What does the quality and consistency of metal powders have to do with sustainability? A great deal, actually. Because Metal Powder Works’ mechanical production process does not rely on gas atomization to produce these common feedstocks, it uses less energy and no industrial gases, both clear wins for the environment, not to mention producing no CO2 while in use.

   
Steps to reduce waste & energy consumption (sme)

   

   
The survey provides a glimpse of what is possible when we reimagine the status quo. A case in point: the power of trust. We found that highly trusted companies are more likely to have made net-zero commitments and to have tied their CEO’s compensation to nonfinancial outcomes, such as employee engagement scores and gender diversity in the workforce.

   

When we reimagine the status quo (pwc)

   

   
The war in Ukraine has been waging for a month now, not only causing human suffering on a massive scale, but also sending economic tremors that are felt far beyond the country’s borders. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s economy has been pulled between its strong historical ties with the Russian economy and the opportunities in forging new ties with the European Union (EU).

   
Twelve facts (vis.csh.ac)

   

   
In the 65 years since Sputnik took its first lonely spin around Earth, the region of space closest to us has become rather more crowded. Today, on International Day of Human Space Flight, it is important to remember that space is no longer inaccessible. The great void of our stratosphere and beyond have never been closer – and that comes with risks.

   
About objects whirling around our planet (iso)

   

   
Measuring distance between objects with light is currently possible only with specialized and expensive lidar—short for “light detection and ranging”—systems. If you’ve seen a self-driving car tooling around, you can spot it right off by the hunchback of technology mounted to the roof. Most of that gear is the car’s lidar crash-avoidance system, which uses lasers to determine distances between objects.

   
Changing how machines see (qualitydigest)

   

  EU' public opinion

   
The main concerns of Europeans had changed dramatically between winter 2020-2021 and spring 2021, and they have changed again since spring 2021. Mentions of rising prices/ inflation/ cost of living have increased considerably, moving it from sixth position in spring 2021 to second position, while the environment and climate change has risen from second place to be the most important issue facing the EU.

   
Eurobarometer 96 (europa)

   

   
Studies so far have provided a tantalizing glimpse at best. But that’s about to change. Next year, robotic vehicles will enter the bewildering icy depths of PSRs for the first time, revealing what the interiors of these shadowed craters look like. By the decade’s end, NASA plans to send humans to explore in person.

   
Secrets coming to light (quantamagazine)

   

   
Scrum is an Agile framework that can help with software development and many other types of projects. It differs from other project management methodologies since Scrum typically focuses on helping teams that self-organize and iterate on products and services over time. The Scrum framework allows teams to deliver optimal software to their clients and users.

   
Best management tools & software (developer)

   

   
Africa's Urbanisation Dynamics 2022 provides a new perspective on Africa’s urban economies that is unique in its breadth and level of detail. Based on data from more than 4 million individuals and firms across 2 300 cities in 34 countries, it presents compelling evidence that urbanisation in Africa contributes to better economic outcomes and higher standards of living.

   
The economic power of Africa’s cities (oecd)

   

   
This impressive total marks another important milestone on our journey towards universal internet accessibility, and means that 63 percent of the world’s total population is now online. There’s much more to this story than a headline user figure though, and this article offers extensive analysis to help you understand the implications of this milestone.

   
The full report (thenextweb)

   

   
Taking a One Health approach and applying univariate and multivariateanalysis, this report provides an integrated analysis of possible relationships between AMC (consumption of antimicrobial agents) in humans and food-producing animals and the occurrence of AMR (antimicrobial resistance) in bacteria from humans andfood-producing animals at country and European level.

   
The European Union summary report (efsa)

   

   
According to market research, the protein therapeutics market is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.86% between 2020 and 2027 (1). This growth is expected to be driven by the rapid rise in chronic disorders, advancements in technologies, broadening awareness of protein therapeutics, increasing adoption of plasma-derived therapies to manage chronic disorders, and mounting government initiatives to develop healthcare sectors.

   
Empowering technologies (pharmtech)

   

   
BAT is a dynamic concept and so the review of BREFs is a continuing process. For example, new measures and techniques may emerge, science and technologies are continuously developing and new or emerging processes are being successfully introduced into the industries. In order to reflect such changes and their consequences for BAT, this document will be periodically reviewed and, if necessary, updated accordingly.

   
Treatment systems in the chemical sector (eippcb.jrc.ec.europa)

   

   
In search of pharmaceutical agents such as new vaccines, industry will routinely scan thousands of related candidate molecules. A novel technique allows this to take place on the nano scale, minimizing use of materials and energy. The work is published in the prestigious journal Nature Chemistry.

   
The breakthrough in mixed tech. (innovations-report)

   

   
Apple once again surprised enthusiasts and analysts with its announcement of the M1 Ultra, a variant of the M1 Max that effectively fuses two chips into one. The result is a dual-chip design viewed by software as a single piece of silicon. These announcements target different markets. Apple has its sights set on the consumer and professional workstation world.

   
Single-Chip Processors Have Reached Their Limits (iee)

   

   
One of the most heated arguments among doctors and scientists is over how significant a problem long covid in children really is. Estimates of the prevalence can swing between 1.8% and 87% of children, depending on the study. As a result, some researchers warn parents to protect their children from a poorly understood syndrome that may affect them for the rest of their lives, while others say the risks have been overstated.

   
Raging battle (technologyreview)

   

   
The analysis is based on the laws and regulations adopted in 2021 for the implementation of direct payments and conditionality. The paper goes on to examine the extent to which the CAP funds used contribute to climate action. The European Commission has laid down that 40% of CAP funds must be climate-relevant.

   
Analysis and policy recommendations (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
The unprecedented threats facing food systems; the basic ingredients for civil society-led transformation of food systems; what the next quarter century has in store if (agri) business-as-usual is allowed to run its disastrous course; and what food systems could look like by 2045 if, instead, civil society succeeds in planning ahead and collaborating more effectively than ever before.

   
A long food movement (ipes-food)
   

   
COVID’s impact was inequitable: Deaths were concentrated among the elderly and minorities working in essential jobs. The inequity may have spread the COVID mental health shock to groups who had previously reported better mental health. The tragedy of the deaths—over 900,000 people by early 2022— by itself is overwhelming. All the effects of the shock to society’s well-being and mental health have yet to be fully assessed.

   
Did pandemic worsen mental health outcomes? (brookings)

   

   
CEOs are most worried about the potential for a cyberattack or macroeconomic shock to undermine the achievement of their company’s financial goals—the same goals that most executive compensation packages are still tied to. And they are less concerned about challenges, like climate change and social inequality, that appear to pose smaller immediate threats to revenue.

   
Reimagining the outcomes that matter (pwc)

   

   
A project management certification is a program that assesses someone’s experience and knowledge with the principles, methodologies, and tools associated with project management. Project management certifications are different than project management certificates. PM certifications typically require weeks of courses and hours of education covering different facets of project management.

   
Top 5 Project (developer)

   

   
Scientists have released three studies that reveal intriguing new clues about how the COVID-19 pandemic started. Two of the reports trace the outbreak back to a massive market that sold live animals, among other goods, in Wuhan, China1,2, and a third suggests that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 spilled over from animals — possibly those sold at the market — to humans at least twice in November or December 20193.

   
Epicentre of pandemic’s start (nature)

   

   
The chief of Russia's space program, Dmitry Rogozin, issued two demands before acceding to the launch. One, he said, OneWeb must guarantee that its satellites will not be used for military purposes. And two, the UK government must give up its ownership of OneWeb. It is virtually impossible to see the UK government agreeing to Russian demands about what it does, and does not, own.

   
Space cooperation (arstechnica)

   

   
Watching DeepMind’s AI play Go, Hassabis realized that his company’s technology was ready to take on one of the most important and complicated puzzles in biology, one that researchers had been trying to solve for 50 years: predicting the structure of proteins. The three-dimensional structure of proteins determines how they behave and interact in the body. But a large number of important proteins have structures that biologists still don’t know.

   
Never miss a breakthrough (technologyreview)

   

   
The battle against climate change isn’t a choice, it’s billions of choices. No action is insignificant, but certain activities and decisions “move the needle” more than others. Those bolder actions from business leaders are needed now—while there’s still time to limit the damage. It’s time to prove we’re up to the challenge.

   
The disconnect between ambition and impact (deloitte)

   

   
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) has become an ever bigger driver, whether it's healthy eating, plant-based ingredients, sustainable supply chains or ethical workforce practices. Investors have also become more mindful of supply chain risks. Technology is the other major influence, opening up varied opportunities to snap up e-commerce targets with direct-to-consumer channels.

   
Secteur oulook (kpmg)

   

   
The European Parliament’s Autumn 2021 Eurobarometer (EB) survey is the third EB survey conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic. While certain adaptations in the methodology were still necessary due to national restrictions in place11, a trend analysis delivers six significant insights.

   
Public opinions (europa)

   
Its code name during development was, well, Cortana, named after a female artificial intelligence character in Microsoft’s popular Halo series of video games. In a nutshell, Microsoft Cortana is an AI-powered virtual assistant that responds to voice commands. It’s available as an app in Windows 10 and 11 and works in conjunction with Microsoft 365 productivity software to help users accomplish business tasks.

   
Past and promising future (computerworld)

   

   
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Freedom Photonics and Purdue University have made strides toward a fully quantum internet by designing and demonstrating the first ever Bell state analyzer for frequency bin coding.Their findings were published in Optica.

   
How to transfer information? (phys)

   

   
The surge in fintech investment is one example of the unprecedented amount of capital flowing into unicorns—defined as privately owned, VC-backed com- panies valued at $1 billion or more—which are in turn scaling at a never-be- fore-seen rate. If 1999 was the year of the IPO, when companies going public raised a record $69.2 billion, the 2020s have ushered in an era of innovation overdrive that the pandemic has only accelerated.

   
A diversifying landscape (pwc)

   

   
We find that personal and employment income taxes are progressive in African countries, but that their progressivity declines as income increases; this finding is in line with earlier studies that made similar calculations for a sample of OECD countries. However, at the very lowest of incomes (between 0.5 and 0.67 times GDP per capita), we find that employment income taxes are slightly less progressive.

   
Findings from a new dataset (odi)

   

   
We live in a data-abundant world and yet we lack basic information about inequality. Economic growth numbers are published every year by governments across the globe, but they do not tell us about how growth is distributed across the population – about who gains and who loses from economic policies. Accessing such data is critical for democracy.

   
Report 2022 (wid.world)

   

   
The African continent represents 20 percent of the earth’s surface and is home to 1.3 billion people—likely reaching 2.53 billion people by 2050. It boasts 60 percent of the world’s arable lands, large swathes of forests, 30 percent of the world’s reserve of minerals, and the youngest population of any continent.

   
Top priorities in 22 (brookings)

   

   
Over the past year and a half, the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council (WEF-IBC) - a group of 120 global CEOs - led a robust, promising conversation with a set of global companies, standard setters, and international institutions centered on a single priority: measuring sustainable, inclusive growth in a comparable and consistent way.

   
A set of common metrics (ey)

   

   
22% of survey respondents have made net-zero commitments (though the largest companies in our sample are further along). CEOs are most worried about the potential for a cyberattack or macroeconomic shock to undermine the achievement of their company’s financial goals—the same goals that most executive compensation packages are still tied to.

   
Strategy is driven by business metrics (pwc)

   

   
Economic complexity offers a potentially powerful paradigm to understand key societal issues and challenges of our time. The underlying idea is that growth, development, technological change, income inequality, spatial disparities, and resilience are the visible outcomes of hidden systemic interactions.

   
The new paradigm (sciencedirect)

   

   
In relation to the COVID-19, the EU agencies in the health and safety cluster have played an important role in the pandemic, albeit in different ways. Helping to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic has been a high priority for all the agencies and our assessment suggests that they have been quick to react to the crisis.

   
Focusing on the health and safety cluster (europa)

   

   
Most studies rely on data supplied by national statistics agencies or the judgments of expert observers. And while scholars acknowledge that the quality of the African state is likely shaped by geographic and ethnic differences within countries, few have measured how state capacity varies at the sub-national level.

   
Professionalism and reach (afrobarometer)

   

  India’s tech innovation engines

   
India recorded 44 new billion-dollar technology companies last year, compared with 10 in 2020 and 9 in 2019 (the country has a total of 83 unicorns). Some analysts are predicting that 2022 will see another surge, with new companies in financial, agricultural and educational technology joining new life-sciences companies, games companies and online marketplaces.

   
India’s socio-economic and environmental challenges (nature)

   

   
91% of young Europeans (15–24-years old) agree that tackling climate change can help improve their own health and well-being, while 87% of all respondents also share this sentiment. 81% of respondents say they are happy living in the EU. 68% of Europeans agree the EU is a place of stability in a troubled world, while 67% agree the EU project offers a future perspective for Europe’s youth.

   
Report (europa)

   

   
For organizations that are leveraging the Continuum by using cloud and cloud-based technologies in more significant ways, the benefits include bottom-line savings such as cost reduction and increased speed to market, and top-line growth in sales via cross-sell and/or up-sell.

   
How to unleash competitiveness? (accenture)

   

   
From June to August 2021, WBCSD convened 75 stakeholders representing 60 organizations from different disciplines, sectors and value chains. The aim was not to define what “nature-positive” means, but to identify existing relevant frameworks and create a shared understanding of the key nature-positive messages or building blocks to support communication and awareness-raising with non-expert business audiences.

   
What does mean ? (wbcsd)

   

   
Rare glimpses into how these algorithms were performing were not comforting: In several states, algorithms used to determine how much help residents will receive from home health aides have automatically cut benefits for thousands. Police departments across the country use the PredPol software to predict where future crimes will occur, but the program disproportionately sends police to Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

   
The use of automated decision systems (ADS) (thenextweb)

   

   
Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and researchers came together in 2021 to assist the Nation during a challenging and unprecedented time. The race to understand and combat COVID-19 produced enormous and rapid breakthroughs in many areas – from additive manufacturing to genetic testing to computer modeling and digital learning and more.

   
A year of challenge (nsf)

   

   
Folks at Technische Universität Wien in Austria have devised a formal security framework called WebSpec to analyze browser security. And they've used it to identify multiple logical flaws affecting web browsers, revealing a new cookie-based attack and an unresolved Content Security Policy contradiction. These logical flaws are not necessarily security vulnerabilities, but they can be.

   
Browser security analysis (theregister/arxiv)

   

   
Companies need to move beyond digital. Top companies do this by starting with a big challenge and then building differentiation (digitally) in the capabilities they own. They get their differentiated capabilities right, and then the flow of digital-powered products, services, solutions, and experiences nat- urally follows.

   
Seven imperatives (pwc)

   

   
Ichthyosaurs coexisted with dinosaurs, but these seagoing reptiles were entirely different creatures. They evolved from land reptiles during the Triassic period, over 246 million years ago. Ichthyosaurs became more streamlined and fish-like over time, and diverse species plied the seas until about 95 million years ago.

   
The largest of its kind (nationalgeographic)

   

   
The European Green Deal6 was launched in December 2019 and sets out the European Commission’s commitment to tackling environmental challenges such as atmospheric warming, climate change, environmental pollution and degradation. It is an integral part of the Commission’s actions to implement the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda and the sustainable development goals.

   
Economic Analysis of the Impacts (cefic)

   

   
As tumors develop, they secrete molecules that disable nearby T cells and other immune cells, allowing the tumors to grow unchecked. Drugs known as checkpoint blockade inhibitors, which can take these brakes off the immune system, are now used to treat some types of cancer, but many other types are resistant to this kind of treatment.

   
Immune system-stimulating drugs (mit)

   

   
Artificial intelligence (AI) promises that organizations will be 40-percent more efficient by 2035, unlocking an estimated $14 trillion in new economic value to global GDP by 2030, according to PwC. This makes it the biggest commercial opportunity in today’s fast-changing business climate, all while improving billions of lives.

   
Responsible use of AI tech. (qualitydigest)

   

   
This report draws on information provided during different interviews with EU experts conducted between April and September 2021. It is also based on five case studies conducted specifically for the purpose of this study by five partners of the Transfrontier Euro- Institut Network (TEIN).

   
Cross-border cooperation (europarl)

   

   
The use of collaboration tools exploded during the coronavirus pandemic, as many offices were shuttered in the name of social distancing. With developers unable to exchange ideas and feedback in an in-person setting, they turned to Zoom calls and other forms of communication to continue their work from home.

   
For software developers (developer)

   

   
The UK has been a pioneer in the development of structures to provide science advice to government. The UK’s guidelines for the use of scientific and engineering advice in policy making, first published in 1997 and subsequently revised,15 are seen as setting a blueprint for the principles of handling science advice in government.

   
Strengths and weaknesses (kas)

   

   
The Nature’s 10 list explores key developments in science this year and some of the people who played important parts in these milestones. Along with their colleagues, these individuals helped to make amazing discoveries and brought attention to crucial issues. Nature’s 10 is not an award or a ranking. The selection is compiled by Nature’s editors to highlight key events in science through the compelling stories of those involved.

   
Nature mag selection (nature)

   

   
This report focus on ESG in private markets, alongside emerging regulations such as European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), is driving growth and leading many companies and investors to alter their strategies. Thousands of companies have made public commitments to net zero, set science-based targets, or sought to demonstrate their wider commitments to society through B Corp status.

   
A hot year for the climate (pwc)

   

   
EU citizens are increasingly using digital tools and the internet to work, learn, socialise, to interact with administrations or companies, and to access services such as health and culture. Access to the internet and the use of digital tools is no longer a novelty. For citizens, companies, organisations, and governments in today’s society, they have become essential. The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated this trend.

   
The common european vision (eurobarometer)

   

   
This paper looks into the diversity of territorial impacts of the pandemic and drivers behind this diversity. First assessments show that regions in the Alps are particularly sensitive to the shock of the pandemic. First assessments also indicate that several regions within the Alpine region are among those regions in their respective countries that will be hit hardest by the economic recession.

   
The territorial diversity & economic effects (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
The European Commission has proposed the introduction of minimum energy performance standards for the 15% worst performing buildings in Europe, which would be rated “G” on the EU’s energy performance scale, whether they are residential or not. By 1 January 2027, all commercial or public buildings would need to reach at least class “F” on the EU’s energy efficiency scale, and then class “E” by 1 January 2030.

   
€150 billion of EU funding (euractiv)

   

   
We use data from almost 600,000 students in 77 countries participating in the 2018 PISA assessment of student achievement in math, science, and reading. The composite measure of SES that PISA uses can be broken down into six component variables that we here use as simultaneous predictors of achievement.

   

A Multidimensional predictor (frontiersin)

   

   
Enzymes are protein molecules that are present in all living things. They speed up and target chemical reactions, in many cases increasing the rate of reaction millions of times. For example, they aid digestion, metabolise and eliminate waste in humans and animals, and play a crucial role in muscle contraction.

   
Eu regulation (efsa)

   

   
In a 6 November preprint published on medRxiv1, Vérez Bencomo and his colleagues report that one of the institute’s vaccines, Soberana 02, is more than 90% effective in protecting against symptomatic COVID-19 infection when used in combination with a related vaccine. Importantly, the combination seems to be effective against the highly transmissible Delta variant.

