New researches

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Mapping Minnesota Data, Women in Animation. Japanese-American History, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 18, 2021

Mapping Minnesota Data, Women in Animation. Japanese-American History, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 18, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Minnesota Duluth: Online Atlas launches to cover Minnesota. “The Atlas provides users access to nearly 400 layers of data in 10 categories: agriculture, biota, boundaries, climate, environment, geology & topography, imagery & land cover, infrastructure, society & economy and water.”

Variety: Women in Animation Launches Global Toon Talent Database. “Women in Animation has launched WIA Talent Database, currently featuring more than 5,000 women, trans and non-binary candidates in the animation industry looking for work in the booming global toon biz. It’s another big step for the WIA in its 50/50 by 2025 goal.”

NewsDirect: The Digital Museum of the History of Japanese in New York (PRESS RELEASE). “The Japan History Council of New York announced today plans to launch the Digital Museum of the History of the Japanese in New York on Tuesday May 18—making it the first East Coast digital archive to represent local historical figures of Japanese descent. The Digital Museum launch comes at a significant point of time, as May marks Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, bringing to the forefront the identity and experiences of Asian Americans throughout history.”

National Low Income Housing Coalition: NLIHC Launches ERA Dashboard and Updated ERA Program Table. “NLIHC launched new Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) tools to monitor trends in how ERA programs are operating and to help renters find assistance. These tools include an ERA Dashboard on how many and which programs are implementing best practices and an updated ERA program table to help renters locate programs in their areas. These tools include programs funded by the $25 billion Treasury ERA program appropriated by the December 2020 Consolidated Appropriations Act (ERA1).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Indian Express: Google launches News Showcase in India with 30 publishers. “Google has launched its news showcase product, which “helps participating publishers share their expertise and editorial voice” while letting readers ‘dive deeper into more complex stories’, in India. Launched last October, news showcase is part of Google’s billion-dollar global investment towards supporting quality journalism.”

Reuters: Google to lay out new features to keep users clicking after lockdown. “Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday is expected to unveil updates across many services, including search and Android, as the company showcases its role in a world that has become more digitally connected during the pandemic.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Extremists Find a Financial Lifeline on Twitch. “QAnon adherents and other far-right influencers are making thousands of dollars broadcasting election and vaccine conspiracy theories on the streaming site.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Apple reportedly makes Chinese customers’ data less secure. “Apple CEO Tim Cook frequently pitches his company as a bastion of security and privacy. He says privacy should be a human right, and he points to the company’s frequent inclusion of encryption and other protective technologies as proof of that. But The New York Times, in a story published Monday, detailed how Apple has increasingly deferred to demands by the Chinese government, ultimately weakening the privacy and speech of users there.”

CNN: Alexa, what other devices are listening to me?. “Devices with various types of voice technology are also becoming more common. With a simple hands-free utterance, an Amazon- or Google-run personal assistant can stream your favorite Gap Band playlist or find a solid recipe for macaroons. But it also raises concerns about privacy – not just hacking but also how companies protect your data.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Canada NewsWire: Canada Announces New Energy and Emissions Database (PRESS RELEASE). “Improvements in energy efficiency are critical to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. The Government of Canada is building a clean energy future to strengthen the economy, create jobs and support the natural resource sectors as we recover from COVID-19. Lenore Zann, Member of Parliament for Cumberland–Colchester, on behalf of the Honourable Seamus O’Regan Jr., Minister of Natural Resources, today announced an $80,000 investment to Sustainability Solutions Group to support the development of the Municipal Energy and Emission Database (MEED), an integrated geospatial platform that tracks greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for municipalities across Canada.”

Bonner County Daily Bee: Digital archive documents caribou extirpation from North Idaho. “The ‘Storying Extinction: Responding to the Loss of North Idaho’s Mountain Caribou’ research project will educate people about the history of the caribou and the factors that contributed to their decline and 2019 extirpation, including logging, development and wildfires.”

