#Big Think (BUTTON) ____________________ * Home * 13-8 * Coronavirus * Surprising Science * Personal Growth * Mind & Brain * Sex & Relationships * Technology & Innovation * Culture & Religion * Politics & Current Affairs * Gear * Videos * Big Think LIVE * Alchemist City * Future of Learning * Thought Fix * Think Again Podcasts * Sponsored by Stand Together * Sponsored by Pfizer * Sponsored by Charles Koch Foundation * Sponsored by Skoll Foundation * Sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies * Sponsored by Lumina Foundation * Sponsored by Northwell Health * Sponsored by John Templeton Foundation * Sponsored by yes. every kid. * Sponsored by Intel The Nantucket Project * Sponsored by Sofia Gray * Sponsored by Creation Crate * Sponsored by Kenzie Academy * Partnerships * digital transformation * Log in IFRAME: https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-KTMTMHF Big Think Big Think Big Think Discover Big Think Edge PopularSurprising SciencePersonal GrowthMind & BrainSex & RelationshipsTechnology & InnovationCulture & ReligionPolitics & Current Affairs Follow Us Video Trending Personal Growth What Kids Need Most Isn't Parenting – It's Parents Videos Why toxic relationships are so draining. And when to break them off. Videos Kids today are lacking these psychological nutrients See All Videos > Newsletters ____________________ (BUTTON) JOIN EDGE SIGN IN Get smarter, faster. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. ____________________ [X] ____________________ > There are 12 million stateless people in the world. Who are they? Without a country to belong to, many of these people lack some of the most fundamental rights. Matt Davis 26 August, 2019 Statelessness Shutterstock * According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the world is host to 12 million people who don't officially belong to any state. * People can become stateless through a variety of means, including racial discrimination, sexist nationality laws, voluntary choice, or bureaucratic accidents. * Who are these millions of stateless individuals? What is life like for them? Can their situation be solved? __________________________________________________________________ You can live in a country for your entire life, but due to some circumstance of your birth or political machinations outside of your control, you can be denied an education, healthcare, employment, legal rights, any kind of identification, and many other things that your peers may have access to. Statelessness may live entirely in the realm of abstract bureaucracy, but it can have some very real and concrete impacts on your life. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that roughly 12 million people across the globe do not belong to any state. Some gave up their statehood willingly, others had it taken away from them by a vindictive government, and others just never had statehood in the first place. How do people become stateless? Often, statelessness arises due to the quirks of international law. For instance, many states offer citizenship based on either jus soli — where individuals born in a given nation acquire that nationality — jus sanguinis — where citizenship is inherited from one's parents — or some combination of the two. When these systems have cracks, sometimes the result can be statelessness. For instance, Canada offers citizenship through jus sanguinis, but only for one generation. Rachel Chandler's father had been born in Libya but was a Canadian citizen due to Canadian nationality laws. Chandler was born in China to a Chinese mother, but she was still ineligible for citizenship under Chinese law. As a second-generation, foreign-born Canadian, she was also ineligible for Canadian citizenship, and thus became stateless. Another major source of statelessness is due to sexism. Twenty-five states also don't permit mothers to pass on their nationality in the same way that fathers can, as is the case in Iran, Qatar, and Kuwait. When the father is stateless himself, unmarried to the mother, or has died, among other reasons, offspring in these countries suddenly find themselves without a nation. Others renounce their statehood or lose their statehood when their nation dissolves — as was the case for many native Russian Soviet citizens living in Estonia and Latvia, who suddenly became stateless when the Soviet Union dissolved. The main source of statelessness, however, arises