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showing posts for 'lab'

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

Covid Disguises Chronic Scarcity of Workers for U.K. Recovery

“The acute labor shortage because of self isolation is masking the systemic challenge for businesses struggling to recruit after Brexit.”
Source: bloomberg.com

How an informant and a messaging app led to huge global crime sting

It took $100,000 plus expenses, and the opportunity for a reduced prison sentence, for the smartphone developer to collaborate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2018 and kick-start Operation Trojan Shield, according to a court document.
Source: reuters.com

Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants

 All viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, change over time. Most changes have little to no impact on the virus’ properties. However, some changes may affect the virus’s properties, such as how easily it spreads, the associated disease severity, or the performance...
Source: who.int

It just got a little easier to move your Facebook posts to some other platform

Social networks have typically followed the roach motel model of customer data: Make it easy to push data in, but hard/impossible to pull it back out. Platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter all make money by knowing what information you've (wittingly or unwittingly) handed over â…
Source: niemanlab.org

This Robot Taught Itself to Walk in a Simulation—Then Went for a Stroll in Berkeley

Recently, in a Berkeley lab, a robot called Cassie taught itself to walk a little like a toddler might—through trial and error.
Source: singularityhub.com

Europe Plans 20,000 GPU Supercomputer to Create 'Digital Twin' of Earth - ExtremeTech

The plan to create a digital twin of Earth might end up delayed due to the relative lack of available GPUs, but this isn't going to be an overnight project. 
Source: extremetech.com

Build for a crisis: Ideas for the future of local news

Enjoyed this story of the ingenuity of local newspapers when struck with the crisis of extreme weather. What does it say for our other complex technology and business layers? When crisis strikes perhaps that's when you find the lowest common tech that works and exactly what purpose you are using it for....
Source: niemanlab.org

Implementing Medical Chatbots: An Application on Hidradenitis Suppurativa - PubMed Dermatology (Basel, Switzerland).

A medical chatbot has to be customised to the specific subject whilst general principles have to be considered. High-quality information has to be available in just a few clicks. People concerned about HS are looking for a diagnosis online and often have not seen a doctor previously. Guidance toward...
Source: nih.gov

Adaptive testing reduces collusion in online tests

“Rensselaer-developed method proven effective in reducing collusion among students” “When a distanced online test is performed, students receive the same questions, but at varying times depending on their skill level. For instance, students of highest mastery levels receive each question after...
Source: rpi.edu

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

Mars rover Perseverance takes first spin on surface of red planet

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance has taken its first, short drive on the surface of the red planet, two weeks after the robot science lab's picture-perfect touchdown on the floor of a massive crater, mission managers said on Friday.
Source: reuters.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

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

Corporate diversity

Why you should look beyond the typical labels: This article highlights the benefits of having a diverse talent pool in your organization, taking into consideration their unique backstory.
Source: impactplus.com

Facebook and Australia's media bargaining law

In Australia, Facebook’s ban on sharing news stories has sent publishers’ traffic tumbling: Audience declines of 20 percent or more have followed Facebook taking its traffic ball and going home. "Even people outside Australia can no longer share stories [on Facebook] from Australian publishers big...
Source: niemanlab.org

46,218 news transcripts show ideologically extreme politicians get more airtime

"We found that the House that’s shown on the news is much more ideologically extreme than the actual House."
Source: niemanlab.org

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

11 TOPS photonic convolutional accelerator for optical neural networks: Convolutional neural networks, inspired by biological

11 TOPS photonic convolutional accelerator for optical neural networks: Convolutional neural networks, inspired by biological visual cortex systems, are a powerful category of artificial neural networks that can extract the hierarchical features of raw data to provide greatly reduced parametric complexity...
Source: nature.com

How we learnt to stop worrying and love web scraping: For Nicholas DeVito, Georgia Richards and Peter Inglesby, custom webscrapers

How we learnt to stop worrying and love web scraping: For Nicholas DeVito, Georgia Richards and Peter Inglesby, custom webscrapers have driven their research — and their collaborations. For Nicholas DeVito, Georgia Richards and Peter Inglesby, custom webscrapers have driven their research — and...
Source: nature.com