Science & Technology News – Page 166

Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Shopping, Trending

Resale is thriving in the pandemic

August 10, 2020

Since the pandemic began, the fashion industry has taken a hit. Retail giants have filed for bankruptcy, independent brands have closed, and brick-and-mortar stores, if they haven’t shut their doors, are still financially recovering from the months they were forced to stay closed during the lockdown. One of the few areas that has seen growth during this time, though, is the resale industry.

Online consignment platforms and secondhand retailers had already been seeing promising signs in the last few years. According to thredUP’s 2020 Resale Report, resale grew 25 times faster than retail in 2019, with 62M women buying secondhand products in 2019, compared to 56M in 2018 and 44M in 2017. The pandemic did not slow this growth.

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Coding, Computer Security, quantum computing, Science & Technology News

The quest for quantum-proof encryption just made a leap forward

August 10, 2020

Quantum computers could make encryption a thing of the past, but 15 contenders are trying to prove they have what it takes to safeguard your data.

Many of the things you do online every day are protected by encryption so that no one else can spy on it. Your online banking and messages to your friends are likely encrypted, for example—as are government secrets. But that protection is under threat from the development of quantum computers, which threaten to render modern encryption methods useless.

Quantum machines work in a fundamentally different way from the classical computers we use today. Instead of using traditional binary code, which represents information with 0s and 1s, they use quantum bits, or qubits. The unusual properties of qubits make quantum computers far more powerful for some kinds of calculations, including the mathematical problems that underpin much of modern encryption.

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AI, Automobiles, Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

Exploring the three elephants in the autonomous vehicle room

August 10, 2020

The expression “elephant in the room” refers to an important question that everyone knows about but no one wants to discuss because it makes them uncomfortable.

Today, in the area of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), there are three elephants in the room which are worth exploring.

Let’s get started.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Future, Machine Learning, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The 6 unholy AI systems thou shalt not develop

August 6, 2020

TLDR; don’t pretend a Magic 8 Ball is a useful tool for grownups and don’t build hate machines

Artificial intelligence may be the most powerful tool humans have. When applied properly to a problem suited for it, AI allows humans to do amazing things. We can diagnose cancer at a glance or give a voice to those who cannot speak by simply applying the right algorithm in the correct way.

But AI isn’t a panacea or cure-all. In fact, when improperly applied, it’s a dangerous snake oil that should be avoided at all costs. To that end, I present six types of AI that I believe ethical developers should avoid.

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Coronavirus, Employment, Latest Trend, Microsoft, Science & Technology News

18 companies now hiring remote workers

August 6, 2020

Big brands from a wide swath of industries are looking to fill long-term posts, according to Flexjobs.com.

Unemployment remains high as Americans emerge from the pandemic-driven lockdown, but 18 well-known companies that made the switch to telecommuting are currently hiring for long-term remote work, according to Flexjobs.com.

This is welcome news: Working remotely is not only safer from COVID-19, it’s very popular, especially among those who had the opportunity to work from home (WFH), after fears of the spread of COVID-19 shifted the way many Americans work.

Some companies that have made the complete shift to remote work are hiring now, and it means a job with a recognizable company name. And there’s a wide swath of industries, too, including big tech, credit card or affiliated companies, real estate, social media, sales, higher education, research and advisory, social and viewing management, software, family history research, and an online retailer, Flexjobs.com said.

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Coronavirus, Employment, Science & Technology News, Trending

LinkedIn says these are the world’s 10 most in-demand jobs that don’t need a degree

August 6, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has had a profound impact on the global jobs market, according to data compiled by LinkedIn, with the economic crisis forcing businesses to cut jobs and slow hiring in most areas.

A report from the United Nations’ International Labour Organization has estimated that the number of working hours lost in the second quarter of 2020 is expected to be the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs.

It means seeking out positions that are in-demand from employers and re-training accordingly are among some of the potential solutions to gaining an edge in this competitive jobs climate.

In the U.K., for example, LinkedIn said that the jobs market is currently three times more competitive when compared to the same period last year.

Josh Graff, U.K. country manager at LinkedIn, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that Britain is facing the “toughest labor market in a generation” as a result of the economic fallout from Covid-19.

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Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Old human cells rejuvenated with stem cell technology, research finds

August 6, 2020

Old human cells return to a more youthful and vigorous state after being induced to briefly express a panel of proteins involved in embryonic development, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The researchers also found that elderly mice regained youthful strength after their existing muscle stem cells were subjected to the rejuvenating protein treatment and transplanted back into their bodies.

The proteins, known as Yamanaka factors, are commonly used to transform an adult cell into what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells can become nearly any type of cell in the body, regardless of the cell from which they originated. They’ve become important in regenerative medicine and drug discovery.

The study found that inducing old human cells in a lab dish to briefly express these proteins rewinds many of the molecular hallmarks of aging and renders the treated cells nearly indistinguishable from their younger counterparts.

