Helping the environment and reducing disposables, maybe you can start with this water drinking cup.

An Arizona man who once struggled with math in high school, has solved one of the most notorious problems in history, (The Collatz Conjecture). Thought by many to be unsolvable for decades, his accomplishment has profound implications.

Cindy R. Ford, PhD, is noted for her expertise as a methodological and statistical consultant with AXYZ analytics

Technological development is happening faster than ever and changing our lives in fundamental ways. The companies behind all these new gadgets and services are no doubt the greatest corporate success stories of our age. But entrepreneur and investor Azeem Azhar worries that our public institutions haven't kept pace with the industry, which has created an exponential gap between digital haves and have nots. He offers recommendations on how bridge the divide and achieve growth with broader societal benefits. You can hear more from Azeem Azhar on his HBR Presents podcast, Exponential View.

Marco Bertini, marketing professor at Esade Business School, says more and more companies are turning to pricing algorithms to maximize profits. But many are unaware of a big downside. The constant price shifts can hurt the perception of the brand and its products. He warns that overreliance on artificial intelligence and machine learning without considering human psychology can cause serious damage to the customer relationship. And he outlines steps managers should take, including implementing guardrails, overrides, and better communication tactics. With London Business School professor Oded Koenigsberg, Bertini wrote the HBR article "The Pitfalls of Pricing Algorithms."

It's easy to see how big stresses at work or home -- like layoffs, illnesses, or even a complex and important project -- cause anxiety too spike. But sometimes the stresses that cause the most hard are the tiny, everyday ones that build up over time into a much bigger problem because we don't take the time to recognize and manage our reactions to them. Former HBR editor Karen Dillon and Babson College professor Rob Cross studied the most common types of "microstress" and the ways in which they impact individuals, teams, and organizations. They explain why, if left unchecked, microstress can lead to mistakes, burnout, damaged relationships, and poor mental and physical health. But they also offer advice for better handling it -- and helping others to do the same. Dillon and Cross wrote the book The Microstress Effect and the HBR article "The Hidden Toll of Microstress."

When it comes to solving complicated problems, the default for many organizational leaders is to take their time to work through the issues at hand. Unfortunately, that often leads to patchwork solutions or problems not truly getting resolved. Instead, Anne Morriss offers a different framework: to increase trust and transparency and the speed of execution to truly tackle big problems. Morriss is an entrepreneur, leadership coach, and founder of the Leadership Consortium. With Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei, she wrote the new book, Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems.

Many leaders confidently go about tackling challenges. After all, relying on their experience got them to where they are. But taking the same approach over and over again can actually hold you back. Sometimes you need to switch up your tactics to break through to the next level. Decision-making expert Cheryl Strauss Einhorn says the first step is to understand your personal problem-solving style. Then she explains a framework to assess the situation and select the best approach. Einhorn is founder and CEO of Decisive. She also wrote the book Problem Solver: Maximizing Your Strengths to Make Better Decisions and the HBR article “When Your Go-To Problem-Solving Approach Fails.”

Horrifying story here from Sharon Lerner how chemical products company 3M (which has successfully branded itself as the cuddly people behind Post-it notes) polluted the world’s water supply and covered it up for decades. It features several issues we’ve discussed … Continue reading →

Harrison Siegel pointed us to this project with Maximiliano Isi and Will Farr on gravitational-wave analysis. The compare models using predictive evaluation, in particular leave-one-out cross-validation (LOO), as discussed here and here. Siegel writes: We discuss our implementation of the … Continue reading →

Large language model does better than human mathematicians trying to solve combinatorics problems inspired by the card game Set

Here’s a look at the $1-million math problem at the heart of computation

A concept from theoretical physics helped confirm the strange connection between two completely different areas of mathematics

In an era where technology is rapidly advancing, it is tempting to view it as a universal remedy for a myriad of challenges. However, while technology has immense potential, it cannot solve problems by itself. The effectiveness of technology as a solution is influenced by...

The post Why Technology Alone Can’t Solve Problems: The Importance of Human-Centred Design appeared first on Design Sojourn. Please click above if you cannot see this post.