EurekAlert: Social media and science show how ship’s plastic cargo dispersed from Florida to Norway. “A ship’s container lost overboard in the North Atlantic has resulted in printer cartridges washing up everywhere from the coast of Florida to northern Norway, a new study has shown. It has also resulted in the items weathering to form microplastics that are contaminated with a range of metals such as titanium, iron and copper.” Good morning, Internet…

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May 18, 2021 at 05:21PM
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Monday, May 17, 2021

Currach Building, Birgit Nilsson, Black Appalachian Music, More: Monday Evening ResearchBuzz, May 17, 2021

Currach Building, Birgit Nilsson, Black Appalachian Music, More: Monday Evening ResearchBuzz, May 17, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Afloat: Online Exhibition Reveals Unique Currach Building Video & Archive. “The finished 19 and a half feet, three-man currach complete with mast and sail, over two hundred photographs and video footage documenting the build, along with details logged in the NMI team’s notes and correspondence, have left us with a significant and complete record of the vanishing skill of traditional Irish currach building. The unique footage, following Michael Conneely carefully and craftfully through the step-by-step building process, is now available to view on the National Museum of Ireland’s website for the first time in an online exhibition called Making a currach – Michael Conneely.”

Gramophone: Birgit Nilsson Stiftelse launches new website devoted to the singer. “The Birgit Nilsson Stiftelse is today marking what would have been the singer’s 103rd birthday by launching a new website devoted to exploring her life and legacy. Rich in biographical accounts and atmospheric photographs, the website also serves as a resource for the museum devoted to the singer, for the Birgit Nilsson Prize, and for the Birgit Nilsson Stipendium – the scholarship established to support superb young artists of today.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Daily Times: First episode of podcast miniseries exploring Black Appalachian music now available. “The first episode of ‘Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music’ is now available on Great Smoky Mountains Association’s podcast ‘Smoky Mountain Air.’ Hosts William Turner and Ted Olson engage guests Loyal Jones, Sparky Rucker, and James Leva in a lively discussion about the roots of Appalachian music and their own roles in preserving these musical influences. This episode is the first of a six-part podcast miniseries to be released throughout 2021. Topics will include the complex history of Black music in East Tennessee, Black sacred music, Black women musicians, and the diverse landscape of music communities in Southern Appalachia.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Inspiration: How to Use Notion with Gmail and Google Sheets using Apps Script. I hear from friends that they’re using Notion but I haven’t tried it yet. You? “Notion, my absolute favorite tool for storing all sorts of things from web pages to code snippets to recipes, just got better. They’ve released a public API and thus it will be a lot easier for developers to read and write to their Notion workspace from external apps.”

Popular Science: 9 cool ways your family can help scientists collect data. “Anyone with an interest in a project or topic, no matter their age or education level, can be a citizen scientist. It can be as simple as uploading a photo of a bird to an app, or as complex as building your own weather station and submitting detailed daily readings to an online database. It can be rewarding too, as this work has real impact and the number of studies using data from citizen science projects is on the rise.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Threatpost: How to Get into the Bug-Bounty Biz: The Good, Bad and Ugly . “In the past handful of weeks, Apple announced a patch for its MacOS bypass bug and rushed four out-of-band fixes for zero-days under active attack; Chrome’s zero-day was posted on Twitter in mid-April; and of course the Microsoft Exchange zero-day attack is still fresh. Threatpost invited zero-day experts to dig beyond the headlines, including Katie Trimble-Noble, the former DHS official who runs Intel’s bug-bounty program; Greg Ose, who runs GitHub’s bug-bounty program, and James McQuiggan, a security awareness advocate for KnowBe4.”

