<p>Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance genius. Not only did he paint masterpieces of art, but he was an obsessive scientist and inventor, dreaming up complex machines centuries ahead of his time, including parachutes, armored tanks, hang gliders, and robots. On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, with the help of biographer Walter Isaacson, NOVA investigates the secrets of Leonardo’s success. How did his scientific curiosity, from dissections of cadavers to studies of optics, shape his genius and help him create perhaps the most famous painting of all time, the &quot;Mona Lisa&quot;? (Premiered November 13, 2019)</p>

<p>Discover the science behind Leonardo da Vinci&#x27;s masterpieces—and Mona Lisa&#x27;s iconic smile.</p>

Decoding da Vinci

<p></p><p>In a new age of information, rapid innovation, and globalization, how can we prepare our children to compete? Once the envy of the world, American schools are now in trouble. Test scores show our kids lag far behind their peers from other industrialized countries, and as the divide between rich and poor grows wider, the goal of getting all kids ready for college and the workforce gets harder by the day. How can the latest research help us fix education in America? Can the science of learning—including new insights from neuroscientists, psychologists, and educators—reveal how kids’ brains work and tell us which techniques are most likely to engage and inspire growing minds? What role should technology play in the classroom? Teachers, students, parents, and scientists take center stage as NOVA explores a new vision for the “School of the Future.”</p>

<p>How can the science of learning help us rethink the future of education for all children?</p>

School of the Future

<p>Rockets are becoming cheaper and more powerful than ever before thanks to stunning new technologies. As companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic make space more accessible, and NASA returns to crewed spaceflight, a new era of space exploration seems to be on the horizon. But will this seeming rocket Renaissance become more than just hype? NOVA explores the latest rocket technologies and the growing role private citizens may have in space. (Premiered February 13, 2019)</p>

<p>With new technologies, NASA and private companies are promising a new renaissance in space travel.</p>

Rise of the Rockets

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<p>Scientists and engineers fight to save Notre Dame Cathedral after the 2019 fire.</p>
<p>When the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral erupted in flames in April of 2019, firefighters battled for nine grueling hours to save the historic landmark. Still, Paris came alarmingly close to losing more than 800 years of history. Now engineers are in a different race against time: to rebuild the roof and secure the medieval structure of Notre Dame. Underneath the charred scaffolding and vaulted ceilings of the cathedral, scientists study the components of Notre Dame’s iconic structure to puzzle out how best to repair it. (<b>Premiering November 25 at 9 pm</b>)</p>





<p>Scientists and engineers fight to save Notre Dame Cathedral after the 2019 fire.</p>

Saving Notre Dame





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>On March 20, as severe cases of COVID-19 spiked in northern Italy, emergency medicine doctor Marco Garrone paused during a chaotic shift <a href="https://twitter.com/drmarcogarrone/status/1241135134188937218?s=20">to tweet</a> a photo: two patients, next to each other in hospital beds, with arcs of tubing connecting them to the same ventilator. “This is what we are down to,” he wrote. “Splitting ventilators, and facing serious dilemmas like choosing who will be actually ventilated when everybody should. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TakeThisSeriously?src=hash">#TakeThisSeriously</a>”</p><p>A month later, as caseloads skyrocketed across the pond in New York City, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital hurried to draft protocols for ventilator sharing. And around the same time, an emergency medicine doctor in Michigan named Charlene Babcock posted a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClq978oohY">YouTube tutorial</a> featuring step-by-step directions on how to modify a ventilator so it can accommodate multiple patients. That video racked up nearly a million views in the ensuing weeks.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>“Here’s my disclaimer,” Babcock says to the camera. “This is off-label use of the ventilator.” But, she adds, extreme circumstances may call for measures that otherwise would be deemed too risky. “If it was me, and I had four patients—and they all needed intubation, and I only had one ventilator—I would simply have a shared discussion with all four families and say: ‘I can pick one to live, or we can try to have all four live.’”</p><p>The appearance of ventilator sharing (or “coventilating”) this spring in places where the novel coronavirus has hit the most severely prompts a number of questions: How does a ventilator work? Why is it possible for more than one patient to use a ventilator at once? And if it’s possible, why aren’t more doctors in hard-hit areas doing it? Good news: This is the first in a NOVA series answering burning coronavirus questions just like these.</p></div>
  

  
      