   
Vaccine effectiveness (nature)

   

   
Security is a global property about the behavior of a system across all possible inputs. You can’t demonstrate security by example, and there’s nothing to see in a particular execution of an algorithm. Security is about a higher level of abstraction. This book is at best, one effort at making the path as smooth as a know how.

   
Ciphering vs deciphering (joyofcryptography)

   

   
The Cygnus NG-17 spacecraft will launch from NASA Wallops, in Virginia, on a routine resupply mission to the International Space Station. Amid the many tonnes of standard crew supplies, spacewalk equipment, computer hardware, and research experiments will be one unusual package: a pair of electronic textile swatches embedded with impact and vibration sensors.

   
Test of sensor-laden electronic fabrics in space (spectrum)

   

   
Values are called the dominating forces in life while our identity determines nothing less than who we are. Both are therefore extremely important in determining citizens’ preferences towards EU policy. But what exactly are these values? To what extent are they shared among EU citizens? In what sense do they differ among different EU Member States?

   
Surevy 508 (europa)

   

   
Potential applications are growing, including creating models for parts built before CAD existed, matching human limbs for orthotics and prosthetics, updating CAD models to as-built after a production process, repair processes, moldmaking—and the list is getting longer. What is driving this are new metrology sensors and more capable software & more powerful and cheaper computing.

   
Applications & emerging Technology (sme)

   

   
Most studies indicate that the majority of enterprise AI projects fail to deliver value. Still, investment in this area is accelerating. How can enterprises best structure their talent, culture, and decision-making to maximize economic value from AI? In this on-demand webinar, researchers Thomas H. Davenport and Laks Srinivasan present the key factors leading to AI investments that deliver real business value.

   
Reliable path to value (sloanreview)

   

   
This report is intended to help guide the action of governments of GPAI Member States and beyond about how to support the responsible adoption of AI for climate action. It is the first step of a program of activities that GPAI would support in this space that we hope would forge concrete international cooperation programs in the form of joint investment in research, development, innovation, regulation, and capacity-building.

   
Beyond data (gpai)

   

   
A breakthrough may lead to a notable advance, which may then be followed by what could be perceived as lateral movement as the other inputs catch-up. Some of the trends highlighted in this report focus on an early-stage facet of a trend, while others recognize a trend moving beyond buzzword to reach a certain stage of market-ready maturity.

   
Trends to watch (comptiacdn)

   

   
Focusing on damages, the German Environment Agency uses the damage costs framework to derive “climate costs”. Mitigation costs are the other framework to calculate climate costs in case the focus is on the costs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The commitment to the Paris Agreement, provides an important benchmark for the mitigation target.

   
Analysis of damage and mitigation frameworks (umweltbundesamt)

   

  City Global Index & Remote Work

   
Study uses data to reveal which global cities are most accessible and attractive for remote workers by assessing factors related to employment compliance, living costs, infrastructure and liveability, in addition to showing current location trends. The first topic we considered was compliance, both in terms of companies hiring remote workers and for employees looking to relocate.

   
80 cities around the world (workmotion)

   

   
When asked what advice committee members might offer to other audit committees to get to grips with the climate challenge, education came out on top (87% of all respondents mentioned education), followed by good management information (79%), and making sure there is alignment of the climate challenge with corporate strategy (78%).

   
Risk assessments as a daunting task (deloitte)

   

   
Leaders are often shaped by crises. And COVID-19 certainly raised the bar for leadership teams; many have broken with old practices to reconcile what were perceived to be competing stakeholder priorities and achieve in weeks what previously took years. This willingness to drive rapid organizational change for the benefit of all stakeholders embodies responsible leadership.

   
Impact on society & the environment (accenture)

   

   
The medical product industry maintains an extensive network of financial and non-financial ties with all major healthcare parties and activities. This network seems to be mostly unregulated and opaque. With absent effective conflict of interests oversight, such promotion might ultimately threaten the integrity, equity, and sustainability of healthcare systems.

   
Oversight and transparency (bmj)

   

   
At the UN Climate Summit, Urgewald and 20 NGO partners launched the “Global Oil & Gas Exit List” (GOGEL), an extensive public database that covers 887 oil and gas companies, which account for almost 95% of global oil and gas production. Over the past 3 years, 16 oil and gas companies spent US$ 168 billion on exploration for new oil and gas resources.

   
Building pipelines halfway to the moon (gogel)

   

   
Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight. Researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety.

   
Lab management in question (bmj)

   

   
The new study suggests that cellular enlargement drives a decline in function of stem cells. The researchers found that blood stem cells, which are among the smallest cells in the body, lose their ability to perform their normal function. replenishing the body’s blood cells — as they grow larger.

   
Bigger doesn’t mean better (news.mit)

   

   
By the late 1970s, the American Petroleum Institute had formed a secret committee called the “CO2 and Climate Task Force,” which included representatives of many of the major oil companies, to privately monitor and discuss the latest developments in climate science. In 1980, Stanford University researcher worned that global warming would be “barely noticeable” by 2005, but by the 2060s would have “globally catastrophic effects.”

   
Info. vs desinfo. (fastcompany)

   

   
Predicting the future is a risky business, particularly in the current environment of huge uncertainty. But once again, Gartner this week announced its Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users in 2022 and Beyond during its virtual Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2021 Americas event.

   
Top Predictions (informationweek)

   

   
If scientists can generate supplies of eggs, it would break the rules of reproduction as we know them. Women without ovaries—for example, because of cancer or surgery—might be able to have biologically related children. What’s more, lab-made eggs would cancel the age limits on female fertility, allowing women to have related babies at 50, 60, or even beyond.

   
Plan to turn blood into human eggs (technologyreview)

   

   
This briefing presents an overview of the key features of migration and asylum policy in the UK, recent trends in migration patterns, and public perceptions and political narratives on refugees and other migrants. Since the referendum, EU immigration has been on the decline, with 28% fewer National Insurance numbers allocated to EU citizens in 2019 than in 2015.

   
Attitudes towards refugees and other migrants (odi)

   

   
Many large companies have long regarded strategy development and strategy execution as two separate things. Before the pandemic, top management was generally seen as responsible for developing strategies, while middle managers and employees were responsible for executing them. Decision and action shld be captured immediately to make relevant strategic decisions.

   
How to make big, old companies act fast ? (strategy-business)

   

   
It’s true that we have little fundamental understanding of the inner workings of self-learning algorithms, or of the limits of their applications. These new forms of AI are very different from traditional computer codes that can be understood line by line. Instead, they operate within a black box, seemingly unknowable to humans and even to the machines themselves.

   
The new alchemy? (quantamagazine)

   

   
We are living in a world in which walls, border patrols, Black Hawk helicopters, unmanned aerial systems, motion sensors, and infrared cameras are placed between the world’s highest emitters and the lowest ones, between the environmentally relatively secure and the environmentally exposed.. This expanding global border regime is increasingly built by private industry.

   
Borders over climate action (tni)

   

   
The analysis shows that, between January 2020 and March 2021, G7 nations committed more than US$189 billion to support coal, oil and gas, while clean forms of energy received only $147 billion. In other words, fossil fuels received more than half of the total support to energy-intensive sectors. Inconsistent result with the steep decline in emissions needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C and with G7 countries’ own net-zero targets.

   
Cleaning up their act? (learn.tearfund)

   

   
One of the hallmarks of our digital age is the rapid pace of change. The ability to procure core technology components at lower costs and the ability to connect individuals around the globe have dramatically accelerated the capacity for innovation, and there is often a sense that businesses need to constantly adapt or face irrelevance.

   
Trends to watch (comptiacdn)

   

   
Analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on young people, providing updated information on their economic and social situation, with a focus on employment. This document was provided in-house by the Policy Department for Economic, Scientific and Quality of Life Policies at the request of the committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL).

   
Economic & social situation (europarl)

   

   
12Wielding Influence in the Age of Coronavirus and surrounding publicity, have been clothed in key CCP slogans – above all that they are part of a ‘Community of Health for All’, tying the effort to Beijing’s strategic goal of uniting China and Africa in a ‘Community of Common Destiny’.

   
Report (kas)

   

   
Depending on its purpose, failure analysis can be performed by plant and maintenance engineers, reliability engineers, or failure analysis engineers. Maintenance engineers conduct primary failure analysis based on their knowledge of the plant operations. If the internal team doesn’t have the required expertise, it is advisable to hire consultants that provide failure analysis services.

   
How to Choose? (qualitydigest)

   

   
T hose who had recovered from COVID-19 months before receiving their jabs harboured antibodies capable of defanging the mutant spike, which displays much more resistance to immune attack than any known naturally occurring variant. These peoples’ antibodies even blocked other types of coronaviruses. “It’s very likely they will be effective against any future variant that SARS-CoV-2.

   
One of the pandemic’s great puzzles (nature)

   

   
The plant will use 22- and 28-nanometer line processing," said Tadahiro Kuroda, Director of Systems Design Lab (d.lab) at the Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo. "So it's not an advanced foundry like the Arizona plant that will use 7 nanometers." But he adds it can produce a range of devices that go into consumer products, sensors, IoT, and auto parts.

   
Chip shortage (spectrum)

   

   
The Methodology Report, which is now available, lays out the metrics by which 20 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies will be assessed and ranked for the 2022 Access to Medicine Index. It captures society’s expectations of pharmaceutical companies regarding access to medicine in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

   
New metric (accesstomedicinefoundation)

   

   
East Asia and Africa started in 1965 with similar shares of working-age populations, at 53 percent. The share then rose rapidly in East Asia to peak at over 70 percent in 2010 due largely to lower fertility rates, and the saving rates rose from 15 percent of GDP to peak at 34 percent of GDP in 2010. The increase in saving rates facilitated more investment and East Asia’s economic transformation.

   
Advantages of industries without smokestacks (brookings)

   

   
Quality management is the cornerstone of medical device manufacturing. There is simply no way to overstate how essential quality is to bring a medical device to market and keep it there long term. A common problem among medical device companies is that senior managers often become disengaged from what’s happening in the quality space.

   
Five biggest quality mistakes (qualitydigest)

   

   
Horizon Europe, the EU’s major Research and Innovation programme, is the successor to Horizon 2020. It is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation with a budget of €95.5 billion. It aims to support scientific excellence, tackle climate change, help to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and boost the EU’s competitiveness and growth.

   
EU citizens’ knowledge and attitudes (eurobarometer)

   

   
Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning are two phrases we often hear being tossed around in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) and new digital technologies. In the media and the public imagination, mostly these two terms are interchangeable, vague, and (arguably) glamorous. Despite the mixed usage, however, they do, in fact, have some key differences.

   
What’s the Difference? (developer)

   

   
Agriculture is estimated to contribute up to 24% of total GHG emissions worldwide. This is because of the way agricultural goods are produced, as well as the land use change they trigger when forests or peatlands are cleared to cultivate crops or graze cattle. Agricultural production is also the largest source of methane and nitrogen dioxide emissions.

   
Decarbonising land use (odi)

   

   
Many larger companies, especially those with a big online presence, have hundreds or even thousands of APIs embedded in their infrastructure. The growth of APIs will only continue to increase. Most APIs are unique, and many organizations simply create new APIs as needed. That can be a nightmare for security teams.

   
10 tools to the rescue (csoonline)

   

   
75 percent of employers claim the students they hire after 12, 16 or more years of formal education lack the ability to think critically and solve problems -- despite the fact that nearly all educators claim to prioritize helping students develop those very skills. we still do not understand the concept well enough to determine how teaching critical-thinking skills can be integrated into the curriculum.

   
Iimproving student ability (insidehighered)

   

   
AI technologies are the most powerful tools in generations for expanding knowledge, increasing prosperity, and enriching the human experience. AI is also the quintessential “dual-use” technology. The ability of a machine to perceive, evaluate, and act more quickly and accurately than a human represents a competitive advantage in any field—civilian or military.

   
Final report (nascai)

   

   

“Super-eruptions are among the most catastrophic events in Earth’s history, venting tremendous amounts of magma almost instantaneously. They can impact global climate to the point of tipping the Earth into a ‘volcanic winter’, which is an abnormally cold period that may result in widespread famine and population disruption.

   
Semi-dormant volcanoes' threats (nature)

   

   
Instead of robot taxes, policymakers who want to help workers displaced by automation should focus on other policies, such as addressing disparities in taxes on capital and labor and easing labor market frictions. Doing so would benefit workers, firms, and the economy more so than would a tax on robots.

   
How do you define robot? (brookings)

   

   
Quantum computers are still in development,, OTI Lumionics designs compagny uses “quantum-inspired” systems and methods for its simulations to test fine chemicals and materials, a process that could take considerably longer through traditional means. The company has been using the Azure Quantum platform in partnership with Microsoft.

   
How to improve the manufacturing cycle for organic LEDs (informationweek)

   

   
Climate protection scenarios are a key part of long-term climate policy planning. The modelling performed in such scenarios informs the development of 2050 national climate strategies—which themselves serve as roadmaps for the decarbonisation of the economy.

   
Scope & Ambition (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
The EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is often presented as the crown jewel of EU climate policy, put- ting a price on carbon emissions from the power sector and industry. With a major reform process now under- way, EURACTIV looks at the implications from a social and economic point of view.

   
Focus on industry & fairness (euractiv)

   

   

Microsoft has announced plans to soon release Windows 11. It turns out Windows 10 wasn't the last version of Windows after all, but that's okay, because Windows 11 will be free for all Windows 10 users, and includes a whole bunch of new features and improvements over the current version of Windows.

   
System requirements (windowscentral)

   

   
Under the Japanese presidency of the 2019 G20, members agreed to the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision, which commits G20 countries to “reduce additional pollution by marine plastic litter to zero by 2050”, thereby ensuring that by 2050, the net volume of plastic entering the ocean is zero.

   
Policy options (resourcepanel)

   

   
In this complex, interconnected and risky world, public administrations must ensure that they are as resilient as possible, in order to preserve the well-being and confidence of the population in the face of future crises. In the final analysis, therefore, resilience is key to supporting resilient societies and healthy democratic systems.

   
How to build resilience (oecd-ilibrary)

   

   

This new edition provides an updated and comprehensive overview of the competent public institutions and the structures of food and feed safety within 37 countries. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as well as its Focal Point network from all 27 EU Member States, Iceland and Norway, as well as observers from Switzerland and EU candidate countries have considerably contributed to this almanac.

   
Who does what ? (bfr)

   

   
Due to product shortages, health care systems have begun looking to unconventional sources of supplies, such as using local upholstery companies to make gowns and leveraging the community to help fill product needs. Health systems are increasingly learning that local suppliers can meet product needs and specifications; however,they tend to be at a higher price point.

   
Building supply chain resiliency (ey)

   

   
In the new era of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the game of cat and mouse in the realm of cybersecurity has reached its head. AI, from its side, gives cybersecurity added power for more intelligent detection and analysis of cyber threats. But unfortunately, hackers are also using AI as a new weapon to create new – and stronger – malicious innovations.

   
Overview (developer)

   

   
Financial markets represent one of the most powerful ways to drive public and private action on climate resilience, as reflected in a "May executive order" from the US administration. The order calls for the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of the Treasury, and other federal agencies to better measure and address financial risks resulting from climate change.

   
The flow of capital toward climate-aligned investments (brookings)

   

   
The EU-funded project SMARTCHAIN hosts today its closing event, showcasing its main findings and recommendations to support collaborative Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs) in Europe. The 3-year long project brought together a wide range of policymakers, practitioners and researchers interested in learning more on collaborative SFSCs and how to support their growth.

   
Key steps to improve sustainability (eufic)

   

   
After continuous growth in previous years, electricity generation from renewable energies also increased in 2020. For the first time ever, renewable energy sources generated more electricity than all fossil energy sources (coal, gas and oil) combined. Wind energy was also able to expand its position as the most important energy source in the German electricity mix.

   
Data on the development in 2020 (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
As the incidence of immune-mediated diseases has increased rapidly in developed societies, there is an unmet need for novel prophylactic practices to fight against these maladies. This study is the first human intervention trial in which urban environmental biodiversity was manipulated to examine its effects on the commensal microbiome and immunoregulation in children.

   
Microbial imbalance or dysbiosis (advances.sciencemag)

   

   
In this study, we characterize the impacts of COVID-19 on air pollution using NO2 and Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) from TROPOMI and MODIS satellite datasets for 41 cities in India. Specifically, our results suggested a 13% NO2 reduction during the lockdown (March 25–May 3rd, 2020) compared to the pre-lockdown (January 1st–March 24th, 2020) period.

   
Spatial and temporal variations of air pollution over 41 cities (nature)

   

   
The mission of the Soyuz space craft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut was of immense importance to Russia's space agency Roscosmos, coming as the SpaceX programme relaunches manned spaceflight from the United States and ignites fresh talk of a space race between the two countries.

   

A vast improvement since 2013 (phys)

   

   
The latest iteration of Google’s web analytics platform, dubbed Google Analytics 4, is now available. The new property type includes expanded predictive insights, deeper integration with Google Ads, cross-device measurement capabilities and more granular data controls.

   
Vision for the future of analytics (searchengineland)

   

   
Nearly all respondents (95%) think that agriculture and rural areas are important for ‘our future’ in the European Union. Moreover, the survey shows that more EU citizens are aware of the CAP (73% today, 6 percentage points (p.p.) more than in 2017) and believe that the CAP benefits all citizens, not only farmers (76% today, 15 p. p. more than in 2017).

   
From sustainability to rural areas & food security (ec.europa)

   

   
Aramco and the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ), in partnership with SABIC, have successfully demonstrated the production and shipment of blue ammonia from Saudi Arabia to Japan with support from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

   
To a sustainable future (ieej)

   

   
The pandemic has significantly intensified the crisis phenomena in the Global South, while countries of the Global North have often been able to withstand the impacts of the crisis through government interventions. The gap between the countries of the Global North and the Global South threatens to widen even further.

   
The international environmental (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
We still need international cooperation because global challenges and problems cannot be solved nationally or regionally. Admit-tedly, issues such as security, finance architecture, free trade, health, and migration must be worked out at the local and national levels, and in the case of climate change also largely implemented at such levels.

   
Is the international order hanging by a thread? (kas)

   

   
A key part of your approach in this new environment should be future-back planning, as explained in the first chapter of this report. The megatrends are a valuable basis to generate new planning scenarios, define a relevant purpose for the future and execute with urgency — all with the goal of becoming a more resilient and transformative company.

   
How to see opportunities where others don’t ? (ey)

   

   
Over half (55%) of global GDP, equal to USD 41.7 trillion1, is dependent on high-functioning biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, a staggering fifth of countries globally(20%) are at risk of their ecosystems collapsing due to a decline in biodiversity and related beneficialservices, reveals a new study by Swiss Re Institute.

   
Ecosystem collapse as biodiversity declines (swiss re institut)

   

   
Renewable energy, now predominant in new electric power capacity, has proven especially flexible, cost-effective, and resilient in the face of the 2020 health and economic crisis. Even better, renewables create numerous and diverse jobs. ast year, jobs in the sector worldwide reached an estimated 11.5 million, continuing a long-term growth trend.

   
Why clean energy needed ?? (irena)

   

   
A consensus-based multilateral solution involving PillarOne and PillarTwo would lead to a more favourable environment for investment and growth than would likely be the case in absence of an agreement by the G20/OECDInclusiveFramework. The full impact of the COVID-19 crisis remains highly uncertain at this stage.