CNN: The bizarre story of the inventor of ransomware. “Eddy Willems was working for an insurance company in Belgium back in December 1989 when he popped the floppy disc into his computer. The disc was one of 20,000 sent in the mail to attendees of the World Health Organization’s AIDS conference in Stockholm, and Willems’ boss had asked him to check what was on it. Willems was expecting to see medical research when the disc’s contents loaded. Instead he became a victim of the first act of ransomware — more than 30 years before the ransomware attack on the US Colonial Pipeline ignited a gas shortage in parts of the US last week.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Discover Magazine: How To Spot Pseudoscience Online And IRL. “Imagine a universe rife with cosmic catastrophes: Jupiter ejecting a comet into space that would later become the planet Venus. The comet whizzing past Earth and changing its rotation. The resulting chaos on Earth causing natural disasters of biblical proportions — literally — like the parting of the Red Sea. In the mid-1900s, Immanuel Velikovsky, a psychiatrist and author, claimed that he could prove these radical ideas. Velikovsky laid out his case in Worlds in Collision, a 1950 bestseller. But the book wasn’t billed as creative fiction or a fanciful hypothesis based on anecdotal accounts of the past; rather, Velikovsky presented these interplanetary theories, and others, as factual.” A lot of articles with this kind of headline are ten paragraphs of bromide. This is a deep dive with a lot of history. Recommended.

SatNews: Geoscience Australia’s New Tool Reveals 30+ Years Of Australia’s Coastline Changes
. “The evolution of Australia’s coastlines can now be seen in amazing scale and detail, with a new tool developed by maps annual changes to Australia’s coastlines to highlight long-term trends in coastal erosion and growth.”

Phys .org: Older adults use social media to compensate for fewer in-person interactions, study says. “A lack of in-person interactions is a primary driver for older people to use social media, which differs from how younger people use it to establish and maintain relationships, according to a first of its kind study of older users by a researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System.” Good evening, Internet…

May 18, 2021 at 05:56AM
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Dylan Thomas, North Carolina Newspapers, Windows Updates, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 16, 2021

Dylan Thomas, North Carolina Newspapers, Windows Updates, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 16, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Texas at Austin: Dylan Thomas Digital Collection Launched Online. “Collections related to Dylan Thomas are held by multiple institutions internationally, and the Ransom Center holds the world’s largest collection, which includes manuscripts, letters, notebooks, drawings and photographs that trace the origins of his major works and the evolution of a young writer. The collection also features screenplays, radio broadcasts and radio plays. Most were acquired by the Center between 1960 and 2004. More than 6,000 items are now digitized, representing only a portion of the author’s physical archive.”

DigitalNC: Jones County Newspaper from 1949-1971 added to DigitalNC. “Thanks to a nomination from the Neuse Regional Library, we’ve added 1,098 issues of the Jones County Journal, a newspaper published out of Trenton, N.C. This is one of only two newspaper titles we have for Jones County. Issues date from volume one, number one, published in 1949 through April 1971. Because the Journal was digitized from microfilm shot with high contrast, many of the photographs are not very clear but the text is quite sharp.” Jones County is one of the least-populated counties in North Carolina, with a population of less than 11,000. By contrast, Wake County has 1.1 million people.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BetaNews: KB5000842 update is causing high-pitched sound problems for some Windows 10 users. “It is a few weeks since Microsoft released the KB5000842 update for Windows 10, and it wasn’t long before the optional patch was linked to problems with game performance. These particular issues have been — mostly — resolved, but KB5000842 remains problematic with users of some 5.1 audio setups complaining that it has results in their computers emitting high-pitched noises.”

CNET: Parler is back on Apple’s App Store. “Conservative social media service Parler is once again available on Apple’s iOS App Store after being after being taken down following the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. The updated version of the app includes ‘enhanced threat and incitement reporting tools,’ according to its App Store listing.”

USEFUL STUFF

Distractify: Jealous of All the Cool Reversed Videos on TikTok? Here’s How to Do It Yourself. “There’s no shortage to the different types of social media trends that blow up on the internet — so much so that it’s difficult to keep up with them or really understand how they ever got so popular in the first place. At times, they start off as an inside joke that blew up to proportions that no one could’ve ever really predicted. Other times, they’re deeply intertwined with current events. And sometimes they emerge from a new feature added to said platform, like ‘reverse’ videos on TikTok.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BBC: TikTok: How Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays out on social media. “Once known primarily for viral dance trends, the video app has also become a key platform for sharing news. The Chinese-owned site has a vast, mostly younger audience, with an estimated 700 million active monthly users worldwide. Footage of rocket fire over Israel, destruction in Gaza and Palestinian protests have all gone viral on the site. It has brought the conflict to people’s phone screens around the world.”

