How the Post Office's Horizon system failed: a technical breakdown
"From bugs to unqualified staff, the Post Office's point-of-sale system was inadequate on many levels." The code was poor from the start and the small team of developers were not up to the job. However, the problems were apparent in 1999 before it was launched. Includes a discussion of the Dalmellington...
Source: theguardian.com
Gender differences in individual variation in academic grades fail to fit expected patterns for STEM - Nature Communications
Fewer women than men pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), despite girls outperforming boys at school in the relevant subjects. According to the ‘variability hypothesis’, this over-representation of males is driven by gender differences in variance; greater male...
Source: nature.com
Will electric motorbike sales take off across Asia?
"Soaring petrol prices could speed up the transition to electric much faster than expected." Could electric motorbikes become a thing in the UK? Not so much in hilly Cornwall perhaps but cities maybe. The smaller size of a motorbike battery lends itself to being swappable.
Source: bbc.com
Biopharma futures
I've been looking at a few industry reports on the future of biopharma as part of a course I'm on with INSEAD Business School on Business Strategy and Financial Performance. I thought I'd share some of my ramblings on Biopharma Futures. Expectations are high Pharmaceutical
companies are operating...
Source: agnate.co.uk
What does the future of work look like for pharma?
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated changes to our working world. What does this mean for pharma, and what must the industry do to keep pace? PwC - future of work for pharma costs - pressures on efficienct, increasing R&D costs sustainability and societal impact - pressure on companies to address...
Source: pwc.co.uk
The future of biopharma
Shifts in how diseases are diagnosed and prevented, custom treatments, curative therapies, digital therapeutics, and precision intervention could upend current business models in biopharma. Deloitte's Five forces to 2040 Prevention and early detection Customized treatments - interventions for very...
Source: deloitte.com
Internet user classification
Grampound it seems is classified as 'e-Rational Utilitarian' ... but who is shouting out for more local facilities and better internet infrastructure? Checks notes ... methodological individualist and political liberals with social stratification (i.e. class, status distinctions) playing a relatively...
Source: cdrc.ac.uk
Combat drones: We are in a new era of warfare - here's why
No longer the preserve of superpowers, drones are now in the hands of insurgents and smaller countries.
Source: bbc.com
Outgoing U.N. aid chief slams G7 for failing on vaccine plan
Outgoing U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock slammed the Group of Seven wealthy nations on Monday for failing to come up with a plan to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, describing the G7 pledge to provide 1 billion doses over the next year as a "small step."
Source: reuters.com
Bill Gates' next generation nuclear reactor to be built in Wyoming
Billionaire Bill Gates' advanced nuclear reactor company TerraPower LLC and PacifiCorp (PPWLO.PK) have selected Wyomingto launch the first Natrium reactor project on the site of a retiring coal plant, the state's governor said on Wednesday.
Source: reuters.com
Why Did It Take So Long to Accept the Facts About Covid?
"The importance of airborne transmission in the pandemic was clear long before the World Health Organization finally began to acknowledge it." "If the importance of aerosol transmission had been accepted early, we would have been told from the beginning that it was much safer outdoors, where these small...
Source: nytimes.com
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
Feeding your cat a very meaty diet may mean it kills less wildlife
In a small trial in the UK, pet cats fed on an unusually meaty diet brought home 36 per cent fewer prey animals than cats given a typical diet. "Domestic cats seem to hunt less when their diets are richer in animal-sourced protein, suggesting that feeding cats more meat could help reduce their impact...
Source: newscientist.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
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
Largest COVID-19 contact tracing study to date finds children key to spread, evidence of superspreaders.
Largest COVID-19 contact tracing study to date finds children key to spread, evidence of superspreaders: Researchers from the Princeton Environmental Institute find the continued spread of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is driven by only a small percentage of those who become infected.
Source: princeton.edu
A UN framework for the immediate socio-economic response to COVID-19.
UNSDG | A UN framework for the immediate socio-economic response to COVID-19. The five streams of work that constitute this package include: 1. ensuring that essential health services are still available and protecting health systems; 2. helping people cope with adversity, through social protection...
Source: unsdg.un.org
Effectiveness and feasibility of a mindful leadership course for medical specialists: a pilot study: Medical specialists
Effectiveness and feasibility of a mindful leadership course for medical specialists: a pilot study: Medical specialists experience high levels of stress. This has an impact on their well-being, but also on quality of their leadership. In the current mixed method study, the feasibility and effectiveness...
Source: biomedcentral.com
Drug therapy for delirium in terminally ill adults. Cochrane review.
Drug therapy for delirium in terminally ill adults. "terminally ill adults includes anyone with an advanced progressive illness such as advanced cancer, advanced dementia or organ failure, as well as those receiving hospice and end-of-life care ... " "We found low-quality evidence that, compared to...
Source: cochrane.org
Publication bias is a challenge in science and a criticism of the influence of industry.
Publication bias is a challenge in science and a criticism of the influence of industry. In the domain of biosciences and drug development more accountability (e.g. the FDAAA 2007), editorial and peer-review training (as suggested by the Cochrane Collaboration), and statistical techniques (as championed...
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