Policy instruments can be applied to improve the sustainability of plastics, including regulations, market-based instruments, information and voluntary tools. The report reviews the use of these instruments, provides good practice examples, such as product taxes and charges, eco-design standards, extended producer responsibility and environmental product labels, as well as discussing opportunities for their future applications.

The quiet streets have that special Viennese quality of grandeur combined with melancholy and nostalgia

If you haven’t, you should immediately read Jeremy’s post titled A responsive mind. Not because he says some incredibly kind things about yours truly, but, well, of bits like this:

That’s the thing about responsive web design: you can’t just think of it as a sprinkle of pixie dust that can be applied to any site. It requires the right mindset. It requires that sites be built on solid foundations of best practice. If those foundations are in place—a flexible layout, flexible images, optimised performance—then responsive web design can work its magic.

There are so many wonderful, quotable points that I’m doing Jeremy a disservice by even excerpting that one. If you’d like to understand why a responsive approach would be right for your project (or, perhaps as importantly, why it might not), I urge you to read the whole thing.

Being able to visualize biology at the molecular level is essential for our understanding of the world. A structural biology approach reveals the molecular basis of disease processes and can guide the design of new drugs as well as aid in the optimization of existing medicines. However, due to the lack of a synchrotron light source, adequate infrastructure, skilled persons and incentives for scientists in addition to limited financial support, the majority of countries across the African continent do not conduct structural biology research. Nevertheless, with technological advances such as robotic protein crystallization and remote data collection capabilities offered by many synchrotron light sources, X-ray crystallography is now potentially accessible to Africa-based scientists. This leap in technology led to the establishment in 2017 of BioStruct-Africa, a non-profit organization (Swedish corporate ID: 802509-6689) whose core aim is capacity building for African students and researchers in the field of structural biology with a focus on prevalent diseases in the African continent. The team is mainly composed of, but not limited to, a group of structural biologists from the African diaspora. The members of BioStruct-Africa have taken up the mantle to serve as a catalyst in order to facilitate the information and technology transfer to those with the greatest desire and need within Africa. BioStruct-Africa achieves this by organizing workshops onsite at our partner universities and institutions based in Africa, followed by post-hoc online mentoring of participants to ensure sustainable capacity building. The workshops provide a theoretical background on protein crystallography, hands-on practical experience in protein crystallization, crystal harvesting and cryo-cooling, live remote data collection on a synchrotron beamline, but most importantly the links to drive further collaboration through research. Capacity building for Africa-based researchers in structural biology is crucial to win the fight against the neglected tropical diseases, e.g. ascariasis, hookworm, trichuriasis, lymphatic filariasis, active trachoma, loiasis, yellow fever, leprosy, rabies, sleeping sickness, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, etc., that constitute significant health, social and economic burdens to the continent. BioStruct-Africa aims to build local and national expertise that will have direct benefits for healthcare within the continent.

The universe is 13.8 billion years old, while our planet formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Some scientists think this time gap means that life […]

The post Is Earthly Life Premature From a Cosmic Perspective? appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Eyjafjallajökull's eruption may be a hassle if you had any transatlantic flights planned this summer. For scientists, however, volcanic eruptions are the only way they can obtain samples from deep within the Earth to learn more about our planet, its formation, and its ongoing evolution. Smithsonian Geologist Liz Cottrell helps put this recent eruption into perspective.

The post Geologist Liz Cottrell puts Eyjafjallajökull’s eruption into perspective appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Jim Zimbelman, planetary geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, shares his three favorite images from the exhibition "Beyond: Visions of Our Solar System.” On view at the Air and Space Museum through May 2, 2011, the exhibition by artist Michael Benson combines art, science, photography and exploration to unveil the diverse landscapes found on the planets in our Solar System.

The post A new perspective on the Solar System with Planetary Geologist Jim Zimbelman appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Read a new Perspective on promoting transparency in scientific authorship co-authored by NAS President Marcia McNutt. Appearing in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the piece offers suggestions for improving how author contributions are attributed in scientific publications.

A recent study has analysed trade unions’ understanding of the relationship between environmental protection and jobs. It identified four reoccurring themes from interviews with union representatives, which provide insight into how trade union environmental agendas could develop under a greener economy.

The recent recession has prompted the adoption of 'return to growth' policies but the tools used to assess growth often have a narrow economic focus. A new report has assessed current macro-economic models and suggests they need to incorporate the impact that environmental factors can have on the economy, and vice versa, and recommends they should consider limits on resource and material consumption.

A recent study has analysed trade unions’ understanding of the relationship between environmental protection and jobs. It identified four reoccurring themes from interviews with union representatives, which provide insight into how trade union environmental agendas could develop under a greener economy.

