
“I saw another way to make it through the world. So my mind is opening up to all these other possibilities,” Kramer said.
 
He returned to the service industry, this time getting a job in a hotel kitchen in Seattle. Though the chefs he worked with were professionals with excellent credentials, none knew how to sharpen knives. So he decided he would learn. “I learned how to juggle. I’m going to learn how to sharpen a knife,” he said.
 
After some study, he acquired the right skills and the right tools and started a knife-sharpening business, driving a truck around Seattle, Washington, to fish markets, hotels, and restaurants, making blades razor sharp.

“Make a lot of mistakes”

After about five years, he got bored. “I’ve made enough money, but my mind is not stimulated anymore,” he said. Then one day in Blade, a magazine about custom knives, he saw an ad for a two-week bladesmithing class in Arkansas — an experience that forever changed his life.
 
After attending class, smashing coal into high-carbon coke to make steel and hand-forging a 10-inch blade with a 5-inch handle, he was enraptured.
 
“And when I got home from that, I thought, ‘I’m doing this.’ Somehow this is going to be incorporated in my life,” Kramer said.
 
Soon, he stopped driving his knife-sharpening truck and opened a knife shop in downtown Seattle, hand-making knives in an on-site forge. A review in Saveur magazine brought in swift business. After a move to the country, business slowed. Then Kramer got another review, this time in Cook’s Illustrated, on a $400 chef’s knife the publication bought from him.
 
“And they said, the best knife they had ever tested. The phone starts ringing again, and it happens all over again. Great problem to have,” Kramer said.
 
Kramer described how he makes steel for knives: It starts by stacking layer upon layer, then heating that up to 2,350 degrees Fahrenheit (1,288 Celsius) in the forge and hammering the layers together until they bond. It’s a process he has honed over years of trial and error.
 
“Make a lot of mistakes,” he advised the audience. “That’s how you get to know the stuff.”
 
Professor Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT and one of Kramer’s DMSE hosts, says what sets Kramer apart is his endless curiosity and passion for self-learning.
 
“Bob is not only a craftsman and an artist; he’s an innovator, in the best sense of that word,” Chiang says. “He doesn’t have any fancy university degrees, but he has illustrated throughout his life how to learn on your own.”

EFF Urges New York Court to Protect Online Speakers’ Anonymity

EFF: Updates - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 4:54pm

The First Amendment requires courts to apply a robust balancing test before unmasking anonymous online speakers, EFF explained in an amicus brief it filed recently in a New York State appeal.

In the case on appeal, GSB Gold Standard v. Google, a German company that sells cryptocurrency investments is seeking to unmask an anonymous blogger who criticized the company. Based upon a German court order, the company sought a subpoena that would identify the blogger. The blogger fought back, without success, and they are now appealing.

Like speech itself, the First Amendment right to anonymity fosters and advances public debate and self-realization. Anonymity allows speakers to communicate their ideas without being defined by their identity. Anonymity protects speakers who express critical or unpopular views from harassment, intimidation, or being silenced. And, because powerful individuals or entities’ efforts to punish one speaker through unmasking may well lead others to remain silent, protecting anonymity for one speaker can promote free expression for many others.

Too often, however, corporate or human persons try to abuse the judicial process to unmask anonymous speakers. Thus, courts should apply robust evidentiary and procedural standards before compelling the disclosure of an anonymous speaker’s identity. 

Under these standards, parties seeking to unmask anonymous speakers must first show they have meritorious legal claims, to help ensure that the litigation isn’t a pretext for harassment. Those parties that meet this first step must then also show that their interests in unmasking an anonymous speaker outweigh the speaker’s interests in retaining their anonymity. In this case, the trial court didn’t require the German company to meet this standard, and it could not have in any event.

Courts around the United States have adopted various forms of this test, with EFF often participating as amicus or counsel. We hope that New York follows their lead.

Remembering Ken Johnson Jr., MIT DAPER director of communications, promotions, and marketing

MIT Latest News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 11:50am

On Feb. 12, the Division of Student Life and MIT lost a valued community member. Ken Johnson Jr., director of communications, promotions, and marketing in the Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation (DAPER), passed away following complications from a stroke. He was 47 years old.

Johnson’s sports information career spanned 25 years. Prior to working at MIT, he worked at Brown University and was the sports information director at Manhattanville College, the University of Bridgeport, St. Anselm College, and Assumption University. For the last eight years, Johnson has been at MIT, where he loved working with student-athletes and was recognized many times for his contributions to the sports communications profession.

“Ken truly embraced his role in DAPER. He loved working with our student-athletes and coaches. He continuously displayed his commitment to making every team feel special,” says G. Anthony Grant, DAPER department head and director of athletics.

A passion for sports and collegiate athletics

As a Red Sox fan, an avid golfer, a marathon runner, and a lover of all kinds of sports, Johnson was passionate about working with all of MIT’s 33 sports teams — and it showed. He was recently honored by the College Sports Communicators for his 25-year career in the field. Johnson was also the second vice president of the Eastern Athletic Communications Association and the recipient of the 2019 U.S. Track and Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association Excellence in Communications Award for NCAA Division III Track and Field.

Andrew Barlow, associate professor and baseball coach, also admired Johnson’s enthusiasm for his work, adding, “Ken was a true professional and an instant friend for those who had the opportunity to know him. His passion for the sports communication profession and his devotion to all the student-athletes with whom he supported were remarkable. He was a true fan of all our MIT athletic teams and was an integral part of our MIT baseball family.

“All our players will have fond memories of Ken’s reactions when they would try to make him laugh with silly post-game interview antics. All of us coaches will surely miss our post-game ‘debrief’ sessions where Ken would point out all of ‘our potential decision-making mistakes’ that we might have made,” Barlow says.

“He took great pride when Karenna Groff won the NCAA Woman of the Year Award, and he even attended the ceremony in San Antonio, Texas, where she was recognized,” says Grant. “Ken was also ecstatic when our Men’s Cross-Country team won the program’s first Division III NCAA National Championship. He even bought a full-sized replica of the trophy to put in his office.”

A true New Englander

Johnson grew up on Cape Cod and graduated from Dennis Yarmouth Regional High School. He subsequently earned a bachelor of science in sports management from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is survived by his parents, Kenneth and Katherine “Kate” Johnson, his sister Megan Warfield, her husband, Bill, and his beloved nephew Cameron.

Gifts in Johnson’s memory can be made to the Friends of DAPER Fund.

A sprayable gel could make minimally invasive surgeries simpler and safer

MIT Latest News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 11:30am

More than 20 million Americans undergo colonoscopy screenings every year, and in many of those cases, doctors end up removing polyps that are 2 cm or larger and require additional care. This procedure has greatly reduced the overall incidence of colon cancer, but not without complications, as patients may experience gastrointestinal bleeding both during and after the procedure.

In hopes of preventing those complications from occurring, researchers at MIT have developed a new gel, GastroShield, that can be sprayed onto the surgical sites through an endoscope. This gel forms a tough but flexible protective layer that serves as a shield for the damaged area. The material prevents delayed bleeding and reinforces the mechanical integrity of the tissue.

“Our tissue-responsive adhesive technology is engineered to interact with the tissue via complimentary covalent and ionic interactions as well as physical interactions to provide prolonged lesion protection over days to prevent complications following polyp removal, and other wounds at risk of bleeding across the gastrointestinal tract,” says Natalie Artzi, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the senior author of the paper.

In an animal study, the researchers showed that the GastroShield application integrates seamlessly with current endoscopic procedures, and provides wound protection for three to seven days where it helps tissue to heal following surgery. Artzi and other members of the research team have started a company called BioDevek that now plans to further develop the material for use in humans.