due to states discriminating against a particular group. The Syrian government, for example, stripped hundreds of thousands of Kurds of their statehood in a 1962 census, claiming that the Kurds had immigrated illegally, and sparking considerable international criticism. Today, the Myanmar government is perhaps the biggest contributor to the modern stateless population with their refusal to grant the Rohingya people citizenship. The Rohingya have been present in Myanmar since the 8th century, but the state only offers citizenship to 135 legally recognized ethnic groups, of which the Rohingya do not belong. Instead, Myanmar appears to intend to expel its Rohingya population. Notable examples of statelessness [json] Mehran Karimi Nasseri's living quarters in Charles de Gaulle airport. Photo credit: Christophe Calais / Corbis via Getty Images Albert Einstein had a very interesting political history, bouncing from German to Swiss back to German to U.S. citizenship. However, in between the years in which he was a German and Swiss citizen, Einstein was stateless for five years. Though he was born in the German Kingdom of Württemburg, Einstein renounced his citizenship in order to avoid military service in 1896. Five years later, he would be granted Swiss citizenship. Mehran Karimi Nasseri was not so lucky. He has been allegedly stateless since 1977, and 18 of those years he spent living in Charles de Gaulle airport. Nasseri claims to have been expelled from Iran, his home country, for protesting the Shah. He decided to move to Britain, but the travel documents that listed him as a refugee — which provided him a legal basis to seek citizenship in Europe — were stolen during a layover in France. Nasseri continued onto Britain regardless and was returned to France by British authorities. French officials intended to deport him but could not; Nasseri had no country of origin to be deported to. A French court concluded that Nasseri had entered the country legally, but he could not leave the airport. It was only until 2006 that Nasseri left Charles de Gaulle due to an unknown illness requiring his hospitalization. The 2004 film The Terminal used Nasseri's story for inspiration. Garry Davis voluntarily renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1948, partially due to his brother's death in World War II and his own participation in the war as a B-17 bomber. Davis interpreted Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as allowing him the rights of a world citizen. In his later years, he would start the World Service Authority, a non-profit with the goal of promoting world citizenship and a world government. He also developed world passports, which he allegedly used to gain entry into some countries (though he was detained many times). Though these examples highlight some of the more whimsical ways one can lose their statehood, most stateless persons suffer a significant amount of abuse because of their lack of statehood. The UNHCR has stated its goal to end statelessness by 2024 by a variety of actions, among them: * encouraging countries to change problematic laws (such as those 25 countries with gendered nationality laws), * pushing discriminatory states toward reform through international pressure, and * improving the process by which states dissolve or separate. It's a lofty goal, but one can't help but to imagine that the stateless will always be with us. Related Articles Around the Web * Stateless in Europe: 'We are no people with no nation' | World news ... › * The Stateless in the United States - The Center for Migration Studies ... › * Statelessness - UNHCR › women population law refugees immigration government global issues Badge Northwell Health Northwell Health How New York's largest hospital system is predicting COVID-19 spikes Northwell Health is using insights from website traffic to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks in the future. Stephen Johnson 14 January, 2021 Credit: Getty Images Sponsored by Northwell Health * The machine-learning algorithm works by analyzing the online behavior of visitors to the Northwell Health website and comparing that data to future COVID-19 hospitalizations. * The tool, which uses anonymized data, has so far predicted hospitalizations with an accuracy rate of 80 percent. * Machine-learning tools are helping health-care professionals worldwide better constrain and treat COVID-19.