By Brett Israel UC Berkeley News Elemental sulfur, the most heavily used pesticide in California, may harm the respiratory health of children living near farms that use the pesticide, according to new research led by UC Berkeley. In a study … Continue reading →

This infographic shares the depressing small amount of plastic that gets recycled. Information is Beautiful created The Problem with Plastics infographic by visualizing data by Geyer et al, Science Advances, back in 2017. The infographic uses a Sankey Diagram to show the fate of all plastics that were ever made.

Why plastic recycling doesn’t work ????

“Most ‘recycled’ plastic still ends up being dumped or incinerated”

n.b. These numbers are from 2017. Humanity produces approx. 345 million tonnes of plastic a year. That means another ~1.7 billion tonnes since this study was released.

Found on Informationisbeautiful.net

Researchers went 'bioprospecting' in marine microbes, looking for those that can perform helpful functions like eating plastic or generating antibiotics.

Researchers went 'bioprospecting' in marine microbes, looking for those that can perform helpful functions like eating plastic or generating antibiotics.

Researchers went 'bioprospecting' in marine microbes, looking for those that can perform helpful functions like eating plastic or generating antibiotics.

People with cannabis use disorder (CUD) report more sleep problems than those without, and their disrupted sleep may affect visual learning memory.

A study published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol found that long-term cannabis users experience interfered with sleep and memory. The findings

A study published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol found that long-term cannabis users experience interfered with sleep and memory. The findings

A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology have released a prototype for a new type of advanced, smart mask that could be used to dete

Researchers went 'bioprospecting' in marine microbes, looking for those that can perform helpful functions like eating plastic or generating antibiotics.

Tom Franklin will be giving a plenary talk on "There Is No Such Thing As A Silver Bullet: CMS And Portals Will Not Solve Your Problems!". This talk is a replacement for the plenary talk by Mike Taylor which was advertised previously. [2005-05-31]

Matt Thrower, UKOLN, University of Bath will talk about UKOLN's Web site redesign and the problems involved. Come along and discuss how we solved these and other problems and what lessons could be learned for your institution.

New essay by Kevin K. Gaines, "Racial Uplift Ideology in the Era of the Negro Problem," added to Freedom's Story: Teaching African American Literature and History, TeacherServe from the National Humanities Center.

Event Begins: Wednesday, November 13, 2024 5:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Museum of Natural History

Do we really consume a credit card’s worth of microplastics in a week? If microplastics are so small, how can they have such a big impact on our waterways? What are microplastics, anyway?

Explore these questions and more at November's Science Café! Please join Chris Ruf, Principal Investigator of the Remote Sensing Group (RSG) in the Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering Department (CLaSP) and graduate student Gopal Sundaram of the College of Engineering; Melissa Duhaime, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; and members of the Duhaime Lab (Rachel Cable, Lizy Michaelson, Skyler Har), for a discussion about one of our planet’s biggest tiny problems.

Afghanistan's economy changed — almost overnight — after the Taliban retook control of the country | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Spider-Man isn't the first film franchise to be rebooted over and over again. But the infamous off-screen drama between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures explains why it happens so frequently. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Turkey is facing really high inflation, over 60 percent. Its president is taking an unorthodox approach to dealing with it. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

More than 20 years ago, something unusual happened in the small town of Dixfield, Maine. A lady named Barbara Thorpe had left almost all of her money—$200,000—to benefit the cats of her hometown. When Barbara died in 2002, those cats suddenly got very, very rich. And that is when all the trouble began.

Barbara's gift set off a sprawling legal battle that drew in a crew of crusading cat ladies, and eventually, the town of Dixfield itself. It made national news. But after all these years, no one seemed to know where that money had ended up. Did the Dixfield cat fortune just...vanish?

In this episode, host Jeff Guo travels to Maine to track down the money. To figure out how Barbara's plans went awry. And to understand something about this strange form of economic immortality called a charitable trust.

This episode was produced by Willa Rubin with help from Dave Blanchard. It was engineered by Josh Newell. Sally Helm edited the show and Sierra Juarez checked the facts. Jess Jiang is Planet Money's acting Executive Producer.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

(Note: This episode originally ran back in 2022.)