Gonzalo Muñoz Taboada, CEO of BioDevek, and Daniel Dahis, lead scientist at BioDevek, are the lead authors of the study, which appears in the journal Advanced Materials. Elazer Edelman, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and the director of IMES, and Pere Dosta, a former postdoc in Artzi’s lab, are also authors of the paper.

Adhesive gels

Routine colon cancer screenings often reveal small precancerous polyps, which can be removed before they become cancerous. This is usually done using an endoscope. If any bleeding occurs during the polyp removal, doctors can cauterize the wound to seal it, but this method creates a scar that may delay the healing, and result in additional complications.

Additionally, in some patients, bleeding doesn’t occur until a few days after the procedure. This can be dangerous and may require patients to return to the hospital for additional treatment. Other patients may develop small tears that lead the intestinal contents to leak into the abdomen, which can lead to severe infection and requires emergency care.

When tissue reinforcement is required, doctors often insert metal clips to hold tissue together, but these can’t be used with larger polyps and aren’t always effective. Efforts to develop a gel that could seal the surgical wounds have not been successful, mainly because the materials could not adhere to the surgical site for more than 24 hours.

The MIT team tested dozens of combinations of materials that they thought could have the right properties for this use. They wanted to find formulations that would display a low enough viscosity to be easily delivered and sprayed through a nozzle at the end of a catheter that fits inside commercial endoscopes. Simultaneously, upon tissue contact, this formulation should instantly form a tough gel that adheres strongly to the tissue. They also wanted the gel to be flexible enough that it could withstand the forces generated by the peristaltic movements of the digestive tract and the food flowing by.

The researchers came up with a winning combination that includes a polymer called pluronic, which is a type of block copolymer that can self-assemble into spheres called micelles. The ends of these polymers contain multiple amine groups, which end up on the surface of the micelles. The second component of the gel is oxidized dextran, a polysaccharide that can form strong but reversible bonds with the amine groups of the pluronic micelles.

When sprayed, these materials instantly react with each other and with the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, forming a solid gel in less than five seconds. The micelles that make up the gel are “self-healing” and can absorb forces that they encounter from peristaltic movements and food moving along the digestive tract, by temporarily breaking apart and then re-assembling.

“To obtain a material that adheres to the design criteria and can be delivered through existing colonoscopes, we screened through libraries of materials to understand how different parameters affect gelation, adhesion, retention, and compatibility,” Artzi says.

A protective layer

The gel can also withstand the low pH and enzymatic activity in the digestive tract, and protect tissue from that harsh environment while it heals itself, underscoring its potential for use in other gastrointestinal wounds at high risk of bleeding, such as  stomach ulcers, which affect more than 4 million Americans every year.

In tests in animals, the researchers found that every animal treated with the new gel showed rapid sealing, and there were no perforations, leakages, or bleeding in the week following the treatment. The material lasted for about five days, after which it was sloughed off along with the top layer of tissue as the surgical wounds healed.

The researchers also performed several biocompatibility studies and found that the gel did not cause any adverse effects.

“A key feature of this new technology is our aim to make it translational. GastroShield was designed to be stored in liquid form in a ready-to-use kit. Additionally, it doesn’t require any activation, light, or trigger solution to form the gel, aiming to make endoscopic use easy and fast,” says Muñoz, who is currently leading the translational effort for GastroShield.

BioDevek is now working on further developing the material for possible use in patients. In addition to its potential use in colonoscopies, this gel could also be useful for treating stomach ulcers and inflammatory conditions such as Crohn’s disease, or for delivering cancer drugs, Artzi says.

The research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

Access to Internet Infrastructure is Essential, in Wartime and Peacetime

EFF: Updates - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 10:49am

We’ve been saying it for 20 years, and it remains true now more than ever: the internet is an essential service. It enables people to build and create communities, shed light on injustices, and acquire vital knowledge that might not otherwise be available. And access to it becomes even more imperative in circumstances where being able to communicate and share real-time information directly with the people you trust is instrumental to personal safety and survival. More specifically, during wartime and conflict, internet and phone services enable the communication of information between people in challenging situations, as well as the reporting by on-the-ground journalists and ordinary people of the news. 

Unfortunately, governments across the world are very aware of their power to cut off this crucial lifeline, and frequently undertake targeted initiatives to do so. These internet shutdowns have become a blunt instrument that aid state violence and inhibit free speech, and are routinely deployed in direct contravention of human rights and civil liberties.

And this is not a one-dimensional situation. Nearly twenty years after the world’s first total internet shutdowns, this draconian measure is no longer the sole domain of authoritarian states but has become a favorite of a diverse set of governments across three continents. For example:

In Iran, the government has been suppressing internet access for many years. In the past two years in particular, people of Iran have suffered repeated internet and social media blackouts following an activist movement that blossomed after the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman murdered in police custody for refusing to wear a hijab. The movement gained global attention and in response, the Iranian government rushed to control both the public narrative and organizing efforts by banning social media, and sometimes cutting off internet access altogether. 

In Sudan, authorities have enacted a total telecommunications blackout during a massive conflict and displacement crisis. Shutting down the internet is a deliberate strategy blocking the flow of information that brings visibility to the crisis and prevents humanitarian aid from supporting populations endangered by the conflict. The communications blackout has extended for weeks, and in response a global campaign #KeepItOn has formed to put pressure on the Sudanese government to restore its peoples' access to these vital services. More than 300 global humanitarian organizations have signed on to support #KeepItOn.

And in Palestine, where the Israeli government exercises near-total control over both wired internet and mobile phone infrastructure, Palestinians in Gaza have experienced repeated internet blackouts inflicted by the Israeli authorities. The latest blackout in January 2024 occurred amid a widespread crackdown by the Israeli government on digital rights—including censorship, surveillance, and arrests—and amid accusations of bias and unwarranted censorship by social media platforms. On that occasion, the internet was restored after calls from civil society and nations, including the U.S. As we’ve noted, internet shutdowns impede residents' ability to access and share resources and information, as well as the ability of residents and journalists to document and call attention to the situation on the ground—more necessary than ever given that a total of 83 journalists have been killed in the conflict so far. 

Given that all of the internet cables connecting Gaza to the outside world go through Israel, the Israeli Ministry of Communications has the ability to cut off Palestinians’ access with ease. The Ministry also allocates spectrum to cell phone companies; in 2015 we wrote about an agreement that delivered 3G to Palestinians years later than the rest of the world. In 2022, President Biden offered to upgrade the West Bank and Gaza to 4G, but the initiative stalled. While some Palestinians are able to circumvent the blackout by utilizing Israeli SIM cards (which are difficult to obtain) or Egyptian eSIMs, these workarounds are not solutions to the larger problem of blackouts, which the National Security Council has said: “[deprive] people from accessing lifesaving information, while also undermining first responders and other humanitarian actors’ ability to operate and to do so safely.”

Access to internet infrastructure is essential, in wartime as in peacetime. In light of these numerous blackouts, we remain concerned about the control that authorities are able to exercise over the ability of millions of people to communicate. It is imperative that people’s access to the internet remains protected, regardless of how user platforms and internet companies transform over time. We continue to shout this, again and again, because it needs to be restated, and unfortunately today there are ever more examples of it happening before our eyes.




Boosting student engagement and workforce development in microelectronics

MIT Latest News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 9:45am

The Northeast Microelectronics Internship Program (NMIP), an initiative of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) to connect first- and second-year college students to careers in semiconductor and microelectronics industries, recently received a $75,000 grant to expand its reach and impact. The funding is part of $9.2 million in grants awarded by the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition (NEMC) Hub to boost technology advancement, workforce development, education, and student engagement across the Northeast Region.

NMIP was founded by Tomás Palacios, the Clarence J. LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT, and director of MTL. The grant, he says, will help address a significant barrier limiting the number of students who pursue careers in critical technological fields.

