Fatalism - the stalemate of us vs. COVID-19
Stephen Casper - medical historian at Clarkson University - offers a worrying prediction for COVID for the end of 2022. The analogy for COVID-19 won't be influenza but 'tuberculosis before the discovery of antibiotics'. A new hospital specialty might even exist - looking after COVID patients - and they...
Source: twitter.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
Early warnings and emerging accountability: Total's responses to global warming, 1971-2021 Global Environmental Change.
Building upon recent work on other major fossil fuel companies, we report new archival research and primary source interviews describing how Total responded to evolving climate science and policy in the last 50 years. We show that Total personnel received warnings of the potential for catastrophic global...
Source: sciencedirect.com
Council policies 'inconsistent' with climate goals
A third of English councils support policies that could increase emissions, BBC research suggests.
Source: bbc.com
The pandemic slashed the West Coast’s emissions. Wildfires already reversed it.
Major fires and resulting emissions are set to continually increase across the world’s forested regions, fueling more warming and more fires to come.
Source: technologyreview.com
Tailored messaging increases understanding of climate change in Republicans
A team of researchers at Yale University's Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has found that the use of tailored advertising can increase awareness among Republicans of the dangers posed by climate change. In their paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the group describes field...
Source: phys.org
Greta Thunberg aims to change how food is produced
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has set her sights on changing how the world produces and consumes food in order to counteract a trio of threats: carbon emissions, disease outbreaks and animal suffering.
Source: reuters.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
UK should set tougher air pollution limits, says Kissi-Debrah coroner
The UK government should impose tougher limits on air pollution, in line with World Health Organization recommendations, to prevent more deaths like those of 9-year old Ella Kissi-Debrah, a coroner has urged.
Source: newscientist.com
IEA issues 'dire warning' on CO2 emissions as it predicts 5% rise
Global CO2 emissions from energy are seen rising nearly 5% this year, suggesting the economic rebound from COVID-19 could be "anything but sustainable" for the climate, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.
Source: reuters.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
Community Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Associated with a Local Bar Opening Event — Illinois, February 2021 CDC. Samira Sami.
Forty-six cases of COVID-19 were linked to an indoor bar
Source: cdc.gov
How to Virtually Become a Doctor
Medical schools and students alike have had to adapt to remote cadaver dissections and bedside-manner training via Zoom.
Source: nytimes.com
Using GPT-2 to generate Tweets
Last summer I blogged about using a Deep Neural Network to generate tweets but only used 3200 of my tweets. Since then I've used Twitter's archive mechanism to retrieve ALL my tweets (just over 30,000) to train a network. Not any old network - the GPT-2 model from OpenAI. This 'finetuning' of an existing...
Microbes Unknown to Science Discovered on The International Space Station
The menagerie of bacterial and fungal species living among us is ever growing - and this is no exception in low-gravity environments, such as the International Space Station (ISS).
Source: sciencealert.com
Cornwall: Home care issues for people in rural areas
More than 80 people in Cornwall currently have no council-funded care despite being eligible.
Source: bbc.com
Mars rover Perseverance takes first spin on surface of red planet
NASA's Mars rover Perseverance has taken its first, short drive on the surface of the red planet, two weeks after the robot science lab's picture-perfect touchdown on the floor of a massive crater, mission managers said on Friday.
Source: reuters.com
IEA says global CO2 emissions rising again after nearly 6% fall last year
"Global carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 5.8% in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed economic activity, but they rebounded at the end of the year and are on course to rise further, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday." Whilst economic growth is sought to reduce national deficits following...
Source: reuters.com
'Undiscovered Titian painting' found in Ledbury church
"An art historian claims to have found the Renaissance master's signature during restoration work." Fascinating story especially the then - plague - and now - pandemic angle. Enormous dedication from the historian and team who have been working on it - over 11,000 hours of work. Can't remember seeing...
Source: bbc.com
The Edge: Where Ed Tech’s $2-Billion Year Leaves Colleges
It’s not too late to pay attention to something perennially missing from these booms: whether the tools are working.
Source: chronicle.com
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