Author Archives: Egg Syntax

DeepMind AI Program Increases Google Data Center Cooling Power Usage Efficiency by 40%

[This is the same company — and same approach — that developed the go-playing software that recently beat a leading professional player. -egg]

Alphabet’s DeepMind division reports they improved the overall power usage efficiency (PUE) of Google’s data centers by 15 percent after placing an AI program similar to a program taught to play Atari games in charge of managing a data center’s control systems. DeepMind and data center engineers report they’ve improved the cooling systems PUE consistently by up to 40 percent and that the program had achieved the lowest PUE the data center site had ever seen.

Demis Hassabisnoted that it was not only a cost savings, but also reduced the environmental impact of their data centers. Google reportedly used 4,402,836 MWh of electricity in 2014, or the equivalent of 366,903 U.S family homes according to Google Green. They’ve provided a carbon footprint estimate for serving an active Google user, which is defined as:

someone who does 25 searches and watches 60 minutes of YouTube a day, has a Gmail account and uses our other services, for whom Google emits about 8 grams of CO2 per day to serve. In other words, serving a Google user for a month is like driving a car one mile.

According to an initial report, the offset in cost savings could be hundreds of millions of dollars in savings over multiple years and will in-part, if not completely, pay for the 400 million pound, or more than $600 million DeepMind acquisition. It will also reportedly reduce their data center’s carbon-footprint-per-user. On how the program achieved the efficiency gains, DeepMind research engineer Rich Evans and Google data center engineer Jim Gao stated they:

accomplished this by taking the historical data that had already been collected by thousands of sensors within the data centre, data such as temperatures, power, pump speeds, setpoints, etc. and using it to train an ensemble of deep neural networks… then trained the neural networks on the average future PUE, which is defined as the ratio of the total building energy usage to the IT energy usage. We then trained two additional ensembles of deep neural networks to predict the future temperature and pressure of the data centre over the next hour. The purpose of these predictions is to simulate the recommended actions from the PUE model, to ensure that we do not go beyond any operating constraints.

Individual data center characteristics like climate and weather, each center’s unique site-specific architecture, and the interplay between different systems throughout the day had previously made creating a universal equation for optimizing PUE not possible. With the deep learning, convolutional neural network approach a single equation isn’t necessary because the program can learn to play in a game-like manner from the inputs being fed in from sensors and a reference to ideal outcomes. The engineers demonstrated how the PUE was affected for the site when the program was turned on and off. Hassabis said they had learned where gaps in their data center data capture were and that additional sensors would be deployed to further increase efficiency.

According to DeepMind, the same technology could potentially be used to improve power plant conversion efficiency, reducing semiconductor manufacturing and water usage, or helping manufacturing facilities increase throughput.

Source: DeepMind AI Program Increases Google Data Center Cooling Power Usage Efficiency by 40%

The Limits of Majority Rule > Publications > National Affairs

[George F. Will being surprisingly reasonable. -egg]

The second fallacy behind a passive judiciary deferring to majoritarian institutions is more fundamental. It is rooted in the fact that we know, because he said so, clearly and often, that Lincoln took his political bearings from the Declaration of Independence. We know that Lincoln believed, because the Declaration says so, that governments are instituted to secure our natural rights. These rights therefore pre-exist government. And they include the unenumerated ones affirmed in the Constitution’s Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

…

For many years and for several reasons, many of my fellow conservatives have unreflectively and imprudently celebrated “judicial restraint.” For many years, I, too, was guilty of this. The reasons for that celebration of restraint include an understandable disapproval of some of the more freewheeling constitutional improvisations of the Warren Court, and the reasonable belief that the law schools that train future judges, and the law reviews that influence current judges, are, on balance, not balanced — that they give short shrift to conservatism. It is, however, high time for conservatives to rethink what they should believe about the role of courts in the American regime.

Another reason many conservatives favor judicial deference and restraint is what can be called the conservative populist temptation. Conservatives are hardly immune to the temptation to pander — to preach that majorities are presumptively virtuous and that the things legislatures do are necessarily right because they reflect the will of the majority.

But the essential drama of democracy derives from the inherent tension between the natural rights of the individual and the constructed right of the community to make such laws as the majority deems necessary and proper.

Source: The Limits of Majority Rule > Publications > National Affairs

Medical benefits of dental floss unproven

[Well, this is interesting. -egg]

Associated Press: It’s one of the most universal recommendations in all of public health: Floss daily to prevent gum disease and cavities.Except there’s little proof that flossing works.

Still, the federal government, dental organizations and manufacturers of floss have pushed the practice for decades. Dentists provide samples to their patients; the American Dental Association insists on its website that, “Flossing is an essential part of taking care of your teeth and gums.”

The federal government has recommended flossing since 1979, first in a surgeon general’s report and later in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans issued every five years. The guidelines must be based on scientific evidence, under the law.

Last year, the Associated Press asked the departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture for their evidence, and followed up with written requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

When the federal government issued its latest dietary guidelines this year, the flossing recommendation had been removed, without notice. In a letter to the AP, the government acknowledged the effectiveness of flossing had never been researched, as required.

Source: Medical benefits of dental floss unproven

New fossil evidence supports theory that first mass extinction engineered by early animals

New fossil evidence supports theory that first mass extinction engineered by early animals
The disc-like fossils shown here are the preserved remains of holdfast structures used by the Ediacaran species Aspidella that went extinct about a million years after these individuals died and were preserved. Credit: Simon Darroch, Vanderbilt University

Newly discovered fossil evidence from Namibia strengthens the proposition that the world’s first mass extinction was caused by “ecosystem engineers” – newly evolved biological organisms that altered the environment so radically it drove older species to extinction.

The event, known as the end-Ediacaran extinction, took place 540 million years ago. The earliest life on Earth consisted of microbes – various types of single-celled organisms. These held sway for more than 3 billion years, when the first multicellular organisms evolved. The most successful of these were the Ediacarans, which spread around the globe about 600 million years ago. They were a largely immobile form of marine life shaped like discs and tubes, fronds and quilted mattresses.

After 60 million years, evolution gave birth to another major innovation: metazoans, the first animals. Metazoans could move spontaneously and independently at least during some point in their life cycle and sustain themselves by eating other organisms or what other organisms produce. Animals burst onto the scene in a frenzy of diversification that paleontologists have labeled the Cambrian explosion, a 25 million-year period when most of the modern animal families – vertebrates, mollusks, arthropods, annelids, sponges and jellyfish – came into being.

New fossil evidence supports theory that first mass extinction engineered by early animals
Conichnus burrows are trace fossils: the surface bumps represent vertical tubes that were originally occupied by anemone-like animals that may have fed on Ediacaran larvae. Credit: Simon Darrroch, Vanderbilt University

“These new species were ‘ecological engineers’ who changed the environment in ways that made it more and more difficult for the Ediacarans to survive,” said Simon Darroch, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University, who directed the new study described in the paper titled “A mixed Ediacaran-metazoan assemblage from the Zaris Sub-basin, Namibia,” published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

New fossil evidence supports theory that first mass extinction engineered by early animals