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  <div class="rich-text"><p>Have a COVID-related question for us? Follow the #CovidQs hashtag on Facebook and Twitter to submit your inquiry or ask us on Reddit @novapbs.</p></div>
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      <div class="rich-text"><h3><b>How do ventilators work? </b></h3><p>Treating a patient in extreme respiratory distress is “like staring out the window and seeing people free fall,” says Albert Kwon, an anesthesiologist at New York Medical College. Doctors don’t know how long their patients have been “falling” or how long they’ll continue to fall without intervention; they must make an on-the-spot assessment about whether a parachute is necessary.</p><p>In that case, they can choose from several options, ranging from less to more invasive. All ventilators provide oxygen and promote its absorption in the bloodstream while also helping rid the body of the resulting carbon dioxide. The ones you’ve probably heard the most about during the COVID-19 pandemic provide a stream of air into the lungs via a tube inserted into a patient’s throat.</p><p>This stream of air exerts positive pressure, which is the opposite of how breathing usually works. When we breathe in on our own, our diaphragm muscles move down in our chests, increasing available space and creating an area of <i>negative</i> pressure that causes air to rush in. (There is one ventilator that works on negative pressure, which you’ve probably heard of: <a href="https://amhistory.si.edu/polio/howpolio/ironlung.htm">the iron lung</a>.) </p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="mouselungs.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/mouselungs.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>High-magnification images show the surface of alveoli in healthy mouse lungs (left) and lungs with ventilator-induced damage (right). Image Credit: Kate Hamlington Smith, University of Colorado School of Medicine</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>One reason COVID-19 patients need to use ventilators is because their lungs become so stiff that the diaphragm isn’t strong enough to complete its normal movement, causing breathing to slow or stop. Ventilation also keeps the lungs inflated while they heal. That’s important because inflamed capillaries in sick lungs can leak a protein-rich fluid, increasing surface tension in the liquid that normally coats the lungs and making them vulnerable to collapse. </p><p>But even healthy lungs are at risk during this process, because their tissues are not usually subject to positive pressure. That means that getting pressure levels wrong during ventilation can be dangerous. Too low, and a patient doesn’t get enough oxygen. Too high, and the lungs can become overinflated, causing their tissue to tear.</p><p>At first glance, the ventilator used in the most severe COVID-19 cases looks fairly simple: a tube that goes down the patient’s throat, two hoses that connect the tube to the machine itself (one for pushing air into the lungs and one for bringing carbon dioxide back out of the body); seals, valves, and filters to keep gases moving in the right direction; and a central case. But inside that case lives a much more complicated device, replete with pressure, flow, and oxygen sensors, and sets of circuitry and alarms associated with each element. A standard hospital ventilator has 1,500 parts, features several layers of fail-safes, and can cost around $30,000. </p><p>“The number of safeties that have to be on a medical device like this is amazing,” says Nevan Hanumara, a research scientist in MIT’s Precision Engineering Research Group. “This is second only to aerospace.”</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="iStock-1216256777.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="533" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/iStock-1216256777.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>A medical ventilator. Image Credit: Nenov, iStock</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <h3><b>Why isn’t ventilator sharing more common? </b></h3><p>Ventilators have such complicated inner workings in part because ventilation is much more involved than just turning on a hose. The process requires doctors to consider myriad disease factors and patient measurements, making it almost an art rather than a science. &quot;Tidal volume,&quot; for example, refers to the amount of air in each breath, &quot;resistance&quot; to the ease with which air moves through the lungs, and &quot;compliance&quot; to how stiff or flexible the lung tissue itself is. Clinicians can also adjust how fast patients breathe and regulate air pressure at each stage of those breaths.</p><p>All this means that while setting up coventilation is relatively simple—in her YouTube video, Babcock simply uses a cheap plastic adaptor to make space for more hoses—that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe. The first problem, Hanumara points out, is that coventilating requires using the same pressure with two very different sets of lungs. The healthier lungs receive more air because they inflate more easily, while the sicker, less flexible lungs won’t get as much.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Secondly, he adds, sensors calibrated for one person’s measurements may not work for two, meaning the appropriate alarms might not be triggered if there is an emergency. Some COVID-19 patients, for example, experience sudden, catastrophic changes in their lung health; without alarms, it’s much more difficult to catch these changes in time. And finally there’s the matter of cross-contamination. Although two coronavirus patients sharing a ventilator can’t give each other their infections, they might still swap pneumonia microbes, or even tuberculosis.</p><p>Given these risks, research on coventilation has divided the respiratory care community. Among the more recent studies, Assistant Director of Research at SUNY Downstate Department of Emergency Medicine Lorenzo Paladino successfully coventilated four sheep for 12 hours in 2008. (Garrone, the Italian doctor, looked to that study when setting up his coventilated patients in March.) Paladino and his coauthors chose sheep for their study because adults have similar respiratory physiology and weight as humans, and aimed for 12 hours because emergency protocols allow for delivery of equipment from the Strategic National Stockpile anywhere in the continental US within that time.</p><p>The study was prompted by the 2001 anthrax attacks and 2003 SARS outbreak, Paladino says, and was meant to provide a stopgap “bridge” measure for emergency physicians with inadequate supplies waiting for backup in a disaster situation—not to replace single ventilation in the long term. Before COVID-19, the technique was most famously used after the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting, when a single ER saw a huge surge of gunshot patients and coventilated them to keep them alive while they waited for surgery.</p><p>Paladino compares the technique to a life vest. “We don’t condone crossing the Atlantic in a life vest,” he says. “But if I’m in the middle of the Atlantic, I would rather have a life vest than not. And I would hope that a boat is coming to pick me up soon.”</p></div>
  

