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
UK rollout data on AstraZeneca shot should guide other countries: vaccine chief
Natural experiments can be a really useful source of data. "Data from Britain's vaccine rollout on the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University COVID-19 shot in older people should help other countries reassess their use of it, the head of the university's vaccine research group said on Tuesday."
Source: reuters.com
Betting on death of petrol cars, Volvo to go all electric by 2030
"Volvo's entire car lineup will be fully electric by 2030, the Chinese-owned company said on Tuesday, joining a growing number of carmakers planning to phase out fossil-fuel engines by the end of this decade." Maybe the transition to all electric cars is going to go faster than it appeared only a few...
Source: reuters.com
Drones fly to protect rare New Zealand dolphins
New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern said on Friday (February 26) that her government was backing a new project that uses drone technology to understand and protect the endangered Maui dolphins in the country. Gloria Tso reports. Reuters Video.
Source: reut.rs
Fires Raged in the Amazon Again in 2020
"After intense fires in the Amazon captured global attention in 2019, fires again raged throughout the region in 2020. According to an analysis of satellite data from NASA’s Amazon dashboard, the 2020 fire season was actually more severe by some key measures." “Our system identified about 23,000...
Source: nasa.gov
Ancient Northland swamp kauri solves 42,000 year old mystery
NZ Herald: Ancient Northland swamp kauri shows breakdown of Earth's magnetic field 42,000 years ago. "For the first time ever, we have been able to precisely date the timing and environmental impacts of the last magnetic pole switch," Chris Turney, a professor at UNSW Science and co-lead author of the...
Source: nzherald.co.nz
Google fires Margaret Mitchell, co-lead of its Ethical AI team
"Last December, Gebru was fired from Google after she tried to be outspoken about unethical AI. This prompted some 225 Google employees to club together to create a union, in the hope of preventing further unfair dismissal and protecting employee rights. Mitchell was a member of said union, but that...
Source: techspot.com
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
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
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
Proposal for a New Tool to Evaluate a Serious Game
Proposal for a New Tool to Evaluate a Serious Game: The current enthusiasm of generations of students for video games and the marked interest of training institutions for the use of playful strategies, which facilitate learning, has encouraged the development and use of formative games called Serious...
Source: online-journals.org
Oppose the educational technology algorithims and technosolutions?
Essay by Audrey Watters on schools and the technology industry ... basically f**k the algorithm. "Robot Teachers, Racist Algorithms, and Disaster Pedagogy: I have volunteered to be a guest speaker in classes this Fall. It's really the least I can do to help teachers and students through another tough...
Source: hackeducation.com
Coronavirus COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 information
A collection of information sources for COVID-19. The NHS 111 online COVID-19 service. The first point of call for someone in the UK who thinks they have symptoms or have been exposed whilst travelling. The NHS Coronavirus COVID-19 information webpage. UK Government's Coronavirus action plan. Public...
Energy conference cancelled after Royal College of General Practitioners concern.
Energy conference cancelled after College concern. Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “We deeply regret that a booking was accepted to host an event at our headquarters that conflicts with the College’s longstanding commitment to combat the impact of climate change...
Source: rcgp.org.uk
Cardiac guidelines challenged following investigation.
Surgeons withdraw support for heart disease advice: European guidelines on a form of heart disease are under review, following a Newsnight investigation. “It is a matter of serious concern to us that some results in the Excel trial appear to have been concealed and that some patients may therefore...
Source: bbc.com
Why People Demanded Privacy to Confide in the World
"To encourage ongoing dialogue, Weizenbaum designed Eliza to simulate the type of conversational style used by a Rogerian psychoanalyst. The program would take something the user said and reflect it back with a question
... during their brief interactions with Eliza, many users began forming emotional...
Source: ieee.org
City fund managers call for rethink of capitalism
"Two of the world’s biggest fund management bosses have called for a rethink of capitalism and its obsession with constant economic growth, in a plaintive appeal for business and governments to deal more decisively with the challenges of climate change.
Anne Richards, chief executive of Fidelity...
Source: www.ft.com
Publication bias is a challenge in science and a criticism of the influence of industry.
Publication bias is a challenge in science and a criticism of the influence of industry. In the domain of biosciences and drug development more accountability (e.g. the FDAAA 2007), editorial and peer-review training (as suggested by the Cochrane Collaboration), and statistical techniques (as championed...
Open is Eating the World: What Source Code and Science Have in Common.
"Open is Eating the World: What Source Code and Science Have in Common: In 2011, Marc Andreessen said that software is eating the world, predicting that technology companies would continue to significantly disrupt an increasingly broad range of industries. Since then, publishers have embraced technology....
Source: sspnet.org
Joint Speech Recognition and Speaker Diarization via Sequence Transduction: Posted by Laurent El Shafey, Software Engineer
Joint Speech Recognition and Speaker Diarization via Sequence Transduction: Posted by Laurent El Shafey, Software Engineer and Izhak Shafran, Research Scientist, Google Health Being able to recognize “who said what”.
Source: googleblog.com
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