“Undergraduate students are key for the future of our nation’s microelectronics workforce. They directly fill important roles that require technical fluency or move on to advanced degrees,” says Palacios. “But these students have repeatedly shared with us that the lack of internships in their first few semesters in college is the main reason why many move to industries with a more established tradition of hiring undergraduate students in their early years. This program connects students and industry partners to fix this issue.”

The NMIP funding was announced on Jan. 30 during an event featuring Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll, and Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao, as well as leaders from the U.S. Department of Defense and the director of Microelectronics Commons at NSTXL, the National Security Technology Accelerator. The grant to support NMIP is part of $1.5 million in new workforce development grants aimed at spurring the microelectronics and semiconductor industry across the Northeast Region. The new awards are the first investments made by the NEMC Hub, a division of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, that is overseeing investments made by the federal CHIPS and Science Act following the formal establishment of the NEMC Hub in September 2023.

“We are very excited for the recognition the program is receiving. It is growing quickly and the support will help us further dive into our mission to connect talented students to the broader microelectronics ecosystem while integrating our values of curiosity, openness, excellence, respect, and community,” says Preetha Kingsview, who manages the program. “This grant will help us connect to the broader community convened by NEMC Hub in close collaboration with MassTech. We are very excited for what this support will help NMIP achieve.”

The funds provided by the NEMC Microelectronics Commons Hub will help expand the program more broadly across the Northeast, to support students and grow the pool of skilled workers for the microelectronics sector regionally. After receiving 300 applications in the first two years, the program received 296 applications in 2024 from students interested in summer internships, and is working with more than 25 industry partners across the Northeast. These NMIP students not only participate in industry-focused summer internships, but are also exposed to the broader microelectronics ecosystem through bi-weekly field trips to microelectronics companies in the region.

“The expansion of the program across the Northeast, and potentially nationwide, will extend the impact of this program to reach more students and benefit more microelectronics companies across the region,” says Christine Nolan, acting NEMC Hub program director.Through hands-on training opportunities we are able to showcase the amazing jobs that exist in this sector and to strengthen the pipeline of talented workers to support the mission of the NEMC Hub and the national CHIPs investments.”  

Sheila Wescott says her company, MACOM, a Lowell-based developer of semiconductor devices and components, is keenly interested in sourcing intern candidates from NMIP. “We already have a success story from this program,” she says. “One of our interns completed two summer programs with us and is continuing part time in the fall — and we anticipate him joining MACOM full time after graduation.”

“NMIP is an excellent platform to engage students with a diverse background and promote microelectronics technology,” says Bin Lu, CTO and co-founder of Finwave Semiconductor.  “Finwave has benefited from engaging with the young engineers who are passionate about working with electronics and cutting-edge semiconductor technology. We are committed to continuing to work with NMIP.”

Jailbreaking LLMs with ASCII Art

Schneier on Security - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 7:12am

Researchers have demonstrated that putting words in ASCII art can cause LLMs—GPT-3.5, GPT-4, Gemini, Claude, and Llama2—to ignore their safety instructions.

Research paper.

Unusually hot weather raises South African food inflation risk

ClimateWire News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 6:52am
While farmers have managed to expand planting areas, yields are expected to suffer from heat damage and a lack of rainfall.

Going electric: Snowmobiles finally getting the Tesla treatment

ClimateWire News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 6:51am
“Honestly, a snowmobile is one of the worst vehicles to electrify,” said a Canadian motorsports CEO.

Heat pumps that fit in NYC apartment windows promise emissions cuts

ClimateWire News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 6:51am
The pumps represent a promising climate solution for buildings, whose operations account for 26 percent of global energy-related carbon emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.

5 things we learned from the EU's first-ever climate risk report

ClimateWire News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 6:48am
Farming must change. Diets must evolve. Southern Europe is at risk. And disaster looms if EU leaders don't act after June's elections.

Report: EVs beat gas cars on climate emissions — in the long run

ClimateWire News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 6:48am
But new research says building electric vehicles leaves a bigger carbon footprint than making gas-powered cars.

Florida statehouse passes ban on local heat protections for workers

ClimateWire News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 6:47am
The legislation now awaits action from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. The proposal follows a similar effort in Texas.

HUD ‘took disaster aid seriously’ under Marcia Fudge

ClimateWire News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 6:47am
The outgoing Housing secretary boosted HUD disaster aid, but a major overhaul is unfinished.

How Trump could exit the Paris climate deal — and thwart reentry

ClimateWire News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 6:33am
Conservatives have plans to hinder future presidents from reentering the Paris Agreement if a second Trump administration leaves the global climate accord.

Scientists develop a rapid gene-editing screen to find effects of cancer mutations

MIT Latest News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 6:00am

Tumors can carry mutations in hundreds of different genes, and each of those genes may be mutated in different ways — some mutations simply replace one DNA nucleotide with another, while others insert or delete larger sections of DNA.

Until now, there has been no way to quickly and easily screen each of those mutations in their natural setting to see what role they may play in the development, progression, and treatment response of a tumor. Using a variant of CRISPR genome-editing known as prime editing, MIT researchers have now come up with a way to screen those mutations much more easily.

The researchers demonstrated their technique by screening cells with more than 1,000 different mutations of the tumor suppressor gene p53, all of which have been seen in cancer patients. This method, which is easier and faster than any existing approach, and edits the genome rather than introducing an artificial version of the mutant gene, revealed that some p53 mutations are more harmful than previously thought.

This technique could also be applied to many other cancer genes, the researchers say, and could eventually be used for precision medicine, to determine how an individual patient’s tumor will respond to a particular treatment.

“In one experiment, you can generate thousands of genotypes that are seen in cancer patients, and immediately test whether one or more of those genotypes are sensitive or resistant to any type of therapy that you’re interested in using,” says Francisco Sanchez-Rivera, an MIT assistant professor of biology, a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and the senior author of the study.

MIT graduate student Samuel Gould is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Biotechnology.

Editing cells

The new technique builds on research that Sanchez-Rivera began 10 years ago as an MIT graduate student. At that time, working with Tyler Jacks, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology, and then-postdoc Thales Papagiannakopoulos, Sanchez-Rivera developed a way to use CRISPR genome-editing to introduce into mice genetic mutations linked to lung cancer.

In that study, the researchers showed that they could delete genes that are often lost in lung tumor cells, and the resulting tumors were similar to naturally arising tumors with those mutations. However, this technique did not allow for the creation of point mutations (substitutions of one nucleotide for another) or insertions.

“While some cancer patients have deletions in certain genes, the vast majority of mutations that cancer patients have in their tumors also include point mutations or small insertions,” Sanchez-Rivera says.

Since then, David Liu, a professor in the Harvard University Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and a core institute member of the Broad Institute, has developed new CRISPR-based genome editing technologies that can generate additional types of mutations more easily. With base editing, developed in 2016, researchers can engineer point mutations, but not all possible point mutations. In 2019, Liu, who is also an author of the Nature Biotechnology study, developed a technique called prime editing, which enables any kind of point mutation to be introduced, as well as insertions and deletions.

“Prime editing in theory solves one of the major challenges with earlier forms of CRISPR-based editing, which is that it allows you to engineer virtually any type of mutation,” Sanchez-Rivera says.

When they began working on this project, Sanchez-Rivera and Gould calculated that if performed successfully, prime editing could be used to generate more than 99 percent of all small mutations seen in cancer patients.

However, to achieve that, they needed to find a way to optimize the editing efficiency of the CRISPR-based system. The prime editing guide RNAs (pegRNAs) used to direct CRISPR enzymes to cut the genome in certain spots have varying levels of efficiency, which leads to “noise” in the data from pegRNAs that simply aren’t generating the correct target mutation. The MIT team devised a way to reduce that noise by using synthetic target sites to help them calculate how efficiently each guide RNA that they tested was working.