This past weekend, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had the second largest domestic opening of 2023, netting (or should we say webbing?) over $120 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada. But the story leading up to this latest Spider-Man movie has been its own epic saga.

When Marvel licensed the Spider-Man film rights to Sony Pictures in the 1990s, the deal made sense — Marvel didn't make movies yet, and their business was mainly about making comic books and toys. Years later, though, the deal would come back to haunt Marvel, and it would start a long tug of war between Sony and Marvel over who should have creative cinematic control of Marvel's most popular superhero. Today, we break down all of the off-screen drama that has become just as entertaining as the movies themselves.

This episode was originally produced by Nick Fountain with help from Taylor Washington and Dave Blanchard. It was engineered by Isaac Rodrigues. It was edited by Jess Jiang. The update was produced by Emma Peaslee, with engineering by Maggie Luthar. It was edited by Keith Romer.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

AI, EVs, and satellites are tackling the climate crisis. But they have environmental downsides. This hour, TED speakers explain how to use these tools without making global warming worse. Guests include AI researchers Sasha Luccioni and Sims Witherspoon, climate researcher Elsa Dominish and astrodynamicist Moriba Jah.

TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

When problems arise, it's tempting to wait for someone else to address it. But sometimes, the only person who can fix it... is you. This hour, TED speakers share ideas on how to do it yourself. Guests include physicist and engineer Kate Stone, humanitarian programmer Tiffani Ashley Bell, builder and youth educator Emily Pilloton-Lam and videographer Jack Corbett. Original broadcast date: May 5, 2023.

TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/ted

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Toronto, ON – This Friday, April 8, University of Toronto Engineering students will present their solutions to 10 of Toronto’s most persistent problems. From helping epileptic children learn to write to designing better tools for collecting street litter, these first-year students are working with local communities, companies and agencies with a single goal: to improve life in […]

Toronto, ON –  First-year students in U of T Engineering are stepping up to take on some of the Greater Toronto Area’s most persistent problems, from diagnosing infant epilepsy to finding lost arrows at a local archery range. This Wednesday, April 12, students at the University of Toronto are hosting a day-long event to showcase […]

Sleep problems disproportionately impact adults with ADHD. This study found a higher risk for women and those with co-existing mental health conditions.

The concern was so much of a significance that a PWR plant in Kansas wanted to assess the issue with the measurement of several of its pipe runs.

On March 9, NPR reported Boeing was unable to find any paperwork about the door plug and attributed a top Boeing official saying, “It was likely that such records never existed.” Roughly one day later, the Wall Street Journal reported the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation.

Little by little, a compressor’s lubricating oil will eventually escape the compressor’s crankcase and enter the system’s tubing.

Frost on an evaporator coil will prevent the correct amount of airflow across the coil. Anytime the evaporator coil experiences reduced airflow across its face, there will be a reduced heat load on the coil.

Here is the potential problem: A contractor quotes a customer on the compressor replacement, and he agrees to repair the cooler at the quoted price. Then, as the technician is completing the job — or even after he has finished replacing the compressor — he finds out there is another system problem.

If a condenser coil is dirty or fouled, its ability to reject heat is severely affected.

There are several reasons why the compressor discharge temperature of a refrigeration system can be high when the condensing temperature is not, and a checklist can help a technician figure out the root problem.

In the end, it's about airflow control. Unless your solution involves airflow and pressure measurement, you're guessing whether the repair worked.

Dr. Andrii Gakhov, author of the book Probabilistic Data Structures and Algorithms for Big Data Applications talks about probabilistic data structures and their application to the big data domain with host Robert Blumen.

Wouter Groeneveld, author of The Creative Programmer and PhD researcher at KU Leuven, discusses his research related to programming education with host Jeremy Jung. Topics include evaluating projects, constraints, social debt in teams, common fallacies in critical thinking, maintaining flow state, documenting and retaining knowledge, and creating environments that encourage creativity. Brought to you by IEEE Software and IEEE Computer Society.

_{-- Delivered by Feed43 service}

Cabling in power substations is very important due to the fact that they are the longest parts of a system and therefore act as efficient antennas that pickup and or radiate noise. In HV substations, there are different kinds of conductors... Read more

The post The problem of induced voltages in control cables in high voltage substations appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.