December 15, 2022 - Spotting plastic waste from space and counting the fish in the seas: here's how AI can help protect the oceans

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Spotting plastic waste from space and counting the fish in the seas: here's how AI can help protect the oceans You’ve seen the art AI image generators can create, and you may have played with natural language AI chatbots. You’ve benefited from artificial intelligence tools recommending you music and suggesting your next streaming show. We’ve used AI’s exceptional pattern recognition to trawl through satellite images and map the tonnes of plastic pollution threatening our seas – in real time. Already, this technique has found more than 4,000 unreported informal dumps next to rivers. This is useful, given just ten rivers contribute nearly all the plastic entering our oceans. Continued here

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High class: A strong electric assist transforms a classic cruiser If your complete list of bicycle formats consists of road and mountain, then you may struggle to remember what a cruiser is. Think of a long, heavy frame with handlebars that sweep back in a wide curve, allowing the rider to perch nearly upright on a wide, comfy seat. Fat tires make for a cushy ride, often down a road that runs alongside a beach in a warm, sunny climate. Continued here

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How Anne Wojcicki Developed a Strategic Vision for 23andMe as a Health Care Pioneer The co-founder and CEO of the DNA testing company shares lessons from her journey leading and growing a breakthrough business. Continued here

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How Managers Unknowingly Sabotage Their Growth The first few months on a new job can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re tasked with managing a team. I remember my first management job well. Like many people, I wasn’t immune to feeling like an imposter and was constantly asking myself: “Do I actually know how to do this? Do I really have what it takes?” I was carrying a lot of emotional baggage while trying to prove myself, make a great impression, and be liked by my team. Continued here

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Sydney: A Biography is Louis Nowra's love letter to his adopted city Louis Nowra’s inspired biography of Sydney starts with a surprise visit to the city. He grew up in a housing commission estate in Melbourne. In 1959, while on a trip with his father to Wollongong in a truck to pick up a load of coke (for fireplaces, not drinking), his father took a detour – to Sydney. Nowra was nine. After being driven through congested inner-city streets, he found himself on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. His amazement rendered him speechless. The massive grey steel structure and granite pylons provided a stunning contrast to the emerald-green harbour. Nowra’s passion for Sydney had been ignited. Twenty years later he moved to the now chic but then bleak inner-city suburb of Chippendale. Later, he took up residence on the border of the inner suburbs of Woolloomooloo and Kings Cross, where he lives today. Continued here

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How the Brain Distinguishes Memories From Perceptions | Quanta Magazine Perception and memory use some of the same areas of the brain. Small but significant differences in the neural representations of memories and perceptions may enable us to distinguish which one we are experiencing at any moment. Memory and perception seem like entirely distinct experiences, and neuroscientists used to be confident that the brain produced them differently, too. But in the 1990s neuroimaging studies revealed that parts of the brain that were thought to be active only during sensory perception are also active during the recall of memories. Continued here

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Ukraine Calls for Boycott of 'The Nutcracker' and Other Russian Works Critics argue that connecting Russia’s culture with its current leadership is counterproductive Ukraine is calling on its Western allies to temporarily boycott Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer behind Christmas classic The Nutcracker, and other Russian works. Continued here

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8 Predictions for How the Workforce Will Change in 2023 The workforce of 2023 will continue to change and evolve, from more hybrid work policies to a greater focus on global candidates. Continued here

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The Grim Origins of an Ominous Methane Surge As the pandemic locked the world down in 2020, carbon dioxide emissions fell by 17 percent. But the global emission of methane—which is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas yet disappears from the atmosphere much quicker—went up, even though industrial processes, like oil and gas extraction, slowed.  The likely culprit is in fact sneakier and more ominous than the scenario of scientists missing a massive pipeline leak somewhere. Writing today in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers found that humanity’s methane emissions did indeed fall in 2020, but nature’s didn’t: Wetlands belched up significantly more of the gas compared to 2019. In fact, it was the highest methane growth rate since atmospheric measurements began in the early 1980s. That may be a hint of a potential climatic feedback loop, which could release even more methane as the world warms. And ironically, due to quirks of chemistry, civilization’s reduced emissions during the first year of the pandemic also ended up exacerbating the problem of atmospheric methane.  Continued here