  
      <div class="rich-text"><h3><b>The future of coventilation</b></h3><p>Not every patient is a good candidate for coventilating, Paladino stresses. Patients with active asthma should be excluded, as should those who tend to “fight” the ventilator, trying to draw a breath when the machine is expelling air, or vice versa. But even with these caveats in place, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, six major organizations—including heavyweights like the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the American Society of Anesthesiologists—have made statements against coventilating, judging it too risky and ethically questionable to be worth considering. “There’s a very legitimate concern that instead of saving two people, you just highly increased the risk of mortality for two people,” says Bradford Smith, a biomedical engineer at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. </p><p>These serious risks point to the urgency of the recent situations in Italy and New York that have led doctors to try coventilation. Smith, who recently published a “preprint” (a not-yet-peer-reviewed preliminary study) suggesting an algorithm to match patients for safer coventilation, runs down the list of options he would try before resorting to the technique: fixing old, broken ventilators; using available machines normally used for surgical anesthesia; attaching endotracheal tubes to similar but less-invasive machines used for sleep apnea. “This is so rife with problems that the first time I heard about it, I thought, &#x27;This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’” Smith says. “But people are taking steps to mitigate all those issues.”</p><p>Coventilating practitioners can use filters between patients to help prevent cross-contamination, for example. And protocols drawn up by Columbia Presbyterian and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this spring suggest workarounds to allow for some adjustment of ventilator settings, better monitoring of both patients, and use of some built-in alarms.</p><p>As in Paladino’s case, most research on coventilation stems from a drive to prepare for the worst. Smith says he was initially inspired to work on his algorithms because he was afraid he would have to use them. (“With the news coming out of Italy, I was on these chain emails of critical care physicians, and things sounded pretty dire,” he says.) And the fact that HHS thought it necessary to convene a taskforce in Washington D.C.—which included Paladino and Babcock—to produce coventilation guidelines for future use speaks to the severity of both the pandemic and predictions for global health over the next two years.</p><p>Smith hasn’t had to use his algorithms, but he fears fall flu season may provide another opportunity. He also wonders if they may be of use in other places around the world where ventilator supplies are meager, to give physicians and respiratory therapists valuable context about how different types of patients may react to coventilation.</p><p>“This is not how nations, or even states, deal with a ventilator problem,” Paladino says. Instead, he sees coventilation playing an important role for communities that are rural or isolated, or lack access to medical care. Imagine a small hospital that owns just three ventilators and then receives six desperately sick COVID-19 patients in one night. Then what? “One night you see a spike, and you ask for help from the neighbors,” he says. In the meantime, coventilating just might keep those patients alive.</p><p></p><p><i>Stream</i> <b><i>Decoding COVID-19</i></b><i> starting on Wednesday, May 13 at 7/6c on the PBS Video app or online to learn more:</i></p><div>
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Less-invasive ventilators use a mask rather than a tube inserted into the patient's throat. Image Credit: Juanmonino, iStock

<p>The science of coventilation for coronavirus cases illustrates a complicated dilemma.</p>

Covid-19 patients sharing ventilators is possible—but not ideal





  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Hello, NOVA fans! We understand that many of you may be spending more quality time at home than usual. And, as schools across the country remain closed, fostering student learning at home is a top priority.</p><p>In the upcoming weeks, we’ll be sharing collections of some of our favorite NOVA films—all organized by subject to make bingeing, learning, and entertainment as easy as possible for science lovers of all ages.</p><p>Have you ever wondered about the ethics of genetic engineering or considered whether autonomous vehicles will someday take over our roads? Get ready: The subject of this collection is “Technology.”</p><p></p><h3><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/decoding-da-vinci/">Decoding da Vinci (2019)</a></h3></div>
  