   
Supporting health systems & recovery above all (oecd)

   

   
What we do know is that leading net zero commitments have certain attributes. They are science-based. They take responsibility for tackling value chain emissions including suppliers, products, services and investments. They also explicitly recognize that net zero requires a reshaping of corporate strategy and in turn a firm’s operating model.

   
The building blocks (pwc)

   

  USA: Competition in digital markets

   
The purpose of the investigation was to document competition problems in digital markets; examine whether dominant firms are engaging in anticompetitive conduct; and assess whether existing antitrust laws, competition policies, and current enforcement levels are adequate to address these issues.

   
Investigation report (judiciary.house)

   

   
The ESA’s recently launched Solar Orbiter will spend years in one of the most unwelcoming places in the Solar System: the Sun. Solar Orbiter are almost always run by real-time operating systems that work in an entirely different way than the ones you and I know from the average laptop. Operating systems used in space needs to be done correctly within a strictly specified deadline.

   
RTEMS vs VxWorks (arstechnica)

   

   
Viral infections usually cause disease in humans through both direct cytopathogenic effects and excessive inflammatory responses of the infected host. This also seems to be the case with SARS-CoV2, as COVID-19 patients develop cytokine storms that are very likely to contribute to, if not drive, immunopathology, and disease severity.

   
How to suppress pathogenic inflammation ? (nature)

   

   
This is the sixth annual report for the Cabinet Secretary from the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) Oversight Board. It has now completed its sixth full year of work and has covered a number of areas of HCSEC’s work over the course of the year 2019 to 2020.

   
Annual report (assets.publishing.service)

   

   
EU Member States are being urged to step up surveillance and biosecurity measures to guard against possible new outbreaks of avian influenza this year. The warning follows outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) among wild and domestic birds in western Russia and Kazakhstan.

   
Avian influenza overview (efsa)

   

   
What do a human rights negotiation in Afghanistan, a crisis negotiation in Calgary, and a business dispute between a Brazilian and a Frenchman have in common? At first blush, nothing. However, when we dig deeper into these high-stakes negotiations, there is a common thread that connects them all.

   
How to help your counterpart save face? (hbr)

   

   
The human oral cavity harbors a complex microbial community known as the oral microbiome. These organisms are regularly exposed to selective pressures, such as the usage of antibiotics, which drive evolution and acquisition of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Resistance among oral bacteria jeopardizes not only antibiotic therapy for oral infections, but also extra-oral infections caused by bacterial translocation.

   
Antibiotic resistance genes (plos)

   

   
You can’t ensure privacy without first getting your cybersecurity ducks in a row. One of the reasons many publicized attacks involve government agencies and credit reporting agencies is because they are pillars of our very identities in the modern world. Cybersecurity professionals help ensure that those pillars remain firmly in place.

   
Why cybersecurity professionals are so important ? (comptia)

   

   
Experts identified a health concern for infants and toddlers, considering both mean and high consumers. Among adults, there is a health concern for high consumers only. Glycoalkaloids poisoning can cause acute gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

   
Public health risks assessed (efsa)

   

   
As the coronavirus pandemic unfolded, one leading global engineering and technology services company found itself well positioned to meet unprecedented challenges. The firm had kicked off a digital transformation project the year before, including investing in a data and analytics program equipped with advanced tools.

   
Insights capability in the post–COVID-19 world (strategy-business)

   

   
This paper seeks to answer that challenge by proposing “The Breakout Scale,” a comparative model for measuring IOs based on data that are observable, replicable, verifiable, and available from the moment they were posted. It is intended for use by the operational research community for real-time categorization of IOs as they are identified.

   
The impact of influence operations (brookings)

   

   
This report is the culmination of a 3-year process of research and collaboration between IPES-Food and a wide range of local, regional and international partners to support the development of sustainable food systems in West Africa. This region is fast becoming a climate hotspot with a number of urgent and interconnected challenges.

   
Unlocking the potential for transition (ipes-food)

   

   
We have reached a tipping point where large and prom-inent drugmakers have retreated from the antibiotics field and smaller innovative biotech companies have gone bank-rupt due to the poor financial rewards on offer. Antibiotics are taken for short courses and the most precious products are reserved for emergencies.

   
Benchmark 2020 (accesstomedicinefoundation)

   

   
New research finds that rapid MRI scans generated with artificial intelligence (AI) were just as effective as, and were diagnostically interchangeable with, traditional MRI. The results could significantly improve the patient experience, expand access to MRIs, and potentially enable new use cases for MRI.

   
Deep learning with 4 times less data (nyulangone)

   

   
The average person subscribes to three streaming services. Keeping them straight is a mess. But a fix may be coming soon. Google has been working on a new platform called Kaleidoscope. It appears to be a website that combines all of your streaming services in one place, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus and many more.

   
Jumping between streaming services (fastcompany)

   

   
In recent years, numerous niche innovations have emerged in the food systems of European countries, which have the potential to contribute to the necessary, more sustainable shaping of food systems. These niche innovations are presented in this publication as well as classified and evaluated with regard to their potential contribution to the transformation of the food system.

   
Niche innovations (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
We’ve been adding voice commands to Dictate so that you can break away from the keyboard. Whether on desktop or mobile (or transitioning between devices), you can stay in the flow and focus on your message by using dictation with voice commands to add, format, edit, and organize your text.

   
How to break away from the keyboard? (microsoft)

   

   
With the national election taking place at a time of desperate hope for new vaccines and therapies to combat the lethal coronovirus, FDA officials are struggling to maintain the credibility and independence of its drug regulatory process amidst accusations of intentionally delaying clinical testing for political reasons.

   
COVID-19 convalescent plasma (fda)

   

   
The report—produced in partnership with universities, research institutions, UN agencies and the secretariats of several multilateral environmental agreements— identifies key anthropogenic drivers for the emergence of zoonoses, from agricultural intensification and increased demand for animal protein to the conversion of land and climate change.

   
How to break the chain of transmission (pnud,ilri, un)

   

   
Consumers are increasingly willing to tell their doctors when they disagree with them, are using tools to get information on costs and health issues, are tracking their health conditions and using that data to make decisions, and accessing and using their medical record data.

   
The future of health (deloitte)

   

   
Expenditures in business travel have been growing fast, much faster than global GDP. The Growth Lab had explored this question by looking at labor and entrepreneurial mobility between firms, regions, and countries. But it occurred to them that the importance of knowhow might explain why firms rely so heavily on business travel.

   
What would happen ? (growthlab)

   

   
Q2’20 saw regions across the globe continuing to grapple with the challenges associated with COVID-19, including economic turbulence, sudden spikes in unemployment rates, restrictions on travel and movement, and the ramifications of the continued shutdown or slowdown of many sectors and industries.

   
Global analysis (kpmg)

   

   
This article’s purpose is to discuss what we know about respiratory protection, and also what can be done to make masks more effective by reducing air leakage. The effectiveness of a mask made from a particular material can vary enormously as a function of how well it seals against the wearer’s face.

   
Something is better than nothing (qualitydigest)

   

   
AI-based solutions are playing a crucial role in the fight against the pandemic — from contact-tracing algorithms to drones that scan body temperatures and ensure compliance with social distancing directives. The primacy of tackling the crisis is reordering ethical considerations.

   
Aligning policymakers and companies (ey)

   

   
his innovation hints at the ways 5G networks could transform and improve all of the critical components of healthcare, a subject especially meaningful today as the spread of the coronavirus has put unprecedented stress on healthcare systems around the world.

   
The privacy challenge (pwc)

   

   
Origin stories come in many forms: tales of how we entered a profession, personal chronicles explaining how and when we became part of an organization, accounts of how we met our significant other, or even how we emerged as a new person after a crisis. Despite this natural inclination, we rarely examine what we include (and don’t include) in those accounts and how those choices shape our present reality.

   
About “becoming” leaders & leadership (hbr)

   

   
Which value(s) can help us to evaluate sustainable climate performance appropriately? At least since Agenda 2030, it has been clear that sustainability means more than just environmental and climate protection, and requires economic and social concerns to be taken into account, too.

   
CO2 productivity as a benchmark (kas)

   

   
Machine Learning and Deep learning algorithms are powerful and flexible predictive modeling tools but have rarely been applied to animal movement data. In this study we present a general framework for predicting animal movement that is a combination of two steps: first predicting movement behavioral states and second predicting the animal’s velocity.

   
Tracking data focus on parametric models (plos)

   

   
Opposition to progress is often “shaped, not so much by fundamental personality traits, but simply by the imperatives of argument, almost regardless of the desires, character, or conviction of the participants. Theses can help us understand why some executives aren’t going full throttle with business experimentation, a practice that is key to innovation, that drives profitable growth and creates shareholder value.

   
Seven myths (strategy-business)

   

   
Vaccines to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) are urgently needed. The effect of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines on viral replication in both upper and lower airways is important to evaluate in nonhuman primates. The use of messenger RNA (mRNA) is a promising approach for Covid-19 vaccination.

   
Evaluation of the mRNA-1273 Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 (nejm)

   

   
The COVID-19 situation has deeply affected urban consumers’ views on spending. Before the outbreak, consumer confidence was sky-high, with almost half (46%) of our survey respondents saying they expected to spend more in the next 12 months. When we reached back out to people after the outbreak had begun, 40% reported a decrease in income as a result of job loss or redundancy.

   
A customer purchase journey (pwc)

   

   
The treatment from Southampton-based biotech Synairgen uses a protein called interferon beta which the body produces when it gets a viral infection. The protein is inhaled directly into the lungs of patients with coronavirus, using a nebuliser, in the hope that it will stimulate an immune response.

   
Promising coronavirus treatments (bbc)

   

   
Following a mandate from the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority has developed a Guidance on Technical Requirements(Guidance on Particle-TR),setting out information requirements for applications in the regulated food and feed product areas, and establishing criteria forassessing the presence of a fraction of small particles.

   
Upgrading the conventional risk assessment (efsa)

   

   
Current estimates are that nearly 690 million people are hungry, or 8.9 percent of the world population – up by 10 million people in one year and by nearly 60 million in five years. The number of people affected by severe food insecurity, which is another measure that approximates hunger, shows a similar upward trend.

   
Food security and nutrition (fao)

   

   
Providing production support to an application is one of the most challenging aspects of software development. Developers are assigned to the maintenance team and work on patching bugs on the application. They are, however, also available on-call in case a production outage happens, in which case they work to get the application back on track as quickly as possible.

   
Tech. to speed up troubleshooting (thenextweb)

   

   
Adding crushed rock dust to farmland could draw down up to two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air per year and help meet key global climate targets, according to a major new study led by the University of Sheffield. The technique, known as enhanced rock weathering.

   
Applying rock dust to croplands (newswise)

   

   
Given the exceptional uncertainties characterising the near-term outlook, the OECD considers two epidemiological scenarios for the coming 18months: one where the virus continues to recede and remains under control, and one where a second wave of rapid contagion erupts later in 2020.

   
Outlook2020 (oecd)

   

   
The report describes activities within the project “Advanced materials - Thematic conferences: Assessment of needs to act on chemical safety” to provide discussion input on approaches to describe, cluster and prioritize advanced materials. The report presents a structuring of the field of advanced materials by screening existing definitions and classifications as well scientific activities related...

   
Screening criteria for relevance assessment (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
While the pandemic did unexpectedly result in a dip in stress, there are still concerns that keep millennials and Gen Zs up at night. Three topics stood out for both millennials and Gen Zs in the pulse survey, both before the pandemic and after: family welfare, their longer-term financial futures, and their job/career prospects.

   
The resilient generations (deloitte)

   

   
Protecting global biodiversity calls for a variety of instruments, at the EU border as well as in the provisions of preferential agreements. The EU already includes biodiversity-rel ated non-trade provisions in trade agreements, but these provisions are not legally binding and hardly effective.

   
International trade and environmental rules (europarl)

   

   
“Thelong-term outlook for EVs remains bright,as fundamental cost and technology improvements outweigh the short-term impacts of the pandemic,” Bloomberg NEF says in its latest Electric Vehicle Outlook.Its analysts predict that EVs willmake up 10% of global sales by 2025 and 28% by 2030.

   
In line with environmental policies (euractiv)

   

   
Experts agree that the novel coronavirus behind COVID-19 spreads through direct contact and large droplets that, once sneezed or coughed out, often fall harmlessly to the ground. But a recent letter signed by 239 scientists suggests that the virus may also spread by airborne transmission, lingering in the air for hours within lighter "microdroplets."

   
New studies (academic)

   

   
While messenger RNA (mRNA) is crucially important, it is just one of many types of RNA involved in a range of activities that affect the transmission of genetic information and the functioning—or dysfunctioning—of cells. Appropriately designed RNA-based therapies can thus modulate genetic information in a controlled and targeted manner, effectively acting as gene therapies.

   
How to to deliver to the right cells ? (pharmtech)

   

   
As the Covid-19 crisis spread around the world, large numbers of people started working from home, with immediate and varied impacts on energy use. Oil demand shrank but residential electricity use surged. Companies such as Google and Facebook announced they would allow staff members to work remotely until at least the beginning of next year, while Twitter said its employees could continue working from home indefinitely.

   
Working from home (iea)

   

   
Certifications can validate your IT skills and experience to show employers you have the expertise to get the job done. You can get certified in skills you already have or skills you’d like to put to use in your career — whatever your reason, certifications are a great way to strengthen your resume and set yourself apart from other candidates in a job search.

   
IT Popular certifications (cio)

   

   
When analyzing causes and consequences of comparative advantage across products (or indus-tries), theories of international trade typically assume that countries compete within productsby producing the exact same (or perfectly symmetric) output. Yet this is not the case withquality differentiation. The choice of quality allows firms – for a given product – to tailor theiroutput to match the skills of workers in their country.

   
Quality differentiation & Comparative advantage (growthlab)

   

   
The pandemic and the resulting sudden stopinglobaleconomic activity has increased the riskthat banks will face large credit losses in the coming quarters.In this paper, we argue that policymakersshouldtake more aggressive actions to ensure that banks remain well-capitalized so that they can continue to play their critical roles as providers ofcredit to the economy.

   
Drawing on lessons from global financial crisis (brookings)

   

   
Looking behind the money flows, this report found that the obstacles to agroecological research are deep-rooted — but not insurmountable. The majority of donors partially endorse some principles of agroecology while simultaneously supporting conventional approaches. Agroecology is often reduced to the biophysical dimension, and consequently donors like Switzerland pay less attention to concerns.

   
What is holding back investment ? (ipes)

   

   
The EU’s annual report on arms export control presently lags behind the national reports of many countries. The introduction of a searchable online database will be a substantial step in increasing the user-friendliness of the report. This paper makes recommendations with regard to readability, comprehensiveness and comparability.

   
Recommendations for transparency (europarl)

   

   
This special report, produced in partnership with Vodafone, analyses the current state of play for Europe’s digital vision of the future in a radically transformed post-coronavirus world. It draws on the expertise of high-level politicians and policymakers, industry experts and business leaders, in order to chart the coming revolution in Europe’s technological landscape.

   
The coming revolution (euractiv)

   

   
Microsoft 365 now lets you create intranet sites in multiple languages. You can create pages and news in a user’s preferred language, and show site navigation, site title, and the site description in the preferred language, too. The process is relatively easy – but there are a few things to know before launching.

   
Tips and best practices (computerworld)

   

   
When the Journal took up the topic in 2003 with a debate about the role of race in medicine, one side argued that racial and ethnic categories reflected underlying population genetics and could be clinically useful.1 Others held that any small benefit was outweighed by potential harms that arose from the long, rotten history of racism in medicine.

   
Hidden in plain sight (nejm)

   

  MS ' Project Bonsai & Moab

   
Project Bonsai is the first service component of Microsoft's vision to empower customers to build, operate, and manage autonomous system. Also announcing Project Moab, a new open-source balancing robot to help engineers and developers learn how to build real-world autonomous control systems with Project Bonsai.

   
How to incorporate knowledge from experts ? (azure.microsoft)

   

   
During the last three decades, implementing the standard has typically been a significant overhead expense, a never-ending chore to remain compliant, and an added work burden to the staff of most organizations. We’ve developed tools for continual improvement and metrics to demonstrate how well they work, but they are seldom integrated into overall business performance indicators.

   
Part 1 to 5 (qualitydigest)

   

   
In Europe, Italians have the highest genetic diversity. The gradient of their genetic variability, scattered all over the peninsula, encloses on a small scale the whole genetic variance between southern and continental Europeans. This amazing diversity started to accumulate soon after the Late Glacial Maximum, which ended approximately 19,000 years ago.

   
Earliest evidence (phys)

   

   
The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) offers best practices for delivering IT services using a systematic approach to IT service management (ITSM). The ITIL 4 was updated by Axelos in February 2019 to include a stronger emphasis on maintaining agility, flexibility and innovation in ITSM, while still supporting legacy networks and systems.

   
Costs, requirements, levels and paths (cio)

   

   
The study starts with a brief overview of empirical data regarding the impacts of biodiversity loss on human rights, highlighting data gaps and limitations in currently available sources. The study will assess the status and content of existing international obligations on biodiversity and human rights.

   
Why is it linked to human rights? (europarl)

   

  Windows 10 May 2020 update

   
Despite calls for Microsoft to significantly delay its spring Windows release due to the pandemic, the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, version 2004, is expected to begin rolling out to users in the next few weeks. Industry watchers initially expected it on May 12, Patch Tuesday, but the public release now appears to be slated for the last week in May.

   
Review (computerworld)

   

   
We show that for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterized by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C. This distribution likely reflects a human temperature niche related to fundamental constraints. With population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y.

   
The interplay of mechanisms driven by warming (pnas)

   

   
Over the past four decades, the Arabian Sea has experienced a profound loss of inorganic nitrate. In all probability, this is due to increased denitrification caused by the expansion of the permanent oxygen minimum zone and consequent changes in nutrient stoichiometries. These exceptional changes appear to be creating a niche particularly favorable to Noctiluca scintillans which has recently replaced diatoms as the dominant winter, bloom forming organism.

   
Coast of Oman upheaval (nature report)

   

   
This briefing note focuses specifically on the effects this economic crisis will have on education leavers. It estimates the level of employment and pay scarring that they could suffer, and also considers the unique effects that this particular crisis will have by putting at risk many of the roles that non-graduate education leavers first enter into.

   
Education leavers in the current crisis (resolutionfoundation)

   

   
Resource efficiency as an opportunity many countries have begun to develop policies for a more efficient and sustainable use of natural resources at the national level. A compilation of policies by European countries was published by the European Environment Agency. However, for non-European countries there is little information available.

   
Policies and trends (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
COVID-19 threatens to erode trust in publicinstitutions, especially if citizens view their respective authorities as mishandlingthe responseto the crisis or lacking transparencyas tothe scope of thisresponse.29Nevertheless, some executives appear to be receivinga boost in popularity fortheir seemingly robust responses to the pandemic.

   
Sector governance (dcaf)

   

   
Extrapolating behaviours from acceleration data of wild individuals is a challenge since it is often impossible to test whether the extrapolated behaviours are correct or not. However, the promising advance of behaviour classification through machine learning is the ability to study the behaviour of wild animals without observing (and possibly disturbing) them.

   
Using data from captive individuals (plos)

   

   
This survey found that the EU has among the lowest confidence in the safety and effectiveness of vaccinesworldwide, that levels of confidence vary by vaccine, and that there is a correlation between the confidence of general practitioners in vaccines and the confidence of the general public.