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The dawn of AI has come, and its implications for education couldn't be more significant The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot has given us a glimpse into the future of teaching and learning alongside artificial intelligence. Educators immediately pointed out the chatbot’s ability to generate meaningful responses to questions from assessments and exams. And it’s often not possible to attribute these responses to a particular source – making it difficult to detect plagiarism. Continued here

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The Most Compelling Science Graphics of 2022 From COVID to space exploration, graphics helped tell some the year’s most important stories Words alone cannot capture the full wonder (or horror) of all the stories science had to tell this year. That’s where graphics come in. Whether visualizing the most important data emerging around the COVID pandemic, explaining some mind-bending idea in quantum physics or synthesizing the incredible journey of a parasite through three different hosts, Scientific American’s graphics editors have helped cover a plethora of fascinating topics this year. Here is just a tiny sampling of our favorites. Continued here

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Navigating Work Benefits: Our Favorite Reads I wanted a higher salary, flexibility in work hours and location, great health insurance at a lower cost, a retirement plan supported by the company, and a good time-off policy. Of course, there were other benefits I cared about, but by identifying and prioritizing the ones that mattered most to me, I was able to find a job that matched my career goals and my values. Because of that, I’ve felt fulfilled and supported during my time here. Continued here

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How to Get Through the Holidays Without Going Broke While your friends and families may not all be dealing with the same pressures you face — finding a job, making rent, and generally, figuring out your life and career — everyone knows that it’s been a tough 12 months. Your loved ones likely won’t be disappointed if you can’t give them lavish gifts (and if they are, they might not be the best people to have in your circle). Continued here

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Why humans walk on two legs: a close look at chimpanzees puts some old theories to the test There’s no trait that distinguishes humans from all other mammals more clearly than the way we walk. Human habitual bipedalism – obligatory walking on two legs – has long been a defining trait of our species, as well as our ancestors as far back as 4.5 million years ago. Science’s growing understanding of chimpanzee culture, communication and emotion may have blurred the understanding of “distinctly human”, but our obligatory bipedalism has stood the test of time. Continued here

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6 moments in African football in 2022 that will be talked about for years to come 2022 was a significant year for African football. It was a benchmark for the women’s game and a year that may mark the first real move into African football as a business rather than football as development. It ended with some thrilling matches at the men’s World Cup in Qatar, proving the real progress made by teams from African countries. The first full year of a return to the sport after the COVID pandemic, 2022 has shown that the African game is able to grow and claim its own space in world football beyond the headlines generated by star African players like Mo Salah and Sadio Mané playing for high profile European clubs. Continued here

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Taiwan’s hottest devices are in one of its oldest malls Tucked among the goods in Victor Shen’s store, in Taipei’s Guanghua Digital Plaza, is something extraordinary. It’s a cable crafted from silver and gold, carrying a price tag of nearly $4,000. The cable connects to a pair of headphones custom-molded to fit the wearer’s ears.  They don’t exactly fly off the shelves, Shen admits. Still, his offerings are emblematic of what Guanghua offers: a tech product for any specific need. “At Guanghua market, people come here for a purpose,” Shen told Rest of World.  Continued here

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Is Popular A.I. Photo App Lensa Stealing From Artists? The tool went viral first for generating flattering portraits—and then for igniting ethical concerns If you've been on social media recently, images from the app Lensa—and its new Magic Avatars feature—have likely popped up in your feeds. The tool has been having a moment, and it's easy to see why: For a few dollars, and a few minutes spent uploading a variety of selfies, users will receive a trove of flattering, interesting, artistic renderings of themselves to post to their feeds, all generated using artificial intelligence. Fun, shareable and harmless, right? Continued here

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Even without strong powers, mayors find a way to get things done Anyone following the debate around Ontario’s proposed Bill 39, which would permit the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa to exercise “strong mayor” powers, may be under the impression that the leaders of these large Canadian cities have difficulty getting things done. With the province of Ontario moving with such urgency to bestow new powers on Toronto’s John Tory and Ottawa’s Mark Sutcliffe, it would be natural to assume there’s a governance crisis at play. Are mayors being stymied by their councils, and are their policy agendas routinely scuttled by obstinate city councillors? Continued here

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Most assume writing systems get simpler. But 3,600 years of Chinese writing show it’s getting increasingly complex Charles Kemp's work on this project was supported by an ARC Future Fellowship ( FT190100200). At this very moment, the words you are reading are entering your mind at the speed of thought. Below your awareness, strings of letters are retrieving words and meanings as effortlessly as oxygen absorbed into the bloodstream. Continued here