The Conversation: HIV survivors’ stories show the loss, resilience and activism of the early years of AIDS pandemic. “As multidisciplinary HIV researchers, we know how important it is to continue learning from these histories to improve HIV treatment, support and prevention efforts today. So far, we have conducted 116 oral history interviews with long-term survivors of HIV and their caregivers in British Columbia between 2017 and 2020 as part of the community-based HIV In My Day project. These interviews will soon be available in a publicly accessible digital archive.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Chinese businessman with links to Steve Bannon is driving force for a sprawling disinformation network, researchers say. “A sprawling online network tied to Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has become a potent platform for disinformation in the United States, attacking the safety of coronavirus vaccines, promoting false election-fraud claims and spreading baseless QAnon conspiracies, according to research published Monday by the network analysis company Graphika.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

IBM Research Blog: New smartphone app to navigate blind people to stand in lines with distances . “Social distancing has become the norm — but for visually impaired people, adhering to the regulations can be tricky. Especially when it comes to standing in line. Our team wants to help. We have developed an AI-driven assistive smartphone app dubbed LineChaser, presented at … CHI 2021, that navigates a blind or visually impaired person to the end of a line. It also continuously reports the distance and direction to the last person in the line, so that the blind user can follow them easily.”

Radio Free Asia: Beijing Ramps up Fake Social Media Operation Peddling Pro-China Propaganda Overseas. “China has been using social media networks like Twitter to spread positive propaganda about the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the start of the pandemic, according to a report published by an international press group.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 17, 2021 at 11:53PM
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Clinical Trials, Neobanks, Bereaved Families, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 16, 2021

Clinical Trials, Neobanks, Bereaved Families, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 16, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Medical Plastics News: FDA-approved medical devices and clinical trials database launched. “The National Institute for Health Research’s Innovation Observatory (NIHRIO), based at Newcastle University, has launched a comprehensive database of searchable clinical trials drawing from 11 of the largest clinical trial registries in the world; as well as medical devices, diagnostics and digital applications information from the FDA database.”

The Financial Brand: Introducing the World’s First Interactive Directory of Digital-Only Neobanks. “Tired of scouring the web as you try to keep up with all the neobanks, challenger banks and digital-only banks out there? Check out The Financial Brand’s new Neobank Tracker — powered by Nymbus. This is the world’s largest interactive, searchable index listing hundreds of digital-only banks and innovative fintechs providing financial services directly to consumers and businesses.”

Arizona State University: Practical tools from award-winning ASU program made accessible online to parents of bereaved children. “The practical tools that are now available on the new website promote four key aspects of bereaved parenting. The foundation is self-care: parents’ ability to be kind to themselves during this time when they are grieving. The second tool teaches simple activities parents can use to help build stronger bonds with their children. The third involves basic communication tools to help children open up and share more. And the fourth focuses on tools to help parents respond in a way that helps children feel understood.”

Habitat: A New Digital Tool to Help Co-ops and Condos Cut Carbon Emissions. “The website features maps that allow the public to see the location of all 40,000 buildings in the five boroughs that must meet new emission limits, as well as the energy-efficiency letter grades of buildings that are required to provide benchmarking information on their annual energy and water consumption. The annual letter grades were inaugurated last year. The website also answers frequently asked questions and shares resources to help with building retrofits, including information about compliance metrics, adjustment programs and financial assistance.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Indian Express: Google I/0 2021 keynote: How to watch livestream and what to expect. “Instead of a large, in-person event, this year’s I/O will be a virtual event, thanks to the ongoing pandemic. The event will see the launch of Android 12 and likely updates to Google’s core services, and there’s a possibility of an unveiling of new Pixel hardware. Google I/O runs from May 18-20. Here’s what’s to expect from the annual developer conference, how you can watch, and the top I/O rumours about what Google has up its sleeve.”

