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 S67The goats fighting fires in Los Angeles   It's a typical Los Angeles scene: the Pacific Ocean sparkling under a crystal-clear, bright blue sky, with miles of golden sandy beaches stretching as far as the eye can see. There's also a herd of goats precariously perched on a clifftop, enjoying the multimillion-dollar view.These aren't just any goats, though – they're California's new secret weapon in the fight against wildfires, and they're being put out to graze across the state.
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S66To Scale GenAI, Companies Need to Focus on 3 Factors  The risk with generative AI is not that leaders fail to try it, but that trying is as far as they get. Despite the progress made by vendors, using AI-enhanced productivity tools alone will not give you a competitive edge — just as provisioning smartphones, email, or web access to your team is nothing more strategic than providing electricity or running water. There are three drivers of AI scale: community, commonality, and coordination. Companies should enable their explorers, build platforms instead of buying products, and prioritize for impact.
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S68How common are unexplained outbreaks of disease?  It began one spring morning in 1993, when a Navajo family pulled into a service station in New Mexico and dialled 911. Their son, a 19-year-old marathon runner, had suddenly developed breathing problems. He was rushed to the local hospital by ambulance, where he died. The doctors were stumped – what could have killed someone so young and healthy? It soon transpired that the marathon runner's death was not an isolated incident. He had been on the way to his fiancée's funeral, after she had succumbed to a similar respiratory illness just a few days earlier.
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S70Scientists Sequence DNA from a 3,000-Year-Old Brick  A clay brick from the National Museum of Denmark from which ancient DNA samples were derived.Thousands of years ago people building a palace molded mud from beside the Tigris River into a brick, scooping up parts of nearby plants in the process. Researchers recently managed to tease discernible plant DNA from that brick, providing a rare look at what was growing in Mesopotamia (now part of Iraq) nearly three millennia ago, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.
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S63Research: Setbacks Can Actually Boost Your Career  If you’ve hit a big pothole on the road to success, take heart. Research shows that setbacks can galvanize your career in unexpected ways that make you more successful. Three practices are key to turning them to your advantage: exploring whether your goals still fit your aspirations, opening yourself to unorthodox opportunities, and adopting a growth mindset.
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S70Sandra Day O'Connor, the Mom Next Door--And So Much More  We were neighbors when I was growing up in Phoenix, Arizona. She was always the adult I looked up to.To me, she was always Mrs. O’Connor, the mom next door. Yet she was always—even then, in the mid-1960s in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona—the person who would be Justice O’Connor. Long before her breakthrough appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court made her one of America’s most renowned jurists, Sandra Day O’Connor showed the qualities of pragmatism, wisdom, and patience with human frailty that marked her time on the Court—and make her legacy more precious than ever today.
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S69The final frontier? How humans could live underwater in 'ocean stations'  A cable vanishes from the surface, stretching away into the abyss. The water is crystal clear, yet just 20m (66ft) down – even with its lights on – the remote operated vehicle (ROV) attached to that cable is beyond the reach of our vision. What must it be like looking up from that depth? What about 10 times that depth? Most humans who venture down that far can only get a brief glimpse of what life is like at those depths. But what if you were able to stay down there for days? That is exactly what the experts at Deep aim to do.Manufacturing of the ocean technology and exploration company's "subsea habitats" has already begun and, on 3 November 2026, they plan to deploy a crew of six fully trained "aquans" to their newly unveiled Sentinel oceanic habitat system. Deep hopes this will begin an era of humanity's continuous presence underwater, an ambition that will mirror the achievements already made in outer space. The technology will allow people to live at depths of up to 200m (656 ft) for up to 28 days at a time – revolutionising the way scientists observe, monitor and understand the oceans.
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S65When Charismatic CEOs Are an Asset -- and When They're a Liability  Starting in the 1980s, a generation of larger-than-life CEOs became full-blown celebrity, but over time, research suggested that charismatic CEOs tended to have drawbacks at leaders. However, charisma can be especially useful in two business concepts with big unknowns: entrepreneurial startups and corporate turnarounds. In these settings, when everyone — investors, employees, customers, suppliers — is dealing with enormous uncertainties, a leader’s charisma can give people the faith necessary to take risks.