   
Special Eurobarometer (europa)

   

   
People moved through Wuhan to 296 prefectures in 31 provinces and regions throughout the country. The researchers linked the population-flow data, which was provided by a major national wireless telecommunications carrier, to COVID-19 infection counts, provided by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Chinese CDC), by location and time at the prefecture level.

   
Real-time data about population flows (nature)

   

   
The researchers found that low income workers, such as farmers and construction or factory workers, tend to work in jobs that require less physical proximity to other people at work than high income workers, such as office workers or school teachers. However, as low income workers tend to be in occupations that are more machine-dependent and less ICT-enabled, this makes them less flexible to work remotely.

   
Covid economics (cepr)

   

   
Generally, vaccines must go through three progressively more stringent human trial phases before they are considered safe and effective. The phases assess the candidates’ safety profile, the strength of the immune responses they trigger, and how good they are at actually protecting people from infection and disease.

   
100-plus in the works (arstechnica)

   

   
The content is provisional and will be updated on a regular basis, as needed. It has been prepared to provide general guidance on matters of interest only, and does not constitute professional advice. There may be local nuances which require specific consideration. You should not act upon the information contained herein without obtaining specific professional advice.

   
Audit legislation (kpmg)

   

   
Public health experts around the world have said that one of the most vital strategies for slowing the spread of COVID-19 was ‘social distancing’. UQ’s Professor Jolanda Jetten advocated renaming the term to ‘physical distancing’. “The idea of distancing clashes with the deep-seated human instinct to connect with others, especially during challenging times,” she said.

   
Socially connected while physically apart (nature)

   

   
The spread of COVID-19 has compounded Europe’s weak growth and brought some economic activity to a halt. On average, 63 per cent of CFOs report in March 2020 that they are less optimistic about the financial prospects for their company, an increase of almost30 percentage points in six months. If we look at the data based on when CFOs responded throughout March it is apparent that optimism was dwindling fast as the month progressed.

   
A perspective on COVID-19 (deloitte)

   

   
The phrase “flatten the curve” means to slow the transmission of the coronavirus (Covid-19) in order to spread the total number of cases out over a longer period of time. This will avoid overwhelming the healthcare system.1 The model is accurate as presented throughout the internet, but it also overlooks terrible dangers and enormous opportunities.

   
The SIR model & the Curve (qualitydigest)

   

   
“Agricultural economic water scarcity” is, here, defined as lack of irrigation due to limited institutional and economic capacity instead of hydrologic constraints. To date, the location and productivity potential of economically water scarce croplands remain unknown. We develop a monthly agrohydrological analysis to map agricultural regions affected by agricultural economic water scarcity.

   
Adaptation strategy to climate change (sciencemag)

   

   
Evidence of food-borne outbreaks shows that L. monocytogenes is the most relevant pathogen associated with bfV. The probability of illness per serving of uncooked bfV, for the elderly (65–74 years old) population, is up to 3,600 times greater than cooked bfV and very likely lower than any of the evaluated ready-to-eat food categories.

   
Frozen fruit and vegetables (efsa)

   

   
Businesses today are looking to acquire assets that reflect and cater to consumers’ strong environmental and ethical values and comply with increased regulations. Most of these targets are likely to be strategic deal opportunities that offer longer-term value. Consumers are voicing their preferences and businesses are responding.”

   
Consumers are driving the companies to change ethically (kpmg)

   

   
Governments around the world are acting decisively to protect their businesses and people from the economic disruption being caused by the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Whether through tax cuts, investment incentives or changes to filing deadlines, tax systems will play a significant part in helping to alleviate the financial and economic turmoil that is now occurring.

   
How are governments responding ? (ey)

   

   
This study researched the drivers and mechanisms of both structural and non-structural horizontal and vertical integration in the seafood industry in all Member States with a coastline. The objective of the study was to identify trends among the Member States. The observed trends generally fall into three broad, inter-linked categories: regulatory environment, natural resources and firm performance.

   
Study (europarl.europa)

   

   
The results from 10 severe adult cases showed that one dose (200 mL) of convalescent plasma was well tolerated and could significantly increase or maintain the neutralizing antibodies at a high level, leading to disappearance of viremia in 7 d. Meanwhile, clinical symptoms and paraclinical criteria rapidly improved within 3 d. Radiological examination showed varying degrees of absorption of lung lesions within 7 d.

   
Plasma therapy in severe COVID-19 patients (pnas)

   

   
The IHME, which is responsible for the ongoing Global Burden of Disease study, calculated the likely need for hospital admissions and intensive care beds and projected deaths in European countries hit by Covid-19. Looking at measures taken by the UK to curb the spread of the disease, the institute says the peak is expected in 10 days’ time, on 17 April.

   
Codiv' assessments (healthdata)

   

   
There are some similarities to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014. The epidemic has disrupted market supply chains. Many farmers could not grow or sell their crops. This, coupled with shortages of agricultural labor, has had an impact on food production.

   
Sub-Saharan Africa (fao)

   

   
Zipline has expanded into Ghana, and has plans to start flying in India as well, but the COVID-19 pandemic is changing everything. Africa is preparing for the worst, while in the United States, Zipline is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to try and expedite safety and regulatory approvals for an emergency humanitarian mission.

   
Critical medical supplies distribution (spectrum)

   

   
We are witnessing massive behavior change at a scale and speed that we’ve never seen before, sparked by fear, proselytized by social media, encouraged by government. Such change includes frequent handwashing, working from home and discouraging bad behaviorsuch as toilet roll hoarding. The time to act is now. This document outlines the practical steps you should take to get started.

   
Now & Next since Covid-19 (accenture)

   

   
COVID-19 presents significant challenges to people and organisations around the globe and the disruption continues to evolve. We know that your business is facing several potentially significant challenges to which you need to respond rapidly. To help you cut through the complexity, PwC's team of specialists collaborated to create a resource for you to stay abreast of the changes that impact your business.

   

Source (pwc)

   

   
Reducing the data-dependency of deep learning is currently among the top priorities of AI researchers. computer scientist Yann LeCun discussed the limits of current deep learning techniques and presented the blueprint for “self-supervised learning,” his roadmap to solve deep learning’s data problem.

   
Self-supervised learning (thenextweb)

   

   
As IT pros around the world go all-out to support a workforce that's suddenly fully remote, many technology workers and companies are also joining efforts to alleviate the COVID-19 crisis in various ways, including developing products to combat the virus, tracking and predicting its spread, and protecting hospitals from cyberattacks.

   
IT pros help (computerworld)

   

   
MS worked hard to address the evolving needs of today’s savvy web surfers. With the new Microsoft Edge, we hope you’ll see great performance, more control over your data and better ways to connect to and make sense of information. Because it’s time to expect more from the web.

   
The top 10 reasons to switch (windows)

   

   
This article, which draws from the best practices in supply chain and operations management, can help struggling hospitals and other care providers increase the odds they will have those resources. It is based on a central reality: Tackling shortages and supply constraints requires a comprehensive strategy aimed at both the demand- and supply-side roots of the problem.

   
Filling the gap (hbr)

   

   
The first 21 SARS-CoV-2 genomes in Austria have now been completed and published within the scope of the “Mutational Dynamics of SARS-CoV-2” project recently launched by CeMM in close collaboration with the Medical University of Vienna. The project aims at sequencing 1,000 viral genomes obtained from Austrian patient-derived samples, in order to learn more about the molecular understanding.

   
Global map of SARS-CoV-2 (innovations-report)

   

   
With evidence of benefits in short supply, experts also raised concerns about potential harms. Mask wearing may give people a false sense of security, some experts said. This may lead some members of the public to be lax about other, far more critical precautions, such as staying two meters apart from others, limiting outings, and washing their hands frequently and thoroughly.

   
A deep dive into the data (arstechnica)

   

   
Traditional vaccines, like the seasonal flu vaccine, are made by growing up large quantities of the virus and in some way killing or inactivating it so that it can be used safely as a vaccine. This approach is an old technology from the middle of the past century, according to von Hofe. “The main problem here is the time it takes to produce the vaccine, which is at least a year and can be several.

   
Racing against time (pharmtech) (This server take time to download the article)

   

   
Some of these small businesses rely on corporate events for as much as 90% of their revenue. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread throughout the world and shelter-in-place and work-from-home orders remain intact throughout the Bay Area, many of these businesses find themselves with no source of income.

   
Blank calendars and layoffs (cnbc)

   

   
Early cancer detection could identify tumors when outcomes are superior at a time when outcomes aresuperior and treatment is less morbid. This prospective case-control sub-study assessed the performance of targeted methylation analysis of circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) to detect and localizemultiple cancer types across all stages at high specificity.

   
Sensitive and specific multi-cancer detection (annalsofoncology)

   

  How Codiv-19 will change aviation

   
How the current health crisis might spur investment in different segments of robotics and drone technology. These changes were all meant to happen even before the spread of the pandemic, but will now accelerate, forcing all industries to rethink their ecosystems and shift towards a stronger adoption of new technologies.

   
The fall of commercial travel (airport-technology)

   

  Codiv-19 FAQ

   
Though the first cases of the new coronavirus seem to have spread from animals to people, the virus is now spreading from person to person. People who get COVID-19 appear to get sick in a time frame of a couple of days to two weeks after being exposed. At present, there’s no reason to think the pathogen could be transmitted through food or via consumer goods.

   
What You Need to Know (consumerreports)

   

  Machine learning & Medic.

   
In the February 20 issue of Cell, one team of scientists announced that they — and a powerful deep learning algorithm — had found a totally new antibiotic, one with an unconventional mechanism of action that allows it to fight infections that are resistant to multiple drugs. The compound was hiding in plain sight (as a possible diabetes treatment) because humans didn’t know what to look for. But the computer did.

   
An unconventional mechanism of action (quantamagazine)

   

   
The Dutch government made this stretch of coast a magnet for kiteboarders and other beachgoers a few years ago when it dropped off an immense pile of sand. Called the Zandmotor, or Sand Motor in English, the project is the world’s largest experiment in coastal storm and flood defense at a time when climate change is causing seas to rise and storms to intensify.

   
With nature’s help (pulitzercenter)

   

  Fast vs. Formulated?

   
In an automobile race, a vehicle must be well designed, highly tuned, and have the proper fuel to outperform the other competitors. In the traditional drug development race to get a molecule to clinic, drug companies sometimes look for shortcuts. Questions about manufacturability and drug performance may not be answered until formulation steps are initiated after the filing of the investigational new drug application.

   
Postponing early stage formulation (pharmtech)

   

  How to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 ?

   
As the COVID-19 outbreak has worsened, the volume of calls fielded by our teams has noticeably increased. By the end of February, the phones were ringing off the hook. Business leaders are concerned, and rightly so, for the welfare of their people and their organizations.

   
Seven key actions (strategy-business)

   

  Learning mobility

   
Learning mobility barriers still exist and according to recent statistics from OECD and Eurostat the shares of mobile students vary widely across Member States. Eurostat has released this year information on the number of mobile graduates for the academic year 2012/2013.

   
Study (europa)

   

  ISS gets a new research platform

   
The International Space Station (ISS) will soon be receiving a new research platform, Bartolomeo, which will play host to both scientific and commercial projects. Created by Airbus and hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA), the platform is heading to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft.

   
The versatile Bartolomeo service (digitaltrends)

   

  Agricultural applications

   
Remote sensing has the capacity to assist the adaptive evolution of agricultural practices in order to face this major challenge, by providing repetitive information on crop status throughout the season at different scales and for different actors. We start this review by making an overview of the current remote sensing techniques relevant for the agricultural context.

   
Estimation from remote sensing (sciencedirect)

   

  Health equity in england

   
We cannot say with certainty which of these adverse trends might be responsible for the worsening health picture in England. Some, such as the increase in child poverty, will mostly show their effects in the long term. We can say, though, that austerity has adversely affected the social determinants that impact on health in the short, medium and long term.

   
The Marmot review (instituteofhealthequity)

   

  Covid-19 & Global economic assessment

   
Global GDP growth is projected to slow from 2.9% in 2019 to 2.4% this year, before picking up to around 3¼ per cent in 2021 as the effects of the coronavirus fade and output gradually recovers (Figure 6). Announced and implemented policy actions incorporated in the projections will help to support incomes in the near term, particularly those well-targeted on affected firms and households.

   
OECD

   

  Building a balanced diet

   
As the food pyramid is one of the most common and hence most familiar graphic representations, it is used as an example throughout this article. To make it simpler, healthy food guides are used as an umbrella term for FBDGs ( food-based dietary guidelines). The original food pyramid was created in Sweden in 1974.

   
The universal message (eufic)

   

  Robots learning complex tasks

   
Roboticists are developing automated robots that can learn new tasks solely by observing humans. At home, you might someday show a domestic robot how to do routine chores. In the workplace, you could train robots like new employees, showing them how to perform many duties. One such task is setting a dinner table under certain conditions.

   
Training interactive robots (mit)

   

   
Many of the technologies that made the list seem to overlap and even amplify each other, like advances in personalized and anti-aging medicine. It’s also no coincidence that A.I. is involved in many of these spaces, as it’s allowed for many breakthroughs — something that will continue as it runs on more devices, like your phone.

   
Assessment (technologyreview)

   

   
The paper explore quantitatively the role of non-tariff measures (NTMs), including regulatory measures such as sanitary and technical requirements, in shaping the United Kingdom’s future trade relations with the European Union and the impact on developing countries. We simulate the possible impacts of Brexit using a panel data gravity model and compare the European Union membership effect.

   
Future trade relations (unctad)

   

   
The establishment of harmonised or standardised investigation methods for the quantitative description of possible impact of plastics on the environment is urgently necessary. The UBA is actively participating in several research projects funded by the BMBF for the establishment of suitable sampling strategies and chemical investigation methods and is also sponsors research projects which are geared towards methodical issues.

   
From valuable materials to wast (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
While data center and information technology terminology acronyms can be complex, we often use metaphors to help bridge the communication gap between project stakeholders. For data centers, we frequently use cars as a comparison. Most people know how to drive a car, but not everyone knows how the various parts work together — and even fewer know how to fix them without assistance.

   
The great consolidation (areadevelopment)

   

   
Thanks to these advances, new professional sectors have been developed under the general description of teleworking including tele-medicine, tele-education, tele-consultancy. However, this growth, based on the associated technological achievements, has not been without a dark side.

   
Working with technology (europa)

   

   
Structural change is taking place in Africa, but with a pattern that is distinct from the historical experience of industrialized countries and contemporary East Asia. Export-led manufacturing is playing a much smaller role in the structural transformation of Africa’s economies. Manufacturing in Africa’s GDP has fallensince 1980. Instead, services—some with quite low productivity—absorb the bulk of African workers leaving agriculture and moving to cities.

   
Industries without smokestacks (rookings)

   

  Geneva Barometer

   
The turn of the year was marked in Ge-neva by a contradictory dynamic: On the one hand, several international organisa-tions were con-fronted with severe cri-ses, while on the other hand, ambitious promises for the future were made in many places. At the WHO, the handling of the Corona virus (COVID-19) has domi-nated the agenda since January.

   
Geneva’s International Organisations (kas)

   

   
As a variety of technology models hit their breaking point, they herald a bigger shift that enterprises in every industry must note: people will no longer be bystanders when it comes to technology. Whether it’s security standards misaligned with today’s interconnected ecosystems, bad actors leveraging the content neutrality of social platforms to amplify misinformation, or government regulations that are years behind the technology itself, expectations are not being met—and the resulting tech-clash demands action.

   
Opportunities are knocking (accenture)

   

   
In recent months, the words “infection” and “outbreak” have not been far from anyone’s mind as we’ve faced the emergence of a new coronavirus, COVID-19. Mathematics may sound like an unlikely hero to help us overcome a global epidemic; however, the insights we gain from studying the dynamics of infectious diseases by using equations describing fundamental variables are not to be underestimated.

   
Modelling of Infectious Disease Dynamics (plos)

   

   
Policy-makers in low-income countries are increasingly aiming for a different and higher-quality type of growth. This growth should be more technology intensive, with a diversified production structure, be resilient to shocks, create jobs and be more inclusive. Crucial for this is enhancing economic transformation, defined as the movement of resources from low-productivity to high-productivity activities.

   
A new body of evidence (odi)

   

   
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic has spread from China to 25 countries. Local cycles of transmission have already occurred in 12 countries after case importation. In Africa, Egypt has so far confirmed one case. Here we evaluate the preparedness and vulnerability of African countries against their risk of importation of COVID-19.

   
Countries with the highest importation risk (lancet)

   

   
The report identifies the 250 largest retailers around the world based on publicly available data for FY2018 (fiscal years ended through 30 June 2019), and analyzes their performance across geographies and product sectors. It also provides a global economic outlook, looks at the 50 fastest-growing retailers, and highlights new entrants to the Top 250.

   
Uncertainty surrounding the global economy (deloitte)

   

   
New EY research suggests that outside of the need for compliance, a gulf separates cybersecurity from the business. To bridge the chasm, CISOs need to prove their value in a language boards and C-suites can understand; and the business needs to embrace cybersecurity from the onset and through the lifecycle of every initiative.

   
Driving a culture of Security by Design (ey)

   

   
During the last 12 months, Slovakia was added to the list of affected countries, whereas Czechia was recognised as officially ASF(African swine fever) free in March 2019. ASF is present in each of the non-membercountries on the eastern border of the EU, except Turkey. New introductions from these non-MSs canbe suspected.

   
Epidemiological analyses of ASF (efsa)

   

   
The European Commission has published the common "toolbox" to guarantee the security of 5G. It leaves the door ajar for Huawei by recommending that member states just limit their involvement to non-sensitive parts of the networks; it thus asserts its autonomy from the pressures of the US administration.

   
5G' security (europa)

   

   
The general theme of uncertainty hindering progress moved to the fore in our survey’s ranking of threats to organisations’ growth prospects. Although over-regulation remained the top threat cited globally, CEO concern over uncertain economic growth surged from number 12 to number three. Climate change is increasingly prominent on CEO agendas, as we discuss later in this report.

   
The rising tide of uncertainty (pwc)

   

   
As individuals specialize in specific knowledge areas, a society’s know-how becomes distributed across different workers. This paper studies the interdependencies among co-workers that result from this process in a population-wide dataset covering educational specializations of millions of workers and their co-workers in Sweden over a 10-year period.

   
Distributed knowledge (advances.sciencemag)

   

   
Current World Bank poverty estimates show that almost half the world's population lives on less than $ 5.50 a day, and the pace of poverty reduction has halved since 2013. At the top of the world economy will find a minority of incredibly wealthy people. Their fortune grows exponentially over time, without much effort.

   
Story of two extremes (oxfamilibrary)

   

   
Where would we be without IDEs and code editors? If you’re a practicing Pythonista, you’re probably well aware of this fact. But as Python’s popularity is constantly growing, so is the selection of Python-related tools. Therefore, the question arises: “Which IDE or code editor should I choose for the most optimal results?”

   
The very best of them (stxnext)

   

   
An overview of global and regional trends in employment, unemployment, labour force participation and productivity, as well as dimensions of job quality such as employment status, informal employment and working poverty. It also examines income and social developments, and provides an indicator of social unrest.

