It is very useful–check it out.
STAT has launched a new #covid19 data tracker with helpful data on case numbers by country, state, province and county. Helpful information. Check it out here: https://t.co/lxjpAXI5SE
— Adam Feuerstein (@adamfeuerstein) March 26, 2020
It was Friday March 13 when doctors at the largest healthcare provider in New York City decided to take the search for a coronavirus drug into their own hands. Many of their Covid-19 patients were not getting better — and some were getting worse.
Two of the hospitals’ scientists each called their contacts at US biotech companies Gilead Sciences and Regeneron to offer to test their potential treatments: an antiviral called remdesivir and an anti-inflammatory called Kevzara, developed for Ebola and rheumatoid arthritis respectively. Clinicians, researchers and regulators rushed to set up the clinical trials, which usually take months, and just four days later two patients took their first doses of the experimental drugs.
“The patients were very, very sick,” says Kevin Tracey, president of the Feinstein Institute, the research arm of Northwell Health. “Everybody just rolled up their sleeves and said we’re facing a crisis and the patients need this. After30 years of doing research, it was one of the proudest days of my life to know patients were getting treated with these drugs that may help them.”
The hospital hopes the drugs will stop the replication of the virus and reduce the inflammation in the lungs of the patients.
Free to read: The world cannot afford to wait 18 months to find a coronavirus vaccine. Instead, clinical trials are focusing on drugs developed for other diseases, from Ebola to malaria and arthritis, which they hope could also treat Covid-19 https://t.co/SLOdEpvSUz
— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) March 26, 2020
Q: I’m curious about some things that aren’t happening on a national scale. One is, why are shelter in place orders happening state by state? Why are we doing this sequentially? Is that a mistake?
A: No, I don’t think we could say it’s a mistake or not a mistake. There is a discussion and a delicate balance about what’s the overall impact of shutting everything down completely for an indefinite period of time. So, there’s a compromise. If you knock down the economy completely and disrupt infrastructure, you may be causing health issues, unintended consequences, for people who need to be able to get to places and can’t. You do the best you can. I’ve emphasized very emphatically at every press conference, that everybody in the country, at a minimum, should be following the fundamental guidelines. Elderly, stay out of society in self isolation. Don’t go to work if you don’t have to. Yada, yada, yada. No bars, no restaurants, no nothing. Only essential services. When you get a place like New York or Washington or California, you have got to ratchet it up. But it is felt—and it isn’t me only speaking, it’s a bunch of people who make the decisions—that if you lock down everything now, you’re going to crash the whole society. So, you do what you can do, as best as you can. Do as much physical separation as you can and ratchet it up at the places you know are at highest risk.
Q: But I heard a guy say, if you think you’re doing too much, you’re probably doing the right amount.
A: That’s me.
Q: I know it’s you. The “15 Days to Slow the Spread” campaign doesn’t mention religious gatherings. I know Pence mentioned them yesterday. But why aren’t they on the 15 days recommendations? All these other places are mentioned.
A: It was implied in no crowds of more than 10 people. But you’re right, crowds in church are important and every time I get a chance to say it, I mention it. I can’t really criticize them strongly for that at all. When you say less than 10, it makes common sense that it involves the church. I say it publicly and even the vice president has said it publicly.
Listen to facts of the pandemic!!! https://t.co/kRxMaPIYhR
— Larry (@Larry75982917) March 24, 2020
The COVID-19 virus has churches scrambling. In many parts of the world, including North America, many churches have been closed to public worship. Bishops and clergy have been furiously sending out emails and instructions, plotting responses and strategizing about the days ahead. Lists of “10 Things To Do in Your Congregation” are making the rounds. From my observations, I can generalize about elements in these responses. There are outliers, of course, but not that many.
The first thing I see is the insistent call to comfort and be comforting. People are afraid and uncertain, we are told, and they need to be loved and assured. These directives are aimed mostly at clergy, but filter down from them: you can’t hug anybody anymore physically, but you should try to do it in other ways, maybe even “virtually.” Call people up; create email chains; issue little daily meditations of warmth and security. This falls into a kind of “motherly” mode. And with it comes another motherly aspect, which is the disciplinary call to behave: wash your hands; don’t get too close; obey the rules; remember that other people count; be kind; be responsible. All this represents an almost fierce maternalization of the church and especially of her leadership.
