New researches

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Scholarships-Africa, IOS Press Labs, North Carolina Black History, More: Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Scholarships-Africa, IOS Press Labs, North Carolina Black History, More: Wednesday, April 14, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

My spreadsheet project kind of exploded over the weekend and I’ve been spending a lot of time working on it. It’s an instant-overview tool for Wikipedia, for when you hear a name or a topic and need a quick stack o’ facts without going through lots of searches. (I need this often in the process of doing ResearchBuzz.)

It really started coming together yesterday and I was able to share it with my patrons on Patreon. (Thanks for playing with it last night, y’all!) Today I want to see if I can use a tool to turn it into an app. And of course now that I’ve got the APIs all nicely integrated, I can do more with the Wikipedia data I’m bringing in. One thing at a time.

But I also woke up this morning and realized I had 800 emails, so I’m going to spend the morning addressing that. The fun has to wait until this afternoon. Thanks for reading. Much love, as always.

NEW RESOURCES

KIVI: Boise State Senior creates social media platform, Scholarships-Africa. “Boise State Senior, Sunday “Paul” Adah is the Founder and CEO of Scholarships-Africa. He left his friends and family back in 2015 to enroll in a university more than 73-hundred miles away…. ‘Growing up in Africa there’s a lot of challenges with finding funding to get a good education,’ he said, ‘I noticed that a lot of Africans and black minorities have the same struggles.’ It was those struggles that inspired Scholarships-Africa, a social media platform created to connect students to scholarship opportunities.”

IOS Press: IOS Press Labs Goes Live. “Offering a platform that promotes collaboration and feedback, Labs content centers around the following categories: data management, innovation, open science, the research ecosystem, STM publishing, and technology. Topics of particular interest are: artificial intelligence; case studies; “failing forward;” corporate/brand identity; data policies/data sharing; digital transformation; diversity and inclusion; editorial policies; knowledge graphs; linked data; machine learning; open access; open source; publication ethics; software development; and workflow tools for scholarly publishing.”

Western Carolina University: WNC Tomorrow Black Oral History Project brings 1980s-era recordings to digital age. “Western Carolina University’s Special and Digital Collections at Hunter Library has digitized a collection of interviews conducted between 1986 and 1989 with Black residents from Western North Carolina, all of whom were older than 69 at the time. Recorded as part of the Western North Carolina Tomorrow Black Oral History Project are memories of interactions during segregation, life in the mountains as a Black person and the importance of church and school in the community. Their stories are of days spent sharecropping, service in the military and fighting in world wars, the civil rights movement and integration and other social changes in their lifetimes.”

The National (Scotland): Online Indy Tales library to help boost campaign for indyref2. “AN online library of short stories and poems in favour of Scottish independence has been launched ahead of the May 6 Scottish Parliament elections. The creation of Bob Hastings, a Scot who’s been living in Spain for more than 30 years, Indy Tales is a forum for exchanging fictionalised accounts of the need to regain this nation.”

PR Newswire: Launch Of Two Online Exhibitions Allows The Country Music Hall Of Fame® And Museum To Serve A Broader Audience (PRESS RELEASE). “Today, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum unveiled new, free-to-access online exhibitions: Suiting the Sound: The Rodeo Tailors Who Made Country Stars Shine Brighter and Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City. These multimedia exhibits are the first designed exclusively for the museum’s website.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Twitch users could face ban for off-service behavior. “Twitch has developed an off-service conduct policy to deter users from serious offenses done either offline or on other internet services, the company said Wednesday. People investigated for violations could face penalties including an indefinite suspension of their accounts.”

Engadget: Google is shutting down its iOS and Android Shopping apps. “Google is adding another entry to its app graveyard and this time it’s Shopping that’s getting the guillotine. After XDA Developers spotted the word ‘sunset’ in the Shopping app code, Google confirmed to 9to5 Google that it’s closing the app on iOS and Android by the end of June. Instead, it will direct users to the Shopping website.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

ABC News (Australia): Google Maps loses town, outback mayor loses patience with wayward navigation app. “The western Queensland mayors and tourism officials are so ‘disappointed’ by the inaccuracy of Google Maps in parts of the region, they are urging locals and tourists alike not to trust the web-based technology. They are advising tourists to use their common sense instead.”