   
An overview of global and regional trends (ilo)

   

   
What’s the ideal way to approach and allocate resources to innovation? Disruption can happen in any industry, at any time. Whether it’s responding to a new technology, competitor or market – from autonomous vehicles to meatless meats. companies are well aware of the need to innovate to succeed.

   
The recipe for portfolio growth (accenture)

   

   
If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. Facebook made a gesture toward transparency this week with the launch of its Off-Facebook Activity tool. This offers users a glimpse into the many ways details of real-world transactions get shared with Facebook, regardless of what you’re doing on the Facebook platform.

   
Free software vs Data mining (vox)

   

   
This study aims to investigate how Facebook can help hold government officials to account, and to examine what government officials do to solicit comments through Facebook. The motivations of users posting concerns in relation to public service delivery will also be surveyed in this research. The paper consists of a literature review, a discussion of the methodology, the data collection and its limitations.

   
A Pilot study and analysis (kas)

   

   
Africa’s population continues to grow at an exponential rate, with the U.N. projecting that 40 percent of the world’s population will live on the continent by the end of the century. Here, AGI’s role as a leading source for policy solutions—and for opportunity—for this increasingly youthful continent shines through.

   
Top priorities for the continent 2020-2030 (brookings)

   

   
Opioids remain an essential tool for medical providers. Inappropriate opioid prescribing can lead to diversion of, addiction to, and overdose from prescription opioids,56789 contributing to an epidemic of opioid related deaths in recent years.10 Promoting cautious, scientifically justified, opioid prescribing has become a leading goal of policy makers in both government and healthcare.

   
The prescribing of opioids (bmj)

   

  Youth stocktaking report

   
Youth are exposed to the increasingly complex globalchallenges of our times including climate change, rising inequality and high levels of public debts. In a context in which political positions are dominated by older age cohorts and existing channels for youth to shape policy outcomes perceived by many asoutdated or inefficient.

   
Youth needs and aspirations (oecd)

   

   
New definitions of growth will lead naturally to new thinking in meaning and metrics, which might include personal growth performance measures like learning, happiness, communal longevity or good health. in the future, financial institutions might stop evaluating their loans on categories of firms or countries. Instead, they might look at applicants’ activities that help fulfil specific missions – such as removing plastic from the ocean.

   
Time to reset capitalism (accenture)

   

   
While payments continued to draw the most significant attention from fintechinvestors across most jurisdictions, H1’19 also saw the continued maturation of the fintechindustry as a whole and the broadening of its definition. Areas like wealthtech, proptechand regtechalso grew on the radar of investors.

   
Trends to watch (kpmg)

   

   
Two of the world’s most complex manufacturing industries—semiconductor fabrication and biopharmaceutical production—share a common fundamental objective: to maximize process yields through rigorous control of production equipment and process variables. Biopharma manufacturers seek to correlate raw material data with variations in their bioreactor and process chromatography yields, with a goal of achieving greater predictability and control of process results.

   
Cross-collaboration (pharmtech)

   

   
Opaque and unregulated deci-sion-making processes are, the greater the risk of abusing power for self-enrichment. Arbitrary and unclear decisions, whether that be in dispensing justice, granting governmental contracts, or filling public offices, undermine the rule of law and swallow up additional resources. Corruption is a global phenomenon. But a panacea has yet to be found. Instead, various approaches have been tried world-wide.

   
Threat to the Constitutional State (kas)

   

   
There is a nascent but growingbody of research which suggests that vulnerability to unfair economic outcomes is a morecompelling root cause of the current wave of populism.Whatexactlyis meant by economic fairness in this context? Most broadly, as put by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, it means that “awards should be according to merit.

   
Working paper (growthlab.cid.harvard)

   

   
Modifiable lifestyle factors including smoking, physical activity, alcohol intake, body weight, and diet quality affect both total life expectancy and incidence of chronic diseases.6789 Studies have shown that smoking, inactivity, poor diet quality, and heavy alcohol consumption contribute up to 60% of premature deaths and 7.4-17.9 years’ loss in life expectancy.

   
How to be free from major diseases ? (bmj)

   

   
A panel of tech executives discussed privacy, encryption, and digital advertising this week at CES 2020 Apple’s senior director of global privacy Jane Horvath came out in strong favor of privacy protection, commissioner Rebecca Slaughter of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission came out even stronger.

   
Privacy, encryption, and digital advertising (iee)

   

   
Automation has always been one goal of enterprise technology, but today’s capabilities open new doors. Just by using cloud systems, companies can take advantage of tools from their cloud provider. Internet of things implementations expand the ability to gather inputs from a variety of sources, and artificial intelligence can help drive actions based on those inputs.

   
Promising future (comptia)

   

   
Since fires flared up in the states of New South Wales and Queensland in September 2019, parts of Australia have continued to battle unprecedented levels of wildfire activity, even though the annual fire season in the south-east of the country doesn’t typically peak until January–February. CAMS has been closely monitoring the intensity of the fires and forecasting the resulting transport of the pollutants they release.

   
The most extreme fires (atmosphere.copernicus)

   

   
In Pharmaceutical Technology's ongoing Pharmacopoeia Compliance Series, experts explain the revision process for global and national pharmacopoeias, best practices for monitoring changes, and how to participate in revisions. Other features include FDA warning letters, building a quality culture, and essentials for DOE and QRM.

   
Best practices (pharmtech)

   

   
Many battery materials, including heavy metals such as nickel and cobalt, pose tremendous environmental and humanitarian risks. Cobalt in particular, which is largely available in central Africa, has come under fire for careless and exploitative extraction practices. IBM Research has discovered a chemistry for a new battery which does not use heavy metals or other substances with sourcing concerns.

   
For smart power grid applications (ibm)

   

   
The heat is greatest for small and midsize shale producers, including many whose wells aren't producing as much oil and gas as they had projected to lenders and investors. Some of those companies may be forced out of business, said Clark Sackschewsky, the managing principal of accounting firm BDO's Houston tax practice. Large companies are likely to weather the blow because of their size and global asset diversity.

   
Fracking forecasts in doubt (marketscreener)

   

   
The development of pioneering new digital treatments and technologies, including robotics, artificial intelligence and data networks, is set to transform our healthcare systems over the coming years, optimising our healthcare system and offering numerous benefits for patients and healthcare providers alike.

   
Ethical and environmental ramifications (euractiv)

   

   
The tech industry is faced with a tricky balancing act: continuing to drive innovative solutions while grappling with the side effects of those solutions in the global economy. The challenge itself is not unique—every industry deals with this tension as it becomes more mature—but the new variables here are the scale that tech is able to achieve and the evolutionary aspect of mixing digital and physical worlds.

   
The trends shaping the industry (comptia)

   

   
Work is becoming more automated. As new, technology-driven models transform industries, capital replaces people and we estimate 30% of UK jobs, 38% of US jobs, 35% of German jobs and 21% of Japanese jobs could be at risk of automation by the early 2030. Add to this the 53% of workers who believe automation will significantly change or make their job obsolete within the next ten years.

   
Strategy for a better world (pwc)

   

   
Articles written by female first and last authors were up to 21% less likely to use positive terms to frame their research findings than comparable articles published in the most prestigious journals with at least one man in a lead author position. Additional analyses confirmed that these positive words typically qualified the findings: we would frequently see word combinations such as “novel approach,” “unique mechanism,” or “promising result.”.

   
The gender gap in self-promotion (hbr)

   

   
In recent years, there’s been a shift in how people are considering what they wear for special (and even not so special) occasions. No longer do fashionistas want — or need — to pay high prices for things that might end up gathering dust in the closet after that one special night. They instead want a more convenient shopping experience, a more affordable lifestyle, greater variety, and the option to consume more conscientiously.

   
Isn’t new at all (strategy-business)

   

   
This alien-looking contraption is referred to as a “stratollite,” a portmanteau of “stratos pheric satellite,” operated by a company called World View Enterprises. It’s a finely honed surveillance device outfitted with a suite of sensors and a camera sensitive enough to detect people standing on the ground from the edge of space.

   
Lurking at the edge of space (arstechnica)

   

   
SAP prescribing is a complex process that involves multiple professions across the pre-, intra- and post-operative surgical settings. The utilisation of behaviour change frameworks to identify barriers and enablers to optimal SAP prescribing supports future development of theory-informed antimicrobial stewardship interventions.

   
In public and private hospitals (journals.plos)

   

   
The Fair Tax Mark will later this week release a new report, The Silicon Six and their $100 billion global tax gap, which examines the tax conduct of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google and Microsoft over the last decade. The report questions whether the companies, collectively referred to as the ‘Silicon Six’, are paying their way on tax.

   
Over $100 billion at stake (fairtaxmark)

   

   
When looking at glorious images of cosmic phenomena, like black holes and supernovae, with striking colors set against the stark, dark backdrop of the universe, it’s important to remember that before that picture could be made, it started as a researcher’s hypothesis. Ideas of these brilliant, stunning celestial forces start as data points on a page before scientists can even develop a sense of what they might look like.

   
Chandra Telescope (smithsonianmag)

   

   
As incumbents scramble to respond to technical, business, and regulatory challenges posed by innovative disruptors, investors and consumers alike are wondering who will win the fight for new media supremacy. The answer, it turns out, may depend on how old you are, the age of your customers, and how each of you define “video content.”

   
A radical reinvention (hbr)

   

   
The reasons for economies falling behind, whether a lack of investment or a lack of political will, are increasingly well understood. Informed individuals may well ask, “If other governments can progress, why can’t ours?” This research, which is part of the World Bank’s Doing Business study, aims to look at the challenges governments face when they implement new tech.

   
The changing landscape of tax policy (pwc)

   

   
It is a symptom of a new great-power politics that is increasingly shaping the international system. Rus-sia, with its construction of intermediate-range missiles, and China, which increases its military spending each year and has reached parity with the US in some areas already, are contributing to this trend.

   
A new arms race (kas)

   

   
This report aims to expand that discourse and provide a metric for assessing how far the world is from production levels that are consistent with global climate goals.Moving away from fossil fuel production poses both economic and political challenges, but doing so is possible and increasingly necessary to avoid dangerous climate change.

   
2019 report (productiongap)

   

   
Babesiosis, an economically consequential animal disease caused by a wide range of tick-transmitted Babesia spp. parasites, is recognized as an emerging infection in humans . Babesia venatorum (formerly Babesia sp. EU1) is notable in that it appears able to infect humans without immune suppression or splenectomy and can present with more severe symptoms.

   
Tick-transmitted Babesia spp. parasites (wwwnc)

   

   
An effective QC unit must be independent of the manufacturing unit,and the QC unit’s final decision on the release of product must be respected. “It is never appropriate to pressure the quality unit to release product to meet business needs if the product is not acceptable for release,” says Oates. “The quality unit must have a single, final decision-maker who is ultimately responsible for quality decisions.”

   
The right pieces for a Quality Program (pharmtech)

   

   
Early symptoms of auto-brewery syndrome may be mood changes, brain fog and delirium, instead of signs of intoxication, according to the Richmond study. Some symptoms of auto-brewery syndrome can mimic other conditions or medical events, such as hypoglycemia or a stroke.People who suspect they have auto-brewery syndrome get a breathalyzer so they can test their blood alcohol levels when symptoms manifest.

   
Underdiagnosed medical condition (bmjopengastro)

   

   
Blockchain is going through a similar path of diffusion across industries far beyond its initial fintech applications.4 More organizations in more sectors—such as technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and health care, and government—are expanding and diversifying their blockchain initiatives. Bockchain appears to be entering a new era of wider, more practical adoption.

   
2019 Global Blockchain survey (deloitte)

   

   
Just how worried should we be about killer robots? Amidst all the talk about how artificial intelligence (AI) is threatening society, some experts believe AI shouldn’t be feared. Here’s why we can embrace the power of technology. ISO – in conjunction with its sister organization, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) – has identified the need to develop standards for AI that can benefit all societies.

   
Setting boundaries (iso)

   

   
Modern medicine, a marvel of technology and ingenuity, ushers in waves of progress that can add length and quality to human life. And yet certain powerful countervailing forces work against the efficacy of new treatments. The social determinants of health — often-ignored social factors such as employment; housing; income inequality; and can swamp the health systems that ignore them.

   
Expanding the health ecosystem (pwc)

   

   
This paperexploits geographic variation in the incidence of populism to apply cross-sectional regression analysis to these arguments, and concludes that they are highly unconvincing. Instead, the thus-largely overlooked factor of social mobility is found to have far greater explanatory power. Four settings are analyzed: the 2016 US Presidential Election, the 2017 French Presidential Election, the 2019 European Parliament Elections, and the political stability of developed countries in 2017.

   
Social mobility & Populism (growthlab.cid.harvard)

   

   
With the plethora of new kit that seems to come out every year (or even month), it’s easy to get lost in the depths of debates about R vs. Python and Azure vs. AWS. When asked about my favorite tools, I was reminded that I don’t have the pleasure of being “hands-on” for a living anymore. How to The ideal toolbox we think needs to enable an analyst to do three main things with data: prep, unearth sight and drive action ?

   
Hands-on tools (qualitydigest)

   

   
According to the IPCC Special Report on 1 .5°C, global CO2 emissions need to decrease to net zero by 2050 in order to keep global temperature rise below 1 .5°C . If we continue at current emissions levels, the remaining carbon budget to stay below 1 .5°C, namely 420 GtCO2, will be expended in just over nine years .1Current NDCs would lead to about 3°C of global temperatures above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century and global GHG emissions continue to climb.

   
A net-zero emissions economy (climate-transparency)

   

   
What causes companies to stay true to their calling? What countervailing forces can leaders call on that will keep them where they need to be to stay competitive? Our work in service design and customer experience tells us that the answer can be found in the principles of design thinking. For niche players, the problem of focus is, literally, a question of identity itself.

   
How to win by being narrow? (strategy-business)

   

   
Today, nearly half of American adults are in facial recognition databases. Russell Brandom, policy editor at The Verge, explains that the government first started with DMVs running facial recognition on all the photos in their system to see if any of them were the same person, “usually because it was Social Security fraud”. Big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft have been selling facial recognition tech to various companies for business purposes.

   
The ACLU is suing the FBI (recode/vox)

   

   
Originally designed for measuring isotope abundances and elemental masses, mass spectrometry is becoming a mainstay across life sciences. As electrospray ionization of biomolecules turns 30 and the Orbitrap mass analyzer 20, we take this opportunity to highlight the role of both inventions in stirring mass spectrometry from physics into biology and discuss the advances and challenges that may impact the future applications of biomolecular mass spectrometry.

   
New methodological approaches or instruments (nature)

   

   
In an age of mass extinctions, confirming the survival of lost species provides rare second chances for biodiversity conservation. Global Wildlife Conservation and partners Southern Institute of Ecology and Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research have rediscovered a wildlife species lost to science since 1990 called a silver-backed chevrotain—a deer-like species that is the size of a rabbit, has a silver sheen, and has been hanging on in a region of Vietnam ravaged by poaching by snares.

   
Most wanted’ list (globalwildlife)

   

   
The next generation of cellular mobile communications technology has arrived: Major U.S., European, and Asian operators have launched commercial 5G networks. 5G, which is set to succeed the current standard over the next few years, offers an exponential improvement in functionality over 4G.

   
Expanding services with mobile broadband (strategy-business)

   

   
Recent efforts in Smart Manufacturing (SM) have proven quite effective at elucidating system behavior using sensing systems, communications and computational platforms, along with statistical methods to collect and analyze real-time performance data. However, how do you effectively select where and when to implement these technology solutions within manufacturing operations?

   
Few insight for technology implementation (qualitydigest)

   

   
For all the ease with which the wildly popular CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing tool alters genomes, it’s still somewhat clunky and prone to errors and unintended effects. Now, a recently developed alternative offers greater control over genome edits — an advance that could be particularly important for developing gene therapies.

   
Super-precise new CRISPR tool (nature)

   

   
Findings suggest that amajority of both men and womenthink equality is already a reality when it comes to education, earning a living, and owning or inheriting land. But fewer than half think equal opportunities and treatment for women have improved in recent years.

   
Experiences of gender (in)equality (afrobarometer)

   

   
The tremendous increase in computing power and parallelization of processes in the last decades have led to an increase in clinical decision support models, patient-level predictions and other machine learning applications. Their widespread utilization also increased the diversity. Computations now can range from simple statistics and reference interval calculations to complex neural networks.

   
A training and deployment platform (plos)

   

   
The likelihood of a recession in the near term is not considered a significant threat by respondents. While there has been more speculation about the potential of a global correction, executives do not see this on the immediate horizon. A majority does not expect a severe downturn, and of the minority that do, say it is not likely until 2021 or 2022.

   
Global economy is showing resilience (ey)

   

   
While it’s unclear how many jobs automation will eventually replace and when it might happen, a new study looks at something more measurable: how new technologies are changing workers’ day-to-day jobs right now. Emerging technologies aren’t actually going to replace the over 1 million warehouse workers in the US anytime soon. But over the next 10 years, the technology may make their lives harder.

   
Frustrated workers (vox)

   

   
Many airports have gone above and beyond to ensure smooth operations in extreme conditions. For instance, Stockholm Arlanda Airport uses more than 100 pieces of equipment to get rid of snow with a combination of snow blowers, ploughs, loaders, brooms, sprayer trucks and de-icing chemicals and agents.

   
Five innovative tech (airport-technology)

   

  WTO' report 2019

   
The globalization of services has the potential to scale up growth, deepen integration, and level the economic playing field in ways that go beyond the changes wrought by the globalization of manufacturing in recent decades. It holds out the promise of a major expansion not just of trade, but of the essential enablers of trade, development, and economic growth.

   
Services highlighted (wto)

   

   
Foreign companies that wish to succeed in China must find a way to fit into one of its major business ecosystems. These are composed of networks of suppliers, banks, distributors, retailers, and trading companies centered around one or several mega firms.

   
Who gets in and who doesn’t (qualitydigest)

   

   
A deadly disease estimated to have killed 1m olive trees in Italy has spread to France. The French agriculture ministry announced the discovery of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, known as olive tree leprosy, on two trees in the south of the country and said the infected trees would be destroyed to stop it from spreading.

   
The eradication of Xylella fastidiosa (fao)

   

   
The U.S. tried to buy Greenland (what?), the Amazon is burning, billionaire David Koch died, and CEOs from 181 of the world’s largest companies — as part of the lobbying group The Business Roundtable (BRT) — declared that the purpose of a corporation is not just to serve shareholders (their official position since 1997), but “to create value for all our stakeholders.”

   
How to follow these principles? (hbr)

   

   
In emerging markets, digital banks have the ability to reach previously unbanked consumers without having to establish a major physical presence, thereby eliminating significant capital investment requirements. Enabling this, however, requires a high level of trust from the consumer.

   
The economics of trust (kpmg)

   

   
The publication covers a variety of topics ranging from land use regulation, smart cities, energy and indigenous people’s rights. All of these topics are relevant to the work of KAS given that we are committed to the cause of sustainable development that takes into account environmental protection.

   
New features and new problems (kas)

   

   
The guide addresses planner and project managers involved in designing and implementing an adaptation project in fragile or conflict affected contexts. This includes donors, practitioners from central and local governments, non governmental organisations and other implementing agencies. The guide seeks to sensitise planners and project managers how their interventions could be or have been interacting with conflict.

