I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a si…

Continued here

Well behind at halftime: here's how to get the UN Sustainable Development Goals back on track

This week world leaders are gathering at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York to review progress against the Sustainable Development Goals. We’re halfway between when the goals were set in 2015 and when they need to be met in 2030.As authors of a global UN report on the goals, we have a message to share. Currently, the world is not on track to achieve any of the 17 goals.

Continued here

Managers Are Burned Out. Here's How to Help Them Recharge.

As a leader of leaders, you “create the weather” for your team. It’s your job to not only support your burned-out leaders, but also to keep burnout at bay going forward. In this article, the author offers six strategies to help recharge the burned-out managers on your team: 1) Recognize and acknowledge their burnout; 2) Create opportunities for personal connection both in person and virtually; 3) Re-assess, re-prioritize, and re-distribute their work; 4) Revise team agreements about how you all work together; 5) Touch base one-on-one with your leaders on a regular basis; and 6) Set the expectation with team members that they use all of their vacation time — it can be easy to put off or skip vacation when there’s so much to do.

Continued here

UNESCO Adds Sites in Kyiv and Lviv to List of World Heritage in Danger

The agency has been trying to protect Ukraine’s historic sites since the beginning of the war with RussiaUNESCO has added several new Ukrainian sites to its List of World Heritage in Danger, the agency announced on Friday.

Continued here

You Might Like

Manet's 'Olympia' Comes to America for the Very First Time

When Édouard Manet’s Olympia debuted in 1865, viewers at the Paris Salon were aghast. “Spectators were sobbing, shouting, getting into scuffles; the Salon had to hire armed guards,” writes the New York Times’ Jason Farago. “The picture was so stark that visitors kept trying to puncture the canvas with their umbrellas.”Today, the painting is celebrated for heralding the dawn of modern art. Despite its international renown, Olympia has spent the vast majority of its 160-year existence in just one city: Paris, where it resides in the collections of the Musée d’Orsay.

Continued here

Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist's Love Letter to Life

“It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form.”

Continued here

Songbirds That Learn to Make New Sounds Are the Best Problem-Solvers

Birdsâand humansâare vocal learners, meaning they can imitate new vocalizations and use them to communicateBirds can make an array of noises, from elegant trills to ear-piercing squawksâand nearly everything in between. One reason for this wide range is their ability to imitate new vocalizations and communicate with them, a process known as vocal learning. Humans do this, too, when first developing language skills.

Continued here

Make Culture Unconditional

Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Defining, creating, and strengthening a company culture can enhance alignment, connection, and even employee retention. To achieve those bold ambitions, organizations often create complex models, programs, and communication campaigns to share a newly defined culture with employees. This work is often referred to as a “journey” and can last years — but by the time the campaign has been rolled out, the culture has probably changed not just once but many times. The problem with this traditional approach to culture work, although well intentioned, is that the net cast is usually broad, the content is over-generalized, and execution on a team level is optional.

Continued here

Girl Celebrating 7th Birthday Finds 2.95-Carat Diamond

Aspen Brown was celebrating her 7th birthday with her dad and grandma when she made the discovery of a lifetime: a 2.95-carat diamond.Earlier this month, the young girl had opted to spend her special day at Crater of Diamonds State Park, a protected area in southwestern Arkansas. She found the gem in the park’s 37-acre diamond search area, where guests are encouraged to hunt for jewels and take them home.

Continued here

Worried about heat and fire this summer? Here's how to prepare

Roger Jones has provided technical advice on fire climate regimes to the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (Formerly the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning).The Northern Hemisphere summer brought catastrophic fires and floods to many countries. Down south, the winter was the hottest ever recorded in Australia, fuelled by record ocean temperatures.

Continued here

When Britain was gripped by 'fairy mania'

Imagine a fairy. Is the picture that appears in your mind's eye a tiny, pretty, magical figure – a childish wisp with insect-like wings and a dress made of petals? If so, it's likely you've been influenced by Cicely Mary Barker, the British illustrator who created the Flower Fairies. 2023 marks 100 years since the publication of her first book of poems and pictures, Flower Fairies of the Spring – an anniversary currently being celebrated in an exhibition at the Lady Lever Gallery in Merseyside, UK.

Continued here

What You Need to Know as a Young, Black Startup Founder

While two-thirds of all U.S. start-ups are likely to fail, the ones that get funding — and a shot at success — are overwhelmingly white (71.6%) and male (88.3%). In 2022, U.S. venture funding hit $198.4 billion, and less than 1% went to Black-founded start-ups. How can young, Black founders overcome these obstacles?