Mashable: Google I/O is back and it’s going virtual in 2021. “Not only is Google I/O actually happening this year, but it’s also free to ‘attend.’ Due to the ongoing pandemic, Google I/O 2021 will be held virtually, which is better than nothing considering the company fully cancelled the event last year.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Google reportedly ran secret ‘Project Bernanke’ that boosted its own ad-buying system over competitors. “Google wrote in the unredacted filing that data from Project Bernanke was ‘comparable to data maintained by other buying tools,’ according to the Journal. The company was able to access historical data about bids made through Google Ads, to change bids by its clients and boost the clients’ chances of winning auctions for ad impressions, putting rival ad tools at a disadvantage. Texas cited in court documents an internal presentation from 2013 in which Google said Project Bernanke would bring in $230 million in revenue for that year.”

Globe and Mail: Court rejects appeal by Google Canada in long-running patent case. “The 3-0 decision written by Justice Yves de Montigny said it would be better to have the central issues go ahead and be considered by the trial judge, rather than be delayed by Google’s appeal on a secondary matter. Google Canada and its parent companies are defendants in an action brought to the Federal Court in 2018 by Paid Search Engine Tools LLC, which is seeking compensation for the use of intellectual property that is covered by a Canadian patent.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: Paranoia therapy app SlowMo helps people ‘slow down’ and manage their fears. “A new clinical trial from King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, & Neuroscience, in collaboration with Oxford University, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Sussex University, and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has established an innovative therapy as an effective means of treating paranoid thoughts in people experiencing psychosis.” Good morning, Internet…

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April 14, 2021 at 05:19PM
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Friday, April 9, 2021

Whale Evolution, Microsoft Paint, Verizon Hotspots, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 9, 2021

Whale Evolution, Microsoft Paint, Verizon Hotspots, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 9, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Michigan: New 3D exhibit by U-M Museum of Natural History offers up-close encounters with prehistoric whales. “‘Whale Evolution: From Land to Sea’ is an immersive exploration into the unusual evolution and adaptation of whales, whose ancient ancestors walked on land.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BetaNews: Paint will soon be available to download from the Microsoft Store. “Four years ago, Microsoft announced plans to kill off Paint, a fixture of Windows since the operating system’s first release back in 1985. There was a huge outcry at the news and Microsoft eventually backtracked, stating its simple graphics program would live on, but in the Microsoft Store.”

TechXplore: Verizon recalls mobile hotspots sold to schools, in stores (Update). “Verizon is recalling 2.5 million mobile hotspots after some reports of overheating and two reports of minor burns. The 4G hotspots were used by schools and sold by stores. They are called Ellipsis Jetpack mobile hotspots and were imported by Franklin Wireless in San Diego. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Thursday that the lithium ion battery in the hotspots can overheat, posing fire and burn hazards.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 12 Useful Bots to Get the Most Out of Telegram. “Telegram is one of the most popular instant messaging apps for a reason. It offers quite a few useful features, such as messages that can self-destruct, enormous group sizes of up to 200,000 members, and fantastic stickers. Added to that, Telegram also supports bots that can access all sorts of information and tools. The number of bots is quite extensive. Here are some of the most useful Telegram bots you should use.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Museums Association (UK): Collections Trust announces plans for improved national museums database. “The Collections Trust is to retire Culture Grid this autumn as part of a move to develop a new and more sustainable national collections database. Created more than a decade ago, Culture Grid was built as a proof-of-concept service assisting organisations in sharing their collections safely online. By 2015, however, project funding was pulled, and Culture Grid became a legacy system closed to new accessions.” You can learn more about Culture Grid here.

EurekAlert: $1.4 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant expands Enslaved.org research. “The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded $1.4 million to Michigan State University for Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade, or Enslaved.org, a first-of-its-kind database containing millions of records cataloging the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Enslaved.org, developed and maintained by MSU researchers, links data collections from multiple universities, archives, museums and family history centers.”

National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures: NALAC and Ford Foundation Launch “Reclaiming the Border Narrative”. “In partnership with the Ford Foundation, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures announces the award of 27 grants to artists, cultural workers and organizations whose work will change narratives and amplify stories in collaboration with their respective communities across the US – Mexico border region.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Biden’s $100 billion broadband plan is already getting pushback. “President Joe Biden wants to spend $100 billion to connect every American to affordable high-speed internet. It’s a lofty goal that’s hard to dispute, right? Lobbying groups representing cable and telecom companies that deliver those services, however, are worried Biden’s hefty spending plan will leave them out of the running for government grants and subsidies that could be used to offset the cost of building new infrastructure.”