  
      

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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance genius. Not only did he paint masterpieces of art, but he was an obsessive scientist and inventor, dreaming up complex machines centuries ahead of his time, including parachutes, armored tanks, hang gliders, and robots. On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, with the help of biographer Walter Isaacson, NOVA investigates the secrets of Leonardo’s success. How did his scientific curiosity, from dissections of cadavers to studies of optics, shape his genius and help him create perhaps the most famous painting of all time, the &quot;Mona Lisa&quot;?</p><p></p><h3><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/rise-of-the-rockets/">Rise of the Rockets (2019)</a></h3></div>
  

  
      

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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Rockets are becoming cheaper and more powerful than ever before thanks to stunning new technologies. As companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic make space more accessible, and NASA returns to crewed spaceflight, a new era of space exploration seems to be on the horizon. But will this seeming rocket Renaissance become more than just hype? NOVA explores the latest rocket technologies and the growing role private citizens may have in space.</p><p></p><h3><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/look-whos-driving/">Look Who&#x27;s Driving (2019)</a></h3></div>
  

  
      

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      <div class="rich-text"><p>After years of anticipation, autonomous vehicles are now being tested on public roads around the world. As ambitious innovators race to develop what they see as the next high-tech pot of gold, some experts warn there are still daunting challenges ahead, including how to train artificial intelligence to be better than humans at making life-and-death decisions. How do self-driving cars work? How close are we to large-scale deployment of them? And will we ever be able to trust AI with our lives?</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><h3><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/school-of-the-future/">School of the Future (2016)</a></h3></div>
  

  
      

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      <div class="rich-text"><p>In a new age of information, rapid innovation, and globalization, how can we prepare our children to compete? Once the envy of the world, American schools are now in trouble. Test scores show our kids lag far behind their peers from other industrialized countries, and as the divide between rich and poor grows wider, the goal of getting all kids ready for college and the workforce gets harder by the day. How can the latest research help us fix education in America? Can the science of learning—including new insights from neuroscientists, psychologists, and educators—reveal how kids’ brains work and tell us which techniques are most likely to engage and inspire growing minds? What role should technology play in the classroom? Teachers, students, parents, and scientists take center stage as NOVA explores a new vision for the “School of the Future.”</p><p></p><h3><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/nova-wonders-can-we-make-life/">NOVA Wonders: Can We Make Life? (2018)</a></h3></div>
  

  
      

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      <div class="rich-text"><p>&quot;It&#x27;s alive!&quot; Since Dr. Frankenstein spoke those famous words, we&#x27;ve been alternately enthralled and terrified by the idea of creating life in the lab. Now, a revolution in genetic engineering and thrilling innovations in synthetic biology are bringing that dream—or nightmare, as the case may be—closer to reality. New tools allow researchers to use cells to create their own DNA and edit it into existing genomes with more ease and less cost than ever before. Along with renewed hopes for treating some genetic diseases, there&#x27;s serious talk of using the newest technologies to bring long-extinct animals back from the dead – like the team hoping to resurrect the woolly mammoth. Science fiction is quickly becoming science fact. Another daring genetic experiment to bioengineer animals could prevent Lyme disease. But the power to make life comes with deep ethical questions. What are the potential rewards—and dangers—of tinkering with nature? <i>NOVA Wonders</i> explores the benefits and the burden of risk surrounding the controversial new technology.</p></div>
  

  
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<p>Five episodes exploring the revolution and ethics of technology.</p>

Five Technology Documentaries Streaming Right Now

<p>Discover how a museum curator and computer scientists used a CT scan of a burnt scroll to virtually unravel and read an ancient biblical text in this media gallery from NOVA <i>Dead Sea Scroll Detectives</i>.</p>