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Games, high-end audio equipment, maid cafés: Inside Akihabara, Tokyo’s geek paradise Climbing the floors at Dynamic Audio 5555 in Akihabara is dizzying: Each level of specialty audio goods is yet more hushed, more exclusive than the last. Lining the walls are waist-high speakers, heavy amplifiers in brushed aluminum, music players encased in immaculate walnut paneling. One audio system costs as much as a Tokyo apartment. “Take a photo of the cables,” urged Kengo Shima, the sales manager for the fourth floor. “These machines would be nothing without the cables.” Rest of World duly stepped behind an amplifier arrangement to snap photos of the sleek, heavy leads. Shima looked on approvingly.  Continued here

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Breaking bones in childhood more than doubles the odds of it happening again as an adult, study finds Breaking a bone in childhood is not just a rite of passage. It could be a warning sign of future fracture risk and osteoporosis. A history of prior fracture is one of the strongest predictors of future fractures, yet current guidelines used to determine osteoporosis risk ignore childhood fractures. Continued here

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Australia needs much more solar and wind power, but where are the best sites? We mapped them all Renewable energy’s share of Australia’s main electricity grid has more than doubled from 16% to 35% in five years, and the federal government wants this figure to reach 82% by 2030. Nearly all new power plants in Australia are solar and wind because these are the cheapest sources of electricity. Some of the extra solar capacity will be on rooftops. However, most solar and wind farms will necessarily be in regional areas. So where are the best sites? Continued here

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A Smart Way to Get Ahead of the Next Flu Surge Everyone, it seems, is sick right now. Walk into an office or school and chances are you’ll find plenty of empty seats, as everyone is laid up with a fever or heavy cold. Rates of flu-like illness are high across the northern hemisphere and don’t appear to have peaked. With one in four flu tests returning positive in the United States and about one in seven in the United Kingdom, a lot of people are out of commission. In the US, it is estimated that at least 6 million people had visited a doctor and 120,000 had been hospitalized by December 3.  If we’d had a more detailed view of how cases were building this year, things might not have gotten so bad. Accurately detecting an outbreak’s early stages can show people—in real time, based on a postal code—where cases are rising and help them avoid exposure. Early signals of flu levels in each community also allow for better predictions of how the entire season will evolve, and what its consequences will be for the health system or businesses.  Continued here

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How Indigenous philosophies can improve the way Canadians treat animals Courtney Graham received a small stipend from the University of Guelph's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Enhancement Fund for her time to write this piece. Teaching such views could also transform university curricula, especially in animal science and biomedical programs, as well as climate change activism and sustainability as we pursue reconciliation. Continued here

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Trump backers are lining up to block Republican frontrunner for new House speaker When the 118th United States Congress convenes on January 3 2023, the first order of business for the House of Representatives is to elect a new speaker. The current frontrunner for this powerful position is California Republican Kevin McCarthy. But McCarthy’s path to the speakership is not guaranteed, and could be sabotaged from within his own Republican caucus. Continued here

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These Pants Were Pulled From an 1857 Shipwreck. Are They the World's Oldest Jeans? After more than a century at the bottom of the ocean, the garment fetched $114,000 at auction Earlier this month, a pair of pants recovered from an 1857 shipwreck sold for $114,000 at auction. Continued here

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Why would you dump a requirement for financial advisers to give advice that's in their client's best interests? The findings about advisers in the landmark 2019 financial services royal commission couldn’t have been more stark. The result was a series of radical, but long-awaited changes in the industry, ranging from mandating a bachelor’s degree to enforcing ongoing professional development to introducing a legally-enforceable code of ethics. Continued here

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People in Rural Areas Die at Higher Rates Than Those in Urban Areas Deaths from heart disease, cancer and COVID are all higher in rural areas than urban ones in the U.S., and the gap is only widening There’s a common perception that cities are dangerous places to live, plagued by crime and disease—and that small towns and the countryside are generally safer and healthier. But data tell a different story. Continued here