The second aspect of our moment’s ecclesial response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a corollary of the first. If bishop and clergy all become “Mom,” everybody else becomes “the kids.” Thus, with the church’s maternalization of leadership comes the Christian people’s infantilization. They’re scared, worried, need direction and hand-holding (well, only metaphorically). They also need to be told how to behave, how to be nice to others, how to organize their time well.
A provocative contrary view about online worship from Ephraim Radner: “When it comes to worship, we might learn to pray alone” https://t.co/5oy6vkBGdG
— Jeff Walton (@jeffreyhwalton) March 20, 2020
I asked Collins whether that means we seem to be tracking with what happened in Italy.
“Right,” Collins told me. “If you look at the curve of new cases being diagnosed over the course of the last month, just look at the curve of what happened in Italy, and then look at our curve in the U.S., and you say if you go back eight days from today, they had about the same number of cases that we have today—that is, slightly over 2,000. And then if we follow that same track, then eight days from [March 22], we would be having the same kind of incredible crisis that they are facing.” (The New York Times described the catastrophe befalling Italy: “The coronavirus epidemic raging through Italy has already left streets empty and shops shuttered as 60 million Italians are essentially under house arrest. There are the exhausted doctors and nurses toiling day and night to keep people alive. There are children hanging drawings of rainbows from their windows and families singing from their balconies. But the ultimate metric of pandemics and plagues is the bodies they leave behind. In Italy, with the oldest population in Europe, the toll has been heavy, with more than 2,100 deaths, the most outside of China. On Monday alone, more than 300 people died.”)
Collins added this important qualifier: “Now we have a chance to change that, by applying now the most draconian measures on social distancing to try to limit the spread of coronavirus from person to person. But we will not succeed at changing the course from that exponential curve unless there is full national engagement in those commitments to try to reduce spread. I think we’re getting there; certainly in the last few days there seems to be a lot of waking up to just how serious the threat is, but that’s obviously not universal across this large and complicated country.”
Francis Collins, a highly respected geneticist and the head of the NIH:
“It is incumbent on all of us to severely limit our social interactions. We need to ask the question about every interaction we have, and whether it is necessary or not.”https://t.co/8LL3kf8yI1
— Sarah Pulliam Bailey (@spulliam) March 18, 2020
On a normal Sunday, most of the 100 people filling the pews of the Rev. Lori Cornell’s congregation fit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s description of those at high risk for COVID-19.
So like the majority of churches in the greater Seattle area, Calvary Lutheran Church of Federal Way has suspended its worship services and is turning to technology not only for its weekly celebration of the Eucharist, but for all the pastoral and social contact an aging congregation depends on church for.
But with social distancing and electronic connections come challenges. Cornell is worried older members of her church may become lonesome.
“They have the potential to feel more isolated than ever, so we’re trying to be really mindful of that,” Cornell said. “My concern is for people whose lives very much count on the church and who find themselves often dependent on other people to get them places they need to go, like Bible study, church and other events.”
Her church’s leadership is using Facebook as a way to stay connected, with plans to post homespun sacred music created by church musicians, and leading video chats throughout the week.
For those not technically savvy, the phone has become an important tool, Cornell said.
Christ Saint Paul’stakes the health and well being of our parishioners seriously. With the unknown possibilities of the spread of the coronavirus, the Bishop and CSP leadership has decided for the next two weeks, not to hold our regular services and events.
But we do have new and innovative ways to stay connected to our families to share with you!…
No normal services in the Anglican Diocese of #SouthCarolina for the next two weeks https://t.co/K8tN97aFMG #parishministry #lowcountrylife #worship #coronavirus #covid19 #publichealth #religion #usa pic.twitter.com/bFRmZQNYCz
— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) March 16, 2020
The Roche case offers some encouragement: Brown said that the company started working on its new test last month, and finished the work in six weeks. Roche asked the FDA for emergency clearance earlier this week, and received it around the stroke of midnight Friday. As he announced a national emergency Friday afternoon, President Trump promised that testing capacity would eventually reach 5 million.
Testing serves two purposes. It can tell whether an individual person is sick. But it also acts as our way of knowing how bad the epidemic is, and where it is worst. Other types of technologies might help with the second part, if not the first. Blood tests that look to see if people have antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 –when they become available — can tell us how many people have had Covid-19. Next-generation DNA sequencing technologies could also play a role in monitoring it.