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S64To Craft a Purpose That Motivates Your Team, Balance Pragmatism and Idealism  While many leaders strive to energize and motivate their teams to do work that matters, the unfortunate reality is that employees often feel disconnected to their company’s core purpose. Purpose statements, if they exist at all, tend to be too vague or too lofty, or both. To use purpose to drive business, leaders need to balance idealism and pragmatism. This article discusses how to develop and implement a purpose for your business that is both clear and demanding, and that stretches between current strategy and long-term plans.
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S2What VUCA Really Means for You  It’s become a trendy managerial acronym: VUCA, short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and a catchall for “Hey, it’s crazy out there!” It’s also misleading: VUCA conflates four distinct types of challenges that demand four distinct types of responses. That makes it difficult to know how to approach a challenging situation and easy to use VUCA as a crutch, a way to throw off the hard work of strategy and planning—after all, you can’t prepare for a VUCA world, right?
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S3A Leader's Framework for Decision Making  Simple contexts are characterized by stability and cause-and-effect relationships that are clear to everyone. Often, the right answer is self-evident. In this realm of “known knowns,” leaders must first assess the facts of a situation—that is, “sense” it—then categorize and respond to it.
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S4How Information Gives You Competitive Advantage The information revolution is sweeping through our economy. No company can escape its effects. Dramatic reductions in the cost of obtaining, processing, and transmitting information are changing the way we do business. Most general managers know that the revolution is under way, and few dispute its importance. As more and more of their time and […]
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S5The 4 Types of Innovation and the Problems They Solve  Innovation is, at its core, about solving problems — and there are as many ways to innovate as there are different types of problems to solve. Just like we wouldn’t rely on a single marketing tactic for the life of an organization, or a single source of financing, we need to build up a portfolio of innovation strategies designed for specific tasks. Leaders identify the right type of strategy to solve the right type of problem, just by asking two questions: How well we can define the problem and how well we can define the skill domain(s) needed to solve it. Well-defined problems that benefit from well-defined skills fall into the category of “sustaining innovation.” Most innovation happens here, because most of the time we’re trying to get better at something we’re already doing. “Breakthrough innovation” is needed when we run into a well-defined problem that’s just devilishly hard to solve. In cases like these, we need to explore unconventional skill domains. When the reverse is true — skills are well-defined, but the problem is not — we can tap into “disruptive innovation” strategies. And when nothing is well-defined, well, then we’re in the exploratory, pioneering realm of basic research. There are always new problems to solve; learn to apply the solution that best fits your current problem.
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S6TLC's 1995 hit Waterfalls: The number one song that promoted safe sex  In the mid-1990s, one of the world's brightest bands was boldly changing the conversation around safe sex, HIV and Aids. Award-winning Atlanta-based trio TLC (comprising Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas) released their signature track in 1995: Waterfalls, taken from their second album, CrazySexyCool.More like this: - The real meaning of Swift's song Slut - Should we bring singers back from the dead? - The extraordinary influence of Madonna
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S7Fairytale of New York: Shane MacGowan, The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl's rousing and controversial Christmas classic  When the death of Shane MacGowan was announced on Thursday, fans everywhere discussed which of his songs were their favourites. As the lead singer of Anglo-Irish band The Pogues, and then as a solo artist, MacGowan was renowned as one of pop's most distinctive writers, and as someone who brought rambunctious, punky new life to Irish folk music. But one song of his will be remembered above all others. Fairytale of New York is a bona fide Christmas classic that is currently being played in a bar, shop or home near you – although some people would prefer if it were never played again.More like this:- The most violent band in the world- Why Sinead O'Connor refused to be silenced- The number one song that promoted safe sex
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S8Emissions inequality is getting worse - here's how to end the reign of the ultra-polluters  Climate change is overwhelmingly a problem of wealthy people. The wealthiest 1% of humanity produce over 1,000 times the emissions of the poorest 1%. In fact, these 77 million people are responsible for more climate-changing emissions than the poorest 66% (5 billion people) of humanity. Since 1990, the personal emissions of the world’s wealthiest have exploded. They are now 77 times larger than the level that would be compatible with a 1.5°C warming limit – a threshold beyond which whole island nations will possibly disappear.