“We can design multiple prime-editing guide RNAs with different design properties, and then we get an empirical measurement of how efficient each of those pegRNAs is. It tells us what percentage of the time each pegRNA is actually introducing the correct edit,” Gould says.

Analyzing mutations

The researchers demonstrated their technique using p53, a gene that is mutated in more than half of all cancer patients. From a dataset that includes sequencing information from more than 40,000 patients, the researchers identified more than 1,000 different mutations that can occur in p53.

“We wanted to focus on p53 because it’s the most commonly mutated gene in human cancers, but only the most frequent variants in p53 have really been deeply studied. There are many variants in p53 that remain understudied,” Gould says.

Using their new method, the researchers introduced p53 mutations in human lung adenocarcinoma cells, then measured the survival rates of these cells, allowing them to determine each mutation’s effect on cell fitness.

Among their findings, they showed that some p53 mutations promoted cell growth more than had been previously thought. These mutations, which prevent the p53 protein from forming a tetramer — an assembly of four p53 proteins — had been studied before, using a technique that involves inserting artificial copies of a mutated p53 gene into a cell.

Those studies found that these mutations did not confer any survival advantage to cancer cells. However, when the MIT team introduced those same mutations using the new prime editing technique, they found that the mutation prevented the tetramer from forming, allowing the cells to survive. Based on the studies done using overexpression of artificial p53 DNA, those mutations would have been classified as benign, while the new work shows that under more natural circumstances, they are not.

“This is a case where you could only observe these variant-induced phenotypes if you're engineering the variants in their natural context and not with these more artificial systems,” Gould says. “This is just one example, but it speaks to a broader principle that we’re going to be able to access novel biology using these new genome-editing technologies.”

Because it is difficult to reactivate tumor suppressor genes, there are few drugs that target p53, but the researchers now plan to investigate mutations found in other cancer-linked genes, in hopes of discovering potential cancer therapies that could target those mutations. They also hope that the technique could one day enable personalized approaches to treating tumors.

“With the advent of sequencing technologies in the clinic, we'll be able to use this genetic information to tailor therapies for patients suffering from tumors that have a defined genetic makeup,” Sanchez-Rivera says. “This approach based on prime editing has the potential to change everything.”

The research was funded, in part, by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, an MIT School of Science Fellowship in Cancer Research, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Hanna Gray Fellowship, the V Foundation for Cancer Research, a National Cancer Institute Cancer Center Support Grant, the Ludwig Center at MIT, a Koch Institute Frontier Award, the MIT Research Support Committee, and the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute.

Podcast Episode: 'I Squared' Governance

EFF: Updates - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 3:10am

Imagine a world in which the internet is first and foremost about empowering people, not big corporations and government. In that world, government does “after-action” analyses to make sure its tech regulations are working as intended, recruits experienced technologists as advisors, and enforces real accountability for intelligence and law enforcement programs.

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(You can also find this episode on the Internet Archive and on YouTube.)

Ron Wyden has spent decades working toward that world, first as a congressman and now as Oregon’s senior U.S. Senator. Long among Congress’ most tech-savvy lawmakers, he helped write the law that shaped and protects the internet as we know it, and he has fought tirelessly against warrantless surveillance of Americans’ telecommunications data. Wyden speaks with EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley about his “I squared” —individuals and innovation—legislative approach to foster an internet that benefits everyone. 

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

  • How a lot of the worrisome online content that critics blame on Section 230 is actually protected by the First Amendment 
  • Requiring intelligence and law enforcement agencies to get warrants before obtaining Americans’ private telecommunications data 
  • Why “foreign” is the most important word in “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” 
  • Making government officials understand national security isn’t heightened by reducing privacy 
  • Protecting women from having their personal data weaponized against them 

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, has served in the Senate since 1996; he was elected to his current six-year term in 2022. He chairs the Senate Finance Committee, and serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the Budget Committee, and the Select Committee on Intelligence; he also is the lead Senate Democrat on the Joint Committee on Taxation. His relentless defiance of the national security community's abuse of secrecy forced the declassification of the CIA Inspector General's 9/11 report, shut down the controversial Total Information Awareness program, and put a spotlight on both the Bush and Obama administrations’ reliance on "secret law." In 2006 he introduced the first Senate bill on net neutrality, and in 2011 he was the lone Senator to stand against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), ultimately unsuccessful bills that purportedly were aimed at fighting online piracy but that actually would have caused significant harm to the internet. Earlier, he served from 1981 to 1996 in the House of Representatives, where he co-authored Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996—the law that protects Americans’ freedom of expression online by protecting the intermediaries we all rely on.

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Transcript

SENATOR RON WYDEN
It's been all about two things, individuals and innovation. I call it “I squared,” so to speak, because those my principles. If you kind of follow what I'm trying to do, it's about individuals, it's about innovation. And you know, government has a role in playing to guardrails and ensuring that there are competitive markets. But what I really want to do is empower individuals.

CINDY COHN
That's U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. He is a political internet pioneer. Since he was first elected to the Senate in 1996, he has fought for personal digital rights, and against corporate and company censorship, and for sensible limits on government secrecy.

[THEME MUSIC BEGINS]

CINDY COHN
I'm Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

JASON KELLEY
And I'm Jason Kelley - EFF's Activism Director. This is our podcast series, How to Fix the Internet.

CINDY COHN
The idea behind this show is that we're trying to make our digital lives better. And sometimes when we think about the lawmakers in our country, we often think of the conflict and fighting and people who just don’t get it when it comes to how digital works. But there are also some people in the legislatures who have worked to enact real progress.

JASON KELLEY
Our guest this week is one of the giants in the political fight for internet freedom for several decades now. Senator Wyden played a critical role in the passage of Section 230 — a pillar of online freedom of speech that has recently been coming under attack from many different sides. And he introduced the first Senate net neutrality bill back in 2006. He’s consistently pushed back against mass surveillance and pushed for a strong Fourth Amendment, and over the years, he has consistently fought for many of the things that we are fighting for here at EFF as well.

CINDY COHN
Our conversation takes a look back at some of the major milestones of his career, decisions that have directly impacted all of our online lives. And we talk about the challenges of getting Section 230 passed into law in the first place. But more recently, Senator Wyden also talks about why he was strongly opposed to laws like FOSTA-SESTA, which undermined the space that Section 230 creates for some online speakers, using the cover of trying to stop sex trafficking on the internet.

JASON KELLEY
But like us at EFF, Senator Wyden is focusing on the battles happening right now in Congress that could have a fundamental impact on our online lives. When he was elected in the ‘90s, the focus was on the explosion and rapid expansion of the internet. Now he’s thinking about the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence, and how we can make sure that we put the individual before the profits of corporations when it comes to AI.

CINDY COHN
Our conversation covers a lot of ground but we wanted to start with Senator Wyden’s own view of what a good tech future would look like for all of us.

SENATOR RON WYDEN
Well, it's one that empowers the individual. You know, consistently, the battles around here are between big interest groups. And what I want to do is see the individual have more power and big corporations and big government have less as it relates to communications.

CINDY COHN
Yeah. So what would that look like for an ordinary user? What kinds of things might be different?

SENATOR RON WYDEN
What we'd have, for example, is faster adoption of new products and services for people showing greater trust in emergency technologies. We'd build on the motivations that have been behind my privacy bills, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale, for example, Section 230, the Algorithm Accountability Act. Cindy, in each one of these, it's been all about two things: individuals and innovation.

JASON KELLEY
I'm wondering if you're surprised by the way that things have turned out in any specific instance, you know, you had a lot of responsibility for some really important legislation for CDA 230, scaling back some NSA spying issues, helping to stop SOPA-PIPA, which are all, you know, really important to EFF and to a lot of our listeners and supporters. But I'm wondering if, you know, despite that, you've seen surprises in where we are that you didn't expect.