Continued here

How to Have a Successful Meeting with Your Boss's Boss

Taking the time and effort to invest in upward relationships, such as those with skip-level managers, requires strategy, humility, and diligence. After all, leadership is not only about managing those below you, but also navigating the complexities above. In this article, the author offers practical tips for holding a successful skip-level meeting.

Continued here

How Companies Can Recommit to Their DEI Goals

After the summer of 2020 in the United States, many organizations made a big push to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in their ranks and operations. But now, many fear that that momentum is slipping, especially in the face of economic headwinds. Laura Morgan Roberts, organizational psychologist and professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, says it is time to recommit to these efforts by creating the conditions for all workers to flourish. She explains four freedoms that organizations can foster to allow employees to become their best selves — and even be able to fade into the background when they choose. Roberts wrote the HBR Big Idea article “Where Does DEI Go From Here?”

Continued here

It's Time for a New Model for Operations Management

Covid-19 was the death knell for traditional hierarchical command-and-control operations management. In its place a new model has emerged that’s far better equipped to deal with today’s disruptive, volatile, and unpredictable environment. In this model, decision-making responsibility is broadly dispersed to where it makes the most sense, resulting in faster, more accurate decisions in response to changing conditions. This model is built on four pillars — trust, talent, transparency, and technology. Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate Nestlé is an example of a company that has embraced this concept in its factories and, as a result, has built a resilient operational model that has helped the company effectively respond to adverse events and challenges.

Continued here

The Crucial Role of ID Verification in the Digital Economy

At its core, ID verification tools prove your information – name, address, age, phone number – is valid and linked to you. Many different technologies can be used to achieve that one goal. The author, the CEO of Mastercard, explores how the technology works, where it’s used, and the potential pitfalls of digital IDs.

Continued here

How I rewired my brain in six weeks

"It's surprisingly hard to think of nothing at all", is one of my first thoughts as I'm lying in the maw of a machine that is scanning my brain. I was told to focus on a black cross while the functional Magnetic Resonance Imagine (fMRI) machine does its noisy work. It also feels impossible to keep my eyes open. The hum of the scanner is somewhat hypnotic, and I worry a little bit that drifting off will affect how my brain appears on the resulting images.As a science journalist I've always been fascinated by the workings of the mind, which is how I found myself inside a scanner at Royal Holloway, University of London, to have my brain examined before embarking on a six-week brain-altering course.

Continued here

Using AI to revive nostalgia -- and preserve Hong Kong's past

Michael Chang is the CEO of Capture.HK, an offshoot of U.S.-based media digitization company Capture. The service was launched in Hong Kong in September 2022. Riding a wave of nostalgia about old Hong Kong, Capture.HK has digitized albums and video tapes for hundreds of customers. Firstly, it was an underserved market. Some mom-and-pop shops in Sham Shui Po were doing it, but it was expensive, slow, and the quality was not very good. So there was a big opportunity.

Continued here

How Warren Buffett Rigged a Dice Game with Bill Gates

Weird math can explain why Warren Buffett had the advantage in a dice game against Bill GatesWarren Buffett once challenged Bill Gates to an unusual game of dice. Buffett placed four dice on the table and explained the rules. They would each pick a die, roll it a bunch of times, and whoever rolled a higher number more often would win. These weren’t numbered like standard dice. The typical one through six were replaced with other numbers that varied from die to die. As a supposed courtesy, Buffett invited Gates to pick his die first. This aroused suspicion, compelling Gates to inspect the dice for himself and then insist that Buffett choose first.

Continued here

AI Could Smuggle Secret Messages in Memes

In an advance that could benefit spies and dissidents alike, computer scientists have developed a way to communicate confidential information so discreetly that an adversary couldn't even know secrets were being shared. Researchers say they have created the first-ever algorithm that hides messages in realistic text, images or audio with perfect security: there is no way for an outside observer to discover a message is embedded. The scientists announced their results at the recent International Conference on Learning Representations.The art of hiding secrets in plain sight is called steganography—distinct from the more commonly used cryptography, which hides the message itself but not the fact that it is being shared. To securely conceal their information, digital steganographers aim to embed messages in strings of words or images that are statistically identical to normal communication. Unfortunately, human-generated content is not predictable enough to achieve this perfect security. Artificial intelligence generates text and images using rules that are better defined, potentially enabling completely undetectable secret messages.