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S9Why men in 19th century Wales dressed as women to protest taxation  South-west Wales was reeling in the wake of social unrest in November 1843. There had been a series of protests over several years by farmers furious at taxation levels, mainly attacking tollgates. Often, the men involved dressed as women and were therefore known in Welsh as Merched Beca (Rebecca’s daughters). The events that unfolded came to be known as the Rebecca riots in English. There has been speculation that the name “Rebecca” stemmed from a literal interpretation of Genesis 24:60 in the Bible, which refers to Rebekah’s offspring possessing the gates of their enemies. But the truth is, nobody really knows why the name was chosen.
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S10Colonized countries rarely ask for redress over past wrongs - the reasons can be complex  The king of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, apologized in July 2023 for his ancestors’ role in the colonial slave trade. He is not alone in expressing remorse for past wrongs. In 2021, France returned 26 works of art seized by French colonial soldiers in Africa – the largest restitution France has ever made to a former colony. In the same year, Germany officially apologized for its 1904-08 genocide of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia and paid reparations.
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S11Who is still getting HIV in America? Medication is only half the fight -  As the globe marks another World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, it’s crucial to both acknowledge the significant strides made in the global battle against HIV and recognize the persistent challenges that remain. While the United States had seen a slow decline in the overall number of new HIV infections from 2017 to 2021, a closer look at the data reveals persistent disparities largely borne by LGBTQ people and communities of color.As a social epidemiologist who proudly identifies as a gay Latino, I have a vested interest both personally and professionally in understanding and addressing the HIV disparities my communities face. It’s disheartening to realize that, despite available medical advances that can end the AIDS epidemic, these resources aren’t reaching those who need them the most.
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S12These programs make college possible for students with developmental disabilities  For students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, opportunities to attend college may appear few and far between. But this is changing, thanks to inclusive postsecondary education – known as IPSE – programs at colleges across the United States. Here are some important things to know about these programs.Inclusive postsecondary education refers to programs at colleges and technical schools that provide career and transitional training to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Transitional training helps these individuals move into adulthood, teaching them skills like how to set up a bank account, do laundry or cook for themselves.
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S13Bringing classical physics into the modern world with Galileo's Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment  If you drop a light object and a heavy object from a tower, which one reaches the ground first? As you may recall from high school physics, this is a trick question. Neglecting air resistance, they both fall the same way and reach the ground at the same time – gravity means that their speeds increase at 9.8 meters per second squared, no matter what their mass. That’s the premise behind Galileo Galilei’s Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment, a classic thought experiment in the field of dynamics.
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S14Why all civilian lives matter equally, according to a military ethicist  Some commentators have criticized Israel for causing what is claimed to be disproportionate harm to civilians in its military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.Others have defended Israel’s actions, claiming that such force – and the risk to civilians involved – is necessary to eliminate Hamas, which some Israelis believe poses an existential threat to Israel.
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S15S16'Wonka' movie holds remnants of novel's racist past  Several years ago, I made a visit to a local book sale and came across a rare 1964 edition of Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Popular in its own right, the novel has also served as the inspiration for a number of movies, including “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory” – the classic 1971 movie starring the late Gene Wilder – a 2005 reboot starring Johnny Depp, and “Wonka”, the 2023 version.As a child of the 1980s, I had voraciously consumed Dahl’s novels, so I knew the book well. But the illustrations in this particular edition looked unfamiliar.
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S17A First Amendment battle looms in Georgia, where the state is framing opposition to a police training complex as a criminal conspiracy  When does lawful protest become criminal activity? That question is at issue in Atlanta, where 57 people have been indicted and arraigned on racketeering charges for actions related to their protest against a planned police and firefighter training center that critics call “Cop City.” Racketeering charges typically are reserved for people accused of conspiring toward a criminal goal, such as members of organized crime networks or financiers engaged in insider trading. Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr is attempting to build an argument that seeking to stop construction of the police training facility – through actions that include organizing protests, occupying the construction site and vandalizing police cars and construction equipment – constitutes a “corrupt agreement” or shared criminal goal.