Through all this, the CDC and other health officials now need to follow an old maxim: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Regulatory standards are important, and if the U.S. had organized its response sooner, getting the developers of diagnostic tests and major labs ready, there would have been time for an orderly process. But this is an emergency. And there is a need for speed.
Roche is going to ship out 400k #covid19 test kits out of NJ this weekend to labs CDC has given them hopefully end of next week we’ll have a better visibility on things https://t.co/QRMEDnKuny
— Peter Pham (@peterpham) March 14, 2020
Tim Viney, owner and managing director of Altlantic Geomatics, told MailOnline: ‘Across the country there are thousands of burial grounds, each with important assets, buildings and infrastructure.
‘These valuable assets, in particular memorials and gravestones, must be maintained, records kept of where they are, what they look like.
‘The estimated 35,000,000 burial records relating to the Church of England burial grounds are a huge resource yet they are currently difficult to access.
‘We are delighted to be working with the Church of England with whom we propose a systematic approach across the country to map their churchyards.
‘Integrating the map with images of the memorials and the historic records will protect the records but also make them accessible online.
‘We are in discussion with potential partners to source investment to facilitate a rapid deployment across the country.
‘This is certainly an exciting and challenging project”
Church of England to launch a ‘Google Maps for graves’ w/i five years enabling family historians to search for burial records & locations in an online database –https://t.co/guWCqKDjsV #RealisticVirtualEarth #RealisticVirtualEarthForArchaeology #RealisticVirtualEarthForGenetics ~
— WorldUnivandSch (@WorldUnivAndSch) March 5, 2020
For this reason, degrowth offers no guarantee that environmental impacts will decline. This is all the more so as calls for degrowth are frequently coupled with demands for a return to simpler, less technological, and non-synthetic systems for the provision of food and energy and for production of material goods and services. Less affluent economies more dependent upon production systems that use less technology would substantially increase the resource demands associated with consumption, and would erode or even entirely offset the benefits of lower levels of consumption.
Indeed, all over the world, poor populations dependent on low-productivity technologies often require surprisingly large per capita resource footprints to sustain their meager consumption. One 2012 study in PNAS, for instance, found that the average West African requires the same amount of land as the average Northern European to support a diet that is much poorer calorically and offers much less dietary protein.
By contrast, over the last two centuries, a virtuous cycle of rising energy and resource productivity has allowed for unprecedented levels of human wellbeing. With that has come a growing population — not because people are having more children but because life expectancies are much higher. Greater prosperity has brought rising material consumption — not mainly because of conspicuous consumption in the wealthiest societies, but rather the agrarian, energy, and demographic transitions that have allowed much of the global population to escape rural poverty and achieve something approaching modern living standards.
Growing demand for material goods and services by a growing and increasingly affluent global population has increased the pressure on natural resources. But it has also led to innovation that has raised resource productivity. In this way, rising resource productivity has allowed for both continuing economic growth and the increasing environmental efficiency of the global economy.
Reversing those dynamics will not necessarily result in lower resource usage, or lower environmental impacts. Lowering demand for resources could as easily result in less-productive resource use as in reduced pressure on resources. The combination of large post-growth human populations, economic stagnation, and increasingly abundant natural resources might drive human societies toward less-productive technological systems. The end of growth, in this way, may do more harm to the planet than good.
Yeb Saño believes that the environmental crisis is rooted in three human characteristics, all of which are “closely connected with who we are”. All of these three words, he says, “start with the letter A”.
The first word is arrogance. Arrogance is the belief that you’re better than God or better than nature, that we’re smarter than nature – and that has caused a lot of havoc in the world.
The second word is apathy. Apathy is the dangerous belief that it’s somebody else’s job to care, it’s somebody else’s job to take care of others or take care of the environment.
And the third one is avarice, which is extreme greed. Greed has made this world a much, much worse place to live in. Greed is what drives, for example, corporations to only think about profits and not the people and the planet.
These are three words that “we as Catholics strive to stand up against”, three forms of a lack of love: “the love that Pope Francis reminds us to embrace as a commandment from God and as an example from the life of Jesus”, says Yeb Saño.