The Alang-Sosiya shipbreaking yards in India highlight the inequalities and opportunities of global waste management. The yards, which recycle retired ships from more economically developed countries, have dramatically altered the ecosystems and social structures of the local area. A study looking at stakeholder perceptions analyses different positions on the social and environmental impacts of the yards.

Land use changes over time have altered relations between soils and water cycles throughout the world. Soils have been lost and degraded, and the closely interlinked processes of soils and water have become an urgent issue for European policymakers. This Thematic Issue aims to provide a review of new research into the links between soil and water issues in Europe, including a message that the soil-water links must be considered at their proper spatial scales.

Risk assessments of potential bird mortality caused by planned wind farms should be assessed at the scale of the individual turbine rather than the whole farm, according to new research. It indicated that risk assessments made prior to building are not predicting the actual level of mortality when the farm is built.

Student film "Battle Behind the Bottle" tells the story of the cork industry positive response to the “kick in the pants” screw tops and plastics gave it.

Beautiful solar system map by Eleanor Lutz shows the orbits of more than 18,000 celestial objects.

Thought-provoking documentary weaves together stunning imagery with enlightening interviews to show how connected we are to our planet.

Death has always been hidden away, but after spending time with an isolated tribe, this writer is ready to face death head-on.

Netflix delivered its billionth movie in February 2007. How does this stack up to other products and services and what will it take to deliver several billion more?

Having been involved deeply in computer data security at every stage, the people behind The Connectivity Center bring to the world of cybersecurity products and services an unmatched perspective on this staggering issue.

Appearances by financial services industry experts Jackie Wilke, Phil Toews, Paul Cahill and Michael Wilson

Multi-award winning author Frances Fuller offers a unique outlook on aging based on her own experience. Sharing her personal difficulties, memories and values, she reveals also the decisions she has made about how to live the final stage of her life.

B.BéNI is a New England based inspirational jewelry company that offers men's necklaces and a wide selection of jewelry including bracelets, necklaces, sterling silver, earrings and Christian jewelry that will touch the heart.

The latest episode of A Life of Giving, the acclaimed Podumentary by Reverend Richard Klingeisen, is set to launch shortly after the holidays in early 2020. 'For a Good Cause' sees the Revered focus on the charities closest to him.

B.BéNI is a New England based inspirational jewelry company that offers men's necklaces and a wide selection of jewelry including bracelets, necklaces, sterling silver, earrings and Christian jewelry that will touch the heart.

The new leading and free independent movie streaming platform Vyre Network releases the controversial feature film "Blue Lives Matter".

Featuring the ideas of Tom Davenport, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, John Baldoni, and Annie McKee.

‘Don’t sell but use dips in the market to deploy money’

‘Focus on more essential services and rural-focussed stocks’

'You have to get right kind of worker with right kind of skills'

Let’s go a bit deeper into two aspects of the last episode: frameworks and how they can help you with your photography and perspectives.. but not just those that we photographers love so much. [sc:podlovebutton] Links: Baltic Sea – Photos by Chris Marquardt Inbox Zero – YouTube Pomodoro Technique – Wikipedia Getting Things Done – … Continue reading "880 Perspectives and Frameworks"

The post 880 Perspectives and Frameworks appeared first on PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS FROM THE TOP FLOOR.

We’ve had lots of discussions here and elsewhere online about fundamental flaws in statistics culture: the whole p-value thing, statistics used for confirmation rather than falsification, corruption of the pizzagate variety, soft corruption in which statistics is used in the service of country-club-style backslapping, junk science routinely getting the imprimatur of the National Academy of […]

Another look at 3D modelling suitable for IE10 and IE11 without using 'transform-style: preserve-3d;'

Old growth revisited: integrating social, economic, and ecological perspectives.

Catch up to the latest in the brave new world of podcasting with ALL ACCESS' Podcasting section, courtesy of News-Talk-Sports Editor PERRY MICHAEL SIMON and Next Steps columnist SETH … more

DALLAS and ARLINGTON, April 23, 2020 — As emerging science around COVID-19 highlights elevated danger for people with diabetes, heart disease and stroke[1], the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association urge people living with type...

“The Last Dance,” the Michael Jordan documentary on ESPN every Sunday night for five weeks got me thinking I’d like to talk about this. You can listen to Jordan talk and “The...

