Good morning and welcome. There has been unprecedented interest in recent years about whether marijuana or its constituent compounds should be used as medicine. Since 1996, voters in seven states have approved the medical use of marijuana.

Despite being used for several decades, test-based incentives have not consistently generated positive effects on student achievement, says a new report from the National Research Council.

Efforts to convert civilian research reactors from weapon-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuels are taking significantly longer than anticipated, says a congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says that Medicare’s value-based payment programs could take into account social risk factors – such as low socio-economic position, residence in disadvantaged neighborhoods, or race and ethnicity – but any proposal to do so will entail both advantages and disadvantages that need to be carefully considered.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine outlines how to examine whether specific levels of nutrients or other food substances (NOFSs) can ameliorate the risk of chronic disease and recommends ways to develop dietary reference intakes (DRI) based on chronic disease outcomes.

NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) should implement a coordinated approach for their space-based environmental observations to further advance Earth science and applications for the next decade, says a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

For severe acute pain due to surgeries and medical conditions, there is a lack of guidance on the appropriate type, strength, and amount of opioid medication that clinicians should prescribe to patients, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommends ways to make supply chains -- the systems that provide populations with critical goods and services, such as food and water, gasoline, and pharmaceuticals and medical supplies – more resilient in the face of hurricanes and other disasters, drawing upon lessons learned from the 2017 hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

The goal of achieving universal health coverage by 2030 — one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals — necessitates that countries strengthen their food and drug regulatory systems as a whole, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Although less invasive and more evidence-based approaches are available for temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) – a set of 30 disorders that cause pain or malfunction in the jaw joint and muscles of the jaw – some dentists continue to rely on aggressive or costly procedures as a first-line treatment, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Ron Struthers of Struthers' Resource Stock Report details the value proposition of Bam Bam Resources and its flagship prospect.

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Symend, a Canada-based digital engagement platform, has raised USD 52 million to identify customers having trouble with their bills to keep them from defaulting.

Ron Struthers of Struthers' Resource Stock Report details the value proposition of Bam Bam Resources and its flagship prospect.

A new study has shed light on the sustainable credentials of bio-based plastics. It indicates that, as yet, no bio-based plastics are sustainable, owing to practices including pesticide use. However, this could change with further technological development.

New research has produced a starch-based bioplastic with similar properties to equivalent traditional oil-based plastics. By adding an ammonium salt to thermoplastic starch (TPS) the study demonstrated an improvement in the plasticisation process, rendering it flexible, mouldable and potentially recyclable.

A new tool to help environmental managers make faster, more evidence-based decisions on how to eradicate alien aquatic species has been developed. The tool is a statistical model based on over 140 management case studies in the scientific literature. Packaged as a user-friendly computer program, it allows different management options to be easily compared.

New research has indicated that the design of a high proportion of agri-environmental policy measures in seven EU countries was based on common sense judgments about their possible impact. Only a sixth of the measures studied were based on well-tested quantitative models of their relationship to the environment.

Climate change is a particular threat to island nations and effective adaptation is vital. A new analysis examines current adaptation measures in tropical Oceania and identifies guidelines for implementing resilient, ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA). Among its recommendations, local communities should be fully involved in planning adaptation measures.

The damaging effects of sea-level rise on Black Sea beaches have been estimated in a new study. Diminishing river sediment supply caused by river dams is also an erosion threat. These new results suggest that erosion could cause over 90% of these beaches to retreat by at least 20% of their width. A publicly available database created by the researchers could be useful for developing coastal protection schemes.

A better understanding of the social factors that affect market-based environmental policies could enhance their success, according to researchers. An analysis of reactions to a proposed waste disposal system in Greece indicated that both trust between citizens and trust in institutions could be highly influential in its implementation.

Researchers have devised a blueprint to integrate the efficient use of waste wood throughout a bioeconomy system — part of the economy that uses renewable biological resources from land and sea. This study assessed the environmental sustainability of three scenarios for increasing targeted levels of industrial symbiosis within the wood-based bioeconomy of central Germany, and found that, in most cases, the three alternative future bioeconomy networks outperformed the selected fossil-based reference systems, mitigating environmental impacts by 25 to 130%.

Uber said the layoffs included its customer support and recruiting teams, and expects to incur about $20 million in costs for severance and related charges.

Better methods are needed to monitor underwater gas leaks. A new study outlines a technique that uses sound to detect bubbles of escaped gas and could help produce more accurate measurements of gas leakage rates from carbon capture and storage (CCS) sites, pipelines and natural leakage sites.

Identifying emerging research areas and technologies is important for decision makers, but notoriously difficult to do. This study presents a new way of searching the literature to identify emerging topics, which will help policymakers, industry and funding bodies to make better decisions.

Protecting ecosystems and the services they provide is increasingly thought to be a sustainable and effective approach to help society adapt to climate change. Islands states, at risk from a variety of different threats, including sea level rise, changes in rainfall patterns and ocean acidification, have been among the first to trial this approach. A new study examines measures taken in the Caribbean and highlights the importance of integrating local and external knowledge.

A new review of ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation has described the multi-functional benefits of integrating such measures into policy. It concludes that there is good evidence for the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA), and that its adoption by policymakers and stakeholders should be encouraged.

A free tool to help coastal managers plan sustainable coastal development is now available online. The decision support system provides up-to-date information and data on subjects such as populations and land use, to support integrated management of coastal areas in the North Sea region affected by climate change, both now and in the future.