Continued here

Why We'll Never Live in Space

NASA wants astronaut boots back on the moon a few years from now, and the space agency is investing heavily in its Artemis program to make it happen. It's part of an ambitious and risky plan to establish a more permanent human presence off-world. Companies such as United Launch Alliance and Lockheed Martin are designing infrastructure for lunar habitation. Elon Musk has claimed SpaceX will colonize Mars. But are any of these plans realistic? Just how profoundly difficult would it be to live beyond Earth—especially considering that outer space seems designed to kill us?Humans evolved for and adapted to conditions on Earth. Move us off our planet, and we start to fail—physically and psychologically. The cancer risk from cosmic rays and the problems that human bodies experience in microgravity could be deal-breakers on their own. Moreover, there may not be a viable economic case for sustaining a presence on another world. Historically, there hasn't been much public support for spending big money on it. Endeavors toward interplanetary colonization also bring up thorny ethical issues that most space optimists haven't fully grappled with.

Continued here

Introducing Scientific American 's Redesign, Newsletter and Podcasts

Geoengineering is happening, AI wants to talk with animals, and why we aren’t going to live in spaceYou may have noticed we have a new logo. How do you like it? We're excited to present our redesign with the October print issue of Scientific American. We have new color schemes, updated graphics styles and fonts that are easy on the eyes. We've rearranged the order of our print sections to start with nuggets of news in Advances, which we follow with in-depth articles and then our columns and other departments. A new Contributors page will introduce you to some of the researchers, writers, artists, photographers and data analysts featured in each issue. It's not a radical change from our previous design, but we think it's fresh and lively and inviting. And we all love the letter C in Scientific American's new logo—it's swoopy and crescent-moon-y.

Continued here

The Father of Environmental Justice Reflects on the Movement He Started

Four decades into his activism, Robert Bullard looks back on his legacy and the work ahead.[CLIP: “The residents in this small community fear the worst for the future of their homes because of flooding. They say it’s because of a four-lane highway built by the state several years ago. The father of environmental justice, Dr. Robert Bullard, who grew up in this community almost 50 years ago is now back.”]

Continued here

How Climate Change Made Libya's Flooding Even More Devastating

Climate change, civil war and international sanctions all contributed to the devastation caused by some of Libya’s worst flooding ever, researchers sayThere are fears that 20,000 people have died in Libya in devastating floods that began on 11 September. The official death toll of more than 5,000 is likely to increase: at least another 10,000 people are missing.

Continued here

Pink Diamonds Erupted to Earth's Surface after Early Supercontinent's Breakup

Western Australia’s Argyle Mine is famous for its rare pink diamonds, and scientists now think they know how these formed: a tectonic collision followed by the breakup of a supercontinentWestern Australia’s Argyle mine was among nature’s preeminent treasure troves for nearly 40 years. At its peak, Argyle produced more colored diamonds than anywhere else on Earth and earned an especially sparkling reputation for its unparalleled cache of pink diamonds.

Continued here

How to Address 'Medical Gaslighting'

When doctors tell a patient “It’s all in your head,” that’s medical gaslighting. Here’s how to address an issue that disproportionately impacts the health of women, LGBTQ individuals and the elderlyThe following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.

Continued here

Behind the Scenes of Scientific American 's New Redesign

Today we introduce to the world Scientific American’s redesign, which we hope will nod to our rich history while also look forward to the everchanging landscape of publishingToday we introduce the redesign to the world. While I’m proud to have been able to do this twice, it’s hard to believe how much work that was done. (And when I say “we,” I mean the whole staff with the assistance of the design firm Pentagram. It couldn’t have been done without everyone’s help.)

Continued here

Possible New Human Species Found through 300,000-Year-Old Jawbone Fossil

A jawbone from eastern China that displays both modern and archaic features could represent a new branch of the human family treeA fossilized jawbone discovered in a cave in eastern China bears a curious mix of ancient and modern features, according to a detailed analysis that compares it with dozens of other human specimens. The finding, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, indicates that the 300,000-year-old bone could have belonged to an as-yet undescribed species of archaic human.

Continued here

Does Moving to Another Country for Work Lead to Higher Pay?

Working abroad can give you invaluable experience, but beware of the costs, say Wharton’s Martine Haas and Matthew Bidwell.The era of globalization has ushered in a world of new opportunities for business professionals, granting them the chance to work across diverse locations around the globe. Consultants, analysts, and managers, in particular, have often embraced moving to another country, lured by the prospect of exploring new horizons and the novelty that life abroad offers. However, beyond the allure of personal enrichment, does this international mobility translate into financial gain?