SENATOR RON WYDEN
I didn't expect to have so many opponents across the political spectrum for Section 230. I knew we would have some, but nothing has been the subject of more misinformation than 230. You had Donald Trump, the President of the United States, lying about Section 230 over and over again. I don't think Donald Trump would know what Section 230 was if it hit him in the head, but he was always lying about vote by mail and all those kinds of things.
And huge corporate interests like Big Cable and legacy media have bankrolled massive lobbying and PR campaigns against 230. Since they saw user-created content and the ability of regular people to be heard as a threat to their top-down model, all those big guys have been trying to invent reasons to oppose 230 that I could not have dreamed of.
So I'm not saying, I don't think Chris Cox would say it either, that the law is perfect. But when I think about it, it's really a tool for individuals, people without power, without clout, without lobbies, without big checkbooks. And, uh, you know, a lot of people come up to me and say, "Oh, if you're not in public life, 230 will finally disappear" and all this kind of thing. And I said, I think you're underestimating the power of people to really see what this was all about, which was something very new, a very great opportunity, but still based on a fundamental principle that the individual would be responsible for what they posted in this whole new medium and in the United States individual responsibility carries a lot of weight.

CINDY COHN
Oh, I so agree, and I think that one of the things that we've seen, um, with 230 but with a lot of other things now, is a kind of a correct identification of the harm and a wrong identification of what's causing it or what will solve it. So, you know, there are plenty of problems online, but, um, I think we feel, and I think it sounds like you do as well, that we're playing this funny little whack-a-mole game where whatever the problem is, somebody's sliding in to say that 230 is the reason they have that problem, when a lot of times it has to do with something, you know, not related. It could even be, in many cases, the U. S. Constitution, but also kind of misindentifying –

SENATOR RON WYDEN
Cindy, there's a great story that I sometimes tell. The New York Times one day had a big picture of Chris Cox and I, it was practically a full-length page. I'm 6'4", went to college on a basketball scholarship dreaming of playing in the NBA, and they said “these two people are responsible for all the hate information online and 230 empowered people to do it.” And we hardly ever do this, but Keith Chu, our wonderful expert on all things technology, finally touched base with him and said, "you know that if there was no 230, over 95 percent of what we see online that we really dislike — you know, misogyny, hate speech, racism — would still be out there because of the First Amendment, not 230."
And the New York Times, to its credit, printed a long, long apology essentially the next day, making the case that that was really all about the First Amendment, not 230. 230 brought added kind of features to this, particularly the capacity to moderate, which was so important in a new opportunity to communicate.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

CINDY COHN
What drives you towards building a better internet? So many people in Congress in your town don't really take the time to figure out what's going on, much less propose real solutions. They kind of, you know, we've been in this swing where they, they treated the technologies like heroes and now we're in a time when they're treating them like villains. But what drives you to, to kind of figure out what's actually going on and propose real solutions?

SENATOR RON WYDEN
I showed up, Cindy, Oregon's first new United States senator in 34 years, in 1996, the winner, and the only person who knew how to use a computer at that point was, uh, Pat Leahy, who was a great advocate of technology and, and innovation. I said, "I'm going to get into new stuff." In other words, Oregon had always been about wood products. We always will be about wood products and I will continue to champion those kinds of practices, particularly now we're working to prevent these huge fires. I also said we're going to get into new things. And my dad was a journalist and he said, "You're not doing your job if you don't ask hard questions every single day."
So what we tried to do, particularly in those first days, is kind of lay the foundation, just do the foundational principles for the internet. I mean, there's a book, Jeff Kossoff wrote “26 Words That Created the Internet,” but we also had internet tax policy to promote non-discrimination, so you wouldn't be treated different online than you would be offline.
Our digital signatures law, I think, has been a fabulous, you know, addition. People used to spend hours and hours in offices, you know, kind of signing these documents that look like five phone books stacked on top of each other, and they'd be getting through it in 15, 20 minutes. So, um, to me, what I think we showed is that you could produce more genuine innovation by thinking through what was to come than just lining the pocketbooks of these big entrenched interests. Now, a big part of what we're going to have to do now with AI is go through some of those same kinds of issues. You know, I think for example, we're all in on beating China. That's important. We're all in on innovation, but we've got to make sure that we cement bedrock, you know, privacy and accountability.
And that's really what's behind the Algorithm Accountability Act because, you know, what we wanted to do when people were getting ripped off in terms of housing and education and the like with AI, we wanted to get them basic protection.

JASON KELLEY
It sounds like you're, you know, you're already thinking about this new thing, AI, and in 20 or more years ago, you were thinking about the new thing, which is posting online. How do we get more of your colleagues to sort of have that same impulse to be interested in tackling those hard questions that you mentioned? I think we always wonder what's missing from their views, and we just don't really know how to make them sort of wake up to the things that you get.

SENATOR RON WYDEN
What we do is particularly focus on getting experienced and knowledgeable and effective staff. I tell people I went to school on a basketball scholarship. I remember recruiting, we kind of recruit our technologists like they were all LeBron James, and kind of talking about, you know, why there were going to be opportunities here. And we have just a terrific staff now, really led by Chris Segoyan and Keith Chu.
And it's paid huge dividends, for example, when we look at some of these shady data broker issues, government surveillance. Now, with the passing of my, my friend Dianne Feinstein,  one of the most senior members in the intelligence field and, uh,  these incredibly good staff allow me to get into these issues right now I'm with Senator Moran, Jerry Moran of Kansas trying to upend the declassification system because it basically doesn't declassify anything and I'm not sure they could catch bad guys, and they certainly are hanging on to stuff that is irresponsible, uh, information collection about innocent people.

[SHORT MUSIC INTERLUDE]

CINDY COHN
These are all problems that, of course, we're very deep in and,  we do appreciate that you, you know, our friend, Chris Segoyan,  who EFF's known for a long time and other people you've brought in really good technologists and people who understand technology to advise you. How do we get more senators to do that too? Are there things that we could help build that would make that easier?

SENATOR RON WYDEN
I think there are, and I think we need to do more, not post-mortems, but sort of more after-action kind of analysis. For example, the vote on SESTA-FOSTA was 98 to 2. And everybody wasn't sure where the other vote was, and Rand Paul came up to me and said, "You're right, so I'm voting with you."
And, uh, the point really was, you know, everybody hated the scourge of sex trafficking and the like. I consider those people monsters. But I pointed out that all you're going to do is drive them from a place where there was transparency to the dark web, where you can't get a search engine. And people go, "Huh? Well, Ron's telling us, you know, that it's going to get worse." And then I offered an amendment to basically do what I think would have really made a difference there, which is get more prosecutors and more investigators going after bad guys. And the ultimate factor that would be good, as I say, to have these sort of after-action, after-legislating kind of things, is everybody said, "Well, you know, you've got to have SESTA-FOSTA, or you're never going to be able to do anything about Backpage. This was this horrible place that, you know, there were real problems with respect to sex trafficking. And what happened was, Backpage was put out of business under existing law, not under SESTA-FOSTA, and when you guys have this discussion with, you know, people who are following the program and ask them, ask them when their senator or congressperson last had a press conference about SESTA-FOSTA.
I know the answer to this. I can't find a single press conference about SESTA-FOSTA, which was ballyhooed at the time as this miraculous cure for dealing with really bad guys, and the technology didn't make sense and the education didn't make sense, and the history with Backpage didn't make any sense and it's because people got all intoxicated with these, you know, ideas that somehow they were going to be doing this wondrous, you know, thing and it really made things worse.

CINDY COHN
So I'm hearing three things in the better world. One, and the one you've just mentioned, is that we actually have real accountability, that when we pass some kind of regulation, we take the time to look back and see whether it worked; that we have informed people who are helping advise or actually are the lawmakers and the regulators who understand how things, uh, really work.
And the third one is that we have a lot more accountability inside government around classification and secrecy, especially around things involving, you know, national security. And, you know, you're in this position, right, where you are read in as a member of the Intelligence Committee. So you kind of see what the rest of us don't. And I'm wondering, obviously I don't want you to reveal anything, but you know, are there, is that gap an important one that we close?