A wonderful interview w/ @YebSano following @CathClimateMvmt meeting w/@Pontifex last week “This crisis needs to be a uniting factor for all faith communities & for political leaders…” https://t.co/a7O4cpumrf Scroll down page for audio. #livelaudatosi @LaudatoSi_IRE #LiveLent
— Jane Mellett (@Janemellett) March 1, 2020
Giving an offering via contactless is about to get a whole lot easier in another 300 churches in the UK.
The Church of England has embarked on a new partnership with Visa, SumUp and Caution Your Blast to enable 300 more churches across the UK to accept contactless donations.
With more consumers choosing to make payments with card, mobile and contactless enabled devices, the partnership will offer more options for churchgoers wanting to donate.
Contactless giving available at 300 more churcheshttps://t.co/k36bySfCfG
— Premier Christian (@PremierRadio) February 25, 2020
“Turtles keep you guessing,” she said. “What’s more shocking is since that nest we’re seen five more.”
The early nestings have bad and good implications for sea turtle nesting in South Carolina and across the Southeast. Loggerheads, which lay most of the eggs here, are also nesting earlier.
The phenomenon is likely one more sign that warmer seas and sands are becoming one more threat to the declining species.
But it might mean the ancient turtles themselves are adapting — again — to a changing climate.
Far more of the eggs that are laid in warmer sands emerge as females, disrupting the gender balance needed to reproduce. The trend has worried biologists for the turtles’ future. The turtles, metabolically if not instinctively, might just be looking for cooler sands. The shift in nesting season is occurring along with an apparent northward shift in range.
Sea turtles have begun nesting in Florida, earlier than ever.
South Carolina is seeing the same troubling trend.https://t.co/nkZeGy1ArK
— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) February 24, 2020
ROMANA: (Singing in non-English language).
HARNETT: Now imagine – it’s the early 13th century. You’re sitting inside the Hagia Sophia. Marble pillars rise up around you. Dusty light filters into the windows in the massive dome above. And this is how you might hear Cappella Romana.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROMANA: (Singing in non-English language).
HARNETT: This transformation is possible because of two scholars at Stanford University in two very different fields. Bissera Pentcheva is a professor of art history.
BISSERA PENTCHEVA: A lot of my work is focused on reanimating medieval art and architecture.
HARNETT: Jonathan Abel is in the computer music department.
On this day in 532, Byzantine emperor Justinian I orders the building of a new Orthodox Christian basilica in Constantinople – the Hagia Sophia. pic.twitter.com/kyqCehPCsT
— Marina Amaral (@marinamaral2) February 23, 2020
Recently, several federal agencies reported they’re scaling back remote work programs, citing a lack of data regarding remote workers’ effectiveness.
“Given our current service challenges and lack of data on [the agency’s telework policy’s] impact on public service,” Social Security Administration spokesman Mark Hinkle told The Washington Post, “now is not the time to experiment with working at home.”
And a 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office report on federal telework stated that the agencies it studied “had little data to support the benefits or costs associated with their telework programs. All of the selected agencies could provide some supporting documentation for some of the benefits and only two could provide supporting documentation for some of the costs.”
Gallup analytics has the data.
And the data are clear: Remote work not only improves outcomes and employee branding but is a policy that the most talented employees desire.
Is Working Remotely Effective? Gallup Research Says Yes https://t.co/NRaucH7jhP pic.twitter.com/b0hRZBHHD0
— Stanisław M. Stanuch (@dziennikarz) February 11, 2020
The Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Revd Nick Holtam, the Church of England’s lead bishop on environmental issues, is writing to all bishops and diocesan secretaries this week, in response to the target set at the General Synod last week to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero by 2030.
The most immediate problem facing the C of E is that it has no idea what its carbon footprint is at present. Bishop Holtam will ask parishes to use a new Energy Footprint Tool to measure the energy they use. The online tool also generates a dashboard to show churches how they compare. For details, see cofe.io/footprint.
Responding to the new target, 15 years before the official recommendation, the Bishop said: “We aren’t under any illusion that this will be easy. Synod’s target sets a serious challenge for the whole Church to examine urgently the steps necessary to achieve the kind of year-on-year carbon reductions we need. This is a national goal which will need more than 16,000 local plans supported by the right policies and resource.
“But the science tells us there’s no time to lose if we are to limit the warming of the planet humans are causing. The tone at Synod was overwhelmingly that Christians should respond urgently to our calling to safeguard God’s creation, and go as fast as we can.
