Speaker 1: Welcome to has To Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
Speaker 1: a researcher and writer. Here it has To Works. Every week,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the
Speaker 1: weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture.
Speaker 1: This week, a suggestion has arisen for improving Trump's potential
Speaker 1: border wall, making it a host to a hyperloop, and unrelated,
Speaker 1: a study has found that there aren't enough calories in
Speaker 1: the human body to fully explain cannibalism. But First Senior
Speaker 1: writer and forward Thinking host Jonathan Strickland explores the controversy
Speaker 1: surrounding a United States Federal Bureau of Investigation facial recognition program.
Speaker 1: The Bureau has access to a huge number of Americans photos,
Speaker 1: even those without criminal records, for use in criminal investigations.
Speaker 1: If the FBI had an unlabeled photo of you and
Speaker 1: ran a search using facial recognition technology, do you think
Speaker 1: they'd find you if you're an adult living in the
Speaker 1: United States. The answer is they'd have a fifty fifty shot.
Speaker 1: We know that because Georgetown University's Center on Privacy and
Speaker 1: Technology research law enforcement's use of facial recognition technology and
Speaker 1: found one in every two adult Americans has an image
Speaker 1: stored on some official agencies database. Some of the images
Speaker 1: in these databases are from criminal investigations, but others come
Speaker 1: from applications for licenses, official identification cards, security clearance forms,
Speaker 1: and other non criminal sources. Depending upon the type of search,
Speaker 1: your photo could end up in an FBI virtual lineup
Speaker 1: without your knowledge. The practice is problematic for many reasons.
Speaker 1: Perhaps most troubling is there are no official laws or
Speaker 1: regulations that set parameters for conducting facial recognition matches. Each
Speaker 1: agency has its own set of guidelines, but they vary widely,
Speaker 1: and in many cases there's little to no oversight. Critics
Speaker 1: say this could potentially violate Fourth Amendment rights, which protect
Speaker 1: against unreasonable search and seizure. To complicate matters, these various
Speaker 1: agencies rely on different software vendors for facial recognition technology.
Speaker 1: Most of these agencies have no system in place to
Speaker 1: audit the technology to make certain it is accurate. Several
Speaker 1: agencies require human analysts to look at potential matches between
Speaker 1: a probe photo and their search results, but Georgetown University's
Speaker 1: research showed humans make the wrong call on these matches
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the time. Chances are you don't want
Speaker 1: the FBI investigating you for a criminal act because of
Speaker 1: a bad coin flip. There are a lot of other
Speaker 1: potential issues with facial recognition searches. In March two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: Congress held hearings about the FBI's use of these databases.
Speaker 1: The discussion became heated, with members of both major political
Speaker 1: parties criticizing the implementation of facial recognition procedures without first
Speaker 1: establishing the legality of them in an investigation. It's likely
Speaker 1: that we'll see a call for regulating law enforcement's use
Speaker 1: of facial recognition software in the near future. That doesn't
Speaker 1: change the fact that for more than five years, the
Speaker 1: FBI has used this tech to identify and pursue investigative leads,
Speaker 1: but regulations will help prevent future misuse of a technology
Speaker 1: that has the potential to restrict civil rights to a
Speaker 1: significant degree. Next up, staff editor Eaves, Jeff Coote and
Speaker 1: our freelance writer Michelle Konstantinovski dig into one group's plans
Speaker 1: to give the proposed border wall between the US and
Speaker 1: Mexico and extra dimension of speed. They want to use
Speaker 1: the structure to build hyperlink In June, the Trump administration
Speaker 1: plans to announce ten companies it wants to hire to
Speaker 1: build prototypes of this planned border wall between Mexico and
Speaker 1: the United States. A group of fourteen Mexican and American engineers,
Speaker 1: urban planners, ecologists, and architects, dubbed the Made Collective, hopes
Speaker 1: it will be among them. While dozens of private contractors
Speaker 1: likely took heat of the Customs and Border Protections request
Speaker 1: for design prototypes depicting a solid concrete barrier between nations,
Speaker 1: the main collective offered and alternative, a hyperloop. A hyper
Speaker 1: loop is a type of mass transit that uses low
Speaker 1: pressure tubes and transports people and goods at lightning fast speeds.
Speaker 1: Based on SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's original concept, hyper loop
Speaker 1: pods will hypothetically travel over seven hundred miles per hour
Speaker 1: or about one thousand, one hundred kilometers per hour. In
Speaker 1: the main collectives version, the hyper loop system would stretch
Speaker 1: one thousand, two hundred fifty miles or two thousand kilometers
Speaker 1: from San Diego and Tijuana across the Texas Mexico border.
Speaker 1: But this chunk of land wouldn't just be a standalone
Speaker 1: transit system. According to the Make Collectives proposal, it would
Speaker 1: also become an entirely new territory called Ultra Nation. That's right.