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Meet Ghostwriter, a haunted AI-powered typewriter that talks to you On Wednesday, a designer and engineer named Arvind Sanjeev revealed his process for creating Ghostwriter, a one-of-a-kind repurposed Brother typewriter that uses AI to chat with a person typing on the keyboard. The "ghost" inside the machine comes from OpenAI's GPT-3, a large language model that powers ChatGPT. The effect resembles a phantom conversing through the machine. Continued here

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For Pain Relief, Cannabis May Be No Better Than a Placebo Previous research has shown the placebo effect can be extremely powerful, rivaling ibuprofen or morphine Cannabis has been used around the world for years to reduce pain. In some U.S. states, patients can use medical marijuana to treat conditions such as multiple sclerosis, chronic pain and depression. But a new analysis suggests that cannabis’ pain-relieving effect may stem at least partially from a belief that it will work.  Continued here

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First Nations kids are more active when their parents are happy and supported For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, being physically active has been a part of culture for many thousands of years, through traditional active lifestyles. These activities are still relevant today. Having a spiritual connection to Country, or caring for Country, provides opportunities for physical activity. This is essential for health and wellbeing. Continued here

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Cultivating the Four Kinds of Creativity In the decades to come, creativity will be key to doing most jobs well. In this article the authors offer a new typology that breaks creative thinking into four types: integration, or showing that two things that appear different are the same; splitting, or seeing how things that look the same are more usefully divided into parts; figure-ground reversal, or realizing that what is crucial is not in the foreground but in the background; and distal thinking, which involves imagining things that are very different from the here and now. Most of us tend to think in just one of those four ways. But we can hone our ability to be creative in other dimensions. Managers need to understand both their own strengths and how to balance the types of thinking across their teams to successfully execute creative projects. And organizations can use this typology to optimize innovation across the workforce. Continued here

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How Frank Gehry Delivers On Time and On Budget When the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, opened, in 1997, critics hailed Frank Gehry’s masterpiece as one of the architectural wonders of the past century. The provincial government’s ambitious projections had called for 500,000 people a year to make the trek to Bilbao to visit the museum; in the first three years alone, 4 million came. The term “Bilbao effect” was coined in urban planning and economic development to describe architecture so spectacular it could transform neighborhoods, cities, and regions. Continued here

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ChatGPT Is a Tipping Point for AI We’re hitting a tipping point for artificial intelligence: With ChatGPT and other AI models that can communicate in plain English, write and revise text, and write code, the technology is suddenly becoming more useful to a broader population of people. This has huge implications. The ability to produce text and code on command means people are capable of producing more work, faster than ever before. Its ability to do different kinds of writing means it’s useful for many different kinds of businesses. Its capacity to respond to notes and revise its own work means there’s significant potential for hybrid human/AI work. Finally, we don’t yet know the limits of these models. All of this could mean sweeping changes for how — and what — work is done in the near future. Continued here

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The day the plastic music died: Epic shutting down Rock Band and other servers If you've ever wanted to achieve a five-star Expert rating for Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames," now's the time to grab that track for Rock Band 3. Online stores, DLC, and services for that game and 14 others will shut down on January 24 as Epic Games consolidates its online offerings. Continued here

