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 S34Sharmi Surianarain: Caregiving is real work -- let's treat it that way   Every day, people around the world spend 16 billion hours on unpaid care work — cooking for families, caring for children and older relatives and other routine household tasks — often in addition to other jobs. Employment advocate Sharmi Surianarain says we need to not only acknowledge this labor but also build supportive workplaces that put policies with care work top of mind.
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S32How Fintech Lending Helps SMEs Access Bank Funding  A new study finds a sustainable way for French SMEs, fintech lenders, and banks to work together, with comparable takeaways for the U.S.Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in any country routinely face hurdles in securing bank loans for the usual reasons: They can’t provide collateral to secure loans; they appear to be riskier borrowers than larger firms; or regulators have stricter norms for bank lending to them. But there is a sweet spot where SMEs and banks can work together, with fintech lenders playing a matchmaker, according to a new paper by experts at Wharton and elsewhere titled, “Collateral Effects: The Role of FinTech in Small Business Lending.”
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S19Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language  The continent of Australia is home to more than 250 spoken Indigenous languages and 800 dialects. Yet, one of its linguistic cornerstones wasn't spoken, but carved.Known as message sticks, these flat, rounded and oblong pieces of wood were etched with ornate images on both sides that conveyed important messages and held the stories of the continent's Aboriginal people – considered the world's oldest continuous living culture. Message sticks are believed to be thousands of years old and were typically carried by messengers over long distances to reinforce oral histories or deliver news between Aboriginal nations or language groups.
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S25To Understand Sex, We Need to Ask the Right Questions  Sex is one of the major cultural and political fault lines of our time. Legislation aimed at regulating who may participate in different arenas of society, including girls’ and women’s sports, is being passed with some regularity. These legislative efforts tend not only to conflate sex and gender but also to jumble up biological traits such as hormone levels with behavioral/performance features such as sprint speed or jump height. Disputes arise in part from confusion and disagreement over what is meant by “sex.”Within academia, disagreements about sex recently came to a head when the American Anthropological Association (AAA), the world’s largest professional organization for anthropologists, and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) removed a panel discussion entitled “Let’s Talk about Sex Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology” from their upcoming annual meeting. The panel was submitted for review and initially accepted in mid-July. It was then removed in late September, following concerns in the anthropological community that the panel conveyed antitransgender sentiment and decrepit ways of thinking about human variation.
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S17How Project Managers Can Say No -- While Preserving Relationships  Handling scope creep is one of the most challenging – and important — aspects of a project manager’s role. This often means saying “no” when stakeholders request additional features or changes. In this article, the author outlines practical strategies for how to push back on more work in a way that maintains your relationship with the requester, whether that’s the project sponsor, a customer, or another stakeholder.
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S23China's biggest gay dating app wants to beat Grindr  To Thitiwatt “Pete” Sirasjtakorn, the gay dating app Blued offers more than hookups. Struggling with depression, a recent breakup, and the stigma that came with his HIV diagnosis in 2016, he went live on Blued to show his everyday life — eating in a restaurant, shopping in a department store, or singing while driving his car. Sometimes he even livestreamed himself sleeping. “I don’t want to be looking for sex all the time,” said the 33-year-old, from Thailand’s southern city of Hat Yai. “When I feel lonely but I don’t want to talk with anybody, I just get on livestreaming, and I feel there are many people staying with me.” In 2018, Thitiwatt went public about his HIV status as more than 1,000 viewers tuned in to his livestream on Blued. Since then, alongside Facebook and Twitter, he has advocated for the rights of sexual minorities and people with HIV on Blued, where he has more than 60,000 followers. “This is the best way for me to reach out to people,” Thitiwatt told Rest of World.
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S20Did Australia's boomerangs pave the way for flight?  The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.
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S24An Indian edtech that helps students live out their study-abroad dreams  Leverage Edu is a study-abroad platform that helps students find courses and apply to international universities. It has, of late, also helped students get education loans, apply for visas, and find accommodation. The company, founded by Akshay Chaturvedi, has raised $70 million, and is valued at $150 million. It is one of the few profitable edtech companies in India. While the majority of Leverage Edu’s revenue comes from Indian students, about 7% of its users are from Nigeria, and 2% from Nepal.
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S35Craft Scary-Good Jack-O'-Lanterns With Our Favorite Pumpkin Carving Kits  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 WIREDGrowing up, I was never satisfied with the pumpkin carving kits my folks would bring home from department stores and discount outlets. The cheap plastic handles bent easily, and the dull blades made carving out a jack-o'-lantern rough work for my small arm muscles. It was like trying to cut through a wooden chair leg with another wooden chair leg. Like any good ’90s kid who thought safety was just marketing jargon, I supplemented my toolkit with steak knives and metal mixing spoons from the kitchen drawers.
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S28Spicy Food Probably Doesn't Cause Long-Term Harm  The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.Everyone has a different tolerance for spicy food — some love the burn, while others can’t take the heat. But the scientific consensus on whether spicy food can have an effect — positive or negative — on your health is pretty mixed.
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S26All Natural Numbers Are Either Happy or Sad. Some Are Narcissistic, Too  There are many different types of numbers, some of which you may remember from school: natural, rational, irrational, imaginary, calculable and incalculable numbers. Today, however, we are going to talk about something cheerful, namely, the “happy numbers.” Yes, they do indeed appear in mathematics, and that really is their technical name.Happy numbers don’t have any real-world applications, but they do have amazing properties, which is why they are so popular among amateur mathematicians. For example, all natural numbers can be divided into either “happy” or “sad” numbers. And a generalization of “happiness” leads to the “narcissistic numbers,” which are strongly fixated on themselves.