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S18Native American mothers whose children have been separated from them experience a raw and ongoing grief that has no end  Native American mothers whose children were separated from them – either through child removal for assimilation into residential boarding schools or through coerced adoption – experience the kind of grief no parent should ever feel. Yet theirs is a loss that is ongoing, with no sense of meaning or closure. While some families have eventually been reunited, far too many languish in the child welfare system, where Native American children are overrepresented as a result of discrimination and racial bias, structural racism and increased exposure to poverty.
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S19Why some people from the north of England end up leaving everything to King Charles when they die  What connects an ex-miner and lifelong republican, who once manned the protest lines at Orgreave, with King Charles III? The surprising answer, as the Guardian reported, is that the ex-miner’s estate now forms part of a fund which generates private income for the monarch. The reason is the legal principle of bona vacantia. This is loosely translated as “ownerless goods” and refers to a process through which the estates of people who die without heirs in England and Wales are claimed by the crown.
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S20Argentina's Brexit: why new president Milei is threatening to pull out of South America's common market  Javier Milei, who was elected as Argentina’s new president on November 19, has promised to withdraw from the South American “common market”, Mercosur.This decision could have significant economic and social repercussions for Argentina, potentially similar to when the UK pulled out of the EU. Mercosur has some similarities to the EU . For instance, nationals of nine South American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay) enjoy the right to enter, reside and work in all of the above countries.
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S21Gaza war: what do we know about the hostage-prisoner exchanges and are they likely to resume?  During the seven-day truce agreed between Israel and Hamas, seven exchanges were made of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. But on November 30, the two sides failed to reach an agreement on the eighth exchange and there has since been a resumption of the fighting in the Gaza Strip.While this “humanitarian pause” continued, 107 hostages – including 83 Israelis and 24 foreign nationals – who were taken by force by Hamas on October 7, were returned to Israel. The majority of them were young children and their mothers. A few elderly women were also released.
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S22S23Exhibition explores how the Victorians are being reimagined in contemporary art  As you enter Reimag(in)ing the Victorians, a quote from Oscar Wilde faces you from across the room: “The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.” Wilde’s statement draws the attention of visitors to two things. First, the fact that history is an ever-changing form of representation. And second, that it is form of representation produced by us.One of the most significant – and perhaps unexpected – impacts of the Black Lives Matter movement has been an increased public understanding of history as a subjective representation of the past. The “contested history” debates that have raged over the past few years are evidence of this. And the vicious antagonism that they have provoked gives credence to the work of late 20th century writers like Keith Jenkins, who argues that there is no such thing as an entirely “objective” version of the past.
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S24Santos, now booted from the House, got elected as a master of duplicity -- here's how it worked  U.S. Rep. George Santos, a Republican from New York, was expelled on Dec. 1, 2023 from Congress for doing what most people think all politicians do all the time: lying.Santos lied about his religion, marital status, business background, grandparents, college, high school, sports-playing, income and campaign donation expenditures.
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S25Why are people still flying to climate conferences by private jet?  Rishi Sunak, David Cameron and King Charles are just three of the more than 70,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries at the latest UN climate summit in Dubai, COP28. But they are among hundreds who will have travelled there by private jet. In fact, the UK prime minister, foreign secretary and king even travelled in three separate planes. At COP27 in Egypt last year, around 315 private jet journeys took place. This is an extraordinary statistic, especially as fewer world leaders attended that COP, as many were busy at a G20 summit in Bali.
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S26Sustainability schemes deployed by business most often ineffective, research reveals  If you ever wondered what the weather might look like should global average temperatures rise 2C degrees above pre-industrial levels – the critical warming threshold the Paris Agreement seeks to prevent us from reaching – take your mind’s eye back to Friday 17 November. That day, for the first time since records began, global surface air temperature briefly reached 2.07C above pre-industrial levels. While this does not mean that we have breached the global climate agreement’s target, the frequency at which the mercury jumps over that line raises serious concern.As this year’s global annual climate talks, COP28, unfolds, one could hope that this would shock governments into strengthening their climate goals. But this point in time ought to be a moment of reckoning for companies, too. The data, however, indicates otherwise, as executives lie about their environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts and cut green spending further.
