New researches

Saturday, August 27, 2022

Maine Community Services, Google, Google Sheets, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 27, 2022

Maine Community Services, Google, Google Sheets, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

State of Maine: DHHS Launches New Dashboard Highlighting Services By the Numbers . “Today, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) posted a new ‘DHHS By the Numbers’ Dashboard. It displays current data on services provided by the Department’s 3,400 workers in its eight Offices and two psychiatric hospitals.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: Google helpful content update is now rolling out. “Google has started to roll out the new helpful content update that it pre-announced last week. As a reminder, Google’s helpful content update is a sitewide signal. It targets websites that have a relatively high amount of unsatisfying or unhelpful content, where the content is written for search engines first. In short, did you write that piece of content to rank on Google or did you write it to help users?”

9to5 Google: Google Sheets adds XLOOKUP, Named Functions, and a few other advanced features. “Ben Collins, a Google Developer Expert working with Sheets, shared this week an explanation detailing several new features that have been released for Google Sheets. Specifically, 10 new functions that will be helpful for power users.”

USEFUL STUFF

Wirecutter: Free Video Games You Can Download Right Now. “Whether you own a PlayStation, Xbox, or a gaming PC, accounts or memberships you probably already have regularly give away full-length games on a monthly or weekly basis. These games offer great opportunities to break out of your comfort zones and try new genres.”

WIRED: Curious About 3D Printing? Here Are Some Tips Before You Dive In. “For the purposes of this guide, I’m assuming you’re looking for desktop consumer printers. With the recent explosion in the availability of printers, anything less than $500 is sufficient for household jobs. This range will all meet similar standards of accuracy and speed, and maintain options to upgrade.”

Tom’s Guide: How to stream on Twitch. “If you want to start streaming, theoretically, all you need to do is a computer and a somewhat stable internet connection. The whole process itself is so simple that you could set everything up before you reach the end of this article. However, if you’re keen on putting together a more polished setup, you could accomplish this within the hour, whether that’s using your gaming PC, laptop, console, or even your mobile phone.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNET: Paul Allen’s $1 Billion Art Collection Heads to Auction. “Christie’s auction house said Thursday it would handle the sale of the impressive art collection of Paul Allen, the late co-founder of Microsoft, a collection valued at more than $1 billion that includes masterpieces by Renoir and Roy Lichtenstein.”

CNN: They met on a promenade in Nice. Now this couple makes a living traveling in a world of sounds. “In the six years since that first recording, Libby and Marcel have captured audio in more than 25 countries, mostly in Asia, Europe and North America, spending months at a time in each nation. They have developed a more sophisticated recording setup to encompass stereo, Ambisonic and binaural techniques — but still compact enough to fit their traveling lifestyle.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Privacy complaint targets Google over unsolicited ad emails. “Google has breached a European Union court ruling by sending unsolicited advertising emails directly to the inbox of Gmail users, Austrian advocacy group noyb.eu said on Wednesday in a complaint filed with France’s data protection watchdog.”

Engadget: Plex tells users to reset their passwords after potential data breach. “Plex users may want to change their passwords as soon as they’re able. The digital media player and streaming service said a bad actor had infiltrated its system in a letter sent to users affected by the breach.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 28, 2022 at 12:30AM
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Hurricane Harvey, Gene Roddenberry, Monkeypox Guidance, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, August 27, 2022

Hurricane Harvey, Gene Roddenberry, Monkeypox Guidance, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, August 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Fox 26 Houston: University of Houston highlighting city’s resilience during Hurricane Harvey. “Entitled Resilient Houston: Documenting Hurricane Harvey, viewers may access an online archive of oral history interviews from residents across the city, learn how different communities were affected, and how people stepped up to assist their neighbors.”

Deadline: The Roddenberry Estate & Otoy Unveil First Immersive Roddenberry Archive Experiences, Multi-Year Roadmap To Preserve History Of The ‘Star Trek’ Universe. “The Roddenberry Archive immersive experience and behind-the-scenes video logs are available for the public to view online at this link. These materials will be augmented with additional archive features throughout 2022.”