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S13Getting Feedback Right on Diverse Teams  We know that teams mixing people of different generations, genders, and cultures yield better outcomes, and that frank, constructive feedback is key to improving individual, group, and organizational performance. But these two attributes — diversity and candor — often clash, says Erin Meyer, a professor at INSEAD. She’s studied the challenges that arise when teammates with different backgrounds try to give one another advice and offers recommendations for overcoming them, including establishing norms around regular feedback and ensuring that it is asked for, designed to assist, and actionable. She’s the author of the HBR article “When Diversity Meets Feedback.”
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S18Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake  Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only New Zealand's largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel.
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S6S22Ride-hailing unions in Africa are struggling for traction  In 2016, Nigerian Uber driver Ibrahim Ayoade co-founded Africa’s first gig drivers’ union, the Amalgamated Union of App-based Transporters of Nigeria. He has since advocated for the rights of drivers who work with ride-hailing apps like Bolt, Uber, and inDrive — from sharing their grievances on social media to organizing strikes and rallies to draw the government’s attention. Through WhatsApp and Telegram groups, Ayoade has gathered and mobilized hundreds of gig drivers in the country.But he believes there has been minimal improvement in the lives of those he represents. “We have gone through years of struggle as African drivers and have organized ourselves dating back to 2016. But as ride-hailing unions and organizations in Africa, we are struggling to gain momentum,” Ayoade told Rest of World. “Our industry is taken for granted because we do not have the capacity to fight the capitalist companies we work for.”
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S27S15How the United States Air Force Accelerated AI Adoption  In August 2022, the Pentagon tasked Victor Lopez, then a captain in the U.S. Air Force, with launching a new Air Force innovation unit that leveraged commercial developers and military talent to acquire advanced technologies. Having been granted flexibility in the setup of the office, Lopez pondered the complexities of his assignment and the decisions around organizational design he would have to make.
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S7S21Could we find alien life via its pollution?  It's the Earth's atmosphere that he's usually concerned with. But one day about 10 years ago, a colleague knocked on Gonzalo González Abad's door and asked him an unexpected question: "If you were looking for traces of a technologically advanced alien civilisation, light years away from us, how would you try to do it?"González Abad, an atmospheric scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, thought for a moment before replying, "CFCs" – chlorofluorocarbons. On Earth, various appliances including aerosol cans and fridges released these gases for years, in huge volumes, before we realised that CFCs were eroding the ozone layer.
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S36How to Play Your Favorite Google Play Mobile Games on PC  Google is currently running a beta test of its new Google Play Games for PC service, enabling you to play Android games on your Windows desktop or laptop. The free service allows you to play select titles on a bigger screen with a keyboard and mouse. Google syncs your progress across devices, so you can pick up on your computer where you left off on your phone and vice versa.Not that familiar with Google's games service? Check out our guides to subscribing to Google Play Pass or the Best Mobile Game Controllers.
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S67The Axis of Resistance Has Been Gathering Strength  For the first time since 2006, the Lebanese are again facing the prospect of a devastating war with Israel, on the back of the current conflict in Gaza. Much of the population does not want, and knows it cannot afford, such a war. Lebanon is still in the throes of an economic collapse that began in 2019. Yet Hezbollah, which dominates Lebanon’s political scene, seems moved less by what its countrymen want than by the strategic priorities of its sponsor, Iran.The Iranians have worked painstakingly in the past decade to build up a redoubtable deterrence capability on Israel’s borders with Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. Hezbollah realizes that a full-scale conflict might weaken its hold over Lebanon and will try to avoid such an outcome. But ultimately, the party will follow Iran’s lead.
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S59S30Global Fossil-Fuel Demand Can Peak Before 2030 - Here's How  It’s possible for fossil-fuel demand to peak before the end of the decade, but emissions would still remain high enough to increase the global average temperature by more than two degrees Celsius, according to the World Energy OutlookCLIMATEWIRE | Global demand for coal, oil and gas may peak before 2030, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.
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S31What Role Should the Federal Reserve Play in the Economy? | Christina Skinner  Wharton’s Christina Parajon Skinner demystifies the Federal Reserve, one of the most influential and important institutions in the global economy. This episode is part of a series on “The Economy & You.”Dan Loney: We talk about the Federal Reserve almost daily right now because of everything that’s going on with the economy. But for those who don’t follow it as closely, what does the Fed do?
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S33A cleaner world could start in a rice field  Rice is the world's largest food source — and it's also a massive emitter of methane gas, a key contributor to climate change. Fifth-generation rice farmer Jim Whitaker and his daughter, farmer and conservationist Jessica Whitaker Allen, are working to slash rice's environmental impacts with innovative, sustainable farming practices. They share how they're keeping their family farm in Arkansas profitable while also spreading green farming practices to their neighbors — and, eventually, the rest of the world. "If you take care of the planet, it will take care of you," says Whitaker Allen.
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S29Flesh-Eating Bacteria Cases Spiked in Florida after Hurricane Ian  A recent study found that Hurricane Ian led to a spike in cases of vibriosis, a life-threatening illness caused by water-borne vibrio bacteriaHurricane Ian slammed into southwest Florida as a Category 4 storm in September last year, killing 149 people — the most deaths attributable to a single hurricane in the state in nearly a century. But the official death count didn’t include one of the most gruesome ways people died as a result of the storm.
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S10S50How do kingfishers avoid concussions when diving? It might be in their genes  There are many different species of kingfisher, and those that eat fish hunt by repeatedly diving head-first into the water when they spot tasty prey without suffering brain injuries like concussions. It turns out that diving kingfishers have several modified genes associated with diet and brain structure, according to a new paper published in the journal Communications Biology—notably mutations in genes related to the tau proteins that help stabilize neuron structure, although they can be harmful if too many build up.
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