Using X-Ray Technology to Read the Unreadable





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>When Keith Rose joined the Occupy St. Louis movement in 2011, he didn&#x27;t heed the advice of a fellow demonstrator to wear bandanas to cover his face. The police had cameras out, but Rose didn&#x27;t think they were doing much with the photos they were taking.</p><p>When he joined the Ferguson protests a few years later, it seemed to him that law enforcement had indeed started to put together a file on him. He had not been arrested at that point, but after a few run-ins with police where they knew things like where he had been, who he had been with, or what he had said, he thought it seemed pretty clear that they were monitoring him.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>&quot;It really upset me and got me more concerned with surveillance,&quot; Rose says.</p><p>During the protests, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department opened a surveillance hub called the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC). This data center aggregates information gathered through technologies like license plate readers, sensors that can detect and locate gunfire, and cameras spread across the city. Most of RTCC, as well as much of the technology that powers it, was not funded by the city, but through grants and public-private partnerships with companies like Motorola. That approach, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), allowed the police department to <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/how-shift-power-police-people">sidestep going to the city&#x27;s elected Board of Aldermen</a> for approval and city funds.</p><p>&quot;It&#x27;s really disturbing what this says about the future of big tech being able to expand its own power,&quot; Rose says.</p><p>But with an effort called <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/community-control-over-police-surveillance?redirect=feature/community-control-over-police-surveillance">Community Control Over Police Surveillance</a> (CCOPS), the ACLU is attempting to give citizens more control over the technology that police could use to monitor them. Launched in 2016, CCOPS aims to help local communities draft and pass laws giving them oversight of any surveillance technology that law enforcement agencies or the government want to deploy.</p><p>The ACLU works with local lawmakers to craft each law, changing it to meet the community&#x27;s specific needs. A dozen cities, plus San Francisco&#x27;s BART system, have passed CCOPS laws. In addition to St. Louis, at least another dozen cities, plus the state of Maine, are in the process of adopting their own versions of the law.</p><p>St. Louis Alderman John Collins-Muhammad helped <a href="https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/city-laws/board-bills/boardbill.cfm?bbDetail=true&amp;BBId=10831&amp;fbclid=IwAR2dISUYbLnHGl-n7Tys97ijbIKg8rbMMWR9xdxZZI24kjj1o0bZZoFWTPU">introduce CCOPS legislation</a> in 2017 and 2018, and recently <a href="https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/city-laws/board-bills/boardbill.cfm?bbDetail=true&amp;BBId=13371">reintroduced</a> an updated version. Collins-Muhammad said that he and the rest of the Board got community input and updated each iteration. He thinks the latest version of the bill will pass this year. The law would create a process for board approval of any new surveillance technology, require annual reports for equipment purchases, strengthen sunshine laws around law enforcement data, and call for publishing crime reduction statistics. The bill tries to balance the concerns of both the public and the police, Collins-Muhammad says.</p><p>&quot;We don&#x27;t want to invade privacy,&quot; he says. &quot;But we also don&#x27;t want to limit the police in doing their jobs.&quot;</p><p>The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has also contributed comments on the bill and has been supportive of it in general, Collins-Muhammad says. In a statement, Keith Barrett, a sergeant with ‎the Department, said that civil liberties and surveillance technology can coexist if used in a responsible manner while still helping police do their job.</p><p>“The advancement of technological resources continues to allow our department to deter, document, and reduce crime,” Barrett says. “The technology that is deployed continues to aid our efforts to prevent crime and apprehend criminals. We look forward to working with all our community partners in ensuring transparency and accountability.”</p><p>Privacy Watch, a group of nonprofits in St. Louis, took part in the discussion around the bill. It wanted the law to address issues related to bias with the technology, privacy, freedom of speech, and the cost to taxpayers.</p><p>&quot;There are so many layers of concern,&quot; says Kendra Tatum, a St. Louis resident and an organizer for the Organization for Black Struggle, a member group of Privacy Watch. &quot;People refer to the phrase ‘Big Brother’ jokingly a lot, but we all know that this type of stuff happens.&quot;</p><p>Collins-Muhammad says he knows the threat personally, having experienced surveillance when he was an activist during the Ferguson protests. He said it was “scary” and got him interested in creating policy that could limit that experience for others in the future.</p><p>&quot;This is something very important to me,&quot; he says.</p><h3><b>An AI Panopticon</b></h3><p>While the Real Time Crime Center doesn&#x27;t use AI-powered tools yet, it is technically easy to overlay face recognition software after cameras are in use. The proposed CCOPS legislation in St. Louis wouldn&#x27;t outlaw the technology, but would require law enforcement to go through the Board of Aldermen if they want to use it.</p><p>AI-powered surveillance technology has <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/ai-surveillance">spread across the world quickly</a>. ACLU&#x27;S <a href="https://www.aclu.org/report/dawn-robot-surveillance">Dawn of Robot Surveillance</a> report points out that this is occurring as camera technology is improving with higher resolution and night-vision capabilities. At the same time, more cities are installing centralized surveillance systems, with about <a href="https://www.sdmmag.com/articles/92407-rise-of-surveillance-camera-installed-base-slows">350 million surveillance cameras</a> across the world in 2016.