Challenges in Becoming Data-Driven | Urgency of Fungal Threat to Humans | Bacterial Colonies' Cost Savings for the Pentagon | Low Emotional Intelligence and Toxic Words

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Why Becoming a Data-Driven Organization Is So Hard - Harvard Business Review

Companies have been working to become more data-driven for many years at this point, with mixed results. These efforts play out over time in organizations, and persistence, resilience, execution, and a relentless drive to employ data to make more informed business decisions are what distinguishes those companies that prevail from those who continue to struggle. But while the mission may remain steady, the particulars change.

Right now, the biggest challenge for organizations working on their data strategy might not have to do with technology at all. In the latest NewVantage Partners annual survey, which tracks the progress of corporate data initiatives, corporate chief data, information, and analytics executives reported that cultural change is the most critical business imperative. It’s an understandable problem: to a degree that is perpetually underestimated, becoming data-driven is about the ability of people and organizations to adapt to change. Long-established companies, which have been successful over generations or centuries, are unlikely to change overnight — adoption of the internet through digital transformation efforts has played out over the course of the past quarter century. Similarly, the effort by companies to become data-driven represents a business transformation that is playing out over the course of a generation. Much has been achieved, yet more remains to be done.

First, the Covid-19 pandemic — and the disruptions it caused — raised awareness of the importance of data, science, and facts. While companies may have paid lip service to the importance of data before, the case that good data is essential to making informed, prudent, and judicious business decisions has been made crystal clear over the past two years.

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Humans Can No Longer Ignore the Threat of Fungi - The Atlantic

Back at the turn of the 21st century, valley fever was an obscure fungal disease in the United States, with fewer than 3,000 reported cases a year, mostly in California and Arizona. Two decades later, cases of valley fever have exploded, increasing roughly sevenfold by 2019.

And valley fever isn’t alone. Fungal diseases in general are appearing in places they have never been seen before, and previously harmless or mildly harmful fungi are becoming more dangerous for people. One likely reason for this worsening fungal situation, scientists say, is climate change. Shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns are expanding where disease-causing fungi occur; climate-triggered calamities can help fungi disperse and reach more people; and warmer temperatures create opportunities for fungi to evolve into more dangerous agents of disease.

For a long time, fungi have been a neglected group of pathogens. By the late 1990s, researchers were already warning that climate change would make bacterial, viral, and parasite-caused infectious diseases such as cholera, dengue, and malaria more widespread. “But people were not focused at all on the fungi,” says Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist and an immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That’s because, until recently, fungi have caused humans relatively little trouble.

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Colonies of bacteria could save the Pentagon billions - The Economist

PLAQUE ON TEETH, slime on stones, gunge around taps and showers. Biofilms—slimy, durable colonies of bacteria—are everywhere. Much of the research into them focuses on the hard-to-treat infections they can cause in people. But they can damage inanimate objects, too.

Some biofilms contain sulphate-reducing bacteria, for instance, which respire using sulphate rather than oxygen. The end product is hydrogen sulphide, which can cause pitting in steel. Other sorts can corrode the inside of a fighter jet’s fuel tanks. On a ship’s hull, bacterial colonies can become a base for seaweed and other growth that increases drag. In 2016, America’s armed forces reckoned unwanted biofilms cost “billions” each year.

DARPA, a storied American military research outfit, hopes to turn that problem into its own solution. A bit like trendy edible “probiotic” foods, its “Arcadia” programme hopes to replace harmful bacteria with helpful ones. Tiffany Prest, Arcadia’s manager, notes that a few naturally occurring helpful biofilms are already known. Those containing bacteria from the genus Vibrio, for instance, seem to be able to protect steel. One paper, published in 2020, found that such a biofilm reduced steel corrosion in seawater by 68%.

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People Who Use These 3 Toxic Words Have Very Low Emotional Intelligence - Inc.com

There's a toxic three-word phrase that people with low emotional intelligence use a little too often.

To explain why it's such a bad choice, it helps to examine a separate, one-word term that most people have never even heard of.

What are litotes? They're an ironic figure of speech the posits the denial of an opposite, instead of a simply making a straightforward statement.

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