BBC: US blacklists seven Chinese supercomputer groups. “The US has blacklisted seven Chinese groups it accuses of building supercomputers to help its military. It is the first move by the Biden administration to make it harder for China to obtain US technology On Thursday, three companies and four branches of China’s National Supercomputing Center were added to the US blacklist.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Shields Gazette: South Shields ship experts begin mammoth 3D-modelling project they admit may never be complete. “Since the late 1990s, South Shields Marine School has been one of only two UK centres – and the only teaching college – to create advanced graphics of ships and port and marine landscapes…. In that time, the marine school’s 3D-modelling team has made digital models of around 200 vessels and 120 ports or sea areas.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 10, 2021 at 01:18AM
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Carbon Emissions Monitoring, Ocean Adventures, Facebook, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, April 9, 2021

Carbon Emissions Monitoring, Ocean Adventures, Facebook, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, April 9, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of California, Irvine News: New U.S. Carbon Monitor website compares emissions among the 50 states. “Near real-time, state-level emissions estimates are now available at the U.S. Carbon Monitor website to serve the academic community, policy makers, the news media and the general public. As a companion to launch of the public website, the team today also released an explanatory paper on the EarthArXiv preprint server.”

Guinness World Records: Ocean Rowing Society International launches the first real adventure database. “The new database consists of various interactive and interrelated statistics: tables of expeditions, explorers, vessels, an interactive map that displays expeditions in any given area and period, a page where two expeditions can be compared by the system, and an outline page that summarizes all the facts as numbers on one page.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

MIT Technology Review: Facebook’s ad algorithms are still excluding women from seeing jobs. “Facebook is withholding certain job ads from women because of their gender, according to the latest audit of its ad service. The audit, conducted by independent researchers at the University of Southern California (USC), reveals that Facebook’s ad-delivery system shows different job ads to women and men even though the jobs require the same qualifications. This is considered sex-based discrimination under US equal employment opportunity law, which bans ad targeting based on protected characteristics. The findings come despite years of advocacy and lawsuits, and after promises from Facebook to overhaul how it delivers ads.”

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: How to make a TikTok Duet (on Instagram, too). “If you’re on TikTok — or have seen TikTok videos reposted elsewhere — you’ve likely seen a Duet. Sometimes TikTok creators film videos specifically designed for other users on the app to add to. They can range from dances to singing songs or lip-syncing songs to viral challenges to blind reacts and more.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BuzzFeed News: Despite A Ban, Facebook Continued To Label People As Interested In Militias For Advertisers. “For months after it banned violent extremist groups, Facebook’s advertising preference system, which lets advertisers deliver targeted ads, continued to identify and categorize some people as interested in militias.”

Middle East Monitor: Algeria president calls on France to return Ottoman archive. “Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has called on France to return archives dating back to the Ottoman era, smuggled out of the country during the French colonial era from 1830 to 1962, Anadolu reported.”

Mother Jones: The TikTok Trend That Has Immigration Lawyers Worried. “TikTok’s ecosystem of immigration lawyers is a diverse one. There are plenty of zealous advocates attempting to explain in digestible sound bites convoluted, ever-changing policies. There is also potentially misleading content. Many of the advertisements seem to target undocumented Latin American immigrants with strong ties to the United States and few to no existing options for obtaining legal status.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NIKKEI Asia: Myanmar junta targets 100 celebrities active on social media. “Myanmar’s junta has placed at least 100 celebrities on its wanted list for allegedly inciting protests against its seizure of power, taking aim at those with big social media followings. Since Friday, the nightly news on state television has named 20 prominent figures accused of violating the law. The list is later reprinted the next day in a government-controlled newspaper. The list swelled to 100 on Tuesday night.”

CNN: 500 million LinkedIn users’ data is for sale on a hacker site. “Information scraped from around 500 million LinkedIn user profiles is part of a database posted for sale on a website popular with hackers, the company confirmed Thursday. The sale of the data was first reported on Tuesday by cybersecurity news and research site CyberNews, which said that an archive including user IDs, names, email addresses, phone numbers, genders, professional titles and links to other social media profiles was being auctioned off on the forum for a four-figure sum.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ZDNet: IBM’s new tool lets developers add quantum-computing power to machine learning. “IBM is releasing a new module as part of its open-source quantum software development kit, Qiskit, to let developers leverage the capabilities of quantum computers to improve the quality of their machine-learning models. Qiskit Machine Learning is now available and includes the computational building blocks that are necessary to bring machine-learning models into the quantum space.”

Washington Department of Ecology: State reviews record amount of water quality data in effort to prioritize improvements. “With 65 million data points analyzed and loaded into an online database, the Washington Department of Ecology is now sharing the state’s draft Water Quality Assessment. Taking the form of an interactive online tool, the Assessment pulls together existing data for fresh and marine water.”