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Nuclear fusion: how scientists can turn latest breakthrough into a new clean power source Researchers in the US have finally fulfilled an objective that was set decades ago: the achievement of “ignition” – getting more energy out than you put in – using nuclear fusion. The scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF), where the experiment took place, are no doubt both excited and relieved to finally fulfil the promise implied by the name of their facility. But how excited should the rest of us be? What does this really mean for the possibility of creating effectively unlimited amounts of clean energy, and what else needs to happen to achieve this? Continued here S50 17 Great Tech Books to Gift (or Keep for Yourself) If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED Technology is exerting an ever-growing influence on our world. A cast including Facebook—or Meta—Google, and Apple, with leads like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Elizabeth Holmes, looms large in the public consciousness. Give the gift of knowledge to enlighten the technology-obsessed people in your life and help them learn more about the companies and characters dominating the industry, the news cycle, and, increasingly, our lives. Continued here S46 It's Time for Congress to Support Fusion Energy Fusion devices for clean, safe, and affordable electricity and industrial heat are making advances and need a push Editor’s Note (12/14/22): On Tuesday U.S. officials reported that, for the first time, a nuclear fusion facility created slightly more energy than it used in a fusion reaction. Last year Representative Don Beyer of Virginia explained how Congress can push fusion energy to help with the climate crisis and U.S. competitiveness. Continued here S27 How Women-Led Companies Are Changing the Healthcare Industry Progress is slow, but 23andMe's Anne Wojcicki is optimistic about the future. Continued here S39 Inside Lagos’s bustling Computer Village It’s hard to believe that Lagos’ Computer Village used to be a regular residential suburb. In 1996, Aderonke Ayo-Ibine was a 32-year-old fashion designer on Otigba street when she witnessed its transformation begin.  “It’s called Computer Village because computers [especially memory chips] were the first set of things sold here,” Ayo-Ibine, now 59, told Rest of World. “Phones didn’t exist.” Continued here S51 What Is Twitter Blue, Exactly? Twitter is ready for you to hand over some cash, whether it’s subscribing to the relaunched Twitter Blue service or buying one of the blue bird statues from its San Francisco office. Twitter Blue is one of Elon Musk’s strategies to monetize the social media company and shake up platform dynamics since his April acquisition.  Not sure what exactly you receive for that monthly subscription? Are your eyes glazing over trying to figure out what all these different colored check marks mean? Here’s everything you need to know. Continued here S41 Bengaluru’s tech market has one foot in the radio age, another in the drone era Bengaluru’s SP Road spans more than 1,500 stores over an untidy, 2-kilometer stretch of land. When it rains, it’s a swamp. It’s lined with mobile- and laptop-repair shops that range from the size of a cramped single-person booth to wide, two-story retail stores. The streets are loud with traffic, and have no sidewalk. Visitors constantly dodge scooters whizzing past.  Nihal Mohan, a slight young man who’s been an SP Road-goer since his teens, is Rest of World’s guide. Here, bargaining for electronics parts is a rite of passage for Bengaluru’s hardware geeks; in college, Mohan was the resident “SP Road guy” who procured drone parts on demand for his club. His hobby turned into business, and he rose to become a senior executive at Skylark Drones, an Indian startup.  Continued here S14 Can you name a single character from Avatar? What is a 'forgotbuster' and is Avatar one of them? James Cameron’s Avatar 2: The Way of Water, is released worldwide today. It’s the long-awaited sequel to Avatar (2009), also directed by Cameron, and has cost an enormous amount of money to make. Some sources list the budget at around $350 million dollars, meaning it will need to make upwards of $2 billion at the worldwide box office just to break even. Continued here S48 Alaska's Protective Sea Ice Wall is Crumbling due to the Climate Crisis Emily Schwing: In September, a massive storm on Alaska’s western coast brought a surge of water 17 miles inland from the Bering Sea to the Cup’ik village of Chevak. Schwing: Just over 900 people live in this community. It sits on a high bank above the Ninglikfak River. Elder John Pingayak says the storm shook his resolve.  Continued here S47 Race to Develop Carbon Removal Technology Begins with Record Funding The Biden administration launched a historic effort on Tuesday to commercialize direct air capture technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere A high-stakes race that will shape the future of direct air capture technology has officially begun. Continued here S61 Prosecutors charge 6 people for allegedly waging massive DDoS attacks Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged six people for allegedly operating websites that launched millions of powerful distributed denial-of-service attacks on a wide array of victims on behalf of millions of paying customers. Continued here S57 YouTube moderation bots will start issuing warnings, 24-hour bans YouTube has announced a plan to crack down on spam and abusive content in comments and livestream chats. Of course, YouTube will be doing this with bots, which will now have the power to issue timeouts to users and instantly remove comments that are deemed