USEFUL STUFF

Washington Post: You have the right to film police. Here’s how to do it effectively — and safely. “Smartphones now allow citizens to film and even live-stream their own police encounters, yet the act of recording can put people at risk in highly charged situations. Many Black Americans are tired of having to document each time a police officer kills a Black person to prove it happened. And while the surge in smartphone evidence has fueled calls for reform, one reason [Darnella] Frazier’s video stands out is because it was so rare in actually leading to the conviction of an officer. So how can and should you use your phone to bear witness? I spoke with lawyers, police, activists, photojournalists and technologists to get their advice on how to best record the police, both legally and technologically.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNET: QAnon channels are deleting their own YouTube videos to evade punishment. “Disappearing videos are usually the realm of Snapchat or Instagram Stories, which self-destruct by design after 24 hours. The vanishing QAnon video is something different, a tactic used by peddlers of disinformation that’s designed to help extremist channels evade YouTube’s policies and escape violations that would get them shut down.”

BBC: The app that lets you pay to control another person’s life. “When writer Brandon Wong recently couldn’t decide what takeaway to order one evening, he asked his followers on social media app NewNew to choose for him. Those that wanted to get involved in the 24-year-old’s dinner dilemma paid $5 (£3.50) to vote in a poll, and the majority verdict was that he should go for Korean food, so that was what he bought.”

Pro Video Coalition: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gets Cooke Archive. “Cooke Optics, the award-winning manufacturer of precision lenses for film and television, has transferred the Cooke Archive, an historic collection dating from 1886, and that covers covers development of lens design for photography and film through the 20th century, to a new permanent home at the Margaret Herrick Library, the main repository of research materials of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, located in Beverly Hills, California.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

IGN Middle East: Experimental AI Tool Makes GTA 5 Look Stunningly Photorealistic – Here’s How. “As part of the Intel ISL research group’s Photorealism Enhancement project, the new machine learning tool helps make computer-generated images more realistic by analyzing each frame of the game animation and comparing that to real-life images before applying enhancements based on them. In a video demonstration, Intel ISL shows some regular gameplay of Grand Theft Auto 5 before switching over to its tool’s output, which analyzes the gameplay footage and uses machine learning to make it look more photorealistic.”

ScienceDaily: How smartphones can help detect ecological change. “Mobile apps like Flora Incognita that allow automated identification of wild plants cannot only identify plant species, but also uncover large-scale ecological patterns. This opens up new perspectives for rapid detection of biodiversity changes.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

PC Magazine: Watch NASA’s Historic Ingenuity Helicopter Flight on Mars in 3D. “If you thought watching NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter fly across the Martian sky last month was exciting, you’re in for a real treat. Engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration rendered the historic third flight in 3D, lending what the agency called ‘dramatic depth’ to the short trip—as the chopper lifts into the air, zips off screen, and returns moments later for landing.” Good morning, Internet…

May 17, 2021 at 07:29PM
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Thursday, May 13, 2021

19th Century South Caucasus, Maine Drug Data Hub, Iquito-English Dictionary, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, May 13, 2021

19th Century South Caucasus, Maine Drug Data Hub, Iquito-English Dictionary, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, May 13, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Agenda Georgia: Illustrations of people and places of 19th century Caucasus now in National Archives of Georgia digital collection. “A series of 19th century illustrations of people and places of the South Caucasus, published in a French magazine around 150 years ago, can now be viewed by those interested in history and ethnography on the website of the National Archives of Georgia. Presenting city-dwellers and countryside folks of different ethnicities who lived and worked in cities, towns and villages, the works show Georgia and the wider region as it appeared to ethnographers and travellers between the 1840s and 1870s.”

University of Maine: Governor’s Office of Innovation, UMaine, DHHS launch Maine Drug Data Hub . “Maine Drug Data Hub links to data, reports and other dashboards related to drug problems and related Maine policies. It integrates data from public health, public safety, corrections and the judicial system using the 2021 Maine Opioid Response Strategic Plan as a framework. It also provides special ‘use-case’ portals for ease of use by policymakers, media and clinicians.”