Rochester Institute of Technology: NYSP2I creates new tools to help New York municipalities reduce wasted food. “The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I)—led by Rochester Institute of Technology’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability—has developed a free, interactive toolkit that municipalities can use to design, implement, and manage food waste programs at the local level. The three-part guide, How to Build a Municipal Food Waste Strategy: A Toolkit for New York State Municipalities, is designed to assist communities large and small with building programs for reducing wasted food that are realistic and results-driven.” Good morning, Internet…

April 9, 2021 at 08:04PM
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Thursday, April 8, 2021

Seattle National Archives, Twitter Election Datasets, Stephen King Film Festival, More: Thursday Evening ResearchBuzz, April 8, 2021

Seattle National Archives, Twitter Election Datasets, Stephen King Film Festival, More: Thursday Evening ResearchBuzz, April 8, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

Seattle Times: Sale of National Archives in Seattle halted by Biden administration. “The impending sale of the National Archives at Seattle has been stopped by the Biden administration. On Thursday, the Office of Management and Budget, which administers the federal budget and had approved the sale of the 10-acre Sand Point facility during the Trump administration, reversed course.”

NEW RESOURCES

PubMed: #Election2020: the first public Twitter dataset on the 2020 US Presidential election. “The study of online chatter is paramount, especially in the wake of important voting events like the recent November 3, 2020 U.S. Presidential election and the inauguration on January 21, 2021. Limited access to social media data is often the primary obstacle that limits our abilities to study and understand online political discourse. To mitigate this impediment and empower the Computational Social Science research community, we are publicly releasing a massive-scale, longitudinal dataset of U.S. politics- and election-related tweets. This multilingual dataset encompasses over 1.2 billion tweets and tracks all salient U.S. political trends, actors, and events from 2019 to the time of this writing.”

Mashable: 25 Stephen King short films are being shown at this virtual festival. Some have never been released.. “The Stephen King Rules Dollar Baby Film Festival, a virtual event which will stream a number of short film adaptations based on the author’s work (including some which haven’t previously been released), is set to run from April 23 to 25 — and the best part is, the whole thing is free to join. 25 adaptations will be shown in total, each based on King short stories like Popsy, The Woman in the Room, and The Last Rung on the Ladder.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Politico: National Archives can’t resurrect Trump’s tweets, Twitter says. “Twitter will not allow the National Archives to make former President Donald Trump’s past tweets from his @realDonaldTrump account available on the social media platform, the company told POLITICO on Wednesday, in the latest display of Silicon Valley’s power over communications channels used by the U.S. government.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Daily Beast: Inside the Awful World of Young Landlords on TikTok. “Left unstated in the get-rich-quick strategies outlined on social media: these investment schemes require someone to be the underdog. Someone has to lose their home to eviction, or rent out a ‘home hacked’ property and support their lifestyle. And the country’s poorest are unlikely to afford down payments on massive, multi-family buildings. Nevertheless, some TikTok users suggest otherwise.”

The Cut: An Interview With the Man Who Keeps Uploading My Feet to WikiFeet. “To be clear, I am not a celebrity. I have decent Twitter following from having reported on politics for over a decade, from tweeting jokes about politics and appearing on cable news sometimes. But I was pretty shocked to be looking at my own wikiFeet profile, which included my full name, birthday, and photos of me and my exposed feet, dating back to a family vacation in 2013. The images seemed to have been lifted from my Instagram page, which I keep public because I share my work and media appearances there sometimes. My feet had a very sad 3.5 out of 5 stars rating, which categorized them as ‘okay.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Politico: Letter: Top federal watchdog probing State Department following hacks. “The Government Accountability Office is conducting a wide-ranging probe into the department’s cybersecurity practices following several hacks on the department’s email system over the last decade, according to the documents and people familiar with the matter. Just last week, POLITICO revealed that suspected Russian hackers stole thousands of emails from the department in recent months.”

TechRepublic: Money laundering is a real issue in tech: Here’s what is being done to stop it. “Money laundering and technology go hand in hand, sadly, and I discussed the topic with industry experts Gudmundur Kristjansson, founder and CEO at Lucinity, an artificial intelligence-based anti-money-laundering solutions provider, and and Zac Cohen, COO at Trulioo, an online identity verification service.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: ResearchGate and Wiley deepen partnership with content pilot to deliver new value for researchers. “The first stage of the pilot, which launched today, will make articles from 17 of Wiley’s gold open access (OA) journals available on ResearchGate. The pilot will apply to new articles as they are published in these journals, as well as existing articles published from 2019 onwards. Journals in this first phase include AGU Advances, published on behalf of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Advanced Science, and Brain and Behavior.”