“But the science tells us there’s no time to lose if we are to limit the warming of the planet humans are causing. The tone at Synod was overwhelmingly that Christians should respond urgently to our calling to safeguard God’s creation”https://t.co/LhkGt5qsaP
— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 21, 2020
When a company asks permission to pulverize a corpse—to freeze a body solid, then shake it till it shatters—how, exactly, should the government respond? Last September, Derek Schmidt, the attorney general for Kansas, sat down to ponder the specifics. Interest in a new process for disposing of the dead had trickled across the state; it was up to Schmidt to say whether the technology was even legal.
Schmidt’s analysis began on YouTube, where he landed on an animated demonstration that broke down the new mortuary method, known as promession, into steps: First, cadavers are cryogenically frozen; then they’re vibrated into bits, freeze-dried to get the moisture out, and filtered into an urn. In theory, promession would release significantly fewer emissions than fire cremation, which is responsible for 270,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. If true, that would make promession a big draw for the environmentally conscious. Schmidt cross-referenced each step in the promession process against Kansas law in the hopes of answering what turns out to be a highly consequential question: Is vibration into bits a type of cremation, and therefore a legal form of disposition?
Two months later, Schmidt issued his decision. Promession, he announced, “would not meet the requirements of a cremation process as set forth” in state law. His reasoning reads a bit like science fiction and a bit like a rabbi’s parsing of biblical law. Schmidt argued, for instance, that cremation requires “the separation of flesh from bone by the destruction of the flesh.” Promession certainly could be said to destroy the flesh, but the crystallization process doesn’t really separate it from the bone. In that sense, Schmidt concluded that Kansas could not treat it as cremation.
Schimdt’s predicament is not unique. In the last few years, state officials across the country have been forced to map a range of futuristic death technologies onto the creaky regulations of a prior age. Most state disposition laws are antiquated, premised on narrow definitions of “cremation” and “burial” that leave new technologies like promession without the legal grounds to establish themselves. But a few states—Kansas among them—have seized the opportunity. In a bid to attract death-tech companies, and perhaps a piece of the $2 billion fire cremation industry, they’ve been revamping regulations.
“Repsol has shown the net zero 2050 ambition we need,” said Edward Mason, head of responsible investments at the Church of England, which has been buying shares in oil and gas companies so it can push them to make stronger climate commitments.
“Equinor is doing some great stuff, particularly on (Scope 1 and 2 emissions), but I’m not sure a pledge to halve carbon intensity by 2050 does it any more,” he said on Twitter.
Equinor, which has been building a renewables business mainly focused on offshore wind, will also achieve its renewable investment target sooner than planned, its chief financial officer told Reuters on Thursday.
.@Equinor commits to including Scope 3 emissions in its #GHG reduction targets. If met with clear actions and investment choices, commitments like these can help deliver #netzero emissions by 2050. #EUGreenDeal
— WS EU Energy (@WS_EUEnergy) February 7, 2020
In this new decade of “cultural, digital and spiritual disruption,” the evangelical Christian polling firm Barna Group is relaunching its State of the Church survey report after a gap of 10 years of its public release, and using new technology to help churches personalize the insights, beginning with the 2020 report, the group announced.
The upcoming State of the Church 2020 survey “will be the most in-depth and comprehensive study in Barna’s 35-year history,” Barna said in a statement.
Barna President David Kinnaman said the relaunch is being done “in a way we’ve never done it before.”
The project will combine updated research and “a brand-new technology,” Barna said, adding that it has tracked State of the Church survey data on an annual basis for 35 years, but the public release of the survey was discontinued in 2010. “The new research will analyze previous tracked research as well as the new 2020 survey findings.”
At the end of last year, the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo hosted the so-called ExpoCristiana, a commercial event which offers concerts of Christian music, samples of evangelical publishers and even virtual simulations of episodes of the Bible. One of the most striking products was the one offered by the artificial intelligence company Kuzzma under the slogan “Change the way you manage your church”. The company presented a facial recognition service especially aimed at churches. On the first day of ExpoCristiana, Marcelo Scharan, executive director of Kuzzma, gave a conference entitled Personalization, data and churches.
