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The Bluestocking: The Ant Mill

The Ant Mill theory of Discourse. "An orphan take is an opinion expressed in backlash to a marginal, nebulous or anticipated opposing view. If you see angry tweets or opeds about the horror of a viewpoint you’ve never seen expressed in the wild, that’s an orphan take."
Source: substack.com

Britishvolt: Electric car battery plant gets government funding

Britishvolt says the money (£100m) unlocks huge private investment for a protect that will create thousands of jobs. See also Britishvolt.com The figure seems to be half of the proposed Government investment which was anticipated to be £200m - £250m in December.
Source: bbc.com

The unhealthy industry playbook

What Public Health Practitioners Need to Know About Unhealthy IndustryTactics. Attack legitimate science. e.g. Accuse science of deception, calling it “junk science” or “bad science,” claiming science is manipulated to fulfill a political agenda. Attack and intimidate the scientists. e.g. Create...
Source: aphapublications.org

Meet the rogue birding group blocking wind energy at every turn

The American Bird Conservancy has repeatedly obstructed wind energy projects and become a go-to source for renewable energy opponents.
Source: grist.org

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

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

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

Clinically contextualised ECG interpretation: the impact of prior clinical exposure and case vignettes on ECG diagnostic

Does teaching ECGs with a clinical vignette improve training? Not greatly ... but having seen a condition previously (and presumably the ECG that went with it) is probably best. The researchers concluded that "ECG training should therefore not rely on experiential learning alone, but instead be supplemented...
Source: biomedcentral.com

'Laws of Nature Turned up to 11': Astronomers Spot Two Neutron Stars Being Swallowed by Black Holes

In two separate observations, just ten days apart, astronomers discover a neutron star circling a black hole before being gobbled up.
Source: singularityhub.com

Why Did It Take So Long to Accept the Facts About Covid?

"The importance of airborne transmission in the pandemic was clear long before the World Health Organization finally began to acknowledge it." "If the importance of aerosol transmission had been accepted early, we would have been told from the beginning that it was much safer outdoors, where these small...
Source: nytimes.com

No Evidence That Associations Between Adolescents' Digital Technology Engagement and Mental Health Problems Have Increased

Digital technology is ubiquitous in modern adolescence, and researchers are concerned that it has negative impacts on mental health that, furthermore, increase over time. To investigate whether technology is becoming more harmful, we examined changes in associations between technology engagement and...
Source: sagepub.com

World's wealthiest (and 'business as usual') 'at heart of climate problem'

"These [polluter elite] are people who fly most, drive the biggest cars most and live in the biggest homes which they can easily afford to heat, so they tend not to worry if they’re well insulated or not. … They’re also the sort of people who could really afford good insulation and solar panels...
Source: bbc.com

Use of 360° virtual reality video in medical obstetrical education: a quasi-experimental design Vera Arents. Pieter C.

Background Video-based teaching has been part of medical education for some time but 360° videos using a virtual reality (VR) device are a new medium that offer extended possibilities. We investigated whether adding a 360° VR video to the internship curriculum leads to an improvement of long-term recall...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Effectiveness of a serious game addressing guideline adherence: cohort study with 1.5-year follow-up Tobias Raupach. Insa

Background Patients presenting with acute shortness of breath and chest pain should be managed according to guideline recommendations. Serious games can be used to train clinical reasoning. However, only few studies have used outcomes beyond student satisfaction, and most of the published evidence is...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Detection of a particle shower at the Glashow resonance with IceCube Nature.

The Glashow resonance describes the resonant formation of a W− boson during the interaction of a high-energy electron antineutrino with an electron1, peaking at an antineutrino energy of 6.3 petaelectronvolts (PeV) in the rest frame of the electron. Whereas this energy scale is out of reach for currently...
Source: nature.com

5 failures of political leaders during a public health crisis

“There are five traps political leaders can fall into when it comes to a public health emergency: 1. delay and downplay; 2. fudge the science; 3. isolation from the international community; 4. absence; and 5. double standards.” Sophie Harman Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University...
Source: qmul.ac.uk

Can ultrasound novices develop image acquisition skills after reviewing online ultrasound modules? Elaine Situ-LaCasse.

Background Point-of-care ultrasound is becoming a ubiquitous diagnostic tool, and there has been increasing interest to teach novice practitioners. One of the challenges is the scarcity of qualified instructors, and with COVID-19, another challenge is the difficulty with social distancing between learners...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Adaptive testing reduces collusion in online tests

“Rensselaer-developed method proven effective in reducing collusion among students” “When a distanced online test is performed, students receive the same questions, but at varying times depending on their skill level. For instance, students of highest mastery levels receive each question after...
Source: rpi.edu

The Agile Manifesto 20 years on: agility in software delivery is still a work in progress | ZDNet

We've had two decades to absorb the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. What have we learned, and what are we still learning? 'We are closer and more aware, but we are turning a tanker and it is slow and incremental.'
Source: zdnet.com

Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete & ending the new nuclear arms race

"COVID-19 has provided a vivid reminder of the power of biological threats. But the threat doesn’t come from natural sources alone. Weaponized contagious diseases — which were abandoned by the United States, but developed in large numbers by the Soviet Union, right up until its collapse — have...
Source: 80000hours.org