SENATOR RON WYDEN
Yeah, I mean, you know, there have been a lot of 14-to-1 votes in the Intelligence Committee over the, over the years, and, you know, I've been the one, and you know, the reality is people often get swept up in these kinds of arguments, particularly from people in government, like, we're having a big debate about surveillance now, Section 702, and, you know, everybody's saying, "Ron, what are you talking about? You're opposing this, you know, we face all these, all these kinds of, kinds of threats," and, um, you know, what I've always said is, read the title of the bill, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that means we're worried about foreign intelligence, we're not, under that law supposed to be sweeping up the records of vast numbers of Americans who are interconnected to those foreign individuals by virtue of the fact that communication systems have changed.
And I personally believe that smart policies ensure that you can fight terror ferociously while still protecting civil liberties, and not-so-smart policies give you less of both.

JASON KELLEY
How do we get to that balance that you're talking about, where, you know, I know a lot of people feel like we do have to have some level of surveillance to protect national security, but that balance of protecting the individual rights of people is a complicated one. And I'm wondering how you think about what that looks like for people.

SENATOR RON WYDEN
Well, for example, Zoe Lofgren, you know, Zoe has been a partner of mine on many projects. I know she's been sympathetic with all of you all, well, for many years in her service as a member from California. You know, what we said on our 702 reforms, and by the way, we had a whole bunch of Republicans, there needs to be a warrant requirement. If you're going after the personal data of Americans, there should be a warrant requirement.

Now, we were then asked, "Well, what happens if it's some kind of imminent kind of crisis?" And I said, what I've always said is that all my bills, as it relates to surveillance, have a warrant exception, which is if the government believes that there is an imminent threat to the security of our country and our people, the government can go up immediately and come back and settle the warrant matter afterwards. And at one point I was having a pretty vigorous debate with the President and his people, then-President Obama. And I said, "Mr. President, if the warrant requirement exception isn't written right, you all write it and I'm sure we'll work it out."
But I think that giving the government a wide berth to make an assessment about whether there is a real threat to the country and they're prepared to not only go up immediately to get the information, but to trust the process later on to come back and show that it was warranted. I think it's a fair balance. That's the kind of thing I'm working on right now.

JASON KELLEY
Let’s pause for just a moment to say thank you to our sponsor. “How to Fix the Internet” is supported by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology. Enriching people’s lives through a keener appreciation of our increasingly technological world and portraying the complex humanity of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.
And now back to our conversation with Senator Ron Wyden and his work on privacy laws.

SENATOR RON WYDEN
Really, the first big law that I got passed involved privacy rights of Americans outside the country. So we had won a bunch of battles before that, you know, defeating John Poindexter, Total Information Awareness, and a variety of other battles.
But when I started this, trying to protect the privacy rights of Americans who are outside the United States, you would have thought that Western civilization was going to end. And this was the Bush administration. And the DNI, the head of national intelligence, talked to me. He said, "Ron, this is just going to be disastrous. It's going to be horrible."
And I walked him through who we were talking about. And I said, the biggest group of people we're talking about are men and women who wear the uniform in the United States because they are outside the United States. You can't possibly be telling me, Director McConnell, it was Director McConnell at that time, that they shouldn't have privacy rights. And then things kind of moved and I kept working with them and they still said that this was going to be a tremendous threat and all the rest. They were going to veto it. They actually put out a statement about there would be a veto message. So I worked with them a little bit more and we worked it out. And when we were done, the Bush administration put out something, and we are proud to say that we are protecting the privacy rights of Americans outside the United States.
So, if you can just take enough time and be persistent enough, you can get things done. And now, we actually have elected officials and presidents of both political parties all taking credit for the privacy rights of people outside the United States.

[MUSIC STING COMES IN TO INTRO CLIP]

SENATOR RON WYDEN ON CSPAN
A yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

JAMES CLAPPER ON CSPAN
No sir.

SENATOR RON WYDEN ON CSPAN
It does not.

JAMES CLAPPER ON CSPAN
Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertantly, perhaps, collect but not, not wittingly.

CINDY COHN
That's a clip from CSPAN, a pretty famous interaction you had with James Clapper in 2013. But I think the thing that really shines through with you is your ability to walk this fine line — you're very respectful of the system, even in an instance like this where someone is lying under oath right in your face, you know you have to work within the system to make change. How do you navigate that in the face of lies and misdirection?

SENATOR RON WYDEN
Well, you have to take the time to really tee it up, and I really credit John Dickus of Oregon, our staffer at the time, did a phenomenal job. He spent about six months teeing that question up for Mr. Clapper and what happened is his deputy — Mr. Clapper's deputy, Keith Alexander — had been telling what my 11-year-old daughter — my wife and I are older parents — we have this 11-year-old. She said, "Dad, that was a big whopper. That guy told a big whopper." Keith Alexander told a bunch of whoppers. And then Mr. Clapper did. And this had all been done in public. And so we asked for answers. He wouldn't give any answers. Then he came to the one, um, you know, open-threat hearing that we have each year. And we prepare for those open threat hearings like there is no tomorrow, because you don't get very many opportunities to have a chance to ask, you know, the important questions. And so John Dickus sent to Mr. Clapper, he sent him the question a day in advance, so that nobody could say that they hadn't gotten it, and it's an informal rule in the Intelligence Committee that if an official feels that they can't answer, they just say, "I can't answer, I have to do it in private." I wouldn't have liked that answer. But I would have respected it and tried to figure out some other way, but James Clapper got the question, looked at the camera, looked at me, and just lied and persisted in coming up — he had like five or six excuses for how he wasn't lying. And I think as the country found out what was going on, it was a big part of our product to produce the next round of laws that provided some scrutiny over the Patriot Act.

CINDY COHN
I think that's a really important kind of insight, right? Which is the thing that led to people being upset about the kind of massive surveillance and understanding it was kind of the lie, right? Like if there was more transparency on the part of the national security people and they didn't just tell themselves that they have to lie to all the rest of us, you know, in order to keep us safe, which I think is a very, very dangerous story in a democracy, we might end up in a much more reasonable place for everyone about privacy and security. And I actually don't think it's a balance. I think that you only get security if you have privacy, rather than they have to be traded off against them, and –

SENATOR RON WYDEN
You're a Ben Franklin person, Cindy. Anybody who gives up liberty to have security doesn't deserve either.

CINDY COHN
Well, I think that that's kind of right, but I also think that, you know, the history has shown that the intense secrecy, overbroad secrecy actually doesn't make us safer. And I think this goes back to your point about accountability, where we really do need to look back and say these things that have been embraced as allegedly making us safer, are they actually making us safer or are we better off having a different role for secrecy — not that there's no role, but then the one that has been, you know, kind of, it's an all-purpose excuse that no matter what the government does, it just uses the secrecy argument to make sure that the American people can't find out so that we don't, you know, evaluate whether things are working or not.
I just don't think that the, you know, my experience watching these things, and I don't know about yours, is that the overblown secrecy isn't actually making us safer.

[SHORT MUSIC INTERLUDE]

JASON KELLEY
Before we wrap up, we wanted to get a sense from you of what issues you see coming in the next three years or so that we're going to need to be thinking about to be ahead of the game. What's at the top of your mind looking forward?