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="surveillance2.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/surveillance2.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>With artificial intelligence, a lot of surveillance work can be automated, making AI game-changing technology. Image Credit: iStock, andreusK</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>The potential of facial recognition technology is perhaps most prominently on display in China. The government not only uses it to give out traffic tickets, and has passed laws mandating face scans for those signing up for internet or a new phone number, but has put it to work <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html">monitoring and imprisoning the Uighur minority</a>. By 2020, China plans to have more than <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-social-credit-system-surveillance-cameras/">600 million cameras operating</a>.</p><p>Beyond concerns over increased surveillance, facial recognition software has been shown to perform less well on dark skin. In a 2018 report called &quot;<a href="http://gendershades.org/">Gender Shades</a>,&quot; researchers Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru found that three commercially available systems performed no better than chance at identifying women with darker skin tones.</p><p>The ACLU did its own study showing that Rekognition, Amazon&#x27;s face recognition software, <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/amazons-face-recognition-falsely-matched-28">misidentified 28 members of Congress</a>. Forty percent of the algorithm’s mistakes were made in attempting to identify people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress. Amazon disputed the study and showed that with the recommended higher confidence threshold, which only lets the algorithm offer up matches if it is very sure it is right, the misidentifications disappear. However, one of the police departments<a href="https://gizmodo.com/defense-of-amazons-face-recognition-tool-undermined-by-1832238149">testing the software admitted</a> to not setting any confidence threshold.</p><p>That isn&#x27;t the only case of police departments using software in a way that the developers didn&#x27;t intend. A study by Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology <a href="https://www.flawedfacedata.com/">found that police fed celebrity photos</a> into face recognition software, along with sketches and photoshopped images.</p><p>There is a long history of surveillance in the U.S. according to Matt Cagle, an attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. Public and civil rights groups like the ACLU have fought against much of it, with varying levels of success. With AI, however, a lot of surveillance work can be automated, making AI game-changing technology.</p><p>&quot;If they can watch us, they can control us,&quot; Cagle says.</p><p>In fact, the face recognition conversation can be part of the larger conversation about government surveillance according to Chad Marlow, a senior advocacy and policy counsel at the ACLU, who is also overseeing CCOPS. The proliferation of technology like surveillance cameras and Stingrays—which mimic cell phone towers and send out signals that trick nearby phones into transmitting identifying information and data about their locations—can be reevaluated. Also, anything new developed, with or without AI capabilities, can be integrated in a way that the community is aware of and has some control over.</p><p>“In that way, we aren’t playing whack-a-mole,” Marlow says.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><h3><b>Drawbacks of Bans</b></h3><p>Four cities have gone further than community oversight with their CCOPS laws: Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and Somerville, Massachusetts have outright banned face recognition by the government. Earlier this year, the ACLU, along with another 60 groups, <a href="https://www.aclu.org/letter/coalition-letter-calling-federal-moratorium-face-recognition">sent a letter to Congress</a> asking for a federal moratorium on the use of facial recognition for law enforcement and immigration enforcement until Congress fully debates which practices should be allowed.</p><p>“This capability threatens to create a world where people are watched and identified as they attend a protest, congregate outside a place of worship, visit a medical provider, or simply go about their daily lives,” the letter said.</p><p>But Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and director of the Center for Data Innovation, says cities could also end up blocking better potential uses of face recognition tools out of fear of a surveillance state.</p><p>&quot;We&#x27;re not there yet,&quot; he says. &quot;A lot of the concerns there are premature.&quot;</p><p>Other law enforcement applications of the technology, like finding suspects or missing children, can be made safer with laws that create guardrails, like establishing accuracy rates for any software used. The areas that do matter get conflated with broader issues, like whether the police should be surveilling protestors at all, Castro said.</p><p>&quot;We can separate some of these issues without banning the technology,&quot; he says.</p><p>CCOPS laws only regulate government use of technology, and don&#x27;t stop private companies from using it. St. Louis has a handful of businesses, like corner stores, using cameras run by a local company called Blue Line Technology that says it <a href="https://www.kmov.com/news/local-former-cops-create-facial-recognition-technology-to-fight-crime/article_e7694d3a-7689-11e9-ab41-939fb5bbfa86.html">uses face recognition</a>. Another company called Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS) <a href="https://fox2now.com/2019/07/31/surveillance-company-offers-st-louis-6-6-million-crimefighting-tools-for-free/">offered millions of dollars in crime-fighting technology</a> to St. Louis for free.</p><p>But if the police wanted to plug AI-powered cameras from private property into their Real Time Crime Center or take PSS up on their offer, CCOPS would kick in, forcing the police to bring the project to the Board of Aldermen, points out Marlow. Then the community and its elected officials would decide the future they want to see in their city.</p><p>&quot;CCOPS sets up the conversation; it isn&#x27;t the conversation itself,&quot; he says.</p></div>
  