Perspective is a powerful tool in photography, and if you’re able to master it you’ll find that you’re able to snap far more interesting photos. It is a common misconception that you need special lenses to experiment with perspective, when in actual fact all you really need to do is move around. If you’re interested in using perspective in your photos, here are 3 easy tips that will help:   Get high, and get low  The easiest way to see perspective in action is by snapping photos from above and below eye-level. Try snapping a photo of a subject from the ground, then again from above it, and see how perspective makes a world of difference in the photos that you end up with. Play around with scale Because objects that are further away look smaller, you can reverse that effect and create some amusing photos. Often this is referred ... Read more

The post 3 Tips to Use Perspective in Photos appeared first on Digital Photography Tutorials.

Sentence level quality estimation (QE) for machine translation (MT) attempts to predict the translation edit rate (TER) cost of post-editing work required to correct MT output. We describe our view on sentence-level QE as dictated by several practical setups encountered in the industry. We find consumers of MT output---whether human or algorithmic ones---to be primarily interested in a binary quality metric: is the translated sentence adequate as-is or does it need post-editing? Motivated by this we propose a quality classification (QC) view on sentence-level QE whereby we focus on maximizing recall at precision above a given threshold. We demonstrate that, while classical QE regression models fare poorly on this task, they can be re-purposed by replacing the output regression layer with a binary classification one, achieving 50-60\% recall at 90\% precision. For a high-quality MT system producing 75-80\% correct translations, this promises a significant reduction in post-editing work indeed.

We provide a dynamical perspective on the classical problem of 3D point cloud registration with correspondences. A point cloud is considered as a rigid body consisting of particles. The problem of registering two point clouds is formulated as a dynamical system, where the dynamic model point cloud translates and rotates in a viscous environment towards the static scene point cloud, under forces and torques induced by virtual springs placed between each pair of corresponding points. We first show that the potential energy of the system recovers the objective function of the maximum likelihood estimation. We then adopt Lyapunov analysis, particularly the invariant set theorem, to analyze the rigid body dynamics and show that the system globally asymptotically tends towards the set of equilibrium points, where the globally optimal registration solution lies in. We conjecture that, besides the globally optimal equilibrium point, the system has either three or infinite "spurious" equilibrium points, and these spurious equilibria are all locally unstable. The case of three spurious equilibria corresponds to generic shape of the point cloud, while the case of infinite spurious equilibria happens when the point cloud exhibits symmetry. Therefore, simulating the dynamics with random perturbations guarantees to obtain the globally optimal registration solution. Numerical experiments support our analysis and conjecture.

We consider the problem of protecting and manipulating elections by recounting and changing ballots, respectively. Our setting involves a plurality-based election held across multiple districts, and the problem formulations are based on the model proposed recently by~[Elkind et al, IJCAI 2019]. It turns out that both of the manipulation and protection problems are NP-complete even in fairly simple settings. We study these problems from a parameterized perspective with the goal of establishing a more detailed complexity landscape. The parameters we consider include the number of voters, and the budgets of the attacker and the defender. While we observe fixed-parameter tractability when parameterizing by number of voters, our main contribution is a demonstration of parameterized hardness when working with the budgets of the attacker and the defender.

“You’ll be gone by spring,” said the same voice that drove me to retire. I was afraid this might be true, that I’d be dead by the time the weather warmed. Recent estate planning put death on my mind. I’ve heard enough about the frailty of old age, that it’d be all right by me to leave here with my faculties intact. You’ll be gone by spring. I couldn’t tell Bruce. Then came the snotty nose, my appetite gone, and sleep rising. While my pneumonia wasn’t COVID-19, I needed breathing treatments four times a day. Good doctors cared. I tell you there is healing beyond the science, in their touch, their listening. Then a dear friend said he might not survive this pandemic. An author wrote she was sick with COVID-19. You’ll be gone by spring. Was it Jesus’ voice or the voice, clanging like a train banging from one track to another, the cars jostling against their couplings, the voice of my life, maybe all our lives, rolling onto a siding while the pandemic roared by? Here on Good Friday we

“I never thought I would have to ask for food.” The young mother said as a box was placed in her car. In the last three weeks over 500,000 Illinois residents have filed for unemployment. We have never seen such a sudden, dramatic increase in the need for food in our region. There are now growing lines at area food pantries. Numbers of those seeking help has tripled. For 70% of them this is their first visit to a food pantry. This is occurring when food banks are receiving fewer donations from their sources. The food banks are dependent upon the donations from large food chains. Usually food whose shelf life has nearly expired, or produce that is about to go bad. Because nervous buyers have cleared out so many store shelves there is less leftover to donate. When you live at the bottom of the food chain and depend on leftovers, it is extra frightening when there is little left behind. We need to use this crisis to question our present food system built on dependence. We need to ask how