   
Guidelines (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
Migration has become a staple of the news in many countries, filled with images of desperate Africans fleeing an impoverished continent, poised to descend on the West. These reports are not necessarily false, and they can be valuable in highlighting the human stories of migration but they are not a good basis for helpful action.

   
Far from mass exodus picture (afrobarometer)

   

   
Here, for an RPE-independent treatment approach, we introduce a hyperpolarizing microbial opsin into photoreceptor precursors from newborn mice, and transplant them into blind mice lacking the photoreceptor layer. These optogenetically-transformed photoreceptors are light responsive and their transplantation leads to the recovery of visual function, as shown by ganglion cell recordings and behavioral tests.

   
Optogenetically engineered photoreceptors (nature)

   

   
This study used a harmonised meta-analysis to examine the association between accelerometer measured physical activity and sedentary time and all cause mortality. Specifically, we examined the dose-response relations of total physical activity, different intensities of physical activity (light, low light, high light, moderate to vigorous, and vigorous) and sedentary time and all cause mortality.

   
Physical activity vs Sedentary time (bmj)

   

   
The objective of this study was to test the hypotheses that repetitive head hits in the absence of clinically defined concussion, as well as head hits associated with a clinically defined concussion, will both be associated with a decrease in white matter integrity in the midbrain, and in the setting of repetitive head hits in the absence of clinically defined concussion, the amount of disruption to white matter integrity in the midbrain will be related to the number of hits with high rotational acceleration.

   
Repetitive of subconcussive head impacts (sciencemag)

   

   
Land degradation and climate change, both individually and in combination, have profound 35 implications for natural resource-based livelihood systems and societal groups (high 36 confidence). The number of people whose livelihood depends on degraded lands has been estimated 37 to ~1.5 billion worldwide (very low confidence).

   
In the context of climate change (ipcc)

   

   
As the Tor network has grown in popularity and importanceas a tool for privacy-preserving online communication, it hasincreasingly become a target for disruption, censorship, andattack. A large body of existing work examines Tor’s sus-ceptibility to attacks that attempt to block Tor users’ accessto information (e.g., via traffic filtering), identify Tor users’communication content (e.g., via traffic fingerprinting), andde-anonymize Tor users (e.g., via traffic correlation).

   
Bandwidth denial-of-service (usenix)

   

   
Some owners and managers may not fully understand the scale of change required and how to fund and staff for digital transformation. Only 22% of European companies overall say their companies allocate more than 5% of their investments to digitalisation, compared to 35% in more technologically advanced parts of Europe such as Scandinavia.

   
Time to act in EU   &  Time to act in AFRICA  (pwc)

   

   
Governmental and civil society actors must work together with representatives of business to guarantee that devel-oping and emerging countries in particular enjoy basic medical services. Peter Hefele says that the people in these countries are most sensitive to the relationship between climate change and health. Climatic changes have both a direct and indirect impact on human health. Thus, it is important to focus more sharply on a Global Health policy that is resilient in the face of climate change.

   
Expanding global health infrastructure (kas)

   

  AMD vs Intel

   
At the heart of your quest for a new or upgraded PC lies an important decision: AMD or Intel? Like Apple versus Microsoft or Fortnite versus Apex Legends, the AMD versus Intel rivalry is one of the great debates for PC enthusiasts. One of these two purveyors of finely wafered silicon will produce the beating heart of your new PC. AMD and Intel are just as different from one another as the products they produce.

   
Find out the best choice (digitaltrends)

   

   
Today, tourism standards have evolved into real tools that help organizations better posi-tion themselves on the market (ISO 20488, online consumer reviews), increasing their competitiveness (future ISO 22525, medical tourism) and contributing to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the United Nations blueprint for a more sustainable world.

   
Travel in depth (iso)

   

   
On July 25th, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that organisms obtained by modern forms of mutagenesis such as CRISPR are not exempt from the EU GMO legislation. Consequently, genome edited organisms must comply with the strict conditions of the EU GMOlegislation. This is in stark contrast with the opinion of the Advocate-General of the Court who advised rulingotherwise.

   
EU GMO legislation (mpg)

   

   
This publication is intended to help Internet of Things (IoT) device manufacturers understand the cybersecurity risks their customers face so IoT devices can provide cybersecurity features that make them at least minimally securable by the individuals and organizations who acquire and use them. The publication defines a core baseline of cybersecurity features that manufacturers may voluntarily adopt for IoT devices they produce.

   
Core cybersecurity feature baseline (nist)

   

   
In June 2019 the European chemical industry launched an unprecedented action to help its members proactively and systematically review and update data in previously submitted REACH registration dossiers. This initiative comes in response to the recent conclusion by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) that many REACH registration dossiers require additional information.

   
How to review chemical safety data ? (cefic)

   

   
This report examines what some firms are doing right and what others must do better to manage the most complex business challenge to emerge in generations. Few organizations are achieving transformation at the scale and integration needed for new levels of value to emerge. Instead, ‘pain point’ technology solutions and siloed piloting programs proliferate. Businesses meander along the i4.0 road with no clear view of the future.

   
Racing ahead with i4.0 initiatives (kpmg)

   

   
Consumers are embracing the expanding opportunities to enjoy media experiences uniquely tailored to their own personal preferences, contexts and schedules. Increasingly mobile and never idle, empowered consumers around the world want to exert greater control over how and when they experience media. They do so by managing their media consumption via smartphones and an expanding range of devices, by curating their personal selection of channels via over-the-top (OTT) services.

   
Five-year projection (pwc)

   

   
Environmental protection in Germany is marked by a strong recourse on the regulatory approach. Envi-ronmental protection through regulation means that the government prescribes rules of behaviour, either orders or prohibitions. Compliance with these rules is monitored. In the case of violations, enforcement measures are taken and the responsible person or company will be penalised.

   
Environmental protection & Sustainability (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
Little is known on how the domain and intensity of physical activity (PA) associates with metabolic syndrome (MetS). The aim of this study was to examine associations between PA domains (leisure-time, domestic, active transport, total walking and total PA), PA intensities (light, moderate and vigorous) and PA levels with MetS in the general adult population.

   
A population-based study (plos)

   

  Hiring vs Ageism

   
A bias for younger employees is seen not only in the tech sector, with seven out of 18 top Silicon Valley companies having a median age of 30 or younger, but also in non-tech sectors. A study conducted by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank showed that callback rates about jobs were lower for older applicants, with women having lower callback rates than men.

   
From older stereotypes to ageisme (hbr)

   

  China’s herd of unicorns

   
Only the U.S. has as many as China. According to the May 2019 Greater China Unicorn Index from Shanghai-based research firm Hurun, there are currently more than 200 such companies in China, 21 of them having entered the ranks in the first quarter of 2019 — almost one per week. Hurun estimates that one-fifth of today’s Chinese unicorns will fail, one-tenth will be acquired, and most of the rest will go public successfully.

   
Demand that fuels new business opportunities (strategy-business)

   

   
Before the MRA was implemented, the EU and the FDA sometimes would inspect the same facilities in the same year, even if the facility had a strong record of compliance. We expect the MRA will reduce this duplication, allowing the FDA and the EU to reallocate their resources towards inspection of drug manufacturing facilities that have potentially higher public health risks.

   
EUR & FDA partnership (fda)

   

   
Chlorpyrifos is one of the most widely used pesticides in Europe. Exposure to this pesticide, even in small doses, can harm children’s brain development and function of theirhormonal system.. As European regulators are deciding whether or not to re-approve the use of this harmful pesticide, this briefing brings together the data available on the contamination of fruit with chlorpyrifos.

   
Europe-wide ban to protect consumers (env-health)

   

   
On 19 March 2017, destructive tsunami-like waves impacted the northeast shore of the Persian Gulf (PG). The maximum surveyed runup of about 3 m was observed at Dayyer in southern Iran, where damaging waves inundated the land for a distance of~1 km and resulted in the deaths of five people. Because the PG has always been considered safe from extreme oceanic waves, the event was totally unexpected.

   
Atmospheric processes (Pure and Applied Geophysics)

   

   
The main aim of this work is to evaluate how mobility measures can impact air quality at city scale, focusing on NO2 and PM2.5 yearly average improvement. In particular, in this paper we followed a similar approach to Bigazzi et al., 2017, starting from a possible list of interventions that cities can implement from the mobility point of view.

   
Air quality in urban background (sciencedirect)

   

   
Layers of impermeable and stifling personal protective equipment (PPE) constitute an enormous physical barrier to patient care, complicating management of Ebola virus disease (EVD). After a decade of honing our ability to quickly determine “sick or not sick” and allocating time and resources accordingly, we learned that when managing a ward of patients with Ebola, clinical appearance did not always predict survival.

   
Imaging an outbreak (nejm)

   

   
NASA has been spending billions of dollars each year to build a big, heavy spacecraft and a bigger, much heavier rocket as the foundation for such a return. Along the way, NASA has enriched a half-dozen large aerospace contractors and kept Congress happy. But the space agency still can’t even launch its own astronauts into low-Earth orbit, let alone deep space or the Moon.

   
Setting the 2024 landing goal (arstechnica)

   

   
"Climate change seems to be redistributing coral reefs, the same way it is shifting many other marine species," said Nichole Price, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and lead author of the paper. "The clarity in this trend is stunning, but we don't yet know whether the new reefs can support the incredible diversity of tropical systems".

   
New blends of species (innovations-report)

   

   
By delving deep into the real-world experiences of organisations like yours, we uncovered some surprising findings, many of which turn the basic notion of crisis management – in fact, how we even think of crisis – on its head. Instead of “admiring the problem,” we’ve used this data as a springboard to reverse-engineer a successful crisis response.

   
Learning from 4,500 crises (pwc)

   

   
European answers and visions regarding the digital future are all the more important today as, beyond the economic dimension, digitisation has already become an object of competition between the different systems. While the USA and China are increasingly setting the tone with their own regulatory concepts, it is important to further develop and strengthen the European approach to shaping the process of digitisation.

   
Europe’s next steps (kas)

   

   
The barrier between life and death is porous even at the level of cells, the fundamental units of life. Researchers are learning that cells once thought terminal or dead can resurrect themselves, or be partially resurrected, under the right conditions. By studying the processes that allow cells in limbo to inch back toward life, scientists ultimately hope to restore diseased cells to health, limit overactive cell division, resuscitate expired organs and even pave the way for long-extinct creatures to roam again.

   
From brink of extinction to a shrewd awakening (quantamagazine)

   

   
Information about the opportunities to be found in various areas in municipalities and outlines specific examples from practice in five case studies where material flows and cycles have been optimised. Different areas of action have been investigated, with examples also taken from outside Germany – from Switzerland and Sweden.

   
Optimising regional and local material cycles and flows (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
Just how dangerous antimicrobially resistant pathogens are can be seen from a glance at the statistics: according to the Robert Koch Institute, every year roughly 54,500 people in Germany become infected with pathogens that are resistant to several antibiotics, i.e. multi-resistant. Almost two thirds of them take ill in hospital. Approximately 2,400 people die every year after becoming infected with multiresistant bacteria.

   
Knowing and fighting the enemy (bfr)
    

   
The dynamic model of educational effectiveness argues that effectiveness studies conducted in several countries have shown that the influences on student achievement are multilevel in nature; educational outcomes are influenced by variables at the student level, the classroom level, the school level and national/regional level. In the dynamic model, OTL is seen as part of “management of time” at the teacher/classroom level and is considered a significant factor of effectiveness.

   
A Multilevel Comparison of Six Countries (frontiersin)

   

  GDPR vs SOX

   
The US set the tone with SOX on a global scale. Now the balance of power has shifted, and these same powers will apply to GDPR, giving France and Germany, the leaders of a post-Brexit EU, regulatory authority that will span most of the western world. With an $18.8 trillion GDP, the EU is the largest economic zone on the planet, leaving businesses with few options.

   
Regulators without borders (thenextweb)

   

  Comparison of men’s & women’s soccer

   
In the present paper, we argue that most differences between men’s and women’s soccer can be explained by women having to adapt to rules and regulations that are suited for men and their physical attributes. Thus, games are much more demanding for women. Furthermore, we argue that if men had to play with a degree of adaptation similar to that which women do today, they would have to alter their style of play radically.

   
Relevant anthropometric & physiological differences (frontiersin)

   

   
The representation of the periodic table of chemical bonds also has nothing to do with the familiar matrix-like arrangement of the classical periodic tables of the elements. Instead, the 94 covalent bonds are represented in a network of differently coloured circles. Each circle represents a chemical bond, and the colour symbolizes belonging to one of the 44 groups.

   
Network instead of a matrix (mpg)

   

   
Autonomous in-space manufacturing could make it faster and less expensive to build space infrastructure and reduce the amount of mass needed deploy critical capabilities to space. But how do we reach this goal? As CEO of Made in Space, Inc., a company working in this area, I can see a path forward, though it’s not without hurdles.

   
Autonomous 3D printing & robotics (ieee)

   

   
Countries that have diversified their production into more complex sectors, like Vietnam and China, are those who will experience the fastest growth in the coming decade. That is the conclusion of the researchers at the Growth Lab at Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID) who presented new growth projections using the latest 2017 trade data.

   
2019 - 2027 forecast (cid.harvard)

   

   
A growing body of data and experience shows that shifting from cash to electronic payments provides more security for recipients, especially women, greater efficiency and accuracy in reaching the financially excluded, and a broader range of financial services. It can also save very significant time and human resources that can be then used for more productive purposes, supporting overall economic productivity.

   
The Digitalization of Payments (cgdev)

   

   
The impact of myriad, radical changes to our daily lives has hit younger generations hard—economically, socially, and perhaps psychologically. Through this survey, this “generation disrupted” is telling us that continuous change and upheaval have created a population that is different at its core. But, they’re also providing valuable clues about how society’s institutions can respond to those differences.

   
Doubt in traditional pillars of trust (deloitte)

   

   
Dealing with tons of data requires some special arrangement. Common computational techniques are insufficient to handle a floodgate of data;, more so, when they are coming from multiple sources. In Big Data, the magnitude we are talking about is massive—measured in zettabytes, exabytes, or millions of petabytes or billions of terabytes.

   
The origin and evolution (developer)

   

   
Long steady states of market growth and performance are interrupted by significant, disruptive ones that fundamentally reset “business as usual.” Think steam engine. Or mass production techniques. And more recently, AI and machine learning. Today, we’re in one of those periods of frame-breaking change. Leaders across all industries and geographies are being challenged to solve complex business problems in new ways.

   
It’s business as unusual (accenture)

   

   
In an era defined by uncertainty, the companies that get closest to their customers will emerge ahead of the pack. This begins with an “outside-in” view, building new ways of understanding how and why people make decisions. The underlying drivers of human decision making have become exponentially more complex in recent years.

   
The Genesis of these findings (kpmg)

   

   
An increasing number of clients are willing to pay for financial advice, but what they value is evolving rapidly. To help providers understand how best to deliver value, we surveyed 2,000 wealth management clients across 26 countries to understand what matters most to them. We believe the following five areas are the most important for firms to address.

   
Redefining the value of wealth management (ey)

   

   
The move to personalised, active E&M experiences has profound implications for how companies go about framing and developing offerings. At the same time, it will impose new responsibilities and, occasionally, limitations, on how they market and present their products and services. These new dynamics apply across different platforms, content types, and digital and physical experiences.

   
2019 - 2023 Vision (pwc)

   

   
Once in the ocean, plastics are rapidly colonized by complex microbial communities. Factors affecting the development and composition of these communities are still poorly understood. Additionally, whether there are plastic-type specific communities developing on different plastics remains enigmatic.

   
The plastic-specific microbial community (plos)

   

   
How narrow-limit gauging (NLG, aka compressed limit plans) can reduce enormously the required sample size, and therefore the inspection cost, of a traditional attribute sampling plan. The procedure consists of moving acceptance limits t standard deviations inside the engineering specifications, which increases the acceptable quality level (AQL) and therefore reduces the sample size necessary to detect an increase in the nonconforming fraction.

   
Supporting innovative application (qualitydigest)

   

   
A breakthrough by the University of California San Francisco using NVIDIA’s AI architecture to create an electrocardiographic link to your brain has resulted in voice-free vocal communication. This could enable the future of head-mounted wearable computers, provide for cell phone use in crowded spaces and make voice communication possible both in high-noise areas and for those that can’t speak and/or type.

   
Eliminating voice sound at scale (computerworld)

   

   
The increase in female performance in response to higher temperature is significantly larger and more precisely estimated than the corresponding decrease in male performance. In contrast to math and verbal tasks, temperature has no impact on a measure of cognitive reflection for either gender. Gender mixed workplaces may be able to increase productivity by setting the thermostat higher than current standards.

   
Battle for the thermostat: on cognitive performance (plos)

   

   
Monitoring the expected decline in the atmospheric concentrations of banned compounds might seem like an unexciting research task. But on page 413, Montzka et al.1 report an unexpected finding in the long-term measurements of CFC-11, one of the most potent ozone-deplet-ing compounds: its atmospheric con-centration is decreasing much more slowly than would be expected on the basis of its known sources and sinks.

   
Infringement to Montreal protocol (nature)

   

   
As innovation is one of the goals of every ICT framework, Kenya’s good performance on the Global Innovation Index [94] indicates that the framework is not only factually up to modern standards as certified by the ITU Regulatory Tracker, but also effective in delivering its goals.

   
Which framework does it need ? (kas)

   

   
The very strong calls for more action by the EU in 15 key policy areas bear witness to this. And, in comparison with last year’s results, it is interesting to note that the proportion of those believing that EU action is adequate has risen markedly in most of the fields surveyed, possibly demonstrating that respondents are becoming increasingly aware that the EU is acting on their behalf.

   
2019 European Elections at sight (europarl.europa)

   

   
Alongside conventional drivers of growth, such as high net FDI inflows and strong commodity prices, political stability and perceived levels of corruption have also been influential. To demonstrate this, we modelled the performance of each country across six of the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (2013-17).

   
Economic projection (pwc)

   

   
This study provides insights into the economic benefits of the European Single Market (SM) for countries and regions across Europe. Specifically, we evaluate the impact of the trade boosting effects of the SM on productivity, markups, product variety, welfare and the distribution of population across European countries and regions.

   
Estimating economic benefits (bertelsmann-stiftung)

   

   
The informal group of the world’s twenty leading industrialised and developing economies celebrated its tenth anniversary at the end of 2018. It undoubtedly plays a key role in steer-ing the world economy, particularly in light of the fact that there is little likelihood of a “world government” in the foreseeable future and that the United Nations, which is underfunded and in dire need of reform, is not in a position to fully assume this task.

   
Selfich growth vs free trad & innovation (kas)

   

   
water-stressed country,South Africa is considered highly vulnerableto the extreme weather patterns of intensified drought, flooding, and storms that characterize climate change(Institute for Security Studies, 2018).Since 2013,nearly every province in the country has experienced some form of drought and water shortagesresulting in water restrictions in urban areas and in the agriculture sector (Climate Analysis Group, 2018).

   
Raising awareness across the region (afrobarometer)

   

   
Urban populations are often rapidly changing and are composed of diverse social groups that live closely together in densely populated areas. Security sector governance and reform (SSG/R) provides a useful framework for effectively governing these complex social relationships through people-centred approaches to urban safety and security.