“Data such as gender, age, attendance, arrival time, likely reasons for being late, and many others are analyzed and presented in reports. We can even define if someone needs a pastoral visit”, Scharan said. According to the Kuzzma website, facial recognition works from a high-resolution panoramic camera installed in the churches, that identifies both personal data and the attendance to the worship service. Then, with all that data, they make reports of each person, which include statistics on their behavior and even warnings if there is any abnormal activity. The Brazilian company Igreja Mobile was also selling the facial recognition service at the fair.
Thousands of people will take action to help tackle Climate Change as part of the Church of England’s first ever official green Lent campaign, launched today by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
Environmentalists, activists and climate experts gathered at Lambeth Palace for the official launch of LiveLent 2020 a set of 40 daily reflections, actions and prayers.
It comes on the same day Prime Minister Boris Johnson officially launched the UK’s COP26 strategy ahead of the crucial UN climate talks in Glasgow in November, alongside Sir David Attenborough, climate expert Lord Stern and the outgoing Bank of England Governor Mark Carney.
Those attending the launch were invited to add personal climate commitments to a ‘pledge-tree’, before a panel of expert climate academics, influencers and activists was chaired by the Archbishop.
#LiveLent 2020 is based on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book, Saying Yes to Life, by Dr Ruth Valerio.
Christians urged to plant trees and twin toilets in Church of England’s first official green Lent campaign #LiveLent https://t.co/esY0YoVTZT @ruthvalerio
— Sarah Greenwood (@sayssarahg) February 4, 2020
Pounded by rain bombs from above and rising seas below, Charleston is among the most vulnerable cities in the South to a rapidly warming planet.
City officials estimate it may take $2 billion or more in public money to fortify Charleston against these threats — costs rooted in the rise of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Yet, amid these looming perils and costs, the city government itself has taken relatively modest steps to reduce its own carbon footprint in recent years, a Post and Courier investigation found.
Pounded by rain bombs from above and rising seas below, Charleston is among the most vulnerable cities in the South to a rapidly warming planet.https://t.co/5uxTHUmvTQ
— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) January 26, 2020
General Synod is to be asked to set a target date of 2045 for the Church of England to become carbon-neutral.
The motion will be moved by the Bishop of Salisbury when the Synod meets in London next month. The Rt Rev Nicholas Holtam pointed out that combating climate change was one of the five Anglican ‘marks of mission’.
To help parishes and other church bodies to work towards the net-zero target this week the Church launched an energy ratings system similar to those used for household appliances to help monitor the carbon footprint of its almost 40,000 buildings.
The Bishop said: “The problem is that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And it’s not only the church that is struggling with that, the climate change committee in Parliament’s been having to think about the same issue.”
However, some were unhappy about the target date of 2045.
Brian and Stacey McNaughton had bought their single-family home in Fort Collins, Colo., six years earlier for $525,000. It was the sort of place, situated on an oversize corner lot in a neighborhood filled with doctors and lawyers, that projected the kind of solid middle-class status that the couple had achieved after years of study. Brian McNaughton, once a first-generation college student, was on the tenure track at Colorado State University, and his wife was a nurse anesthetist.
But all of that risked being torn asunder because of the big lie — a lie that they shared, and that Stacey McNaughton was now threatening to expose. She would recount to the police how she had signaled plans to call her husband’s boss, reveal his deception, and derail his career. The couple struggled for control of a phone, and the professor pleaded with his wife to reconsider, before Stacey McNaughton ran out the back door screaming for help. She jumped a fence and took refuge with some neighbors who were having a backyard campfire.
On that night and many thereafter, Brian McNaughton feared that his wife would tell people at Colorado State how he had fabricated a job offer from another university. It was a simple scheme, one designed to earn him the kind of money and respect that is often so elusive for early-career professors. As McNaughton had hoped, the fake letter spurred a counteroffer, forcing his dean and department chair to reconsider what he might be worth.
In July 2015, police responded to a domestic disturbance at the McNaughtons’ home. An officer’s body camera captured interviews with the couple and a secret recording that Stacey McNaughton had made of their argument.
Not long before, Stacey McNaughton had started secretly recording all of the couple’s conversations. In audio from that summer night, which she shared with an officer, she can be heard saying, “You wrote that letter, Brian — that lie. I told you don’t submit it.”
But he had done it, and there was no turning back.
A professor schemed to get a raise and win his department’s respect. Instead, he wrecked his career. https://t.co/7iGDwfg8uj #CHEarchive
— The Chronicle of Higher Education (@chronicle) December 26, 2018
Half the UK’s universities have pledged to sell their shares in fossil fuel companies after a years-long campaign involving protests, hunger strikes and petitions by students worried about climate change.