Berkeley Linguistics: New online Iquito-English Dictionary. “This new dictionary is basically a digital version of the dictionary published by Abya-Yala press(link is external) in 2019, with an expanded grammar sketch and corrections of minor errors.” Iquito is a language of Peru.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bing Blogs: Easy set-up guide for Bing’s Content Submission API (Beta). “Bing already supports the ability for webmasters to notify Bing about URL changes via its Bing URL submission API (setup guide) but now (under Beta launch) also the ability to notify Bing directly about URL along with content changes via Bing Content Submission API. This will not only help webmasters to reach to more relevant users on Bing but also will reduce BingBot crawl load on their sites. This blog post will provide a generic overview along with step-by-step instruction on adopting the same.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BuzzFeed News: Instagram Labeled One Of Islam’s Holiest Mosques A Terrorist Organization. “Instagram removed posts and blocked hashtags about one of Islam’s holiest mosques because its content moderation system mistakenly associated the site with a designation the company reserves for terrorist organizations, according to internal employee communications seen by BuzzFeed News.”

Jewish News: Google filter for antisemitism searches ‘not fit for purpose’. “Google’s SafeSearch function for filtering offensive images is ‘not fit for purpose’ a new report has claimed – after discovering that antisemitic images and ‘Jew jokes’ remain online. A report produced jointly by the Community Security Trust (CST) and Antisemitism Policy Trust, found the SafeSearch function had no impact on the amount of antisemitic images found in Google image searches.”

Discover: Meet The Activist Archivists Saving The Internet From The Digital Dustbin. “Websites die constantly. The sheer size of the internet makes it feel like a permanent fixture, but individual pages only live an estimated 90 days before they change or vanish. At the same time, every single page has potential historical value. Maybe a future scholar will want to read a local news article that disappeared when the paper redesigned its website, or a political candidate is purging troublesome old statements. Perhaps someone will just want to revisit a video that made them laugh decades ago. That anything (and everything) might someday prove valuable is why extensive internet archiving efforts exist.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Al Jazeera: Two plead guilty in case highlighting China’s online control. “Two amateur computer coders in China have pleaded guilty to ‘stirring up trouble and picking quarrels’ in a case that highlighted Beijing’s growing crackdown on online activity. Chen Mei, 28, and Cai Wei, 27, created an online archive that stored articles that had been censored from the Chinese internet and an accompanying forum that allowed people to discuss them anonymously.”

Reuters: Italy fines Google for excluding Enel e-car app from Android Auto. “Italy’s competition regulator has fined Google 102 million euros ($123 million) for excluding an e-mobility app developed by Enel from the U.S. tech giant’s Android system. For more than two years, Google has not allowed Enel’s JuicePass to operate on Android Auto – a system that allows apps to be used safely in cars – unfairly curtailing its use while favouring Google Maps, the regulator said on Thursday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Journalist’s Resource: What’s peer review? 5 things you should know before covering research. “As scholars and other experts rush to release new research aimed at better understanding the coronavirus pandemic, newsrooms must be more careful than ever in vetting the biomedical studies they choose to cover. One of the first steps journalists should take to gauge the quality of all types of research is answering this important question: Has the paper undergone peer review?”

ScienceDaily: Brain computer interface turns mental handwriting into text on screen. “For the first time, researchers have deciphered the brain activity associated with trying to write letters by hand. Working with a participant with paralysis who has sensors implanted in his brain, the team used an algorithm to identify letters as he attempted to write them. Then, the system displayed the text on a screen — in real time.”

EurekAlert: Online museum exhibitions will be more prominent post COVID-19. “When Museums closed their doors in March 2020 for the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK a majority moved their activities online to keep their audiences interested. Researchers from WMG, University of Warwick have worked with OUMNH, to analyse the success of the exhibitions, and say the way Museums operate will change forever.” Good morning, Internet…

May 13, 2021 at 06:00PM
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Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Stolen Art, Ransomware Attacks, NFSA, More: Wednesday Evening ResearchBuzz, May 12, 2021

Stolen Art, Ransomware Attacks, NFSA, More: Wednesday Evening ResearchBuzz, May 12, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