CBS 17: CDC launches new website to help colleges deal with monkeypox spread. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have launched a new landing page full of monkeypox resources for people in higher education. It offers tips for students on how teens and young adults can prevent the spread of the disease and other things they need to know.”

EVENTS

NARA: National Archives Public Programs in September . “In September, the National Archives celebrates Constitution Day (September 17), opens its new All American: The Power of Sports exhibit on September 16 at its DC Museum, and continues offering free public programs at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, at Presidential Libraries nationwide, and virtually on the National Archives YouTube Channel.” Interesting census program on September 8!

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: Elon Musk’s ‘absurdly broad’ Twitter data requests mostly rejected by judge. “Elon Musk’s demands for Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) user details were rejected as ‘absurdly broad’ by a judge on Thursday, although the billionaire will get some data as he pursues his bid to end his $44 billion acquisition of the company.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Mainichi: Ordinary Japanese ‘salarymen’ reach TikTok stardom. “Daikyo Security Co.’s account, which gathers goofy dances, gobbled instant noodles and other everyday fare, is the brainchild of the company president. Despite his unpretentious demeanor, Daisuke Sakurai is dead serious about not only enhancing brand power but also recruiting young people to his company, a challenge he sees as a matter of survival.”

Reader’s Digest: How TikTok is changing book cover designs. “We’ve all heard the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, but it’s pretty evident that the look of the novel in question has to grab our attention. With a new digital trend that sees readers sharing their beloved purchases on social media apps like Instagram and TikTok, there’s more of a drive than ever to ensure that those covers match their desired target audience.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Conversation: Social media ads are about to change – how new rules on content marketing will affect what you see and share. “We’ve all scrolled through social media and come across a witty post shared by a friend. Perhaps it references a favourite TV show, or speaks to your current mood. If you were intrigued enough to click on it, you may have been surprised to discover it’s actually an ad for fast food, fashion or even gambling. Such ads, with no apparent connection to the product and which are not overtly trying to sell you something, are called content marketing.”

USA Today: Scribbled notes, classified materials and golf carts: Here’s how the millions of White House documents and artifacts should be archived. “Until the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration, former presidents owned their records, although some worked with the National Archives to create presidential libraries. But when Richard Nixon, after resigning, wanted to destroy the White House tapes that incriminated him in the cover-up of the Watergate complex burglary, Congress passed a law giving control over presidential records to the National Archives at the end of an administration.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PBS: Not all scientists wear lab coats. Volunteers are fueling research nationwide. “There’s a term for people who contribute to this knowledge purely out of love of the game: citizen scientists. And opportunities to get involved with federally run or sponsored initiatives — from mapping mosquito habitats with smartphones to tallying up plastic pellets spotted on the beach — have only expanded over time.”

Stanford University: New App VideoSticker Uses AI To Help Students Take Rich Notes from Video Lessons. “At present, note-taking of video means manually taking screenshots, clipping and cropping visual objects, reviewing transcripts and manually taking notes, all the while bouncing back and forth between video player and a note-taking app, [Hari] Subramonyam says. But VideoSticker combines video, audio, transcripts, and a powerful visual and a textual note-taking application. Better yet, using AI, VideoSticker can automatically identify and trim objects out of the video and place them in the note-taking area.”

Science Daily: What makes us share posts on social media?. “A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Generalled by University of Pennsylvania researchers Danielle Cosme and Emily Falk analyzed the behavior of more than 3,000 individuals to explore the psychology behind sharing information online. It turns out that the answer is quite straightforward: People share information that they feel is meaningful to themselves or to the people they know.” Yup. Good morning, Internet…

August 27, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Friday, August 26, 2022

Medieval Manuscripts, Preserving File Formats, Ohio Monkeypox, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 26, 2022

Medieval Manuscripts, Preserving File Formats, Ohio Monkeypox, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

British Library: Hildegard-go! “Thanks to generous funding from Joanna and Graham Barker, the British Library is digitising many of its manuscripts, rolls and charters connected with women from Britain and across Europe, and made between 1100 and 1600. We have some great news to report: the first batch of ten manuscript volumes is now available to view online.”