   
For inclusive, safe & resilient cities (dcaf)

   

   
The idea of electrical cars has been mooted for years, but it is only now, with the proven effects of climate change, that enough is being done to make them a viable commercial prospect. Indeed, change is already upon us. Monthly figures published by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders suggest that electric car sales in the United Kingdom have risen significantly over the past few years.

   
Green tech (iso)

   

   
Biodiversity – the essential variety of life forms on Earth – continues to decline in every region of the world, significantly reducing nature’s capacity to contribute to people’s well-being. This alarming trend endangers economies, livelihoods, food security and the quality of life of people everywhere.

   
Biodiversity dangerous decline (ipbes)

   

   
The technology transfer network should continuously evaluate the project management toolkit, helping optimize and enable successful technology transfers. This evaluation can be facilitated through a monthly forum and face-to-face workshops with the global technology transfer team. The team can pilot new initiatives and tools at their site before finalizing and standardizing across the network.

   
On technology transfer (pharmtech)

   

   
The UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) is the flagship report of the United Nations on worldwide efforts to reduce disaster risk. The GAR is published biennially by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), and is the product of the contributions of nations, public and private disaster risk-related science and research, amongst others.

   
Global assessment report (Disaster Risk Reduction 2019)

   

   
The first anti-CRISPRs were discovered in 2013 by a student at the University of Toronto named Joseph Bondy-Denomy. “It was serendipity. We stumbled onto the fact that some phages seemed to be resistant to CRISPR. When we put the phage into a cell, the bacteria couldn’t protect itself.” The number of labs studying such defenses is smaller than the number working with CRISPR.

   
The antidote for CRISPR (technologyreview)

   

   
Based on observations from security assessments performed for large organizations over the years, Onapsis estimates that the issues affect nine out of every ten SAP systems deployed by more than 50,000 SAP users worldwide -- around 900 million systems in total. Over 400,000 organizations from around the world use SAP software products, including some of the largest multinational corporations.

   
Configuration vulnerability (csoonline)

   

   
As the global population grows from 7 billion in 2010 to a projected 9.8 billion in 2050, and incomes grow across the developing world, overall food demand is on course to increase by more than 50 percent, and demand for animal-based foods by nearly 70 percent. This synthesis report proposes a menu of options that could allow the world to achieve a sustainable food future.

   
Balancing many competing needs (wri)

   

  Newly defined Alzheimer's-like

   
A recently recognized brain disorder that mimics clinical features of Alzheimer's disease has for the first time been defined with recommended diagnostic criteria and other guidelines for advancing and catalyzing future research. Scientists from several National Institutes of Health-funded institutions, described the newly-named pathway to dementia, Limbic-predominant Age-related TDP-43 Encephalopathy, or LATE.

   
Guidelines proposed (nih)

   

   
Renewable energy sources such as geothermal have been getting more attention since the 2011 Fukushima disaster exposed the risk — or folly — of nuclear power. The Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. estimates the country’s geothermal potential at 23,400 megawatts, putting it at No. 3 in the world behind the United States and Indonesia.

   
Geothermal development (japantimes)

   

   
With the rise of a group of powerful internet companies – especially the BATs – the Chinese internet has become the centre of global attention. Referring to Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, the BATs are the three most powerful companies providing web applications in China. they each occupy a dominant position and enjoy a near monopoly in their respective areas.

   
China's Tech-Giants (kas)

   

   
With a record $8.1B in funding and the absence of an equally robust exit market, there is more scrutiny on digital health than ever before. Will value creation track with recent investment trends? To provide some structure around this question, we validated a simple framework with fellow investors to assess the current “bubbliness” of digital health. Our verdict: digital health is not in a bubble.

   
The market opportunities (rockhealth)

   

   
Arctic feedbacks accelerate climate change through carbon releases from thawing permafrost and higher solar absorption from reductions in the surface albedo, following loss of sea ice and land snow. Here, we include dynamic emulators of complex physical models in the integrated assessment model PAGE-ICE to explore nonlinear transitions in the Arctic feedbacks.

   
The real economic consequences of a melting Arctic (nature)

   

   
Under a new “knowledge management” approach for the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), manufacturers will submit applications that present data on drug safety and efficacy in a structured format. The data then can be transmitted to teams of FDA experts from multiple disciplines for timely and efficient assessment.

   
Modernizing the CDER (pharmtech)

Related:FDA' regulatory framework for AI in medical care

   

   
The cost of a middle class lifestyle has increased faster than inflation. Housing, for example, makes up the largest single spending item for middle-income households, at around one third of disposable income, up from a quarter in the 1990s. House prices have been growing three times faster than household median income over the last two decades.

   
The trends of middle-income households (oecd)

   

   
Slowing economic activity is viewed as the greatest external risk to the growth plans of many companies. Respondents believe the most likely cause of a slowdown in growth is from tariff and trade disputes undermining carefully calibrated supply chains that have been built up over many years.These trade disputes are often grounded in wider geopolitical tensions that have built up over the past decade.

   
Confidence barometer (ey)

   

   
The objective of this paper is to review existing economic models regarding their potential application for a quantitative assessment of the economic effects of linking Emission Trading Systems (ETS). As a matter of fact, most of the economic assessment criteria to evaluate the effects of a bilateral linking of ETS cannot be measured empirically, but need to be modelled by aid of economic modelling.

   
German's economic models assessment (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
Technology companies have featured strongly in initial public offering (IPO) activity in recent years. This is set to last, as the sector continues to generate significant demand for equity in public markets, and the competition between exchanges to attract ‘unicorns’ and ‘new economy’ companies intensifies, particularly between the US and China (mainland China and Hong Kong).

   
Are public markets under threat? (pwc)

   

   
Artificial intelligence will be the main driver of mobile technology and that 6G will be the enabling force behind an entirely new generation of applications for machine intelligence. By any criteria, 5G is a significant advance on the previous 4G standards. The first 5G networks already offer download speeds of up to 600 megabits per second and have the potential to get significantly faster. By contrast, 4G generally operates at up to 28.

Are we in the next generation of tech.? (technologyreview)  

   

   
The International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) commissioned Oxford Economics to provide a detailed assessment of the chemical industry’s activities across the globe, and to quantify their total economic impact. The findings outlined in this report paint an important picture of the industry’s contribution to the global economy, and in so many aspects of people’s daily lives.

   
The economic impact (icca)

   

   
Children with DLD and those with ASD raise particular levels of concern, albeit for different reasons. For children with DLD there have been concerns about identification and provision of additional speech and language therapy, while for those with ASD concerns have been raised about managing behavior.

   
Needs, or diagnostic category in neurodevelopmental disorders (frontiersin)

   

   
Lower costs and higher efficiencies aren’t the only advantages. Because they’re flexible and lightweight, perovskites and other emerging technologies could extend solar into new applications. Perovskites, for example, could be quickly sprayed and rolled onto flexible substrates, much as newspapers are spooled through high-volume printing presses.

   

How to win the support they deserve? (iee)

   

   
Much more can be done to transform the prospects of those most at risk of being left behind by better targeting investment in human capital that both builds peoples’ wellbeing and boosts their economic potential. The fact that some donors and countries are already much better at targeting than others points to what is possible to achieve at the global and national level.

   
For Sustainable development (odi)

   

  EU' Ethical AI is here

   
These rules aren’t like Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics.” They don’t offer a snappy, moral framework that will help us control murderous robots. Instead, they address the murky and diffuse problems that will affect society as we integrate AI into sectors like health care, education, and consumer technology. The EU convened a group of 52 experts who came up with seven requirements they think future AI systems should meet.

   
New guidelines for trustworthy AI (theverge)

   

   
China is investing heavily in emerging technology sectors—such as artificial intelligence and next-generation mobile communication—to successfully chip away at U.S. technology leadership and global market share. However, in the United States, many U.S. workers are unable to find good jobs in the information economy.

   
Crafting a new approach (americanprogress)

   

   
Programmers are human, but mathematics is immortal. By making programming more mathematical, a community of computer scientists is hoping to eliminate the coding bugs that can open doors to hackers, spill digital secrets and generally plague modern society. Now a set of computer scientists has taken a major step toward this goal with the release today of EverCrypt, a set of digital cryptography tools.

   
Against known hacking attacks (quantamagazine)

   

   
The cloud usually means the Internet or the network and computing refers to the virtual resource provided as a service by the remote provider. The services through resources can be software, infrastructure, platform, devices, and other resources. This article delves into the subject, giving a quick idea of the basics of cloud computing.

   
The infinite scalability (developer)

   

   
A community with over 700,000 subscribers, many of whom regard it as an online oasis. Any topic is open for debate: All drugs should be legal, voter ID laws are a good idea, flour tortillas are superior to bread. CMV has captured the attention of journalists, who have called it “our best hope for civil discourse,” and researchers, who have used it to study the effective online rhetoric.

   
‘Change my view’ (wired)

   

   
Engineers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum have developed a novel concept for rapid data transfer via optical fibre cables. In current systems, a laser transmits light signals through the cables and information is coded in the modulation of light intensity. The new system, a semiconductor spin laser, is based on a modulation of light polarisation instead.

   
Capacity of spin lasers (innovations-report)

   

   
In order to evaluate a measurement system, we will need some sort of study where multiple determinations are made of the same thing or the same group of things. Perhaps the simplest form for studies of this sort is to measure the same thing repeatedly. When these values are placed on an XmR chart we end up with a test for the consistency of the measurement system.

   
Practical answers (qualitydigest)

   

   
DNA profiling can be so powerful and has been used successfully in so many cases that some people think it is nearly infallible. But the reliability of DNA profiling varies, and other things being equal, it is most reliable when the evidence contains plenty of DNA from just one or two people. That’s why homicides and sexual assaults—crimes that tend to produce a lot of this type of DNA evidence—made up the bulk of DNA casework for many years.

   
A Forensic science (nist)

   

   
While the decision to liberalize bilateral or multilateral trading relationships is usually made at thenational level, the degree to which trade restrictions bind economic outcomes is likely to vary geo-graphically. Cities in which economic activity is concentrated in industries facing high tariffs or otherbarriers to exports or protections from potential import competition are likely to be disproportion-ately affected by trade integration.

   
Working papers (havard)

   

   
In 2018, at least the cinema allowed us to experience what Sub-­Saharan Africa could possibly look like: paradisiacal conditions and a highly developed civilisation that uses its immense resource wealth to provide its own population with a life in freedom and prosperity and to defend this achievement from the outside world.

   
International report (kas)

   

   
In addition to the traditional return on investment (ROI) metrics used to determine a company’s success, it’s time to introduce another metric, one with a focus on customer experience. Because consumers today are so discerning and powerful, it’s our perspective that most organisations need to invest far more in customer experience (CX).

    
Introducing ‘return onexperience’ (pwc)

   

   
Half a billion more people could be at risk from diseases transmitted by mosquitoes within 30 years as a result of the warming climate, a study warns. People in Canada and part of northern Europe could come into contact with yellow fever, Zika, dengue and chikungunya, as well as other emerging diseases. Over 6 billion people live in climates where the two mosquitoes studied can live for a month or more each year.

   
Action to combat global warming (plos)
    

   
The UN Security Council is set to hold further discussions on the security implications of climate change; the new Climate Security Mechanism within the UN system will come into effect; and many countries will continue to see discussions on the impacts of climate-related disaster risks, with consequences for conflict dynamics and security.

   
Climate change (odi)

   

   
Thomas Edison is often described as America’s greatest inventor. His successes include electric power generation, sound recording, and the electric lightbulb. But Edison was no stranger to failure. He famously tested 1,000 different designs before settling on the carbon filament that became the first commercially successful lightbulb.

   
Behind the secrets of success (technologyreview)

   

   
The Paris climate agreement was established in 2015 as a strategy to address climate change, with nations committing to cut their carbon emissions and hold back soaring global temperatures. But while awareness of climate change’s catastrophic impacts grows, there is no equivalent agreement by nations to deal with the other environmental challenges facing the planet.

   
Turning the tide to environmental damage (unenvironment)

   

   
The “sandwich generation” are adults who both have children who live at home and seniors, usually parents or in-laws, in whose care those adults are involved, so they’re sandwiched between their own children and their parents or their in-laws or other senior relatives that they have to help care for. The growth of that sandwich generation reflects lots of different thing.

   
Managing the future of work (hbs)

   

   
More than 3,500 bankers in the UK are paid more than €1m (£860,000) a year, according to new pay and bonus details published by the European Banking Authority (EBA). The UK was home to 73% of all millionaire bankers across Europe, according to the pay data, which the European parliament forced banks to make public following the financial crisis.

   
Data analysis-2016/2017 (eba)

   

   
To show how fast Internet affects employment in Africa, we exploit the gradual arrival of submarine Inter-net cables on the coast and maps of the terrestrial cable network. Robust difference-in-differences estimatesfrom three datasets covering 12 countries show large positive effects on employment rates—also for less ed-ucated worker groups—with little or no job displacement across space.

   
The higher net job-creation (ibread)

   

   
Maths anxiety has been seen in young school children from around the age of 6. However, negative attitudes towards mathematicsand maths anxiety appear to increase when children reach secondary school age, persisting into post-secondary education and throughout adulthood. Many potential causes have been identified for maths anxiety. These include some environmental factors.

   
The study (U.Cambridge)

   

   
The Japanese labour market is pulling off a neat trick. Although both the whole population and the working-age population are declining every year, the number of Japanese in the workforce is growing, and expanding at a rate that outperforms many other younger and more vibrant advanced economies. We explain how this is happening and assess whether it is sustainable in our feature article.

   
Economic projections (pwc)

   

   
Ambient air pollution is a major health risk, leading to respiratory and cardiovascular mortality. A recent Global Exposure Mortality Model, based on an unmatched number of cohort studies in many countries, provides new hazard ratio functions, calling for re-evaluation of the disease burden. Accordingly, we estimated excess cardiovascular mortality attributed to air pollution in Europe.

   
Novel hazard ratio functions (European heart journal)

   

   
The power of a workplace culture of equality to drive employees’ innovation mindset—or their willingness and ability to innovate—is strong. It has more impact than age or gender and leads to an increase in innovation mindset in all industries and all countries. In fact, employees’ innovation mindset is six times higher in the most-equal cultures than in the least-equal ones.

   
Workplace environment (accenture)

   

   
Our Sun sometimes produces highly energetic particles, which are accelerated either by magnetic reconnection in solar flares. Such events represent a threat to modern society in terms of communication and navigation systems, space technologies, and commercial aircraft operations.Traces of an enormous solar storm that battered the atmosphere and showered Earth in radioactive particles more than 2,500 years ago have been discovered under the Greenland ice sheet.

   
Multiradionuclide evidence of Solar storm (pnas)

   

   
The Netherlands and Singapore again claim first and second place, respectively; the former benefiting from its European leadership in transport public policy, the latter from its brilliance in attracting investment from global technology leaders.But many of the overall scores are very close and there are numerous opportunities, identified in this report, for countries to make significant progress.

   
Assessing countries’ preparedness (kpmg)

   

   
Democracy is good for your heart, health and longevity, a study of 170 countries has concluded, in a boost to a form of government that has recently faced significant setbacks globally. Life expectancy has improved more quickly in countries that have switched to democracy in the past 50 years, the researchers discovered, and there have been fewer deaths from cardiovascular disease, cancer, cirrhosis and even road traffic accidents.

   
Impact of democracy on adult health (Lancet)

   

   
The open web has accomplished so much in just thirty years. But today, it faces real challenges. Half the world cannot get online. The other half face threats to their privacy, security and fundamental rights. Web Foundation has always been concerned about: the Internet' balkanisation, that’s a pretty darn effective way of doing. There will be a massive loss of richness to the web.

   
Three sources of disfunction on the web (medianama)

   

   
Cells from a woolly mammoth that died more than 28,000 years ago have been partially reactivated inside of mouse egg cells, according to one study. The achievement shows that biological activity can be induced in the cells of long-dead creatures, but that does not mean that scientists will be resurrecting extinct animals like mammoths any time soon.

   
Extracted genomic DNA from mammoth remains (nature)

   

   
Growth is recovering in Europe and there is an optimistic, vibrant air in the region that is fostering a renewed sense of ambition. This report investigates how companies in Europe are developing digital, data-driven technologies to augment human physical and mental abilities. Specifically, the report examines the triggers of innovation and its implementation in relation to three critical enabling factors.

   
Survey on European companies (deloitte)

   

   
The intent to divest remains at record levels — 84% of companies plan to divest within the next two years, consistent with last year’s record of 87%. Despite uncertainty from tariffs, a trade war, desynchronized growth and geopolitical concerns, the market offers sellers a resilient yet competitive environment.

   
Shareholder activism (ey)

   

   
With 5G, digital entertainment is set become both richer and more social. High-speed wireless connectivity will deliver 4K and 8K video, holograms, augmented reality and virtual reality applications for gaming and immersive TV, while bringing people together to enjoy live events, such as sports and concerts. 5G could enable spectators to enjoy a 360-degree view from anywhere in the venue.

   
The rollout of intelligent connectivity (gsma)

   

   
The recently launched EU Research & Innovation Framework programme, Horizon Europe has the ambition to make Europe an unparalleled global innovation hub. As the chemical industry is a significant contributor to solving global challenges through innovative solutions and products, we support the new framework. REACH, the EU’s pioneering chemicals legislation, is designed to ensure the safety of chemicals throughout Europe.

   
Facts & figures (cefic)

   

   
AI is now being used in every aspect of managing supply chain and manufacturing operations, says Chris Noyes, a senior manager with Deloitte Consulting LLP. Product development is using natural language processing on social media data to understand customer feedback. Logistics managers are using advanced optimization algorithms to find better network configurations.

   
Robotic process automation (RPA) (areadevelopment)

   

   
The publicity surrounding the EU accession prospects stemming from the Prespa agreement and the support that it has received from both the EU and EU member state officials has had only a marginal impact on the popular perceptions on the progress made in the EU integration process in 2018. Domestic factors and veto-power of neighbouring EU member states are seen as the two biggest obstacles to Macedonia’s prospects of EU membership.

   
Members' opinion (kas)

   

   
The systems modernization you need today is more than an upgrade; you’re playing a new game with new rules, in which you modernize not just the tools and functions, but the way you do IT. The vendors are largely the same, but the options and principles of the past no longer apply. Hardware no longer stands alone.

   
10 Principles (strategy-business)

   

   
The “discovery of the 21st century” was awarded the Nobel prize two years after it was made. In 2015, the Laser Interferometre Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project finally detected what it was built to: gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space and time—caused by the collision of two black holes. one of the most universal shifts in the innovation sector in recent years has been the growth of large teams.

   
When it comes to teaming ? (hbr)

   

   
Researcher have demonstrated the possibility of repeatable noncontact labeling and reading with resolution beyond common printer quality. Because of the small amount of highly available material required, the expense for a film of 1m2 is below $1.50. The presented label concept can be fabricated using highly scalable processes that are available today.

   
Programmable & transparent (advances.sciencemag)

   

   
Approximately one-third of all food produced in the world intended for human consumption is lost or wasted (FAO 2011). This level of inefficiency in the global food system has significant economic, social, and environmental impacts. It amounts to economic losses of $940 billion per year (FAO 2015). It means that more than a billion tons of food never get consumed each year, while one in nine people remain undernourished (WFP 2018).