‘Product-service systems’ are innovative business models designed to satisfy societal needs in an environmentally sustainable manner. This study explores how government policies could increase the uptake of these systems, outlining five key recommendations to achieve this, including schemes to raise awareness and involve local authorities.

A pilot cloud-based learning platform that brings together multiple datasets, models and visualisation tools has been developed with the engagement of numerous stakeholders throughout the design process. This tool could lead to informed decisions about flood risk at the local level. These types of tools and frameworks are effective ways of facilitating better decision making.

Worldwide, programmes have been implemented to protect water quality from human pressures, often using ecological indicators as a method of evaluation. An eight-year study of a Portuguese estuary has found that indicators based on multiple measures of fish communities, such as the number and relative abundance of resident and migrant species, reflect human pressures on these transitional waters and could improve the implementation of water protection programmes.

Algal blooms in inland and marine waters could be detected and monitored more accurately in future, thanks to a new assessment method. Scientists have developed a new algorithm for sensors which identify emerging blooms of cyanobacteria based on the behaviour of light reflected by the algae’s pigment. Importantly, the algorithm may reduce uncertainty in estimations of algal concentrations by distinguishing between two different types of pigment.

Natural water-retention measures, which ‘keep the rain where it falls’, have great potential to be used as part of flood-risk management plans. But their benefits for downstream urban areas can bring costs to the upstream agricultural areas where they are installed, a recent analysis explains. The researchers behind this analysis suggest that we need new and/or improved policies and institutions to oversee the trade-offs and benefits for agriculture and flood management, and a better scientific understanding of the measures’ likely impact on urban flood risk.

Researchers have developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based system to detect Twitter bots after identifying differences in their short-term behaviour from humans on the social media platform.

Unacademy said that basic information related to 11 million learners had been compromised but no sensitive information such as financial data, location, or passwords had been leaked

Facebook has revealed that it removed a network of 37 Facebook accounts, 32 Pages, 11 Groups and 42 Instagram accounts that originated in India and used fake accounts masquerading as media outlets to target the Gulf region, the US, the UK and Canada.

The company is planning to develop tools that will give more controls to meeting hosts and allow users to securely join a meeting.

The company on Wednesday announced systems integration (SI) capabilities including consulting, agile devOps, cloud migration, cloud capacity optimization and the Future Mode of Operation aimed at taking the communications industry to the cloud at an accelerated pace.

The company is planning to develop tools that will give more controls to meeting hosts and allow users to securely join a meeting.

The world's most comprehensive digital biodiversity database has been developed, enabling access to over 177 million records. However, over two-thirds of the records are from just three countries: the USA, Sweden and the UK, and focus on certain groups such as birds. Changes in policy and funding could help widen the scope of the data.

The advantages of soft ecosystem-based climate change adaptation over hard infrastructure-based approaches are becoming increasingly recognised. A new analysis highlights these advantages and calls for more effort to improve our understanding of ecosystem-based adaptation's (EbA) effectiveness.

Richer countries have more resources for gathering biodiversity information, creating a biased view of the worlds' species and their distribution. However, a new study argues that there are other reasons why some countries are underrepresented in global biodiversity databases, with low numbers of English speakers, large distances from the database host and low security acting as key barriers to data collection.

Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) to climate change could help avoid future food crises in Africa, a new review suggests. By examining United Nations EbA projects implemented across Africa, the authors demonstrate that such approaches help improve the climate change resilience of production systems and the communities dependent upon them.

Long-term biological monitoring is key to effective, evidence-based conservation management, new research concludes. However, greater collaboration is needed to ensure that scientists understand what kind of information is needed by conservation managers. In this way the data can deliver answers for the most important management questions.

A new approach to modelling the spread of mammal populations under climate change has been developed. The method overcomes the problem of missing ecological data for most species by using information on species characteristics, or ‘traits’, associated with population demographic rates and individual movements to deduce which species move too slowly to escape climate change’s effects on their habitat. The model’s results suggest that around 30% of mammal species may not be able to disperse quickly enough to survive.

Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) could be made better for biodiversity and local people with the help of two new evaluation methods presented by a recent study. The methods, which assess the value of SuDS sites for wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, recreation and education, are described by the study’s authors as cost-effective, quick and reliable, and could help designers plan and retrofit SuDS that are wildlife-friendly and socially inclusive.

This study assessed the implementation of the ‘Flowering Meadows’ agri-environment scheme in France, a results-based scheme which encourages farmers to conserve meadows in the Bauges, Haut Jura and Vercors natural parks. While there was limited change in agricultural practices, the scheme did help to maintain meadow habitats. Farmers also welcomed the results-based payments approach, which gave them greater responsibility for and flexibility in managing their farms.

Results-based agri-environment measures are an alternative to management-based measures that, in certain circumstances, could be both more effective and more cost-efficient, since their payment depends on the provision of the desired conservation outcome. This study reviews the success of a scheme, introduced in Germany in 2000, to preserve biodiversity in species-rich grassland.

Researchers have developed a new approach to hierarchise pesticides based on their risk to or via the aquatic environment, which has been implemented in the Pinios River Basin of Central Greece. The analysis indicated that a number of pesticides were found in concentrations that could cause negative impacts on aquatic ecosystems. The results provide detailed information to inform decisions regarding the monitoring of pesticides in the Pinios River Basin and outline an approach that could be used in other watersheds.