NARA: NARA’s Digital Preservation Framework Goes Live as Linked Open Dataset. “Beginning today, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is making its Digital Preservation Framework available as a Linked Open Dataset, a first for the agency…. The Digital Preservation Framework describes best practices for the preservation of 684 file formats, some dating back to the first transfers of electronic records to NARA 50 years ago.”

Ohio Department of Health: Ohio Department of Health launches new monkeypox cases dashboard. “The Monkeypox Cases Overview dashboard and interactive map, available on the Ohio Department of Health website (odh.ohio.gov), shows the total number of cases across the state, the number of cases per county, the age range of people affected by monkeypox, the percentage of cases by sex, and outcomes, including any hospitalizations and deaths. The dashboard, which will be updated weekly on Thursdays, is modeled after other dashboards ODH has developed to share information with Ohioans about infectious disease outbreaks, including the 2018 statewide outbreak of Hepatitis A.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Google Search and Maps results will confirm if a medical center offers abortions. “In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, Google announced that it is making it easier to use its Maps and Search products to find medical providers that offer abortions. When someone searches for specific services and Google has confirmation that a location provides those services, it’ll be clearly labeled in Search and Maps.”

How-To Geek: Chrome’s Next Privacy Upgrade Might Break Some Websites. “Most web browsers have been slowly phasing out User Agents, which send details about your computer and browser to sites. Starting in October 2022, the Chrome web browser will take another step towards ditching User Agent strings entirely.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Verge: Find the best AI-powered app to transcribe your audio. “Whenever a popular online app announces a change to its fees, or in the services it provides for those fees, you’re going to get a reaction from its subscribers — especially the long-term ones. The latest app to cause this type of dismay is Otter, a recording and transcription service that recently announced downgrades of the services it provides on two of its plans and raised the price on a monthly plan.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

LastPass: Notice of Recent Security Incident. “I want to inform you of a development that we feel is important for us to share with our LastPass business and consumer community. Two weeks ago, we detected some unusual activity within portions of the LastPass development environment. After initiating an immediate investigation, we have seen no evidence that this incident involved any access to customer data or encrypted password vaults.”

The Guardian: British judge rules dissident can sue Saudi Arabia for Pegasus hacking. “A British judge has ruled that a case against the kingdom of Saudi Arabia brought by a dissident satirist who was targeted with spyware can proceed, a decision that has been hailed as precedent-setting and one that could allow other hacking victims in Britain to sue foreign governments who order such attacks.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Spiders Are Caught in a Global Web of Misinformation. “Recently, more than 60 researchers from around the world, including Dr. [Catherine] Scott, collected 5,348 news stories about spider bites, published online from 2010 through 2020 from 81 countries in 40 languages. They read through each story, noting whether any had factual errors or emotionally fraught language. The percentage of articles they rated sensationalistic: 43 percent. The percentage of articles that had factual errors: 47 percent.”

University of Alabama at Birmingham: Sponsorship disclosures by social media influencers reduce engagement, study finds. “A new study in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice by Parker Woodroof, Ph.D., assistant professor of marketing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Collat School of Business, looked at pet influencers marketing and the effect that certain textual and visual cues within sponsored posts have on social media engagement behaviors. Woodroof’s study found that mentions of sponsorships, using brand logos and overall saturation of sponsorships hinder social media engagement in pet influencer marketing.” Good afternoon, Internet…

August 27, 2022 at 12:54AM
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Japanese Anime, Medieval Drawings, EarthSnap, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, August 26, 2022

Japanese Anime, Medieval Drawings, EarthSnap, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, August 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Crunchyroll: The World’s Largest Japanese Anime Database “Anime Taizen” Opens to The Public Today. “As of the end of July 2022, Anime Taizen has approximately 15,000 registered titles, mainly Japanese commercial anime works released from 1917 to the present. In addition to title name searches, the database has search functions for chronology, Japanese syllabary, keywords, etc. As a result of the research to date, the number of episodes amounts to approximately 180,000.” Apparently the site is somewhat slow at this writing due to demand.