Speaker 1: In response to Trump's call for designs, the group offered
Speaker 1: to create an independent nation that the U S and
Speaker 1: Mexico share. The full proposal was submitted to both governments,
Speaker 1: with the budget costs to the US of about ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars to fifteen billion dollars. The Main Collective's proposal
Speaker 1: also includes the additional eleven billion dollars Trump has earmarked
Speaker 1: for the border wall to be reinvested into healthcare, education,
Speaker 1: and the arts in the United States. In addition to that,
Speaker 1: it proposes plans for stations throughout the hyper loop network
Speaker 1: to serve people from all nations, and for solar farms
Speaker 1: to power the system. The group's members laid out their
Speaker 1: full plan on a dedicated Ultra Nation website, and they've
Speaker 1: also launched a change dot org petition to replace the
Speaker 1: border's current fencing with this hyper loop design. On this website,
Speaker 1: the group calls the hyperlop plan a trans national new
Speaker 1: deal and says it will be built on local economic empowerment,
Speaker 1: energy independence, and revolutionary infrastructure and transit. The group hops
Speaker 1: to plan will get people on both sides of the
Speaker 1: border talking, but it remains unclear whether the proposed wall
Speaker 1: will ever be a reality. Trump initially assured Americans that
Speaker 1: he would stick Mexico with a construction bill, but he
Speaker 1: has since turned to Congress to ask for funding. The
Speaker 1: plan has also been the subject of skepticism and scrutiny
Speaker 1: from both Democrats and Republicans, and some people suspect US
Speaker 1: taxpayers would actually be forced to foot the bill, which
Speaker 1: an m I T study estimates could cost anywhere from
Speaker 1: twenty seven billion dollars to forty billion dollars. Finally, this week,
Speaker 1: staff editor Christopher Hassiotas and our freelance writer Laurie L.
Speaker 1: Dove bring us the results of a slightly strange study.
Speaker 1: The researchers set out to discover exactly how nutritious human
Speaker 1: flesh is, and therefore how likely it is that ancient
Speaker 1: humans eight other ancient humans to survive. By this point
Speaker 1: in our still young century, you've likely heard of the
Speaker 1: Paleo diet thousands of times. That trendy regiment's name is
Speaker 1: short for Paleolithic, the Stone Age, and supposedly mimics the
Speaker 1: nutrition of ancient humans who lived about ten thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: although it really doesn't, but that's another story. Cave people
Speaker 1: ate meats, seafood, nuts, and a few fruits and vegetables
Speaker 1: and one other food source that doesn't show up on
Speaker 1: today's protein focused food blogs other people. Archaeologists in Western
Speaker 1: Europe have evidence that the precursors to modern humans ate
Speaker 1: their neighbors during the Paleolithic era, particularly due to butchery
Speaker 1: marks found on human bones. Most experts, though, debate whether
Speaker 1: cannibalism was part of a balanced diet of our ancestral
Speaker 1: hominins or whether it was something more ritualistic or ceremonial.
Speaker 1: To be classified as nutritional cannibalism, the people that Paleolithic
Speaker 1: clans eight needed to be well nutritious, So just how
Speaker 1: many calories are in a human thigh or an ear?
Speaker 1: Archaeologist James Cole of the University of Brighton in England
Speaker 1: wondered the same thing, and so, being a scientist, he
Speaker 1: decided to find out. Think of the diagrams of cattle
Speaker 1: and pig that illustrate different cuts of meat you might
Speaker 1: see in a butcher's shop, Cole mapped out the human
Speaker 1: body in much the same way, then determined the caloric
Speaker 1: count within each segment, showing how much energy each would
Speaker 1: transfer to an eater if consumed, publishing his findings in
Speaker 1: the journal Scientific Reports. A human thigh, for instance, contains
Speaker 1: a hefty thousand, three hundred and fifty calories, while the
Speaker 1: spleen offers up only a modest one hundred and thirty calories.
Speaker 1: If you're more of a head and torso diner, that'll
Speaker 1: let you about five thousand, four hundred and twenty calories,
Speaker 1: and those upper arms seven thousand, four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: calories total. Overall, the average human body has anywhere from
Speaker 1: one thousand to a hundred and forty four thousand consumable calories.
Speaker 1: Some parts may take longer to digest. You'll rack up
Speaker 1: ten thousand, two hundred and eighty calories from human skin alone,
Speaker 1: while others are snacks, eyes like the kidneys, containing just
Speaker 1: three D eighty calories. The brain, spinal cord, and nerves.
Speaker 1: We're thinking of stew might be the most appropriate cooking
Speaker 1: method for that will provide you two thousand, seven hundred calories,
Speaker 1: and human bones contain about twenty five thousand, three D
Speaker 1: and thirty bone broth is so on trend right now,
Speaker 1: after all, Despite all this talk of ancient eating habits,
Speaker 1: Cole concluded that other humans are probably not a regular
Speaker 1: meal of choice, eaten for nutritive value. Disappointment is other people,
Speaker 1: after all, and it turns out that that holds true
Speaker 1: for nutrition, especially when compared to competing available food sources.
Speaker 1: The carcass of one single wooly mammoth, for instance, contains
Speaker 1: a whopping three point six million calories and would have
Speaker 1: given an entire tribe food for about eight weeks. A human,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, would have provided enough calories for
Speaker 1: a tribe to subside on for only a half day,
Speaker 1: leaving everyone to wonder what's for dinner after just a
Speaker 1: few hours. Cole concludes that because of the relatively meager
Speaker 1: calorie counts of human body, people ate other people only
Speaker 1: for social or cultural reasons, not for their own health.
Speaker 1: Modern paleo dieters be glad the recipe books skip this
Speaker 1: particular ingredient. That's our show for this week. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Further thanks to our audio
Speaker 1: producer Dylan Fagan and our editorial Liaison's Christopher Hasiotas and
Speaker 1: Alison louder Milk. Subscribe to now Now for more of
Speaker 1: the latest science news, and send us links to anything
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