   
Quantifying benefit-cost ratios (wrap)

   

   
This report provides academic researchers, policymakers, and business leaders with insights into Latino-owned businesses as a group and as a number of subgroups and profiles. It includes differences in growth and funding experiences by gender, nativity, region, industry, size, and other personal and business characteristics. The 2018 SLEI Survey of U.S.

   
Trends (gsb.stanford)

   

   
In 2018 wind energy generated enough electricity to meet 14% of the EU’s electricity demand. This is a 2% share higher than in 2017 levels, in part due to the lower elec-tricity demand registered7. Denmark had the highest share of wind (41%) in Europe, followed by Ireland (28%) and Portugal (24%). Germany, Spain and the UK follow with 21%, 19% and 18% respec-tively. 9 Member States had a wind share of 10% or more.

   
WindEurope report 2019

   

   
Climate Assessment warned in November that without significant reductions in emissions, average global temperatures could rise by 5ºC by the end of the century.20GRPS respondents seem increasingly worried about environmental policy failure: having fallen in the rankings after Paris, “failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation” jumped back to number two in terms of impact this year.

   
Three of the top five risks (weforum)

   

   
Temporal context refers to the features of an experience that occur around the time it is first experienced, and is shaped by both external inputs and a continuously changing internal state1,2,5. Recent evidence has demonstrated the presence of signals in the brain that may serve as an internal representation of temporal context.

   
Memory of past and future (quantamagazine)

   

   
Companies have used the power of digital transformation to shape themselves, to shape customers and employees, and then to shape people’s expectations. What’s left is using their ongoing digital efforts to shape the market. Companies face a world of renewed expectations and core digital technologies are more critical than ever.

   
What’s next? (accenture)

   

   
Tourism is an important sector in the global economy. Today, 10.4% of the world’s GDP and 7% of the world’s total exports come from tourism. The industry is worth over US$ 1.1 trillion. The money earned from expenditures by foreigners are crucial drivers of economic development and can be an important source of foreign exchange.

   
View of global tourism (hks.harvard)

   

   
Until recently, Barzilay, one of the world’s leading researchers in artificial intelligence, hadn’t given much thought to these nearby buildings full of chemists and biologists. But as AI and machine learning began to perform ever more impressive feats in image recognition and language comprehension, she began to wonder: could it also transform the task of finding new drugs?

   
The unlimited possibilities (technologyreview)

   

   
According to SR1.5, limiting warming to 1.5°C requires drastic emission reductions globally by 2030 (40–60%, compared to 2010). This necessary increase in the level of ambition in the near-term would have major implications for European climate policy. Apart from committing to achieving green-house gas-neutrality by 2050, the EU would have to rapidly accelerate emission reductions by 2030.

   
Realignment to Paris agreement (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
The Next Big Thing is dead. Long live the Next Big Thing. Few phrases better capture the anticipation, intrigue, and magic of tech innovation. The phrase has been an apt descriptor for such standouts as the market-ready product that quickly revolutionizes the tech landscape. Increasingly, though, that phenomena is less relevant in a world defined not by ‘one big thing,’ but rather, the iterative fusion of technology building blocks coupled with a generous helping of people and process.

   
Trends to watch (comptia)

   

   
European countries have introduced various tobacco control policies (e.g. increased taxation of tobacco products, no-smoking areas, advertising bans, graphic pack warnings, and smoking cessation programs) over recent decades. Despite a general decrease in tobacco consumption and the prevalence of smoking, still more than one in four of the European population over the age of 14 years is an active smoker.

   
Related to Time & age (plos)

   

   
A new class of bacterial tolerance against antibiotics that could have wide implications for the future of antibiotics in medicine. In the battle with antimicrobial peptides, it was found that some E. coli cells essentially act as cannon fodder — sacrificing themselves to antibiotic assault while other cells continued to grow and replicate.

   
On how to enhance population survivability (elifesciences)

   

   
The mission of Vicarious Surgical’s founders and its investors is to drive down both the cost of higher impact surgeries and access to the best surgeons through remote technologies. The market for medical robots is highly lucrative. Earlier today, Johnson & Johnson announced the $3.4 billion acquisition of Auris Health — a maker of robotic diagnostics and surgical tools.

   
From big to tiny devices (techcrunch)

   

   
what are CEOs saying about the year ahead? PwC’s 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey of 1,378 chief executives in more than 90 territories explores that question and many others regarding the global business climate in 2019. Conducted in September and October of 2018, this year’s survey drills down on CEO insights in top-of-mind areas such as: Growth, Data and Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence.

   
CEOs’ expectation (pwc)

   

   
With steadily growing demands on housing, mobility, and consumption, the densely populated urban settlements offer considerable potential for reducing environmental impacts. In order to allow healthy urban surroundings and a high quality of life in vibrant green quarters for the residents, urban development must be closely linked with environmental quality targets.

   
Numerous pressing research questions (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
It is time to change our perception of vaccines: vaccines are not merely a protective tool against a specific disease, they affect the immune system broadly. In the case of live vaccines, the immune system is strengthened. In contrast, non-live vaccines seem to have a negative effect on the immune system in females.

   
Live-vaccine vs non-live vaccine (theconversation)

   

   
The international community has made important progress toward addressing the tax challenges arising from digitalisation of the economy and has agreed to continue working multilaterally towards achievement of a new consensus-based long-term solution in 2020, the OECD announced.

   
Important progress at sight (oecd-ilibrary)

   

   
The adage, “What goes up, must come down,” isn’t likely to apply to the global health care sector in 2019. Aging and growing populations, greater prevalence of chronic diseases, exponential advances in innovative, but costly, digital technologies—these and other developments continue to increase health care demand and expenditures.

   
Age of smart health (deloitte)

   

   
In recent years, researchers have found that the accuracy of the software gets better and better as they build deeper networks and amass larger data sets to train them. That has created an almost insatiable appetite for computing power, boosting the fortunes of GPU makers like Nvidia and AMD. Google developed its own custom neural networking chip several years ago, and other companies have scrambled to follow Google's lead.

   
The process (arstechnica)

   

   
The progress made in the last year with the APA program, documented in the 2017 APA Annual Report, is in line with the SAT’s commitment to preventing double taxation and providing certainty to taxpayers. While the number of APAs signed in 2017 was somewhat lower than in 2016, there was a significant increase in SAT resources for APA and MAP work in 2017 and 2018.

   
APA report (kpmg)

   

   
The sectors with the most significant exposure to transition risk (i.e., sectors with direct exposure to fossil fuel supply chains or with readily accessible low carbon substitutes), namely mining, manufacturing, transport and energy, generally scored higher. These sectors have faced the bulk of stakeholder activism around improved climate disclosures.

   
Business disclosures (ey)

   

   
The actual air temperature, which is unchanged by the wind, is not the only way to determine if your body is at risk in the cold. A wind chill index accounts for a combination of air temperature and how fast the wind is blowing. Higher winds strip heat away from the body more quickly. In the United States, wind chill is calculated with a formula using degrees Fahrenheit and wind speeds in miles per hour, but wind chill values can also be calculated using degrees Celsius and meters per second.

   
How does it work? (smithsonianmag)

   

   
Researchers have discovered how specific cells in the guts of mice slow down metabolism and eventually contribute to obesity, diabetes, hypertension and atherosclerosis.The findings, scientists say, could have important implications for the prevention and treatment of these kinds of metabolic diseases in humans. The study was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health and appears in the journal Nature.

   
Treating metabolic diseases in humans (nih)

   

   
Scientists have developed a new test that scans the shapes of tumour cells to pick out women with especially aggressive ovarian cancer, so treatment can be tailored to their needs. The researchers found that having misshapen nuclei was an indication that the DNA of cancer cells had become unstable – and believe it could in future help doctors to select the best treatment for each patient.

   
‘Very high risk’ ovarian cancer (icr.ac)

   

   
Industry 4.0 is opening the door to innovative and economic strength. It allows products to be tailored precisely to customers’ needs at low cost, high quality, and with a high level of efficiency. One example of this is DESMA Schuhmaschinen GmbH, a medium-sized company headquartered in Germany, which is using Industry 4.0 methodology to produce individualized footwear in lot size 1 at mass production cost based on digital models.

   
From robotics to machine learning (iso)

   

   
Human lifespan has a low heritability (12–25%), whereas survival into extreme ages (longevity) clusters within families. Studies showed that parents, siblings and children of longevous persons lived longer than first-degree relatives of non-longevous persons or population controls. In addition, members of these longevous families seem to delay or even escape age-related diseases and in fact, healthy ageing in such families is marked by well attuned immune systems and good metabolic health.

   
Datasets analysis (nature)

   

  How to improve hypothesis quality?

   
Active forms of learning are seen as key to acquiring deep conceptual knowledge, especially in science domains. One of the active forms of learning is inquiry learning. Inquiry learning has been defined in many different ways with as its kernel that the method starts from questions for which students need to find answers. In this study, we focus on the practice of the scientific method, and in particular on the creation of hypotheses.

   
Automated feedback could be the answer (frontiersin)

   

   
Battery developers have been trying for years to figure out how to use silicon instead of carbon in anodes, because lithium ions combine with silicon to form Li15Si4. The 15-to-4 ratio means a smaller amount of anode material can store a lot more lithium. Silicon anodes could thus provide much larger capacities.

   
Boost expectation: 70% (spectrum.ieee)

   

   
While big banks in the U.S. and Europe have been grappling for almost a decade with how best to go digital, a modest-sized bank in Asia, DBS Bank Ltd., with assets of SGD 541.5 billion (US$394.7 billion) as of September 2018, has come from nowhere with a solution: Don’t try to figure out how to acquire digital capabilities. Instead, think like a fintech company and transform your business completely.

   
How to rethink your transaction model? (strategy-business)

   

   
The globalising age accompanied by the challenge of multiculturalism is an age of crisis of identity which is posing the challenge of accepting global diversity, it also raises critical questions concerning what is primary identity and what is the link between religious, national and regional identity. Increasing incidences of xenophobia, ethnoreligious exclusivism, conflicts and wars pose a tremendous challenge for building of a new multicultural world.

   
Peace and harmony (kas)

   

   
Researchers and dental material manufacturers have aimed to develop new materials with better aesthetic characteristics through the years. In 1975 laminate veneers were introduced as a better material of choice to mask the dentition, the restorations were 1 mm in thickness and were made from a cross-linked polymeric veneer.

   
Preparation design and material type (ncbi)

   

   
Recent years have seen a fast increase in the analytical capacity to read genetic information and in the ability to understand the link between the genetic information and the functioning of organisms. This has increased the scientific knowledge in previously underexploited fields. One example is the human microbiota and the understanding of the vital role that the microbiota plays in the physiological and psychological human health status and well-being.

   
The current scientific knowledge (jrc)

   

   
Within healthcare circles, the hype around the potential of real-world evidence to transform health outcomes through new patient insights has been considerable. But as the pool of RWD swells daily – driven by growing demand from drug development, regulatory decision-making and patient care and enhanced by advances in technology, study design and data collection methods – there is one very large stumbling block on the horizon.

   
Data standardization (eyeforpharma)

   

   
When Isaac Newton came up with his universal theory of gravity in 1687, it’s unlikely he could have imagined that almost 330 years later, British astronaut Piers Sellers would be floating on the International Space Station with a chip from his apple tree. In the modern era of space exploration we have all become familiar with weightless astronauts floating around or doing acrobatics, but there are many effects of microgravity still unknown.

   
From chemistry to biology (chemistryworld)

   

   
The global conversation around data privacy changed dramatically in March of 2018. That’s when Cambridge Analytica made international headlines. It was the story of a shadowy political firm misappropriating the data of tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge. But really, the story was how Facebook, keeper of 2 billion users' private messages, photos, and social connections, let it happen.

   
Get ready for (wired)

   

   
This First results report provides a selection of data on topics such as the European political situation, the economy and European citizenship. It focuses on the results obtained in the 28 EU Member States and is published together with the results of the Standard Eurobarometer questions, which are set out in an annex. The results of the Standard Eurobarometer of autumn 2018 will be analysed in the full report.

   
Latest survey (ec.europa)

   

   
Analysis of the Ae. aegypti mosquito genome could help scientists combat the pest and the infectious diseases it spreads, including Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. Generation of a high-quality reference genome for this species is critically important for exploring the genomic basis of insecticide resistance, disease transmission, blood-feeding host preference, and development of novel repellents.

   
Public health threats (nature)

   

   
Every document should have a purpose, every training, audit, and data collection initiative should have a purpose. A company should never write a document, conduct an audit or training, or collect data unless there is a clear objective. Audits should be done only on processes that are not performing, have new people, or are high risk. Don’t audit for the sake of auditing.

   
Implementing a management system (qualitydigest)

   

   
A series of auctions revealed that Facebook users value the company's service so highly that it would take on average more than $1,000 to convince them to deactivate their accounts for a year, according to a recent paper published in PLOS One. This doesn't mean much for the company's stock market valuation, but it's a good indicator that people find value in Facebook regardless of the many concerns raised recently.

   
Solow-Swan growth model (plos)

   

   
While the impact of the 5G wireless network still remains to be seen, it has the potential to drive numerous advancements, including digital transformation across industries, providing a platform for end-to-end IoT connectivity, enabling faster connections for consumers, and even providing a more cost-effective platform for carriers.

   
The newest generation of wireless (deloitte)

   

   
The first study of the response of a flexible, catalyst-coated sheet to self-generated flow fields, which arise from the catalytic reaction in the host solution. The findings from our computational models reveal how the coupling between these deformable, active sheets and the reactant-containing fluids leads to rich dynamic behavior, which extends the functionality and utility of active materials.

   
Designing active sheets (sciencemag)

   

   
Metcalfe’s law, which states that the value of a network grows with the square of its number of nodes, is a mainstay of telecommunications theory. But it also relates to biology because the web of life is a network, too. Each passing year brings to light new varieties of interconnections and relationships among the ever-widening diversity of organisms, cells, genes and biomolecules known to science.

   
Some meaningful progress (quantamagazine)

   

   
Ongoing pressures in the life-sciences industry require pharma and biotech manufacturers to fundamentally transform how they operate. For example, an annual decrease in operating budgets is now an established expectation in some companies, driven by reduced revenues and the need to prioritize investment in new product development. Previously, managers could cut costs to achieve these goals.

   
IT, OT & Quality collaboration (pharmtech)

   

   
Santa makes lists and so do we, only ours usually is just of those who have been naughty. And the Retraction Watch leaderboard includes some pretty dodgy characters. The top spot in the lineup still belongs (and perhaps always will) to Yoshitaka Fujii with 183 retractions, and it now takes at least 21 retractions to crack the Top 30, with a tie at that slot. For those who won’t settle for anything less than the Top 10, 41 papers is the minimum.

   
The naughty list (the-scientist)

   

   
Microsoft Edge will now be delivered and updated for all supported versions of Windows and on a more frequent cadence. We also expect this work to enable us to bring Microsoft Edge to other platforms like macOS. Improving the web-platform experience for both end users and developers requires that the web platform and the browser be consistently available to as many devices as possible.

   
A new emphasis for Microsoft (windows)

   

   
Technology is changing faster than ever. Applications are merging with data and infra structure, moving outside the enterprise and evolving into systems, embedding themselves deeply into our daily lives. These blurring boundaries are transforming the very nature of human-machine relationships and fundamentally changing our understanding of enterprise IT.

   
The world of constant change (accenture)

   

   
The Alpine area wants to turn into a green economy model region. The background paper describes important aspects for a development of a green economy in the Alps in four topic areas: Low-carbon economy and adaptation to climate change, resource-efficient economy, ecosystem services and natural capital, quality of life and well-being.

   
Example of adaptation to climate change (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
For most of us, though, the robot invasion will simply change the tasks we do, not destroy our jobs altogether. That’s according to researchers who study the impact of automation on jobs. They also note that, as the spread of artificial intelligence automates the rote parts of our jobs, it will not only force us to upgrade our skills but also free us up to take on more sophisticated tasks.

   
Robots-skills may never be able to master (qualitydigest)

   

   
This paper develops a three-part framework to support governments and non-state actors to identify opportunities to: (1) drive action to mobilise and shift finance; (2) track progress against Article 2.1c; and (3) increase ambition. As part of highlighting the approaches that can be taken both inside and outside of the UNFCCC, the authors also outline the four key sets of tools that primarily governments can employ to shift finance.

   
The transition to a low-greenhouse gas emission (odi)

   

   
With mathematical methods, the resolution can still be drastically improved. One method would calculate its exact center from the brightness distribution of the blurry spot. With the dSTORM (Direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy) technique, the resolution of a conventional light microscope can be increased by a factor of 10. It allows user to visualise the architecture of a cell down to its molecular level, for example.

   
Direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy technique (nature)

   

   
What happened in Hermosillo? Can the current economic structure sustain the municipality’s high wages and guarantee future growth? What policy interventions are needed? Seeking answers to these questions, the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University joined forces with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

   
Economic growth analysis (cid.harvard)

   

   
The United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $5.9 trillion (in current $) on the war on terror through Fiscal Year 2019, including direct war and war-related spending and obligations for future spending on post-9/11 war veterans (see Table 1). This number differs substantially from the Pentagon’s estimates of the costs of the post-9/11 wars because it includes not only war appropriations made to the Department of Defense – spending in the war zones.

   
The post-9/11 wars (watson.institut)

   

   
According to recent statistics, the milestone of half the world’s population online will soon be reached, representing a momentous achievement. The importance of broadband Internet for sustainable development is clear, as our societies continue to grow and develop. Broadband infrastructure is now vital infrastructure, as essential as water and electricity networks, but it is also becoming more invisible and integrated in utility networks in ‘smart’ infrastructure.

   
Catalyzing sustainable development (itu)

   

   
Digital technology is disrupting whole industries; sustainability is becoming central to the conduct of business; in the corporate and financial worlds, winning trust is more important than it’s ever been; and millennials represent an enduring demographic change. After surveying nearly 3,000 family businesses across 53 territories, we were able to prove that family businesses pay off in real terms.

   
A competitive advantage in disruptive times (pwc)

   

   
DeepMind, has claimed a “significant milestone” in being able to demonstrate the usefulness of artificial intelligence to help with the complex task of predicting 3D structures of proteins based solely on their genetic sequence. Understanding protein structures is important in disease diagnosis and treatment, and could improve scientists’ understanding of the human body.

   
DeepMind at work (techcrunch)

   

   
At the school’s Stem Cell Institute, IVF doctor and scientist Werner Neuhausser says he plans to begin using CRISPR, the gene-editing tool, to change the DNA code inside sperm cells. The objective: to show whether it is possible to create IVF babies with a greatly reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease later in life. The researchers are practicing how to change the DNA in sperm collected from Boston IVF.

   
White collar without border (technologyreview)

   

   
Paying Taxes continues to be a unique study from PwC and the World Bank Group, which investigates and compares tax regimes across 190 economies worldwide using a medium-sized domestic case study company. This year, we look at how new tax software, real time reporting systems and data analytics are changing the way companies meet their tax compliance obligations and how tax authorities monitor and enforce those obligations.

   
The impact of the changes (pwc)

   

   
New scientific findings on climate damage costs have been published since the publication of Methodological Convention 2.0. An overview of these findings shows that the damage costs estimates are becoming more robust overall. We therefore consider it appropriate to use a pure damage cost approach to derive our recommended cost rate.

   
Cost rates (umweltbundesamt)