Medievalists: Thousands of medieval images available for free, thanks to Albertina Museum. “The Albertina Museum, located in Vienna, is considered to have one of the best collections of drawings and prints in the world. Recently, they put into the public domain most of the online image collection, which will allow people to use the images freely. Nearly 4,000 of these images date between the 12th and 15th centuries, with another 23,000 dating to the 16th century.”

PR Newswire: EarthSnap Launches Revolutionary App to Identify All Types of Earth’s Plants and Animal Species (PRESS RELEASE). “EarthSnap is citizen science in action: When users upload photos of plants or animals to EarthSnap, the app utilizes a custom-built, patent-pending AI machine learning solution to identify the subject and share details like habitat, global population distribution and known history on Earth. These uploaded photos also contribute to EarthSnap’s ever-growing database – applications of which include recording animal migration habits, shifting habitats and animal behavior.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: DuckDuckGo Opens Email Protection Service Beta to Everyone . “Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo opened its Email Protection service beta to everyone Thursday. The service gives you a free Duck address (name@duck.com) and will detect and strip trackers within emails sent to it. Then the email is forwarded to your personal email address, and DuckDuckGo will let you know how many trackers it got rid of.”

Wall Street Journal: DHS Folds Disinformation Board After Criticism Over Threat to Free Speech. “The Department of Homeland Security has terminated a government board formed earlier this year to combat online disinformation, after a range of critics said it could stifle free expression on the internet and had an unclear mission. It encountered widespread criticism from conservatives, civil liberties advocates and some current and former officials.”

How-To Geek: CrossOver 22 Can Run More Windows Apps on Mac and Linux. “CrossOver is one of the best ways to run Windows software on Mac and Linux, as it’s based on the popular Wine project. CodeWeavers has now released CrossOver 22, with significant changes to the interface and software compatibility.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TechCrunch: Shuffles, Pinterest’s invite-only collage-making app, is blowing up on TikTok — here’s how to get in . “Collage-style video ‘mood boards’ are going viral on TikTok — and so is the app making them possible. Pinterest’s recently soft-launched collage-maker Shuffles has been climbing up the App Store’s Top Charts thanks to demand from Gen Z users who are leveraging the new creative expression tool to make, publish and share visual content. These ‘aesthetic’ collages are then set to music and posted to TikTok or shared privately with friends or with the broader Shuffles community.”

Reuters: Walmart explores matchmaker marketplace for social media influencers. “Walmart may launch a platform that will use social media influencers to help the retailer and its 100,000 third-party sellers promote their goods and services online, according to trademark filings.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Twitter whistleblower to testify about company’s ‘widespread security failures’ at Senate hearing. “Twitter’s former security chief will testify at a Senate hearing about the company’s security practices. Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, who recently went public with a lengthy whistleblower complaint based on his experiences at the company, will appear at a Judiciary Committee hearing on September 13th.”

Wall Street Journal: NFTs Are Increasingly Targeted by Criminals, Report Says. “Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, are increasingly sought by criminals looking to either steal them or use them to launder illicit gains, a new report from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said on Wednesday. More than $100 million worth of these blockchain-based assets were reported stolen in scams over the past year, according to the study. Over 4,600 NFTs were stolen in July, the most in any month since Elliptic began tracking the data in 2017, the report said.”

Oxford Mail: Lawyer struggles to communicate with client over Google Translate. “AN ADVOCATE said he had battled to communicate with his cannabis farmer-accused client using Google Translate – as no interpreter was available. Pham Hoang, 18, was before Oxford Crown Court accused of producing the class B drug at a commercial scale factory in a flat in Underhill Circus, Barton. The Vietnamese teenager was allegedly found at the 270-plant cannabis farm by police officers during a raid on July 19.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ProPublica: Visualizing Toxic Air . “Making data public isn’t enough when it’s incomprehensible to the people it affects. ProPublica set out to decode a complex EPA data set to expose hot spots of industrial air pollution across the U.S.” Good morning, Internet…

