"Mayfly populations falling fast in North America: A team of researchers from the University of Oklahoma, Virginia Tech and the University of Notre Dame has found that populations of mayflies in parts of North America have fallen dramatically in recent years. In their paper published in the Proceedings...
Source: phys.org
Neanderthals may have climbed an active volcano soon after it erupted: Footprints on an extinct Italian volcano suggest ancient humans were regular visitors, and the shapes of the tracks point to the identity of the trackmakers. "A set of preserved footprints suggests that ancient humans often went scrambling...
Source: newscientist.com
Harvard professor says surveillance capitalism is undermining democracy: In her new book, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” HBS Professor emerita Shoshana Zuboff outlines her belief that surveillance capitalism is undermining personal autonomy and eroding democracy — and the ways she says society...
Source: harvard.edu
Amol Rajan's 9 media predictions for 2020: Could we see streamageddon, eco-browsing, the break-up of Amazon and a new owner for ITV? "The data shows we really are living through the most extraordinarily peaceful, prosperous, wealthy, healthy, safe period in human history. There is strong evidence to...
Source: bbc.com
Dominic Cummings wants 'weirdos' to help run the UK. Will it work?: A senior adviser to the UK's prime minister suggests policy-making can be improved by training AI on government data, but the researchers he cites say they aren't so sure
Source: newscientist.com
Earliest roasted root vegetables found in 170,000-year-old cave dirt: Charred fragments found in a cave in southern Africa suggest that the real “paleo diet” included lots of roasted root vegetables that were rich in carbohydrates
Source: newscientist.com
Mountain walker captures rare Brocken spectre: Rhys Pleming and his friend captured pictures of the rare weather phenomenon on New Year's Day.
Source: bbc.com
People in Japan are wearing exoskeletons to keep working as they age: To solve the problem of Japan’s ageing workforce, tech companies have developed exoskeletons that help older workers continue to do heavy manual labour
Source: newscientist.com
Surgeons withdraw support for heart disease advice: European guidelines on a form of heart disease are under review, following a Newsnight investigation. “It is a matter of serious concern to us that some results in the Excel trial appear to have been concealed and that some patients may therefore...
Source: bbc.com
Would you pay $1 million to enroll in a phase 1 clinical trial of an “anti-aging” gene therapy? "Libella Gene Therapeutics, LLC made the news last week for announcing a “pay-to-play” trial of its telomerase-based anti-aging gene therapy. What was shocking about the announcement was not that it...
Source: sciencebasedmedicine.org
Tick-borne encephalitis virus detected in ticks in the UK: Surveillance detects tick-borne encephalitis virus in 2 parts of England for the first time. "Tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) has been detected for the first time in ticks in the UK. The findings are part of ongoing research by Public Health...
Source: www.gov.uk
Better wisdom from crowds: MIT scholars produce new method of harvesting correct answers from groups. “A new technique [described in 2017] can better extract correct answers from large groups of people. For a given question, people are asked two things: What they think the right answer is, and what...
Source: mit.edu
Researchers "Translate" Bat Talk. Turns Out, They Argue—A Lot: A machine learning algorithm helped decode the squeaks Egyptian fruit bats make in their roost, revealing that they “speak” to one another as individuals.
Source: smithsonianmag.com
College students who go off Facebook for a week consume less news and report being less depressed: When users stop getting news from Facebook, they don't necessarily start getting it somewhere else.
Source: niemanlab.org
Four Key Barriers to the Widespread Adoption of AI: There is a lot of buzz about the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning—from self-driving cars to predicting heart attacks, AI is spreading like wildfire across industries, triggering a massive investment in talent as businesses...
Source: mit.edu
New Bill Would Ban Autoplay Videos and Endless Scrolling - Slashdot: A new bill, sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), targets snapstreaks, YouTube autoplay, and endless scrolling that, the bill alleges, are designed in a way to make services "addictive." Reader Zorro writes: Hawley's Social Media Addiction...
Source: slashdot.org
How a GPS bracelet is saving babies' lives: In rural Kenya, nomadic women can now get the maternal care they need - thanks to GPS.
Source: bbc.com
There have been more than 1000 cases of measles in the US this year: Measles cases are rising in the US at an alarming rate. There have now been 1164 this year, which is the highest year on record since 1992
Source: newscientist.com
Great advice. Keep up to date with technology, increase your entrepreneurship and communication skills, and hire women. "Four Actions Engineers Can Take to Ensure Their Startup Succeeds: Venture advisor Chenyang Xu recommends staying up to date on technology and taking entrepreneurship classes."
Source: ieee.org
Putting a leash on Google and Facebook won’t do much to save the traditional news model: "Social media and search give advertisers better tools to target messages to more precise groups of potential consumers. It is a phenomenally better mousetrap."
Source: niemanlab.org