One of the most devastating aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been unpredictability. The nation's health systems—especially those in hard-hit areas like New York City—have had to adapt to sudden surges of COVID-19 cases, all while dealing with limited resources, existing patients, and a novel virus that's still not fully understood.

But what if health systems were able to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks before they occur? Northwell Health, the largest health care system in New York state, recently deployed a predictive tool that does just that.

Northwell Health's surveillance dashboard is able to predict COVID-19 hospitalizations by using insights from machine learning. In March, Northwell Health's Customer Insights Group developed an algorithm that's been mining data from online traffic to the Northwell.edu website, which has received more than 20 million hits since March.

The algorithm collects data through 15 different indicators, each of which reflects the online behavior of the website's visitors. For example, the tool analyzes metrics such as the length of time users spend on certain pages, searches for emergency department wait times, and specific symptoms users search for. Combined, this information translates into something like the "public mood" of the website on any given day.

Since Northwell Health began using the predictive tool in September, it's predicted COVID-19 hospitalizations with an accuracy of about 80 percent.

To understand how this mood relates to future COVID-19 cases, Northwell Health began comparing its data with a timeline of COVID-19 hospitalizations across 23 hospitals and nearly 800 outpatient facilities and in the metro New York area. This enabled the Customer Insights Group to see patterns of online activity that precede future increases or decreases in hospitalizations.

Since Northwell Health began using the predictive tool in September, it's predicted COVID-19 hospitalizations with an accuracy of about 80 percent.

"This is really the first tool that I've been exposed to that gives me a sort of guestimate of what two weeks from now may look like," said Dr. Eric Cruzen, chief medical informatics officer of Northwell's emergency medicine services and chair of the emergency department at Lenox Health Greenwich Village in Manhattan.

"Even if the data can provide an idea of whether to expect an increase, decrease, or stasis, that's valuable. Because every day we're working to estimate what tomorrow's going to bring. Any tool that's going to shed light on that is a good tool in my book."

The value of forecasting Northwell emergency departments use the dashboard to monitor in real time. Credit: Northwell Health

One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:

The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop personalized care plans for diabetes patients, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at elevated risk of suicide, to name a few applications.

Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how machine learning can help battle the pandemic, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.

Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.

"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."

Making machine-learning tools openly accessible

Northwell Health has made its predictive tool available for free to any health system that wishes to utilize it.

"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."

Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.

"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."

In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.

"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."


Keep reading Show less health health care coronavirus data prediction algorithm community Popular Surprising Science Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist 3,000-pound Triceratops skull unearthed in South Dakota Surprising Science World’s largest bee, thought to be extinct, found in Indonesia Surprising Science Scientists find 'smoking gun' proof of a recent supernova near Earth Surprising Science Divers discover world's largest underwater cave system filled with Mayan mysteries Technology & Innovation Sister Sites * Brendan Fraser * Semicolon Tattoo * Drew Brees Scar * Dermatologist Salary * Why are you Interested in this Position * Career Quotes Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist A leading British space scientist thinks there is life under the ice sheets of Europa. Paul Ratner 03 May, 2020 Jupiter's moon Europa has a huge ocean beneath its sheets of ice. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute Surprising Science * A British scientist named Professor Monica Grady recently came out in support of extraterrestrial life on Europa. * Europa, the sixth largest moon in the solar system, may have favorable conditions for life under its miles of ice. * The moon is one of Jupiter's 79.

Alien hunting is a hopeful activity and one reason behind our space programs that the public generally supports. Looking for other life is a strong incentive to be venturing out into space, despite having found none so far. A top British space scientist, Professor Monica Grady, gave all cosmic explorers a big dose of such hope in a recent speech. She is certain there's some form of life on Jupiter's moon, Europa.

This life would not look human, but more like an "octopus," and is likely residing in the cold waters under the moon's sheets of ice.

Grady, a Professor of Planetary and Space Science and Chancellor at Liverpool Hope University, thinks there's a great likelihood of undiscovered life somewhere in our galaxy.

She also supposes that the deeper caves and cavernous spaces of Mars could be harboring some subterranean creatures, likely bacteria, there to escape the solar radiation. They could be getting water from the ice buried deep down.

"When it comes to the prospects of life beyond Earth, it's almost a racing certainty that there's life beneath the ice on Europa," she said in a February address.

She thinks these life forms on Europa, 390 million miles from Earth, could be higher in sophistication than the Martian bacteria, possibly having "the intelligence of an octopus."

Where would the creatures live on this moon of Jupiter? Somewhere below the very thick layer of ice, which goes 15 miles deep in some places. It's possible there is liquid water beneath all that ice, keeping whatever lives inside protected against radiation and the impact of asteroids and similar smashing bodies.

The likelihood of life on Europa is bolstered by the possible hydrothermal vents on its ocean floor. Such vents are cradles of life on Earth.

Grady thinks that our solar system doesn't have to be particularly special and that statistically speaking, as we explore other stars and galaxies, we should be able to find conditions for life. "I think it's highly likely there will be life elsewhere—and I think it's highly likely they'll be made of the same elements," stated the professor.

Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to go ice fishing on Europa