ZDNet: Bad broadband, no problem: Google’s open-source speech codec works on even low-quality networks. “In a bid to put an end to the all-too-familiar choppy, robotic voice calls that come with low bandwidth, Google is open-sourcing Lyra, a new audio codec that taps machine learning to produce high-quality calls even when faced with a dodgy internet connection.” Good evening, Internet…

April 9, 2021 at 06:08AM
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Thursday CoronaBuzz, April 8, 2021: 24 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Thursday CoronaBuzz, April 8, 2021: 24 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Please wear a mask (or even two). Wash your hands. Stay at home if you can. Please be careful. I love you.

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How to Become Someone’s ‘Vaccine Angel’. “As medical experts have warned in recent days, the virus will continue to spread (and, potentially, new variants will continue to emerge) until enough people are vaccinated that the U.S. reaches herd immunity, which means time is of the essence. Because of this, you might be considering doing your part to help by volunteering in your state’s vaccination efforts. The good news is, you don’t need medical expertise or formal training to help. If you’d like to aid in this the gargantuan national effort, there are many groups and organizations that can put you to work in various capacities. Here’s more on how you can get involved.”

SOCIETAL IMPACT

AP: Discarded masks litter beaches worldwide, threaten sea life. “Discarded masks and gloves started showing up on beaches not long after the virus began circulating widely last year, and continued to appear as quarantine-weary people sought an escape at the beach. In the second half of 2020, more than 107,000 items of PPE were collected by volunteers around the world according to the Ocean Conservancy group — a figure its members believe is a vast undercount of the year’s true totals.”

ABC News: Beyond the Pandemic: London’s financial hub seeks a rebirth. “Plagues, fires, war — London has survived them all. But it has never had a year like this. The coronavirus has killed more than 15,000 Londoners and shaken the foundations of one of the world’s great cities. As a fast-moving mass vaccination campaign holds the promise of reopening, The Associated Press looks at the pandemic’s impact on London’s people and institutions and asks what the future might hold.”

MISINFORMATION / DISINFORMATION

PsyPost: Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories linked to increases in anxiety, according to new research. “A new study published in Personality and Individual Differences provides evidence that conspiracy theories about COVID-19 can have a negative personal impact on individuals who adhere to such beliefs. The research indicates that COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs predict heightened levels of mental distress.”

HEALTH CARE / HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS

Miami Herald: Undocumented immigrants in Florida getting shut out of access to COVID-19 vaccine. “In the scorching heat, Doris Mejia slowly makes her way to the front of the vaccine line. For the fifth time in a month, a worker asks if she has a Florida ID. She shakes her head no. Without it, no COVID-19 vaccine site has been willing to inoculate Mejia—an undocumented Salvadoran migrant living in Homestead — against the deadly virus. For the single mother of four who makes ends meet as a farmworker and housekeeper, not being able to get the vaccine comes at a high price.”

AP: Polish hospitals struggle with surge of virus patients. “Polish hospitals struggled over the Easter weekend with a massive number of people infected with COVID-19 following a huge surge in infections across Central and Eastern Europe in recent weeks. Tougher new pandemic restrictions were ordered in Poland for a two-week period surrounding Easter in order to slow down the infection rate. The country hit new records of over 35,000 daily infections on two recent days, and deaths have been in the hundreds each day.”

ProPublica: The Broken Front Line. “As the winter’s surge of coronavirus cases overwhelmed Los Angeles hospitals, EMTs like Michael Diaz were forced to take previously unthinkable measures. What lasting impact will the pandemic have on America’s first responders?”

BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS

Talking Points Memo: Vaccine Shipments to Israel Halted Over Government Impasse. “The Pfizer vaccine issue is part of that same Gordian Knot thicket at the center of the destabilizing political crisis. According to The Jerusalem Post (which is thus far the only English language report of this), Israeli Army Radio is reporting that Pfizer has halted the latest shipment of 700,000 doses of the COVID vaccine because Israel still hasn’t paid for the last shipment of 1.5 million doses. Pfizer reportedly said the situation was akin to something from a ‘banana republic’.”

NBC News: Manufacturers embrace robots, the perfect pandemic worker. “The latest jobs report shows the manufacturing sector grew at its fastest level since the pandemic began, jumping by 50,000 positions. However, there are still about half a million fewer employed manufacturing workers than there were a year ago. The question is how many of those jobs will come back — and how many have been permanently disrupted by digital processes.”

New York Times: U.S. Taps Johnson & Johnson to Run Troubled Vaccine Plant. “The Biden administration on Saturday put Johnson & Johnson in charge of a troubled Baltimore manufacturing plant that ruined 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine and moved to stop the plant from making another vaccine by AstraZeneca, senior federal health officials said.”

