Greeks domesticated grapes about 4000 years ago to improve wine-making
We know that the ancient Greeks made wine as early as 4300 BC, but a new analysis of preserved seeds suggests grapes were domesticated around 2000 BC
Source: newscientist.com
Opinion: It
Hopefully that openness is here to stay: The pandemic has created greater understanding of the importance of good communication, particularly around health issues.
Source: independent.co.uk
Brain-Based Learning, Myth versus Reality: Testing Learning Styles and Dual Coding | Science-Based Medicine: Ed. Note: Today
Brain-Based Learning, Myth versus Reality: Testing Learning Styles and Dual Coding | Science-Based Medicine: Ed. Note: Today we present a guest post from Josh Cuevas, a cognitive psychologist and assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of North Georgia. Enjoy! "Since early on...
Source: sciencebasedmedicine.org
3D Scene Understanding with TensorFlow 3D
Posted by Alireza Fathi, Research Scientist and Rui Huang, AI Resident, Google Research "The growing ubiquity of 3D sensors (e.g., Lidar, depth sensing cameras and radar) over the last few years has created a need for scene understanding technology that can process the data these devices capture. Such...
Source: googleblog.com
Using whale songs to image beneath the ocean
Using whale songs to image beneath the ocean’s floor: Seismic data generated by whale songs helps build a picture of the ocean's base. "The song of a fin whale is not exactly the sort of thing you'd typically describe as musical. It's generally in the area of 20Hz, which sounds more like a series of...
Source: arstechnica.com
Using Technology to Teach the Complex Science of Climate Change
"The world of education is no stranger to controversy. Every year, you'll find a splashy headline about how different school districts teach different versions of history from very different history textbooks. Or you'll encounter one special interest group or another objecting to teachers covering topics...
Source: emergingedtech.com
Word of the day: deprecated
Geek talk. The tech behind this blog which takes any link that I find interesting and, instead of curating it for LinkedIn / Twitter / Facebook, curates it here on something I have control over broke. I accidentally upgraded the server to PHP8 and an old function in PHP each() no longer worked. Took...
Frontline workers left "risking lives to provide treatment and care"
"The Department for Health and Social Care's decision to prioritise hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic meant social care providers were left exposed by lack of PPE, says the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee in its first report on PPE procurement published today." "While government...
Source: parliament.uk
Introducing Open-AI's DALL-E.
Ever wondered what an armchair in the shape of an avocado might look like? Introducing Open-AI's DALL-E.
Does this help with accessibility by explaining things in pictures from written words? Does it risk replacing humans in the creative industry with machines?
"DALL·E: Creating Images from...
Source: openai.com
11 TOPS photonic convolutional accelerator for optical neural networks: Convolutional neural networks, inspired by biological
11 TOPS photonic convolutional accelerator for optical neural networks: Convolutional neural networks, inspired by biological visual cortex systems, are a powerful category of artificial neural networks that can extract the hierarchical features of raw data to provide greatly reduced parametric complexity...
Source: nature.com
Largest COVID-19 contact tracing study to date finds children key to spread, evidence of superspreaders.
Largest COVID-19 contact tracing study to date finds children key to spread, evidence of superspreaders: Researchers from the Princeton Environmental Institute find the continued spread of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is driven by only a small percentage of those who become infected.
Source: princeton.edu
MMR, smoking, and 'in-vitro' models in COVID-19
Good summary of current science news topics for coronavirus in Reuters. Strong responders to MMR II vaccine (since 1979) have less severe disease with COVID-19, cigarette smoke increases risk, and a useful 'in-vivo' model for further study of how SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses might be treated.
Source: reuters.com
Victorian hologram keeps music in touch with lockdown audience
"Victorian hologram keeps music in touch with lockdown audience: Musicians are using an interactive hologram based on Victorian technology to reach fans in the locked down world of the coronavirus pandemic." The two musicians join a pianist who is live on stage. They are made to appear on stage because...
Source: reuters.com
France and Germany thrust into lockdown as second COVID-19 wave sweeps Europe: French President Emmanuel Macron and German
France and Germany thrust into lockdown as second COVID-19 wave sweeps Europe: French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered their countries back into lockdown on Wednesday, as a massive second wave of coronavirus infections threatened to overwhelm Europe before the winter.
Source: reuters.com
The Plastic Pandemic: COVID-19 trashed the recycling dream: Recyclers struggle as oil world invests hundreds of billions
The Plastic Pandemic: COVID-19 trashed the recycling dream: Recyclers struggle as oil world invests hundreds of billions to make new plastic
Source: reuters.com
Why Use Ensemble Learning? - Machine Learning Mastery: What are the Benefits of Ensemble Methods for Machine Learning? Ensembles
Why Use Ensemble Learning? - Machine Learning Mastery: What are the Benefits of Ensemble Methods for Machine Learning?
Ensembles are predictive models that combine predictions from two or more other models.
Ensemble learning methods are popular and the go-to technique when the best performance on...
Source: machinelearningmastery.com
Photographer 'Devastated' After Her Unsplash Photo Was Used in 'Crass' UK Ad Campaign
Photographer 'Devastated' After Her Unsplash Photo Was Used in 'Crass' UK Ad Campaign: Atlanta photographer Krys Alex is speaking out after a portrait she took and posted to Unsplash was used in a controversial UK ad campaign.
Source: petapixel.com
Dying in a Leadership Vacuum Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly?
Dying in a Leadership Vacuum Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? The NEJM Editors asks what has gone so wrong in the US and lays the blame with the political leadership. "This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were...
Source: nejm.org
Effect of school closures on mortality from coronavirus disease 2019: old and new predictions
"It was predicted in March 2020 that in response to covid-19 a broad lockdown, as opposed to a focus on shielding the most vulnerable members of society, would reduce immediate demand for ICU beds at the cost of more deaths long term. The optimal strategy for saving lives in a covid-19 epidemic is different...
Source: bmj.com
The tyranny of merit.
The Insufferable Hubris of the Well-Credentialed: A four-year college degree has become necessary for dignified work. Michael Sandel says that’s a huge mistake. "The meritocratic hubris of elites is the conviction by those who land on top that their success is their own doing, that they have risen...
Source: chronicle.com
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