SENATOR RON WYDEN
The impact of the Dobbs decision repealing Roe v. Wade is going to have huge ripple effects through our society. I believe, you know, women are already having their personal information weaponized. against them. And you're seeing it in states with, you know, MAGA attorneys general, but you're also seeing it – we did a big investigation of pharmacies. And pharmacies are giving out women's personal information hither and, and yon. And, you know, we're very much committed to getting privacy rights here. And I also want to congratulate EFF on your Who's Got Your Back report, because you really are touching on these same kinds of issues, and I think getting a warrant ought to be really important.
And the other one I mentioned is, uh, fighting government censorship. And I would put that both at home and abroad. It's no secret that China, Russia, and India want to control what people can say and read, but you know, if you look at some of what, you know, we're seeing in this country, the U.S. trade representative taking a big step backwards in terms of access to information, we're going to have to deal with that in here in our country too.

CINDY COHN
Oh, those are wonderful and scary, but wonderful and important things. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. It's always such a pleasure and we are huge fans of the work that you've done, and thank you so much for carrying, you know, the “I squared,” individuals and innovation. Those are two values close to our hearts here at EFF and we really appreciate having you in Congress championing that as well

SENATOR RON WYDEN
I don't want to make this a bouquet-tossing contest, but we've had a lot of opportunities to work, work together and, you know, EFF is part of the Steppin' Up Caucus and, uh, really appreciate it and, uh, let's put this in "to be continued," okay?

CINDY COHN
Terrific.

SENATOR RON WYDEN
Thanks, guys.

CINDY COHN
I really could talk with Senator Wyden all day and specifically talk with him about national security all day, but what a great conversation. And it's so refreshing to have somebody who's experienced in Congress who really is focusing on two of the most important things that EFF focuses on as well. I love the framing of I squared, right? Individuals and innovation as the kind of centerpiece of a better world.

JASON KELLEY
Yeah. And you know, he's not just saying it, it's clear from his bills and his work over the years that he really does center those things. Innovation and individuals are really the core of things like Section 230 and many other pieces of legislation that he's worked on, which, it's just really nice and refreshing to hear someone who has a really strong ethos in the Senate and has the background to show that he means it.

CINDY COHN
Yeah, and you know, sometimes we disagree with Senator Wyden, but it's always refreshing to feel like, well, we're all trying to point in the same direction. We sometimes have disagreements about how to get there.

JASON KELLEY
Yeah. And one of the great things about working with him is that, you know, he and his staff are tech-savvy, so our disagreements are often pretty nuanced, at least from what I can remember. You know, we aren't having disagreements about what a technology is or something like that very often. I think we're, we're usually having really good conversations with his folks, because he's one of the most tech-savvy staffers in the Senate, and he's helped really make the Senate more tech-savvy overall.

CINDY COHN
Yeah, I think that this is one of these pieces of a better internet that, that feels kind of indirect, but is actually really important, which is making sure that our lawmakers - you know, they don't all have to be technologists. We have a couple technologists in Congress now, but they really have to be informed by people who understand how technology works.
And I think one of the things that's important when we show up a lot of the times is really, you know, having a clear ability to explain to the people, you know, whether it's the congressional people themselves or their staff, like how things really work and having that kind of expertise in house is, I think, something that's going to be really important if we're going to get to a better internet.

JASON KELLEY
Yeah. And it's clear that we have still work to do. You know, he brought up SESTA-FOSTA and that's an instance where, you know, he understands and his staff understands that that was a bad bill, but it was still, as he said, you know, 98-2, when it came to the vote. And ultimately that was a tech bill. And I think if, if we had more, even more sort of tech-savvy folks, we wouldn't have had such a such a fight with that bill.

CINDY COHN
And I think that he also pointed to something really important, which was this idea of after analysis, after-action thinking and looking back and saying, "Well, we passed this thing, did it do what we had hoped it would do?" as a way to really have a process where we can do error correction. And I noted that, you know, Ro Khanna and Elizabeth Warren have actually, and Senator Wyden, have floated a bill to have an investigation into FOSTA-SESTA, which, you know, for, for those who, who don't know the shorthand, this was a way that Section 230 was cut back, and protection was cut back. And the idea is that it could help stop sex trafficking. Well, all the data that we've seen so far is that it did not do that. And in some ways made sex trafficking,  you know, in the offline environment more dangerous. But having Congress actually step in and do and sponsor the research to figure out whether the bill that Congress passed did the thing that they said is, I think, just a critical piece of how we decide what we're going to do in order to protect individuals and innovation online.

JASON KELLEY
Yeah. For me, you know, it's actually tied to something that I know a lot of tech teams do which is like a sort of post-mortem. You know, after something happens, you really do need to investigate how we got there, what worked and what didn't, but in this case we all know, at least at EFF, that this was a bad bill.

CINDY COHN
Yeah, I mean, sometimes it might be just taking what we know anecdotally and turning it into something that Congress can more easily see and digest. Um, I think the other thing, it's just impossible to talk with or about Senator Wyden without talking about national security because he has just been heroic in his efforts to try to make sure that we don't trade privacy off for security. And that we recognize that these two things are linked and that by lifting up privacy, we're lifting up national security.
And by reducing privacy, we're not actually making ourselves safer. And he really has done more for this. And I think what was heartening about this conversation was that, you know, he talked about how he convinced national security hawks to support something that stood with privacy, this story about kind of really talking about how most of the Americans abroad are affiliated in one way or another with the U.S. military, people who are stationed abroad and their families, and how standing up for their privacy and framing it that way, you know, ultimately led to some success for this. Now, we've got a long ways to go, and I think he'd be the first one to agree. But the kind of doggedness and willingness to be in there for the long haul and talk to the national security folks about how, how these two values support each other is something that he has really proven that he's willing to do and it's so important.

JASON KELLEY
Yeah, that's exactly right, I think, as well. And it's also terrific that he's looking to the future, you know, we do know that he's thinking about these things, you know, 702 has been an issue for a long time and he's still focused on it, but what did you think of his thoughts about what our coming challenges are — things like how to deal with data in in a post-Dobbs world, for example?

CINDY COHN
Oh, I think he's right on, right on it. He's recognizing, I think as a lot of people have, that the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade has really made it clear to a lot of people how vulnerable we are, based upon the data that we have to leave behind in what we do every day. Now you can do things to try to protect them, but there's only so much we can do right now without changes in the law and changes in the way things go because you know, your phone needs to know where you are in order to ring when somebody calls you or ping when somebody texts you.
So we need legal answers and he's correct that this is really coming into the fore right now. I think he's also thinking about the challenges that artificial intelligence are bringing. So I really appreciate that he's already thinking about how we fix the internet, you know, in the coming years, not just right now.

JASON KELLEY
I'm really glad we had this bouquet-throwing contest, I think was what he called it. Something like that. But yeah, I think it's great to have an ally and have them be in the Senate and I know he feels the same way about us.

CINDY COHN
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, part of the way we get to a better internet is to recognize the people who are doing the right thing. And so, you know, we spend a lot of time at EFF throwing rocks at the people who are doing the wrong thing. And that's really important too. But occasionally, you know, we get to throw some bouquets to the people who are fighting the good fight.

[THEME MUSIC FADES IN]

JASON KELLEY

Thanks for joining us for this episode of How To Fix the Internet.
If you have feedback or suggestions, we'd love to hear from you. Visit EFF.org/podcast and click on listener feedback. While you're there, you can become a member, donate, maybe pick up some merch and just see what's happening in digital rights this week and every week.
We’ve got a newsletter, EFFector, as well as social media accounts on many, many, many platforms.
This podcast is licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, and includes music licensed Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported by their creators.
In this episode you heard Kalte Ohren by Alex and Drops of H10 (The Filtered Water Treatment) by J. Lang
Our theme music is by Nat Keefe of BeatMower with Reed Mathis
How to Fix the Internet is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program in public understanding of science and technology.
We’ll talk to you again soon.
I’m Jason Kelley.

CINDY COHN
And I’m Cindy Cohn.