abusive. Continued here S29 How the Co-Founder and CEO of Pilot Helps Small Businesses Strike Quickly Waseem Daher started digital bookkeeping platform Pilot to help companies spend less time dealing with finances. Continued here S21 Why Am I So Obsessed with Giving People Gifts? In the fall of 2018, I spent the majority of December cooped up inside my apartment, hand-painting Bitmojis of my coworkers onto wine glasses. I baked them in the oven to ensure they would be dishwasher safe and wrapped them in glossy gold paper. A few days before people left for vacation, I snuck into the office around 6 am, and like an elf, I placed the gifts on their desks and waited. Continued here S32 4 Strategies to Secure a Corporate Board Seat To understand how people who are historically underrepresented on corporate boards successfully landed their seats, the author recruited 12 Black female public corporate directors to discuss their career paths and process of being recruited. His conversations revealed that recruiters and boards tend to look for and pre-vet C-suite candidates who resemble current and past directors. This makes it even more critical that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds build a robust and healthy social network filled with individuals who know you — and know what you want to accomplish. He recommends four strategies to accomplish this: 1) Demonstrate your ability to add value; 2) Gain board exposure; 3) Be your own best advocate; and 4) Build and nurture your network. Continued here S34 Toward Fairer Data-Driven Performance Management Reliable, accurate, and bias-free measures of employees’ job performance are notoriously elusive. And while companies are awash with data about their employees, their ability to translate them into trustworthy markers of performance is at best a work in progress. Research shows that self-ratings and supervisory ratings of job performance overlap by merely 4%. While true meritocracy in organizations is impossible and performance won’t ever be entirely measurable, organizations can become more merit-based, fairer, and overall more successful if they identify KPIs about performance within their organizations and use the right data to measure it. Continued here S62 COVID is here to stay, but global emergency could end next year, WHO chief says As the US appears to be heading into another dreaded winter wave of COVID-19 infections, the World Health Organization is looking further ahead—and finding hope for the end of the global health emergency. Continued here S26 5 Ways to Use ChatGPT In Your Workflow Produce content more efficiently and boost your content marketing all with this AI chat bot. Continued here S12 Can sending fewer emails or emptying your inbox really help fight climate change? Doctorant en sciences de l'environnement, Département des sciences fondamentales, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) The massive carbon footprint left behind by emails has been widely discussed by the media, but most of the time these discussions are exaggerated. Continued here S54 We need an "orbital perspective" to solve Earth's problems While aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Ron Garan was tasked with consolidating the contents of two toolboxes into one. From a terrestrial perspective, that may seem simple enough. But nothing is simple in space. Every procedure must be meticulously planned and accounted for. Garan read through the “long, complex, and highly-choreographed” procedure and discovered that the tools weren’t in the starting positions assumed by its writers. Because of this, the task couldn’t be executed as planned, so he contacted the ground to request a change. (Everything must be accounted for in space). Continued here S58 Scientists discover a new supergroup of rare single-celled predators Back in the day, taxonomists had to characterize organisms based basically on how they looked. Molecular phylogeny changed that; once scientists could isolate and amplify DNA, they started classifying organisms based on their genetic sequences. But that still usually required that the organisms be cultured (and thus culturable) in a lab. Continued here S55 SIDS: Are infants' dreams a possible cause? In 2020, close to 2,800 parents in the U.S. were forced to endure the unthinkable: Their beloved infant had suddenly passed away during the night, apparently without any clear cause. Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) had struck. SIDS is not a specific thing; it is a descriptor, Richard Goldstein, a leading SIDS researcher and pediatric palliative care specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, told the BBC earlier this year. “It’s a description of an outcome. And that outcome is that a seemingly well infant is placed to sleep and dies during their sleep for no apparent cause.” Continued here S56 Myth debunked: Mosquitoes aren't repelled by vitamin B1 or dietary supplements A longstanding medical myth suggests that taking vitamin B1, also known as thiamine, can make your body repel mosquitoes. A “systemic repellent” that makes your whole body unappealing to biting insects certainly sounds good. Even if you correctly reject the misinformation questioning safe and effective repellents like DEET, oral repellents would still have the benefit that you wouldn’t need to worry about covering every inch of exposed skin or carrying containers of bug spray whenever you venture into the great outdoors. Continued here S67 Listen to the Sound of a Dust Devil Swirling Around on Mars For the first time, scientists have recorded the noise of a Martian dust storm using a microphone on NASA’s Perseverance rover Dust devils regularly sweep across the surface of Mars. But now, for the first