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
'Concerning' rise in pre-teens self-injuring.
"The rate of hospital admissions for nine to 12-year-olds who self-injure has doubled in six years." "In 2019-20, before the coronavirus pandemic, there were 16 hospital admissions per 100,000 nine to 12-year-olds, up from eight in 2013-14. Self-injury admissions for girls in this age group were twice...
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
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
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
Sharks at unprecedented risk of extinction after 71 per cent decline: Numbers of oceanic sharks and rays have declined at
Sharks at unprecedented risk of extinction after 71 per cent decline: Numbers of oceanic sharks and rays have declined at an “alarming” 71 per cent over almost half a century, leading to an unprecedented increase in their risk of extinction
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
Stonehenge: Did the stone circle originally stand in Wales?
Archaeologists now believe the stone circle stood 150 miles from its current location in Wiltshire. "One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales - and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge. Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's...
Source: bbc.com
England's current lockdown could be the last
England's current lockdown could be the last, says Neil Ferguson: Expert says growing immunity means England could be in tier 1 or 2 measures by May.
Source: theguardian.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
Covid bereavement group founder is 'inspirational young man'
Covid bereavement group founder is 'inspirational young man': The support group now has about 700 members around the UK and beyond. "On the evening of his father's funeral Liam Meyer launched a group to help other families whose lives had been ravaged by Covid-19. His father, David, died with Covid-19...
Source: bbc.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
Phrase of the day: Scaling Kubernetes to 7,500 Nodes
Scaling Kubernetes to 7,500 Nodes: We've scaled Kubernetes clusters to 7,500 nodes, producing a scalable infrastructure for large models like GPT-3, CLIP, and DALL·E, but also for rapid small-scale iterative research such as Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models. Scaling a single Kubernetes cluster...
Source: openai.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
Day 2381 - Coffee cup sketch
The crap artist awakens for the first time in a long time. Joining Janet's Sketchaway course I thought I'd knock out a study of a typical breakfast moment - the empty coffee cup in pen. #thecrapartist
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
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
RSS feed