Data-driven humanitarianism
An article from MIT Technology Review showing how the World Food
Programme uses geospatial data that is developed and made 'open' to all
by people within the areas being served. "It’s one of the most beautiful places on Earth, but its people are among the most vulnerable. Afghanistan’s snowy...
Source: technologyreview.com
First it was Agile software development, now Agile management is remaking the workplace | ZDNet
"The most effective managers have used the past 12 months to support new remote-working practices with Agile leadership styles. This is what two digital leaders have learnt from the experience - and here's how you can benefit."
Source: zdnet.com
New Technique Reveals Centuries of Secrets in Locked Letters
M.I.T. researchers have devised a virtual-reality technique that lets them read old letters that were mailed not in envelopes but in the writing paper itself after being folded into elaborate enclosures.
Source: nytimes.com
Simulations suggest Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere will last only another billion years
A pair of researchers from Toho University and NASA Nexus for Exoplanet System Science has found evidence, via simulation, that Earth will lose its oxygen-rich atmosphere in approximately 1 billion years. In their paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Kazumi Ozaki and Christopher Reinhard...
Source: phys.org
'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
NOAN creates timber wedding chapel in Finnish woodland
"NOAN has designed a timber chapel within a forest overlooking the Tervajärvi at a campground in southern Finland." What amazing woodwork.
Source: dezeen.com
The Namib Desert bears a scar from a meteorite impact.
"In the vastness of one of the world’s oldest deserts lies a relatively recent geologic feature: the Roter Kamm crater (“red comb” or “red crest/ridge” in German). An astronaut onboard the International Space Station photographed the crater while orbiting over the Namib Desert. It is approximately...
Source: nasa.gov
The Technology Behind Cinematic Photos
There has been some work by teams at Google looking at analysing images to extract their 3D features. They launched a new feature called 'cinematic photos' and this blog posted by Per Karlsson and Lucy Yu, Software Engineers, of Google Research tries to explain how it works. "Looking at photos from...
Source: googleblog.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
Open Access, Conspiracy Theories and the Democratization of Knowledge
The Scholarly Kitchen "We are in the middle of a new political dynamic here in the US – one that has been building for over a decade. This new dynamic has meant that science and scientists are being viewed with a level of distrust – and even, at times, hostility – that is unprecedented in modern...
Source: sspnet.org
Most brain activity is "background noise"
"Most brain activity is "background noise" and that's upending our understanding of consciousness." This complexity view of the mind is not new but this article explains it quite clearly.
Source: salon.com
Why Are COVID-19 Case Numbers Dropping?
"We don’t know. That part is easy. Also easy is that case numbers really are falling — it’s not just reduced testing — and it’s happening pretty much everywhere. Urban areas and rural. Red states and blue. Places with broad vaccine rollouts and those with hardly any. North and South America,...
Source: jwatch.org
Microsoft Teams AI could tell you who is most enjoying your video call
Researchers at Microsoft have developed an AI for the firm's Teams videoconferencing software that highlights positive audience reactions during a virtual presentation
Source: newscientist.com
Reconstructing the Menu of a Pub in Ancient Pompeii
When in Rome ... or Pompeii. "Eat like a first-century Roman, using recent archaeological discoveries as your guide." "In consideration of some of this evidence, if we were to hypothesize that what we’ve read in the Latin literary record about “boiled meat,” “broth and chunks of meat,” and...
Source: atlasobscura.com
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
AI uses "ugly duckling" technique to spot melanoma with high accuracy
"Artificial intelligence is starting to combine with smartphone technology in ways that could have profound impacts on the way we monitor health, from tracking blood volume changes in diabetics to detecting concussions by filming the eyes." "Using the technology to spot melanoma in its early stages is...
Source: newatlas.com
Using the right tools for the job
Since this blog has been up I've fiddled with some text analysis stuff by analysing the text and making recommendations for similar blog entries. Did it all in PHP and MySQL just to understand how the algorithms work. Eventually it started to take about 5 hours to: tokenise and stemming the textcalculate...
Dreadful user experience can be expensive.
"Citibank just got a $500 million lesson in the importance of UI design: Citibank was trying to make $7.8M in interest payments. It sent $900M instead." The screenshot is from court records where the judge ruled against Citibank who had wanted to get their money back. The lesson is to always include...
Source: arstechnica.com
The 10 Biggest Trends in Entrepreneurship to Look For in 2021
Want to know what’s in store for entrepreneurs in 2021? Here’s a rundown of the top ten trends every entrepreneur should know about.
Source: neilpatel.com
Australian news app beats Facebook in App Store
"Take that Facebook. A homegrown app from Australia Broadcasting Company (ABC) topped iOS download charts in Australia, outpacing Facebook. That's important for one big reason: Facebook just banned news from appearing on Australian newsfeeds in response to a law that would require the social giant...
Source: mashable.com
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