Some 78 of the UK’s 154 public universities have committed to at least partially divest from fossil fuels, including University College London, York, Liverpool and Exeter, which all said they would ditch oil and gas stocks last year.
According to People & Planet, the group that co-ordinated the students, £12.4bn of endowments across the higher education sector have dumped at least some fossil fuel stocks.
The divestment by universities is the latest sign of the growing influence of young climate activists. Last year, youth-led climate strikes took place across the world, inspired by teenager Greta Thunberg.
Half the UK’s universities have pledged to sell their shares in fossil fuel companies: https://t.co/1hpXskF0Lp by @AttractaMooney
— George Smeeton (@GSmeeton) January 13, 2020
Scientists at the MDI Biological Laboratory, in collaboration with scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, Calif., and Nanjing University in China, have identified synergistic cellular pathways for longevity that amplify lifespan fivefold in C. elegans, a nematode worm used as a model in aging research.
The increase in lifespan would be the equivalent of a human living for 400 or 500 years, according to one of the scientists.
The research draws on the discovery of two major pathways governing aging in C. elegans, which is a popular model in aging research because it shares many of its genes with humans and because its short lifespan of only three to four weeks allows scientists to quickly assess the effects of genetic and environmental interventions to extend healthy lifespan.
Because these pathways are “conserved,” meaning that they have been passed down to humans through evolution, they have been the subject of intensive research. A number of drugs that extend healthy lifespan by altering these pathways are now under development.
We study worms to figure out how to live longer – now researchers have identified synergistic cellular pathways for longevity that amplify lifespan fivefold – how would you like to live to be 400 or 500 years old? https://t.co/JpvtFfmOLe
— John Hagel (@jhagel) January 10, 2020
As we enter a new decade, we are also entering a new era of political economy. Over the centuries, capitalism has evolved through a number of stages, from industrial to managerial to financial capitalism. Now we are entering the age of “surveillance capitalism.”
Under surveillance capitalism, people’s lived experiences are unilaterally claimed by private companies and translated into proprietary data flows. Some of these data are used to improve products and services. The rest are considered a “behavioral surplus” and valued for their rich predictive signals.
These predictive data are shipped to new-age factories of machine intelligence where they are computed into highly profitable prediction products that anticipate your current and future choices. Prediction products are then traded in what I call “behavioral futures markets,” where surveillance capitalists sell certainty to their business customers.
Google’s “clickthrough rate” was the first globally successful prediction product, and its ad markets were the first to trade in human futures. Already, surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, and ever more companies across nearly every economic sector have shown an eagerness to lay bets on our future behavior.
The competitive dynamics of these new markets reveal surveillance capitalism’s economic imperatives.
First, machine intelligence demands a lot of data: economies of scale.
Second, the best predictions also require varieties of data: economies of scope. This drove the extension of surplus capture beyond likes and clicks into the offline world: your jogging gait and pace; your breakfast conversation; your hunt for a parking space; your face, voice, personality, and emotions.
In a third phase of competitive intensity, surveillance capitalists discovered that the most predictive data come from intervening in human action to coax, tune, herd, and modify behavior in the direction of guaranteed outcomes.
From the article: “Whereas the Internet and digital technologies once promised to liberate humanity through disintermediation and shared connections, now they have been turned into tools for behavioral manipulation and exploitation.” https://t.co/uvnEkkId1e
— James Colbert (@HODPublishing) January 9, 2020
By some estimates, Dr. Robbins’s vaccine against the illness, called Hib meningitis, has saved seven million lives since it was licensed in 1989.
Pediatricians who worked in the pre-vaccine days remember feeling their hearts sink when they saw Hib bacteria under a microscope in a baby’s spinal fluid. It meant that, even with antibiotics, the child was at risk of permanent brain damage, deafness or death.
Before the vaccine, Hib meningitis killed about 400,000 children a year, according to the World Health Organization….
I always live in slight fear of seeing a child with deadly HiB meningitis or epiglottitis.
It’s because of people like Dr Robbins that I’ve never seen the latter, and only once the former.
And they didn’t make any money off of it. Thank you, sir. https://t.co/wr4T9orrXA
— Dr. Dipesh Navsaria (@navsaria) December 19, 2019