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
Investors overseeing $14 trln call for vote on company climate plans
Investors managing $14 trillion in assets on Friday said they wanted all companies to set a climate transition plan and allow them to vote on it, ahead of next year's season for annual general meetings.
Source: reuters.com
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
Tailored messaging increases understanding of climate change in Republicans
A team of researchers at Yale University's Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has found that the use of tailored advertising can increase awareness among Republicans of the dangers posed by climate change. In their paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the group describes field...
Source: phys.org
World's wealthiest (and 'business as usual') 'at heart of climate problem'
"These [polluter elite] are people who fly most, drive the biggest cars most and live in the biggest homes which they can easily afford to heat, so they tend not to worry if they’re well insulated or not. … They’re also the sort of people who could really afford good insulation and solar panels...
Source: bbc.com
To them that hath: economic complexity and local industrial strategy in the UK Penny Mealy. Diane Coyle. International Tax
Divergent economic performance in many countries has led to renewed interest in place-based policies, such as the UK’s local industrial strategies at the level of Combined Authorities or Local Economic Partnerships. However, an analysis of employment data using methods from the economic complexity...
Source: springer.com
Sewage discharged into rivers 400,000 times in 2020
Waterways in England had sewage discharged into them for three million hours
Source: bbc.com
Heisenberg on Helgoland - the value of spending time in natural surroundings
"It was finally time to use his strange calculus to calculate the energy of a real physical system. As his excitement mounted he kept on making mistakes and correcting them, but finally he had it. When he looked at it he was struck with joy and astonishment. Out of the dance of calculations emerged an...
Source: fieldofscience.com
Matrix Multiplication Inches Closer to Mythic Goal
A recent paper set the fastest record for multiplying two matrices. But it also marks the end of the line for a method researchers have relied on for decades to make improvements.
Source: quantamagazine.org
Using GPT-2 to generate Tweets
Last summer I blogged about using a Deep Neural Network to generate tweets but only used 3200 of my tweets. Since then I've used Twitter's archive mechanism to retrieve ALL my tweets (just over 30,000) to train a network. Not any old network - the GPT-2 model from OpenAI. This 'finetuning' of an existing...
Moving fast and breaking us all: Big Tech’s unaccountable algorithms
Much of the technology driving revenues for the world’s most powerful digital platforms is accountable to no one—not even the companies themselves.
Source: rankingdigitalrights.org
Over 27,000 students share how colleges and universities could improve digital learning
"A Jisc survey of 27,069 higher and further education students reveals that most are pleased with their digital learning, but areas such as wellbeing, mental health and staff digital skills need more attention." Get the basics right (like college WiFi)Make learning sessions more interactive Record lessons...
Source: jisc.ac.uk
This Soft Robot Stingray Just Explored the Deepest Point in the Ocean
The bot could be a game-changer in how we explore the deep sea, especially its bizarre marine life. It can handle living specimens without damaging them.
Source: singularityhub.com
PAIRED: A New Multi-agent Approach for Adversarial Environment Generation
This Google AI blog describes a method for machine learning using paired agents. The gap between the one that did the best and the one that did the worst is regret. That feeling of 'could have done' better is what pushes the 'unsupervised environment design' algorithm towards a better solution. "The...
Source: googleblog.com
Gloves that give people with tremor a helping hand | Reuters Video
One of the word's largest electronics manufacturers has invested in a UK start-up making gloves with built-in spinning gyroscopes that help people overcome the sometimes debilitating tremors that can stop them doing some simple tasks.
Source: reut.rs
MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia™, deep learning technology to animate the faces in still family photos
MyHeritage have used the same AI technology behind deep fakes to analyse old photographs and link them to movements from a number of videos of other moving faces. Bring your ancestors back to life.
Source: myheritage.com
Best Way to Learn Online | Snapask
"Snapask App instantly matches students with tutors to answer difficult questions! Download and ask for free! Whether it is Primary or Secondary subjects (Malay, English, Mathematics, Phy, Chem, Bio) homework questions can be asked, and the tutor will reply instantly!" Snap a photo of your homework and...
Source: snapask.com
Study shows conversations rarely end when people want them to end
"A team of researchers from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the University of Virginia has found that conversations between people usually do not end when either partner in the conversation wants them to end. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National...
Source: phys.org
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
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
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