  
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With an effort called Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS), the ACLU is attempting to give citizens more control over the technology that police could use to monitor them. Image Credit: iStock, asxsoonxas

<p>As law enforcement agencies deploy AI-powered facial recognition systems, some communities are pushing back, insisting on having a say in how they’re used.</p>

Communities come face-to-face with the growing power of facial recognition technology

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<p>See the “Mona Lisa” as da Vinci once did.</p>
<p>An engineer used powerful lights, cameras, and computer software to digitally remove the varnish from the &quot;Mona Lisa,&quot; allowing people today to see the painting as Leonardo da Vinci created it.</p>
<p><b>Giving the &quot;Mona Lisa&quot; a Digital Makeover</b></p><p>Published: November 22, 2019</p><p></p><p><b>Walter Isaacson: </b>If we could just take that varnish off, we could see it the way Leonardo really did it. But I think French governments have fallen for less cause than trying to take the Mona Lisa out of circulation and clean it.</p><p><b>Narrator:</b> Perhaps there is another way. Could she be given a digital makeover?</p><p>That is what Pascal Cotte is trying to do. He has analyzed the &quot;Mona Lisa&quot; with a remarkably powerful camera and lights, which he demonstrates using a replica.</p><p><b>Pascal Cotte: </b>We make the measurements in the basement of the Louvre, inside the laboratory. It’s very emotional to have the painting in your hands without the frame. You can look at this painting under this very intense light, that reveal everything that you cannot see, usually.</p><p><b>Narrator:</b> Cotte’s extremely detailed scan of the &quot;Mona Lisa&quot; and his analysis of the optics and chemistry of paint reveal how the colors may have changed over time. It’s not just the varnish that yellows and darkens, but the pigments and oil in the paint itself.</p><p>Cotte’s challenge is to reverse engineer the effects of that aging.</p><p><b>Martin Kemp:</b> This is not just photoshopping it and messing around with the colors, which you and I could do and get tolerable results, but this is based on pigment analysis.</p><p><b>Narrator:</b> First, Cotte determines how much the varnish has darkened and with his computer, peels it away. Next, he identifies what the color of each pigment would have looked like 500 years ago and recreates them to see the colors just as Leonardo did.</p><p><b> Cotte: </b>For example, we know that Leonardo make the sky with white lead and lapis lazuli. So, we have a software that removes the wrong colors to obtain the genuine color.</p><p><b>Narrator:</b> Then, pixel by pixel, Cotte restores those colors.</p><p>Suddenly, a greenish sky becomes brilliantly blue, and a bit of flush comes back to Lisa’s cheeks. Finally, as the French say, “voila!”</p><p><b>Kemp:</b> Suddenly she doesn’t look like a submarine goddess. She looks as if she’s in the fresh air, which is just terrific.</p><p><b>Narrator:</b> Cotte’s restoration has brought Lisa back to life, at least digitally closer to the state that Leonardo saw her.</p>
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Giving the "Mona Lisa" a Digital Makeover Hero