INTERPOL: INTERPOL launches app to better protect cultural heritage . “An app launched by INTERPOL will help identify stolen cultural property, reduce illicit trafficking, and increase the chances of recovering stolen works and artefacts. INTERPOL’s ID-Art app enables users ranging from law enforcement to the general public to get mobile access to the INTERPOL database of stolen works of art, create an inventory of private art collections and report cultural sites potentially at risk.” The app is free and available in your local app store.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WUSA: Hackers demand $4 million ransom from DC police, as more officers’ confidential info posted to the dark web. “In the latest escalation of an unprecedented cyber-attack against U.S. law enforcement, hackers belonging to the Russian-speaking Babuk syndicate posted a $4 million ransom demand against the Metropolitan Police Department on the dark web. The demand came as more D.C. police officers received notice their confidential information was included within the scope of the April hack.”

IF (Australia): NFSA to receive $2 million in additional funding. “The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) will receive a $2 million boost in tomorrow’s Federal Budget as part of a funding package for national collecting institutions. Announced on Saturday, eight institutions will share in $79.9 million of additional support, of which $32.4 million will go towards the delivery of public services and programs, while $47.5 will be allocated to five institutions for a variety of capital works.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How to Delete Your Clubhouse Account, Because It’s Not as Easy as You Think. “Clubhouse might feel like an exclusive… well, club, but you may discover it isn’t for you once you finally get to try it out yourself. Whether you find one of the numerous Clubhouse … competitors more appealing, you just don’t like the open audio conversation format, you find the app’s constant access to your phone’s contacts and its inconsistent privacy policy a bit sketchy, or you could do with a bit less unmoderated anti-Semitism, there are plenty of valid reasons to stop using Clubhouse.”

MakeUseOf: How to Create a Poll on Facebook (in Pages, Groups, and Stories) . “Facebook allows you to post polls to help you collect opinions from your Pages, Groups, and Stories’ followers. It’s easy to add a poll with your specific question to any of your Facebook properties. In this guide, we’ll show you how to create a poll on Facebook—specifically for posts on Pages, in Groups, and on your Stories.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

California State University Northridge: CSUN Receives NEH Grant to Digitize its Farmworker Movement Collection. “The Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at California State University, Northridge has received a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to digitize some of the approximately 22,000 images in its Farmworker Movement Collection that tell the story and document efforts to unionize farmworkers in the 1960s and early 1970s.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: New York Attorney General declares top ISPs committed net neutrality fraud. “When then-President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tried to destroy net neutrality in 2017, everyone knew that millions of comments in favor of breaking net neutrality were bogus. As then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said at the time, two million net neutrality comments were fake.”

Reuters: German regulator bans Facebook from processing WhatsApp user data. “Germany’s lead data protection regulator for Facebook is banning the social network from processing personal data from WhatsApp users because it views the messaging app’s new terms of use as illegal, it said on Tuesday. The decision follows emergency proceedings opened by the regulator in the city-state of Hamburg last month after WhatsApp required users to consent to new terms or stop using the service.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ScienceX: DNA ‘Lite-Brite’ is a promising way to archive data for decades or longer. “We and our colleagues have developed a way to store data using pegs and pegboards made out of DNA and retrieving the data with a microscope—a molecular version of the Lite-Brite toy. Our prototype stores information in patterns using DNA strands spaced about 10 nanometers apart. Ten nanometers is more than a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair and about 100 times smaller than the diameter of a bacterium.”

EurekAlert: International team partners with UN to launch global initiative to map ungulate migrations. “An international team of 92 scientists and conservationists has joined forces to create the first-ever global atlas of ungulate (hooved mammal) migrations, working in partnership with the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), a UN treaty. The detailed maps of the seasonal movements of herds worldwide will help governments, indigenous people and local communities, planners and wildlife managers identify current and future threats to migrations, and advance conservation measures to sustain them in the face of an expanding human footprint.” Good evening, Internet…

May 13, 2021 at 06:16AM
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Wyoming Fishing, Rent Debt, Climate Technologies, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 12, 2021

Wyoming Fishing, Rent Debt, Climate Technologies, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 12, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Wyoming Fish & Game Department: New interactive fishing guide lures anglers to new waters. “Want to catch a kokanee? Or how about a golden trout? It’s easy and inspiring to plan all your fishing pursuits with a new interactive fishing guide from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.”