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Environment, Green Friendly, Plant Life, Science & Technology News

The Great Green Wall of Africa : Is the the next wonder of the world?

August 8, 2020

“The Great Green Wall promises to be a real game-changer.”

Africa’s Sahara Desert is growing.

In 2018 it was found that the Sahara, the biggest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic, had increased in size by 10 per cent over the last century. This expansion is due to a combination of man-made climate change and natural climate cycles, with most of the change happening along the northern and southern edges of the desert.

Desertification is a major problem around the world, not least in the Sahel region (which runs from the southern belt of the Sahara to the Sudanian savanna below) where some of the world’s poorest communities reside. Despite the Global North being the most significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, it is people like those living in the Sahel who are paying the price.

The Sahel community are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, dealing with persistent droughts, famines, and rapidly depleting natural resources on an ongoing basis. As a result, millions of people across the region, from Senegal to Djibouti, are being left to handle the severe repercussions of the climate emergency without much help.

This is where the Great Green Wall comes in, a project that could save an entire region from ecological collapse.

Continue reading… “The Great Green Wall of Africa : Is the the next wonder of the world?”

Automobiles, Electric Automobile, Environment, Science & Technology News

Renault arms entire french town with free electric cars

August 8, 2020

Renault wants people to know that it’s easy to go electric.

The automaker giant Renault has gifted an entire village in France its Renault Zoe electric vehicle in a recent power move. The move comes as an effort to demonstrate that EVs are suitable for not only urban areas but also rural communities just as well as gas-powered cars.

Renault offered three-year leases of its Zoe EV to every house in Appy, a small town in the Ariege region of France. There is only one thing the automaker requires them to do: giving Renault periodic updates on whether they like the car and EV ownership or not.

Accordingly, this move will help Renault “understand the way customers interact with and use electric vehicles day to day.”

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Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight, Tourism

Virgin Galactic offers peek inside new space plane for tourists

August 6, 2020

Inside of VSS Unity unveiled, showing the cabin in which six passengers will be able to float in zero gravity on the edge of space

Virgin Galactic has revealed the interior of its centrepiece space plane, showing off a cabin with new custom seats and a “space mirror” in a virtual tour of what its passengers can expect to experience on flights to the edge of space.

For $250,000 a ticket, passengers who have signed up for the suborbital flight aboard the air-launched plane VSS Unity will strap into six tailored seats and be able to peer out of the cabin’s 12 circular windows as they ascend 97km (60 miles) above Earth. The plane has five other windows.

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Alzheimer's Disease, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Memory, Science & Technology News

World-first gene therapy reverses Alzheimer’s memory loss in mice

August 6, 2020

Research into Alzheimer’s-related memory loss has uncovered an exciting new breakthrough in the form of a world-first gene therapy

Scientists in Australia have made an exciting breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research, demonstrating what they describe as the first gene-therapy-based approach for treating advanced forms of the disease. Through experiments in mice, the team was able to show how activating a key enzyme in the brain can prevent the kind of memory loss associated with advanced forms of Alzheimer’s, and even reverse it.

The research was carried out at Macquarie University, where dementia researchers and brothers Lars and Arne Ittner were investigating the role of a key enzyme in the brain called p38gamma. Through previous research, the brothers had shown that by activating this enzyme in mice with advanced dementia, they could modify a protein that prevents the development of Alzheimer’s symptoms.

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Environment, Farms, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Big-money investors gear up for a trillion-dollar bet on farmland

August 7, 2020

Ray Williams bought this land just north of the small town of Dumont, in Butler County, Iowa.

For a glimpse of what could happen to a trillion dollars worth of American farmland, meet Ray Williams.

He’s a lawyer-turned-farmer, growing organic grain and feeding young cows on 3,000 acres in northeastern Oregon. Last year, he and his brother Tom decided that they were getting too old for the long hours and hard work.

“We told our clients, you don’t want to rely on senior citizens for your high quality organic products. Trust me on this!” says Williams, age 68.

Their farm sold for $23 million. The buyer was a company registered in Delaware with a mailing address in Manhattan. The people behind that company wish to remain anonymous.

This left Williams with a pile of money to invest, and he parked almost $3 million of it in farmland halfway across the country. He bought 293 acres in Butler County, Iowa, from a farmer named Rich Showalter, and another 160 acres in O’Brien County from the estate of a woman who was born in Iowa but died in Indiana at the age of 100.

The end result: Control over this land has passed to people with little personal connection to it, who live a thousand miles away. The new owners will decide what happens to that land, whether to plow or drain it, or even to stop farming it entirely. Their decisions will have profound effects on rural communities, wildlife and even the global climate.

Continue reading… “Big-money investors gear up for a trillion-dollar bet on farmland”