Active and former military among those most opposed to autonomous weaponry
AMHERST, Mass. – The results of a new survey by the University of Massachusetts Amherst show that a majority of Americans across the political spectrum oppose the outsourcing of lethal military and defense targeting decisions to machines. The opposition to autonomous weaponry is bipartisan, with the strongest opposition on the far left and far right, and among active and former members of the military.
A random sample of 1,000 Americans was asked how they felt about military technology that could take humans out
AMHERST, Mass. – Today the National Academy of Sciences announced a three-year, $271,930 grant to chemist Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to develop, test and deploy new, sensitive, reliable and affordable inkjet-printed, nanoparticle-based test strips for detecting disease-causing bacteria in drinking water, with researchers at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan.
AMHERST, Mass. – The DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst will welcome 30 international scholars from July 7-14 to participate in its seventh biennial Summer Film Institute. This year’s institute, held on the Smith College campus and titled “DEFA & Amerika: Culture Wars, Culture Contact,” will explore East Germany’s filmic relationship to the USA during the Cold War.
AMHERST, Mass. – Leading Bluefin tuna researchers at the universities of Massachusetts and Maine issued a rebuttal to a “factsheet” they say is an “irresponsible distortion of the information available” issued by the Pew Charitable Trusts this week, as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna’s (ICCAT) expert working groups meet in Montréal beginning today to discuss tuna stocks.
AMHERST, Mass. – Reporting this month in Molecular Microbiology, Peter Chien and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst describe using a combination of biochemistry and mass spectrometry to “trap” scores of new candidate substrates of the protease ClpXP to reveal how protein degradation is critical to cell cycle progression and bacterial development. The new understanding could lead to identifying new antibiotic targets.
AMHERST, Mass. – President Barack Obama’s office recently named computer science education pioneer Beverly Woolf at the University of Massachusetts Amherst a Presidential Innovation Fellow for 2013, recognizing her leadership in designing software tutors that respond to a student’s mood and personal learning pace, for example, to dramatically improve lesson effectiveness.
AMHERST, Mass. – Rebecca Spencer, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts and a former student-athlete, has been named the campus’s faculty athletic representative to the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Spencer will report directly to Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy and serve as a key advisor on intercollegiate athletics. The faculty athletic representative is also a member of the Faculty Senate’s Athletic Council.
AMHERST, Mass. – In the cover story for the journal Genetics this month, neurobiologist Dan Chase and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst describe a new experimental technique they developed that will allow scientists to study the function of individual proteins in individual cell types in a living organism.
AMHERST, Mass. – Dr. Bruce H. Kraut, chief of pediatrics at Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Fla., has been named director of University Health Services at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.