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showing posts for 'ac'

WhatsApp to go ahead with changes despite backlash

The messaging app is making a second attempt to convince users to accept its new privacy policy.
Source: bbc.com

Decade-long study shows half of all rivers in the world heavily impacted by humans

A team of researchers from several institutions in France and China has conducted a decade-long study of the degree of human impact on river systems around the world over the past two centuries. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study and what their findings revealed.
Source: phys.org

Feeding your cat a very meaty diet may mean it kills less wildlife

In a small trial in the UK, pet cats fed on an unusually meaty diet brought home 36 per cent fewer prey animals than cats given a typical diet. "Domestic cats seem to hunt less when their diets are richer in animal-sourced protein, suggesting that feeding cats more meat could help reduce their impact...
Source: newscientist.com

Goondiwindi Argus says that Government sets talks with Facebook

"Frydenberg and Zuckerberg to talk on Friday in an attempt to resolve news stand-off." Apart from the fact that Facebook has blocked them - sharing news stories from Australian newspaper websites would be so much easier if they configured their pages for sharing.
Source: goondiwindiargus.com.au

Facebook and Australia's media bargaining law

In Australia, Facebook’s ban on sharing news stories has sent publishers’ traffic tumbling: Audience declines of 20 percent or more have followed Facebook taking its traffic ball and going home. "Even people outside Australia can no longer share stories [on Facebook] from Australian publishers big...
Source: niemanlab.org

Nasa's Perseverance rover in 'great shape' after Mars landing

"Perseverance will now spend at least two years looking for evidence of past life on the Red Planet. The American space agency has successfully landed its Perseverance rover in a deep crater near the planet's equator called Jezero. "The good news is the spacecraft, I think, is in great shape," said Matt...
Source: bbc.com

Increasing Students Critical Thinking Skills and Learning Motivation Using Inquiry Mind Map

These researchers from Indonesia explore the use of inquiry-based models in encouraging critical thinking in medical students. "Critical thinking skills are very important to have for students given the rapid distribution of information. To promote the critical thinking skills of the student, it could...
Source: online-journals.org

Clinical Trials Overlook Diseases of Low-Income Countries

Conditions like respiratory infections, tuberculosis, and enteric infections that disproportionately affect low-income countries are consistently understudied in clinical trials, according to a recent study. Bridget M. Kuehn. JAMA.
Source: jamanetwork.com

No, frozen wind turbines aren't the main culprit for Texas' power outages

"Lost wind power makes up only a fraction of the reduction in power generating capacity that has brought outages to millions of Texans across the state during a major winter storm." Plenty of disinformation out there. There have been posts apparently showing a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine but it...
Source: texastribune.org

46,218 news transcripts show ideologically extreme politicians get more airtime

"We found that the House that’s shown on the news is much more ideologically extreme than the actual House."
Source: niemanlab.org

Abydos beer factory: Ancient large-scale brewery discovered in Egypt.

"The archaeological find in the Abydos burial ground is thought to date back about 5,000 years." They brewed beer in batch sizes of about 220 hectolitres and I bet they got away without paying much beer duty. Wonder if we can work out some of the recipes.
Source: bbc.com

Abundant Rain Turns Namibia Green

The landscape has been transformed by the wettest rainy season since 2011. "January 2021 saw rainfall totals double to triple the norm in the northeastern, central, and southern parts of Namibia. According to a weather monitor in Windhoek, 228 millimeters (9 inches) of rain fell in January; the long-term...
Source: nasa.gov

Twitter a goldmine for tracking consumer mood on prices, Bank of Italy finds.

The Bank of Italy said on Monday a set of experimental indicators it created from the content of millions of tweets accurately tracked consumer mood on price, offering scope for a powerful new monetary policy tool.
Source: reuters.com

Guinea declares new Ebola outbreak

Guinea declared a new Ebola outbreak on Sunday when tests came back positive for the virus after three people died and four fell ill in the southeast - the first resurgence of the disease there since the world's worst outbreak in 2013-2016.
Source: reuters.com

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

Amazon India launches online academy to coach future engineers: Amazon.com Inc has launched an online academy to train students

Amazon India launches online academy to coach future engineers: Amazon.com Inc has launched an online academy to train students for one of India's most competitive college entrance tests, the e-commerce giant said on Wednesday, as it taps a boom in virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Source: reuters.com