National Equity Atlas: Rent Debt in America: Stabilizing Renters Is Key to Equitable Recovery. “Our new rent debt dashboard, produced in partnership with the Right to the City Alliance, equips policymakers and advocates with data on the extent and nature of rent debt in their communities to inform policies to eliminate debt and prevent the specter of mass eviction.”

PRNewswire: Clean Energy Ventures Launches Open Access Tool to Identify the Climate Technologies Worth Investor Attention (PRESS RELEASE). “Clean Energy Ventures announced today the launch of an open-access calculator to estimate a climate tech innovation’s potential impact on climate change. The Simple Emissions Reduction Calculator (SERC), which Clean Energy Ventures developed to help evaluate climate tech startups seeking funding, will be used by partners including Cleantech Open, Cleantech Scandinavia, and by any climate tech startups that are looking to validate their carbon emissions reduction potential.”

KHQ: DNR launches new website showcasing 100 of Washington’s best geological sites. “Waterfalls, glacier-fed lakes and pacific coastlines are just some of the stunning features Washington has to offer. In efforts to showcase some of the state’s marvels, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources created a website showing off 100 geological sites.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5Google: Google Chrome prepares ‘Desktop Sharing Hub’ with copy link, QR code, other shortcuts. “The omnibox in Google Chrome is a very flexible and useful tool, and soon, it may add another useful menu. A new ‘Desktop Sharing Hub’ menu in Google Chrome could provide faster, easier access to shortcuts for copying links, generating QR codes, and more.”

USEFUL STUFF

University of Michigan: New website answers Michiganders’ questions about expanded Child Tax Credit. I skimmed this site and saw nothing that was Michigan-specific. It looks useful for anyone with questions about this credit. “The first step to receive the tax credit is to file taxes for 2020, and the tax filing deadline is extended to May 17 this year. Parents of children under 18 may be eligible to receive this money, even if they have not previously filed taxes and have low or no earnings. Visit the Child Tax Credit: What You Need to Know website to learn more about eligibility for the expanded tax credit and see answers to frequently asked questions.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

AP: Army of fake fans boosts China’s messaging on Twitter. “A seven-month investigation by the Associated Press and the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at Oxford University, found that China’s rise on Twitter has been powered by an army of fake accounts that have retweeted Chinese diplomats and state media tens of thousands of times, covertly amplifying propaganda that can reach hundreds of millions of people — often without disclosing the fact that the content is government-sponsored.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: UK unveils law to fine social media firms which fail to remove online abuse. “Britain said on Wednesday a planned new law would see social media companies fined up to 10% of turnover or 18 million pounds ($25 million) if they failed to stamp out online abuses such as racist hate crimes, while senior managers could also face criminal action.”

CarBuzz: Kids Have Stolen Hundreds Of Mazdas Because Of A Dumb Social Media Challenge. “Earlier this year, Mazda was named the best car brand of 2021, but we doubt that New Zealand citizens will feel quite so good about the Japanese automaker a year from now. See, the Australasian country, specifically the province of Taranaki, has been going through a strange phenomenon: the theft of older Mazda cars. Apparently, there’s some sort of social media challenge that is going viral, and this is causing teenagers to film themselves stealing cars that are easy to break into. Most of the cars being targeted are small Mazda runabouts, as they are perceived to be easy to get going with just a little hot-wiring.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington State University: Open source tool can help identify gerrymandering in voting maps. “In an article in the Harvard Data Science Review, the researchers describe the improved mathematical methodology of an open source tool called GerryChain. The tool can help observers detect gerrymandering in a voting district plan by creating a pool, or ensemble, of alternate maps that also meet legal voting criteria. This map ensemble can show if the proposed plan is an extreme outlier—one that is very unusual from the norm of plans generated without bias, and therefore, likely to be drawn with partisan goals in mind.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 13, 2021 at 12:17AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/3eIgLO0