Report – Page 2 – Impact Lab

Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Report, Science & Technology News

Study finds aging tends to shift gears as you turn 34, 60 and 78

December 8, 2019

It’s possible to predict a person’s age from protein levels in their blood according to a Stanford study

The blood-borne signs of aging – and indeed, perhaps the causes of aging – make three big shifts around the ages of 34, 60 and 78, a new Stanford-led study has discovered, potentially leading to new diagnostic tests and avenues of anti-aging research.

The study measured levels of nearly 3,000 individual proteins in the plasma of small blood samples from 4,263 people aged between 18 and 95, and found that 1,379 of these proteins varied significantly with a subject’s age. Indeed, with information about levels of just 373 of these proteins, the researchers found they could predict a subject’s age “with great accuracy,” and an even smaller subset of just nine proteins could do a “passable” job.

Continue reading… “Study finds aging tends to shift gears as you turn 34, 60 and 78”

Big Problems, Economy, Housing, Report, Science & Technology News

Boomer homes to flood US market, but who will buy them?

December 1, 2019

Baby Boomer home sales will flood the housing market: Report

Baby Boomers’ homes will be sold on a large scale over the next 20 years, but with millennials refraining from home ownership, who will be buying them?

The U.S. housing market is on the verge of being inundated with homes for sale on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the housing bubble in the mid-2000s.

The tsunami is being driven by a grim reality: Baby Boomers dying.

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Batteries, Energy, Report, Science & Technology News, Solar Power, Wind Power

Gas plants will get crushed by wind, solar by 2035, study says

November 18, 2019

Generators now on drawing boards will be left uneconomical

Natural gas-fired power plants, which have crushed the economics of coal, are on the path to being undercut themselves by renewable power and big batteries, a study found.

By 2035, it will be more expensive to run 90% of gas plants being proposed in the U.S. than it will be to build new wind and solar farms equipped with storage systems, according to the report Monday from the Rocky Mountain Institute. It will happen so quickly that gas plants now on the drawing boards will become uneconomical before their owners finish paying for them, the study said.

The development would be a dramatic reversal of fortune for gas plants, which 20 years ago supplied less than 20% of electricity in the U.S. Today that share has jumped to 35% as hydraulic fracturing has made natural gas cheap and plentiful, forcing scores of coal plants to close nationwide.

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Artificial Intelligence, Business, Latest Trend, Report, Science & Technology News

Seven digital transformation trends for 2020

October 31, 2019

MuleSoft has released the report ‘Top 7 Digital Transformation Trends Shaping 2020’ which outlines the most timely digital transformation trends for 2020 and explores their impact across industries.

Digital transformation has become a catchall term for reimagining business in the digital age: it can refer to any process that uses digital technologies to solve for changing business and market requirements.

The top trends, according to Mulesoft are:

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Analysis, Big Data, privacy, Report, Science & Technology News

Can the data poor survive?

October 19, 2019

Will work for data

We’ve been running a data science experiment over the past few months. Our first goal was to compare and contrast the amount of data we could actively gather using a link to an online survey (please click here to take it) vs. the amount of data we could passively gather using our cookies and pixel-monitoring tools. Our second goal was to compare and contrast the value of self-reported data vs. observed behavioral data. Our final goal was to turn both data sets into actionable insights and analyze the results. We were shocked, but not surprised, by what we learned.

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Analysis, Internet, Report, Science & Technology News

10% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

October 13, 2019

Who’s not online in 2019

For many Americans, going online is an important way to connect with friends and family, shop, get news and search for information. Yet today, 10% of U.S. adults do not use the internet, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data.

The size of this group has changed little over the past four years, despite ongoing government and social service programs to encourage internet adoption in underserved areas. But that 10% figure is substantially lower than in 2000, when the Center first began to study the social impact of technology. That year, nearly half (48%) of American adults did not use the internet.

Internet non-adoption is linked to a number of demographic variables, including age, educational attainment, household income and community type, the Center’s latest analysis finds.

For instance, seniors are much more likely than younger adults to say they never go online. Although the share of non-internet users ages 65 and older has decreased by 7 percentage points since 2018, 27% still do not use the internet, compared with fewer than 10% of adults under the age of 65. Household income and education are also indicators of a person’s likelihood to be offline. Roughly three-in-ten adults with less than a high school education (29%) do not use the internet in 2019, compared with 35% in 2018. But that share falls as the level of educational attainment increases. Adults from households earning less than $30,000 a year are far more likely than the most affluent adults to not use the internet (18% vs. 2%).