WORLD / FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Washington Post: Coronavirus vaccines are finally reaching poor countries, but some can’t cover the cost of administering them. “Coronavirus vaccines have begun to trickle into some of the world’s poorest nations, in large part thanks to Covax, the World Health Organization-backed initiative to distribute vaccine doses equitably. But once doses arrive on airport tarmacs, it is up to each country to finance distribution, including the salaries of health-care workers to administer the shots. In many cases, that funding isn’t readily available.”

STAT News: Biden officials rebuff appeals to surge Covid-19 vaccine to Michigan amid growing crisis. “Amid Michigan’s worst-in-the-nation coronavirus surge, scientists and public health officials are urging the Biden administration to flood the state with additional vaccine doses. So far, though, their plea has fallen on deaf ears. Instead, the federal government is sticking to a vaccine-allocation strategy that largely awards doses to states and territories based on their population.”

CNN: The Biden administration launches a $500,000 contest to improve face mask designs. “If you have a unique idea that follows required safety guidelines, you can submit your idea here by 5 p.m. ET on April 21. You must be a US citizen or legal resident to receive a prize. Up to 10 winners will be chosen in the first phase of the challenge and will split a $100,000 prize, with each person taking home up to $10,000.”

INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS

Washington Post: Elizabeth Shedlick, nurse to two presidents, dies of covid-19. “As a child, Sarah Anderson knew that her mother, Elizabeth Shedlick, had worked at the White House, but she didn’t think it was that special. It was only years later when Anderson fully appreciated her mother’s career in the Navy and her role as a trusted caregiver for two presidents. Shedlick was there for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson when they needed medical care or felt unwell. A 1961 Washington Post article describes her as an efficient nurse for Kennedy when he had a virus. And a Baltimore Sun article from the fall of 1965 says she was among the team caring for Johnson after a surgery.”

K-12 EDUCATION

The Guardian: Work pressure in Covid lockdown was shattering, say teachers. “One in four teachers who answered questions about their mental wellbeing told the NASUWT union that they had needed to see a doctor or other medical professional because of the pandemic’s impact, with many undergoing counselling or taking antidepressants. A small number of the 4,700 members who replied said they had self-harmed within the last 12 months as a result of their work. Others reported that their relationships had broken down during the pandemic, and nearly one in three said they had increased their alcohol consumption as a means to cope with their job.”

HIGHER EDUCATION

The Ithaca Voice: Cornell will require vaccinations for students returning to campus in fall; expects full in-person learning. “Cornell University announced its fall 2021 return plans Friday, with an ambitious requirement that any students returning to Ithaca, Geneva and Cornell Tech campuses must have received the full doses of one of the various COVID-19 vaccinations.”

HEALTH

New York Times: We Have All Hit a Wall. “Call it a late-pandemic crisis of productivity, of will, of enthusiasm, of purpose. Call it a bout of existential work-related ennui provoked partly by the realization that sitting in the same chair in the same room staring at the same computer for 12 straight months (and counting!) has left many of us feeling like burned-out husks, dimwitted approximations of our once-productive selves.”

TECHNOLOGY

LAist: Kids Seek Pandemic Mental Health Support On Social Media Apps. “After a year of lockdown and remote schooling, young people are reporting growing levels of depression, stress, and anxiety. Many teens have been turning to social media apps such as Twitter and TikTok in search of community.”

Boston Herald: Massachusetts testing Bluetooth app that alerts users of possible coronavirus exposure. “Massachusetts public health officials are testing a Bluetooth app that alerts users if they have potentially been exposed to the coronavirus — a “new tool in our toolbox to fight COVID,” Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone tells the Herald.”

RESEARCH

Medical XPress: Almost one in seven suffers long COVID, UK study finds. “Nearly one in seven Britons who tested positive for COVID-19 continued to have symptoms for at least 12 weeks, according to a UK study released Thursday. The Office for National Statistics said the study of over 20,000 people who had tested positive from April last year to March this year found 13.7 percent had symptoms that lasted for at least 12 weeks.”

Futurity: Sunlight Inactivates SARS-CoV-2 Way Faster Than Expected. “Many science-backed COVID-19 management concepts remain unchanged to this day: hand washing with soap and warm water disrupts the virus’ lipid membrane. Social distancing can attenuate the virus’s spread, ideally keeping it out of a host until it degrades. Other notions, such as droplet contact being the primary mode of transmission, were modified when emerging evidence showed that under certain conditions, the virus could remain suspended in air for extended periods of time. In a letter in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, researchers conclude that it might take more than UV-B rays to explain sunlight inactivation of SARS-CoV-2.”