August 26, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Thursday, August 25, 2022

Illinois State University Performing Arts, Martha’s Vineyard Biodiversity, Google, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 25, 2022

Illinois State University Performing Arts, Martha’s Vineyard Biodiversity, Google, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Illinois State University: School of Theatre and Dance programs now online. “Did you know that the actor who plays Officer Kevin Atwater in the hit NBC series Chicago P.D. also played Private Driscol in the 2008 Wonsook Kim School of Theatre and Dance production of Bury the Dead? And that actors from The Office and Will & Grace once played harpsichord together on the Westhoff Theatre stage in a 1991 production of Love for Love: A Comedy? You can find all this and more in Illinois State’s institutional repository, ISUReD! Through a partnership between Milner Library and the School of Theatre and Dance, around 190 programs have been added to the School’s collection on ISUReD. Patrons can now browse production programs that date back to 1957 and feature hundreds of the school’s theatre and dance students, faculty, and staff.”

Martha’s Vineyard Times: Recording the Island’s biodiversity . “BiodiversityWorks launched a new website called the Martha’s Vineyard Atlas of Life, where Islanders can record the biodiversity that exists on the Island. This project was launched with support from the Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation. Claire Callagy, the foundation’s philanthropic program manager, said the foundation made a three-year commitment to help launch this project.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BBC: Google “airbrushes” out emissions from flying, BBC reveals. “Flights now appear to have much less impact on the environment than before. That’s because the world’s biggest search engine has taken a key driver of global warming out of its online carbon flight calculator…. The company said it made the change following consultations with its ‘industry partners’.”

USEFUL STUFF

VERIFY: Yes, there is a way to check if you received a Pell Grant. “Pell Grants are need-based federal grants awarded to college students. Unlike loans, they do not need to be repaid, but many Pell Grant recipients also used student loans to help pay for school. The additional forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients was unexpected for many, and top search questions after Biden’s announcement were about Pell Grants and how to check if someone received one.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNN: New York museums are now required to disclose artwork looted by Nazis. “Museums in New York will now be required to disclose which artworks were stolen in Europe during the Nazi era, thanks to new legislation signed last week by Governor Kathy Hochul.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: She Had an AirTag in Her Lost Luggage. It Led Police to a Baggage Handler’s Home.. “A traveler who put a tracking device in her bag helped sheriff’s deputies in Florida identify an airport worker who was accused of stealing more than $16,000 in goods from passengers’ luggage, the authorities said.”

Salt Lake Tribune: Utah cold case investigators unveil nationwide resource aimed at solving railroad killings. “The database currently has more than 1,000 entries, spanning crimes ranging from the 1960s to 2012, and still more are being added. At least 12 of the cases originated in Utah. Volunteers have pieced together information from newspapers, police and court records and even railroad documents, and they soon hope to visit train archives in other states that may contain more information.” The database is not publicly-available because the information has not been scrubbed of personal information, but the Cold Case Coalition is happy to search it for law enforcement or family of missing persons.

RESEARCH & OPINION

NBC News: Google is trying out ‘pre-bunking’ in an effort to counter misinformation. “In a study published Wednesday, social scientists from Cambridge University and Google reported on experiments where they showed 90-second cartoons to people in a lab setting and as advertisements on YouTube, explaining in simple, nonpartisan language some of the most common manipulation techniques. The cartoons succeeded in raising people’s awareness about common misinformation tactics such as scapegoating and creating a false choice, at least for a short time, they found.”

ReviewGeek: Why I Hate Google’s New Search Interface. “Over the last week or so, you may have noticed a drastic change to the ‘All, Shopping, News, Images, Videos, More’ shortcut buttons under the search bar after you Google something. Or, maybe you noticed they’re missing entirely. Instead of the options we’ve all enjoyed for years, it looks like Google is A/B testing a big visual overhaul, and it’s a convoluted mess.”

