Overturning 'conventional wisdom' with 'natural experiments'
Via Reuters ... "Economists David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens won the 2021 Nobel economics prize on Monday for pioneering "natural experiments" to show real-world economic impacts in areas from minimum wage increases in the U.S. fast-food sector to migration from Castro-era Cuba." "One experiment...
Source: reuters.com
China has won AI battle with U.S., Pentagon's ex-software chief says
China has won the artificial intelligence battle with the United States and is heading towards global dominance because of its technological advances, the Pentagon's former software chief told the Financial Times.
Source: reuters.com
The AI Hierarchy of Needs | Hacker Noon
Sometimes you come across something that someone has written which makes what was a whole complicated mess in your head very simple indeed. Monica Rogati has done that with AI using an analogy of Maslow's (in)famous hierarchy of needs. For AI it translates to something like collecting, storing, preparing,...
Source: hackernoon.com
Psychology of panic buying
I've been fascinated by the psychology of panic buying and it is clearly an area for future research. It has an enormous impact on delivery infrastructure and I wonder if anyone has been tracking the data of the causes and the impact in the current fuel 'crisis'. A systematic review from last year identified...
Source: nih.gov
Rediscovering Cryptpad
Cryptpad is for working collaboratively on documents such as Rich Text, Spread Sheets, Presentations, Whiteboards, and Project Boards. The server has no access to any of your data and the encryption is based on zero knowledge. You don't even need to give an email address to register - you pick a username...
Source: cryptpad.fr
New WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines aim to save millions of lives from air pollution
"Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats to human health, alongside climate change. New guidelines provide clear evidence of the damage air pollution inflicts on human health, at even lower concentrations than previously understood." "Global assessments of ambient air pollution alone...
Source: who.int
Britain tells its food industry to prepare for CO2 price shock
"Britain warned its food producers on Wednesday to prepare for a 400% rise in carbon dioxide prices after extending emergency state support to avert a shortage of poultry and meat triggered by soaring costs of wholesale natural gas." State support has been given to a key producer for a period of 3 weeks.
Source: reuters.com
The Impact of Mask Distribution and Promotion on Mask Uptake and COVID-19 in Bangladesh
A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that face masks can protect against COVID-19. There is, however, limited rigorous evidence on the extent to which mask-wearing is effective in reducing COVID-19 in a real-life situation with imperfect and inconsistent mask use. In Bangladesh, researchers...
Source: poverty-action.org
New Delta strain believed to have emerged among 53,000 revellers at Boardmasters festival
Almost 5,000 infections have been linked to the Boardmasters festival in Cornwall, and with half a million music lovers at even larger events over the Bank Holiday, officials fear revellers are being hit by a new strain of the Delta variant
Source: inews.co.uk
Extinction Rebellion protesters block London's Tower Bridge
Demonstrators from the Extinction Rebellion group, which is demanding urgent action by governments and business to limit climate change and biodiversity loss, staged a sit-down protest that stopped traffic from using Tower Bridge in London on Monday.
Source: reuters.com
This is the real story of the Afghan biometric databases abandoned to the Taliban – MIT Technology Review
Source: technologyreview.com
A Simple Approach to Relieve Teens’ Anxiety and Depression JAMA.
An intervention known as Shamiri helped relieve Kenyan adolescents’ depression and anxiety symptoms more effectively than a program aimed at improving their secondary school study skills, researchers reported in JAMA Psychiatry.
Source: jamanetwork.com
Teen builds solar-powered tuk-tuk from scraps
Piranawan, 15, from Sri Lanka spent eight months of his Covid lockdown making his eco-friendly vehicle.
Source: bbc.co.uk
Development and validation of teacher and student questionnaires measuring inhibitors of curriculum viability - BMC Medical
Background Curriculum viability is determined by the degree to which quality standards have or have not been met, and by the inhibitors that affect attainment of those standards. The literature reports many ways to evaluate whether a curriculum reaches its quality standards, but less attention is paid...
Source: biomedcentral.com
How green is blue hydrogen? Robert W. Howarth. Mark Z. Jacobson. Energy Science & Engineering.
Blue hydrogen is the production of hydrogen from natural gas combined with carbon capture and storage. Commercial production so far is limited to just two facilities, but blue hydrogen is increasingl...
Source: wiley.com
Council policies 'inconsistent' with climate goals
A third of English councils support policies that could increase emissions, BBC research suggests.
Source: bbc.com
How Data Science Pinpointed the Creepiest Word in ‘Macbeth’
It’s not the word you’d expect - and it appears in this very sentence
Source: medium.com
Will MIT Scientists' Powerful Magnet Lead Us to Nuclear Fusion Energy? - Slashdot
"A start-up founded by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it is nearing a technological milestone that could take the world a step closer to fusion energy, which has eluded scientists for decades," reports the New York Times:
Researchers at M.I.T.'s Plasma Science and Fus...
Source: slashdot.org
OpenAI's Codex Translates Everyday Language Into Computer Code
The company believes its Codex machine learning algorithm is the next step in programming—a sidekick for coders to speed up the work and ease the drudgery.
Source: singularityhub.com
U.S. employers get religion with vaccine mandates
As coronavirus infections rise again, U.S. companies mandating vaccinations are confronting an uncomfortable question rarely asked by an employer - what is an employee's religious belief?
Source: reuters.com
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