FUNNY

Cult MTL: IKEA shared an instruction manual to teach their clients how to stay home. “After footage has been shared on social media of clients lining up outside various IKEA stores across Canada, IKEA has reshared an instruction manual from March 2020 in traditional IKEA format, teaching clients how to stay home.”

CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL

Business Insider: Southwest Airlines passengers dance and cheer as couple accused of refusing to wear masks gets thrown off flight. “A TikTok video shows an entire plane clapping and cheering after a couple is escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight, Newsweek reported. In the video shared by user Brendan Edler, a woman is seen arguing with a crew member.”

POLITICS

Korea Times: Envoys connect through social media challenges during pandemic. “The COVID-19 pandemic has changed lifestyle in many ways, and the lives of ambassadors in Korea are no exception. Their calendars used to be jam-packed with events as they communicated with other diplomats as well as public and private figures of the country. But the pandemic and social distancing rules have forced the canceling of events or limiting the number of guests, making networking difficult. Instead of clinking glasses at events, foreign diplomats in Korea are finding new ways to communicate though social media and share a positive influence.”

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April 9, 2021 at 04:35AM
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Midwestern Hemp Database, Magistrate Judges 1990-2021, Space Exploration, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 8, 2021

Midwestern Hemp Database, Magistrate Judges 1990-2021, Space Exploration, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 8, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Hemp Grower: Midwestern Hemp Database Gives Insights on Best Hemp Varieties for Region. “During the summer of 2020, the university extensions of Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Purdue (Indiana) sought out growers focusing on cannabinoid production to share cultivation data and crop samples in exchange for discounted testing thanks to a partnership with Rock River Laboratory Inc., based in Wisconsin….More than 130 growers across the Midwest participated in the project, submitting more than 750 samples for cannabinoid profiling.”

From the Free Law Project on GitHub: Incorporate magistrate judges from 1990 to 2021. From the resource page: “Every so often we ask the AO for stuff we can’t really get ourselves. In July of last year, we asked for a list of all magistrate judges, past and present. We already get regular updates from the FJC, but our hope was to get the historical data too. After many months of waiting, and to their immense credit, the AO did eventually deliver today. Attached please find roughly 1,000 magistrate judges that worked in the federal judiciary between 1990 and today.” I’m pretty sure that “the AO” in this case stands for the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

EVENTS

Arizona State University: ‘Why We Go’ space exploration series launches. “The Interplanetary Initiative at Arizona State University and the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) are launching a monthly discussion series examining interplanetary exploration through conversations with diverse experts optimistically answering the question, ‘Why do humans go to space?’ The four-part virtual series dives into the philosophy and passions behind the desire to travel into deep space.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Pitchfork: Radiohead Adding More Archival Concert Films to YouTube. “A year ago, Radiohead began adding archival concert footage to their YouTube page. The shows came from the extensive Radiohead Public Library. The series ran from April to July 2020. Now, the band is starting a second series. This Friday (April 9), a January 2008 show, performed at London’s 93 Feet East, will broadcast on YouTube. Be sure to tune in below at 3 p.m. Eastern on Friday.”

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: Among Us: How to play everyone’s game obsession online (and use the new free Airship Map). “If you’ve spent any time on Twitter or around a person under age 30, you’ve probably become familiar with memes involving colorful Teletubby-like figures clad in spacesuits. These are the players of Among Us, which skyrocketed in popularity over the past few months…. We’ve got everything you need to know about Among Us right here to get you ready for some remote gaming.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Dallas News: Kittens, tweets and basketball memories — Mark Cuban’s new online gallery is a showroom for the latest craze: NFTs. “Billionaire entrepreneur, Shark Tank investor and Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is once again innovating in the digital space, launching a new kind of online art gallery for creators in Dallas and beyond. He’s created a platform to present non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, the digital assets that have been grabbing headlines since an artist known as Beeple sold one for $69 million at the auction house Christie’s in March.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Local: Austria privacy group files complaint against Google. “An Austrian online privacy campaign group said Wednesday it has a filed a complaint against Google over what it says is a tracking code ‘illegally’ installed on Android phones. The complaint from NOYB relates to Google’s Android Advertising Identifier (AAID) and has been lodged with the CNIL, France’s data protection authority.”

The Daily Beast: Elite University Track Coach Stole Athletes’ Nudes Then Extorted Them: DOJ. “A track coach who left Northeastern after a sexual harassment investigation and was then hired by another university is facing several charges after allegedly duping female athletes to send him nude photographs in an elaborate social media scheme—and cyberstalking at least one of them.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Scientific American: The Antiscience Movement Is Escalating, Going Global and Killing Thousands. “Antiscience has emerged as a dominant and highly lethal force, and one that threatens global security, as much as do terrorism and nuclear proliferation. We must mount a counteroffensive and build new infrastructure to combat antiscience, just as we have for these other more widely recognized and established threats.”