University of Florida: Smartphones push consumers to prefer unique, tailored products. “Personalized wine lists. Tailored clothing options. Unique experiences just for you. The world is awash in products and services that promise to provide custom experiences to every consumer. And it turns out our smartphones are pushing us to unconsciously prefer just these kinds of customized options.” Good afternoon, Internet…

August 26, 2022 at 01:02AM
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OED Correspondence, Twitter, Iran Social Media, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, August 25, 2022

OED Correspondence, Twitter, Iran Social Media, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, August 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Thanks to Tish W for always keeping an eye out and sending me cool stuff. From Fine Books & Collections: Oxford English Dictionary Correspondence Heads Online. “The Murray Scriptorium has been established by Professor of English at the University of Oxford Charlotte Brewer and research fellow Dr. Stephen Turton from the University of Cambridge, both specialists in the history of dictionaries. It aims to document the letters and papers of Sir James Augustus Henry Murray (1837–1915) who was the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and sent and received so many letters compiling it that a pillar box was set up outside his house in Oxford.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Twitter merges misinformation and spam teams following whistleblower claims. “According to Reuters, Twitter is merging its health experience team, which is in charge of clamping down on misinformation and harmful content on the website, with its service team. The latter reviews profiles when they’re reported and takes down spam accounts. Together, the combined group will be called Health Products and Services (HPS).”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Iran International: Iran Further Limiting Access To Western Social Media. “Internet and digital security experts say the Iran’s government is quietly implementing ‘intelligent’ filtering of social networks, particularly Instagram. In the past ten days, subscribers to Instagram and WhatsApp who use two-step authentication for signing into their accounts have reported that they are not receiving the required authentication codes via text message. Text message codes are also required for creating new accounts.”

South China Morning Post: TikTok owner ByteDance quietly launches search app Wukong in China, where Google is banned. “ByteDance, owner of the hit short video app TikTok, has quietly launched a new search engine that promises no advertisements in a cyberspace where Google has not been available for more than a decade.”

Chicago Reader: Mapping sex work in Chicago. “Rebelle C[], a writer, activist, and self-proclaimed Chicago ‘heaux-storian,’ is the founder and director of Heaux History, a multimedia archive that explores the history of Black, Brown, and Indigenous sex workers and erotic labor.” I have censored the last name as it is also a popular vulgarity for a woman’s intimate parts. I’m worried this newsletter will get filtered with extreme prejudice if I don’t.

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: A monumental case looks to crack open the world of auto-warranty robocalls. “…according to state and federal officials, just two men may be responsible for an overwhelming share of the billions of auto-warranty spam calls that have hit US phones. Now, a new lawsuit in Ohio is trying to cut them off at their source, following a years-long effort across the public and private sectors to turn the tide on the scourge of robocalls once and for all.”

Bleeping Computer: WordPress sites hacked with fake Cloudflare DDoS alerts pushing malware. “WordPress sites are being hacked to display fake Cloudflare DDoS protection pages to distribute malware that installs the NetSupport RAT and the RaccoonStealer password-stealing Trojan.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: A Teen’s Journey Into the Internet’s Darkness and Back Again. “What science increasingly shows is that virtual interactions can have a powerful impact, positive or negative, depending on a person’s underlying emotional state.”

Vox: Why you (probably) won’t finish reading this story. “A new book by the British journalist Johann Hari, called Stolen Focus, takes a close look at what’s happening — and what’s happened — to our collective attention. Hari argues that we’re all becoming lost in our own lives, which feel more and more like a parade of diversions. And it seems to be getting worse and worse every year.”