Continued here

An economy powered by sun and wind -- it's almost here

With some of the highest energy bills in Southeast Asia and extreme weather to match, the Philippines experiences the climate crisis -- and climate activism -- as a part of daily life. Clean energy advocate Kala Constantino highlights how people across the country are coming together to transform policies, power and the economy as the island nation maps out its green revolution.

Continued here

Rebecca Collyer: How to supercharge renewables and energize the world

The power sector generates the electricity that sustains modern life -- but it's also the number one contributor to climate change. We need a swift and equitable shift to renewable energy, says 2023 Audacious Project grantee and ReNew2030 executive director Rebecca Collyer. In conversation with TED's David Biello, she introduces a new coalition of governments, businesses and communities that aims to drastically scale wind and solar capacity in the 30 highest-emitting countries. Learn more about their plan -- and why Collyer has hope for a greener, more equitable future. (This ambitious idea is part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)

Continued here

The Apple iPhone 15 Proves It's OK Not to Love Your Phone

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDIf you've found your way to this review, you've probably already decided you don't want to spend more than $1,000 on an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max. You don't find metallurgical advances alluring, you don't care about an extra Action Button, and you don't fancy yourself a budding filmmakerâpardon me, content creatorâwho at any moment might go viral. You're a normie, and you own it.

Continued here

Chinese Spies Infected Dozens of Networks With Thumb Drive Malware

For much of the cybersecurity industry, malware spread via USB drives represents the quaint hacker threat of the past decade—or the one before that. But a group of China-backed spies appears to have figured out that global organizations with staff in developing countries still keep one foot in the technological past, where thumb drives are passed around like business cards and internet cafés are far from extinct. Over the past year, those espionage-focused hackers have exploited this geographic time warp to bring retro USB malware back to dozens of victims’ networks.At the mWise security conference today, researchers from cybersecurity firm Mandiant revealed that a China-linked hacker group they’re calling UNC53 has managed to hack at least 29 organizations around the world since the beginning of last year using the old-school approach of tricking their staff into plugging malware-infected USB drives into computers on their networks. While those victims span the United States, Europe, and Asia, Mandiant says many of the infections appear to originate from multinational organizations’ Africa-based operations, in countries including Egypt, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, and Madagascar. In some cases, the malware—in fact, several variants of a more than decade-old strain known as Sogu—appears to have traveled via USB stick from shared computers in print shops and internet cafés, indiscriminately infecting computers in a widespread data dragnet.

Continued here

DeepMind's New AI Can Predict Genetic Diseases

About 10 years ago, Å½iga Avsec was a PhD physics student who found himself taking a crash course in genomics via a university module on machine learning. He was soon working in a lab that studied rare diseases, on a project aiming to pin down the exact genetic mutation that caused an unusual mitochondrial disease.This was, Avsec says, a "needle in a haystack" problem. There were millions of potential culprits lurking in the genetic codeâDNA mutations that could wreak havoc on a person's biology. Of particular interest were so-called missense variants: single-letter changes to genetic code that result in a different amino acid being made within a protein. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, and proteins are the building blocks of everything else in the body, so even small changes can have large and far-reaching effects.

Continued here

High Blood Pressure Is the World's Biggest Killer. Now There's a Plan to Tackle It

The World Health Organization (WHO) is taking on the world's worst killer, laying out its first plan to conquer hypertensionâa level of high blood pressure that affects one in every three adults globally. That figure has doubled since 1990. It's now up to 1.3 billion people.High blood pressure might sound like a disease of rich nations, but in a report released today during the United Nations General Assembly, the WHO said that three-fourths of people living with hypertension reside in low- and middle-income nations. Nearly half of them have no idea they have the condition, which causes heart attacks, kidney disease, and stroke. Four-fifths of them, including both people with a diagnosis and those who don't know they are affected, aren't getting adequate treatment to control it.

Continued here

Everything We Know About Neuralink's Brain Implant Trial

Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink has announced it is one step closer to putting brain implants in people.Today, the company stated that it will begin recruiting patients with paralysis to test its experimental brain implant and that it has received approval from a hospital institutional review board. Such boards are independent committees assembled to monitor biomedical research involving human subjects and flag any concerns to investigators. Neuralink is dubbing this “the Prime Study,” for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface.

Continued here