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S27Destruction of Ukrainian heritage: why losing historical icons can leave a long shadow  Destruction of Ukrainian heritage is happening on a scale not seen there since World War II, a report published by the journal, Antiquity, has claimed. The report lists damage to a number of historic sites, including the Unesco-listed Vasyl Tarnovsky Museum of Ukrainian Antiquities and the burial mound at Boldyni Hory – one of the largest eleventh-century Ukrainian necropolises. Since the war began, Unesco has verified damage to 329 sites, including to the historic centre of Chernihiv.
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S28Artificial wombs could someday be a reality - here's how they may change our notions of parenthood  Our reproductive lives are considerably different from those of our ancestors, thanks in part to health innovations that have taken place over the past few decades. Practices such as IVF, donor eggs and sperm, womb transplants, surrogacy and egg freezing, mean that for many, there’s now more choice than ever before over whether, when and how to reproduce.Yet, despite these advances, one aspect of reproduction has remained constant: the need to gestate (grow) foetuses in the womb. But what would happen to our notions of parenthood if technology made it possible to grow a foetus outside the human body?
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S29Turmoil at OpenAI shows we must address whether AI developers can regulate themselves  In the background, there have been reports of vigorous debates within OpenAI regarding AI safety. This not only highlights the complexities of managing a cutting-edge tech company, but also serves as a microcosm for broader debates surrounding the regulation and safe development of AI technologies.Large language models (LLMs) are at the heart of these discussions. LLMs, the technology behind AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, are exposed to vast sets of data that help them improve what they do – a process called training. However, the double-edged nature of this training process raises critical questions about fairness, privacy, and the potential misuse of AI.
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S30Electric arc furnaces: the technology poised to make British steelmaking more sustainable  Materials Scientist and SUSTAIN Impact & Engagement Manager, Swansea University In a move to embrace sustainable steelmaking, British Steel has unveiled a £1.25 billion plan to replace two blast furnaces at its Scunthorpe plant with electric arc furnaces. This follows the UK government’s commitment in September to invest up to £500 million towards an electric arc furnace at Tata Steel’s Port Talbot plant in south Wales.
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S31A Senate inquiry is calling for a new 'behaviour curriculum' to try and tackle classroom disruptions  The inquiry, which has been looking at “increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms,” said education authorities should introduce a “behaviour curriculum”. The inquiry is being conducted by a Senate education committee, chaired by Liberal senator Matt O'Sullivan. It was set up in November 2022, following concerns about the levels of disruptive behaviour in Australian school classrooms. This has included evidence about both primary and secondary schools and government and non-government schools.
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S32Frederick Wiseman in Paradise  In “Menu-Plaisirs—Les Troisgros,” Frederick Wiseman’s four-hour documentary about a great French restaurant, playing at Film Forum, there is a kitchen like none that I’ve ever seen: a large rectangular room with windows facing the woods; rows of stainless-steel countertops, with burners embedded in the flat surfaces; clear open air above the cooking spaces—a startling absence of ladles, pots, pans, mitts, and hoods (the high ceiling works as a hood). One further absence, and a very welcome one, too: a sweat-stained studly cook, hair enshrined in a bandanna, bullying everyone in the room.In this airy space, everyone can see everyone else, and the young boss of the kitchen, César Troisgros, a slight, concentrated man with wire-frame glasses, controls the room with a look here and there, a quiet command, and occasionally a quick rush from one counter to another. We are about forty-five miles northwest of Lyon, in rural Ouches, where the Troisgros family runs an extraordinary restaurant called Le Bois sans Feuilles (The Woods Without Leaves). The price of the set meal, for lunch or for dinner, is three hundred and forty euros, hors boisson. (Call it five hundred euros per person with a good bottle of local wine.) Ouches! Yes, but, having seen the movie, I’m quite sure that no one is being cheated.
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