Reducing pesticide use while increasing effectiveness

MIT Latest News - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 12:00am

Farming can be a low-margin, high-risk business, subject to weather and climate patterns, insect population cycles, and other unpredictable factors. Farmers need to be savvy managers of the many resources they deal, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides are among their major recurring expenses.

Despite the importance of these chemicals, a lack of technology that monitors and optimizes sprays has forced farmers to rely on personal experience and rules of thumb to decide how to apply these chemicals. As a result, these chemicals tend to be over-sprayed, leading to their runoff into waterways and buildup up in the soil.

That could change, thanks to a new approach of feedback-optimized spraying, invented by AgZen, an MIT spinout founded in 2020 by Professor Kripa Varanasi and Vishnu Jayaprakash SM ’19, PhD ’22.

Over the past decade, AgZen’s founders have developed products and technologies to control the interactions of droplets and sprays with plant surfaces. The Boston-based venture-backed company launched a new commercial product in 2024 and is currently piloting another related product. Field tests of both have shown the products can help farmers spray more efficiently and effectively, using fewer chemicals overall.

“Worldwide, farms spend approximately $60 billion a year on pesticides. Our objective is to reduce the number of pesticides sprayed and lighten the financial burden on farms without sacrificing effective pest management,” Varanasi says.

Getting droplets to stick

While the world pesticide market is growing rapidly, a lot of the pesticides sprayed don’t reach their target. A significant portion bounces off the plant surfaces, lands on the ground, and becomes part of the runoff that flows to streams and rivers, often causing serious pollution. Some of these pesticides can be carried away by wind over very long distances.

“Drift, runoff, and poor application efficiency are well-known, longstanding problems in agriculture, but we can fix this by controlling and monitoring how sprayed droplets interact with leaves,” Varanasi says.

With support from MIT Tata Center and the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, Varanasi and his team analyzed how droplets strike plant surfaces, and explored ways to increase application efficiency. This research led them to develop a novel system of nozzles that cloak droplets with compounds that enhance the retention of droplets on the leaves, a product they call EnhanceCoverage.

Field studies across regions — from Massachusetts to California to Italy and France —showed that this droplet-optimization system could allow farmers to cut the amount of chemicals needed by more than half because more of the sprayed substances would stick to the leaves.

Measuring coverage

However, in trying to bring this technology to market, the researchers faced a sticky problem: Nobody knew how well pesticide sprays were adhering to the plants in the first place, so how could AgZen say that the coverage was better with its new EnhanceCoverage system?

“I had grown up spraying with a backpack on a small farm in India, so I knew this was an issue,” Jayaprakash says. “When we spoke to growers, they told me how complicated spraying is when you’re on a large machine. Whenever you spray, there are so many things that can influence how effective your spray is. How fast do you drive the sprayer? What flow rate are you using for the chemicals? What chemical are you using? What’s the age of the plants, what’s the nozzle you’re using, what is the weather at the time? All these things influence agrochemical efficiency.”

Agricultural spraying essentially comes down to dissolving a chemical in water and then spraying droplets onto the plants. “But the interaction between a droplet and the leaf is complex,” Varanasi says. “We were coming in with ways to optimize that, but what the growers told us is, hey, we’ve never even really looked at that in the first place.”

Although farmers have been spraying agricultural chemicals on a large scale for about 80 years, they’ve “been forced to rely on general rules of thumb and pick all these interlinked parameters, based on what’s worked for them in the past. You pick a set of these parameters, you go spray, and you’re basically praying for outcomes in terms of how effective your pest control is,” Varanasi says.

Before AgZen could sell farmers on the new system to improve droplet coverage, the company had to invent a way to measure precisely how much spray was adhering to plants in real-time.

Comparing before and after

The system they came up with, which they tested extensively on farms across the country last year, involves a unit that can be bolted onto the spraying arm of virtually any sprayer. It carries two sensor stacks, one just ahead of the sprayer nozzles and one behind. Then, built-in software running on a tablet shows the operator exactly how much of each leaf has been covered by the spray. It also computes how much those droplets will spread out or evaporate, leading to a precise estimate of the final coverage.

“There’s a lot of physics that governs how droplets spread and evaporate, and this has been incorporated into software that a farmer can use,” Varanasi says. “We bring a lot of our expertise into understanding droplets on leaves. All these factors, like how temperature and humidity influence coverage, have always been nebulous in the spraying world. But now you have something that can be exact in determining how well your sprays are doing.”

“We’re not only measuring coverage, but then we recommend how to act,” says Jayaprakash, who is AgZen’s CEO. “With the information we collect in real-time and by using AI, RealCoverage tells operators how to optimize everything on their sprayer, from which nozzle to use, to how fast to drive, to how many gallons of spray is best for a particular chemical mix on a particular acre of a crop.”

The tool was developed to prove how much AgZen’s EnhanceCoverage nozzle system (which will be launched in 2025) improves coverage. But it turns out that monitoring and optimizing droplet coverage on leaves in real-time with this system can itself yield major improvements.

“We worked with large commercial farms last year in specialty and row crops,” Jayaprakash says. “When we saved our pilot customers up to 50 percent of their chemical cost at a large scale, they were very surprised.” He says the tool has reduced chemical costs and volume in fallow field burndowns, weed control in soybeans, defoliation in cotton, and fungicide and insecticide sprays in vegetables and fruits. Along with data from commercial farms, field trials conducted by three leading agricultural universities have also validated these results.

“Across the board, we were able to save between 30 and 50 percent on chemical costs and increase crop yields by enabling better pest control,” Jayaprakash says. “By focusing on the droplet-leaf interface, our product can help any foliage spray throughout the year, whereas most technological advancements in this space recently have been focused on reducing herbicide use alone.” The company now intends to lease the system across thousands of acres this year.

And these efficiency gains can lead to significant returns at scale, he emphasizes: In the U.S., farmers currently spend $16 billion a year on chemicals, to protect about $200 billion of crop yields.

The company launched its first product, the coverage optimization system called RealCoverage, this year, reaching a wide variety of farms with different crops and in different climates. “We’re going from proof-of-concept with pilots in large farms to a truly massive scale on a commercial basis with our lease-to-own program,” Jayaprakash says.

“We’ve also been tapped by the USDA to help them evaluate practices to minimize pesticides in watersheds,” Varanasi says, noting that RealCoverage can also be useful for regulators, chemical companies, and agricultural equipment manufacturers.

Once AgZen has proven the effectiveness of using coverage as a decision metric, and after the RealCoverage optimization system is widely in practice, the company will next roll out its second product, EnhanceCoverage, designed to maximize droplet adhesion. Because that system will require replacing all the nozzles on a sprayer, the researchers are doing pilots this year but will wait for a full rollout in 2025, after farmers have gained experience and confidence with their initial product.

“There is so much wastage,” Varanasi says. “Yet farmers must spray to protect crops, and there is a lot of environmental impact from this. So, after all this work over the years, learning about how droplets stick to surfaces and so on, now the culmination of it in all these products for me is amazing, to see all this come alive, to see that we’ll finally be able to solve the problem we set out to solve and help farmers.”

An amplified groundwater recharge response to climate change

Nature Climate Change - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 12:00am

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 12 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41558-024-01955-x

Groundwater recharge replenishes aquifers and enables them to sustain irrigated agriculture and household water access, but the sensitivity of recharge to climate change remains unclear. Our analysis of global recharge rates demonstrates their sensitivity to climatic conditions, implying that amplified and nonlinear impacts of climate change on recharge rates are likely.

Groundwater recharge is sensitive to changing long-term aridity

Nature Climate Change - Tue, 03/12/2024 - 12:00am

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 12 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41558-024-01953-z

How groundwater recharge changes with global warming is not well constrained. Here, the authors use an empirical relationship to show that groundwater recharge is more sensitive to aridity changes than expected, implying a strong response of water resources to climate change.

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