<p>See the “Mona Lisa” as da Vinci once did.</p>

Giving the "Mona Lisa" a Digital Makeover

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<p>An algorithm helps find buried lead, but can residents trust it?</p>
<p>Researchers are turning to AI to give workers the best chance of finding dangerous lead in Flint.</p>
<p><b>Artificial Intelligence is Helping Get the Lead Out of Flint</b></p><p>Published: November 19, 2019</p><p></p><p><b>Gina Luster:</b> We could be getting water from heaven but our infrastructure is so destroyed, by the time it makes it to me and my family, it’s no good. </p><p><b>Onscreen:</b> In 2014, Flint, Michigan changed water sources but didn’t properly treat the new water to prevent corroding water pipes resulting in eroded lead pipes and contaminated water across the city</p><p><b>Luster: </b>I will never trust what anyone says as far as the condition and quality of the water. In the back of my head, I&#x27;ll always be wondering.</p><p><b>Onscreen: </b>Officials denied that the water was unsafe for more than a year until activism by Flint residents brought national attention and pressure.</p><p>In 2016 the city began to replace the lead pipes. But there was a huge problem. They didn’t know where the thousands of lead pipes were.</p><p><b>Jacob Abernethy: </b>The city had essentially no records of what these lines were. The vast majority of the lead pipes were in the public portion of the line.</p><p>The problem is that the line is buried entirely underground. There is no way to find out what the material is unless you dig six feet underground and that’s very expensive</p><p><b>Onscreen:</b> To give workers the best chance of finding the lead, U. of Michigan researchers turned to a form of artificial intelligence (AI), that searches large collections of data looking for patterns. It’s called “machine learning” </p><p><b>Abernethy: </b>It first would check, is the age of the property above this value? Then, is the home located in this neighborhood? Then, has this home had a water test?</p><p><b>Onscreen: </b>Using census data and city records, the algorithm makes conclusions based on relationships it finds in the data.</p><p><b>Abernethy: </b>It takes all these little pieces of information and combines it into a single number which is a probability of a home having a dangerous pipe. </p><p><b>Onscreen: </b>The more information the ai model got about pipes in Flint, the more accurate the predictions became.</p><p><b>Abernethy: </b>When this project started, we had a total of 36 homes where we actually knew the service line material. </p><p>Now we have over 20,000 homes. Once you go from 36 to 20,000, the accuracy of a machine learning algorithm increases dramatically.</p><p><b>Onscreen:</b> The city of Flint started using the AI model to prioritize digging at homes that most likely had lead pipes. In 2016-2017, the algorithm successfully predicted which homes had lead about 81% of the time. </p><p><b>Abernethy: </b>That was a decent hit rate, it wasn&#x27;t perfect.</p><p><b>Onscreen: </b>But many residents objected to prioritizing some homes over others. </p><p><b>Maurice Davis: </b>When it&#x27;s something as devastating as the lead in this water, we don’t need predictions, we need 100% accuracy to right this wrong.</p><p>We need to actually dig holes, excavate the holes, look down in that hole and see copper-to-copper or  lead-to-copper. You come and replace my neighbor’s but you don’t replace mine according to a prediction? That don’t help nobody’s confidence.</p><p><b>Onscreen: </b>In 2018, the City hired a California-based contractor to accelerate replacement of lead pipes.</p><p>They stopped using AI to target specific homes and took a more blanket approach, inspecting neighborhoods across the city.</p><p><b>Abernethy:</b> They did a less targeted, less focused approach </p><p><b>Onscreen: </b>But only found lead in about 15 percent of the homes inspected </p><p><b>Abernethy: </b>When it became clear that the hit rate of this new contracting firm had gone down so dramatically, people were concerned about that and were trying to figure out why finite government resources were being used to try to replace pipes in homes that actually didn&#x27;t require replacement.</p><p><b>Onscreen:</b> A coalition of activists sought a court order demanding that the city first inspect homes expected to have lead.  </p><p>A settlement required the city to use the AI model. Now the hit rate has climbed back up, to over 70%. Still, many residents want physical confirmation that their pipes are safe.</p><p><b>Luster:</b> Once all of these agencies that are supposed to be put in place to protect you deceive you and lie to you, how do you ever gain that trust back? </p><p>The damage is permanently done to our bodies, our infrastructure. You can never forget that. Our pipes haven’t been changed yet. I don’t really know what our service line pipes are. I want a person down there with a shovel, literally down there touching that pipe.</p><p><b>Eric Schwartz: </b>There’s really no substitute for seeing someone dig in your front lawn, removing that lead pipe, and replacing it with a fresh copper pipe.</p><p>The goal is really just take advantage of all the information we have and remove the lead from the homes that actually have lead as quickly as possible so that no residents in Flint have to continue living with lead more than five years after the water has been switched.</p><p><b>Onscreen: </b>More than 8,000 lead pipes have been replaced so far.</p><p> No one knows how many remain. Researchers estimate there could be about 1,921 lead pipes remaining</p><p><b>Crowd: </b>Five years later, Flint is not fixed</p><p><b>E. Yvonne Coleman-Lewis: </b>There are things that will never change in my life or my family’s life as a result of this. </p><p>Until the water system is completely replaced, there will be little, if any, true trust in the water that comes from the tap.</p><p><b>Onscreen: </b>At least 12 residents died from illnesses related to the water crisis in Flint </p><p><b>Crowd: </b>Rest in peace. All of you fallen soldiers. That’s what you are.</p><p><b>Onscreen:</b> It’s estimated that in 2014-2015 alone, 140,000 people were exposed to dangerous levels of lead in Flint’s water including around 9,000 children.</p>
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Artificial Intelligence is Helping Get the Lead Out of Flint Hero

<p>An algorithm helps find buried lead, but can residents trust it?</p>

Topic: Tech & Engineering

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