time, scientists have captured the sound of one. Continued here S53 Neuroscientists identify a brain pathway for overcoming fear New research shows that mice lacking one subtype of serotonin receptor rapidly forget learned fear responses due to altered activity of nerve cells in the brain’s fear circuitry. The findings, published recently in the journal Translational Psychiatry, provide clues about how Prozac and related antidepressants exert their effects, and could aid the development of more effective treatments for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Serotonin plays a role in a wide variety of neuropsychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety. There are at least 14 different subtypes of receptor for this neurotransmitter, but the serotonin 2C receptor is known to play a crucial role in these disorders. Sandra Süß of Ruhr-University Bochum and her colleagues examined “knock-out” mice that had their serotonin 2C receptor gene deleted. Continued here S28 3 Ways to Use Mentorship to Your Advantage Why you need a mentor and what to do once you have one. Continued here S35 The overlooked benefits of real Christmas trees In 1800, Queen Charlotte, the German wife of King George III, set up what is thought to be the first Christmas tree in England, at Queen's Lodge in Windsor. Decorated Christmas trees already had a long history in Germany, but they soon became a fashionable part of the festive season for the English upper classes, and by the 1850s were a common sight across the UK. Continued here S64 The immortalists have got it wrong – here’s why we need death | Psyche Ideas Vanitas Still Life (undated) by Herman Henstenburgh (1667-1726). Courtesy the Met Museum, New York Vanitas Still Life (undated) by Herman Henstenburgh (1667-1726). Courtesy the Met Museum, New York Continued here S40 Boozing your way through Mexico City’s electronics flea market It’s 2 p.m., and the Lomas Verdes bazaar is bracing for the lunchtime rush. “Gatherings in cars are strictly prohibited in the bazaar parking lot,” warns a sign in bright lettering. Beneath it, a group of young women brazenly discuss their day’s exploits, leaning on their Jeep. Doors open, music blaring, they gesture with liter cups of micheladas — a concoction of beer and spiced sauces, rimmed with a goopy hot sauce — in hand.  The bazaar is an institution. People come to buy clothing, eat, and pre-drink, but above all, they come because it’s the best place for technology in Greater Mexico City. On weekends, so many cars line up to enter that the massive road outside grinds to a standstill.  Continued here S38 Jakarta’s once-booming electronics market is a ghost town It was a dry, hot Friday afternoon in August when Rest of World visited Glodok, the formerly bustling outdoor electronics market in Jakarta. It was eerily quiet. The narrow alleyways that used to be filled with endless rows of bootleg VCDs and DVDs were mostly empty, save for a few stalls. There haven’t been many customers since the pandemic began, according to shop owners and workers. In fact, that day, Rest of World couldn’t find a single one. Continued here S30 7 Strategies Smart Leaders Use to Handle Criticism Stop inviting feedback unless you're ready to accept and act on it. Continued here S37 Enter the maze of Hong Kong’s tech wonderland In the working-class district of Sham Shui Po, surrounded by the hissing steam of fishball stalls and noodle shops, is Hong Kong’s labyrinthine Golden Computer Center and Arcade. Dozens of shops crammed across four floors make up Hong Kong’s most popular offline electronic marketplace. For more than three decades, merchants here have supplied the city with games and gadgets before release, infamously bypassing official channels to sell them to eager consumers. Cheng Kwok-wai, a 55-year-old salesman known among the customers as “CK,” came to work at the mall in the mid-1980s as a computer salesman, and ended up running a gaming store to meet the voracious appetite from students. Before Golden was the place for early-access goods, it was a hive of cut-price counterfeits: Cheng began by selling pirated games for the Nintendo Famicom, the Japanese counterpart to the NES, and for other popular systems of the time, like Sharp’s X68000. Continued here S36 Inside the world’s biggest tech bazaars Flashing LED displays, the major-key jingles of arcade games, the low buzz of cathode-ray monitors. Most cities have a technology district. In function, they might exist to sell and fix devices; in practice, they channel the rhythm of the cities that house them. Within these districts, in discreetly everyday moments, society and technology collide. Over the past six months, Rest of World visited eight of these tech markets and districts across the world — from the sensory barrage of Akihabara in Tokyo to the rain-spattered, rowdy SP Road in Bengaluru. Continued here S33 When to Give Verbal Feedback -- and When to Do It in Writing One of the many reasons why we dread (and avoid) giving feedback is that we believe it’s simply not going to work. While there are many reasons why feedback fails to deliver results, one that is easily overlooked is our choice of delivery — speaking or writing. You may be leaning on one style not because it’s best for the feedback you need to give, but because it’s most comfortable — or most convenient — for you. Consider what works best for the context, audience, and goals of your specific situation. Spoken and written feedback are both necessary, and each has their time and place. Practicing getting out of your feedback comfort zone when the situation calls for it will make you a stronger communicator all around. Continued here About Me Prem Kumar View my complete profile Powered by Blogger.