ZDNet: Right to Repair doesn’t go far enough (here’s what we need to happen to see real change). “It might shock some people to know that while I’m a supporter of the Right to Repair, the movement pressing for government legislation to allow consumers and businesses to repair and modify their stuff, I don’t think that it will help consumers that much in the long run. This is not to say that people shouldn’t be able to repair their stuff. Absolutely not, and being able to repair things is crucial in keeping things out of the junk pile. But I think that the movement is focusing on a specific niche and ignoring the broader problems.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 9, 2021 at 12:51AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/3wHEiFq

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

WebXR, Cult Cinema, Twitter Spaces, More: Wednesday Evening ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2021

WebXR, Cult Cinema, Twitter Spaces, More: Wednesday Evening ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: Experiment with AR and VR made for the web. “Augmented and virtual reality are opening up the possibilities of how we interact with the world and information around us. WebXR brings together AR and VR on the web to make them more convenient and widely accessible. Today on the Experiments with Google platform, we’re launching the new WebXR collection to showcase what is possible with this technology — from helpful utilities to get things done, to playful and immersive experiences.”

The Streamable: New Streaming Service Cultpix Debuts With 400 Classic Cult Films. “The platform will launch with a library of 400 cult classic and vintage films and TV shows. Looking to find an audience that has not been properly served by current providers, the content on Cultpix covers the gamut from Italian swordplay epics and Spanish horror to Swedish erotica and American slashers, seeking to draw from genre films published prior to the ’90s. The selection is expected to double by the end of the year thanks to a number of pending content deals.”

USEFUL STUFF

Beebom: How to Create, Join, and Use Twitter Spaces (Guide). “Last December, Twitter released its live audio rooms feature ‘Spaces’ in private beta for iOS users. The company has since expanded the testing to some Android users. If you’re wondering what Twitter Spaces is all about or are curious to know if you should use the feature, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’ve covered everything you need to know to use Twitter Spaces, including how to create, join, and use the feature.”

PC World: Turn Google Photos into Windows backgrounds with this awesome app. “Neither Windows nor Mac offer much in the way of dynamic wallpaper options, and they certainly don’t integrate with Google’s photo service. Thankfully, a program called John’s Background Switcher changes all that.”

The Next Web: Holy sheet: How to pull contact details from a website using only Google Sheets. “Are you in a job where you regularly need to collect contact information from companies? And do you find it an annoying and unnecessarily time-consuming task to sort through ever-changing web designs, to find that one button or bit of information you’re actually looking for? Don’t look any further… help is on the way!” Brilliant use of IMPORTXML / XPath.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Getty: New Project Launches to Identify, Protect, and Celebrate L.A.’s Black Heritage. “Despite comprehensive efforts over the years to record Los Angeles’s historic places, the city’s historic designation programs do not yet reflect the depth and breadth of African American history. Just over three percent of the city’s 1,200 designated local landmarks are linked to African American heritage. Over the next three years, the project will work with local communities and cultural institutions to more fully recognize and understand African American experiences in Los Angeles. The work aims to identify and help preserve the places that best represent these stories and work with communities to develop creative approaches that meet their own aims for placemaking, identity, and empowerment.”

AP: France to open archive for period covering Rwandan genocide. “France’s role before and during the 1994 Rwandan genocide was a ‘monumental failure’ that the country must acknowledge, the lead author of a report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron said, as the country is about to open its archives from this period to the public.”

NBC News: In a Pennsylvania town, a Facebook group fills the local news void. “…the question of just who is accountable for providing information in Beaver County is murky. The area’s once-trusted news source, a newspaper with a 160-year history, was devastated in a few short months after it was swallowed up by giant corporate chains. The vacuum was filled by social media, namely Facebook.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BNN Bloomberg: Google faces complaint in France over Android advertising tool. “Google’s Android advertising tool is the target of a complaint in France by privacy activist Max Schrems, accusing the tech giant of violating European Union rules by failing to get users’ consent.”

Vice: Facebook Says It’s Your Fault That Hackers Got Half a Billion User Phone Numbers. “Facebook has become accustomed to dealing with multiple massive privacy breaches in recent years, and data belonging to hundreds of millions of its users has been leaked or stolen by hackers. But, instead of owning up to its latest failure to protect user data, Facebook is pulling from a familiar playbook: just like it did during the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, it’s attempting to reframe the security failure as merely a breach of its terms of service.” Good evening, Internet…

April 8, 2021 at 05:44AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/2OvEjLF