During tough times, my parents sing a song. It's sweet -- two real voices, not quite in tune, but full of energy. Whenever I complained, they’d break into song: You’ve got to accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative Latch on to the affirmative And don’t mess with Mr. In-Between! Listening, I often thought it’s old fashioned mumbo jumbo. It’s parent talk. Finally, I listened to Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters sing the whole song. The lyrics surprised me: You've got to spread joy up to the maximum Bring gloom down to the minimum Have faith or pandemonium’s Liable to walk upon the scene Sitting at home, while medical professionals work long hours, while so many small businesses struggle, we have a choice. We can accentuate the positive. But, it’s rosy skies and all smiles. Does it encompass our entire situation? Those who may be ill, who are alone, who may not be safe at home? Does it lack a realistic message for those whose lives are so far from simple hope? Since we can’t

The disaster movie starts and when bad things start to happen, a scientist always warns the people to change course. But the people never listen. That’s the gist of a mordant Facebook post circulating among scientists as they, along with the rest of us, have watched this frightening scenario play out in real life. The pandemic moved so fast and was so vicious that it’s no mystery why people insisted it couldn’t happen here. After all, we’re not Italy, or China. Scientists knew better, and in January, warned that it was going to happen here. Trump called them alarmist. In February, health experts were sure the virus had been lurking in communities for a while and was spreading fast. Precious weeks passed and the federal government failed to take charge. Against scientists’ advice, Trump urged those with the virus to take an untested drug. What have you got to lose, he said. In the meantime, governors scrambled to prepare hospitals, issue stay-at-home orders, and figure out testing. This

When unprecedented change happens, its repercussions seem to overpower anything worth smiling about in the world. But at the same time, with this huge change in society, comes the effort by so many to heal and reconnect, to positively respond to adversity in the best way we know how. This past week, my choir teacher reached out to our small choir group, one that had just recently been through the trauma of losing one of our own to a car crash. He spoke of the importance of connections and the realness that comes with being involved in a deeply connected group. He spoke of the power of music in sharing emotions, in bringing joy to even the most distraught. He then requested that each of us share a song that has been especially impactful during this unexpected extended quarantine. The shared clips were more than songs...they were deep feelings. Sadness, confusion, a small flutter of hope. With music we can see the raw emotions of our souls. We can see the small rays of sunshine that come

The COVID-19 pandemic is a situation most Americans alive today have not experienced. It’s challenged our American freedoms ranging from how we worship, work, educate, congregate, socialize, shop, vacation, and grieve. As a nation we take pride in our capitalistic economic system. Over the last several weeks we’ve witnessed 401K’s lose value, the stock market crash, along with historic joblessness and unemployment applications. I applaud both sides of the aisle for getting the stimulus package out, which includes the CARES act. But it’s not enough. The long-term effects of this pandemic will be far reaching. As states share their data on new cases and death related to COVID-19; the reality of American racism is being exposed again. According to the Surgeon General, African-Americans comprise 35.7% of confirmed cases and 53.2% of deaths despite only representing 27% of the US population. The US Census Bureau states the white population of Chicago, IL is 49%, and 30% African-American. As

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is one unexpected silver lining that I just have to share. Teachers are finally getting some of the love and respect that they so sincerely deserve from parents who now have that role – at least temporarily. Praise for educators is all over social media right now, and even celebrities and sports stars are acknowledging how challenging it is to teach and how appreciative they are for their children’s teachers. Teachers of all levels – from preschool through college – have shifted their instruction online while also demonstrating their compassion and concern for their students. Teacher car parades are driving through neighborhoods with signs to remind children and families that their teachers care about and miss them. Teachers are calling students to show they care, and online class sessions are routinely beginning with “check-ins” to make sure everyone is OK. Has the shift to at-home learning been perfect? Absolutely not, but educators across

If you’re like me, you probably having a hard time changing the idea of social distancing into a habit. That’s not easy. Old habits die hard. Why don’t we wear a mask in public, wash our hands more often…or stay at least six feet apart? We each have our own reasons. Sometimes we just forget. I do. And some people just don’t understand the consequences if someone else is exposed to their cough; their hands or something they touched with the virus on it. Other people resist the whole idea of being told what to do. They think that social distancing imposes on their freedom. Or worse, they just can’t be bothered, no matter who they expose to the virus, even their loved ones. So here’s a thought -- Six Feet is Not That Far Away. Where I live in Princeton, Illinois, right off Interstate-80’s Exit 56, a group of us are asking “What does social distancing mean to us? We’re hoping that artists of all kinds will share their interpretations of that message in photographs, videos and music about