The Collegian: Social media’s mental health advice is failing us, destroying community . “Social media is designed to make us feel good. It’s been compared to a drug, because in a way, it is. It’s meant to be addictive — these platforms feed us more and more of what we want to keep us coming back. Nuance and complexity get weeded out by algorithms, while simple and declarative statements are pushed to the top. It’s led to quick-hitting self-help accounts becoming the staples of social media, but the more I see this stuff, I begin to wonder what the real value of it is.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Utah State University: USU Anthropology Student, Vet Med Faculty Identify Object in Centuries-Old Indigenous Pouch. “Anthropologists sometimes work with animal remains in the course of understanding how human societies lived, but they rarely cross paths with veterinarians, who focus on treating living animals. However, when anthropology graduate student Alexandra Wolberg needed to analyze an unusual Indigenous pouch without damaging it, the College of Veterinary Medicine had a unique opportunity to support one of Utah State University’s anthropologists.” Good morning, Internet…

August 25, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Monkeypox in Europe, Meat Sentiment, Marine Energy Atlas, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 24, 2022

Monkeypox in Europe, Meat Sentiment, Marine Energy Atlas, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 24, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

World Health Organization: New mobile friendly web tool with interactive dashboard gives individuals the information they need on monkeypox in advance of attending gatherings. “WHO/Europe has launched a new tool that will offer convenient access to monkeypox information for people planning to attend large gatherings, events or parties. The tool provides an up-to-date assessment of the in-country situation, links to the websites of local health authorities, advice on available preventive measures, as well as links to WHO guidance. It is part of a comprehensive monkeypox resource toolkit with ready-to-use and customizable tools to support national authorities and event organizers in their planning and coordination of mass and large gathering events.”

Purdue University: Purdue Agriculture launches interactive dashboard to track meat sentiment in news and social media. “Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability has added a meat sentiment dashboard to its roster of free-access food system dashboards. The new dashboard, updated weekly, shows the sentiment and volume of meat and meat alternative mentions in social media and online news.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Renewable Energy Laboratory: An Updated Marine Energy Atlas Could Give Communities Greater Energy Autonomy . “With free, publicly available tools, like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) Renewable Energy Atlas and Marine Energy Atlas, anyone anywhere in the world can access the data they need to start planning their clean energy future. Now, new features in the Marine Energy Atlas make it even easier for communities to decide how and where to incorporate marine energy into their power mix and for marine energy developers to learn how much electricity their device could produce at various U.S. sites.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Guardian: Tinder for booklovers: the new app matching like-minded readers. “Reading taste can make or break a relationship for the bookish-minded, and literary preferences are highly subjective. But a new app in development is aiming to remove the uncertainty about literary tastes when meeting new people. Klerb has already been dubbed Tinder for bookworms because it matches you with people in your area according to your shared interests in books.”

West Virginia University: WVU Libraries receives sixth NEH grant to digitize historical newspapers. “The National Endowment for the Humanities is awarding the West Virginia University Libraries’ West Virginia and Regional History Center a grant — its sixth from the NEH, this one totaling $162,155 — allowing it to continue its important work of digitizing newspapers published in West Virginia from 1791 to 1927.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Radio New Zealand: RNZ among media to secure news content deal with Google. “Google is launching its News Showcase in New Zealand today. RNZ, NZME and its various divisions, Scoop and Newsroom, are debut partners and contributors. The Showcase has been rolled out around the world as Google’s response to long-running complaints that it had profited from running media content without payment.”

Washington Post: Lawmakers demand data about online threats against law enforcement. “House Oversight Committee leaders are demanding social media companies take ‘immediate action’ to address a flood of violent online threats against law enforcement, following the FBI’s search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.”

SC Magazine: Nonprofit sues DHS agencies for records on social media monitoring. “The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit legal think tank and advocacy organization at New York University, is suing the federal government and Department of Homeland Security to obtain records on how it uses a trio of social media surveillance contractors.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Duke Today: Economists Have A Method For Reducing Fake News On Social Media. “In new research published in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [Duke University economist] McAdams and collaborators explore ways to improve the quality of information being shared on networks without making any entity responsible for policing content and deciding what is true and false. The model suggests that to cut down on the spread of false information, the network can set limits on how widely certain messages are shared, and do so in a way that is not overly restrictive to users.”

Route Fifty: $26M Awarded for Hyperlocal Smart Cities Research. “The National Science Foundation is investing $26 million to establish an engineering center that will leverage a variety of technologies to improve the quality of urban environments and advance smart city technology.” Good afternoon, Internet…

August 25, 2022 at 01:08AM
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