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
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
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
Teen builds solar-powered tuk-tuk from scraps
Piranawan, 15, from Sri Lanka spent eight months of his Covid lockdown making his eco-friendly vehicle.
Source: bbc.co.uk
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
U.S. employers get religion with vaccine mandates
As coronavirus infections rise again, U.S. companies mandating vaccinations are confronting an uncomfortable question rarely asked by an employer - what is an employee's religious belief?
Source: reuters.com
New WHO toolkit promotes inclusion of people with dementia in society
“Towards a dementia-inclusive society: WHO toolkit for dementia-friendly initiatives”, launched today, is WHO’s latest response for establishing and scaling-up dementia-friendly initiatives globally. The toolkit helps countries raise public awareness and understanding of dementia to support people...
Source: who.int
Who is the we in 'We are causing climate change'?
Everyone is not equally complicit here.
Source: grist.org
Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free to all
New policy brings UKRI-funded research in line with European open-access push
Source: sciencemag.org
Canada blocks proposed Rocky Mountain coal mine on environmental grounds
Canada on Friday formally blocked a proposal to build a steelmaking coal mine in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, citing what it said would be the significant environmental damage.
Source: reuters.com
Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly | Commonwealth Fund
"How the 11 Countries Rank on Performance. The top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The next three countries in the ranking — the U.K., Germany, and New Zealand — perform very similarly to one another." The UK was ranked #1 overall in 2017 - the last time this...
Source: commonwealthfund.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
Sikh and Hindu ashes scattering site opens - BBC News
A dedicated site for ashes to be scattered into flowing water is officially opened in Cardiff.
Source: bbc.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
Gilgamesh tablet: US authorities take ownership of artefact
The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was imported illegally into the US before being bought by Hobby Lobby.
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
The leader's brain: Neuroscience in the workplace
The brain rarely fires on all cylinders even at the best of times - what more during a pandemic?
Source: reuters.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
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