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Employment, Healthcare, Report, Science & Technology News

Artificial intelligence to create 133 million jobs globally: Report

October 13, 2019

The uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to create 133 million new jobs globally and “drastically change” the UK job market in the coming years, according to a new report.

The findings come from the Harnessing the Power of AI: The Demand for Future Skills report, produced by global recruitment agency Robert Walters and market analysis company Vacancy Soft.

The report states that around 10.5 million workers will be impacted by the emergence of AI as around 10-30% of jobs in the UK become automated or otherwise change.

However, it also finds that artificial intelligence will create a host of new jobs.

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Aviation, Corporate Manipulation, Report, Science & Technology News

We’re about to find out if airlines really did stuff too many seats on their planes. We might not like the result

October 9, 2019

Forget comfort, are these seats, on display by Spirit Airlines at an airline industry conference in Los Angeles last month, too close to be safe? The FAA will test to see if U.S. airlines meet evacuation time requirements

Many Americans will likely be rooting for 720 volunteers to fail, miserably, when they participate in a series of FAA tests next month to see if today’s larger, wider and taller passengers can safely evacuate an airplane in less than 90 seconds.

But if those volunteers do fail it could become for the rest of us the best illustration ever of the old warning to be careful for what you wish – you just might get it.

Upon orders contained in legislation passed last year by Congress, the Federal Aviation Administration in November will conduct 12 days of aircraft emergency evacuation tests. Last year, when Congress was considering the bill to reauthorize the FAA and its administration of safe air operations in this country not nearly enough votes could be mustered to support various proposals reintroduce elements of economic regulation back into the world of air travel. But so incensed were our federal lawmakers by U.S. airlines’ maniacal stuffing of more and more seats – each of them seemingly designed by medieval torture machine makers – into their planes that a large majority in both houses eagerly voted to order the FAA to conduct a new round of evacuation tests.

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Employment, Higher Education, Latest Trend, Report, Science & Technology News

Why some say college is no longer the sure path to success

October 8, 2019

An alarming—yet illuminating—new study conducted by Third Way, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, concludes that many who go to college come out earning less than the typical salary of a high school graduate. Contrary to popular opinion, which contends that the path to success is rooted in attaining a college education, the findings indicate that half of U.S. colleges in 2018 left their students earning under $28,000 a year.

In past generations, primarily the upper-class, wealthy elites attended universities. After World War II and the passing of the G.I. bill, soldiers returning from the battlefields were offered financial assistance to attend college—and they did so in large numbers. Slowly over time, in the ensuing decades, enrolling into college became almost commonplace for the average American. Today, there is great pressure put upon high school students to attend universities—even if they lack the aptitude or interest. Sometimes the pressure exerted on kids to attend top-tier institutions is intense. This was clearly exemplified by the recent college admittance scandal, in which the rich and famous parents allegedly bribed school officials to get their children into ivy league and top-tier universities.

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Analysis, Economy, Report, Science & Technology News

European Millennials are not like their American counterparts

October 5, 2019

Under-30s in Europe are more disposed than their parents are to view poverty as a result of an individual’s choice.

In public perception, age is often related to political views. “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head,” the 19th-century French monarchist François Guizot is supposed to have said. King Louis Philippe’s prime minister was swept from power by the 1848 revolution, presumably by a combination of republican under-30s and older Frenchmen who had lost their heads. Since then, Guizot’s famous one-liner has often been updated.

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Analysis, Money Talk, Report, Science & Technology News

The world’s $86 trillion economy visualized in one chart

August 30, 2019

The world’s GDP still grew a healthy 6.9% in 2018, up from $80.2 trillion in 2017 to $85.8 trillion. Nearly half of this growth came from the world’s two largest economies: the United States, at $20.5 trillion (up 5.4% from 2017), and China, at $13.6 trillion (up 10%). However, fear of a global recession are mounting — much of it related to growing economic tension between the two leading economies.

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China, Report, Science & Technology News, Self-driving Cars

China’s driverless future farther off than first thought, report predicts

August 29, 2019

As a number of Chinese tech companies put the pedal to the metal in the race to dominate the autonomous vehicle industry, a major global information provider is proceeding with caution with regard to predicting the industry’s near-term growth

Driverless cars won’t be widely available for online hire in China until around 2025, according to a report published Friday by London-based research firm IHS Markit.

While researchers recognized the potential of autonomous vehicles to make travel more efficient, they warned that the need for policymakers to regulate emerging industries will put the brakes on the switchover from conventional vehicles.

Nonetheless, by 2035 China is expected to be home to some 33.6 million autonomous vehicles, around 10% of the world’s total, the report added.

Continue reading… “China’s driverless future farther off than first thought, report predicts”