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
Overturning 'conventional wisdom' with 'natural experiments'
Via Reuters ... "Economists David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens won the 2021 Nobel economics prize on Monday for pioneering "natural experiments" to show real-world economic impacts in areas from minimum wage increases in the U.S. fast-food sector to migration from Castro-era Cuba." "One experiment...
Source: reuters.com
The AI Hierarchy of Needs | Hacker Noon
Sometimes you come across something that someone has written which makes what was a whole complicated mess in your head very simple indeed. Monica Rogati has done that with AI using an analogy of Maslow's (in)famous hierarchy of needs. For AI it translates to something like collecting, storing, preparing,...
Source: hackernoon.com
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
Rediscovering Cryptpad
Cryptpad is for working collaboratively on documents such as Rich Text, Spread Sheets, Presentations, Whiteboards, and Project Boards. The server has no access to any of your data and the encryption is based on zero knowledge. You don't even need to give an email address to register - you pick a username...
Source: cryptpad.fr
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
The Impact of Mask Distribution and Promotion on Mask Uptake and COVID-19 in Bangladesh
A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that face masks can protect against COVID-19. There is, however, limited rigorous evidence on the extent to which mask-wearing is effective in reducing COVID-19 in a real-life situation with imperfect and inconsistent mask use. In Bangladesh, researchers...
Source: poverty-action.org
Extinction Rebellion protesters block London's Tower Bridge
Demonstrators from the Extinction Rebellion group, which is demanding urgent action by governments and business to limit climate change and biodiversity loss, staged a sit-down protest that stopped traffic from using Tower Bridge in London on Monday.
Source: reuters.com
A Simple Approach to Relieve Teens’ Anxiety and Depression JAMA.
An intervention known as Shamiri helped relieve Kenyan adolescents’ depression and anxiety symptoms more effectively than a program aimed at improving their secondary school study skills, researchers reported in JAMA Psychiatry.
Source: jamanetwork.com
Development and validation of teacher and student questionnaires measuring inhibitors of curriculum viability - BMC Medical
Background Curriculum viability is determined by the degree to which quality standards have or have not been met, and by the inhibitors that affect attainment of those standards. The literature reports many ways to evaluate whether a curriculum reaches its quality standards, but less attention is paid...
Source: biomedcentral.com
Council policies 'inconsistent' with climate goals
A third of English councils support policies that could increase emissions, BBC research suggests.
Source: bbc.com
Will MIT Scientists' Powerful Magnet Lead Us to Nuclear Fusion Energy? - Slashdot
"A start-up founded by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it is nearing a technological milestone that could take the world a step closer to fusion energy, which has eluded scientists for decades," reports the New York Times:
Researchers at M.I.T.'s Plasma Science and Fus...
Source: slashdot.org
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
Visa-free touring granted for UK artists in 19 EU countries – while industry demands "honesty" from government
"The government has announced that visa-free touring has been negotiated for UK artists in 19 EU member countries" This is great news for musicians but also good to see that individual EU states also still have control over their borders (they always did). It will be great for us all to have freedom...
Source: nme.com
Gout and 'Podagra' in medieval Cambridge, England - PubMed International journal of paleopathology.
"The high prevalence rate of gout in the friary is at least partly explained by the consumption of alcohol and purine-rich diets by the friars and the wealthy townsfolk. Medieval medical texts from Cambridge show that gout (known as podagra) was sometimes treated with medications made from the root of...
Source: nih.gov
How global conferences are using tech to stay in business
"Moving events online kept the industry going during the pandemic and now they're here to stay." Notable mentions of the conferences Collision, Web Summit, and RISE, and the speed networking software Mingle. "[T]he Distance Learning Association's Thomas Capone says that the future of meetings and events...
Source: bbc.com
Pegasus: Spyware sold to governments 'targets activists'
Israeli tech firm NSO denies media reports that its software has been sold to authoritarian regimes. The Android and iOS spyware can apparently see photographs and contacts, log everything that is typed, and turn on the camera and microphone.
Source: bbc.com
Can Money Buy Happiness? A Review of New Data
Everyone knows the adage “money can’t buy happiness,” although few of us seem to believe it.
The best-known theory on this topic is that money actually can buy happiness, but only up to a point. This comes from a study by two Nobel Laureates, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton (2010), which found...
Source: givingwhatwecan.org
Cats Are Better Than Dogs (at Catching the Coronavirus)
Cats and dogs can be infected by the coronavirus — but cats are more susceptible to infection, a new study suggests.
Source: nytimes.com
Clubhouse And Education
"New App Has Exciting Potential For Today’s Educators | Emerging Education Technologies" I've used Clubhouse for a couple of months and it certainly provides the opportunity for communities to come together and invite expert speakers. It is refreshing in that it doesn't have screen time and you can...
Source: emergingedtech.com
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